The Worm in Every Heart

The first year of this process was to be known as Year Zero. Everything that happened next would be counted from then on. And all that had happened before would be, very simply . . .

. . . gone.

* * *

Then: Paris, 1793. Thermidor, Year Three, just before the end of the Terror—

“Oh, la, Citizen. How you do blush.”

I must wake up, Jean-Guy Sansterre thinks, slow and lax—the words losing shape even as he forms them, like water dripping through an open mental hand, fingers splayed and helpless. Rouse myself. Act. Fight . . .

But feeling, instead, how his whole body settles inexorably into some arcane variety of sleep—limbs loose and heavy, head lolling back on dark red satin upholstery. Falling spine-first into the close, dim interior of the Chevalier du Prendegrace’s coach, a languorous haze of drawn velvet curtains against which Jean-Guy lies helpless as some micro-organism trapped beneath the fringed, softly sloping convex lens of a partially lidded eye.

Outside, in the near distance, one can still hear the constant growl and retch of the Widow, the National Razor, the legendary Machine split the air from the Place De La Revolution—that excellent device patented by dapper Dr. Guillotin, to cure forever the pains and ills of headaches, hangovers, insomnia. The repetitive thud of body on board, head in basket. The jeers and jibes of the tricoteuses knitting under the gallows steps, their Phrygian caps nodding in time with the tread of the executioner’s ritual path; self-elected keepers of the public conscience, these grim hags who have outlived their former oppressors again and again. These howling crowds of sans-culottes, the trouserless ones—all crying in unison for yet more injurious freedom, still more, ever more: A great, sanguinary river with neither source nor tide, let loose to flood the city streets with visible vengeance . . .

“Do you know what complex bodily mechanisms lie behind the workings of a simple blush, Citizen Sansterre?”

That slow voice, emerging—vaporous and languid as an audible curl of smoke—from the red half-darkness of the coach. Continuing, gently:

“I have made a sometime study of such matters; strictly amateur in nature, of course, yet as thorough an inquiry as my poor resources may afford me.”

In the Chevalier’s coach, Jean-Guy feels himself bend and blur like melting waxwork beneath the weight of his own hypnotized exhaustion—fall open on every level, like his own strong but useless arms, his nerveless, cord-cut legs—

“The blush spreads as the blood rises, showing itself most markedly at the skin’s sheerest points—a map of veins, eminently traceable. Almost . . . readable.”

So imperative, this urge to fly, to fight. And so, utterly—

—impossible.

“See, here and there, where landmarks evince themselves: Those knots of veins and arteries, delicately entwined, which wreathe the undersides of your wrists. Two more great vessels, hidden at the tongue’s root. A long, humped one, outlining the shaft of that other boneless—organ—whose proper name we may not quote in mixed company.”

Sitting. Sprawling, limp. And thinking:

I—must . . .

“And that, stirring now? In that same . . . unmentionable . . . area?”

. . . must—wake . . .

“Blood as well, my friend. Blood, which—as the old adage goes—will always tell.”

But: This is all a dream, Jean-Guy reminds himself, momentarily surprised by his own coherence. I have somehow fallen asleep on duty, which is bad, though hardly unforgivable—and because I did so while thinking on the ci-devant Chevalier du Prendegrace, that traitor Dumouriez’s master, I have spun out this strange fantasy.

For Prendegrace cannot be here, after all; he will have fled before Jean-Guy’s agents, like any other hunted lordling. And, knowing this—

Knowing this, I will wake soon, and fulfill the mission set me by the Committee For Public Safety: catch Dumouriez, air out this nest of silken vipers. And all will be as I remember.

At the same time, meanwhile, the Chevalier (or his phantom—for can he really actually be there, dream or no?) smiles down at Jean-Guy through the gathering crimson shade, all sharp—and tender—amusement. A slight, lithe figure, dressed likewise all in red, his hereditary elegance undercut by a distressingly plebeian thread of more-than-usually poor hygiene: lurid velvet coat topped by an immaculately-tied but obviously dingy cravat; silken stockings, offhandedly worn and faded, above the buckled shoes with their neat cork heels. Dark rims to his longish fingernails—dirt, or something else, so long-dried it’s turned black.

His too-white skin has a stink, faintly charnel. Acrid in Jean-Guy’s acquiescent, narrowed nostrils.

“You carry a surplus of blood, Citizen, by the skin-map’s evidence,” the Chevalier seems to say, gently. “And thus might, if only in the name of politeness, consider willing some small portion of that overflowing store . . . to me.”

“Can’t you ever speak clearly, you damnable aristo?” Jean-Guy demands, hoarsely.

And: “Perhaps not,” comes the murmuring reply. “Though, now I think on it . . . I cannot say I’ve ever tried.”

Bending down, dipping his sleek, powdered head, this living ghost of an exterminated generation; licking his thin white lips while Jean-Guy lies still beneath him, boneless, helpless. So soft, all over—in every place—