The Worm in Every Heart

A guffaw. “Ah, but there’s no need to be so bitter about that, Citizen. Is there? Since they’ve already paid so well, after all—those fat-arsed priests—for spreading such pernicious lies.”

And: Ah, yes, Jean-Guy remembers thinking, as he nods in smiling agreement. Paid in full, on the Widow’s lap . . . just like the King and his Austrian whore, before them.

Across the street, meanwhile, a far less elevated lady of ill-repute comes edging up through the Row proper, having apparently just failed to drum up any significant business amongst the crowds which line the Widow’s bridal path. Spotting them both, she hikes her skirt to show Jean-Guy first the hem of her scarlet petticoat, then the similarly red-dyed tangle of hair at her crotch. La Hire glances over, draws a toothless grin, and snickers in reply; Jean-Guy affects to ignore her, and receives a rude gesture for his politesse. Determined to avoid the embarrassment of letting his own sudden spurt of anger show, he looks away, eyes flicking back towards the attic’s windows—

—where he sees, framed between its moth-worn curtains, another woman’s face appear: A porcelain-smooth girl’s mask peering out from the darkness behind the cracked glass, grub-pale in the shadows of this supposedly unoccupied apartment. It hangs there, empty as a wax head from Citizen Curtuis’ museum—that studio where images of decapitated friend and foe to France alike are modeled from casts taken by his “niece” Marie, the Grosholtz girl, who will one day abandon Curtuis to the mob he serves and marry another man for passage to England. Where she will set up her own museum, exhibiting the results of her skills under the fresh new name of Madame Tussaud.

That white face. Those dim-hued eyes. Features once contemptuously regal, now possessed of nothing but a dull and uncomplaining patience. The same wide stare which will meet Jean-Guy’s, after the raid, from atop the grisly burden of Dumouriez’s overcrowded pallet. That proud aristo, limbs flopped carelessly askew, her nude skin dappled—like that of every one of her fellow victims—

(like Jean-Guy’s own brow now, in 1815, as he studies that invisible point on the wall where the stain of Dumouriez’s escape once hung, dripping)

—with bloody sweat.

His “old complaint,” he called it, during that brief evening’s consultation with Dr. Keynes. A cyclic, tidal flux, regular a

s breath, unwelcome as nightmare—constantly calling and re-calling a blush, or more, to his unwilling skin.

And he wonders, Jean-Guy, just as he wondered then: why look at all? Why bother to hide herself, if only to periodically brave the curtain and offer her unmistakable face to the hostile street outside?

But—

“You aristos,” he remembers muttering while the Chevalier listened, courteously expressionless. “All, so . . . arrogant.”

“Yes, Citizen.”

“Like . . . that girl. The one . . . ”

“At Dumouriez’s window? Oh, no doubt.”

“ . . . but how . . . ” Struggling manfully against his growing lassitude, determined to place the reference in context: “How . . . could you know . . . ?”

And the Chevalier, giving his version of La Hire’s shrug, all sleek muscle under fine scarlet velvet—

“But I simply do, Citizen Sansterre.”

Adding, in a whisper—a hum? That same hum, so close and quiet against the down of Jean-Guy’s paralyzed cheek, which seems to vibrate through every secret part of him at once whenever the blood still kept sequestered beneath his copper-ruddy mixed-race flesh begins to . . . flow . . .

. . . for who do you think it was who told her to look out, in the first place?

* * *

In Martinique—with money and time at his disposal, and a safe distance put between himself and that Satanic, red-lined coach—Jean-Guy had eventually begun to make certain discreet inquiries into the long and secretive history of the family Prendegrace. Thus employed, he soon amassed a wealth of previously hidden information: facts impossible to locate during the Revolution, or even before.

Like picking at a half-healed scab, pain and relief in equal measure—and since, beyond obviously, he would never be fully healed, what did it matter just . . .

. . . what . . .

. . . Jean-Guy’s enquiries managed to uncover?

Chevalier Joffroi d’Iver, first of his line, won his nobility on crusade under Richard Coeur-de-lion, for services rendered during the massacre at Acre. An old story: Reluctant to lose the glory of having captured three hundred Infidels in battle—though aware that retaining them would prevent any further advancement towards his true prize, the holy city of Jerusalem—the hot-blooded Plantagenet ordered each and every one of them decapitated on the spot. So scaffolds were built, burial pits dug, and heads and bodies sent tumbling in either direction for three whole days—while the swords of d’Iver and his companions swung ceaselessly, and a stream of fresh victims slipped in turn on the filth their predecessors had left behind.

And after their task was done, eyewitnesses record, these good Christian knights filled the pits with Greek fire—leaving the bodies to burn, as they rode away.

Much as, during your own famous Days of September, a familiar voice seems to murmur at Jean-Guy’s ear, three hundred and seventy-eight of those prisoners awaiting trial at the Conciergie were set upon by an angry horde of good patriots like yourself, and hacked limb from limb in the street.

Eyes closed, Jean-Guy recalls a gaggle of women running by—red-handed, reeling drunk—with clusters of ears adorning their open, fichu-less bodices. Fellow Citizens clapping and cheering from the drawn-up benches as a man wrings the Princess de Lamballe’s still-beating heart dry over a goblet, then takes a long swig of the result, toasting the health of the Revolution in pale aristo blood. All those guiding lights of Liberty: ugly Georges Danton, passionate Camille Desmoulins . . .

. . . Maximilien Robespierre in his Incorruptible’s coat of sea-green silk, nearsighted cat’s eyes narrowed against the world through spectacles with smoked-glass lenses—the kind one might wear, even today, to protect oneself while observing an eclipse.