Down: Trilogy Box Set (27 page)

“King Henry told me the same thing. He said he never personally killed anyone himself.”

“I am aware you were at his court. Our ambassador reported this. We have been following your every movement, monsieur, just as we have been following Marcel Polverel, who, we know, is an agent for a subversive in Italia. Tell me, monsieur, who is this man?”

“I don’t know.”

Robespierre showed his irritation by roughly snatching a handkerchief and blowing his aquiline nose. “You will tell me the name of the Italian subversive.”

“They said if I knew his name I’d give it up if I was tortured. They kept me in the dark.”

“We can see if this is true. Forneau can arrange a session in the dungeon.”

John gave him an icy stare. “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

Robespierre snorted. “No, I will not torture you. Indeed, I will pamper you. You will have good quarters, good food, good women. You will be my prisoner, but a prisoner in a gilded cage. You will be systematically questioned. We intend to learn from you how to manufacture the superior cannon which you fashioned for the English, and any other technology which you might enable. We also wish to question you on the capabilities of the English fleet. You are a unique and valuable resource which we shall plumb to the fullest depths.”

“Here’s what I have to say about that. Screw you, Max. I’m going to be the worst houseguest you’ve ever had.”

When he fully understood John’s response Robespierre turned furious and told Forneau to take him away.

John started to leave but turned to say, “Tell me something. What ever happened to liberty, equality, and fraternity?”

Robespierre leaned forward to massage his swollen leg. “These are not relevant principles in Hell, monsieur. Surely you know this by now.”

John ignored him, smiled at the astonished woman, and followed Forneau out the door.

The two men walked in silence, accompanied by the armed dungeon keepers, down a long hall to one flight of stairs, then another. The corridor on this floor was as long as the one which housed the royal apartments but there was no carpet and the walls were unpainted plaster. Each of the doors had bolts on the outside.

As they walked down this hall John turned to Forneau and asked, “So what’s your story?”

“My story?” the man said. He had a full face with incipient jowls of a well-fed man in his sixties, and the saddest eyes John had ever seen. “It is a short one. I was a bureaucrat in the court of Emperor Napoleon III. I was involved in a complex, unsavory matter. I died in 1861. Fortunately, my talents were recognized and rather than being condemned to slave labor in the fields or a salle décomposition, I was made a junior minister by the king. I excelled in my job and I was elevated.”

Forneau unbolted one of the doors and gestured for John to enter. He instructed the guards to wait in the hall and joined John inside. The room was large and comfortably appointed with a bed, a braided rug, a bureau, wash basin, chamber pot and a padded arm chair. There was a cold fireplace with a small stack of wood. A pair of windows overlooked the Seine. There was a platter of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a jug of wine.

“Will this do?” Forneau asked.

“I don’t appreciate being held against my will.”

“The king has ordered it.”

“How’d Max become a king anyway?”

“I believe you are not showing him the appropriate respect. A rebellious attitude will not best serve you.” Forneau sat on the chair and John sniffed at the cheese.

“No knife.”

Forneau reached for his belt and offered one.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll cut your throat?”

“The guards would deal with you harshly. I wonder if a living man could die in Hell?”

John took the knife, sliced the cheese and cut the bread. “I’m trying to avoid finding out. Want some?”

Forneau declined and John sat on the bed to eat.

“I have been told that when Robespierre arrived, the king of the day, Louis XI, an ancient monarch who reigned on Earth in the fifteenth century, was taken by his ruthless efficiency. He rose to be Louis’s principal minister and within several decades he engineered a coup d’état and seized the crown for himself. It is said he had a guillotine made to his own specifications and Louis was its first subject. You see the irony, of course. In life he topples a king, in death he becomes one.”

“How come he trusts you? Isn’t he afraid you’re going to do the same thing to him?”

“The answer is simple. He does not trust me. He is suspicious of everyone. His food is tasted. His personal guards are treated like princes to buy their loyalty. He knows I am not ambitious and that alone has kept me from the guillotine.”

Forneau rose and said he had business to attend to.

“My knife, please.”

John had palmed it and was now sitting on it. He fished it out and presented it, handle first.

Forneau pursed his plump lips. “On second thought, keep it. I will have the physician come to examine your head wound.”

Alone, John stashed the knife under the pillow and wondered what Forneau’s gesture meant. Was he going to help him? Was he hoping he’d use it on the king? He tried the door and peered through the windows. Even if he broke the panes of leaded glass and squeezed through, there was a fatally steep drop down to the river bank. The Paris that he could see was low and sprawling, a charcoal sketch of a city, devoid of color. He helped himself to more food and reclined on the bed. After a while the bolt slid open and a heavyset man appeared carrying a small leather bag. He was huffing and puffing from his stair climbing.

“Excuse me,” the man said. “My English is not excellent. I am Doctor Lefebvre. Monsieur Forneau asked me to see your head.”

“I don’t think it’s serious,” John said, throwing his feet over the side of the bed.

The doctor sat beside him and John wondered if the bed would take his prodigious weight.

“How remarkable. To see a living man again,” the doctor said while using his pudgy fingers to poke and prod the tender lump on his crown. Then he put him through a rudimentary neurological exam and declared him to be free of serious malady.

“If I had a problem, is there anything you could have done about it?”

“I was not a surgeon so if you had a hemorrhage I could not help you. I have some simple medicines, naturalistic therapies, nothing very strong. I am a doctor in name only, I am afraid. The king likes to have a doctor at his side, especially a modern one, so I am at his service. I humor him mostly and in return, I am fed and sheltered.”

“Got anything for a toothache?”

The doctor had a look inside his mouth by candlelight and said, “I can give you a vial of oil of cloves. It might provide some comfort.”

“That would be much appreciated. How long have you been here?”

“Some eighteen years. I poisoned a man who was blackmailing me over a sordid affair. I was caught by the police and upon my arrest suffered a fatal heart attack.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Want some wine? Food?”

The doctor didn’t take any prodding to tuck into the bread and cheese and while he ate, John explained his own circumstances.

When he had answered all of Lefebvre’s questions, he turned the tables and asked a few of his own.

“As a medical man, how do you explain that you can’t die here?”

“I cannot explain this,” the doctor said, ripping off another piece of bread. “The laws of nature are different in Hell. The aging process, it ceases. I have not seen cancers or heart attacks. People keep to the same physiologic age indefinitely. There are injuries, yes, and infections, and some maladies like the venous thrombosis that affects the king, but I have seen men who claim they are many hundreds of years old, much older than the king, for example. And I have seen many, many men with catastrophes who should be dead but do not die. It is as if the beautiful laws of nature were canceled and re-written by a sadistic fiend to ensure there is no escape for the likes of us. Now I must go. The king likes to torment me by saying if I do not come quickly when he calls he will use my body fat to light his lamps.”

Alone, John stripped down to his shorts and lay back down. He had just drifted off when he heard the bolt slide again. He blinked himself into alertness and was expecting to see the doctor returning for more food or discourse but when the door opened it was Robespierre’s woman who came through. The bolt slid shut behind her, telling him that her presence was not completely hidden, at least from the guards. She stroked her black hair away from her eyes and just stood there, studying his lean body, waiting for him to say something.

He broke the silence. “Would you like some wine?”

She spoke English with a heavy Russian accent. “Yes. Wine is only thing to sustain me.”

“I hear you. I used to have a similar relationship with booze.”

“Booze?”

“Drink. Alcoholic beverages.”

“Ah. May I sit?”

She took the chair. He handed her a full cup and retreated to the bed. He thought about dressing but decided to wing it.

“What’s your name?”

“Irina.”

“So how did you get to be Max’s woman, Irina?”

She laughed. “No one but you ever had this courage to call him Max. Max’s woman. This is good way to descibe me. I have no title. I am not queen. He fuck me sometimes, not so often for last many years. He terrible lover and his breath smell like swamp. Mostly I am trophy to show people of Francia that he powerful man to have pretty woman. He buy me from Russian duke for lot of money.”

“How long have you been here?”

“In Hell? I lose count. Maybe hundred fifty years.”

“Does Max know you're visiting me?”

“No. I bribe guards to keep quiet. Maybe they talk and I get head chopped off. I don’t care.”

“Really?”

“No, I do care. Rotting room scares me. But it is worth the risk to be with good man.”

“How do you know I’m good?”

“Because you not in Hell for die. And you seem good to me.” She got up and walked toward the bed. “And you smell good.”

When she sat on the bed John smiled at her and said, “Can I tell you something about me, Irina?”

“Yes.”

“I was a soldier most of my adult life and soldiers live with death around the corner. I think I used that as an excuse to be an asshole to a lot of people, especially the women I was involved with. You know what asshole means?”

“I think is clear.”

“So I drank too much and I treated my women badly. I cheated on them and I lied to them. But all that changed with a woman named Emily.”

Maybe she wasn’t understanding where his story was going or maybe she didn’t care. She put her hand on his knee. “Tell me about Emily.”

He let it stay put. “Emily is a remarkable woman. She’s Scottish. She’s a scientist. She’s tough. She’s funny. She’s also very beautiful.”

“I am beautiful too, no?”

“Yes you are. You’re a beautiful woman. But here’s the thing. Emily changed me. I’m trying not to be an asshole anymore, at least not as big a one. I’m trying to be faithful, which for me is as hard as a dog walking past a juicy bone. She’s the reason I’m here. I’m trying to find her and I’m trying to bring her home, back to our time and our place. Can you understand that? It’s not that I don’t want you, Irina. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”

She pouted her lips. “I understand. It is not like here where men fuck everything like dog in heat. Is nice. Not for me but nice. Can I just lie next to you?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She lay beside him and nuzzled his neck. Her breathing became heavy, her breasts, full and heaving, and he saw her hike up her dress to touch herself. He wasn’t immune. He felt himself getting hard and he began playing a mind game along the lines of, was it really cheating to sleep with a dead woman? But he snapped out of it and kept his hands to himself. Irina seemed to lose herself. Her eyes closed, she kept licking and kissing his neck while her hips rocked up and down and the bed creaked to her rhythms. She came in an explosion of kissing and writhing and only then did her body become still.

After a while, she opened her eyes, sighed and pulled her dress down. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad you had a little escape,” he said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Yes. It was escape. Can I come back?”

“I can’t stay here, Irina.”

“The king, he will not let you leave.”

“Can you help me escape?”

“I would go to guillotine. I am sorry.”

“It’s okay. Yes, you can come back.”

John spent the rest of the day pacing the room like a caged tiger and applying the soothing oil of cloves the doctor had delivered. He watched the city fade into darkness and drank the rest of the wine until he had a good buzz going. He flopped on the bed and napped again and when he awoke the room was black. At first he thought he had awoken because his mouth was dry and wooly but then he realized the door was opening. Someone was holding a candle. He grabbed for the knife under the pillow.

“Shhh. It is I, Forneau.”

Forneau closed the door and put the candle on a table. He looked to pour some wine and chuckled when he saw it was all gone.

“I hear you refused to fornicate with Irina.”

John laughed at the choice of words. It sounded like something out of a biology textbook. “She told you that?”

“No, she told one of her maids who told me. I try to know everything at court.”

“Why did you leave me your knife?”

“As a signal.”

“A signal of what?”

“Of my intentions.”

“My intention is to get out of here.”

“Perhaps I can help.”

“Why would you help me?”

“The men you traveled with from Brittania. They serve an Italian.”

“So they say.”

“What if I were to tell you I serve that man also?”

“I’d say that I was pleased to hear that. You’ve met him?”

“I have, only on one occasion but that was enough to change my way of thinking.”

“Go on …”

“And what if I were to tell you that your friends have stolen one of the king’s motor cars and are waiting for you nearby?”

John was already dressing. “I’d be pleased to hear that too.”