A Sharpness on the Neck d-9 Read online

  A Sharpness on the Neck

  ( Dracula - 9 )

  Fred Saberhagen

  In 1792, Philip Radcliffe, the bastard son of Benjamin Franklin, comes to France to deliver a letter to Thomas Paine--only to get caught up in a conflict far more horrifying than the Revolution. By foiling a powerful vampire's attempt at fratricide, Radcliffe dooms himself and his descendants to suffer the vampire's eternal vengeance.

  In present day, Philip and June Radcliffe are kidnapped on their honeymoon. Their captor, a mysterious Mr. Graves, swears that he aims to protect them. Yet as the thrilling story unfolds, involving Napoleon, the Marquis de Sade, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, as well as Jerry Cruncher and Detective Dupin, the young couple refuses to believe him--a mistake that is certain to cost them their lives.

  A Sharpness on the Neck

  by Fred Saberhagen

  Chapter One

  The world abounds in mysteries. But some of the marvels which at first sight strike the observer as most impressive are susceptible to the most trivial explanations.

  Allow me to offer an example. Charles Dickens, famed inventor of Christmas ghosts and Tiny Tim, when visiting Rome in 1845 chose to broaden his experience of the world by witnessing the beheading of a criminal. Afterward Dickens wrote: A strange appearance was the apparent annihilation of the neck. The head was taken off so close that it seemed as if the knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or shaving off the ear. And the body looked as if there were nothing left above the shoulder.

  In fact, the cause of this seeming annihilation is perfectly simple. When the living muscles of the neck are suddenly cut in half, each end of each fiber contracts sharply, pulling with it the soft surrounding tissues, as well as the small, newly disconnected bones which had made up the spinal column. Tiny fragments are all one can expect to find of whichever vertebra lay directly in the path of the falling knife, which, at least in the classical French guillotine, is not only extremely sharp but as heavy as a small anvil.

  * * *

  Now that we have arrived in France, let me mention, parenthetically, a puzzle that I—I, Vlad Dracula—find somewhat harder to explain: In all the surviving bureaucratic paperwork of the Terror—I mean the French Revolution of the 1790s—in all the volumes of court orders, prison records, inflammatory speeches, in all the desperate accumulation of decrees and denunciations—the word "guillotine" does not appear even once. Newspapers, of course, are a different story. Charles-Henri Sanson, chief executioner and high priest of the device during much of that bloodstained epoch, as a rule called it simply la mecanique—"the machine."

  I tell you that greedy and most fickle wench, la mecanique, consumed more blood in one year—nay, perhaps in a month, or even in a single day—than I in a whole century.

  The long, broad stream of human history has cast up a hundred variations on the beheading device, from the simple headsman's axe or sword up through an infernal variety of complications. It seems safe to say that the one the world knows best is the eponymous child of Dr. Guillotin, who more than two hundred years ago, as a delegate to the French National Assembly, conceived his mechanical offspring, based on the latest humanitarian principles, in the course of an enlightened search for greater efficiency in terror.

  The guillotine in its classical French form counted its first live human victim on April 25, 1792, in Paris, when used to dispatch a common murderer and thief, Jacques Pelletier. Some three years later, a steam-powered guillotine, intended to achieve the mass production of justice, was on the drawing boards—but by 1795 the number of beheadings, after averaging around twenty-six a day in Paris alone during the previous summer, had gone into a precipitous decline. The French Revolution, a monstrous child of oppression, was choked on blood and stumbling over bodies. To the best of historians' knowledge at the end of the twentieth century, that ultraefficient model of la mecanique has yet to be constructed.

  Throughout a good part of the 1790s—those strenuous years which in France, at least, are never to be forgotten—Sanson and his sons and their crew (there was never a shortage of volunteers) performed their indefatigable labors, without benefit of steam, while elevated on a stage. Their Parisian theater of operations looked much like a prizefighters' square ring, and had the same reason for its existence: to provide a good view for a large audience.

  The tall narrow frame of the guillotine, extending almost fifteen feet above the platform, was essentially composed of two stout wooden uprights a little more than a foot apart. The lunette at the bottom of the uprights consisted of two pieces of wood, each with a smooth, semicircular notch, that when clapped together formed a solid neckpiece pierced by a circular, neck-sized hole.

  This hole was at the head of the plank bed on which the subject was placed facedown. The broad, single plank, painted blood red like the lunette and uprights, slid back from the upright portion of the frame, simultaneously tilting into an almost vertical position. First, as a rule, the subject's hands were tied behind his or her back. Then the man—frequently a woman; sometimes a child—who was to experience the full effect of the apparatus walked (or was dragged or carried) up to this plank, and was secured to it by broad leather straps encircling the waist and legs.

  The plank was then tipped forward on its central pivot, bringing its occupant to a prone position. Now a precise adjustment by the machine's attendants, allowing for the subject's height—perhaps I should say for the total length when horizontal—positioned the chin in a nicely calculated way, to overhang the end of the plank by about three inches. The executioners, shifting their grip, slid the whole bed forward in its greased grooves, so that the chin of the occupant just cleared the lower half of the lunette. The upper construction of curved wood was then clamped down. A final adjustment, if necessary, was accomplished by tugging on the subject's hair, or on the ears if there was insufficient hair to offer a good grip. This part of the operation was not entirely without peril for the technician; more than one assistant executioner lost more than one finger due to premature release of the heavy knife above.

  Let us now briefly consider that weapon, its cutting edge poised ten or twelve feet above the waiting neck. Attached to the top of the blade was a mouton, a piece of iron weighing some thirty kilograms, or over sixty pounds, intended to render more forceful the descent of the razor-edged cutter, which in itself weighed about twenty pounds. The impact of all this metal, falling usually on the fourth vertebra, tended to be decisive.

  I can offer eyewitness testimony that it was Sanson's habit, each day after work, to bring home with him only the blade of the guillotine, without the mouton. His idea, that of a good workman, was to save the most delicate part of the instrument from rain and rust. Also there was some thought of discouraging curiosity-seekers from playing games with la mecanique, hurting themselves or some innocent victim.

  Naturally Sanson, or more often one of his assistants, saw to it that the blade was cleaned very thoroughly before it was brought into his house. Those in charge also took care that the cutting edge, angled at about forty-five degrees from right to left for improved efficiency, was treated tenderly with file and whetstone to keep it sharp.

  Up on the platform, when Sanson's shop was open for business, there waited wicker baskets also painted red, and made small and large, to receive, respectively, the heads and bodies of the corpses which were the finished product of all this industry and ingenuity. The baskets were usually kept half-filled with bran or sawdust, in hopes of making the cleanup easier.

  How's this for a joke? Executioner to victim being dragged to the machine: "You don't want to do it? But it will only take a second."

  Yes, I quite agree. But at the very height of the Terror, in the
summer of 1794 (Year 2 of the now-almost-forgotten Revolutionary Calendar), one of Sanson's least intelligent assistants was wont to repeat this wheeze a dozen or a score of times a day. Of course each victim only had to hear it once; but after a few weeks it seemed that the fellow's own co-workers, tortured beyond endurance, were on the point of cutting their colleague's throat to shut him up… but I digress.

  Where was I? Yes, there is one more point I wish to make about the guillotine, then on with the story, which I trust you will find fully satisfactory… Whenever, in these post-Revolutionary times, a full-size model of la mecanique becomes available—this happens somewhat more often than you might think—many people find something irresistibly attractive in the idea of trying on, as it were, that tiltable plank and even that lunette. (Few go so far as wanting to hear above their heads the speedy whisper of the falling blade.) Some of these enthusiasts are found among the adventurous elderly, sometimes they are young men, but for some reason the most susceptible to such temptations seem to be young women. All of them want to know: How would it feel to lie down there?

  But it would have been hard to conceive of anything more remote from the thoughts of Philip Radcliffe and his bride of three months, the former June MacKenzie, on the late afternoon in the early summer of 1996 when those two young people encountered… no, not a guillotine, not yet… but their first vampire.

  This particular drinker of blood made a first impression all sweet and girlish, with nothing at all in her appearance to suggest, at first glance, the true nature of her being—unless one considered the dark glasses, necessary armor against the day's last, relatively feeble rays of direct sunlight. She looked very young (though actually well over five hundred years of age, as I can testify through personal acquaintance) and was comely of face and figure. Her hair was curly, coloring on the dark side, more gypsy-looking than African. Wearing faded jeans, a man's shirt, and long silver earrings, she stood at roadside, one arm boldly extended, thumb up in the hitchhiker's time-honored gesture, flashing white teeth—none of them at the moment particularly pointed—as Radcliffe's convertible, slowing to ten miles an hour for a sharp curve on the winding, climbing, narrow western road, drew near.

  The Radcliffes' kidnapping by the so-called undead took both of them completely by surprise. At the moment when they first came in sight of the young woman, there had been nothing on their minds more exotic than their choice of places, all hours of driving distant, where they might stop for the night.

  But how could an even moderately adventurous young man, accompanied by a wife who invariably wanted to stop for injured animals, resist an attractive young woman standing at roadside at sunset, hitchhiking appealingly in an open area, typical of the western USA, where not even a single thuggish male companion could possibly be concealed? One could see the mountains rising, almost a hundred miles away, with not much of anything but distance in between. There was no broken-down car in evidence, to offer an explanation for her presence.

  The girl at roadside came into the view of Philip and June just as the sun was on the point of disappearing behind the western mountains, on what had been till then a day of only minor surprises for the young couple. The youthful-looking hitchhiker was barefoot, a condition made more noticeable by her blood-red painted toenails. It seemed obvious that she had not been doing a lot of walking along the desert road in that condition.

  Philip's intention had been to coast on past the waiting figure for a few yards before coming to a full stop. But the hitchhiker, as if afraid he was going to get away, darted into the narrow road right in front of his convertible, so that he had to slam on the brakes and curse violently to stop before hitting her. In the next moment, he had the impression that his car had hit the crazy woman; he thought he heard an alarming thump, and believed he saw her body propelled backward a yard or two.

  June, her pale blond hair and skin in marked contrast to those of the hitchhiker, screamed and said something. Afterward, no one could remember what.

  But in the next moment, it seemed that the impression of a heavy impact must have been mistaken, because the hitchhiker certainly was not harmed, had not even been knocked down. Almost before he had completely stopped, she was at the side of the car, reaching for the right rear door handle.

  Certainly whatever had happened was not his fault, but Philip was half-convinced that his auto had struck her, and he couldn't refuse to stop and open the door for her.

  Until that day, the young man would have given the year 1996 a mixed rating. Apart from the joys of his recent wedding, it had not been, for various financial and business reasons, among the very best years of his life. But on the other hand it was a comfortable distance from the worst. Career-wise, he thought it might very well be described as one of the riskiest of times, with the life of a computer consultant in a constant state of flux. But if you looked at the other side of the coin of rapid change, such an epoch was also the most promising.

  Philip Radcliffe was twenty-six years old, and almost exactly six feet tall, broad-shouldered but rangy rather than massive in his build. He was blessed, or cursed, with a classically handsome face, which added to the impression of aristocracy. A shock of dark brown hair tended to resist all efforts at arrangement, lending its owner a romantic, windblown look.

  Something in the young man's features or bearing, the look of his eye, the tilt of his head, along with the lack of styling in his hair, suggested the aristocrat even to people who had no clear idea what an aristocrat in the classic European sense ought to look like.

  Having screeched to a halt, half on the road, half off, he opened his driver's door and started to get out of his car. But then he aborted the motion, slamming his door shut again. Because the young woman was already settling into the rear seat.

  "Drive on!" his new passenger urged, slamming her door shut too—or at least thumping her hand on the flat panel. Radcliffe couldn't have sworn that she had ever opened the door, but somehow she was in. She gave a small but dramatic wave of one small hand, displaying long fingernails of the same color as her toes, and laughed.

  June, twisting round her slight frame to look from the right front seat, gaped open-mouthed at the brazenness of this performance.

  Philip, a trifle dazed by the rapidity of events, started to drive on. With automatic caution he reminded his new passenger to put on her seat belt.

  His new passenger only drew in a deep breath, ran her fingers through her curly hair, and laughed at the idea, once more displaying her amazingly white teeth.

  He snatched a couple of seconds from his driving to turn his head and look at her again. He said: "I thought for a moment that the car had hit you, back there."

  The reply was breezy: "You don't have to worry about that."

  Well, thought Philip Radcliffe. Usually he was quite firm in his attitude toward passengers, requiring that they all be belted in. But the laughter was like a jolt of reality. Illogically, seatbelts were suddenly diminished in importance.

  Welcome a stranger into your car in America these days, and a sudden accident is one of the least of your worries.

  "Where are you going?" Surely a reasonable and almost inevitable question to put to a hitchhiker.

  "With you, Philip." And once more the dark-haired stranger laughed, this time more musically. She turned her head a few degrees from left to right. "Hi, June."

  Phil was sufficiently disturbed that his steering, or lack of it, briefly caused the vehicle to wander back and forth across the road. The couple in the front seat looked at each other with stunned expressions, both of them wondering where inside the car or on it their names might be visible. But of course the names were not on display anywhere, and they knew it. The only reasonable explanation was that they knew this girl from somewhere. But no, thought Radcliffe—she was certainly not of the type that he could have forgotten.

  For some reason he did not even notice that his new passenger was invisible in the rearview mirror; or perhaps, as breathers tend to do som
etimes, he unconsciously suppressed the knowledge. Dangerously neglecting to watch the road, he turned his head to look at her. Numbly he asked: "How'd you know my name?"

  "Somebody told me," she answered playfully, turning her face toward him. With the dying of the last sunspark on the mountainside, she slipped off the dark glasses, revealing warm brown eyes with nothing overtly amazing about them. "Better watch where you're going." Then, as an afterthought: "Call me Connie."

  And Phil, even this early in the game, felt a secret pang of guilt at the impression this comely vampire woman made on him.

  Not that any suspicion of her status, her subspecies if you will, had yet dawned on the puzzled young man. Neither he nor his bride had any clear idea of what a genuine vampire might be expected to look like. Apart from the enjoyment of a few old movies, they really had no thoughts on the subject at all.

  But when the young woman smiled at Philip from between her heavy silver earrings, both observers understood immediately that there was something truly out of the ordinary about her.

  Philip's job as a computer consultant, mainly helping companies to rid themselves of their mainframes in favor of smaller, relatively inexpensive hardware, involved a lot of travel. Begun with his wife three days ago in Kansas City, this trip had been designed with a combination of business and pleasure in mind. Already they had detoured considerably from the strict requirements of business, to do some sightseeing at Meteor Crater and the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert complex. They had visited Inscription Rock in New Mexico as well as the Very Large Array of radiotelescopes mounted on railroad tracks, and were regretting the fact that they had been unable to work the Carlsbad Caverns into their itinerary. They were looking forward to the Grand Canyon and, if they decided to stretch the trip a bit, Zion National Park.

  The sun had at last dropped securely behind the western peaks, whose long shadows now entirely claimed the road ahead. Automatically Radcliffe switched on his headlights—and at the same moment felt the weight and balance in the car change subtly.