The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

Then, once more, 1793. Five o'clock on that long-gone "August" day, and the afternoon sun has already begun to slant down over the Row of the Armed Man's ruined roofs, dripping from their streaming gutters in a dazzle of water and light, along with the last of the previous night's rainfall. Jean-Guy and La Hire sit together at what passes for a table by the open window of a street-side cafe, their tricolor badges momentarily absent from sashes and hats; they sip their coffee, thus disguised, and listen to today's tumbrils grind by through the stinking mist. Keeping a careful tandem eye, also, upon the uppermost windows of Dumouriez's house, refuge of a suspected traitor, and previously listed (before its recent conversion into a many-roomed, half-empty "citizens' hotel") as part of the ancestral holdings of a certain M. le Chevalier du Prendegrace.

Jean-Guy to La Hire: "This Prendegrace — who is he?"

"A ci-devant aristo, what else? Like all the rest."

"Yes, to be sure; but besides."

La Hire shrugs. "Does it matter?"

Here, in that ill-fit building just across the way, other known aristocrats — men, women and children bearing papers forged expertly enough to permit them to walk the streets of Paris, if not exit through its gates — have often been observed to enter, though rarely been observed to leave. Perhaps attracted by Prendegrace's reputation as "one of their own", they place their trust in his creature Dumouriez's promises of sanctuary, refuge, escape; the very fact of their own absence, later on, seems to prove that trust has not been given in vain.

"The sewers," La Hire suggests. "They served us well enough during the old days, dodging royalist scum through the Cordeliers' quarter"

Jean-Guy scoffs. "A secret entrance, perhaps, in the cellar? Down to the river with the rest of the garbage, then to the far shore on some subterranean boat?"

"It's possible."

"So the accused Church used to claim, concerning Christ's resurrection."

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 that 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, pale and empty as a wax head from Citizen Curtuis's museum — that studio where images of decapitated friend and foe to France alike are modelled 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 dappledlike 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 Doctor Keynes. A cyclic, tidal flux, regular as breath, unwelcome as nightmare, constantly calling and recalling 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 brave the curtain periodically 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 ?"