The Medusa Amulet (40 page)

“Time’s up,” Hébert said, striding into the room. Right behind him, he had a barber, carrying a rusty pair of scissors. “Move along now, priest.”

Shoving Sant’Angelo aside, he yanked away the muslin fichu draped around the queen’s shoulders and said to the barber, “Start cutting.” The barber gathered whatever he could of her hair and sheared it off as if she were a sheep.

“We don’t want anything to impede the razor, do we?” Hébert gloated.

When the cutting was done, the queen was thrown a white linen bonnet, with two black strings to tie it behind.

“Stand up,” Hébert barked, and the marquis could tell he took exquisite pleasure in every discourtesy he could show her. “Put your hands behind your back.”

At this, even Antoinette seemed surprised, and said, “You did not bind the hands of the king.”

“And that was a mistake,” he replied, pulling her wrists back, then knotting a rope around them. Her shoulders were so sharp, it looked as if they might pierce the cloth of her simple white dress.

“Time to go,” Hébert said, nudging the queen with his knee, the way one might nudge a turkey toward the chopping block.

With the Chief of the Committee of Public Safety in the front, and his minions on either side of her, Marie Antoinette was led through the anteroom and down the winding stair. For a moment, the marquis considered attacking them all right then and there, and dragging her off, but he knew that even the queen would resist him. She was reconciled to her fate and did not so much as look back at him.

But he would not—he could not—abandon her. Even the king had been allowed the company and solace of his own
abbé
, Edge-worth de Firmont, on the way to his execution. Marie Antoinette had no one. Alone in the cell, Sant’Angelo tossed the black hat in the corner, along with the breviary, and lifted the garland to his own head. Made so long ago, from the bulrushes surrounding Medusa’s pool, twisted and gilded together in the solitude of his studio, he placed it on his own head.

But the effect, as he knew, was not instantaneous.

Rather, it was as if he had stepped beneath the cascade of water spilling over the lip of the Gorgon’s rock. The top of his head felt anointed, then his face, and neck, and shoulders. Slowly, the sensation, like a trickle of cool water, worked its way all the way down his
body, and even as he looked on, his chest, then his legs, then his feet too, disappeared. He was as solid as ever—something he sometimes forgot, when he banged into a doorframe or stumbled over a stool—but he was utterly invisible to the mortal eye.

By the time he had managed to get downstairs, carefully avoiding any contact with the turnkeys or the guards, the queen was being led toward a rickety tumbrel. Her husband, he knew, had been transported to his death in a closed carriage, safe from the howls and imprecations of the mob, but Hébert seemed determined to miss no opportunity to torment the widow Capet. Her steps faltered as she realized that this was to be the way in which she was conveyed to her death, and she had to turn to Hébert and beg him to untie her hands for just a moment.

Hébert nodded at one of his men, wearing a red stocking cap with a white feather stuck in it, who undid the knot, and the queen, desperately seeking some corner of the courtyard that might afford her some privacy, scurried toward a wall, and lifting her hem, squatted there, her pale face reddening with shame, meeting no one’s eye.

As soon as she was done, Hébert had her hands retied and she was thrust back into the open cart. Stepping into it, she naturally sat facing the front, as she had always done in her coach, but the driver, not unkindly, directed her to sit with her back to the horses. This, the marquis knew, was to keep the prisoners from catching sight of the looming guillotine until the last moments of their journey.

And just as the cart jolted to a start, Sant’Angelo leapt up into it. For a second, the horses slowed, reacting to the added weight, but then plodded on, out of the Cour de Mai, where all was relatively silent and restrained, out of the Conciergerie, with its thick walls and lofty towers, and, finally, into the open streets of the city … where madness reigned.

The marquis had never seen a more frightening sight, even in the underworld.

As the cart lurched along the quayside and past the old clock
tower, hundreds of people, their faces twisted with rage, shaking their fists, brandishing clubs and knives, pitchforks and bottles, poured toward them from every direction. The gendarmes accompanying the cart could barely keep them from overturning the tumbrel and tearing Marie Antoinette limb from limb on the spot. A famous actor, Grammont, rode in front, and attempted to divert the crowd by waving his sword in the air and shouting assuredly, “She’s done for, my friends! The infamous Antoinette! Have no fear—she’ll soon be roasting in hell!”

But that didn’t stop the curses and the spittle and the rotten fruit from being thrown. The marquis could only wonder at the queen’s composure. She sat erect in the cart, her head high, her chin thrust out, determined, it would seem, to emulate the sangfroid displayed by her late husband. Sant’Angelo did whatever he could do, blocking what projectiles he could without giving himself away, and once, when one of the savages tried to leap into the cart, kicking him in the face so hard his teeth exploded like sparks. The man, not knowing what had happened, staggered back into the street, blood gushing between the fingers he held to his stunned mouth.

The journey seemed interminable, and Sant’Angelo assumed that the driver had been instructed to take the more roundabout route in order to prolong the queen’s agony. On the narrower streets, heads poked out of windows above the procession, and in one of them the marquis saw the painter Jacques-Louis David perched on the sill, hastily drawing in a sketchpad on his lap. On the rue St. Honoré, he saw a silent priest, nodding his head in a benediction to the passing queen. Only once did the mob thin, and that was as the tumbrel passed the Jacobin Club, where loitering was not allowed. Nearby, in the Maison Duplay, behind the shutters he always kept drawn, lived the ruthless mastermind of the Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre. But he was nowhere to be seen this day.

Even the heavy, slow-moving horses, called
rosinantes
, were meant to be an affront to the queen’s dignity. These were not carriage horses, accustomed to city traffic, but lumbering beasts, used for
drawing plows, and the driver had to calm them down and keep them from trying to bolt. Several times the queen was nearly toppled over by a sudden lurch, and the marquis put out a hand to steady her. But in her mind she was clearly so far away, her eyes focused on something no one else could see, that his touch did not even register.

And then the cart slowly turned into the rue Royale, where the sound of the waiting mob, tens of thousands of them gathered in the Place de la Révolution, swelled like the crashing of an ocean wave. The cart rumbled on, past the palace of the Tuileries, where the king and queen had spent so many happy times with their children. The marquis himself had given an impromptu flute lesson to their daughter, Marie Thérèse, in a music room off the mezzanine there. Marie Antoinette’s gaze lifted at the sight of the gates and terraces and momentarily glistened with tears.

And above the roar of the crowd, he could hear the guillotine, even now going about its business. Prisoners were being dispatched with grim regularity, their demise signaled by a succession of distinctive sounds. First, there was the dropping of the
bascule
, the plank on which the victim was laid flat. Then, after the plank was slid into place, there was the bang of the
lunette
, the wooden pillory, which locked the victim’s head, facedown, beneath the blade. And finally the swishing of the blade itself, as it plunged eighteen feet, then rebounded, splashed with blood and bits of flesh.

Depending on the notoriety of the beheaded, all of this was immediately followed by general exultation, as the executioner wiped his instrument off and his crew threw buckets of water on the platform to wash it clean.

Armed guards had to force a path through the mob for the queen’s tumbrel, which gradually drew to the foot of the scaffold and stopped. Antoinette, who had barely even seen the sun or breathed fresh air for months, struggled to stand up, and Sant’Angelo quickly put an arm around her waist and helped her to keep her balance as she stepped from the unsteady cart. For a moment, she seemed bewildered
at this strange sensation of assistance, and looked around, but he said nothing to give himself away.

Let her imagine it to be an angel at her side, he thought.

With her hands still bound behind her, and unknowingly supported by the marquis’s unseen arm, she ascended the stairs, her plum-colored slippers sliding on the slick wood. Purely by accident, she stepped on the foot of the executioner.

“I am sorry, monsieur,” she said instinctively. “I did not do it on purpose.”

And then, as the marquis stood helplessly by, Marie Antoinette was laid on the plank and her neck was clamped into the
lunette
. Just below her, the eager spectators jockeyed for position, the better to dip their hats and handkerchiefs in her blood. Among them Sant’Angelo saw Hébert’s companion, the man with the long white feather in his cap. He was dancing a jig in anticipation.

And then the executioner took a step back and released the gleaming blade. It hurtled down with a rattle and a crash. When the head was displayed—its mouth open, its eyes bulging wide—a cheer like nothing the marquis had ever heard before went up from the happy crowd.

Chapter 28

When Escher came up out of the Metro at the Pigalle station, he was more than satisfied with his day’s work.

Breaking into the suite at the Crillon had been no trouble at all, and although David had taken his precious valise with him, both he and Olivia had done him the great favor of leaving their laptops in the room. Ernst had spent so many hours opening, downloading, and transmitting their various files that he had had to order up some room service. He’d had lobster, champagne, and a perfect lemon soufflé. Why not?

But what a strange haul it had been. Franco’s files included everything from a gallery of Bronzino’s portraits to treatises on ancient glassblowing techniques. And the woman’s? Hers were even crazier, ranging from mythology to mesmerism, Egyptian burial practices to Nazi training manuals. Just like the bookshelves at her apartment. For Escher, who was usually forced to operate on a strictly need-to-know basis, it was nice to get a glimpse, however inscrutable, of what his quarry was up to, and what it was that Schillinger and his mysterious overseers might be after. He always liked to know more than his employers thought he did.

As he crossed the alleyway, he glanced up to see lights on in his room. Jantzen must be back. But when he came through the doors, the concierge furtively waved him over. She had just been eating
candy, and her fingers were sticky with caramel. “You have visitors upstairs,” she muttered.

“How many?”

“I’m not sure. There were three, but I think a couple left.”

Escher certainly wasn’t expecting anyone, and he asked the old lady to wait five minutes and then go upstairs to offer a turn-down service. Going back around the alley, he climbed the fire escape as quietly as he could. When he got to the top floor, he crept to the window and looked inside through a part in the curtains.

There was no sign of Julius, but a man in white shirtsleeves and a red necktie was sitting in a chair right between the beds. A man he didn’t know, holding Escher’s own gun in his hands.

God damn it
. Escher, knowing it would have been confiscated at the Louvre security desk, had left the gun behind.

There was a knock on the door and the man stood up silently, holding the weapon steady, with both hands, in front of him. This was no amateur.

The concierge unlocked the door, and with fresh towels in her arms, came in. The man hastily slipped the gun under the bedclothes, and Escher could hear the old lady apologizing for the intrusion. While the gunman was distracted, claiming to be waiting for his friends to return, Escher slipped his fingers under the window and raised the frame a foot or more.

When the old lady left, the man tossed the towels on the bed and resumed his vigil.

Escher no longer had to guess what the others had left him behind to do.

It was only a matter of minutes before the gunman noticed the draft in the room, and the curtain billowing out. Escher could see him debating whether or not to get up, but then, putting the gun on the bed, he got up, stretched and rolled his neck. Escher flattened himself against the brick wall of the hotel and waited. A few seconds later, the curtain was pulled back, but instead of trying to close the window, the guy did Escher a favor and opened it wider. Escher’s
hand shot out and snagged his necktie, then yanked his head out the window. With his other hand, he clubbed him in the face. The man’s hands groped at his assailant, but Escher twisted the necktie tighter. The guy was halfway out and already strangling when Escher shoved the window down on his shoulder blades.