A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) Fred Saberhagen (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📖

      “Of course.” He sprang up, feeling vaguely embarrassed and apologetic, and looked around for his boots. He rubbed his eyes. “Did you get any sleep?”

      “Not a great deal. But I think enough. To be able to talk for a few hours with an old friend, a sympathetic listener, was perhaps better for me than sleep.”

      He went to the window and drew a deep breath. There had been rain, and the whole world now smelled clean and new.

* * *

      In the glow of approaching sunset, Old Jules and his granddaughter were preparing some kind of meal, consisting largely of eggs and bread and a little cheese. There was also some honey; evidently the bees were on the job. Jules said the pond had been yielding fish, but he’d had no luck there today.

      Radcliffe, accompanied by his fair companion, took a last walk upstairs and down through the old manor house, and looked around.

      Again it struck him: How the house seemed to have shrunk since then!

      Carrying a loaded flintlock pistol, and looking warily about him, Radcliffe walked out into the farmyard, and took note of the absence of any livestock worthy of mention.

* * *

      The current de facto master of the house wondered about his strange, and strangely injured, guest. There were things about the man that Radcliffe did not understand. The bandages Melanie had applied yesterday had already been discarded today.

      They found the discarded bandages, the ones Melanie had thrown away last night, when she saw that they were no longer needed. There was surprisingly little blood on the cloth—only a faint brownish stain that vanished mysteriously on being exposed to sunlight.

      “Did you wash these, Marguerite?”

      “No ma’am.” The girl sounded surprised at the question. Who would wash such rags? Her eyes were sleepy, and her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere.

* * *

      One of the responsibilities his mother had tried to charge Philip with, when she had heard that he might be visiting the old family estate, had been to do what he could for some of the old family retainers, or at least to see what might have happened to them.

      Radcliffe had left Philadelphia with some idea of perhaps being able to evaluate this property. But once he had been confronted with the reality of Revolutionary France, any such plans were quickly forgotten. Obviously the lands and what was left of the buildings were worthless under these conditions. What they might be worth in the future, or who was going to possess them, seemed impossible to guess. And the old family retainers, with the exception of Jules and his granddaughter, were dead or gone away.

      Not that he had forgotten for a moment his main purpose in coming to Europe and to France: He was charged with carrying out a particular and confidential mission for the fledgling government in America. More precisely, for one of its leaders—Washington himself.

      Radcliffe now hinted at something of the kind to Melanie. Once in Paris, his duty would require him to see Tom Paine, and communicate some message to him.

      Tom Paine, the English-American internationally honored in revolutionary circles, was now (along with Washington and others) an honorary citizen of France. Lately Paine had even been made a member of the Convention, the ruling legislature of the new French government that called itself republican. The man who had been king had been beheaded, more than a year ago, despite Paine’s suggestion that Citizen Louis Capet had better be exiled to America, where he could learn the truth about democracy and the nature of republican government.

      Radcliffe tapped his pocket, in which he was carrying, besides his own written invitation, a sealed letter addressed to Paine.

      The sealed letter was in fact a private plea, from Washington himself, couched in diplomatic language, urging Paine to stop making an ass of himself, and sever his connection with the crazy men who were generally giving the idea of revolution a bad name, and were irritating the English unnecessarily.

      Melanie simply nodded. No intelligent, politically conscious Frenchwoman needed the identity or importance of Tom Paine explained to her.

* * *

      God knew, Philip didn’t blame the peasants of France for revolting. Not after all the stories of starvation and maltreatment he had heard in the short time since he had arrived in the country. Many thousands had gone hungry, millions had been treated like animals under the old regime. But during the few years since the fall of the Bastille, the new stories of mass beheadings and worse were deeply disturbing. Surely human rights and justice were not to be established by turning into savage animals. Humanity ought to mean more than finding a new and painless method of capital punishment…

      Philip continued trying to gather information about the political situation from old Jules, as well from Melanie. Radcliffe hadn’t been in Paris for many years, having come directly to the estate from some seaport town, after a surreptitious landing in a small boat on the beach.

      In Paris, things will be different.” His voice sounded confident, though he could no longer feel sure of that.

      “That may be, Citizen.” The old man, who had probably never in his life been more than two or three miles from where he was born, let alone to the big city, scratched his head, sounding dubious.

      Philip clung to the idea that he would have much less reason to worry about his own personal safety once he had reached the city. Here in the countryside, barbarism reigned. But in Paris he would be respected, given a hearing, as an American and an acquaintance—perhaps he could even claim to be a friend—of Paine.

      In short, discounting rumors to the contrary, and thinking that the latest stories from the capital were probably exaggerated, Radcliffe clung to a belief that in Paris the Revolution would not be conducted by backward peasants. It would be, or at least could be made to be, more reasonable, more enlightened. There would be, there must be,