A red-hung coach, nudging at him—almost silently—from behind.
Perfect.
He shoulders past the pikeman, between the women, drawing curses and blows; gives back a few of his own, as he clambers onto the coach’s running-board and hooks its nearest door open. Rummages in his pocket for his tricolor badge, and brandishes it in the face of the coach’s sole occupant, growling—
“I commandeer this coach in the name of the Committee for Public Safety!”
Sliding quick into the seat opposite as the padded door shuts suddenly, yet soundlessly, beside him. And that indistinct figure across from him leans forward, equally sudden—a mere red-on-white-on-red silhouette, in the curtained windows’ dull glare—to murmur:
“The Committee? Why, my coach is yours, then . . . ”
. . . Citizen.
Jean-Guy looks up, dazzled. And notices, at last, the Prendegrace arms which hang just above him, embroidered on the curtains’ underside—silver on red, red on red, outlined in fire by the sun which filters weakly through their thick, enshrouding velvet weave.
* * *
1815. Jean-Guy feels new wetness trace its way down his arm, soaking the cuff of his sleeve red: His war-wound, broken open once more, in sympathetic proximity to . . . what? His own tattered scraps of memory, slipping and sliding like phlegm on glass? This foul, haunted house, where Dumouriez—like some Tropic trap-door spider—traded on his master’s aristocratic name to entice the easiest fresh prey he could find into his web, then fattened them up (however briefly) before using them to slake M. le Chevalier’s deviant familial appetites?
Blood, from wrist to palm, printing the wall afresh; blood in his throat from his tongue’s bleeding base, painting his spittle red as he hawks and coughs—all civility lost, in a moment’s spasm of pure revulsion—onto the dusty floor.
Spatter of blood on dust, like a ripe scarlet hieroglyphic: Liquid, horrid, infinitely malleable. Utterly . . . uninterpretable.
I have set my mark upon you, Citizen.
Blood at his collar, his nipple. His—
(—groin.)
My hook in your flesh. My winding reel.
Jean-Guy feels it tug him downward, into the maelstrom.
* * *
1793. The coach. Prendegrace sits right in front of Jean-Guy, a mere hand’s grasp away, slight and lithe and damnably languid in his rich, red velvet; his hair is drawn back and side-curled, powdered so well that Jean-Guy can’t even tell its original color, let alone use its decided lack of contrast to help him decipher the similarly-pallid features of the face it frames. Except to note that, as though in mocking imitation of Citizen Robespierre, the Chevalier too affects a pair of spectacles with smoked glass lenses . . .
. . . though, instead of sea-green, these small, blank squares glint a dim—yet unmistakable—shade of scarlet.
Play for time, Jean-Guy’s brain tells him, meanwhile—imparting its usually good advice with uncharacteristic softness, as though ( if it were to speak any louder) the Chevalier might somehow overhear it. Pretend not to have recognized him. Then work your pistol free, slowly; fire a warning shot, and summon the good Citizens outside . . .
. . . those same ones you slipped in here to avoid, in the first place . . .
. . . to aid you in his arrest.
Almost snorting aloud at the very idea, before he catches himself: That an agent of Jean-Guy’s enviable size and bulk actually need fear the feeble defenses of a ci-devant fop like this one, with his frilled wrists and his neat, red-heeled shoes, their tarnished buckles dull and smeared—on the nearest side, at least—with something which almost looks like . . .
. . . blood?
Surely not.
And yet—
“You would be Citizen Sansterre, I think,” the Chevalier observes, abruptly.
Name of God.
Recovering, Jean-Guy gives a stiff nod. “And you—the traitor, Prendegrace.”