Leopard in Exile (2 page)

Monmouth had much of his father's charm and was strongly Protestant in his religious views. In the real

world, following Charles' death, Monmouth led an uprising against his uncle, King James II (Charles'

brother and heir presumptive, a severe arrogant man determined to return England to the Catholic fold),

failed, and was beheaded.

But as our worlds diverge, Charles II, during his protracted dying, realizes that James' inheritance of the

throne would mean trouble for all, and finally admits to a selected body of his strongest council that the

rumor was true, that he had in fact made a secret marriage with Mistress Lucy Waters, and thus the

Duke of Monmouth was the legitimate heir of his body. Thus, upon Charles II's death, the Duke of

Monmouth is crowned Charles DI. James' followers, known to this counterhistory as Jacobites, scheme

futilely to overturn the succession, and in following centuries to return England to Catholic rule. But

though the new king, Charles HI, has difficulties with a diehard group of strong Catholic lords, immediate

events are largely similar to those in the real world. After the reign of three more Stuart kings (Charles

IV, James II, and Charles V) we reach the 1800s, and a world like—and unlike—our own.

There is Revolution in France. Without the American Revolution's pattern to follow—for without the

weak and unpopular Hanovers on the throne, political relations with the American colonies have never

degenerated into warfare—the uprising is far more violent, more along the lines of our own century's

Russian Revolution. Napoleon rises to power as a military dictator, and is soon Master of Europe.

Having destroyed the anointed Royal house of France, Napoleon is master of a secular Empire that

functions without the ancient land-magic based upon covenants with the Oldest People, the prehuman

inhabitants of Europe. As in our world, Britain opposes the Corsican Beast, and it is Britain's funding that

keeps the Triple Alliance—England, Prussia, and Russia—in the field against Napoleon.

The war's consequences reach to the New World. In this world, the Louisiana Purchase by the fledgling

United States in 1805 never takes place. French Louisianne stretches from the Appalachian Chain to the

Red River, a vast unruly territory still staunchly Royalist but under the uneasy control of Imperial France.

West of the Red River, the land belongs to Spain, as does Florida (the Viceroyalty of New Spain) as far

north as our own world's Atlanta, Georgia. As the New England Colonies—in this world called New

Albion—are still under English dominion, slavery has been outlawed in the Colonies in 1807, and the

Colonial lords are more interested in selling goods to the indigenous Indian tribes than in displacing them.

Hie economic conflict between slave-holding Louisianne and free New Albion threatens to break into

war—and Napoleon, desperate for money to fund his expanding aggression, sends an Imperial governor

to Louisianne to extort all he can from his New World treasury… the Marquis de Sade.

But all is not sanguine within the New England Colonies, either. Aware of the rich commercial

opportunities of the new world, fueled in part by Napoleon's Continental Blockade, various factions,

including the Jacobites, petition England to be granted fiefs and kingdoms of their own, and when that

fails, plot to take them by force. The death of Foreign Secretary Charles James Fox in September of

1806 not only leaves a vacuum in British political leadership which these factions hope to exploit, but puts

an end to England's secret peace negotiations with Talleyrand.
1 Though Spain retains a measure of

independence, her king is dying, and she will fall to Napoleon in less than a year, granting the French

Emperor a vast increase in territory that will fuel his continuing ambition and lead to Lord

Wellesley—later the Duke of Wellington—taking the field against France on the battlefields of neutral

Portugal in 1809.

But for the present, the long-delayed wedding of Prince Jamie of England and Princess Stephanie of

Denmark, bringing Denmark firmly into the fold of the Grande Alliance, is hoped by many to herald a

speedy end to Napoleon's aggression.

It is 1807. And our story begins…

—Andre Norton & Rosemary Edghill

PROLOGUE:

The Princes or the Air

(Paris, Walpurgisnacht, 1807)

T
he ancient house on the twisting Rue de la Morte had been an abode of the gentilesse some centuries

before, but the changing tastes, first of the nobility and then the bourgeoisie, had abandoned it to the

vagaries of Fate. When the Glorious '92 swept away both aristocrat and servant, the house—a thing of

crumbling walls and canted floors long abandoned to mold and rot—gained a certain temporary

currency, for the twisting lanes of the worst district in Paris held a real attraction for conspirators and

rebels. But the star of Revolution was eclipsed in turn by the First Consul's Imperial ambitions, and the

house was forgotten once more.

Or not precisely forgotten, for its brief ascendancy had brought it to the attention of a man who required

just such a house, even in the days of Liberty, Equality, and fraternal love among all men.

Like many in the new government, he had prudently turned his coat years before there seemed any need

of it. He had been a soldier and a diplomatist, a husband, an aristocrat, and a philosopher, and in this last

role his writings had won their author some currency during the Days of Glory, as well as his release from

prison.

What surprised some was that an empire should have a use for such a man. Others, though they said so

with great circumspection, held that the Emperor Napoleon, having ground both Man and God beneath

the iron heel of his ambition, had only the Devil left to turn to.

The Devil and his servant, Donatien Alphonse François, the Count—styled Marquis—de Sade.

Imperial France had turned its back upon both the
haut magie
that had consecrated its kings and the

pacts with the Oldest People which had bound its nobility to the land. All that remained to the Emperor

were those darker powers of which M'sieur le Comte had made himself master during a lifetime spent in

slaking his vast appetite for pain. The Comte provided results, and so the Emperor provided patronage,

and carefully did not enquire into the methods that produced those results.

Though a man who had made the Pope kneel before him must be presumed to have no fear of demons…

And when the Empire did not need his services, the Comte—lately created Due d'Charenton by his

grateful master—pursued his studies and his pleasures. Age had granted him a certain wisdom—in his

67th year, the former Comte de Sade had learned the value of anonymity. He had purchased the old

house upon the Rue de la Morte through the services of an agent, and if screams were occasionally heard

here at night, well, such sounds were common enough in the district. And those who joined de Sade in

his pleasures and survived them were circumspect for many reasons.

But this night is different.

At ten of the clock, he had ridden out from his official residence in the black-lacquered crested coach

that bore him to those official functions he deigned to attend, but the coach only took him as far as the

Rive Gauche before it was met by another, far inferior, vehicle. Beneath the soft April rain, de Sade

transferred to the second coach.

It was driven by the trusted—and only—servant to attend de Sade at his house in the Rue Morte, one

Grisalle.

Another hour's jolting travel brought the shabby anonymous vehicle to its destination. Grisalle did not

stop before the house, but proceeded directly to the mews behind it. Rather than be seen upon the street,

the Due preferred to enter the house through the servant's entrance, completely unobserved. In the coach

itself, he had exchanged his own soberly-elegant cloak and glossy bicorne for a shabby and

much-patched cape of dull fustian and a villainous low-crowned hat of battered flea-colored felt pulled

low. Only his hands betrayed the disguise—white and plump like a pair of corpse-fed spiders,

ornamented with a dozen costly jewels like the glistening bodies of dead insects. Despite the well-tended

softness of the skin, the nails were black and ragged, as if eaten away by unspeakable vices.

Thus shrouded from view, the Due made his way from the stables to the house, his only light a shuttered

lantern that Grisalle had provided. His feet plashed through deep puddles, for the garden space was left

untended and undrained. Weeds of every sort grew up over piles of decomposing waste, and the bright

eyes of feral cats watched him from the darkness. Grisalle had gone before him, and the door to the

kitchen was unlocked.

The house smelled strongly of damp and neglect. The kitchen was dark and empty, the fire in its great

iron stove shedding the only light. No one had used this kitchen for its intended use for a very long time.

On the table stood a large hamper of provisions, but that was for later. On this April night, the Due went

fasting to his work.

Grisalle ignited a spill from the coals and used it to light a branch of candles which he presented to his

master. De Sade flung his hat and cloak to the floor and took the light silently, striding off into the depths

of the house while his servant stayed behind.

The rooms on the floor above were as dark and cold as the kitchen and loggia, for though he was

notoriously a libertine, de Sade was no sensualist. The passions he gratified had little to do with pleasure,

and he passed onward to those rooms which saw extensive use.

The third floor of the old house contained a series of rooms whose doors could be flung back to open the

space for dancing or card parties, and the floor had once displayed a fine inlay of exotic woods, but

years of neglect had nearly obliterated its splendor. What was not destroyed by spills, burns, and the

battering of heavy booted feet had been hidden beneath painted sigils of the Art Magickal.

The Due moved into the foremost room, lighting the standing candles that stood on the tables. Here it did

not matter whether it was midnight or noon: the windows were covered with draperies of heavy canvas,

and painted black as well, lest the outside world intrude upon what was done here. Several censers were

scattered about the room, to be lit at need, and a small fire burned in the grate, as it did nine months out

of the year, for whatever his inclinations toward his own comfort, de Sade's precious books and papers

could not be allowed to suffer the pervasive damp. Besides the ornate writing desk and several locked

cabinets of curious and ancient books, the room's only furniture was a series of stout tables. One held an

alembic and other apparatus for the distillation of drags. Scattered across its marble surface were various

boxes and bottles, each labeled in de Sade's own spidery hand.

The bitter scent that could be only faintly discerned in the kitchen was far more pronounced here—a

scent as offensive to the nostrils as that of corruption, but somehow far more dry and burning. There was

a choked moaning coming from the center room—wind, animal, or even human—but de Sade paid it no

attention. Moving closer to the small fire, he added a shovelful of coals to its flames and began, with

quick, impatient movements, to undress.

Reaching into a chest along the wall, the sorcerer withdrew an open-fronted sleeveless garment. It was

made of rough undyed homespun embroidered with fine silk. Edging the opening at the front was a design

of flames and Cabalistic sigils, and upon the back was a triangle of black silk upon which a goat's head

had been embroidered in silver thread, its eyes sewn with rubies and seeming to glow. De Sade donned

this garment and, half-clad as he was, rummaged in the trunk until his fingers closed upon the object he

sought. It was a whip, its butt a human thighbone overbraided with black leather. Triangles of lead were

knotted into its long leather tails, promising hideous injury to its victims.

He carried it with him to the table, and set it aside for a moment while he assembled a curious potion,

grating bitter chocolate into a stained silver chalice, and adding to the shavings the crushed dried bodies

of a certain beetle and several drops of oil of hashish. He then half-filled the cup with a red wine in which

pieces of wormwood had been steeping, and beat the mixture into a foam with a small gold whisk.

Carrying the cup and the scourge, he passed from one room into the next.

The center room was surrounded completely with black velvet draperies: The only light in the room came

from the vigil candle in its red glass safe that burned at the foot of an inverted crucifix hung upon the north

wall. Setting the items he carried upon the altar, the Due took a candle, lit it from the votive, and moved

quietly about the room, kindling open braziers and the candles which framed several lesser shrines about

the walls of the room.

Here stood a Black Virgin, crowned with stars… her face twisted into a lascivious grin, her hands

cupped to present her naked breasts. Beside her stood a strange figure—half goat, half human, with a

burning torch between his horns and a monstrous erect phallus formed of twined serpents. Beyond them

was a depiction of Luciferge Rofocalo, the Lord of This World, rising triumphant out of the flames of