Newton's Cannon (42 page)

“I will do the killing,” Crecy promised. “I will not have you bloody your hands.”

Adrienne laughed harshly. “My hands will never be clean, Veronique. The king is merely an epilogue to my novel of death. I will have murdered a million souls.”

“Surely murder implies some intent,” Crecy protested.

Adrienne flopped into a chair. “If I inadvertently brought about the death of a single person, you would admit that I must accept some fractional blame?”

Crecy shrugged.

“Let us be absurd,” Adrienne continued, “and assume that
hell's tithe for such manslaughter is only a thousandth of what it exacts for a cold-blooded murder. A million such deaths still add up to the murder of a thousand innocents—not counting the men I slew in the forest.”

Crecy shook her head wonderingly. “You are the only person I know who would resort to mathematics to enhance her sense of guilt. I bow to you: You are the queen of blame.”

“I accept the title,” Adrienne said lightly. If her calculations were true, and she was already a killer many times over, then why did she feel so sickened at the prospect of killing the king?

Because whatever sort of monster he was, he loved her and he trusted her. Was it possible that Crecy was right that “murder” was defined by premeditative choice?

Then Fatio and the king were the guiltiest of all, for they had plotted to cause death on an unbelievable scale.

Versailles grew more beautiful each day, Louis reflected. In the past months, Versailles had become as he had always envisioned it, the perfect palace of the sun. And in two days, the flaming chariot of the sun was coming, and it would deliver his name to the heavens. He would reign a hundred years, and no one would ever forget him.

And the angel had promised him he would have a new heir— his true child—a miracle and the lord of all that France should be.

God had even given him a chance to smite his tormentor, Marlborough. In two days, Marlborough would know who was king of France, and he would despair.

So Louis thought as he walked the deserted length of the Hall of Mirrors, where soon he would be made a husband again before all of the world, so all would know his child.

He flushed, and passion stirred in him. His flesh began to ache for Adrienne's embrace, his heart for the adoration of her smile. Still, he was master of himself. He did not hurry his pace, but went circuitously to her rooms through the War chamber where his own statue rode horseback, through the chamber of Apollo. His passion and need grew as he toured the chambers of Mars, Mercury, and Venus before—at last—he took himself down the Marble Staircase to where Adrienne awaited.

“Hello, my dear,” he said as he entered, posing to display his excellent calves and gracious bearing to their best advantage.

“Sire,” she replied.

“One last time you shall be my mistress, and after that only my queen.”

She smiled at him, a glowing, brilliant smile, more dazzling than any lover he had ever had—yet somehow a combination of them all. Smiling tenderly, he began to undress her.

It isn't real
, Adrienne told herself, as the king undid her bodice. Tonight she prayed more desperately for unreality than ever. It was almost as if her lovemaking with Nicolas had cleansed her body so Louis could degrade it afresh. She tried to wrap herself in her accustomed numbness. She tried to review the plan in her head, but her thoughts would not stay focused. She cringed at the smoothness of the sheets, the touch of the king's fingers, his choking perfume. She remembered her first time in bed with him, the awe and terror, and it came again, redoubled.

He disgusts me. I loathe him. He deserves to die.
She needed anger, revulsion, pain, but she couldn't find them. As he moved upon her, she began to sob.

Louis froze. His blind gaze sought hers in the lamplight, searching for something it could not see. His face was
so
old, so drawn, as ecstasy fled it and a troubled look replaced it. For the first time in her life she saw Louis as an old, sick man, as much a victim as she.

No. He had doomed a million people.

Or had he?

“Adrienne? Are you weeping?”

But now her mind
had
found a focus.

“Adrienne, please,” the king begged.

She sobbed, her body contorted by her grief, but her brain raced. The patterns of numbers and symbols burst into her mind fully formed.

“There is still time,” she gasped.

“Time? Time?”

“My lord, it can be stopped. I can stop it.”

He rose up above her, face puzzled.

“A million people, my king. I know you as Maintenon knew you. Think, please. She could not have borne this.
You
cannot bear it, though you think you can.”

“Who told you this?” he asked slowly. “Did that idiot Fatio tell you?”

“No. No—”

“You presume?” Louis shouted suddenly. He grabbed her roughly by the arm, and suddenly fear surged through her. His strength was not that of an eighty-two-year-old man; his fingers bit like iron.

“Who betrayed me?”

“Sire,” she moaned, reaching to touch his face, “
listen
to me.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then he said, in a perfectly reasonable tone, “It will save France, Adrienne. That is all I care for.”

“It will destroy France, Sire. This comet is far more powerful than you have been led to believe—”

He snarled, tightening his grip again. “You presume too much, I say again! How dare you speak of these things!”

He twisted her arm nearly out of its socket, and she screamed. His mouth opened in astonishment and dismay, and a tear started from his eye. “Mademoiselle, forgive me,” he whispered.

Before she could reply, a red tongue licked out of the king's chest, wagged at her, and was gone. He croaked, then jerked his arms wildly, releasing her. She shrieked and propelled herself onto the marble floor.

The king tried to reseize her, but Crecy, who stood behind him, sword in hand, ran him through again.

“God damn your soul,” she swore.

“Do not touch me!” He gasped, blood bubbling in his throat. “For the love of God keep back from me! I am the king! Guards!”

“Adrienne!” Crecy snarled. “Your device!”

But Adrienne was paralyzed. Blood was everywhere—in her hair, spattered on her breasts.

“Mademoiselle!” Louis implored, reaching for her again. “Tell them I am the king!”

Crecy slashed the back of Louis'neck, but her sword shattered.

“Adrienne!” Crecy shouted. A black angel appeared, wrap
ping the king in its wings. The window exploded, and through it blew a gale of smoke and dancing balls of flame. In their midst stood Gustavus, a hideous expression on his alabaster face, a
kraftpistole
clenched in either fist.

Ben clawed at the floor with his fingers, hoping somehow to dig into the earth itself. He thought he heard more gunfire, but one whole side of his head thudded.

Trembling, he raised up his eyes. Robert was some ten feet away, back against a wall, his sword up. He seemed to be staring at him. One of the two men who had been with Bracewell lay on the floor, belly up, breath coming in choppy whistles, blowing bubbles of blood. The other man was still on his feet, a short, heavy sword in his hands. He held it shakily, pointed at a man Ben did not recognize.

He was perhaps twenty years old. His face was sardonic, with a cleft and thrusting chin. His lips were thin, compressed in pain, and he was frowning. But his
eyes
smoldered with a fierce, even manic intelligence. Ben had seen those eyes before, that frown. He wore a scarlet coat and waistcoat; blood visible on his white shirt and cravat. He clutched his shoulder where his wound seemed to be, but remained on his feet, glaring at Stirling.

“Don't move, Ben,” a ragged voice said. Ben turned.

Bracewell was on the floor, back propped against the wall. One hand was pressed against his sternum, blood streaming between his fingers. His metal hand held a pistol less than a foot from Ben's nose, hammer cocked. Bracewell's eyelids fluttered in pain, but they never narrowed farther than to slits.

“What now?” Ben asked him quietly.

“Now? Now?” Bracewell panted. He frowned as if that were the most perplexing question in the world.

“Close that door,” Stirling ordered.

“I'll cut down the first man who comes near the door,” Robert snapped.

Stirling looked confused. His pistol was trained on the redclad newcomer, who, despite his wound and lack of weapons, somehow seemed capable of doing damage.

Ben realized that Bracewell's familiar was nowhere to be seen. He also wondered what had happened to the wheezing man, whose wound was much too large to have been made by Robert's pistol.

“Close the door, Guillaume,” Stirling repeated. Guillaume, apparently Bracewell's man, looked doubtfully at the tip of Rob-ert's sword.

“No,” Guillaume said. “I don't think I will. You have the pistol—you deal with him.”

Suddenly, Stirling struck the red-clad man in the face with the butt of his pistol. The fellow gasped, head slamming against the wall. Blood started from his nose.

“Who the hell
are
you?” Stirling demanded, a tinge of hysteria in his voice. Ben suspected that some part of Stirling knew, just as he did, exactly who the man was.

“Close the door, or I'll kill Ben,” Bracewell gurgled, blood leaking out of his mouth.

“Ben,” Robert said, “his pistol is empty.”

Bracewell's eyebrows went up as he and Ben simultaneously glanced at the empty powder pan. Bracewell cursed and swung the barrel at Ben's face. The pain was brilliant, like fireworks exploding. Ben hit Bracewell hard in the face. He swung again and again, as Bracewell squirmed, arms up to fend off the blows. Ben fell against him, and now they were hammering their forearms and elbows together in an attempt to hit each other. Bracewell was
wounded
, damn him. The pain in Ben's hands was severe, but he didn't
care
if he smashed all of his fingers—this was Bracewell, his nightmare, his brother's murderer. Suddenly, he found that he had hold of an ear, and he yanked and yanked.

And then a blow from nowhere, driving into his belly. His body no longer obeyed him, trying to curl up into a ball, and a steel claw was fastened on his neck, starting to cut through. All
he could see was Bracewell's face, nose bleeding, eyepatch ripped away to reveal an empty, whitened socket, his other eye a hellish flame of malice. Then half Bracewell's head was gone, and Ben was falling, the claw still around his throat.

He tore it away frantically, and kicked across the floor. Wiping blood and brains from his face, sobbing and gasping for air, Ben tasted the gore on his lips and was violently sick.

When next he lifted his head, it was to meet Vasilisa's concerned gaze.

“God damn you, Stirling,” Heath said, holding a rag to the oozing wound on his forehead. “Why?”

Heath and Voltaire had both been found bound and gagged in the orrery room. The Frenchman had some cuts and scrapes, but Heath had received a nasty blow to the head.

Stirling didn't answer but glared defiantly at them. His hands were tied behind his chair, and two of Vasilisa's guards stood nearby armed with pistols. Vasilisa was playing surgeon to the man in the red coat who lay on the table of the meeting room. She had just dug the ball out of his shoulder and was now bandaging the cauterized wound.

Robert and Voltaire clumped back into the room. “Maclaurin is dead,” Voltaire said in the most subdued tone Ben had ever heard him use.

“Stirling and his comrades were going to kill us all.” Vasilisa said icily, “I think you owe us an explanation, James.”

“I answer to no one, least of all some Russian bitch,” James replied.

The Russian guard struck Stirling so hard with the back of his hand that the chair nearly rocked over.

“Misha!” Vasilisa snapped.

“There are four more of them,” the man on the table groaned.

“At your house?” Vasilisa asked, and Ben felt a glow of pride.

“Yes.”

Vasilisa snapped a few words to her two guards. They left the room. “They will do what they can, quietly,” Vasilisa assured them.

“Just the two of them?” Voltaire asked.

“No. I left ten more outside.”

“Vasilisa, I had no idea.”

She frowned. “My dear Voltaire, you know I was Tsar Peter's envoy to the Royal Society. Did you think he would give me no access to my embassy's resources?”

“I want to know what was going on here,” Heath interrupted. “Who were those men, James, and what do you have to do with them? And who is
he
?”

He thrust his finger toward the red-coated man, who had managed to drag himself to sit on the edge of the table. Beads of sweat stood out on his face, and pain still twisted his features, but he managed to grin briefly when he looked at Heath. “Mr. Heath,” he said quietly, “I am insulted, for we have met on several occasions. I am Sir Isaac Newton, of course.”

The dumbfounded silence that followed made it clear that only Ben and Vasilisa had guessed.

“Sir Isaac? But how can that be? You—” But Heath
believed
; Ben could see that much.

“I am an old man? Quite right. But I told your young friend here, Benjamin, I had not been idle.”

“An elixir of life?” Vasilisa said. “Or is this some illusory seeming?”

“No, it's real enough. The cost was my sanity for a time. Or perhaps—” He wrinkled his brow. “—perhaps I had already gone mad when I invented it.”

Ben found that he could not contain his impatience. “The
comet
,” he blurted out.

“I'm sorry to have been so cryptic,” Newton said, “but I trusted none of you. I wanted to see how each of you reacted when my model was placed in the orrery.”

“You were
there
?” Heath gasped.

“Wearing the aegis,” Newton confirmed. “It can be adjusted to render one nearly invisible.”

“Well, you smoked the snake from his hole,” Voltaire declared, with a poisonous glance at Stirling.

“How did you know?” Stirling asked.