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A steampunk-esque story set at the beginning of the French Revolution. A trio of French knights finds themselves caught in the Bastille when it is stormed by a Parisian mob on July 14, 1789 (X Calendar). They must not only escape the siege, but also save King Louis XVI from an assasination plot.
Expect airships, weird technology, tweaked historical figures, and maybe a monster or two.
Paris , France
Pierre
Paris , France
Versailles
Paris
Pierre
Varennes , France
Expect airships, weird technology, tweaked historical figures, and maybe a monster or two.
PART I
Le début des ennuis
(The Beginning of the Trouble)
1
Eight ramparts eighty feet tall. A large moat. Steam cannons. The Bastille was a veritable
fortress within the city of Paris France
At least, that was
what the public believed. The commoners held the idea that the Bastille was a
hellish dungeon full of spies and political prisoners being punished for saying
the wrong thing or simply being born the wrong person. Stories abounded about
people like the mysterious masked prisoner kept under guard a century before
and serve to give the prison its colorful reputation.
While there was a
certain bit of truth to these stories, only those closely connected with the
Bastille could separate fact from myth. Where did imagination end and truth
begin?
One man who knew very
well was on this day sitting in his cell within the stone walls of the Bastille.
His name was Jacques du Chard. With his sandy-brown hair, simple shirt and grey
leggings, the young man did not stand out at all.
He lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling
and tried to keep himself occupied by counting the cracks. At that moment it
was deathly quiet within the chamber occupied only by him and five other empty
cells; the few guards who kept watch over the room had left about ten minutes
ago to go welcome some visitors. There
weren’t even any rats scurrying about; contrary to popular belief, the prison
was not infested with them.
His thoughts kept
going back to that strange message that had appeared on the walls of the
adjacent cell the other day. What did it mean? All he knew was that that cell
belonged to the Marquis de Sade until just recently. None of the guards would
tell him anything; they were keeping their mouths carefully shut.
The whole thing was
very interesting.
Suddenly he heard the
sound of a door opening. Jacques sat up, looked across the room and saw four
people entering the room. He couldn’t get a good look at them until they
arrived in the candle-lit center of the chamber. At the head of the group was
the Marquis de Launay, the governor of the Bastille, whom the prisoner was
familiar with. Jacques would have recognized his fancy brown suit embroidered
in gold, along with his white hair that hung limply off either side of his
head, anywhere.
The other three were
wearing form-fitting suits of silver armor. Jacques recognized them as members
of the Ordre de la Tradition, a special group of knights—along with various
other exceptionally talented individuals—who had been recognized by the king of
France for outstanding service in the military, and who answered only to him.
They embodied the knightly traditions of honor, discipline, and chivalry, which
meant they did not use guns—only bladed melee weapons. Knights were very rare
nowadays, but these individuals were allowed to wear suits of armor made from
irodium, a revolutionary metal developed by the English. Irodium was
lightweight, easy to move in, and could withstand a large amount of punishment
(but was very expensive to manufacture). The two larger knights carried a
sheathed broadsword at their side.
What were they doing
here?
Jacques heard a female
voice say, “It’s dark in here.”
The
voice came from the knight in the center who was somewhat shorter and more
slender than the ones flanking her. Rather than the broadsword of her larger
counterparts, she carried a rapier with a golden hilt bearing the image of a
radiant face, in honor of the Sun King Louis XIV (predecessor of the current
monarch of France
She—along with her two
subordinates—stepped forward and Jacques could see her face. She didn’t look to
be older than thirty years of age (she could even be the same age as him). Her
auburn hair fell to the middle of her back in a braided tail, and Jacques noted
the purple eye patch over her left eye, along with the flowing purple skirt
which opened around the middle of her irodium leggings. Her radiant skin was
especially striking to Jacques.
“Excuse me, mademoiselle,” he said. “Might you be the one they call ‘Jeanne la Juste’?”
***
She looked at him with
indifference for a moment, and then responded, “Yes. My name is Jeanne de Fleur.
I’m a knight with the Ordre de la Tradition.”
“Ah, I thought so. You
are well known among the Third Estate.” The Estates General was composed of
nobility, clergy, and commoners, respectively. “Ah, but you’re supposed to call
them the National Assembly now, yes?” The commoners had recently broken away
from the other two Estates—with whom they had long been at odds —and declared
themselves the National Assembly (although a few members of the clergy and
nobility joined them).
Talkative one, isn’t he? She thought to herself. “Actually, last week they
became the National Constituent Assembly,” Jeanne said. She then turned to de
Launay. “Where is this message you spoke of?”
“It is in the cell to
the left of the forger’s there.”
He escorted the three
knights into the cell next to Jacques’. It was a spacious cell, easily twice as
large as the others, and clearly meant for someone of importance. The bed in
the cell was also a cut above those normally given to prisoners.
On the
wall above the bed there was a series of words carved into the wall: “On July 14 the greatest joke will be told.”
“And you believe this was written by
Monsieur Donatien Alphonse François, the Marquis de Sade?” Jeanne asked upon
examining it.
“No one else has occupied this cell
since the Marquis was transferred out ten days ago,” de Launay said.
“Didn’t you question him about it
before he was transferred?” Jeanne said.
The governor shook his head. “It
didn’t appear until yesterday.”
“Well, then it couldn’t have been
him,” said the gruff voice of the knight to the right of Jeanne. He was a good
foot taller than she, with a neatly-trimmed beard and almond-colored skin. He
obviously wasn’t entirely of European ancestry.
“Pierre
“It wasn’t carved with a knife. The
Marquis wasn’t allowed to have sharp objects in here. The message was written
with a transparent, slow-acting acid he had smuggled in. Once it reacts with
oxygen, the acid will begin dissolving whatever it has been applied to. The
process is gradual and can take over a week depending on the concentration of
the corrosive.”
The knight to Jeanne’s left examined
the message. He was a young man with long dark hair, slightly smaller than Pierre
“Yes, Victor,” Jeanne said. “The
question is: Why? Why would he go to the trouble of doing this?
From over in the next cell, Jacques
said, “Maybe it’s all a joke, no? I hear the Marquis de Sade is a real piece of
work. We have all heard the stories. He kidnapped girls and did horrible things
to them. They say he is the most twisted man in the world.”
Jeanne grit her teeth slightly at
being reminded of the Marquis’ crimes. “I am not his biggest supporter.” She
turned her attention from Jacques back to the message on the wall. “However, I
think we are missing something important.”
“The message seems to suggest that
something will happen on July 14. That’s today.”
“So it is,” Victor said.
“You don’t suppose the Marquis is
throwing you a surprise party?” Jacques retorted.
Jeanne gave him a stern glance. “Be
quiet, you rogue. This is serious.”
Suddenly a guard burst into the
room. “My Lord! It’s terrible! The people….!” He stopped to catch his breath.
“What are you babbling about?” de
Launay demanded.
“There is a mob of people outside!
At least a hundred of them, and more keep arriving. They’re yelling something
about us keeping political prisoners here and abusing them. Their leader is demanding
we remove the steam cannons aimed at them and allow a civilian militia to take
control of the Bastille.”
The color rapidly drained from de
Launay’s face as he took in the guard’s ominous words. “T-Those fools! The
cannons aren’t aimed at anyone in particular. They’re here for the defense of
the people! And there aren’t any political prisoners here; just the one
forger.”
“What are your orders, sir?”
The Marquis de Launay paced the room
while racking his mind to come up with an answer. Finally, he said, “Remove the
cannons. I’ll go speak with their leader.” He turned to leave with the guard.
Jeanne started after him. “I’ll go
with you. My knights and I can help defend you.”
“Are you really prepared to cut down
the people you have sworn to protect?” Jacques said with a slight grin.
Jeanne stopped. “Well, I—”
“And so many of them!”
“You stay here,” de Launay said,
visibly scared. “If I meet them with armed soldiers, it will just anger them
more. Besides, as skilled as you three are, I doubt even you could hold off all of them.”
“I don’t know about that. I could
hold off a lot of men,” Victor happily declared.
Jeanne ignored her subordinate’s
inappropriate comment; she was used to his quips by now. “Very well. We’ll stay
here and continue to investigate the message.”
The Marquis de Launay and the
panicked guard left the chamber, leaving just Jeanne, Pierre, Victor and
Jacques.
Jeanne walked over to the wall next to the door they had
entered through. Jutting out from the wall was a rubber tube with a wide
handle. She dialed a number on the panel below the tube and began speaking. “de
Fleur to Minuit Solaire. What’s going
on outside?” The Minuit Solaire, or
Solar Midnight, was the airship of the Ordre de la Tradition. It was supposed
to be anchored on a telegraph pole outside the prison. However, Jeanne’s
communiqué was met with silence. “I repeat: This is Commander Jeanne de Fleur.
Come in, Minuit Solaire. What is your
status?”
Again, there was only the crackle of static.
“If the mob turned their attention
to our airship, the Solaire may have
had to retreat,” Pierre
Jeanne frowned. If the mob was
violent enough to threaten their vessel into retreating, that was bad news; her
crew wouldn’t leave her without a very good reason. She didn’t need to say it,
though. Pierre and Victor no doubt were thinking the same thing. She just hoped
her crew on the airship was all right.
“What more can we do here?” Victor
said.
Jeanne went back into the cell and
began to feel about the walls. “The Marquis de Sade loves to milk his jokes for
all they’re worth. Stopping with a cryptic message isn’t his style. I bet he
hid another piece of the puzzle for us to find.”
Pierre and Victor helped her look
around the cell. “Did he know the Bastille would be attacked today?” Victor
said.
“How could he? That would imply the
attack was planned well in advance,” Pierre
Suddenly Jeanne came upon a loose
brick in the wall. She took it out, reached inside and pulled out a small glass
vial filled with water. However, there were also countless tiny silver dots in
the water.
“Just as I thought,” she said. “A
message pellet.”
A message pellet was a little ball
about the size of a kernel of corn. Using a magnifying glass, a person could
write a message on it and then drop it into water. Once in the water it
separates into a thousand copies of itself. Only by reassembling the ball can
the message be read.
“We have to get that back to the
airship,” Pierre
Jeanne sighed. “Until the governor
can get the mob to disperse, we’re stuck here.”
2
The
Jacobin Club, July 14, 1789 (Infini Calendar), 10:00 a.m.
The Marquis de Sade was escorted into the undersized hall
that was being used for the meeting currently in session. The room was crammed
with men in red cloaks who all looked the same to the Marquis. He looked to the left side of the room and
saw men in red cloaks. He looked to the right side of the room and saw men in
red cloaks. He looked up into the low-hanging balcony and saw men in red cloaks
sitting beneath windows letting in rays of sunlight. It should have been called
the Jaconformist Club. Oh, right: it was only part of the Jacobin club, the
faction called the Montagnards, who were in here. Oh, well.
To his right, sitting at a table on
a dais a few feet off the ground, was their leader (also wearing a red cloak).
“Welcome to the Jacobin Club, Lord Marquis de Sade.”
The Marquis stepped through the aisle
separating the left side of the room from the right, and looked around. All
eyes were on him. At least, he thought they were; he actually couldn’t see very
many eyes under those hoods. He then turned his attention to the club’s leader.
“Quite a warm reception, Monsieur Robespierre. You’re all bundled up nicely
here in the middle of summer. Personally I would have preferred a lot more
young girls and a lot less clothing. Possibly a knife or two, although I could
make do with my bare hands in a pinch. But I digress: it’s good to be out of
that prison, and in here, with not quite so many people to tell me what I can
and can’t do.” He let out a light cackle.
“Indeed,” said Robespierre. “It was
not an easy task getting you released under the guise of an official transfer.
But it looks like you have upheld your end of the bargain. My sources tell me
knights from the Ordre
de la Tradition have been sent to the Bastille to investigate a strange message
that appeared on the wall of your former cell.”
“Causing chaos and confusion to the
country that has oppressed me for so long? I would have done that for free. I
just wish I could see the looks on their faces right about now, just realizing
the lowly rabble is upon them like rabid wolves!”
Robespierre’s voice took on a
serious tone. “Need I remind you that we represent the ‘lowly rabble’ that is
presently fighting for their rights? And as the newest member of the Montagnards,
you represent them as well.”
The Marquis dismissed Robespierre’s
argument with a frilly wave of his hand. “Classes mean nothing to me. The
Estates are each fighting for their own selfish reasons. To them it call comes
down to ‘Me, Me, Me. France
“On that last point we can certainly
agree,” Robespierre said. He stood up to address the entire hall. “No positive
change can occur within our nation so long as our impotent king kowtows to
nobility and clergy. They, at least,
are selfish. They enjoy tax-exempt
status. They want to keep us down and
make sure commoners like us will continue to be their foot rests.
“And how does our king fight this
injustice? He gives in to them. He does whatever they say, no matter how much
it hurts France France
The attendees cheered, while the
Marquis gave him a half-hearted clap. “You truly are as eloquent as they say, Monsieur
Robespierre. But as you National Assembly people know all too well, words alone
cannot change a nation. That’s why you needed my genius to help you come up
with a plan to assassinate the king.”
Robespierre sat back down. “And an
excellent plan it is. Once those knights decipher your ‘message in a bottle,’
they will immediately leave and warn the king. And the king, ever so trusting
of his knights, will respond in an appropriate manner. Then he will be
vulnerable.”
“But how do you know the knights will
not be killed by the very mob we are letting loose upon them?”
“Don’t underestimate their skills.
They are survivors. Besides, I know a great deal about the Bastille itself.
Those knights won’t be killed so easily.”
The Marquis chuckled. “Well, if they
have to butcher a few peasants, so be it.” Robespierre murmured angrily under
his breath, so the Marquis decided to change the subject to something else he
was curious about. “By the way, you still haven’t told me who you’ve sent to
deal with the impudent king.”
“That’s ‘impotent.’ And the one who
will do the honor of breaking the pavement for a glorious new France is none
other than the Count of Saint-Germaine.” At the last part he raised a fist for
dramatic effect. The other members in the room voiced their pleasure.
The Marquis de Sade was rarely
surprised by anything, but this definitely did it. “The Count of
Saint-Germaine! I thought he died five years ago.”
Now it was Robespierre’s turn to
laugh. “That’s what we wanted the world to think. But in reality he has long
been one of us, and we faked his death so that he could move about more easily.
If no one knows he’s still alive, no one will be able to anticipate his
involvement in this.”
“But the Count must be very old by
now. How will he be able to kill the king?”
“The Count has mastered the art of
alchemy and used it to turn his body into a deadly weapon. No one will be able
to stand against him when he decides to strike. He will use the chaos currently
sweeping through France
Robespierre then moved on to other
business involving the Jacobin Club and the Montagnards in particular, and the
Marquis sat down in the empty seat in front of Robespierre’s table, which had
been reserved for him. While the Marquis was thoroughly enjoying all the havoc
that had no doubt started already (with even more to come), he couldn’t help
but note the irony of Robespierre sending the Count of Saint-Germaine to
dispatch the king. After all, was it not the Count who had predicted these
events some fifteen years ago? That was how the story went, at least.
Not that it mattered. The Marquis
loved irony—the crueler the better. And if he and Robespierre were correct,
things were about to get very ironic
indeed.
3
The Bastille suddenly shook violently.
“What was that?” Victor said.
“Perhaps the Marquis de Launay was
unsuccessful in reasoning with the mob,” Pierre
Jeanne shot down that idea. “That shot
was from a steam cannon. If the governor decided to open fire on the crowd, it
would be directed away from here. And
as far as I know, the Third Estate wouldn’t be able to get their hands on one.”
“That’s a good point,” Pierre
Suddenly de Launay rushed into the
room. Even in the low lighting, they could see the color had completely drained
from his face.
“What’s going on?” Jeanne said.
The Marquis shook his head. “It’s
far worse than I feared.”
“What do you mean?”
“Things were going reasonably well.
I met with the leader of the mob. I allowed him
inside and he watched as we removed the cannons that were pointing outside at
the mob. Unfortunately, they took this to mean we were loading them in
preparation for an attack. Someone got a shot off with a pistol—I’m not sure
who—and suddenly the mob panicked. The ones carrying firearms began shooting
them at my men in the windows. No one was hit, but that was only the beginning.”
“What do you mean?” Pierre
“An army regiment sympathizes with
the crowd and has joined them. They brought their own steam cannons!”
Things suddenly fell into place for
the knights. “So it was their cannons
that hit us a moment ago,” Jeanne said.
“Obviously this place is quite an eyesore
to them,” Viktor observed.
The Marquis nodded grimly. “They see
this fortress as symbol of oppression by the Ancien Régime—what they call the government—and they’re determined
to tear it down, one way or another.”
“Isn’t the Bastille already
scheduled for demolition, seeing as how there are so few prisoners here these
days?” Victor said.
“Unfortunately,” de Launay said,
“they don’t know that, and they weren’t in any mood to listen. They’re dead set
on getting in here, freeing the prisoners and then leveling everything.”
“We have to get out of here,” Jeanne
said.
“Fortunately,” de Launay said, “I’ve
long been worried that something like this might happen. That’s why I had an
escape tunnel built under the prison.”
“Very good. Take us to it,” Jeanne
said.
“Right away. I just need to get us
some light,” de Launay responded. He walked past Jacques’ cell to the wall and
grabbed a torch off the wall.
Jacques walked over to the bars and
addressed the Marquis. “What about me? Surely you will not leave a poor
Parisian to be feasted on by the mob?”
“You’ll be fine,” de Launay said,
walking past Jacques with torch in hand. “As I already stated, they want to
free you, since they think everyone in here is a political prisoner.
Personally, I would prefer to have a forger like you stay in here a few more
years.” He rejoined the knights and pointed towards the door they had entered
through. “It’s this way.”
***
The
Marquis de Launay led them down a flight of stairs into the dark cellar of the
Bastille. Boxes full of guns and
ammunition, as well as what appeared to be rundown steam cannons, were spread
out on the floor in rows. At the far end of the cellar was a man-sized opening
that had clearly been cut out of the wall.
When they arrived they could see
large pieces of wood that had been scattered in front of the door. “I
instructed my men to open up the tunnel and then make their escape ahead of
us,” de Launay explained.
“Seems ironic to put an escape
tunnel in a prison,” Victor laughed.
“Today’s attack has been brewing for
years,” de Launay said. “The taxes, the unequal treatment under the law, even
the ‘Great Fear’—all of it has pushed the Third Estate into action, albeit
misguided and reckless action.”
The “Great Fear” de Launay spoke of
referred to a rumor that had gone around—no one knew how it had started—that
the nobility had employed bands of thugs to go around the countryside
destroying the crops of the peasantry. The rumor turned out to be untrue, but
that didn’t stop a wave of panic from flooding across France
The prison suddenly shook again with
the reverberation of a steam cannon blast, and Jeanne was about to suggest they
hurry through the tunnel when someone charged into her from behind. They both
fell to the floor, whereupon she elbowed her unknown attacker in the face. The
assailant let go of her and all three knights brought their swords upon him.
“Now, now, it is simply I—Jacques du
Chard!”
The Marquis de Launay lowered the
torch so they could get a good look at him. Sure enough, it was Jacques the
forger. Jeanne motioned for Pierre and Victor to sheathe their swords.
“What are you doing down here?” de
Launay demanded to know. “How did you get out of your cell?”
“Let’s just say you should not have
passed so close to me when you went by my cell up there. Didn’t you notice
yourself missing the key?”
The Marquis check his pocket. “You
filthy thief!”
Victor chuckled. “I thought he was
just a forger, but he can get out of a prison cell too. What a multi-talented
criminal!” He then said under his breath, “And not a bad looker.”
Jacques waved his hand in a
tip-of-the-hat gesture. “And you, sir, have an eye for talent.” He returned his
attention to de Launay. “As for why I am here, well, it is simply the fact that
I do not care to be placed in the custody of that mob that is currently
pummeling the doors of this prison trying to get in.”
“Enough of this banter. Let’s keep
moving,” Jeanne said. She hoped they wouldn’t pick up any more comedians today.
***
They
trekked through the man-made tunnel underneath the Bastille. The passage was so
narrow they had to walk single-file; de Launay brought up the rear, followed by
Jeanne, Jacques, Victor and Pierre. The Marquis’ torch provided just enough
light for them to see a few feet in front of them.
Despite the heat of summer, it was
cool in the tunnel. It smelled of mud and rock, two things which can block out
warmth. Jeanne was glad for that; her armor was lightweight, but could still be
unbearably hot this time of year.
She said, “You’re a curious one,
forger. Do you really think you’ll be better off with us than up above with
your fellow commoners?”
“Very much so, Mademoiselle. My
fellow peasants are not too fond of me at the moment,” Jacques said.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“As you know, I was put in prison
for forgery. But what you do not know are the details of that crime. You see, I
was hired by a poor family to forge documents showing them to be nobility. They
wanted to move up in the world, I suppose. Who does not? Anyways, they gave me all the money they had to do the job.
Sadly, on the way back to deliver the false documents to that family I was
caught with the papers on me.” His voice took on a melancholy tone. “Under
threat of torture I revealed the names of the commoners who had hired me to
forge the documents. I later learned they had been split up and sent to
different prisons around France
“That’s….unfortunate,” was all
Jeanne could say. She made it a point to stay in control of her emotions at all
times, and she couldn’t be showing too much pity to a common criminal.
“Don’t listen to him,” de Launay
said. “Regardless of his reasons, he still broke the law. His punishment was
just.”
“’Just’…” Jeanne let the word roll
around in her mouth for a moment. As the commander of the Ordre de la
Tradition, she was known as “Jeanne la Juste,” a moniker she had received
because she treated everyone fairly. She did not show more respect to the
nobility than the clergy or commoners, and she was always fair in her dealings
with criminals. Still, she wasn’t sure how to look upon Jacques du Chard; he
had admitted his guilt, yet his story was nonetheless a sympathetic one.
An abrupt series of reverberations
shaking the tunnel saved her from having to think about it any more at the
present time. Unlike the previous explosions, these were clearly the result of
more than one cannon blast.
“I think they’ve gotten serious,”
Victor said.
“They must have gotten the other
prisoners out and have now commenced the complete bombarding of the prison,” de
Launay said.
More explosions rocked the fortress
above, and mounds of dirt began falling from the ceiling of the tunnel. “We
need to move,” Jeanne insisted.
They began awkwardly running through
the passage as fast as they could. Jeanne realized it had been a mistake to let
the Marquis take point; he wasn’t in nearly as good of shape as the knights, or
even Jacques. He was slowing them down too much. In addition, the tunnel was
too narrow for them to go around him (Jeanne had no intention of leaving him
behind, but she wished the others at least had a chance to get out faster.
As the passage continually shook
from the bombardment, the tunnel began to crumble more and more around them.
Suddenly de Launay tripped on a rock and fell down, his torch landing in a
puddle of muddy water and going out. Now the tunnel was collapsing and they were blind.
Jeanne almost tripped over the
Marquis herself, but managed to stay upright despite all the commotion going
on. She felt for de Launay’s torso and pulled him to his feet. She then grabbed
his shoulders firmly. “Everyone, hold on to the person in front of you!” she
shouted to be heard above the rumblings. She felt someone (she had to assume
Jacques) put his arms around her waist in a somewhat too-familiar embrace.
Still, she didn’t have the luxury to complain. After a moment had passed and
she was satisfied everyone had had time to carry out her order, she said,
“Let’s go!”
They slogged forward as a unit, with
the tunnel threatening to collapse at any moment. After a minute, Jeanne saw a
light up ahead, faint but definitely there. As more and more dirt and debris
fell from the ceiling, though, she didn’t know if they would make it.
Nevertheless, they pressed on
towards the exit, one step at a time.
Twenty feet to the exit.
Fifteen feet.
More debris falling.
Ten feet.
Behind them, the ceiling began
collapsing entirely.
Five feet.
***
They
barreled out of the tunnel and into the open daylight of Paris
Once she could breathe again, she
looked around to take stock of the situation. They were in a wide street behind
the Bastille. Dozens of smokestacks from factories in the distance bellowed
steam into the Paris Paris
She saw the Marquis de Launay lying
behind her, also trying to get himself together. To her right were Pierre and
Victor sitting on the ground, apparently no worse for wear. Their armor was
covered with dirt, dust and grime, and she looked down to see that hers was as
well.
She then heard another series of
explosions. She looked up past the wall into which the tunnel had been built,
and saw the last rampart of the Bastille coming down. Although the falling
structure was a good hundred feet away and separated from them by a twenty foot
wall, it still roared with its last breath and produced a dirty white cloud
which managed to shoot over the wall.
They put their arms up in front of
their faces to shield their eyes from the cloud which came down upon them. For
a moment the world went a shade of sickly grey.
Jeanne went through another bout of
coughing, and she could hear the others doing the same. “Is everyone all
right?” she asked.
“I think so,” Pierre
“Same here,” Victor replied.
“Things could be worse, no?” Jacques
added.
“Oh, will you just shut—” de Launay
started. However, his words were cut off by a sharp retort: the unmistakable
sound of a gun shot.
The cloud cleared and Jeanne saw the
Marquis lying facedown in a bright red pool, a hole having been put in his
shoulder.
She also saw that they were
surrounded on three sides by eight members of the Gardes Francaises, an
infantry regiment of the Maison du Roi, the King’s House. Their role depended
on whether they were stationed in Paris or Versailles Versailles their duty was to guard the palace, while in Paris
A man whose uniform identified him
as their sergeant addressed them. “Please cooperate with us, Mademoiselle de
Fleur. We don’t want any more bloodshed than necessary.”
“I know you,” she said. “You are François
Joseph Lefebvre. What is the meaning of this?”
Lefebvre
was thirty-three years old (having been in the army since he was eighteen). His
prominent features were a strong jaw line and hair which was short and dark. Unlike
the rest of his regiment, his uniform consisted of a blue coat with red cuffs,
a red collar and a red waistcoat, while the leggings and breeches were white.
Jeanne had never seen this uniform before, but Lefebvre’s coat was embroidered
in silver rather than white, distinguishing his status as an officer.
He spoke
calmly and eloquently. “The revolution has begun, and we are siding with the
National Constituent Assembly. They have long been oppressed by the Ancien Régime, and we were recently
ordered to suppress the uprising with violence. Please understand that we
cannot in good conscience open fire on the people of France
Jeanne
clenched her fist tightly. “’Cannot in good conscience open fire’? You just opened fire on the Marquis de Launay.”
Lefebvre
furrowed his brow slightly. “We merely shot him in the shoulder. He will live,
though not for long, I suspect. It is the people who demand his head as the one
who ran the Bastille. Once he is dead, their anger will diminish.”
“What
nonsense is this?” Jeanne demanded. “You are members of the Maison du Roi. You
serve the king’s household. And now you would turn against those you have sworn
loyalty to?”
“We are
loyal to the people! Our king has
abandoned them in favor of the nobles and clergymen. The Third Estate had more
members than the other two; by all rights they should have received more votes.
But our monarch acquiesced to the petulant First and Second Estates—not to
mention his overbearing wife—and shut them out of the hall in which they were
to have met. In effect, he has rejected the majority of France
“And you
think you can change things by shooting innocent people and wreaking havoc in Paris
“I am
under no obligation to justify our actions to you. I was simply hoping you would
understand and come with us peacefully, either to join us or allow us to keep
you under guard so that you do not interfere with our mission. What is it going
to be?”
Jeanne
turned to Pierre and Victor. “Cover the forger. Do not allow any harm to come to
him.”
“Yes,
ma’am,” they said. They ran over to Jacques (who was still on the ground
watching the scene) and proceeded to shield him with their bodies.
Lefebvre
said, “So you refuse?”
Jeanne
removed her rapier and pointed it at him. “We must return to our airship and
then report back to the king. You will not stop us.”
Lefebvre
looked at her with contempt. “That is a foolish choice. Very well.”
He raised his hand and then brought
it down like the hammers of the rifles his men were carrying. They immediately
opened fire on the knights. Jeanne raised her arm to shield her head but took
several bullets in her chest plating, while Pierre and Victor similarly took
multiple blows.
Jeanne fell backwards onto the
ground. “I know that volley wasn’t enough to penetrate your irodium armor,”
Lefebre said. He pulled out his own sword and Strolled over to Jeanne’s fallen
and seemingly unconscious form. “But it should have stunned you enough for me
to deliver the killing blow.”
He gripped his sword with both hands
and positioned it over Jeanne’s throat (which was not covered by armor). He
then dropped it with all his might.
However, Jeanne tilted her head ever
so slightly and Lefebvre’s blade dug harmlessly into the ground. In one fluid
and rapid motion she thrust her rapier—which she had never let go of—into his
thigh. Unlike the knights, French infantry wore no armor, so Jeanne’s blade
entered Lefebvre’s body unopposed.
He cried out and staggered back.
Jeanne took this opportunity to lead to her feet and kick him in the wound she
had just made. Now it was his turn to
meet the ground.
His seven soldiers scrambled to
unsheathe their own swords, but Jeanne ran in and cut down two of them before
they could. Fortunately for them, she
intentionally avoided their vitals.
She turned around to confront two
more who were charging her, only to see a massive pair of hands knock their
heads together.
It was Pierre
She then saw Victor grab a fallen
infantryman’s rifle and club one of the others over the head, knocking him out
cold. He looked at her and said, “We thought you would prefer the nonlethal
approach, if possible.”
The last two members of the Gardes
Francaises obviously realized they had been thoroughly routed and turned tail
to run away.
When they were out of sight, Jeanne
addressed her subordinates. “I told you two to guard the forger.”
“By that point, they were focused
entirely on you, ma’am. They weren’t even aware of his existence.”
Jacques walked up to them with a grin
on his face. “That they were not. Admit it: You forgot about me as well. Ah,
‘tis a sad thing when a man is important one moment, and unknown the next. But
that is just the way of the world, I suppose.”
Jeanne felt like rebuking his
devil-may-care attitude, but couldn’t bring herself to do it. For all his
faults, Jacques du Chard was a hard man to hate.
A pained grunt alerted them to the
fact that Lefebvre was still there. They turned to see him getting back to his
feet with no small difficulty. “This isn’t over,” he said venomously.
“It had better be, for your sake,”
Jeanne retorted.
“Why, you—”
Lefebvre’s words were cut off by a
suddenly cry from a hundred feet up the road. They all turned and saw a mass of
people running towards them.
“Looks like the mob has found us,” Pierre
Lefebvre began laughing with a
righteous fury, a far cry from his earlier demeanor. “Now you’ll pay! You and
all the other dogs of the Ancien Régime.”
With renewed vigor he scooped up the
Marquis de Launay—whom they had all forgotten about in the heat of battle—and
sprinted towards the rushing mob.
“Get back here!” Jeanne called after
him.
“Should we go after him?” Pierre
She shook her head. Even if they
managed to catch up with the manic sergeant, they’d still have to fight off the
mob. There was a veritable sea of enraged Parisians coming at them, and she
didn’t see how they could possibly win against them all. That only left
retreat.
She looked around them. They were
surrounded on three sides by thick walls, those of the Bastille and the
adjacent buildings. The only way out was through the mob. The riotous group
momentarily stopped to celebrate the capturing of the Marquis de Launay, but
Lefebvre quickly reminded them with a pointing finger that there were still
enemies of the people waiting to be seized or worse. The crowd wasted no time
continuing their charge.
“Gut the oppressors!” one yelled.
“The king’s chienne must die!” said another.
“Let’s take our time with her!”
Jeanne wasn’t flattered by being
called a bitch. As the mob got closer she could see they were mostly armed with
hoes and other blunt farming tools. She seriously doubted any of them alone
could even scratch her, but with sheer numbers they had an overwhelming
advantage.
“Is this the end?” Jacques said with
mild apathy.
Jeanne was about to reply when she heard
a familiar whooshing sound. “The end of this farce?” she said. “Yes, it is.”
They all watched as a massive wall
came down between the mob and the knights. Only it wasn’t just a wall; it was
an airship. It landed just a few feet in front of the knights, and Jeanne’s
hair was blown wildly by its appearance.
At fifty feet long, the Minuit Solaire was a sleek silver marvel
of airship technology. Since the outer hull was made of irodium, the ship could
fly faster and higher than if it was composed of any other metal. In addition,
twin engines on either side of the stern provided thrust while the elongated
balloon moored above the ship helped to achieve buoyancy.
While they were admiring the ship’s
impeccable timing, a teenage girl wearing glasses and a dirty brown jumpsuit
appeared on the deck above them. “Sorry to keep you waiting, milady!” She threw
down a rope ladder, and Jeanne instructed Jacques to climb up first, followed
by Pierre and Victor. Finally, Jeanne herself started climbing, and she motioned
to the girl for them to take off.
As the Minuit Solaire began ascending into the air, Jeanne once again
marveled at the level of technological achievement France
However,
his wife and queen, Marie Antoinette, saw the untold benefits of being able to
rule the sky, and she convinced her husband to champion research into the
field.
They soon
brought in engineers from all over the world and had them work together on the Diu
du Ciel [God of the Sky] project. Perhaps most instrumental in the success of
the airship project was James Watt who came up with the idea to power the
airships with technology derived from his steam engine.
At the
behest of Marie Antoinette, Louis XVI decreed that the first airship be
christened by the end of 1785. Working feverishly, the team managed to pull it
off, and on December 24, 1785, the king and queen rode in the inaugural flight
of the Minuit Solaire.
Looking
back, Jeanne now wondered if it was all worth it. The Diu du Ciel project
required vast amounts of France’s resources to be completed on time and now the
country was heavily in debt—and only two airships had been built thus far.
Inflation was at an all-time high; the cost of bread alone had skyrocketed as
of late. She understood why the people were so upset, but their solution of
extreme violence was only making things horribly worse. I am sorry, Monsieur
de Launay, she added silently. Rest assured your sacrifice will not have
been for nothing.
Her train
of thought—along with her climb up the ladder—was suddenly disrupted by a heavy
jolt. The airship spun thirty-five degrees, and Jeanne had to cling to the
ladder to keep from falling off. “Celeste!” She
shouted. “What’s going on?”
Hugging the railing up above,
Celeste adjusted her glasses and called back, “They managed to hit us with a steam
cannon shell! Don’t worry; it was a glancing blow.”
Jeanne climbed up the rope as
fast as she could. If just a graze managed to do that to them, she didn’t
intend to be on a flimsy rope ladder if and when they were hit again.
When she reached the polished
wood of the top deck, Pierre
“Are you unhurt, milady?”
Celeste asked.
“I’m fine. Get below deck and
see to any damage we sustained.”
“Right away!”
Celeste nimbly bound down the
stairs a few feet away.
“Full of energy, that girl,”
Jacques said. Like Pierre and Victor, he had remained on the railing as they
awaited the ship’s captain.
“That she does,” Victor replied.
“Our little engineer has a taste for adventure and she’s right at home up here
in the sky. In fact, the only thing she likes more than pure excitement may be
our captain here.”
“Ah, so you are a role model,
eh?”
Jeanne dismissed the high
praise. “It’s just youthful admiration.”
She looked up at the balloon
above them. It did not appear to be damaged or leaking gas. She silently
thanked the Lord for the one thing that hadn’t gone wrong today.
Satisfied that the ship would
continue to fly (at least for the moment), she headed down the stairs one
flight to the command deck below them. When she reached the command deck,
immediately behind her was the bridge, located on the ship’s bow. Along the
corridor in the opposite direction were crew quarters, the captain’s being the
closest to the bridge so she could get there quickly in an emergency.
Jeanne turned around and walked
into the bridge. The bridge itself was a fifteen-by-ten space. The captain’s
chair sat bolted in the middle of the room, while the two operators had their
own seats at bulky consoles in front of the canopy window. Each console had
large levers and wheels for them to operate in order to fly the ship. Because
of the complexity of the airship, it took two people working together just to
fly it. The left operator was in charge of altitude control, while the right
operator handled acceleration. Of course, there was also a group of people
slaving down in the boiler room to keep the ship powered.
As Jeanne entered, the two
operators—Adolphe on the left, Claude on the right—stood up to salute her. They
wore jumpsuits with a blue left sleeve and red right sleeve, with the rest of
the outfit being white (the colors of the French flag).
“As you were,” she said, and
they returned to their posts.
Jeanne went over to a panel
built into the left wall. She pulled on a latch to reveal an opening about the
size of her hand, removed the vial she had retrieved from the Bastille from her
pocket, and poured the contents into the opening. The water went down a funnel
into the depths of the device, where she knew it would be filtered, separating
the liquid from the innumerous dots that had once made up the message pellet.
There were two small glass
windows a few feet below the opening she had poured the water into. Behind the
left window was a transparent vial similar to the one the water had originally
been stored in, while the right window simply held a round indentation. As
Jeanne watched, water filled the left vial, while metal dots filled the right
indentation.
Once it was obvious that all the
pieces of the message pellet had been deposited into the right vial, Jeanne
pulled a lever on the panel. There was a hiss and the right window filled with
green gas. She didn’t remember exactly how it worked, but somehow the gas
softened up the dots and made them reform into one solid unit.
Sure enough, a solid metal ball
dropped down into a small bin below the windows. Jeanne picked up the message
pellet, but the writing was still too small for her to read.
Fortunately, though, a
magnifying glass hung from the ceiling at the front of the bridge for just such
a situation as this. Jeanne went to it and, using the light from outside, was
able to read the words written by the Marquis de Sade.
Congratulations, you found the words I ‘scribed
And managed to get out before you fried
Now you should return to Versailles
For your good king is going to die
4
“Oh,
dear,” said King Louis XVI as he stood in the hallway at the Royal Palace France
But
it was not the splendor of the Palace that held his attention at that moment.
No, it was the scene he was witnessing as he looked through the
twenty-foot-high windows that made him understandably uneasy.
The
magnificent garden in front of the Palace, with its grand fountain,
expertly-maintained trees and elaborate patterns cut out of the grass, was
normally a serene location the king and queen liked to take walks in.
However,
on this day the garden was anything but peaceful. Currently occupying its
grounds was a sea of people—mostly women—currently shouting angrily at anyone
in the Palace who could hear them.
“We
can’t afford bread!”
“This
is all the Austrian Chienne’s fault!”
“Her
and her damn sky boats have ruined us!”
“Don’t
forget about the American war they dragged us into!”
Louis
XVI turned to his advisor, the Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt,
and said, “Is this a revolt?”
The fifty-two-year-old duke ran a hand through his
graying hair and straightened his black coat before giving his curt reply. “No,
My Lord. It is a revolution.”
“What is going on?” said Marie Antoinette, entering from
a set of exquisite marble doors at the end of the hallway. She wore one of her
trademark flowing dresses, each one of them priceless. This one was red.
The king turned to face his wife. “Just a demonstration.
Nothing to worry about,” he lied.
The queen looked out the window and saw the rage on the
faces of the crowd when they spotted her. They began yelling with renewed fury.
“Someone should go talk to them,” she said, and proceeded
to return in the direction she had come.
“Wait, my love. It is dangerous.”
However, he was unable to stop her before she opened the
terrace and walked out to face the crowd below.
“There she is!” one shouted.
“She dares face us?” said another.
Several members of the mob threw rocks at her. One
connected with her forehead, causing a trickle of blood to flow down her face.
She stood there for what seemed an eternity, taking their
verbal, physical and overall emotional abuse. Finally, they seemed to grow
tired of the tirade, and the abuse subsided. Satisfied that their anger had
been quenched, Marie Antoinette bowed her head and went back inside.
Her husband ran over to wipe the blood off her forehead.
“I’m so glad they did not do worse to you. What were you thinking?”
She said, “Some storms cannot be waited out. They must be
faced.”
“Long live the Queen!” a few of the mob shouted outside.
“It seems
to have worked,” said the Duke, who had followed them.
However, even more of the crowd continued to voice their
anger.
“Don’t be fooled by her!”
“Yeah! She’s hoarding grain just like the rest of them!”
Marie Antoinette shook her head. “I may have simply
bought us some time.”
“My Lord, you need to consider leaving here immediately.
I suggest heading to the Chateau at Rambouillet,” the Duke said.
“I think that would be best,” the queen said. “We can
take the Majesté Divine.”
The Majesté Divine, or Divine Majesty, was the royal airship. The
chateau she spoke of lay in the town of Rambouillet ,
about thirty-three kilometers southwest of Versailles
The king rejected the idea. “For
over a century, this has been home to the royal family of France
“Yes, but I don’t think—”
She was cut off by an explosion,
followed by a thunderous crash as a cannon ball barreled through the terrace
window and missed her head by mere inches.
The three of them dropped to the
floor. The king gaped at the crater in the wall where the iron sphere had
lodged. “They’ve brought cannons!”
“They’re just normal cannons,” the
Duke said. “Heaven help us if they brought steam models.”
“‘Just’ normal cannons? I very nearly lost my head!” the queen said.
She brushed broken glass out of her hair and dress. “We must leave here at
once.”
The king, though, still refused. “I
have been bullied by the Third Estate long enough. They shall not push me out
of my own home.”
“But what of our children? Would you
have them stay in reach of that bloodthirsty mob?”
“We have plenty of guards here.
They’ll disperse the crowd.”
A courtier rushed into the hallway.
“My Lord! Are you all right?”
“We are fine,” the king replied.
“What is that paper in your hand? Is it a message?”
The courtier, seeing that the three
of them were all laying low on the floor, did likewise. He handed the king the
paper he was holding. “We have received word from the Minuit Solaire. They have reported a riot at the Bastille, and not
only that…”
Louis XVI read the paper. “Mon Dieu! It is far worse than we
thought.”
5
The Minuit Solaire
was currently anchored at a telegraph pole on the southwest outskirts of Paris Palace of Versailles
She listened to the tap-tap-tap of the message as Maurice
the telegraph operator repeatedly pushed his index finger down on the copper
handle at his console at the wall next to the entrance on the bridge, behind
the captain’s chair. Like the other two operators on the bridge, he wore a red,
white and blue jumpsuit.
“All done, ma’am,” he said.
“Very good.” Now the king would know
there would likely be an attempt on his life some time today. She just prayed
they weren’t too late.
Everything that had happened so far
could not be simply a coincidence. The Marquis de Sade had obviously known
there would be an attack on the Bastille, but how? The mob had seemed too angry
and their rage too spontaneous to have been a premeditated attack. Was it
possible someone had been subtly manipulating the Parisian populace, stoking
the fires of their hearts in controlled bursts until they exploded on just the
right day?
But if so, who? And why would the
Marquis de Sade give the knights a chance to warn the king. The more she
thought about it, the more uneasy she became.
She sat down in her captain’s chair
and took hold of a rubber tube with a wide opening that hung down from the
ceiling, next to the seat. She spoke into it. “Celeste, I want the
communications cable reeled in immediately. We have to get back to Versailles
ASAP.”
The engineer’s voice came through
the tubing, slightly distorted by the process of traveling up from the boiler room,
through the walls and ceiling, and back down to Jeanne. “Milady, we’re not finished repairing the damage from earlier. It’s not
safe to go full speed.”
“Give us as much as you can. If we
don’t return to the Palace soon, I fear something horrible may happen.”
“We’ll do what we can, but it’ll be
a bumpy ride. Also, I can’t guarantee chunks of the ship won’t begin falling
off before long.”
“We’ll make it. I have faith in your
abilities.”
Even through the tubing, Celeste’s
voice was gushing. “Thank you, ma’am! I’m
honored to hear that from you.”
***
Within
twenty minutes the Minuit Solaire
reached the Palace
of Versailles
The ship sat down on its designated
landing pad behind the Palace, next to the pad for the royal airship, the Majesté Divine. That pad was empty,
meaning the airship had left—hopefully with the royal family safely on board.
Jeanne, Pierre and
Victor disembarked the airship. A royal aide ran up the landing pad’s ramp to
meet them.
“What’s the situation?”
Jeanne said.
The aide, a teenager,
had obviously been through the worst experience of his life, judging by his
lack of composure and the way he trembled as he spoke. “It was awful, ma’am. A
large mob of women—there must have been thousands of them—attacked the Palace.
They demanded lower bread prices—along with the queen’s head. Her Majesty tried
to calm them down, but it only worked on some of them. The rest of the mob
began firing cannons—”
She cut him off. “Steam cannons?”
“No, ma’am. Just regular
cannons. Her Majesty, along with the Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, tried to persuade the King to leave, but he
wouldn’t have it. But then we received your message, and His Majesty relented.
The royal family left in the Majesté Divine thirty minutes ago.”
“Where are they headed?” Jeanne said.
“They talked of going to Rambouillet, but ultimately
decided to head for Montmédy.”
Montmédy
was a fortress in the Lorraine region of
northeastern France France
The aide
gave Jeanne the heading the royal airship was taking, and she thanked him. The
knights then went back into the Minuit
Solaire and the airship took off along the heading for Montmédy.
The
royal family may have escaped the Palace siege, but that didn’t mean they were
safe just yet. It was the duty of the Ordre de la Tradition that they make sure
no harm came to them, no matter what. In order to do that, they had to first
locate the Majesté Divine.
6
The
skies above France
The king and queen sat together on
the luxurious bed in the royal family’s cabin aboard the Majesté Divine. The bed featured four tall posts supporting
a silk canopy. Furthermore, like the Palace their cabin was decorated with
priceless paintings and plush carpeting. Sunlight drifted in from the windows
next to their bed while clouds sped by.
Their son, Louis-Charles, and
daughter Marie-Thérèse, currently were asleep on separate beds on
the opposite wall of the spacious cabin. It had been no trouble for them to
lose themselves in unconsciousness after their harrowing escape from the Palace.
“Are you
sure you can raise enough support in Montmédy?” Marie Antoinette asked softly,
not wanting to wake the children.
“They
have always been loyal to us. And with order breaking down across France
“We can
always go stay with my brother. He would protect us.” Her brother was Leopold
II, emperor of Austria
But
Louis XVI said, “I will not abandon my homeland to those wolves of the Third
Estate. You’ve seen what they do when left to their own devices. Don’t worry;
we shall be safe once we reach Montmédy.”
There
was a knock at the door, and the king bade the visitor to enter. It was the
Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, who
had escaped with them on the airship. “Your Majesties, how are you faring?”
“Well enough, all things considered,” the king said,
though he was visibly lacking confidence in that statement.
The Duke noticed the children sleeping, and came over to
the bed, speaking in a hushed tone. “We shall arrive in Montmédy
shortly. From there you can rebuild your power base.”
The
king’s voice began dripping with anger. “I swear upon our Lord and God that I
will return to crush those barbaric commoners, along with their noble and
clergy accomplices.
Marie
Antoinette rose off the bed and began walking over to the door.
“You should stay in your cabin until
we reach Montmédy, Your Majesty,” the Duke said.
“I’m
going to the toilettes. I’ll be back shortly.”
Oddly,
the Duke seemed anxious about her leaving. “Wait, my queen. It’s not safe—”
He was
too late, however. The queen stepped into the corridor and immediately
shrieked.
“What is
it? What’s wrong?” Louis XVI said.
Marie
Antoinette stepped back into the room, her face contorted in horror. With a
violently shaking finger she pointed at something down the hall. “Th-The
guards! They’re…!”
The king
jumped off the bed and ran into the hallway. There, he saw half a dozen bodies
either slumped against the walls or splayed on the floor, blood soaking
wherever spot they lay. In addition, each guard had a hole going all the way
through his neck in the same spot. They must have all been killed before they
could even cry out to alert others.
Louis
XVI turned to the Duke. “What is this?”
The
commotion woke up the children. Louis-Charles said, “Are we there yet?”
“Oh,
bother,” the Duke said, looking over at them. “I was hoping to kill you while
they slept, so they wouldn’t have to witness it. I was then going to end them
in their sleep, painlessly.”
“Have
you taken leave of your senses, François?” the king demanded to know.
The Duke
actually laughed contemptuously. “I’m not your trustworthy duke. If you were to
ever get back to the Palace—which you won’t—you would find the body of the real
Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt hidden in the cellar.”
“An
imposter? Then who—”
The king
forgot his words as the Duke’s entire flesh rippled like a body of water after
a stone had been dropped in it. The Duke pulsated and the body underneath his
clothes was re-molded as if it were clay.
When
finished, he was no longer the Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Instead, he was
someone completely unexpected. Someone who should have been dead.
The king
gasped. “You…!”
The
imposter spoke again, and now even his voice was different. “I’m glad to see
you still recognize me, even though I’m young again and not the old man you
remember.”
Louis
XVI shook with a combination of rage and terror. “The court was right; you are a monster!”
The
children sat on their beds, too scared to even blink. They were transfixed
entirely on the morphing villain in front of them.
“If you
had heeded my warning fifteen years ago, none of this would be necessary. I
told you what would happen to France
The
imposter took a step towards the king, who immediately removed a golden
revolver from his robe and fired at him. The imposter fell backwards to the
floor, a black ichor oozing from the wound in place of blood.
The
report from the pistol shook the children out of their paralyzed state, and
Louis XVI grabbed them off the beds.
Together
they ran to the bridge to notify the ship’s captain of the assassin, the king
and queen covering the children’s eyes as they stepped over the corpses.
Unfortunately, when they arrived they
found the bridge crew slaughtered just like the guards in the hallway. The
captain and operators were dead in their seats with holes punched through their
necks.
“Children, please look away,” the
queen said.
They quietly did as they were told.
No doubt this whole experience had left them too shaken to do anything else.
The murdered crew was facing away
from the entrance to the bridge, suggesting they had been taken by surprise.
That wasn’t surprising, since they—like the royal family—must have believed him
to be the real Duke of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, up until the moment he decided
to strike. But what weapon had he used? Neither Louis XVI nor Marie Antoinette
had seen him carrying anything in his hands.
“No one’s piloting the ship,” the
queen said.
She managed to refrain from voicing
her new fears, but the king knew well enough that without operators the ship
would soon crash. The idea of any of them taking the controls was out of the
question; they were, after all, royalty and not trained to do the work of commoners.
“We’ll have to parachute,” Louis XVI
said.
He ran over to the lockers on the
right wall and rummaged through them until he found what he was looking for.
His spirits were raised as he removed
four white bundles, but all hopes were shattered as he looked them over.
“They’ve been shredded,” he said, deflated.
Indeed, the parachutes had been torn
by someone or something, probably the assassin who had come to kill them.
They’d never hold up if anyone tried to open them during a freefall.
However, he found a faint glimmer of
hope in the form of a narrow white cylinder on one of the locker shelves. He
took it and looked it over.
“Is that a smoke tube?” the queen
asked.
“Yes. And it seems to be in one
piece. If we can light it on the deck, maybe the Minuit Solaire will see it and come for us.”
“What are the chances that they are
even in the area?”
“The Palace will have told them where
we are heading. If I know Jeanne de Fleur, she will no doubt come after us with
all due haste. It’s a slim hope, but it’s all we have.”
Suddenly the children began
frantically tugging at their parents’ clothes. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
turned around to see a horrifying sight: The assassin was standing in the
hallway outside the royal family’s cabin grinning at them. Furthermore, the
wound in his chest was no longer bleeding.
“It’s useless,” he grinned. “Without
a bridge crew this ship will soon crash. And I destroyed the parachutes, so
there’s no escape.”
Louis XVI shot him again, this time
in the stomach. The assassin fell to his knees, and the king quickly ushered
his family up the stairs onto the top deck. Behind them they heard the assassin
shouting, “Shoot me all you want, my wounds won’t last long.”
7
The skies above France
Jeanne stared intently through the
canopy window on board the bridge of the Minuit
Solaire. So far they had yet to see any sign of the Majesté Divine, though they were flying the same heading
given to them by the aide at the Palace. Fortunately, Celeste and her team of
engineers had recently made upgrades to the Minuit
Solaire’s engines, so the ship could fly at a greater top speed than the
royal family’s vessel. This would hopefully allow them to catch up with the
royal family before it was too late.
“We’ve got something,” Adolphe the
left operator said.
Up ahead they could see a trail of
orange smoke—a signal—ahead of them. At the head of the plume was an airship.
Since there were only two airships in the world, it had to be the Majesté Divine!
“Take us in,” Jeanne said. She
grabbed the communications tube hanging next to her chair. “Celeste, we’ve
spotted the Majesté Divine, but it looks
like they may be having problems. Have Harpoon Control ready some anchors.”
“Ma’am,
if they lose thrust, we won’t be able to keep them afloat.”
“I’m aware of that. I’m going to
take a team in to hopefully stabilize the ship. Just stay focused on keeping us afloat. When we get within range,
fire the harpoons.”
“Understood!”
Jeanne went to go retrieve Pierre
and Victor, who were on standby in their quarters in case they were needed.
Both of them were trained to operate the Minuit
Solaire in the event of an emergency, and since the Majesté Divine were of the same design, they should be able to
operate it as well.
They proceeded up the stairs to the
top deck. The wind battered them as they grabbed hold of the railing. Normally
crew members were not authorized to go topside while the airship was in motion,
but these were special circumstances.
When the Minuit Solaire got closer to the Majesté Divine, Jeanne could see that it was none other than the
king holding the smoke tube. Louis XVI, along with his wife and children, were
huddled together at the stern of their ship.
From the bow of the Minuit Solaire, two decks below the
bridge, a paneled section of the hull was removed and two enormous metal spears
appeared in the rectangular hole.
Jeanne motioned for the royal family
to step away from the stern of the Majesté
Divine. They complied, getting clear of what was obviously coming.
Without any further warning the
spears exploded from the small bay they had been stationed in. In a rush of
steam and cables the spears penetrated the deck of the Majesté Divine. Wood splintered as the two airships became locked
together in the sky.
The Minuit Solaire shuddered as it struggled to adapt to being tethered
to its younger sister hundreds of feet above France
Once she was satisfied the two
airships wouldn’t be leaving each other’s company, Jeanne threw the rope ladder
overboard and rode it down to the deck of the royal airship. Pierre and Victor
followed suit.
When they were safely on deck the
royal family rushed over to them. “Jeanne, thank God you are here!” the king
said.
“Your Majesty, you and your family
need to climb up this ladder and wait—”
Suddenly a trio of black tendrils
came out of nowhere and sliced the rope ladder from the hull of the Minuit Solaire. They then receded back
to their source, the arm of a strange young man standing on the deck near the
bow.
“Who is that?” Pierre
“An
assassin!” Marie Antoinette yelled. “He took on the appearance of the Duke
of Rochefoucauld-Liancourt. Not only
that, but bullets cannot seem to kill him.”
The royal family hid behind Jeanne and the knights.
“Well, now that the rope ladder is out, it looks like we’ll have to kill him,” Victor said.
Jeanne shook her head. “No, you two need to get to the
bridge and fly the ship.”
They were reluctant to leave her alone with the assassin,
but they nonetheless said, “Understood.”
Pierre and Victor cautiously maneuvered around the
mysterious assailant—who seemed to take no notice of them—and headed down the
stairs to the bridge.
“You’re not going to try and stop them?” Jeanne said.
The assassin said, “My real targets are right in front of
me. It doesn’t matter if your knights can keep this airship aloft; as long as
the royal family dies, my mission will be complete.”
“Who are you and why are you doing this?” Jeanne demanded
to know.
The assassin laughed. “Ironically, I was once the king’s
biggest supporter. But he failed to heed my advice and now the country is on
the road to ruin.”
“He is the Count of Saint-Germaine!” Louis XVI said.
It couldn’t be! “The Count of Saint-Germaine died five
years ago,” Jeanne said. “That can’t be him.”
“I am far older than anyone realizes. Only I had the
genius necessary to create the Philosopher’s Stone, the holy grail of alchemy.
And I have used it to become ageless.”
“Let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe you.
Do you really think murdering the king will help France
“Of course I do. Our country’s rightful leader is waiting
to take his place and lead us into the future, even if he has to do it from
behind the scenes.”
Jeanne sighed. “If you’re that determined to commit regicide,
then I’ll have to stop you.”
She unsheathed her sword and took a step towards him, but
he put out his palm and motioned for her to stop. “Just a moment, please. I
know who you are; you are the Countess de Fleur. There is no need for us to
fight, Countess; you can join us. You
may be a noble and a dog of the Ancien
Régime,
but that wasn’t always the case. Your family was originally poor farmers.
Because of your famous ancestor who fought for France France
However, Jeanne simply said, “Is
that it?”
“What?”
“I can’t speak for everyone in the
House of de Fleur, but I serve the
king. He is the one who believed in me and appointed me to this prestigious
post. I will not betray him for anything.” She pointed her sword at him. “If
that is all you have to say, let us now resolve this conflict.”
The Count closed his eyes and
sighed. “Very well. The Revolution can do without you, I suppose.”
Jeanne charged in, but the Count
raised his right arm which morphed into a series of black tendrils and speared
her in her chest plating.
The Count’s tendrils pinned her to
the deck and dented her plating. “Your irodium armor is impressive. Any other
material would have been thoroughly pierced. But it doesn’t really matter; I
can turn any part of my body into anything of any hardness thanks to the
Philosopher’s Stone.”
Jeanne swung her sword and batted
the tendrils away, but they didn’t break. So the Count wasn’t exaggerating
about their hardness.
She jumped to her feet and thrust at
him. However, his left arm morphed into a dark bulbous monstrosity resembling a
battering ram but fleshy with veins, shredding the sleeve which could no longer
contain it. The battering ram easily blocked her strike, and he knocked her
aside with it. Her rapier went skittering across the deck and against the
railing, rattling mere inches from the edge and falling off the airship
altogether.
It didn’t make any sense; alchemy
was only supposed to change objects into things with equal mass. It shouldn’t
be able to enlarge body parts to the extent that was now happening with the
Count. Perhaps he really did have the Philosopher’s Stone.
His tendrils once again shot out and
pinned her to the deck. She grabbed them but they wouldn’t budge. She didn’t
have any chance of getting free without her sword.
The Count stood over her with his
hideous battering ram arm. “Farewell, mademoiselle.” Jeanne saw the unholy
weapon coming down and closed her eyes.
A moment passed, though, and she
wasn’t smashed, so she looked up to see what had happened.
“Not a moment too soon, eh?”
It was the forger, Jacques du Chard.
He stood over her blocking the Count’s attack with a broadsword he had
obviously borrowed from the Minuit
Solaire’s armory. He struggled mightily against the Count’s battering ram;
Jeanne didn’t know how much longer he could hold it off.
“How did you get down here?” she
asked. “The Count destroyed the ladder.”
“Ah, but that is not the only thing
connecting these two ships.”
She was astonished. “The harpoons?
You came across on the cables?”
“My apologies, Mademoiselle de Fleur.
Your crew insisted I not do that, but I cannot redeem myself waiting around,
no?”
The Count’s patience was wearing
thin. “Enough of this banter. If you are on her side, then I’ll kill you as
well.”
Jeanne leaned to talk in Jacques’
ear. “Can you hold him off for a minute?”
He looked the Count up and down. “I
can try.”
“Please do. I have a plan, but it
will take a little time to pull off. I’m counting on you, forger.”
“Your faith shall be rewarded.”
She ran over to the railing and
retrieved her sword, leaving Jacques to face the Count by himself. “A lowly
criminal?” the Count said, indicating Jacques. “Then you should be on our…” he
said, but didn’t bother to finish his sentence. “Never mind; if you’re with
them, you’re not likely to listen to reason.”
The Count raised tendrils and shot
them at Jacques. “I’ve seen that trick already,” the forger said, hitting the
deck and rolling out of the way.
Meanwhile, Jeanne closed her eyes
and mentally steeled herself for what she was about to do. The God’s Eye,
passed down from mother to daughter in her family and said to have been given
to them by the Lord Himself, was an extremely dangerous tool to use. It
required a staggering amount of concentration just to maintain the wielder’s
sanity; more than one of Jeanne’s ancestors had been driven insane using it.
When she was certain that she was as
ready as she was going to be, Jeanne removed the patch over her left eye. The
world in front of her abruptly exploded with information. She could know even
the tiniest details about anything she saw; the exact composition of the Majesté Divine’s deck, how many
molecules were in it, its precise diameter, how many people had been involved
in its construction, how many raindrops had fallen on it since its completion,
its age down to the last nanosecond, etc.
Focus!
She told herself. The sheer amount of information assailing her was the danger
of the God’s Eye. If she didn’t concentrate on one thing at a time, she could
easily lose her mind.
There! She set her sight on her
target: The Count himself. He was currently fighting Jacques and trying to
skewer the forger with his tendrils.
Concentrate only on
the Count. All right, then…his grotesque limbs were composed of…his blood!
So that was how he managed to expand his size; he had converted large
quantities of his own bodily fluids to a solid form and condensed them so they
became hardened against attacks.
But then, if his blood had been converted into weapons,
what was keeping him alive? Jeanne focused on the Count’s midsection and saw a
black substance running through his veins. Focusing even further on the substance,
she perceived that it was a cheap substitute for blood. It was keeping the
Count breathing and moving, but not much else.
That being the case, he shouldn’t be able to keep up a
strenuous battle for long. His stamina would be depleted quickly. That would
explain why he was on the defensive against Jacques and being careful not to
move around too much. If Jeanne were to join the fight…
She put her eye patch back on, eternally grateful to still
be sane after using it. “Forger! Focus on wearing him down! Hit and move!”
“Will do, Mademoiselle!”
While Jacques came at the Count from the front, Jeanne
attacked him from his flank. Jacques dodged the Count’s tendrils and swung with
his borrowed sword. The Count moved to block with his fleshy battering ram, but
that left him open for Jeanne’s strike.
The Count noticed her coming and jumped out of the way of
her sword swing. She managed to graze him across his chest and draw a little
bit of the black substance he was using in place of blood. It may not have been
serious wound, but jumping with his heavy arm weapons must be taxing for him.
Jacques didn’t give him time to catch his breath, as the
forger swung at him again. Jacques wasn’t a trained soldier, but a simple swing
was enough to keep the Count on his toes.
The Count didn’t have time to prepare a tendril strike, so
he simply blocked with them. Jeanne then thrust under his battering ram towards
his legs. Again the Count had to jump out of the way to avoid serious injury.
This continued for what seemed like ages (but was probably
mere minutes), Jeanne and Jacques hitting the Count of Saint-Germaine with
attacks emphasizing speed over power, and him struggling to either keep away
from them or block their assaults with his arm weapons.
Finally he began huffing and wheezing from exhaustion. As
Jeanne had predicted, his cheap black blood and heavy weapon arms caused him to
wear out much faster than Jacques and herself.
He leaned back against the portside rail, wheezing. “I
won’t…haah…be defeated by you,” he said between breaths.
“Surrender now, rogue,” Jeanne replied. “Your desecrated
body was only good for brief but intense bursts of offense. Believe me; your
so-called Philosopher’s Stone hasn’t done you any favors.”
“Ungh…fine, then.” He grunted with some kind of great
exertion and held up his tendril arm. It was pointless, Jeanne thought; she had
already determined the tendrils’ maximum speed, and both Jacques and she could
dodge them now.
However, two of the tendrils merged into the third,
increasing its size and length. With one final howl of physical stress, the
Count launched it at Jeanne with double the speed of his previous strikes. Even
if it didn’t penetrate her irodium armor, the force of the attack would surely
knock her off the airship.
“Mademoiselle!” Jacques cried out. He pushed her out of
the way and took the fleshy spear in his chest.
“Forger!”
Jeanne rushed at the Count and pierced him through the
heart with her rapier. No longer able to support himself on the railing, the
Count fell over it and was sucked into the portside engine.
The ship shuddered as the engine exploded and the deck
pitched sideways. Jacques, who had been freed of the giant tendril when the
Count succumbed to Jeanne’s attack, began sliding towards the starboard side of
the deck.
Jeanne saw that he was in danger of sliding off the ship
and dove in to grab his arm. After a few moments the Majesté Divine stabilized slightly—probably due to the efforts of
Pierre and Victor at the controls.
“Talk to me, forger,” she said.
He coughed up blood. “Did I…do good?”
“Yes, you did very well.”
“I…wonder about that. This is…a revolu…tion by the people,
the same ones I…wronged. Should I have…gone against them? Will this…really
re-redeem me?” He hacked up more blood.
“Believe me; you did a great service to France
“I…would like…something…from you.”
“Anything.”
“I have not…seen you smile, even once since…we met.
Please…smile for me.”
She considered his words. It was true that she rarely
showed emotions. Maybe…maybe that was something within herself that she should
change. “If that is your wish.”
She smiled for him, not too much, but more than enough as
she shed a single tear for this petty criminal who had been rejected by his own
country.
“Merveilleux,” he said softly. Marvelous. And with that, he closed his eyes forever.
A sudden creaking and groaning from the Majesté Divine reminded her that it was
not over yet. With only one working engine, the airship was going down, and the
Minuit Solaire would not be able to
hold it up much longer.
Jeanne motioned to the crew working in the Solaire’s harpoon bay to release the
cables. There was no sense in both ships going down, and without the weight of
the Solaire bearing down on them the Majesté Divine might actually be able to
land in one piece.
There was a snap as the cables were cut and the Majesté Divine was let loose. Jeanne
scooped up the body of Jacques and carried it down to the bridge where the
royal family, along with Pierre and Victor, were waiting for her.
“We’re going down, Commander,” Pierre
There were more seats on this bridge than on the Solaire in order to accommodate their
special passengers. Jeanne made sure each member of the royal family was
secured in his/her seat before strapping herself into the captain’s chair.
The ship pitched forward and they could see the ground
coming up at them. Pierre and Victor struggled to control their descent, but it
looked like it wasn’t going to be enough.
Jeanne braced herself as the Majesté Divine hit the ground with thunderous force. She rocketed
forward in her seat, but the safety harness held.
After a grueling few moments of the ship skidding against
the earth, they came to a complete stop. Jeanne slowly got up from her seat and
stepped into a puddle of water. The canopy window had smashed and water was
pouring in through some sort of pond. It had probably cushioned the impact just
enough for them to survive.
“Is everyone all right?” she said.
The king and queen confirmed that they were. Their
children were also unharmed, although perhaps only physically. Everyone seemed
to be shaken but otherwise fine.
8
The knights led the royal family out of the airship and
onto the solid ground outside. They were in a village which they recognized as
Varennes. They had crashed in a portion of the Aire river which ran through the
town.
Before they could celebrate their
survival, though, the entire village came out to confront them. Angry voices
assailed them as they vented their anger.
“The king is trying to flee France
“Just abandoning your people, eh?”
“Take responsibility for the mess
our country is in!”
It looked like they were going to
get violent, and Jeanne didn’t think they could face the entire village in a
fight. The Minuit Solaire flew
overhead, but there was no way it would reach them in time.
She took the only
option left to her: She bowed down before them. “I implore you! If you are
going to kill anyone, it should be me. Please allow King Louis XVI and his
family to live. Do not deprive these innocent children of their parents!”
The villagers talked it over with
themselves for a few minutes, and then said, “Very well. We will allow the
royal family to live. However, it has become apparent that the king and queen
cannot be trusted. Therefore we insist on accompanying them back to Paris
“Thank you,” Jeanne said.
While it was obvious that Louis XVI
and Marie Antoinette did not like the idea of being prisoners at all, Jeanne
once again silently thanked God that their lives had been spared this day.
As they rode back to France Palace of Versailles
And finally: would this be the only
plot that had been set into motion?
9
July 15, 1789 (Infini Calendar), 11:00 a.m.
The
meeting of the Montagnards sect of the Jacobin Club was an especially tense
one. One of the members, who had the floor, said, “The king is still alive!
This is unacceptable!”
The
yelling of his fellow club members showed that they shared his sentiment.
However, Robespierre waved his hands to quiet them down. “No matter. The king
is being put under house arrest in Paris
“I am more concerned about the loss
of the Count of Saint-Germaine to those knights. I said not to underestimate
them, but it seems that is exactly what I have done. Or perhaps I simply overestimated the Count. At any rate,
we’ll have to be more careful next time. And I can assure you all there will be a next time.”
Let me know what you think of this story. I'm planning for it to be four parts, and I just started part III.
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