Fallen Angels Read Free Page B

the right thing.' He smiled reassuringly at the fat man, then stared at the bodies; fat, thin, old, young, a mess of death. 'So you had the girl, Jean?'
    'Twice!' Brissot laughed. 'You should have been here, Gitan. Skin like milk! Soft as bloody silk!'
    The Gypsy blew smoke over the lolling, black-streaked bodies in the yard. 'I need to find a sack. I'm taking her away.'
    'Look in the storeroom.' Brissot jerked his head towards a doorway. 'Plenty of empty flour sacks.' He watched the Gypsy pick his way among the corpses towards the store. 'Gitan?'
    'My friend?'
    'Why did the Englishman want to find her?'
    The Gypsy turned. He blew smoke into the torchlight, and it drifted above a small child's corpse. He grinned. 'He was going to marry her next week.'
    'Next week?'
    The Gypsy nodded.
    Brissot bellowed his laughter round the courtyard. 'He should have hurried! We got her first! I hope the bastard knows what he's missing! Married next week, eh? Skin like cream! She was a bloody treat, my friend, I tell you. Still,' his laughter died and he shrugged, 'I suppose you've had lots of them.' He sounded jealous.
    'No,' Gitan said, 'I haven't.'
    'You haven't had an aristo?' Brissot was unbelieving. 'Not this week?'
    'Not ever.' The Gypsy turned away to find a sack to serve as a shroud for a dead aristocrat.
    —«»—«»—«»—
    The Gypsy worked slowly, the foul cell lit by a single candle as he scooped the remains from the stone floor and, with bloodied hands, pushed it into the sack.
    When the work was half done he heard heavy footsteps on the landing. With them came the thick smell of cigar smoke. The Gypsy rubbed his hands on a corner of the sack, stood, and leaned against the wall.
    A large, fierce-faced man appeared at the cell door. He was a man in his late forties whose shoulders were humped with muscle like an ox. He was huge-chested, massive-armed; everything about him spoke of strength and weight. His shirt had separated from his trousers, showing the straps of a corset that held in his belly. He looked at the mess on the floor and at the Gypsy's stained hands. 'You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands with you.' He laughed.
    The man was called Bertrand Marchenoir. There had been a time when he was a priest, a fierce preacher made famous by the vitriol of his sermons, but the revolution had let him abandon the service of God for the service of the people. He was now a leader of the revolution; a man to fear or love, but never ignore.
    Marchenoir bullied his followers; he preached, he shouted, he thumped tables into the night, he led, he harangued, he wept false tears to rouse the mob, his gestures were as expansive as his oratory. His voice, starting low and rising to a massive crescendo, had stirred the people from their slums out into the great streets of Paris. He had been at the Bastille, he had helped fetch the King from Versailles, and now his massive, terrifying force whipped the laggards in the National Assembly. 'Forward! Forward!' was his cry, and this week in Paris, fearing that the revolution would go backwards, Bertrand Marchenoir had led the slaughter in the prisons.
    For those who wanted vengeance on their betters, Marchenoir was an idol. For those who wanted moderation, he was a scourge. No one was allowed to forget that he was peasant born; no gutter, he said, was lower than the one in which he had been spawned, and no palace, he shouted, was so high that it could not be pulled down. Forward, ever forward, and this week a thousand and more had died that Marchenoir's revolution could go forward.
    This was the man who came to the cell, who looked almost disinterestedly at the mess on the floor, then back to the Gypsy. 'So you're Gitan?'
    'I am Gitan.'
    'You know me?'
    'I know of you, citizen.'
    Marchenoir smiled and waved his cigar at the scraps of the body. 'You're doing woman's work, Gitan.'
    'A man is lucky to have a job these days, citizen.'
    The heavy, jowled face stared at the Gypsy whose words had