BOOK V
THE SHRUNKEN HEAD
Claus von Rolt was asked (by a syrupy-eyed old general in exile) to accompany the Prussian envoy Ludwig von Kleist to London on a secret mission to secure armaments and raise funds for a planned rebellion against the French. Rolt was known to have spent time in the English capital and, along with his contacts, exemplary English and reputation for charm and wit, it was hoped his presence would soften the brusque military manner of von Kleist. Rolt accepted, of course, for there was no real choice; there was the appearance of patriotic duty to consider. There was also the opportunity to extricate himself from an affaire d’amour run its course. And there was the possibility of conducting a little business in rare species, London being the epicentre of the trade.
He packed his trunk and arrived on a clear, crisp Tuesday.
It was 4 April 1809.
Rolt spent most of his days in meetings and dinners with one cabinet minister after another, listening to von Kleist as he tried to sell the Prussian plan and receive a pledge from the English. After three weeks, they were no closer to any kind of commitment, and then they heard the Austrians were in town too, seeking assistance for their own uprising (bigger and better than the comparatively vague Prussian plan). After that, Ludwig von Kleist became quite desperate and pushy. Rolt knew this wasn’t the approach to take with the English. They nodded politely into their soup as von Kleist argued his case. They cleared their throats as the plates were taken from between Kleist’s firmly planted elbows, and they smiled uncomfortably and tried to change the subject, and still he insisted. Finally, they listened to von Kleist beg and were forced to say, ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ and hoped the man would desist from embarrassing himself and those around him any further.
The shrunken head was in a glass cabinet at Lord Oldham’s house.
They were in his study, drinking French cognac after dinner, and like all the dukes and lords before him, Lord Oldham had stopped listening to what von Kleist had to say. The shrunken head hung by a braided cord from a small brass hook, like the pendulum in some grotesque clock, a blackened leathery ball about the size of a fist. It had long matted hair and wide, shrivelled lips sewn unevenly together, as were the half-closed eyelids, bulging and puckered around the thread, and the nose upturned like a snout, the nostrils obscenely flared. Its cheeks were sunken and lacerated and the face was dry and tight, knuckled like a ham hock. Claus von Rolt couldn’t take his eyes off it.
‘My son brought it back for me,’ Lord Oldham said, noticing the Prussian’s interest and keen for the distraction from the insufferable von Kleist. ‘South America, I believe. They’re into that sort of thing down there you know—lopping off the enemy’s head and usurping its power. If only it were that easy!’
‘Savages,’ Ludwig von Kleist said. ‘Cannibals.’
‘I’ve often wondered what his name was,’ Lord Oldham said. ‘My wife calls him Richard.’
‘How is it done?’ Rolt said.
‘First the skull is removed and the flesh cut away, then they fill it with heated pebbles and sand and sew everything back up again. Leave the head to dry and wait until the whole thing shrinks. Hell of a job. Then they wear the heads around their necks and apparently become invincible—or invisible. One or the other. Useless either way, I should think.’
‘What would you take, Lord Oldham,’ Rolt said, ‘if I were to make an offer?’
‘For my old friend Richard?’
‘Name a price, sir. I will endeavour to oblige.’
‘Ha! And I thought you Prussians had no money!’
WAR CONTINUES IN THE CARIBBEAN, TOO
The Anne-Laure was taken without a single cannon being fired, slightly north-west and ten nautical miles from Cayenne.
‘What would be the point of engagement?’ Captain Mènard had said, looking out at the three enemy ships sailing towards him. ‘There’s nowhere to escape, except to the bottom.’
‘Make a run for it, sir?’ his first officer said. ‘Back out to sea?’
‘Your enthusiasm isn’t matched by our abilities, Augustin. And we’ve only a day’s fresh water left, maybe two.’
Général Fourés agreed. ‘It would be a pointless risk.’ The frigates had long since left them and, besides, the British and Portuguese had already occupied the colony. The général shook his head, patted the captain on the back. ‘You got us here safely,’ he said. ‘Best we continue the course.’
‘Augustin,’ Captain Mènard said to the first officer, ‘strike the colours.’
The enemy ships held back and then a launch was sent over from the brig Vingança. Half-a-dozen Portuguese soldiers boarded the Anne-Laure. Their lieutenant was a short but erect man with a thin moustache, in riding boots and spurs. He approached Captain Mènard and saluted. In a loud, theatrical voice, he asked the captain to surrender his ship. Mènard did so, squaring up his shoulders, and then along with Général Fourés he led the Portuguese lieutenant into his cabin.
‘What happens now?’ Elisabeth von Hoffmann asked. It was very bright on deck and hot, and she shaded her eyes with her hand.
Christophe Bergerard said, ‘They take the ship and put a Portuguese flag on her.’
‘I mean to us.’
Bergerard shrugged.
When the three men emerged from the captain’s cabin a short while later, the Portuguese lieutenant called over two of his soldiers. They stood to attention on either side of Général Fourés. The général removed his sword and presented it in both hands to the Portuguese lieutenant, who bowed formally and took it. The général was then politely arrested as a prisoner of war and escorted across the deck by the soldiers.
Elisabeth hurried over to him.
‘Michel—’
‘It’s all right, ma chérie,’ the général said, trying to appear relaxed. ‘Just games we are obliged to play.’
He took her hand. Fourés was still pale, clammy and exhausted (it had been, in the end, fifty-nine days at sea), and he’d lost weight during the trip. He suddenly seemed much older to Elisabeth, frail and feeble in his loose-fitting uniform.
‘What should I do?’ she said.
‘Rest, be calm and wait for me. Captain Mènard will get you ashore and Christophe can take care of everything until I return.’
Elisabeth hugged the général tightly and whispered in his ear, ‘I love you.’
‘Wait for me,’ he said. ‘Yes?’
She stepped back and watched him walk over to the side of the ship. The général paused and nodded to her, then disappeared down the rope ladder.
LIKE A GRIEVING MAN
On the horizon, a black speck sailed across the white line of sky and sea, bound the long way for Paramaribo after erratic winds and waters had forced a change of course. From its decks and with the naked eye, it was impossible to see the Anne-Laure (its opposite and equal black speck) clearly, to see it being boarded by the Portuguese and the général arrested and descending the rope ladder, or Elisabeth von Hoffmann on deck, uncertain and yet enthralled by the circumstances in motion that were her life now. Impossible to see and yet Krüger was looking exactly in that direction as Elisabeth stood and experienced her presence in the world as though for the first time. He was gazing intently down the invisible line that linked their momentary cartographic perfections of latitude and longitude, two lives only a few nautical miles apart and yet unknown to each other (though of course the gods knew them both).
Krüger, as he stood there on the deck contemplating the sea, sank into the feeling of his unboundedness, blissfully adrift. The ship had taken his life out of his hands and placed it at the whim of air and water. He was free and the sensation overwhelmed his inner self. Air and water, endless, simple, content, all that it took to be free! But Krüger didn’t consider that these were gods too, old gods waiting around, frolicking, playing, shouldering and enforcing, nature at their fingertips, nature soothed, pressed, palpitated, struck (raging Tiamat of the saltwater seas and thunderous Tlaloc of the rain, Enlil the sky god, wielder of storms, the sisters called Djunkgao who stroked the ocean currents with the palms of their hands). Krüger sensed these otherworldly forces (who cannot sense them?) but could not forge the words that might describe them. Without words, he was denied their dimensions, and thus their maps could not be drawn by his imagination and they eluded him. And so Krüger remained upon the surface of things. Like a grieving man, he understood his relief as freedom from the world that had grieved him, rather than a deeper immersion, as young Elisabeth von Hoffmann had understood it, as she had understood it during her own relief, in the aftermath of her own storm of gods. She was inside and present and Krüger was on the surface of things and absent, yet to understand the true dimensions of the world.
‘What are you looking at?’ Christophe Bergerard said.
Elisabeth shrugged, squinting across the bright blue ocean, a hand over her eyes against the glare, towards a small dark smudge on the horizon. She’d turned just then and looked out and there it was, as though it had called to her. ‘Is that a ship?’ she said.
THE GUILLOTINE
The Anne-Laure was brought in under escort and dropped anchor about a mile out from the settlement. Everybody then waited onboard for what seemed an excessively long time before they were allowed to disembark. Even the Portuguese lieutenant began to pace the deck and grumble at his men.
‘Signal them again!’ he said.
‘Yes, sir!’
Bureaucratic matters were eventually resolved and a launch sailed Elisabeth and Christophe into the Cayenne docks. (Captain Mènard had kissed her vigorously. ‘My best sailor! Goodbye!’) The water was choppy and splashed over the bow, drenching Elisabeth’s dress down her left side. Ahead of them, Cayenne was cut into dense green forest that stretched out endlessly around it. Already, its humid, heavy presence could be felt, even inside the cool threading of sea breezes.
A man by the name of Dr Antoine Girodet was waiting for them. He introduced himself and apologised for the lack-lustre welcome.
‘We have been defeated and occupied,’ he said, ‘and our administration has succumbed to its habitual indifference, only more so. It’s the weather, you see.’ He turned to Elisabeth. ‘I’m sorry for the loss of your général, Mademoiselle.’
‘Do you know where they’ve taken him?’
‘Where? No.’
Elisabeth narrowed her eyes at Girodet. He was olive-skinned, with dark unruly hair, young and handsome (she admitted it, though there was something about him that she immediately didn’t like). ‘No,’ she said, echoing him softly.
‘Wait!’ Girodet suddenly said, calling out over her shoulder and making Elisabeth jump. ‘Is that the blade?’
Behind Elisabeth, sailors were unloading crates from another launch that had come from the Anne-Laure. Girodet walked quickly towards them. He spoke with the sailors and then pointed to a nearby cart. Elisabeth saw two Indians (she thought they must be) standing in front of it, shoulders harnessed like horses and naked except for barely covered loins. Their flat, red-brown faces were blank, inscrutable. She thought they looked like children.
Girodet directed the sailors among the items unloaded from the launch. They eventually carried over a large flat crate and two smaller ones, as well as a few long lengths of dark timber. They stacked everything into the cart and then the doctor slipped them a bottle of rum.
‘Who is this Dr Girodet?’ Elisabeth said.
Christophe had sat down on one of their trunks (the heat was unbelievable) and removed his coat. ‘We’ll find out, I suppose.’
Dr Girodet came back to them, his sweaty face bright with excitement. ‘We can walk,’ he said. ‘It’s not far. You can put your luggage in the cart.’
‘Walk where?’ Elisabeth said.
‘To my humble home, Mademoiselle, of course. I shall have the honour of your presence until matters with the Portuguese, and your accommodation, become a little clearer.’
Their luggage was loaded into the cart and the two Indians began to pull and the three of them followed behind as it moved off, wheels grinding and wobbly. Girodet offered Elisabeth an umbrella for shade, but she declined.
‘Do you know,’ the doctor said, opening the umbrella above his own head, ‘the blade in that large crate right there took the heads of King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette?’
Bergerard looked over at Girodet.
‘The very blade,’ the doctor said. ‘Incredible, no?’
‘My father was there,’ Bergerard said. ‘At the place de la Révolution.’
‘Truly?’ Girodet smiled, showing small bright teeth. ‘But that is wonderful!’
FLUSHING FEVER
On the evening of 14 August 1809, the British navy (commanded by Sir Richard Strachan, 6th Baronet) resumed an intense bombardment of the Dutch port town of Flushing, where a significant portion of Bonaparte’s navy was stationed. That same night, under the smoke and flash and boom of their guns, with the town in flames and the French retreating and much confusion in the streets, Johannes Meyer slipped away from his regiment.
He reached the banks of the River Scheldt just before dawn and found a small raft normally used for poling cargo to and from the riverboats. He dragged it into the water and then, staying as low as possible on his knees, he poled the raft across the river to the island of Walcheren. The British were stationed there, with an army of forty thousand men.
As he neared the island, Johannes slipped into the water and waded through the freezing river to the shore. He walked a short distance, and when he saw the British soldiers he put his arms in the air and called out to them.
‘I’m Prussian!’
The soldiers fired at him (twice; the shots thumped into the sand to his left and right) and then they rushed Johannes and held him at bayonet point. They searched him roughly, pushed him around a little, gave a jab to his kidneys and then walked him up to the main encampment. He was placed under guard in a small wooden shelter.
Men, cannon, equipment, wagons, horses, everywhere Johannes looked. There were ships anchored out in the deeper part of the estuary, sails tucked away, and further behind there was Flushing, on fire, pouring thick smoke into the air.
Johannes emptied his boots of water. He waited. Soon he noticed there were lots of men being carried around on stretchers, arms hanging limp off the sides. They moaned and looked feverish. Some of the men on the stretchers were silent and their faces were covered with tunics.
Half an hour later, an officer came to question Johannes. He wore a tasselled sword and knee-high boots and silver spurs, a tall Englishman in a well-tailored uniform, covered in far less mud than the soldiers Johannes had seen. He was clean-shaven but very pale and he sat down before Johannes with some weariness and a brief expression of pain. Then he asked questions in perfect German. Where was Johannes from and how had he come to be there? What was his regiment, who was his commanding officer? How many men did the French have, where else had he served? Was he a spy?
With the last question, the officer smiled.
‘No,’ Johannes said.
The Englishman nodded. ‘From Berlin, you say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me, is there still a tavern on Brüderstraße, towards the Schloßplatz end of the street, called the Win auf den?’
‘I haven’t been in Berlin for a long time,’ Johannes said. ‘But it was still there when the French arrested me.’
‘Good,’ the officer said. He stood up and patted Johannes on the shoulder. ‘Das ist alles gut.’
A little while later, a soldier came and handed Johannes a British uniform.
‘Should fit,’ he said and waited for Johannes to get dressed. The uniform proved short in the arms and legs. The soldier said, ‘Oh well, mate.’
Johannes was led to another part of the camp and issued a rifle and ammunition, and then, with a signature and a salute, he was formally enlisted into the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion. Two days later, he was back in Flushing, part of the British infantry assault. The town was taken, but the effort proved a complete and colossal waste of time. The French fleet had already retreated to Antwerp even before the bombardment had begun.
Worse still, on the island of Walcheren, the British had been decimated by Flushing fever: a rampant, ruthless spread of malaria, typhoid and dysentery, which eventually killed four thousand men (barely one hundred were killed in action) and infected a further sixteen thousand. The campaign was reduced to a desperate evacuation of the dying.
Johannes Meyer remained miraculously uninfected. Some weeks later he was finally shipped across the Channel to the Sussex coast, to a town called Bexhill-on-Sea, where the King’s German Legion had its training depot.
He began planning his escape the moment he arrived.
PARAMARIBO
The heat. And in the air, an intense fragrance of lemon and orange blossom.
The River Surinam was choked with ships, barges and launches, loading sugar, molasses, coffee, cacao, indigo and cotton all bound for Holland, and unloading flour, beef and pork, salted fish and spermaceti candles, timber, horses and slaves. Krüger walked and watched. His legs were shaky. It had been forty-seven days at sea and stepping onto land hadn’t changed anything. The heat was inebriating.
A slave ship from the West African coast had unloaded some twenty-odd Negroes: men, boys, women, children, naked and shielding their eyes from the light. What was left of an original one hundred and forty souls. The breeze picked up the stink of their stale sweat, of their fear and hunger. In a huddle, they were ladled water from a bucket then handed bananas and oranges.
A voice called out, ‘Wash ’em!’
While the Negroes continued to eat, buckets on ropes were dipped into the river and then hauled up and the water was splashed over them; five, ten, fifteen buckets of river water. The women rubbed their children’s hair and cheeks, their necks and chests and backs. After they’d eaten the fruit and had been washed by the buckets of water, a man came with a smaller bucket and each Negro cupped out some of the coconut oil there and rubbed it into their skin. The women rubbed their children then themselves. Now the Negroes glistened and Krüger could see how the men were roped in muscles and the women were smooth-legged and shone and the children were long-limbed and shiny too.
He walked on.
There were some fine houses in Paramaribo, made of timber and brightly painted, two and sometimes three storeys. Along the streets there were orange, tamarind and lemon trees, bursting in bloom, and magnificent gilded carriages making their way, the drivers in full livery (in the heat!), the horses immaculately brushed, and there were finely dressed men and women strolling in embroidered silks and glossy velvets, gold and silver lace, the women with elegant French parasols to guard against the sun. Krüger had never seen anything like it.
At one corner a large group stood around a birdcage hung from a tree: inside, a black-and-red-feathered bird, barely the size of a thumb. It chirped and tweeted sharply. Krüger noticed wealthy gentlemen in expensive clothes, holding silver-tipped canes, and women in silks and lace, fanning themselves. There were barefoot slaves in worn breeches, too, and slave women smoking small wooden pipes. There were ragged children running about, black and white and every shade between, and men who stood importantly at the rear of the crowd, broad-rimmed hats low over their eyes, silent except for an occasional whisper into the ear of one of the slaves, who then ran over to a mulatto man standing beside the birdcage with a slate in his hands. Bets were made and a moment later the talking ceased and everybody fell silent and watched the birdcage.
A tall, skinny Negro came up close to the cage. The tiny bird inside flitted about. Once it had calmed and perched itself on a branch stuck between the cage bars, the Negro closed his eyes and licked his lips and began to whistle. It was a soft, low, beautiful sound. Krüger could see the Negro’s thin, scarred cheeks quiver, just as though a bird’s tiny heart was beating beneath its surface, and the sound he made trembled and carried on the heavy, humid air.
The bird in the cage looked about, its head moving in quick jerks. The people standing around waited and didn’t move and watched the bird. It continued to perch there on the branch and jerk its little head and it didn’t make a sound. And then, with a flurry of wings, it suddenly flew to the cage bars and gripped them and let out a harsh squawk.
The crowd exclaimed as one. Money quickly changed hands. Krüger asked and discovered: the object of the game was to inspire the bird to sing. It was called rackling.
‘But this rackler no good!’ the old slave beside him said.
Another man came up to the cage. Wagers were made.
Krüger moved on. At a nearby tavern he asked for Bayman Quince Rotterdam. He was told to wait, that Bayman would come by in the early afternoon.
ST GILES OF THE CRIPPLED AND INDIGENT
Claus von Rolt found the place off Brewer Street in Piccadilly. The proprietor’s name was Hugh Alfred Collins. They’d met briefly many years before, over the sale of a Cuban crocodile (to an Italian prince), and then Rolt had dealt the man’s work in Berlin a few more times (a squirrel monkey, a flamingo, a toucan, a leopard). Though they’d fetched good prices, Collins certainly wasn’t the best taxidermist Rolt had ever seen. But his work managed to hold together, at least until the buyer had returned home with it, and he’d always been well connected with suppliers, from the legitimate naturalists and explorers with government funding (and a willingness to sell spare specimens to private collectors) to the wealthy eccentrics who insisted on hunting the rare species themselves, but tended to die during their naive and ill-equipped expeditions. Hugh Collins also had artistic aspirations; he wanted his work to capture life. Rolt was philosophically partial to the ambition.
He opened the front door. Inside, a barrage of smells: turpentine, arsenic, camphor, mould and dust; the animal smells of tanned skins and greasy fur; the musty, mangy smell of old feathers; the oiled linseed of wood and the smoked, tannin smell of leather. The place was in desperate need of an open window.
All around, on the floor and crowded onto tables and shelves, on top of narrow plinths, in the window ledges, there were animals in different poses: down on all fours or up on hind legs, calmly perched on branches or clawing at the bark with wings spread mid-flap, species both docile and baring their teeth. Some were only half complete and showed the wire construction in their chests and the hessian stuffing in their backs, their small, brown featherless wings and empty eye sockets waiting for coloured glass beads. It seemed business was solid for Hugh Alfred Collins.
Rolt walked through the silent animals. The dusty room felt poised, or frozen. He noted a number of rare species, including a Platypus anatinus, labelled with a tag on its webbed foot. He stopped before the strange creature, no more than a foot long.
‘You’re aware that Blumenbach named it Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, which is now the accepted designation?’ Rolt asked. ‘Has been for some time.’
‘Of course a Prussian would say that,’ Hugh Collins said, coming out from behind a worktable. There were red-and-yellow-feathered birds laid out there, surrounded by various hand tools, spools of thread and bowls of paste, brown bottles and vials of yellow-coloured liquid, a tin half filled with pellets. ‘But I believe our Mr Shaw was first, Herr Rolt. One should always accept defeat graciously.’
Hugh Collins was lanky, broad-shouldered, a man of some thirty years. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows, revealing large hands and hairy forearms wound in bulging veins, a man who might have swung a blacksmith’s hammer rather than sit hunched over shot punctures in hummingbirds, delicately plugging them with cotton and resin. He wiped each of his fingers separately with a rag, then held out his hand.
Rolt shook his head. ‘Let’s not spread the arsenic around.’
‘A little never hurt anybody.’ Collins smiled and cracked his knuckles.
‘Your work has become much finer, more expressive. Congratulations.’
‘And priced accordingly, my friend.’
‘How much for heads?’ Rolt said.
Collins leaned back against the edge of the workbench. ‘What sort?’
‘Human. Shrunken.’
‘Oh, righto then.’ He crossed his arms. ‘Well, there have been a few coming in from South America and the South Pacific lately. And from New Zealand now, too, or so they tell me.’
‘You haven’t come across any?’
Collins grimaced. ‘One or two. Bloody awful things.’
Rolt extracted a small card from his pocket, the name of his hotel written there, and held it out to the taxidermist. ‘You’ll inform me?’
‘Of course,’ Collins said. ‘But you know, they’re already faking them. Dead whores from St Giles sold as South Pacific warriors named Akoni. Once they’re dried and sewn up, they’re all dark brown. Impossible to tell.’
‘They’re murdering people?’
Collins laughed. ‘No need. The morgues are full of unclaimed bodies, there’s plenty of stock. The Thames is practically choking on headless corpses.’
‘I see.’ Claus von Rolt combed the head of a tiny monkey with his forefinger. ‘Then I must get to the original source.’
That week, Ludwig von Kleist finally heard back from the English. They’d committed the munitions requested, but had cut the fifty thousand pounds asked for down to twenty. Von Kleist was told, ‘Be sure to use it wisely.’ A letter of credit was written up.
‘Finally,’ von Kleist said, ‘we can leave.’
‘I think I’ll stay a while longer, Herr Kleist,’ Rolt said. ‘I have some personal business to which I must attend.’
FOR THE GOOD OF MANKIND
Elisabeth von Hoffmann said, ‘You want to know if the head of the decapitated man is capable of seeing anything?’
‘Yes! And if they feel, if they sense anything else.’ Dr Antoine Girodet paused, drank some wine, dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘Are they in pain? And, if so, where is the pain? What is the connection of the mind with the body? Where do feelings reside inside us? In the brain or the heart or in one’s little toe?’ Girodet smiled. ‘Oh, there is much to be learned, Mademoiselle.’
‘You hope the guillotined man’s head will simply tell you all these things you wish to know, Dr Girodet?’ Christophe Bergerard asked.
‘Yes, Monsieur Bergerard—’ Girodet looked over at the door and waved someone in ‘—that is it exactly.’
A dark mulatto girl came into the dining room and placed a silver platter of roasted meat on the table. Bergerard noticed how exceptionally beautiful the girl was and watched her walk away. Elisabeth had noticed her too.
‘Roasted tapir,’ Girodet said. ‘You’ll never eat pork again.’
They ate and drank and the wine was replenished and other dishes were brought in and placed on the table by the beautiful dark mulatto girl (sweet river fish, smoked eel, crabs). Insects smacked and winged the windows. The heat in the room was lifted and spread thinner by two rectangular, framed canvas sails hanging from the ceiling, operated by a bored Negro who stood near the door and pulled down on a rope, all the time staring at the floor.
‘Who will be your participants?’ Elisabeth von Hoffmann asked, disliking the stringy meat that had been served her as much as the topic of conversation.
‘Slaves,’ Girodet said. He waved his fork. ‘Runaways.’ He had an agent, apparently, in neighbouring Surinam, who procured Negro slaves on his behalf then smuggled them over the border, avoiding the Portuguese who were confiscating all healthy labour. It was how he’d acquired the young mulatto beauty serving the food this evening, though the agent had planned to keep her for himself. He’d asked a steep price, but Girodet had been unable to resist her.
‘My work is for the human race,’ he said. ‘I am an explorer of the ultimate unknown frontier, on a perilous search for the bridge, for the window into the next world. Who can say what we might glimpse and discover?’ Dr Antoine Girodet was sure it would make him famous.
Christophe nodded, intrigued. Elisabeth stared down at her plate.
‘Have you heard of the eminent surgeon and philosopher Jacques de Dieu?’ Girodet said to the young man. ‘You must read his Observations and Conclusions on the Post-decapitatory State of the Brain. It was written in 1793, a magnificent enquiry into fibrillary contractions, corneal reflexes, the effects of severing the fourth cervical vertebrae and so on. He argued that it was indeed plausible there was a lingering of perception, of the eyes seeing and the brain comprehending, after the blade had done its work. And so, a moment of vision, quite possibly between life and death, no?’
‘Or a moment of horror,’ Elisabeth said.
Girodet smiled. ‘We must find out! Can’t you see?’
‘And now you have your own blade.’ She put down her knife and fork, pushed the plate away.
‘I do indeed,’ Girodet said. ‘The blade of the Revolution!’ He turned back to Christophe. ‘Tell me, Monsieur Bergerard, are you squeamish about such things? I am in need of an assistant for my research.’
OH, HE’S DONE FOR NOW
Lieutenant Schneppen’s main purpose in life was to action the use of his cane in the training and disciplining of his men—and right now, most particularly, his preoccupation was the exercising and disciplining of Johannes Meyer.
Schneppen had disliked the boy on sight (a deserter, a coward, tall) and the fact that he could barely hold a rifle correctly, took an eternity to reload and couldn’t shoot a building if it was right there in front of him, drove Schneppen to near insanity. Johannes Meyer was a damning reflection on Prussia, whose defeat at the hands of the French still burned with bright shame in Lieutenant Schneppen’s burly chest, a veteran of the lost Battle of Jena.
‘A fucking disgrace!’ he said.
The man’s breath was hot with the pickled stench of an empty stomach. Johannes Meyer stood stock-still, sweating from the endless drills that morning, up and down the parade ground, up and down, up and down, his collarbone aching, and still it hadn’t stopped. He was a thousand miles from everywhere. All the days since he’d arrived had been miserable, intolerable. The grey sky never clearing, the constant drizzle, the dull, penetrating cold that seemed to come up from deep in the ground. And Lieutenant Schneppen, his fellow Prussian, relentless and at his throat.
‘Imbecile,’ Schneppen said, this time in German. He struck Johannes with the cane. As the boy stumbled from the blow, Schneppen struck him again, right across his back.
The other soldiers stepped away. Johannes Meyer suddenly turned, stood and lunged for the lieutenant, crashed him to the ground. He scrambled over Schneppen in a fury, got his hands to the man’s throat. Everything that had ever happened to him, every misfortune, here was the cause.
‘He’s going to kill him!’
‘Do it!’
The two men struggled. Schneppen grimaced, made a tight, phlegmy, gargled sound. He took Johannes by the wrists but couldn’t loosen the boy’s hands on his throat.
The soldiers moved in around them.
Then, just as it appeared that Lieutenant Schneppen was about to take his last breath of damp English air, two ensigns pushed through the crowd of soldiers. The first one grabbed Johannes in a headlock, the other kicked him in the side. Still Johannes wouldn’t let go. It took a second kick and a tightening of the headlock before he finally released the lieutenant.
More soldiers pushed through the men.
‘Step aside!’
Lieutenant Schneppen was helped to his feet. He spat on the ground, coughed and spat again. He rubbed his neck and pointed at Johannes.
‘Arrest him!’ His voice was a thin, harsh whisper.
Johannes Meyer lunged, tried to attack the lieutenant again, but was held back. He was thumped in the stomach then dragged away to the guardhouse.
Somebody said, ‘Oh, that’s it. He’s done for now.’
BAYMAN QUINCE ROTTERDAM
He said, ‘Oh, Great Lord, by God, Good Lord Jesus Christ Our Saviour and King!’ He took off his plumed, fur-trimmed cocked hat and held it to his chest. ‘The lame one be dead! And the Devil take his soul and the Heaven be free of his wickedness!’
He was an old Negro with a huge barrel stomach and a black, silver-tipped cane, dressed in loose, torn stockings and worn heels and a long, dirty white wig that hung over his frayed admiral’s epaulettes. The blue coat was trimmed in gold and silver, and the lace cuffs of his white shirt, gone yellow now from sweat and age, flowered at the wrists. Children had followed him into the tavern, street urchins laughing and running up to pull at his tails when he wasn’t looking. Every now and then (if the children had bothered to count, they would have learned that it was every third time), the old Negro whipped his silver-tipped cane around behind him, fast and without warning, and the children jumped and dodged and laughed hysterically, though some were caught about the legs, the sound a loud and terrible whack. They ran to their friends again and rubbed at the painful welts, laughing through their tears and keen to try their luck again.
‘To your health, sir,’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said to Krüger. ‘And to the soul of that poor horrible Negro, that he might suffer no more than one eternity, and possibly a half again.’
They were drinking sangaree: Madeira wine, sugar, nutmeg and water. It was still sometime before midday. Krüger had bought a second carafe, which was already more than two-thirds gone. And all of it straight to his head.
‘Drink, good sir, drink!’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said. ‘For we are in mourning and this be a wake!’
He swung the cane behind him again and caught one of the children across the thigh.
‘Many years ago, good sir,’ he said, ‘my beloved owner sailed me to Europe and paraded my esteemed self before the princes and dukes, the princesses and duchesses, and finally before the King of Holland himself. I was celebrated for my intelligence and indeed I was awarded a medal for my comportment. They placed a broad orange sash of the purest, finest silk over my head, with a clasp of solid silver, set with blue and red gemstones and a small diamond. Yes, sir, celebrated for my bearing. My beloved owner allowed me my honours; they be earned fairly, he said. But here, upon our return, among this filth and deception and criminal degeneracy, there was no respect to be found. My treasures were taken from me! Stolen by a black devil, my due and glory denied, and now not a single citizen believe my true self. But you believe me, good sir, when I say I be praying his soul, that damn thieving Negro whomsoever he be, that he suffer slow, excruciating torments. And that mean and treacherous Mr Hendrik, oh, it wasn’t him, but he knew who done it and refused to tell. Refused me!’ He drank down his glass of sangaree and poured the remainder from the carafe. ‘Everything here be rotten, yes! Be rotten to the bone and to the marrow.’
Krüger put a coin on the table and motioned to the proprietor. ‘Mr Hendrik said you might help me find his sister,’ he said.
‘Did he now?’
Krüger put a second coin on the table.
‘Young Josephine, she shone and now she gone,’ Bayman Quince Rotterman said. ‘Stolen and sold and sent to the east.’ He pointed with his cane over Krüger’s shoulder. ‘Stolen and sold to live with French beasts!’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Bonis burn down the plantation, good sir. Murder the captain, Captain van der Velde, murder the wife and murder the daughters, true. They strung the captain up in a tree. Took his hands. Took Josephine, took everything.’
Krüger felt a wave of weariness.
The old Negro smiled, than sang, ‘Rotten brothers, rotten sisters, no manners, no! Every one you see, and everywhere you go!’
The children ran up and repeated the song behind him; Bayman Quince Rotterdam swung his cane back with a smirk, then licked his lips.
‘Do you know where she is?’ Krüger said.
‘Oh, good sir, I know all! Yes, all there is to know I know!’
The old Negro poured the remaining sangaree into a flask. They left the tavern and he led Krüger out of town, further up the river.
‘It’s going to rain,’ he said, striding with his cane. ‘A good ’un storm!’
They walked and walked, along the river, through the bends and bushes. Finally a grassy bank, Negroes and naked Indians washing at the water’s edge, and there were others cleaning fish and eels that were heaped upon the grass and inside the canoes. The river was dark green and the branches of dead trees reached up out of the water. Bayman Quince Rotterdam approached a man and they shook hands. There was a young boy beside him, holding a wooden spear for fishing.
‘Your son has grown, Dante,’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam said.
‘And I be shrunken.’
The boy had long eyelashes, fine-boned cheeks and slender shoulders, light-skinned like his father. His name was Aranjo.
‘Can you take this man to Guyane?’ Bayman Quince Rotterdam asked. ‘He searches for Mr Hendrik’s sister.’
Dante looked at Krüger with no expression, then down at his son. He knew about all that had happened at Captain van der Velde’s plantation.
‘What if she is not there?’ Dante replied.
‘Then she is not there,’ Krüger said. ‘But you’ll be paid.’
Dante nodded. ‘When do you wish to go?’
LORD OLDHAM FALLS ASLEEP
The fire warmed the backs of Claus von Rolt’s legs. He’d gone to stand there in order to stay awake. Lord Oldham had been talking about shortages of men for the navy, about another recruitment push through the northern villages and west to Whitehaven, about the Admiralty’s hope for five thousand more men.
‘Deserters, that’s the bloody problem!’ he said. ‘Bloody cowards.’
It was just the two of them. The room was close, the candlelight soft, the cognac glowed in each man’s cheeks and chests. And all the time the Englishman talked, the shrunken head had been calling Rolt from the cabinet. He couldn’t think about anything else.
‘We’ll round ’em up though,’ Lord Oldham said conclusively.
A clock chimed somewhere in the house. Rolt realised he hadn’t been listening; that in fact he’d closed his eyes for a moment and almost fallen asleep, standing up in front of the fire. He opened his eyes, embarrassed, but it didn’t matter. Lord Oldham had dropped chin to chest and was snoring lightly in his deep chair.
Rolt finished his cognac. He waited a little while, but Lord Oldham didn’t stir. He turned and put the glass down on the mantelpiece. He was wide awake now.
He went over to the cabinet and opened the glass door (a faint, hollow shudder). He unhooked the plaited leather cord and took the shrunken head out. He cradled it in his palm, surprised at the dense weight. The hair, when he touched it, was coarse and dry and not like hair at all. Rolt carefully put his finger to the blackened skin of its sunken cheeks too, its forehead, the shrivelled, grotesque lips and swollen eyes. The head seemed to be merely asleep, just like Lord Oldham.
Rolt took a white silk handkerchief from his pocket and shook out the folds. He wrapped the shrunken head there and then slipped it into his pocket. He carefully closed the cabinet door.
The maid helped him with his coat.
‘Goodnight, sir,’ she said and opened the front door.
Rolt smiled and nodded. ‘Lord Oldham may need a blanket,’ he said and stepped outside. The cold air was a shock. As he began to walk, his heart was beating fast.
SWIFTWING
James Noble was well and truly done with King and Country.
At twenty-two, he was still no bigger than he’d been at thirteen. He had glossy black hair and coal eyes too, and a good nose until the regiment champ broke it in a betting bout (he was still a touch wobbly at times, weeks later).
All James Noble needed was somebody to help him with the boat.
Harris wouldn’t do it—he was desperate for family and home (up north on the Kentish coast)—and, besides, it made more sense to take the Prussian, who’d surely be wanting to head that way, across the Channel.
They fixed it all for the same night. Easy enough, with Harris in the guardhouse and the keys on a hook.
Nobody spoke. They took the keys and let Johannes Meyer out of his cell. They opened the front door and ran for the trees. Simple as that.
‘Ten pounds says you’ll see Old Bailey before me,’ James Noble said when they’d made it to cover.
‘Sure.’ Harris smiled. ‘But how would you ever know?’
A moment later, he was gone.
Noble turned to Johannes. There was a wrenching feeling in his guts. He hadn’t expected it. ‘We go this way,’ he said.
There was a fine drizzle falling and the ground was soft and the grass slapped wetly against their boots as they ran, crouching, though the darkness. They were headed down to a cove about a mile along the coast. When they got there, Noble revealed a small round boat, hidden underneath branches. He saw the dubious look on Johannes Meyer’s face.
‘It’s just a paddle to the real boat, son. Don’t panic. It’ll get us there.’
Johannes climbed in first and then James Noble pushed off and jumped in behind, almost tipping them over. He settled on his knees and began to paddle, but the coracle turned like a wheel over the water, no keel, and the two of them aboard like children on a fairytale leaf. It was woven of wicker and stank of brine and fish guts and everything was wet and slimy with dew. Neither man was particularly fond of the sea, and less so now.
‘Use your hands,’ Noble said. ‘We’ll get there quicker.’
The lugger was about a quarter-mile off the coast. First they had to swing around a ragged finger of rock to get its bearing. Shapes appeared there, dark stone skulls against the night sky. They could hear the soft rhythmic hiss of the tide as it spread and sank into the gravel and shell scree of the beach.
‘Keep her straight,’ Noble said. ‘Haste, my friend!’
They paddled steadily and the sea lapped at them and soon the dawn crept into the horizon. The clouded sky turned pale orange and pink.
‘It’s grand, isn’t it?’ Noble said, pointing at the sunrise. ‘That way, my good man, into the light!’
Johannes Meyer’s hands were numb and he was cold and uncertain.
They paddled, spun about, seemed to go nowhere. Maybe an hour passed and then a fog rolled in. Before it settled completely, Noble cried out, ‘There!’
She’d been a chasse-marée once upon a time, smuggling wool to the French; now she hauled mackerel as a lowly fishing lugger. Swiftwing. Ghostly and beautiful in the morning light. Noble smacked Johannes on the shoulder. Both men were grinning with relief.
MOSES
The boards of the guillotine were slicked with blood. The doctor moved quickly; there was no time to lose. He went to his knees beside the basket, reached in and turned the head around so that he was staring at the man’s face.
Breathing fast, Dr Antoine Girodet leaned the severed head against the side of the basket, cursing himself now for not having thought to bring something—a rolled-up towel or a block of wood—to stop it from falling over. But he managed to fix the head at an angle, then instantly let go, aware that he’d already contaminated the experiment (too late!).
Girodet gripped the sides of the basket, ignoring the warm blood seeping into the knees of his pants.
‘Moses!’ the doctor said. ‘Moses!’
The eyelids seemed to flicker, but remained closed. It was baking hot in the courtyard and the sun was directly above.
‘Four seconds,’ Christophe Bergerard said, standing over Girodet’s shoulder, a watch ticking in the palm of his hand. This was the second experiment he’d been involved with since agreeing to the doctor’s offer and terms of employment. The first had yielded no science to record.
‘Moses!’ Girodet said again, wanting to shake the basket with frustration but managing to restrain himself. It had taken bribes and bargaining (food, liquor, women), threats and violence, finally the promise of setting his wife and children free to convince the Negro to cooperate. And now he was holding out!
‘I still have your children!’ Girodet said. ‘Can you hear me, Moses? Your wife and your children!’
‘Seven seconds,’ Bergerard said.
Girodet leaned in, agonised, desperately willing the Negro’s head to give him a sign, a twitch of the cheek or of the lips, if not the eyes blinking as they had agreed to. Anything! But quickly, by Christ, for the window was closing rapidly.
Ten to twenty seconds, post-decapitation, Jacques de Dieu had estimated, until life slipped the body entire.
‘Do it, Moses! Tell me!’
Bergerard said, ‘Ten seconds.’
Girodet snapped, gave in to his anger and slapped the severed head across the cheek. It rolled around in the bottom of the basket. Then the doctor reached in and gripped the Negro by his ears, picked up the head and stood and held it in front of him.
‘Hear me, Moses!’ he said.
‘Fifteen seconds.’
‘Hear me!’
And then, by God, the eyelids opened.
Girodet almost dropped the head from shock. He saw the pupils dilate. He felt a great trembling through his body. It had happened. The slave Moses had opened his eyes.
‘If you can hear me, Moses,’ the doctor said, ‘blink!’
The eyes blinked once, slow as a drunkard’s.
Girodet said, ‘How many children have you sired, Moses?’
The eyes closed, but then stayed closed as the seconds ticked . . . two . . . three . . . then slowly, separately, each gluey lid opened on a bloodshot eye. There seemed much effort behind it, much will.
‘Yes!’ Girodet said. ‘How many children do you have? Blink the number, Moses! Blink it!’
Once.
Twice.
‘Yes! How many?’
The eyelids closed.
Then nothing.
Girodet waited.
But it was over.
After a moment, he dropped the head back into the basket.
‘Merde,’ he said. Moses had five children.
He turned to Bergerard. ‘Time?’
‘Twenty-two seconds,’ Bergerard said.
‘You saw it?’
‘Everything.’
Christophe Bergerard handed the doctor a rag to wipe his bloody hands.
‘Well,’ Girodet said. ‘Not too bad.’
‘When do you want to try again?’ There was another slave locked up in the washhouse.
‘Tomorrow,’ Girodet said. The beautiful mulatto girl was waiting for him. ‘Will you write it all up for me, Christophe?’
‘Of course.’
‘There will be more arriving on Thursday with the agent, too. If he can get through, we won’t be short.’
‘I’ll take care of it.’
Dr Antoine Girodet left the courtyard. He would have to wash up before he saw Josephine.
Bergerard looked down at the head in the basket. One eye had opened again. It was fixed on him but saw right through Bergerard, somewhere far beyond.
‘Barbu!’ he called out.
The old slave ran over with two others. They collected the head and body of Moses, then set to cleaning down the bloody guillotine with brooms and buckets of water.
ALONE
A young Portuguese corporal and an old Creole man with a mule and wagon came to escort Elisabeth to the Hôtel de la République, right in the centre of town. Christophe had decided to remain with the doctor.
‘What else can I do with the général gone?’ he said. ‘I have no money or work and Girodet has offered me both.’
‘He guillotines slaves.’
‘For science.’
Elisabeth von Hoffmann said nothing. She kissed the général’s aide-de-camp on the cheek. ‘Be careful, Christophe.’ Then she climbed up into the wagon and sat beside the old Creole man (who smelled of fish), relieved to be leaving Girodet and his disconcerting hospitality behind.
They moved off. The day was already hot and humid. Every day was the same, every day was hot and humid; every day the heat pressed down and the buildings and trees in Cayenne shimmered in the light. As the sun rose, the world slowed and sank and the day took twice as long to pass.
The wagon swayed and rocked over the uneven road.
The young Portuguese corporal led them on his small brown horse and twice he turned his head and smiled at Elisabeth. After a time, he let the wagon come up alongside him.
He looked over to Elisabeth and touched his hat. ‘If you will permit me, Mademoiselle?’
Elisabeth nodded. The young corporal’s face was flushed and shiny with sweat.
‘They have taken the Général Fourés to Rio de Janeiro,’ he said. ‘Please do not say that I have told you this.’
‘Why have they taken him there?’ Elisabeth had been to see endless officials but nobody had told her a thing.
The young corporal shrugged. ‘I do not know. I am sorry.’
He rode the horse back up to lead the wagon again. Children ran across the road, dogs sniffed and weaved, there were soldiers on foot in pairs, Portuguese, a few English. Negro women balanced bundles on their heads, hips swaying like palms.
At the hotel, the young corporal helped Elisabeth down and then he and the old man carried her luggage to the room.
‘My name is Duarte dos Santos,’ he said at the door. ‘Please, Mademoiselle, if you need my help, you must ask. Anything.’
‘Thank you, Duarte,’ Elisabeth said. She liked the feeling of his name as she spoke it. ‘You are very kind.’
Corporal Duarte dos Santos bowed and walked off. His boots echoed down the stairs. He hoped, deep in his heart, that she would indeed call upon him.
Elisabeth closed the door and turned to the empty room. Part of her felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness, of having been abandoned. She could barely grasp in her mind everything that had happened, the distance she’d come. But another part of her trembled with nervous excitement.
She went downstairs and ordered hot water for a bath, and then she opened all the windows and shutters in her room, let the heat pour in.
EXTRACTS FROM THE RECORDS OF THE BEXHILL COURT MARTIAL 13 SEPTEMBER 1810
(1) Testimony of Charles William Talbert, pilot of His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead: ‘They had her mizzen for a foresail and the foresail out for a main and you’d have caught more air in a coat if you’d’ve known what you were doing, Your Honour.’
(2) Testimony of George Boulton, owner of Swiftwing, in pursuit of the stolen craft aboard His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead: ‘When the fog came in we thought, well, that’s it, we’ll never catch up now, not with the cover and then the night coming and the wind in the right direction. But we sailed out for a look in the morning and the fog blew off quick like. She’d basically drifted down the coast, and when we got to her, she was sitting like a log on the water and one of ’em was splashing an oar around.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike for the Prosecution: ‘How far had she sailed?’
Boulton: ‘Oh, about six or seven miles off the Hythe head. But to be perfectly accurate, sir, there were no sailing about it.’
(3) Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike for the Prosecution, questioning Sergeant Edward Tennant, who’d been aboard His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead in pursuit of the two deserters from the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion: ‘It has been claimed, Sergeant Tennant, that the two accused called out, “France! France!” in an excited manner and with their arms waving when His Majesty’s cutter Arrowhead became visible to them after the fog lifted. Is this correct?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘Yes, that is correct, sir.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike: ‘How did you interpret their actions?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘They thought we were French, sir. They believed they’d made it across the Channel and reached the coast of France.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike: ‘Were they fearful or gleeful?’
Sergeant Edward Tennant: ‘I would say they were gleeful, sir.’
Lieutenant-Colonel J.W.R. Pike, addressing the Judge Advocate: ‘I understand this as no less than an act of treason. I submit the prisoners should be hung until dead as in accordance with the law.’
(4) Lieutenant E.P. King Carr for the Defence: ‘I beg the court to bear in mind that though clearly these two men are guilty of absconding, their motivations were never treasonous. Private Noble was escaping extreme abuse at the hands of one Lieutenant Schneppen of the King’s German Legion, who at this moment is conveniently on leave and could not appear before this court, and who has, I wish to state for the record, other charges pending against him. And Private Meyer, a Prussian ally who’d previously been forced into servitude with the French, who escaped and heroically served our king at Walcheren, was merely trying to get back home in order to help overthrow the French occupation of his own country.’
(5) Judge Advocate the Honourable E.H. Ampleforth: ‘Based upon the evidence presented this day, I am inclined to agree with the Defence that the defendants were not intending to desert for the purposes of joining or fraternising with the enemy. However, there is no question of their intent to desert from the ranks of the King’s German Legion, 2nd Light Battalion, or of their wanton theft of the lugger Swiftwing during the attempt to do so. Therefore, I sentence Private James Francis Noble to transportation and fourteen years’ penal servitude in His Majesty’s colony of New South Wales, and Private Johannes Meyer to transportation and penal servitude for the term of his natural life in His Majesty’s colony of New South Wales.’