Sacre Bleu (48 page)

At the edge of bow range, the Picts began to circle, swinging clay pots of flaming pitch around their heads on lanyards and hurling them into the kill zone between their lines and the walls, until the ground around the Roman fort was a black, smoking hell and the Picts but blue demons beyond the fire.

Pict arrows came down on the Romans from every direction. Legionaries sought cover from one threat, only to find death raining down from another. The cavalry was sent through the gates to break the Pict ranks, but no sooner was the column outside before the oxen-borne litter rumbled out of the flames and the screech of the blue-woman atop it caused their horses to rear.

Her first spear took a cavalry captain in the chest, knocking him back like he’d been tied to a stake. The Colorbringer hurled a javelin from each hand, taking an archer off the wall with the first, the second driving through the wooden rampart to impale a slave carrying water to douse the flames on the walls. A cry went up from the Picts at the sight of their king’s kills, and the whirling mass of blue warriors closed in on the fort.

Roman arrows thunked into the wooden litter around them. A Pict shield bearer fell and was trampled by the heavy oxen. Leanan Sidhe took an arrow in the thigh, and her next thrown lance cleaved the archer’s helmet and took off the top of his head. As she wrenched out the arrow, the Colorman was hit in the chest with one—two—three arrows, their iron tips passing through to stick out his back.

A cry of fury went up among the Picts. The Romans had the range now and a half dozen arrows pinned the Colorman to the wooden frame to which he was strapped.

“Ouch,” said the Colorman. “I hate arrows.”

“I know,” said Leanan Sidhe. She reached forward and snatched out the arrows that protruded from his back, held the bloody shafts aloft, and screamed at the Romans. The scream echoed across the ranks. The Colorman slumped in his harness, his head lolling with the movement of the oxen. She pulled the rest of the arrows from his chest, threw them aside, then grabbed the little man by the ears and shook his head.

“Up, Poopstick, up!” she said. “They have to see you take the arrows and rise again. Fight!”

The Colorman opened one eye and his head came up. “It’s cold. I hate the cold,” he said, grabbing a javelin in each hand and sending them sailing over the walls into the fortress. “And I hate arrows.”

When the litter reached the walls, Leanan Sidhe leapt from her perch, caught the top of the rampart, and vaulted to her feet atop the wall just as an arrow caught her in the side. She whirled, drawing her swords as she did, and looked into the wide eyes of a terrified archer, who was trying to nock another arrow. He turned to run as she fell on him and took off his arms, leaving him to bleed out, then hacked her way through Roman flesh as the Picts placed their ladders and came over the walls in swarms of blue bloodlust.

A half-hour later, every Roman had fallen, every slave taken from Caledonia had been freed, and the crooked little king of the Picts stood on the roof of the villa, a few arrows still protruding from his chest and back, holding aloft the head of Quintus Pompeius Falco, provincial governor of Britannia, whose last thought had been:
These crazy fucks really are painted blue.

Behind the Colorbringer, the muse, Leanan Sidhe, smeared Sacré Bleu over the golden Roman eagle staff and held it over her head as the Painted People chanted her name.

Paris, Île de la Cité, 1891

W
ITH ONLY THE POWER OF A FEW CACHED PAINTINGS, AND NOT THAT OF TEN THOUSAND
blue-painted Pictish warriors, it took the Colorman until the next evening before he could regenerate from the gunshot wounds Bleu had inflicted upon him. Fortunately, a morgue worker who was sweeping up got too close and now lay desiccated and dead on the floor, the life drawn out of him.

The Colorman slid off the morgue slab to the cold floor. Bullets pooped from his wounds and plopped on the stone as he limped naked around the room looking for something to wear. All the dead were either naked, too ripe, or too tall for him to use their clothes, so he settled on a white mortician’s coat that trailed out behind him as he went. The morgue attendant pretended not to see him as he passed, figuring that a spontaneous reanimation would require paperwork that he did not wish to fill out.

It was only three blocks back to the flat, and while it was a very public three blocks, and in the early evening, a time when all classes were out on the street, he went just the same. Gentlemen looked past him and ladies averted their gaze as he crossed the bridge from Île de la Cité into the Latin Quarter. He was near Notre-Dame Cathedral, where often were found cripples and freaks looking for charity, so the crooked little man with the overhanging brow, dragging the tails of a long white coat, attracted no more attention than any other unfortunate soul.

He rang the bell at the building on rue des Trois-Portes and the concierge yelped and leapt back when she answered the door, a woman whose size and cynicism had caused many years to pass since her last yelp
or
leap. The novelty pleased the Colorman to no end, and he had the urge to pull open his coat for a full penis presentation in celebration, but feared it might be gilding the lily, so he pressed on.

“Bonsoir,
Madame,” said the Colorman. “Could you let me in? I seem to have forgotten my key.”

“But, Monsieur,” said the concierge, raising a professionally buoyant eyebrow of suspicion. “I thought you were dead.”

“A scratch, only. Accident. Couldn’t be helped. The new maid was cleaning the gun and it fired.”

“You were shot five times. I heard the shots.”

“She’s not a very good maid. I think we will have to let her go.”

“Your niece said you were attacking the girl.”

“Scolding her for her bad cleaning. Madame, let me in, please.”

“The whole flat is covered in blue powder, monsieur.”

“It is? That’s the last straw. That maid is fired.”

“She was naked. She barely spoke any French. The police took her away wrapped in a sheet.”

“I will give you fifty
francs,
Madame, but my money is in the flat, so you have to let me in first.”

“Welcome home,” said the concierge, swinging the door wide and stepping aside.

“Did you feed Étienne?” asked the Colorman.

Paris, Montmartre, 1891

“S
O YOU SEE, SHOOTING HIM IS NOT ENOUGH,” SAID
J
ULIETTE.
“I
HAVE TO GO BACK
.”

They were sharing a baguette and butter with coffee at the Café Nouvelle Athènes in Place Pigalle. Juliette had volunteered to buy breakfast, since she was the only one with any money left.

Outside, around the fountain in the square, models, young women and a few men, were lined up waiting to be hired. Artists in search of a model need only come to the “parade of models” to find a subject, and with a few
francs,
the contract would be sealed. Those girls who were not lucky enough to be hired by an artist might move down the boulevard to sell their wares in a different way. There was a fluid line between prostitute and model, dancer and whore, mistress and madame; all were denizens of the
demimonde.

“You’re really not hungover at all?” asked Lucien, who experienced something akin to seasickness every time he turned his head to look around the café.

“Muse,” explained Henri. Then to Juliette, he said, “So, you and the Colorman are the reason Hadrian built his wall across Britain?”

She nodded modestly. “Inspiration is my business.”

“He built that wall because he was
afraid
of the Picts,” said Lucien, jealous that he was not emperor of Rome and could not build a wall across a country for her.

“Or annoyed by them,” said Henri.

“Mon Dieu!
For painters, you don’t understand inspiration at all,” said the muse.

“You’re not Jane Avril, are you?” asked Henri, recoiling from the bite of a shifty suspicion.

“No,” said Juliette. “I have not been the pleasure of her company.”

“Oh good,” said Henri. “Because I think she is very close to going to bed with me, and I would like to think she responds to my charm and not a proclivity for the color blue.”

“I assure you, Henri, it is your charm,” said Juliette, laughing musically, leaning over and brushing Henri’s hand with her fingertips.

“Perhaps then, mademoiselle, you and Lucien can accompany me to the Moulin Rouge this evening and help convince the lady to view me on the horizontal, as that is where my charm is most compelling.”

“It’s like breakfasting with a goat,” said Lucien.

“I’m sorry, Henri, but I can’t,” said Juliette.

“A goat in a hat,” said Lucien.

“I really have to return to the Colorman. I have no choice.”

“You can’t,” said Lucien. “Stay with me. Make him come after you. I’ll defend you.”

“You can’t,” she said.

“Then we’ll run away. You’re the one who travels through time and space, right? We’ll go hide somewhere.”

“I can’t,” she said. “He can compel me to return to him. I told you, I am a slave.”

“Well, what then?” Lucien nearly fell out of his chair trying to move to her side, then caught himself on the table.

“I won’t be free as long as he lives.”

“But you said yourself, he can’t be killed,” said Henri.

“He can’t be killed as long as there are paintings made with unharvested Sacré Bleu. That is my theory. When I saw the Manet nude, I thought that was my chance. I thought that painting must be what protected him, but now I know there are others, or it’s something else. He’s alive. I can feel him pulling me back.”

“I don’t understand,” said Lucien. “What can we do?”

She leaned into the center of the table and the two painters leaned in for the conspiracy. “I’ve taken the Sacré Bleu we made with the Manet nude. It’s in the mine with your
Blue Nude.
He’ll need more. Gauguin is leaving for Tahiti, so I will go to the artist he’s found for me. A Monsieur Seurat.”

“Seurat’s a
peintre optique,”
said Henri. “He paints with tiny dots of pure color. Enormous canvases. He’ll take years to complete a painting.”

“Exactly,” she said. “The Colorman will have to go wherever he has the other paintings hidden. I know they have to be close, because I was only gone a day before he came with the Manet. And the canvas wasn’t rolled, it was on the original stretchers, so he couldn’t have traveled far with it. There was no crate. When he goes to get another to use for the making of the Sacré Bleu, then you can follow him, destroy the paintings, and make him vulnerable.”

“And why haven’t you done that?” asked Henri.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried? I can’t. One of you has to do it.”

“And if we do this, you will be free?” asked Lucien. “And we can be together?”

“Yes.”

“And Jane Avril will go to bed with me?” asked Henri.

“That has nothing whatever to do with this,” said Juliette.

“I know, but I was wondering if you might intercede on my behalf, since you have broken my heart. Just
influence
her until we’re in bed, out of gratitude for helping you to gain your freedom.”

“No!” said Lucien.

Juliette smiled. “Dear Henri, she will be yours and there will be no enchantment but your delightful presence.”

“Fine then, I’m in,” said Henri. “Let’s rid the world of this Colorman.”

“Oh, my heroes,” she said, taking each of their hands and kissing them. “But you must be very careful. The Colorman is dangerous and crafty. He’s been the end of hundreds of painters.”

“Hundreds?” said Henri, a quaver in his voice.