The Wolves Of Paris

"The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared victory against the world; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine."

-Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"

***

Gévaudan, France, 1769:

In the village, a man lay dying.

Antoine Chastel drew water from the well and went inside. His father lay in the inn's largest room, a single candle lit, Bible open on his lap. He slept feverishly. Antoine wiped his brow with a wet cloth and Jean Chastel's eyes opened. He spoke between labored breaths. "I thought...you had left."

Antoine shook his head. "Not until you're well."

"I will not be well again," said Jean. "The Lord will..." And his voice trailed off. He slipped in and out of sleep. Antoine did what he could to comfort the older man. Some hours into the night, Jean Chastel woke for the last time. His feeble hands groped for the Bible. Signaling for water, he drank until he could speak and said, "Antoine? Tell me about the hunt."

Antoine flinched. "Not tonight. Another night. You need your rest--"

"There will be no other nights. Tell me now."

Antoine shuddered, but he could not disobey. Closing his eyes, he began to speak, as he did every time his father asked, of that day two years ago, a day that had yet to end in his nightmares...

It was a cold morning for July. Antoine's breath frosted. The metal of his musket was painful to touch. He and his father had become separated from the hunting party. Lost, Jean Chastel sat on a hill and prayed. Antoine stood guard. His knees would not stop shaking. If not for his father he would have run away. Instead he stood; his knees shook, but he stood.

For three years Gévaudan had been at the mercy of a monster. There had always been wolf attacks in the farmlands, but this was no ordinary wolf. This one they called the Beast. Most killer wolves claimed one or two victims before being hunted down. The Beast had killed over a hundred. Two years ago the king sent his own Lieutenant of the Hunt to Gévaudan to slay it, but on Christmas of that year the Beast returned from the dead and had roamed unchecked ever since. Now Antoine, Jean Chastel, and the other men of Gévaudan took matters into their own hands.

Day in and day out they hunted, each man armed, each man (except perhaps Antoine) willing to give his life to put the Beast down once and for all. Jean was even armed with specially blessed silver bullets, believing that only silver was pure enough to truly destroy such a monster. The elder Chastel sat in prayer still, calling on God to deliver them: "Dear Father God Almighty, Three in One Who wert, art, and shall be blessed without end, I thank Thee that Thou hast kept me from nightfall to the hour of morning..."

Somewhere nearby, a branch snapped. Antoine whirled around, almost dropping his musket. Jean did not react.

"I pray Thee to grant in Thy holy pity that this eventide I may again give thanks..."

The trees began to shake. "Father!" said Antoine, but Jean did not reply. Antoine's breathing came shorter and faster. The morning air seemed to cut his lungs. Something was coming, something big and incredibly fast...

"Thy holy power, grant that this day I fall into no sin, nor run into any danger..."

A small tree at the edge of the clearing broke and fell, its trunk splintered. And there, padding forward on four great paws, its eyes blazing like coals and its jaws slavering, was the Beast. It's not a wolf, thought Antoine. No wolf could grow to such a size. Its fur was red, stained by the blood of a hundred innocents, and it body was pitted with scars from the bullets of the king's hunters. Fear rose like bile in Antoine's throat. "Father!" he cried again. But Jean prayed on:

"By Thy restraining care my thoughts be set to keep Thy holy laws and do thy holy will..."

The words provoked the Beast; it howled so loud that Antoine had to cover his ears, screaming. He was nearly deaf by the time it finished; he could no longer hear his father's voice, nor even his own. Then the Beast charged right for them. Antoine raised his gun but his hands were shaking and his finger fell on the trigger too soon. The discharge knocked it out of his grip and his bullet buried in the ground. The monster's great paws churned the earth as it bore down on him. There was no time for another shot and no time to reload. He could never outrun the Beast, but he turned to flee anyway. He was startled to find his father standing, like a stone pillar, right behind him. J

ean Chastel raised his musket and the Beast froze in its tracks. For a moment the world went still as man and Beast stood, face to face and eye to eye. Antoine cowered, helpless. The Beast snarled and tore at the earth, but Jean didn't blink. Every creature in the forest was quiet, transfixed by the confrontation. Am I dreaming, thought Antoine? Will I wake now?

Then the spell of the moment was broken. The monstrous wolf came at them again but Jean fired, the call of the musket sounding even in Antoine's deaf ears. The sacred silver bullet burned into the Beast's body and the monster stalled its charge, whimpering and staggering. The blood it spilled was so rank and foul that nothing would grow in that field for years. It a half-hearted attempt to flee, but it was no use. With one last hateful cry, the Beast of Gévaudan slumped over, and died.

Antoine cried in relief. Jean said nothing, keeping his eye on the fallen Beast. It looked not so terrifying now. Alerted by the commotion, other men appeared, in time to see the Beast's death throws. Antoine looked at where his musket lay and felt ashamed. In the moment of truth he had been willing to leave his father to face the Beast alone. The Beast was dead, and Jean Chastel was a hero, but Antoine was a coward. No one except his father would ever know it, but that was enough.

Jean said nothing though. He simply handed his son's gun back to him and then went to inspect the body. Already they heard sounds of wonder and horror from the assembled hunters. Pushing through the crowd, the Chastels came to where the Beast lay, and Antoine let out a cry of shock, for now, instead of a great demon wolf they saw the body of a man. Antoine pointed a shaking finger. "But that's--that's--?"

"It does not matter who it was," said Jean." He is dead now." He turned to the other hunters. "Did you all see the Beast dead, and did you all see it return to the figure of a man after death?" The hunters nodded and agreed. "Then there is nothing else to be said. We will take the body back to the village and burn it. And that will be the end."

And it was. For everyone but Antoine, that is. For years, every time he saw his father, his father asked him to recount the hunt. Now, as he finished the tale for the last time, the older Chastel looked at him with eyes weak. Antoine could not imagine what his father was thinking when he looked at him that way. "Do you know why I ask you to tell me about the hunt?" said Jean.

Antoine's face burned. "To remind me of my shame."

Jean's eyes widened. "No! No, no, no," he said, and then his voice was lost in a coughing fit. With great effort he summoned speech once more: "I do not want you to feel ashamed of your fear. But I want you to remember it!" He grabbed Antoine's hand, his grip unnaturally strong for his diminished state. "You were afraid not because you are a coward but because the Beast was no ordinary creature: It was a hound of hell. The memory of that fear will always remind you of what you fight."

Jean fell back in bed, staring at the ceiling. "When the Beast died I swore an oath before God that I would not rest until all of its kind were dead, too. There are others, you know. It was the most vicious of its brood, but far from the only one."

Cold fear stabbed Antoine's heart.

"But I will not live through the night," said Jean. "My oath will go unfulfilled. That is why I give you these." He took something from under the mattress and put it into Antoine's hands. Antoine untied the bag and discovered...

"The silver bullets?"

"Made from an icon of the Holy Virgin, blessed weapons against the enemies of God. You must take them, and use them. Hunt the brothers and sisters of the Beast, until none are left."

Antoine's jaw dropped. "Father, no! I cannot. I'm not like you. I am not brave enough."

"You are," said Jean. "You must be. I swore on the honor of our family and it must be made good, for the sake of my eternal soul."

Old Jean's breath rattled in his lungs. His head rolled to one side and he no longer had the strength to lift it.

"Swear on your father's dead bad you'll do this," said Jean. "I go to God now. Let me go knowing that our family's honor will live after me."

Antoine swallowed the lump in his throat. He took his father by the hand. "I don't know if I can do what you ask. I don't know if I have the strength. But I swear to you, I will not rest until I have hunted these monsters to the last, or they me. You have my word." Tears blurred his eyes.

Just at dawn, with a sigh of relief, Jean Chastel quit the world.

Antoine slept in his father's house for the last time that morning. When he awoke a few hours later he took his father's best musket and his father's Bible and the blessed silver bullets, and he left the village. He rode to the house where his wife waited for him, and there his grief was mingled with wonder and joy, for he discovered that she had given birth while hew as away, and now he had a son of his own. He wept as he told her what he would have to do. She begged him not to go, but he had no choice. After holding his son for the first and last time, Antoine set out for he knew not where, promising to return but knowing, in his heart, that he never would. On cold nights when the sky was bleak and dark, Antoine Chastel's wife would sometimes hear wolves howling. On nights like that, she prayed for him.

But all the prayers in the world could not save Antoine Chastel now.

***

Paris, April 5

th

, 1794 (on the Calendar of the Revolution,16 Germinal, Year II):

Four soldiers questioned the old man, one of them a captain. It was late and they were growing impatient. The lesser soldiers (all sans-culotte volunteers, those who had stepped up to fill the vacancies left by the royalist soldiers who had deserted or been killed in the name of the revolution) wanted to simply arrest him, but the captain, a true soldier of France who wore the blue coat of the National Guard insisted they keep questioning him. "Tell us again," said the captain. "Tell us from the beginning."

"I've told you already, citizen" said the old man. "I don't know why you're asking me these things. The man you are looking for is dead. All of Paris knows that he is dead. Why would you try to arrest him now?"

The captain frowned. He knew this man was a good man, a baker who always sold his bread for less to the poorest customers. The captain did not enjoy interrogating him, but he had no choice. It was his duty. "Tell us again," he said.

"I was sitting here in front of my shop two hours ago," said the baker, indicating the chair. "A man came to me begging for food."

"What kind of man?" interrupted one of the other soldiers. "Was he an old man, or a young one?"

"Neither young nor old," said the baker.

"What did he look like?"

"Like a man," said the baker. "Like a poor man. Most poor men look alike."

"What did you do?" said the captain.

"I gave him bread," said the baker. "He had money. It wasn't enough, but I told him it was. I always tell them it's enough."

The lesser soldier shook his bayonet. "And did it not occur to you that this man might be a fugitive?"

The baker shrugged. "Any man might be a fugitive. Beggars and fugitives look much alike."

"And then what happened?" said the captain, checking the other soldier with a look.

"We heard someone coming," said the baker, "some soldiers. I turned to look at them, and when I turned back the beggar was running away, and he was joined by two others."

"Who?"

"I did not see them well. They wore cloaks that covered their heads. But I could tell they had been hiding. And I could tell that one of them wore a mask."

"A mask?"

"Yes, or perhaps more like a scarf that wrapped around his face, in the style of a Turk."

"And this beggar and this masked man and this third man you saw not at all ran away from the soldiers once they had your bread?" asked the lesser soldier, his voice dripping with disdain.

"It was as you say," said the baker, "and that is all I know." He sat down, to indicate that, in his mind at least, the interview was over. The soldiers adjourned to the street to deliberate.

"Captain, I do not believe one word of it," said the younger soldier. "This man is a lair and most likely a traitor, a royalist, and a counter-revolutionary. He probably has the fugitive in his shop right now. I say we arrest him and search the whole place and then drag them all off for a meeting with the Committee!" The other young soldiers agreed, but the captain shook his head

"I believe him," he said. The sans-culottes looked stunned.

"You do?"

"Fabre isn't here. Split up and go door to door and question everyone who lives on this street, but don't arrest anyone without my approval." The soldiers looked uneasy. The captain cocked an eyebrow. "Unless you would like for me to report your insubordination to the Committee myself?"

The soldiers blinked and stammered apologies, scattering. The captain returned to the baker's porch, nodding at him and taking off one glove to offer the old man his hand. "I am sorry to have troubled you so late, citizen."

"No need," said the old man, accepting the proffered handshake. The captain leaned in.

"This is not an accusation," he said, "but I suspect there is something you're not telling us."

The old man's face twitched a little. "In truth, I did leave out one thing. I was not sure if you would believe me, and I was afraid of being reported..."

"I would believe a great many things that other men do not."

The baker sighed. "I said that I saw three men running away. What I really saw was two men and a wolf."

"A wolf?"

"Yes."

"Not a dog?"

"I know a wolf when I see one."

"Yes," said the captain, his voice somber. "So do I."

The captain turned to go. The old man stopped him. "What is your name?"

The captain pulled his glove back on, "Chastel," he said. "Antoine Chastel. The younger."

"I knew an Antoine Chastel once," said the old man.

"My father."

"He was a good man."

Chastel gave a wan smile. "No," he said, "he was not. But he did his duty."

"I still do not understand why you're here. The man you are hunting is dead. I saw him die. Everyone saw."

"Indeed," said Chastel, walking away. "And yet, hunt we must."

***

17 Germinal, Year II:

Sainte-Chapelle was no longer a church. The relics were all looted, scattered, destroyed. Now it was merely an office, where the people did the work of the Republic. And the Conciergerie, on the others side of the square, was no longer a palace. Now it was a prison. In Sainte-Chapelle they filed the death warrants, and in the Conciergerie they carried the prisoners out, and in the space between Madame Guillotine enjoyed her daily feast and the people shouted and danced and sang the Carmagnole as those deemed enemies of the Republic, one by one, lost their heads. Santerre watched from his office window as a cartload was dumped into the Seine, twenty open mouths and twenty pairs of sightless eyes bobbing up and down in the river like a chorus of gaping fish. It was the first such payload of the day, but the sun was barely up, and it would be a busy day.

There were new prisoners to be processed every day, and cells must be emptied, and those who languished in the Conciergerie could be "released" only one way. Terror was the order of the day, so Terror is what the people would have. Though he was General of the National Guard, Santerre's duties in Paris were little more than administrative. He did not complain. Half of the Republic's legislature had just had the other half executed. Now Robespierre and the Committee for Public Safety were the final and only power in France, so Santerre kept his mouth shut, did his duty, and hoped if he spent most of his time in this office, suspicious eyes would never fall on him. Complaining would only expedite his own execution. He still remembered the look on the king's face that day a year ago when Santerre came to take him to the plaza...

"General Santerre!"

"Hm?" He looked toward the voice. Leta appeared rather put-out.

"General Santerre," she said again. "I do not see the point in my being here if you are not even going to pay me the slightest mind."

"My apologies, citizeness," Santerre said, turning away from the window. "You must forgive me if I am distracted by my duty to the Republic."

"We all have our duty, General," said Leta. "And we all do our part whether we like it or not." She resumed stroking his stiff prick with her soft, lily-white hand.

"Quite right, citizeness," said Santerre. "Your diligence is an inspiration to us all during these trying times."

"Oh shut your fat mouth, you republic pig," Leta said, and then, holding her nose and assuming a look of disdain that Santerre found completely charming, she swallowed his prick. Santerre leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, letting his trousers slip to his ankles.

For a well-born woman, Leta had remarkable talents. He wondered, not for the first time, exactly where she had acquired them. There was more than one courtesan, or for that matter, brothel girl, who could learn a thing or two from the way Leta's soft, pouting lips skillfully glided back and forth on him, or the way her tongue wriggled, sending scintillating waves up and down his member. She was fast, but not too fast, and she never languished but was always working, always going up and down and, when she tired of that, switching to a side to side motion, rolling his cock around and around the inside of her mouth in a way that made his bones ache with pleasure.

It was quite a spectacle; almost enough to make him forget the sound of the falling blade just outside...

Santerre ignored it. Instead he thought about Leta's lips sucking away, the warm wetness of her mouth, the swaying of the locks of her curling hair (cut curiously short for a woman), and, as always, the cold, bitter anger in her eyes as she went at it. That was the part that was most gratifying to Santerre, and he never let her forget it. He watched her generous breasts strain against her dress; it was a dress he had specifically saved for her after almost all of her other possessions were seized under the Law of National Goods. This one he'd kept as a gift to her because he liked how it accentuated her...well, her national goods.

Santerre gave them each a squeeze. Leta slapped his hands away, taking him out of her mouth long enough to say, "Keep your hands to yourself! Bad enough I have to soil my mouth with this," she gestured to his organ.

Santerre shook a finger at her. "I think you're forgetting who is in charge here.'" And to emphasize the point he unlaced her dress over her protests and fondled her naked breasts as they popped free, taking his time as he rolled her rubbery pink nipples between his fingers. "Remember, in the Republic you must learn to share some of your bounty with your fellow citizens. There are laws against hoarding of precious resources."