Melanie Jackson - Divine Night

A part of Harmony realized that this strangerthis Alexandre Dumas who carried a gunwas somehow inside her head, perhaps guiding her to this moment, perhaps against her will or at least her better sense. Odder still, she had this feeling that if she shifted her thoughts just a bit that she might be able to see into his mind too. As it was, it seemed like she knew what he would say or do a splitsecond before he said or did anything. This should have alarmed her, but her senses seemed entirely taken up by the weird but overwhelming erotic sensation that was making her skin dance and her muscles go weak.

Perhaps she was more drunk than she realized. But drunk or not, she didnt care. She sighed with pleasure and for the first time gave herself over completely to the experience of brain-fogging passion, letting Alex enter her thoughts fully and willing him to share her elation and arousal.

This was a night that shed never forget.

For my dear husbandThank you for being here

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

Alexandre Dumas

What would you say to an immense novel beginning with Jesus and ending with the last man of creation, divided into five episodes: one under Nero, one under Charlemagne, one under Charles IX, one under Napoleon, and one set in the future?The principal characters are to be: The Wandering Jew, Jesus Christ, Cleopatra, the Fates, Prometheus, Nero, Poppaea, Narcissus, Octavia, Charlemagne, Rolland, Vittiking, Velleda, Pope Gregory VII, King Charles IX, Catherine de Medicis, the Cardinal of Lorraine, Napoleon, Marie-Louise, Tallyrand, the Messiah, and the Angel of the Cup. I suppose that sounds mad to you, but ask Alexandre (fils), who knows the work from end to end, what he thinks.

Letter from Alexandre Dumas to his publisher, Marchant, about a book that was never written

Christmas Eve, 2006

The man opened his black notebook and began writing by the light of the fire flickering contentedly on the hearth.

NIGHT TRAIN TO CASABLANCA A Novel By Alexandre Dumas

Alex smiled as he wrote because he had always loved his work. And because it paid well. Really wellespecially his swashbucklers. This was hiswhat was this book? Six hundred and seventy-something. When he had first retired, his literary brood of novels, plays, travelogues, and memoirs had already numbered over five hundred.

It had delighted his current editor when Alex had first approached him with a manuscript for an historical thriller and the suggestion that the book be published under the name of his illustrious ancestor, the original Alexandre Dumas. Dear, ignorant Christopher thought it was a brilliant publicity stunt to have an author pretend to be the famous French novelistespecially since the two men were related.

Alex had allowed his editor to go on being delighted the last decade and more. He saw no need to complicate the beautiful arrangement by informing Christopher that he truly was Alexandre Dumas, and that his novels were actually installments of his autobiographywhich were told almost without exaggeration. Almost. As a dramatist, he had never been able to resist the temptation to embellish a bit when history failed to supply the necessary touch of color or proper dialogue.

Of course, Christopher would be even happier if his best-selling author wrote faster, but some things could not be rushed. And though he had tried, Alex had yet to find a way to use a computer without causing catastrophic memory failure every time he powered up. He couldnt use cell phones either. Two minutes and the battery went dead, drained of all power and unable to be recharged. Nothing electrical had worked around him since his transformation. It was all part of paying the piper for his infernal gift, but it was annoying. He either had to wear rubber gauntlets when he used electronic machines or else had to have his secretary do everything for himanswer phones, send faxes, even use the photocopier.

Alex shook his head in irritation and then bent back over his notebook. The silence of the library was unbroken except by the scratching of the pen and the gentle snores of the neighbors cat, which had attached herself to him three weeks ago. He called her Lady de Winter because she was white and because she had the hardest eyes hed ever seen, excepting only those staring at him over a dueling pistol one misty dawn a century ago.

Casablanca. Perhaps he was romanticizing this chapter of his life a bitbut just a bit, and that was only for the sake of telling a better story, not some Miles Gloriosis. Perhaps he was editing himself a bit as well, but there was no need to upset readers by mentioning that he had taken up the career of a jewel thief because he was depressed and hed become completely indifferent to societys laws once it engaged itself in a second world war. And because it had sounded like fun.

And also because back then he had still retained the natural prejudice of a Frenchman against the English, and hadnt minded stealing from the rich bastards of Britannia. At least he hadnt minded until the bombing of London started. Hed been in London when the first Luftwaffe bombers had flown up the estuary, following the Thames into the Old City. He wasnt an Englishman, and had reason to dislike his old enemy, but this sight offended him. London was beautiful and dignified. Hed had no love for the Germans after the First World War, but it was during this war that he had come to truly detest the nation that had invented the Nazis and all their various clones. After that, Frenchmen and Englishmen alike had been united in their anger against the Germans. Alex had even spied on the Germans for a time, helping the British when he could, even though they hunted him as a criminal.

There was another reason to write his novel as well.

Alex touched a hand to the earring he always wore. It looked like a thick gold hoop, but closer examination showed that it had been a ladys ring. The inside was inscribed with the words je tadore. He told anyone who asked that he wore it for luck, but in reality it was more of a hair shirt. It had belonged to the only woman he had truly loved, a woman who had died for him. She was the real reason he had to tell this story. This was the time that Fate in the form of a woman had intervened in his life and helped him get off the road to ruin. The tragedy of her death had saved him from personal ruination, arrested his slide into depravity. He owed it to herand himselfto remember this time.

There was the real possibility of pain in revisiting this time and place even after all these years, but Alex was not a coward. He thought that he was perhaps finally ready to write about what had happened on that fateful visit to Africa. It had been more than six decadessurely he was ready. He would tear the bandage off this lesion and see what his old wound looked like some sixty years on. Then perhaps he could finally put the incident behind him, stop dreaming of the woman who had died for him so many years ago. Stop feeling as if his own life had ended on the night she died.

But that came later in the story. Alex began writing, his penmanship as florid as it had been a century ago.

Prologue Adventure on a Train

January 4, 1943

He was traveling on one of the most luxurious trains in the worldall the guidebooks said so. Passengers were, the books insisted, held spellbound by the lavish blue and gold interiors decorated in the art deco style. The train contained no fewer than three dining cars presided over by master chefs, and every travelers wants and comfort were seen to by a crew of attentive stewards uniformed almost as sumptuously as the upholstery and drapes where the pampered elite, those politically ambivalent individuals who liked to view the war through the charming lens provided by the bottom of a champagne flute, dined so long and lavishly.