The Marquis Arrives

He did not know what escort to expect; but he was bemused to endure a shower of sand that drenched his blond locks as the chopper set down outside the gate, in a blur of cresents and crosses. He immediately recognized that he was overdressed and over-coiffed; the troops on either side of him had several days of stubble and the hard tack look of soldiers whose clean-pressed decorum had been inevitably ground down from years of combat. These were mechanics, office men, bureaucrats who had been plumetted into the abyss, and had survived on the other end by becoming efficient machines. Nothing in his fantasies had prepared him for this.

When the blades stopped whirring, the Marquis crept to the rear of the machine and retched, holding his cape so as to not stain it. It was the stench that did it. He rose, recovered, and apologized to his charges.

"I am quite fine," he said. "Lead me."

After passing the gate, he felt entombed. He noted the barbed wire running the expanse of the concrete walls and thought, "Well, prisons must have walls." But this was merely the first gate. Beyond lay a second, of rusting steel, at the end of a large courtyard crammed with humanity: dark figures in robes, many dazed, sitting on the ground, some wailing, some attempting to snatch the attention of soldiers who could not, or would not, comprehend their language. Some clutched indistinct papers, or waved small books. He recognized that most were apparently female.... all sweltering under the fire and the stench of the courtyard.

"Who are these people?"

"They are the relatives," someone answered.

He likened the courtyard to some outer rim; as Stygian as this predicament seemed on the surface, he rationalized that they were at least free to come and go. But he felt his fantasies vanish; blanched from him by acid. His fantasies had fled, leaving a white skeleton, and a robe.

He wondered what to tell Madame Doucette.