Page 136 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“Do not mistake ignorance for innocence, Citizen Capet,” Léon said. “It is no defence to have observed atrocities from a distance, then said you could do nothing. You, of all men, had more power than anyone to help people. You chose to hurt them. You chose to divide them. But today, you see, the people have real power.”
Léon slotted the board forward, and Louis’ head slipped into place. Léon enclosed his neck in the lunette, and he pulled the rope.
Down came the blade, and Louis Capet was decapitated. Léon lifted the man’s head high so he could see what he had wrought through his careless cruelty. So he could see the anger and the blood lust—see what Léon had seen every working day for so many years. A people poorly educated, miserable, desperate for change. Who had needed the beautiful ideals of the revolution, the wonderful dreams that set everything in motion, that any good and pure heart would have wanted for their kinfolk. Food, education, healthcare. Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Léon strode to the front of the stage with the head dripping, the eyes twitching, then he held it up directly to Henry. He smiled, wide, and Henry smiled too, then laughed. Of all the strange twists of fate. What a wonderful thing for Léon to be able to take the head of the very man who had caused him so much suffering. And to the letter of the law too.
Henry’s eyes glazed over. The pride he felt in Léon was immeasurable. The audience screamed out, “Long live the Nation!” “Long live the Republic!” and “Long live Liberty!” A man ran his fingers through Louis’ blood, tasted it, and declared, “It is well salted!” Guns fired in celebration, singing and dancing broke out, but between Léon and Henry, there was silence. A quiet moment so close to the end, that was just the two of them, and everything Henry had worked for.
Léon threw the head in a casket, flipped the platform, and rolled Louis’ deceased body onto it. The casket was placed on an open carriage, and it rolled away, taking with it all the soldiers, all the people who had come to see the demise of their antagonist, all the people who had come to see justice done.
But as the drums faded with the procession, so the door on Henry's carriage swung open, and careless, ignorant hands reached in, digging into his bare skin.
Léon returned to his reality. The one he’d never wanted. The one he’d been fighting to get out of. The one he’d never been able to break free from until Henry.
His partner, his lover, was shoved forward, pushed up the stairs, and forced to his knees in front of Léon, hands bound behind his back, awaiting the indifferent slice of Madame Guillotine.
63
LÉON CARRIES OUT AN EXECUTION
Henry and Léon stood in a moment of stark and brutal silence, the two of them on the stage in front of everyone, not a single other person with the vaguest idea of what they meant to one another.
“Untie me,” said Henry. “And I’ll pull that rope myself.”
Léon smiled. “You are brave Henri. Brave and often stupid.”
Henry might have remarked that wasn’t a particularly kind thing to say to someone in his situation, but Léon had already stepped away from him. He picked up his axe, and with nerve-fraying horror, the weak light of the winter sun reflected sharp in Henry’s eyes. “No. Don’t do that for me.”
Léon held it with a steady hand, and Henry hated to think of how he could. Had he gone back to that lonely place where Henry had found him? Gone back to that isolation, the wall around himself that Henry alone had been able to destroy? For him to live the rest of his precious life that way… It broke Henry’s heart.
Léon came to him, so close Henry could feel the heat of his body—the body he would never touch or kiss or love again. Henry said, “I can’t stand for you to do this. I will pull that rope myself. I’m not scared of death, I fear only for you. For I haveloved you so deeply, Léon. So deeply and so truly. I cannot bear to be the one to hurt you.”
Léon listened to his words with his body taut, his fingers white on the axe handle, his eyes watering. He turned his head away just as the first tear broke, and yelled to the crowd in a strong and false voice, “Henri De Villiers! You are here today, convicted of treason. Of spreading seditious materials. Of writing and distributing numerous articles in which you made such outrageous claims as, ‘The people of this nation are good and true and strong, and require only to be freed from the chains of the monarchy to create a just and free land.’” Henry stared up at him, paling. “Pamphlets, where you declared, ‘Every man, woman, and child has a right to food, education, healthcare, and respect’. Stories where you said that human nature is intrinsically good, only pushed to foul extremes by the brutality of its rulers—where you claimed citizens would never require or institute capital punishment in a country that gave its people enough sustenance so they didn’t have to kill to survive.”
“Léon, shut up,” Henry snapped. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“You’ve cut off the head of the snake today,” Léon yelled out to the crowd. “The power is in your hands. These people,” he indicated the carriage carrying Henry’s cellmates, “are due to die. And for what? The revolution is now! You have won. It’s over.”
“Léon, please.”
But Léon swallowed down the lump in his throat, and continued, “It’s important to know when to stop. It’s important to know who and what you’re fighting for. Do you want freedom? Equality? Peace? Or do you just want blood?”
Léon came around behind Henry, then wrenched his head back against his navel. An approving cry broke from the crowd at the perceived barbarity of it, even if Léon’s hands were lovingon Henry. His thighs pressed into Henry’s shoulder blades, and Léon lowered the axe between his own legs. “Don’t move,” he said softly, as the axe glided like butter through Henry’s restraints.
Henry was confounded. Perhaps Léon was going to let him pull the rope. He must have been considering it, because he then yelled out, “Do you want the head of this man who believed in this revolution? Or do you wish to build something better, more beautiful, something based on the principles we were supposed to stand for?”
But the people glared at Henry’s long and beautiful neck, exposed to their hungry teeth, and they screamed for it. As one mob, whipped into feverish nationalism by years of war and death and horror, no one was prepared to try to stop the violence. They had convinced themselves it was acceptable. Necessary. One more death. Seven more deaths. A thousand more deaths, and where it would stop, neither Henry nor Léon knew, but Léon had made up his mind, by the looks on their faces, by his difficult and horrifying history, by the beating pulse of the man he loved beneath his fingers, that he was choosing love.
“If you decide to stay,” he warned, “you won’t get justice—all you’ll get is blood. Leave now, unless that’s what you want.”
Every side of the scaffold was filled deep with living, seething humans who screamed their acquiescence—who had long-since overstayed their welcome in Léon’s life.
“The people have spoken,” Léon said. He kicked the heading block in front of Henry. “Head down, my love. Keep your wrists together as if you were tied.”
“You’re being very casual about this,” Henry replied, trying to wrestle down the disgust of placing his head where so many others had lost theirs, the cold of the blackened and greasy mahogany like ice on his neck.
“It will all be over soon,” Léon assured him.
