Page 19 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Léon spun around like a top. “What are you talking about?”
Émile’s bright eyes met Henry’s. “What can I tie him up with?”
“You’re not tying me up!” Léon snapped.
Henry’s gaze roamed the floor until he lit upon Émile’s wind-up cat and the long leash that came with it. “We’ll use this.”
“Hey! That’s mine!” Émile ran forward to save the destruction of his toy, which the tall Henry lifted high above his head, making him jump to try to pull Henry’s muscular arm down. He failed entirely, and Léon was taken aback to see the playful way he let Émile swing on his biceps, the child giggling just as though the man was no sort of kidnapping child murderer at all.
“We’ll reattach it later,” Henry mollified with a laugh, transferring the goods to his other hand and stumbling back as Émile jumped up against him again. If there had been something close to a moment of ease between Henry and Léon, it evaporated that very second with Henry’s, “I’m sure your brother knows a thing or two about tying ropes.”
Léon’s eyes turned to broken glass. With a defensiveness that caught Henry, he seethed, “I don’t hang people.”
Henry raised a disparaging chin. “Ah. You prefer the brutality of doing it the old-fashioned way?”
“The way they usually reserve for royalty,” Léon replied.
“A royalist, are you? Well, doesn’t that just figure.” Émile was smart enough to have ceased any play, and Henry took the toy to a nearby bench to pull the short piece of rope loose.
Léon was no royalist. He was nothing of the sort. He had no time for the King and the Queen and their ludicrous spending of the national purse, if the rumours were to be believed. Yet he wasn’t convinced the revolution was about to achieve everything it was said to either, redistributing that wealth to a starving nation, but he wasn’t about to admit that in front of this dangerous stranger. Instead, he deflected by turning the conversation to the subject that was at the forefront of his mind. “Is that who you’re trying to break out of prison? One of your revolutionaries? A brother in arms?”
“That’s none of your business,” Henry muttered, wrapping the red rope tight around his fingers.
“You’ll never get them out,” Léon goaded, enjoying the resultant tensing of the man’s shoulders. “Do you really think it’s as simple as that? Just take the keys and wander in there? Have you ever been inside Reims Prison?” He looked over Henry’s fine clothes, his judgement clear. “It’s not some rural, one-cell holding room. It’s not the sort of place you’d even have a clue about.”
With a voice dripping in derision, “Having avoided a stay in prison is not something to be ashamed of, I’d suggest.”
Léon’s grin deepened with the challenge. “Suggest what you’d like, but it’s exactly why your good friend will lose their head tomorrow.”
Henry’s fingers stopped, and the frozen face that locked onto Léon’s had visibly paled. “You can’t possibly know that.”
“You don’t think I know whose head I’m to take?”
“You don't know who they are.”
Léon leaned forward, face turned up in hate-filled victory. He had the upper hand now, and he used it to inflict whatever smallrevenge he could on the man, saying slowly, on a wide smile, “They’re all to die. Every last one of them. First thing tomorrow.”
Henry’s eyes were terror, sheer and unadulterated, and he twisted the rope in his hands, fingers whitening with the pressure as his eyes rambled about the room. Mouth tight, he swallowed, and Léon awaited the next joust. But Henry said, in a voice low and barely audible, “What do you mean, ‘all’?”
Léon leaned back in the chair, fingers drumming in a loud and repeated line that was deliberately designed to unsettle Henry further. “Every single execution, every single condemned man and woman, will die in one enormous show. Blood everywhere. It’s going to be a ghastly spectacle. I’m not sure I have a basket big enough to contain all the heads. I guess I’ll have to throw them to the crowd.”
Henry looked at Léon, a new and not-before-seen revulsion in his eyes. “You’re an animal.” He said it as though it was a new idea, a new conviction. Something in it stabbed at Léon because he was nothing of the sort, and it was exactly what he’d expected a man of Henry’s apparent rank to think of him.
He could have defended himself against the notion easily, but he’d gotten under Henry’s skin now and he liked it there far too well to be concerned with his reputation. “I’ll probably sell them for meat when I’m done. I can turn a tidy profit on the side doing that, you know. No one knows what goes into the stew at the inn, but I?—”
“Shut up!” Henry’s hands slammed down on the table, his face inches from Léon’s, and he raised a furious finger. “Not anymore. Not tomorrow. There isn’t a thing they can do without their prize pig to drop the axe.”
Léon laughed, loudly and obnoxiously. “If I’m not there to do it, do you really think that would stop them?” He leaned even closer with a sneer. “They’ll just find someone else without my precision. And believe me, you don’t want to see that.”
Henry held eye contact just long enough for Léon to see the light fade. Léon was too angry, too much on the attack to register the small jab in his gut that he might otherwise have identified as guilt or sympathy. He watched Henry pull away, walk to the other side of the room, bury his face in two hands, shaking his head. It was curious to see. Was there money tied up in it somehow? More than that? Léon prodded him. “And it’s not just my axe you need to worry about.”
He was referring to their new killing machine, of course, and it seemed to him as though Henry knew of it, or of something else, because the horror was unmistakable in his features. A hand pressed to his chest. He looked like he might crumple straight to the floor right then and there. “No. They wouldn’t. They…”
He dashed to the side of the room, ripped a bag open, and pulled out a charcoal and paper. He slapped it down on the table in front of Léon. “Draw it. Draw the prison. Tell me where the guards will be. Every one of them.”
Léon shoved it away with a shrug. “How should I know?”
A shaking hand pushed it straight back and held it there. Henry, looking deep into Léon’s eyes, begged for the first time, low and weak. “Please. Please, Léon… I will do anything you ask. Anything. I swear to you. Please help me. She’s…”
