Page 22 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
After a long and exacting assessment, Léon finally looked back down at the page, Henry took a deep breath, and a frown came across Léon’s forehead as he continued to draw. “I’ll tell you honestly, Henri, I don’t think there’s any way to help your sister. But if there is, if you could get her out, how do you expect to escape with a convicted witch?”
Henry, seeing the charcoal working across the paper, came to the table and sat opposite Léon for the first time, watching on eagerly. “We’ll head straight to Paris. Lose ourselves in the city there. Somewhere the people are intelligent, and-and-and educated, and don’t believe in outdated notions such as witchcraft.”
“You think it’s smarter to stay in France with a wanted woman?” Léon raised his shapely eyebrows over his sharp green eyes. “Brilliant plan.”
The mocking nature of the comment struck Henry as a touch playful, and his heart did an odd little bounce, despite the precarious nature of the situation. “We’ll be safe there,” Henry replied softly. “We have friends. I just need to get her out of prison, and we’ll be on our way.”
Léon eyed him a little longer, making some sort of judgement about him, Henry suspected. Then the charcoal returned to the paper until he finished by making three little Xs. Léon pushed it towards Henry, and with fingers longer and prettier than Henry had noticed before, he pointed at the first two marks. “The guards will be here, in the main room. They have a fire, and they’ll probably spend the night right by it. They’re supposed tocheck the prisoners twice during the night, but I do not believe they are very careful of their rounds.” His finger slid through the doorway he’d drawn on the page to another X. “This man will leave at ten o’clock. He keeps the keys to the prison. He will be locking the place up then, so…” It was here that Léon remembered the fake keys he’d given Henry, that Henry had accepted in good faith. Here he remembered that Henry couldn’t get into the prison at all after Mollard left.
His pulse ticking a little faster, Léon thought aloud, “You’d have to disable them somehow. The guards and the warden. One shot of your gun, and the whole town will come running.”
“I’m an excellent swordsman,” Henry replied, too readily, eyes fast on the paper. Léon could just about see the bloodbath playing out in Henry’s mind—leave Mollard dead on the floor, slip through that doorway, take one, then another of the guards. Nothing but marks on a page to him, but very real people to Léon, whether he liked them or not.
Should he tell him? Tell him that his keys were false, and he’d have to be there by ten? It was perhaps the only way to save the life of his sister, jailed on such a ridiculous accusation. But he saw murder in Henry’s eyes, and if he told him, he was, with no trial whatsoever, condemning the three other lives. Three at least. What if Henry was seen? How many more would he kill to get to her? And what right did Léon have to make this decision for any of them?
The swirl of thoughts, the weight of the fate only Léon could decide in that moment, began to suffocate him. He tried, “They have guns. They’ll shoot you on sight. I don't think you can get through this door and across the room to their fire and?—”
“Then I’ll shoot first.” He spoke the words with a finality that scraped down Léon’s spine.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? You’ll wake the whole town. A gunshot at that time of night—you’ll be killed before you can escape with her.”
“So be it.” Henry’s finger traced the circular stairs Léon had sketched, the long walkway to the cell his sister languished in. “This door, is it…” He looked up at Léon, a plea in his eyes. “It’s the same key?”
“Yes. It’s a skeleton key. But you’re not listening. You can’t get her out.”
“I don’t need to get her out,” Henry whispered, the flames of the fire reflecting bright in his desperate and confiding eyes. “I just need to make it quick.”
“Quick?” Léon repeated, his mind working overtime on how to get a point across that Henry seemed unable to grasp.
But then the sinking realisation twisted inside.
If he was caught, he wasn’t going to try to escape with her. He was going to shoot her dead to save her the pain and horror of the execution.
Just as quickly as the understanding struck him, Léon’s hand reached for Henry’s. “I won’t let her suffer.”
A sick grin pulled across Henry’s face, and he wrenched his hand away. His voice slipped to thin in harrowed disbelief. “What will you do? Give her more straw? A few extra twigs?” Léon made to form an answer and failed, so thrown was he by the response, but Henry talked on, sharply too, his voice raising on every word. “Extra wood? Make the fire burn a little faster? Just what exactly are you going to do for her?”
“You think…” The revulsion of the notion struck Léon, and he gasped out, “They’re not going to burn her! No, no! No, nothing like that!”
“That’s what they do with witches, is it not?”
“No. No, it’s not…” But even as the words left Léon, it occurred to him that he had no idea what exactly they did withwitches, because there had never been a witch tried or convicted in his entire lifetime, that he knew of. And another moment’s thought brought back the memory of Mollard’s filthy fingers on Catherine’s file, him saying she was a special case. Then a remembrance of DuPont saying he needed to talk to Léon about one of the condemned. ‘Special circumstances,’ he’d said. And then there was the pile of firewood by the door of the prison…
Heart hammering in his chest, Léon snatched the paper and charcoal back from Henry and thrust it towards Émile, tapping his finger down on the bottom of the page. He leaned close to the boy, but Henry heard him say, “Write ‘witch’ for me.”
Clear, intelligent eyes met his. “Witch?” Émile confirmed, quickly putting charcoal to paper.
“Witch… Maybe ‘witchcraft’,” Léon corrected. “That’s what she’s been convicted of?” He looked up at Henry.
Henry could only murmur a vague confirmation as he watched on in astonishment, Émile scrawling out the letters for Léon in a neat and practiced hand. He gave the paper back to Léon. Léon ripped the word from the bottom of the page, his chair scraped against the floorboards as he pushed it back, and he announced, “I have to go. Émile come.”
Henry jumped up just as fast as Léon had, but with some measure of confusion, rounding the table to meet him. “I’m sorry, no, you’ve been abducted.”
Léon pulled to a stop right before his chest hit Henry’s, Émile bumping into the back of him with the suddenness of his halt. “No, listen, this is serious. I…” He stared into Henry’s eyes, no longer scared of him now that he believed he knew what he was. And despite Henry’s vile words only minutes before, he found he didn’t have the heart to say out loud what he was thinking: that there was every chance they were going to strap Henry’s little sister to a post in the town square in the morning and set her on fire. And that they’d likely expect Léon to be the one to drop theburning torch to her pyre. He nodded faithfully and said, “I will return.”
Henry’s gaze flitted to Émile. “Then leave the boy.”
Henry’s look was fearful, and Léon understood it perfectly—his only firm grip on the situation was slipping away—but Léon wasn’t about to trust a desperate stranger with his brother. He held out his hand, offering to seal the promise with a shake. For Léon, his word was true every time. He prided himself on it. He would come straight back as soon as he had the facts. “I think I can… I can try to stop this. I can talk to the administrator. I can do things to at least make it better. Please. You have to let me try.”
