Page 27 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Léon gasped. “Seventeen?”
“Seventeen. Wonderful. You watch how those heads roll, and if there’s any trouble, we’ll do it however you like next time. But it’s important we move fast on this one. It’s the first time the people of Reims will see the machine in action, and we need them to love it. I want you to put on a show like never before.”
“But—”
“And the girl? Remember, you need to make that as subtle as can be. Get her up there, get it over and done with. Can you squeeze her in somewhere good?”
The thought of Catherine up there in the chill of morning, blindfolded and disoriented, cold and crying, being laid out on the platform, her young life snuffed out so callously for absolutely nothing, made Léon ill. He’d killed innocents before. He’d done it only the day before—his own Godmother. And that sat heavily enough with him up there above the wondering faces of passers-by, beneath the eyes of God, if any such thing hadn’t given up watching over him long ago, after all the sins he’d committed.
But now it felt… different. It felt like he’d taken just about all of it that he could take.
And how he wanted Henry to save her…
The thought struck him like an axe in the neck.
He knew things like that weren’t possible. Last-minute reprieves never came, not ever, and he’d learned to steel himself against hope, because hope only led to crushing disappointment.
But there it was.
The strange, long-suppressed ghost ofhope.
He wanted to believe it could happen. He wanted that something warm in his worn down, cynical heart—wanted to believe there was a goodness in fate or destiny or whatever celestial machine set the events of his daily life in motion.
Strange, the places his mind went, unaccustomed, thinking over the chances Henry had, the likelihood of him being run through with a sword just as soon as he attempted the rescue, his body dead and disposed of before Léon even arrived the next day to decapitate his sister. And that whole nightmare over. Just like that. Their lives and their story gone, scrubbed from existence and history, and then back to work the next day.
He snapped back to reality when he realised the way he was being watched by DuPont. Far too closely.
In an attempt to guard himself from undue interest, he said, “She’ll be first. The very first of the morning. I think it will be an exciting surprise for the crowd to see her go like that. They’ll remember the machine, not her. Then we’ll move straight on to number two. And Sophie’s famous; they can’t wait to see her die. I think they’ll forget all about the girl by the time we’re through.” Léon’s well-practiced defensive duplicity allowed the words to roll off his tongue with ease.
“Perfect. She’ll be down the bottom of the body cart, never to be heard of again. Good lad. Now I have one last thing to show you.”
DuPont motioned to some men below, but Léon paid them little heed. His eyes were back on the guillotine. He put a foot up onto the platform where the bodies were to be laid out flat before death. He was about to climb up, but DuPont rushed over to halt him. “Not that way. That’s what I want to show you.”
A bleat broke over Léon’s attempted reply, snatching his attention as a sheep was shoved up the stairs towards them. “Not again,” Léon groaned. “Is this necessary?”
“Just one more. You need to see this.”
“Can’t you just tell me?” Léon protested, being moved aside roughly so the sheep could be lifted up onto the platform.
“Seeing is believing,” DuPont returned, rather dramatically, then, “Cart!” he shouted down.
A horse was tapped, and a cart shifted forward until it was next to and below the guillotine. At the same time, the wooden bars were brought down around the bleating creature’s head to hold it in place. Léon rushed back to DuPont. “You’ll only dull the blade by doing this. Surely, you can spare the sheep and?—”
“Pull!” DuPont yelled.
The Parisian’s hand wrenched the rope, and the blade came down, just as swiftly and blindly as before. The second sheep’s head of that very long day tumbled to Léon’s feet.
“Could you please stop doing that!” he shouted.
DuPont held up a hand to silence him. “Just watch.”
He nodded giddily to the Parisian, who flipped the platform, and the sheep’s body tumbled directly off the guillotine, dropping with a splat and a bang into the cart below. DuPont’s hands rubbed together. “How’s that for efficient?”
Léon’s eyes remained wide on the sheep’s haemorrhaging carcass, dead on the floor of the deep cart. He was utterly horrified by the manner of disposal, as careless as throwing an off-cut of meat to the butcher’s shop floor to be trod into sawdust.
“Then we simply drive them to the pit,” DuPont carried on, like a centipede slipping along Léon’s shoulder and into his ear, “tip the cart up, and that’s the lot, done and dusted, all in one go.”
“That’s dreadful,” Léon stated on a barely audible breath.
