Page 35 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Léon made a soft chuckling sound in his throat. As though he’d chosen the career appointed him by the very people Henry was so desperate to defend. “Tell me, if not me, who will your great republic find to take the heads of the people who disagree with you?”
“You misunderstand—deliberately, I think,” Henry declared. “After the revolution, there will be no need for such things. We’ll live in a fair and equitable society with enough for all. A government of the people, for the people. All moving as one glorious machine, with freedom for all. What crimes must we condemn people for then, when everyone has enough?”
Henry had begun to fascinate Léon. Here was an idealism and sweeping ignorance in such opposition he wondered that the two could exist inside the same man. “Oh, Henri, how can you be so naïve?” he asked, in perfect earnest. “All men are either corrupted or corruptible.”
“Are you speaking for yourself?”
“Indeed, I am. And for you too. I almost killed a man to get those keys today. A vile but innocent man. And you? Do you findyourself pushed in recent days? Or maybe you make a habit of stealing small children to get your way?”
Guilted close to silence, Henry said, “I do not.”
“Then there you have it. Desperate men have no morals. Desperate people will always do desperate things. And greedy people will always do greedy things. And it takes very few of each to throw your whole system out the window.”
Now it was Henry’s turn to scoff. “Do you have such a dark view of humanity?”
“Yes,” Léon said bluntly. “I’ve seen it first-hand my entire life. The system moves with all the care of a clock, tick tock, and if you get caught in the gears, it will grind you to gristle. The system offers a modicum of safety, but you do not want to put yourself in the centre of that mechanism if you value your limbs.”
“And that’s why you do it, then? Because you’re too scared to risk a limb?” Henry settled back on his hands, smug as a man who had already won his argument when he asked, “Is that why you executed your own father?”
There was a perfectly aimed stab at Léon’s heart. How did Henry know so much about him? Léon had put together enough to know that Henry must have been asking about him—that Henry had found out where he lived, who his brother was, when the boy would be at home with only a feeble old lady to defend him. But how long had he been in town? How long had he been watching him? Rather than answer the repulsive question, Léon asked his own. “Why did you choose me? Out of everyone in Reims, why was it me?”
“You work at the prison,” Henry returned.
“No, I don’t. Not really. Of every man who works there, I was the least able to help you. Why did you really choose me?”
Because I’d never seen such a beautiful man in my entire life and I thought you seemed kind…
Henry closed his eyes over the words he was sure he would never say aloud, and adopted a cold and cruel air, all the better to push Léon away with. “Because you’re a renowned killer. I thought you’d be ruthless, and I thought you’d get the job done.”
Léon was thankful Émile was asleep, so he didn’t have to hear that. The statement was everything he’d never wanted to be. And it was what he had become, it seemed. This was how a perfect stranger like Henry saw him. This was what his townsfolk must have said about him. This, despite all his good intentions, was his legacy. He would be remembered as nothing but a mindless, heartless, ruthless killer, so lacking in humanity, it wasn’t even worth considering how his brother’s kidnapping might have affected him.
An arm of the law.
A means to an end.
Henry could see exactly what he’d done—the impact of the blow he’d dealt. Léon’s grasping silence filled the clearing with a ghastly, thick atmosphere, charged with sadness, an overwhelming melancholy, and for the first time Henry got a glimpse of Léon—who he was beneath the reputation, beneath the front, beneath the show with his axe, and he saw instead a whisper of the broken, lost, trapped man, who Henry had forced into a corner.
Léon said, softly and calmly, “My father was a headsman. Did they tell you that?”
Henry had already given up hope of a response, least of all one so quiet and compelling. “They didn’t.”
“It goes down the family line, the job of executioner. You’re born into it. And I don’t claim that as any sort of defence—not for any of us. It simply is. But three generations in, my father tried to change that.” Léon’s face took on a distant aspect that pulled Henry closer. “I know a few letters. For reading. My father sent me away to Lyon, to school. He didn’t want this life for me,so when I was six, he sent me off. And I missed him. And I missed my mother. I cried every night at school, but I didn’t once complain to him, because I knew he wanted better for me than what he’d had.”
His face fell more miserable by the second, a hoarseness to his voice curdling Henry’s insides for having set that ball in motion, even as he found himself hanging on every word of Léon’s story. “One day—I’d only been at school for a few months—but one day, someone took note of my name. Some adult who knew what my family did. Someone so ridiculous and so cruel and so dreadful, they couldn’t stand to see me there at that school, with their children.” He glanced up at Henry. “You probably know I’m not allowed in the cathedral. I’m not allowed to touch the fruit at the market. People won’t touch my hands, because I use them to kill. Just like you wouldn’t, earlier today.”
Henry had barely even registered Léon’s offered hand that afternoon. He’d been so caught up in how to get him to do what he’d wanted, he’d never thought for a second that Léon might have taken the reaction that way. It wasn’t even a rejection, only a missed connection. But before Henry had gathered his thoughts enough to make sense of it, Léon spoke on.
“It was the same for my father, and that was what he was trying to save me from. He lost all his savings on that school, and he still said no. He said I would never touch that axe.” Léon took a moment, pulling his father’s image from the ashes of his past. “He never let me see the heads, when I was little. I knew what he did, but he never talked about it. He kept me safe from it. I took what little other work I could find, tarnished as my name was. I chopped wood. Funny, isn’t it?”
He laughed, but Henry couldn’t find it in himself to see the humour. He was much too caught up in the sadness and injustice of it all. The whole thing went so much deeper, was so much darker than he had ever imagined. But Léon was aheadsman now, so Henry listened on, waiting, as it were, for the axe to fall.
Léon knew as much. He quickly revealed, “My father was convicted. Sedition. And when he was thrown in prison, when he was tried and found guilty, I was expected to take up the axe. I refused. I couldn’t believe they’d even asked me to do it. But I was a cog in the machine. I was a name, a point on a piece of paper, a means to an end. There was an expectation, from my birth, from all around me, and they did everything they could to see that I ended up exactly where I needed to be. I lost my job. I lost my chance at an education. Every avenue was deliberately closed to me. But I still said no. It was my father’s only wish.”
Henry wanted him to stop. He knew in his gut what was coming. He knew with a horror, like watching a man about to go under the wheels of a great cart, there was nothing he could do.
“An uncle was called in to do the job,” Léon continued. “Because, by our ‘noble’ blood, he was the next in line for the role.” Henry raised an eyebrow, but Léon assumed, him being French, he must have known Léon’s surname and had some inkling of the way the system worked. “My father forbade me to see his execution. But I went anyway. To say goodbye, to support him. I don’t know. I needed to see it, I suppose. To put an end to it. To know he was gone.”
Léon curled arms around himself, against the cold and the memory, looking small in his sweater. “He was so sad. I could see it, but he didn’t cry. He went down with the last words, ‘Make it quick’. Imagine that…”
