Page 39 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
The tension was palpable, and there were a few in the audience who couldn’t keep themselves from screaming out encouragement.
Léon curled the second finger.
“Off with his head!” came a gurgling cry.
Just one finger held the rest of the crowd enraptured. Then he folded it.
“Godspeed,” Léon said. He wrenched the rope back, the blade came down, and even Léon jumped with the suddenness of it. The head was off and in the basket, blood painting the stage as it leaked through the coarse wicker.
The whole crowd looked to Léon, as they always did. And he had no axe to hide beneath. He’d lost his count. Thirty seconds. Fingers shaking, scrambling for the rope, he pulled. He did it as slowly as he could. The neck of the man was so closely hewn it formed a suction against the metal, and made a sickening squelch as Léon heaved the blade back up. But the crowd didn’t care how long it all took. That was now part of the show. Léon’s bare and beautiful arms bulged with every pull, his firm and muscular legs pressed into shining leather as he braced his body for the effort, and blood ran from the blade in festive red rivulets.
He fastened the rope, leaned his long body down, and snaked his fingers into the dead man’s hair. With a contraction of every supporting muscle to hold himself brave and authoritative, Léon thrust his arm out long, and let the dead, open eyes fall over the crowd that screamed.
He watched them—clapping, howling with pleasure, grinning from ear to ear. And how he hated them. Every last one of them. And there he stood, a smile on his lips, murder in his heart, his arm shaking under the strain and the rage.
“Next!” he cried. Then he threw the head into the crowd, spattering dozens of them in the fresh, warm blood they’dbegged for as the head rolled over and over in the air, cracking down on the pavement where the crowd parted for it to be passed around, kicked and jostled underfoot, as the next condemned man came to face his fate.
And so Léon’s work day had begun. For the next nine prisoners, the pattern repeated itself, though he didn’t give them another head to play with. Not yet.
Chop went the blade of the guillotine, snap went the board as it was pulled back, crack went the platform as it was flipped, the body rolled, and bang, it smashed down into the cart.
It was on the tenth head, as the large basket grew dangerously full, that Léon noticed the telltale signs of the blade’s dulling edge. That neck came open with a crack, more a slit than a slice, and when Léon raised the goods, the skin hung frayed at the neck.
He had seven to go.
Chop and snap and bang and drip, and off came the next, and this with a bruising about the wound, as of blunt-force trauma.
A creeping chill that worked its way up Léon’s arms and over his shoulders was thrown off by a stretch of his neck as he called for the next man.
He was almost done. And he’d had a feeling this would happen, which is exactly why he’d ordered the day’s executions the way he had, with the most vile criminals saved for last. He wouldn’t be pausing the show to unscrew those bolts.
Chop and snap and bang and drip, and off came the next, and this with a long string of sinew, a rip of flesh from the blade. But the head was off. Fast, in one blow, still what most people would have called ‘humane’.
And so Léon worked until he called for the second to last. This man, he knew. This man was guilty. This man had been convicted of crimes Léon didn't even want to announce to the crowd. This man had chased Souveraine through the streets atnight. He hoped the man had spent the long last morning of his life, terrified of what was to come. He hoped he’d been miserable.
Léon announced what he’d done, but he offered the man no last words. Nor did he offer him a blindfold. Unlike the others, this man was laid out on his back, staring up at the blade. Léon enjoyed fastening the lunette across his neck.
The man cried. He begged for mercy. Called out for God.
Léon took the rope in hand. He yanked it, but just as the audience and the condemned screamed out, he tightened his hold, and paused the blade inches from the man’s throat.
“Do it!” cried an audience member.
“Kill him!” screamed another.
“Marry me, Léon!” called a third.
Léon flashed them his widest grin, three girls swooned to the ground, and DuPont, watching from a high balcony, nodded his approval.
Léon raised the blade slowly.
Shhhhhing! It moved fast along its well-oiled tracks andshink! Léon caught it. A communal groan of faux frustration swept into the air and the condemned pissed himself.
There were perks to the job.
Inch by inch, hand over beautiful hand, Léon pulled the blade back up, and it was then something caught his eyes. Something black, moving at the back of the crowd.
He looked across the square, and in full horror, his eyes focused on Henry.
