Page 21 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“Overboard?” Léon also repeated.
“Yes, yes, overboard. Into the sea. At night. And drowned. Mind you, I was in my bunk sleeping all the while, but I awoke to some furore, discovered Catherine missing, then soon found she’d been thrown in the brig.”
Léon, well caught up in the tale by now, sat forward. “What can have happened?”
“A freak wave is my best guess, for what else could have done it? It’s not as though there are kraken about the channel, sweeping men off their boats.”
“Certainly not. But then how did she end up in the brig?”
“It’s quite beyond my understanding.” The same hand that had been in the air roamed through his hair nervously. “Perhaps the company didn’t want to pay the insurance on the lives of the men they’d lost, and so they decided to blame my poor sister.”
Léon’s eyes and brow narrowed in confusion. “For what? For a wave?”
“That’s the very thing, you see? They have her trumped up on a charge of witchcraft!”
“Witchcraft!” Léon almost yelled, shocked as he was. “This day and age?”
“I know!” said Henry, shoving himself to standing and strutting a few paces away, arm flying out to exemplify their shared opinion on the matter. “Utterly ridiculous. No one believes in that nonsense anymore. I, personally, had thought better of France, with this so-called enlightenment.”
“We are very enlightened!” Léon protested. “There must be some mistake. It can’t be for witchcraft. Are you sure?”
“I attended the trial myself, if you could call it that. Every spare man of the ship attested they’d seen her blast the men off board with a swish of her hand. And someone said the ship wasn't wet enough after the accident to support the theory of a wave. Well, I ask you, water dries, doesn’t it?”
“That it does,” shouted Léon, in firm agreement that Catherine’s situation was beyond a joke. “Sixteen men? How could anyone do that? It’s an act of God!”
“Exactly right,” shouted Henry, raised to equal fervour. “It was some small town, some stupid jurisdiction of peasantsand dead-brained fishermen and lard traders and… Oh, well, it hardly matters now. You see what I’m up against. They brought her to Reims, not another word about it, due to be executed, and that’s when I came to you.”
Léon laughed, a cold laugh, and the short-lived camaraderie died a fast death. “Came to me?”
“More or less,” mumbled Henry, a touch of pink about his handsome cheeks. “But we’re here now. And, to give you due credit, you’re far more receptive to our situation than I thought you’d be.”
Léon was very receptive. The only problem was, Léon was far more experienced with the long arm of the law in France than Henry was. And were there ways to extricate wrongly convicted people from prison in time to save their lives, he’d have exercised that power dozens of times. It was almost certainly a hopeless case, yet the ridiculous nature of the matter, should Henry’s claims turn out to be true, had Léon in its grip from the start. Pushing all his newly roused anger aside, he took up the charcoal and began scrawling the plan of the prison. As he drew, he asked, “What should I call you?”
The air turned thick. The silence brought Léon’s eyes up. Henry searched them, swallowed, then, “Henry.”
Léon’s lovely lips curled about the sound. “Hen…”
“Hen-Hen-Henri!” he blustered out. “Henri! It was just…” He coughed, rather dramatically. “Sorry, my throat. Henri. That’s my name. Henri. And you’re Léon, correct?”
“Lyon.”
“Léon.”
“Lyon.”
“Léon?”
“Lyon,” Léon repeated a little louder.
“Le… Le…”
“Léon Lyon, that is my name.”
Henry scrunched his brow. “Léon Léon?”
“Oh my god.” Léon hid his forehead against his hand. “Lé-on Ly-On. I’m twice the lion.”
“You’re twice…” Henry pushed his lips together. Hard. Léon stared at him, harder, and Henry kept perfectly still as his insides threatened to explode in laughter.
