Page 25 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
A disbelieving laugh sounded in the back of Léon’s throat, weakly. “Did she sign a confession?”
The man’s voice softened in response. “No. She’s simple. She can’t write, and she can’t speak, and I’m not sure she fully understood what was going on.”
“Then surely you agree she shouldn’t be here?” he tried.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” DuPont said. “And it doesn’t matter what you think. But I will tell you this. That simplicity, the circumstance that she can’t speak, is the only thing that saved her from torture.” Struck into tense silence, Léon listened carefully. “Women don’t give up those confessions easily, and why would they? The pyre is waiting for them. But if this case gets attention, if they’re forced to open this up to the world at large, the court will get their confession out of her one way or the other. And it won’t be pretty.” DuPont pushed the point home. “I knew this one would be hard for you. That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it. Believe me, the best thing you can do right now is extend her the mercy of ending it quickly.”
He scrutinised Léon’s face so intently that Léon dropped his head, but with it, Léon gave a small, hopeless nod of agreement.
“Good lad,” said DuPont. “When you’re done reading that, come out to the square. I’ve got something to show you.”
DuPont stepped past Léon to leave, but Léon extended a hand to catch him. “The guardian,” he said softly. “Who are they? Shouldn’t they be here?”
“A brother,” DuPont replied. “Very loud at the start of it all. According to that,” he pointed at the file, “he broke her out of the holding cell in Dieppe. God only knows how. No one caught up with them until they reached Rethel, making for the border, I suppose. When they found the girl again, she was alone, and no one’s seen shot of him since she arrived in Reims. Seems he’s slunk off somewhere, abandoned her.”
Léon’s chest gave an unexpected squeeze at just how incorrect that notion was. “And her parents?”
“Couldn't be contacted. Apparently they’ve fled Paris, what with all the commotion. Nobody knows where they are.”
“But why should they flee? Are they monarchists?”
“How should I know?” replied DuPont. Fair point, Léon considered, but then DuPont concluded the conversation by adding quietly, “But from what I hear, the family would put the Queen to shame with their excesses. Probably a smart time to go on the run. If only they’d thought to take their daughter with them.”
He pressed a consoling hand into Léon’s arm on the way out, and Léon’s fingers scrunched into the bundle of papers. He’d kill to know what it all said. About the girl, about Henry, about the whole bizarre case. He flipped a few pages over, fanning them out. It was just scribble to him. He dropped the lot on Mollard’s desk with the instruction, “Keys.”
“You’ve already been in there once today,” Mollard complained, scratching the papers into a neat pile.
“You heard Bernard,” Léon snapped. “Special circumstances. Give me the keys.”
With a huff, Mollard pulled open a rattling drawer and produced the loop of keys. Moments later, Léon was back at the cell door. He opened the hatch and two sets of eyes fell upon him, one scared, one defiant. But Sophie’s face soon softened into a smile, and she leapt up, fingers on his within seconds. “What news?”
“None good,” he said with a shake of his head.
She passed a worried look back at Catherine, who watched on more openly than the last time, guarded, but with an interest in Léon inspired by, Léon presumed, Sophie’s kind words about him.
Léon looked over the balcony to see that the guards were well across the room by their warming fire, unable to hear him, then whispered, “Catherine?”
The recognition in her face made it clear that was indeed her name—that Henry hadn’t lied about it. She made no more response, only watched Léon with trepidatious curiosity.
He reached into his pocket and pulled forth the carefully concealed scarf. It took only the smallest glimpse of the rich green silk for Catherine to let out a cry and fly from the bed to Léon. “Mmm. Oh!” The utterings were cut off in a mess of tears, and Sophie looked at Léon with raised eyebrows, inasmuch to say she didn’t realise she could form those sounds at all, so silent had the girl been until that moment. But Léon gave it little thought as Catherine’s hands grasped his desperately, those big hazel eyes he knew well now begging him to speak.
He glanced darkly at Sophie and whispered, “Your complete secrecy. Please.”
Sophie gave a conspiratorial nod and leaned in close. But just as Henry’s message was about to spill from Léon’s mouth, it caught right on the edge of his lips. Henry said he would come. He said he wouldn’t let it end with her execution. But Henry had no clue he didn’t have the keys or any access to Catherine whatsoever. He had no idea it would all be over in a matter of hours. How could Léon say what he’d asked—give the girl that hope?
Catherine’s breath came fast in her excitement, her fingers gripping his painfully. He hated having to disappoint her. And she’d be dead in the morning, so what did it matter if she spent her last night hopeful?
“He’s coming,” Léon whispered. “He’s… He’s still figuring everything out, but he said to let you know… He won’t…” His heart gave out. How could he lie to her like that? DuPont’s words came back on him.Give her that one mercy. He took Sophie in with his gaze, then corrected to the brutal truth, just as gently as he could. “You two are first. Catherine, then you, Sophie. And you’ll have a blindfold. And you’ll lie down. And I’ll help. And it will be so fast?—”
An enormous tremor rattled over Catherine’s body, creeping with each of Léon’s words from her knees, through her stomachand chest and right along her arms. A curious shaking started in the groaning walls and sagging mattresses of the prison, and even the escaped straw on the floor began to heave. But both Léon and Sophie were too concerned with the girl’s fit to pay attention to another earthquake.
She would have fallen to the stone floor had Sophie not caught her in her broad arms and bundled her up tight. She pulled Catherine wholly onto her lap, and Catherine curled into her like a child. She sucked in thin breaths on a high-pitched wheeze, and “Shhhh,” said Sophie, stroking her hair. “Shhhh.”
Catherine’s long and pale fingers lifted her brother’s scarf to her face. She buried her nose in it, breathing deep. Léon wondered if she knew by feel that it contained the cake—if that was the comfort she sought—or if it was the scent of Henry. The lost touch of a loved one, her last comfort on this earth. And something inside him snapped at the thought—something primal and protective at seeing the helpless safety she sought in the touch of his silk and the smell of him, just the same way Émile would twist his little fingers in Léon’s hair. What Henry must have been to her to make her hold on to that remnant of him so desperately.
“Catherine,” he said, calling up one hopelessly lost look from her. Then, in a moment of fantastic and altruistic madness, “He’s trying… I’m… He hasn’t stopped thinking of you. And…” He firmed up his voice. “He said he won’t let you go like this. He said to stay brave and keep doing what you’re doing. And I believe…” He hesitated over the words, then said what he thought, at that moment, to be true. “I believe he will come tonight. But for now…” He nodded to the scarf. “Open it.”
Her movements were slow, such overwhelm as the myriad ideas had set upon her fragile mind, but Catherine folded back the layers of the scarf to reveal the small cake, miraculously intact after its rough treatment. She ran fingers over the stickytop, pressed them together and felt the viscous texture, watched the strands of honey pull apart and break as she opened her hand again.
