Page 5 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
But… before he got to the prison…
Léon was back out the door, making for the prison in a blind panic. He had no clue where the warden lived. No idea what time he would arrive for work. Would anyone else arrive earlier?
It wasn’tthatuncommon for Léon to hang around the prison. He’d been trained in the art of the rope, like any other executioner, and it had, for a time, been routine for him to measure the condemned, their height and weight, in the hopes he could snap the neck at the fall and save a long and brutal public strangulation. But he’d never been good at it.
He shuddered at the memory.
He was, nevertheless, good at persuasion, and much like he’d persuaded the region’s head administrator that a devoted torturer would better fulfil their cause than ever he could, he’d managed to convince the local authorities that his axemanship would draw a better crowd to executions, and thereby set a better lesson for the townsfolk, than hanging ever would. And he’d been right about that, sans the one or two fanatics who’d gotten themselves imprisoned in the hope of dying by his hands. There was no accounting for madness. But Léon had done himself and the town a good turn with his axe, until just now, when his need to be inside that prison was greater than ever.
All this to say, he should have been capable of talking his way out of the mess.
But the warden… Thibault Mollard was a bastard and no doubt. He’d never do Léon a favour. In fact, chances were he’d do just about anything to make Léon’s life as difficult as possible.
He could tell him he needed to measure one up anyway… That he was bringing hanging back. But which prisoner to ask for? Maybe… Maybe he would say he needed to do a count of the condemned, to put in an order for rope?
Yes! That was perfectly logical.
But then, would he really need to see them in person to do that?
Léon stumbled through the night, boots scuffing noisily on the cobblestones, considering all his options.
That stupid fool with his secrecy had set them both up for failure. If only Léon knew who it was he wanted and when they were due to die.Ifthey were due to die! For perhaps this prisoner wasn’t even condemned, which would only make it more difficult for Léon to gain access to them.
He arrived at the prison to find the enormous wooden doors, as expected, locked up tight and bolted with iron. The stone edifice of the complex ran high into the night, disappearing into sickly, looming clouds. The thin slits in the solid wall, what few of them there were, sat high—too high for Léon to peer into.
He skirted some way around the perimeter, not really sure what he was looking for. After all, even if he could see in, what was he going to do? Call out, ‘Is one of you in there the accomplice of…’ He didn’t even know the man’s stupid name. All the short transit did was strengthen the conviction that there was only one way in: straight through those forbidding doors at the front of the building with the warden’s blessing.
Coming back to stand by the entrance, Léon threw himself against the solid wood to wait. His closed eyes brought up one horror, then another, visions of his brother crying for him, terrified, held at the end of that same knife the man had pulledon him, bound and gagged, hands tied, rope cutting into his delicate skin.
He began to pace, filling his eyes with everything real and not those terrible imaginings of his brother.
Midday.He had until midday. And the sky was just turning purple on the horizon. Plenty of time, he tried to tell himself.
But Mollard would never give him those keys and he knew it…
Head pounding, swimming with wine, Léon turned back sharply, then tripped, falling on his wrist with a painful whack before rolling onto his backside. Furiously, he searched about for the offending object that had done it, and like sunlight cutting through the clouds on a stormy day, his eyes lit on the very thing that seemed sent from Heaven to save him and his brother.
Léon scrambled forward, wrapping fingers around a cobblestone that was turned up with a particularly sharp corner protruding. It was loose enough to pull free with his bare hands. It was large and cream-coloured and heavy. In his strong grip, it would easily wield fatal damage…
He ripped it from the mud, and he paced, and he waited.
6
A BASTARD AND NO DOUBT
The tips of Léon’s fingers ached with cold, but still he clutched the stone. He trod a short line back and forth in front of the prison doors, perfectly conspicuous, but he wasn’t thinking about whether he’d be seen or whether he was likely to get away with the crime. He was barely thinking straight at all.
He’d decided he was going to hit Mollard over the head with that stone—maybe even kill him—then make away with the keys. He’d wait in the forest until the exchange was made, then he’d kill his brother’s kidnapper, too. Two murders. He and Émile would have no choice but to away after that. A moment he’d been dreaming of for years. Out of Reims, once and for all.
It was too soon—sooner than he’d ever thought it could happen—but his heart began to warm with the flame of excitement at the idea of escape.
Where to steal a horse? Two horses? And which direction to run in? Perhaps he should leave without Émile. Place him in Souveraine’s care, then come back to claim him when he’d made a fortune by… highway robbery? It was a desperate measure, to be sure, but no more desperate than becoming a headsman hadbeen. No more desperate than killing a warden and a kidnapper to save his brother.
The echo of boots clomping over worn stone snapped Léon’s figure to attention. He scrabbled around the edge of the building to wait and watch.
Closer, closer, Mollard came, relaxed and measured, like a man taking a morning stroll. A man enjoying the first rays of sunlight cutting through the yellow fog that had arrived with the scarlet rain. A man taking the air, reluctant to spend the day in the dank environment of the prison, extending his own freedom for as long as he could.
Léon heard the jingle jangle of his keys swinging on his belt. His spare fingers twitched at the thought of closing around them.
