Page 56 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“It’s not,” said Léon.
“It’s fine,” Henry insisted.
Léon tsked his tongue, then shuffled to Henry’s side and grabbed his elbow.
“I said it’s f-ahhhh!” He sucked air over his teeth as Léon pressed the washcloth to the cut.
“Don’t be a baby,” Léon laughed.
“It stings!” Henry slightly wondered if Léon enjoyed hurting him, just a bit, because after all, he did deserve it. But Léon’s smile was sweet, his tone kind and playful, and it would have been the smallest tilt of Henry’s head just then to steal a kiss from him. He stared at the gorgeous lips, and when Léon’s questioning emerald eyes caught him, he heard himself say, “Stay the night.”
Léon’s movements slowed. What did he mean? Did he mean… No. Léon must have been mistaken. But it was enough to make him drop Henry’s arm and sink down by the tub, hiding his embarrassment by scrubbing himself extra hard. “If you want the carriage, to hide Catherine, you should take it.”
“I don’t. That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay.”
Henry passed the washcloth across his ribs. Léon followed the movement. Henry offered, “If you want to leave now, I’ll give you a shirt. And… You could take my cloak. It’s cold.”
A shiver across Léon’s shoulders seemed to emphasise the very word. And he thought of Henry out on the road, no home, travelling with everything he owned and down a shirt and a cloak. It was an incredibly kind offer when he considered it that way. “I couldn’t do that.”
“You can’t go back like that,” Henry said. “You’ll freeze. And all because you don’t want to stay the night here.”
“It’s not that,” Léon replied softly.
“I think it is. Let the boy sleep. Let the bar wench sleep.” Léon attempted to break in but was spoken over. “Just get some rest. It’s safe here.”
“I have to clear my name. Maybe that means very little to you, but it means everything to me. It’s all I have.” With that statement, the barn and the water and all his velvet ideas of Henry fell away. What an intoxicating illusion it had been.
Léon dipped his head down to the water, rinsing his hair, scrubbing at it with soap, trying to get every piece of Henry and the pit and the last few days off of him. Because it wasn’t only the filth. It was the beauty and the tenderness he’d found. And it was crushing him. It was every soft word Henry spoke, every small thought for him, the idea of a bed with him. He had been surviving—doing fine with Émile and Souveraine and his life. He ran the cloth over his arms, working to erase it all, and he felt the blade in his hands, and it was Sophie’s face, and Marie’s face, and it was on and on, and it felt like it was never going to stop.
Then it was Henry’s hand, gentle on his shoulder, and Léon looked up in shock.
“Don’t go back.” The frigid air sharpened until it felt like pins in Léon’s lungs. Henry, sitting on the wet floor beside him, moved a hand to his cheek. “Stay the night.”
Something close to a cry crept up Léon’s throat, and he choked it down. Henry tilted his head, his eyes fathomless, with a kindness and an understanding Léon hated to see there, revolted against, because it made him feel too vulnerable. And Henry asked, “Are you not worn down by it?”
“Worn down by it?” Léon repeated, feeling as lost and lifeless as whatever was at the very bottom of that deep pit of bodies.
“This life,” whispered Henry, his finger stroking over Léon’s cheek. “You must tire of the life of an executioner, all the trappings that go along with it.”
Léon shied away from him, giving a fake smile that came off as both curious and cynical, and he spoke the cruelest words he could gather up, aimed to belittle Henry, to push him away. “What a luxury it must be to be able to be ‘worn down’ by things.” He slapped Henry’s hand away. “No, Henri. I’m not worn down. I don’t get to be worn down.”
Léon climbed to his feet and moved for a towel.
The comment had ruffled Henry to bewildered defensiveness, and he followed, snatching up another towel. “Is it not human to be tired? Or to object?”
Léon let out an incredulous chuckle. “Look around you. What’s humane about this existence? You see so much promise in the world, Henri, because you’ve been given all the beautiful things it has to offer on a plate. If you saw daily how most of us live—not for a couple of hard years, but from the cradle—if you saw the darker side of humanity…” Léon’s eyes misted over, and he tried to blink it away. He knew how unfair he was being. He believed just then that Henry’s intentions were pure, that his heart was good. And that twisted Léon’s own heart because he wanted it. He wanted that purity and optimism and that way out. So he said truthfully, softly, “I wish I could see the future you see. I wish I could touch that. I wish I could believe, like you do. But I cannot.”
And all Henry saw just then was Léon. He looked straight into the unveiled and gaping nothingness inside Léon’s heart. The hole that’s scraped out of a person when every avenue in life has been blocked, every beloved thing broken or taken away, every door closed before he got a foot to the threshold. It was a vast emptiness, populated only with responsibility and death and worry. With the belief that his goodness, what little he could conjure, might be the only goodness he would ever see in this life. The short and hard life that was killing this man, one head at a time, as he stood steadfast on the scaffold, letting the axedrop, over and over, day after day, a little piece of himself ebbing away with the flow of blood from every severed neck. Hack and hack and hack went the axe, and tick and tock went the clock, his precious and beautiful existence ticking away with it.
Henry saw Léon whole and in a new light, like he’d never seen him before. He knew that he admired this man deeply, in a way that made his gut ache. He wanted to take him in his arms, pull his chest against his own, and let his heart fill up the cavernous space inside of Léon. As though his heart, swollen in his chest, could beat big and strong enough for the both of them—bleed that life back into Léon that had been taken from him. Give him the hopes and dreams that had slipped away from him so long ago.
But Léon, having let the silence rest between them for too long, said, “Goodnight.”
Henry grabbed his hand. Léon pulled his back by instinct, and Henry grasped it harder until Léon settled, more surprised than upset by his touch.
Henry said only, “I’m sorry.” For what could he say? What else could he say after every awful thing he’d done? Every putrid thing he’d said? And to this man, who he now felt unworthy to even lick his shoes.
