Page 6 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
Closer, closer, and Léon, overexcited, desperate and frenzied, all but jumped out of his hiding place, giving Mollard a mighty shock and extracting from him such a cry of fright that it ricocheted across the court. Léon hadn’t expected it, and he gripped the rock twice as tight behind his back. “Citizen Mollard,” he vomited out, eyes as crazed as a sleepless and troubled man who was about to beat another to death with a brick.
Mollard clutched his chest as his pupils dilated into understanding. “Léon? What do you want?” As always, his speech had turned into sneering by the time he’d reached the end of his sentence.
“I need to…” Mollard turned away to shove the key into the lock. Léon, eyes on the back of the man’s balding head, raised the rock. The muscles in his arm readied.
Clink! The ring of keys dropped to the ground, and Léon caught himself just in time to stop the blow hitting the man’s spine as he bent to snatch them up.
Both hands now turned the rock over and over behind his back while Mollard’s red face rose up, angry, as though it was Léon’s fault he’d fumbled the keys. “What is it? Are you drunk?”
“No.” He certainly was. “Only, I need to get in there. With you. As soon as possible.”
Mollard narrowed his beady eyes at him. “What for? Why?”
“Because. I, uh, I have to… kill… you…” The man’s eyes widened and Léon stuttered, “S-someone! Kill someone! But not you. I wouldn’t… notyou…”
Mollard fiddled with the keys in his fingers, feeling for the right one while he kept his keen gaze on Léon. “At this time of day?” He sniffed. “You smell drunk.”
“No.” Léon gave his shirt an absentminded swipe, wondering if it was covered in vomit. He hadn’t thought to check. “No, I haven’t a drop in me.”
Not convinced, clearly, Mollard stood there awaiting more explanation.
“Um,” Léon meandered, “I need to hang them. All of them. The prisoners. I’m bringing back hanging. Just for a laugh, you know? Thought it might be fun.”
The already narrow eyes thinned to mocking slits. “What are you playing at?”
“I’m not playing at anything,” Léon breathed out anxiously.
“A pussy like you, with your ‘official torturer’, and your fancy axe, and your pretty show? You haven’t got the balls for hanging.”
Mollard shoved the key in the lock and turned it successfully this time, while Léon watched on, tight-lipped, rock begging to be used. “I’ve the balls for that and more, Citizen Mollard.”
With a nasty little chuckle, Mollard threw across one last disparaging look, said, “Fuck off,” then spat, narrowly missing Léon’s shoe with a foul globule of phlegm.
Léon’s immediate compulsion was to lift that foot and smash Mollard’s shin in two, but he had something so much better. Mollard pushed the door open, Léon raised his rock high, and “Léon!” came a loud cry from over his shoulder.
Spinning around, he pulled the rock into his coat in record time, but not fast enough to hide it from Souveraine’s appalled eyes.
“I wasn’t!” Léon shouted across the square.
The sound of her boots stomping on the ground smacked against the surrounding buildings with a demanding clap, and the two full milk pails she carried sploshed puddles of white on the ground as she went.
Mollard let out a long and low whistle, eyes crawling over every curve of her body, now taut with repulsion as her gaze moved from Léon to him.
“You don’t deserve that,” he said to Léon, loud enough for her to hear. Then he called out, “When are you going to let me make you an honest woman? Stop going around with him like a slut?”
“Léon.” This time, the way she said his name was a plea, curt as her voice was.
Though he’d never once felt more like caving a man’s head in, Léon immediately crossed the square to her until they were standing toe to toe, her blue eyes burning into his green ones. He dropped the rock by his foot, then stooped and took hold of the handles of both pails.
Souveraine watched every movement as intently as a mother might had her toddler been about to strangle a kitten.
He turned and began to make his way towards her inn. She stayed glued to his side, as silent and tense as he was, and they both shuddered when Mollard shouted out a parting, “I don’t mind having seconds!”
The very moment they’d turned the corner, she was in front of Léon, the buckets sloshing with his abrupt halt to avoid walking into her. “What was that?”
“Are you going to pretend you don’t want me to?” He said it with more anger than he would ordinarily have used with her, but he was beside himself with exhaustion and worry. His mind was reeling, trying to find a way to grasp back the lost opportunity. He set the pails down. “I need to go back.”
But Souveraine’s hand was firm on his arm. “No! What are you doing? Why would you do that?”
