Page 9 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“Yes!” DuPont wrapped a feverish hand around Léon’s forearm. “Just watch.”
“Watch what?” Léon snapped, finally at the end of his tether. “Why are we standing around, staring at a—” The Parisian yanked his arm, pulling a rope with it. The slanted metal dropped.Fast. Faster than Léon could ever have estimated it might fall. It slid with a loudshink!landing with a deadly squelch, which dropped the sheep’s head at Léon’s feet in less time than it took him to finish his sentence: “—sheep…”
A stunned silence took the room before shouts of excitement, congratulations, and calls to get more sheep filled the small space. All this while Léon stared down at that yellow eye that twitched up at him, at the tongue that fell fat and useless on the floor, at the mouth that moved still, but bleated no more.
“An instant kill!” the Parisian narrated as though he were at a horse race. “Painless, efficient, the great leveller of the people!”
Blood ran down the front of the machine, across the floor, beneath the severed head, beneath Léon’s shoes.
“It’s called the Louisette,” DuPont explained.
“I know what it is!” Léon shouted. “I told you I didn’t want one.” Of course he knew what it was. In theory. He’d heard talk of the great killing machine, not that he’d ever seen a picture to recognise one. But he had fought with DuPont over it many times, always insisting his axe would do the job a dozen times better.
With a placating nod, as though mollycoddling a child who’d just made an incredibly stupid remark, DuPont spoke over himin a kind voice. “They’re all the fashion in Paris. And never let it be said Reims couldn’t keep up with the demands of the age, eh?” He raised his chin to the Parisian. “Show him how it’s done.”
Léon was man-handled around behind him to where the sheep’s body lay on the platform, lifeless. Léon was no stranger to headless corpses, but there was something unnerving about this one, up on a plank designed for death, body against the blade, that Léon now noticed was weighted with a huge chunk of heavy stone. That, he figured, must have provided all the raw power his arms had been honed to wield for so many years.
“Pull this rope,” the Parisian directed. He held it out for Léon, and Léon took it, weakly, horrified but curious. “Pull it,” the man insisted.
Léon’s hand tensed on the waxed rope, and he pulled. He didn’t have to pull hard. The blade slid easily. With a sickening suction of flesh against a slanted cleaver, the metal lifted, and the sheep’s remains sloughed off. Dripping, the blade rose up and up until it hit the top with a thud.
The Parisian took the rope back and fastened it to a hook. “And now,” he said, a wide and secretive grin about his face, “the pièce de résistance…”
With that, he took hold of the board upon which the headless sheep’s corpse lay, slid it back, and flipped it up. The body rolled off the plank and flopped down on the floor, sawdust and straw glistening red with still-seeping blood.
“So you see,” the man concluded, “the body goes directly into a box or onto a wagon, and you are done. Minimal fuss, minimal clean-up.”
DuPont’s eyes could not have been wider or more excited. “See that, Léon? We’ll have them at the pit in no time!”
Léon could barely gather his thoughts to provide either enthusiasm or condemnation, but he didn’t have to provide ananswer just then, because Mollard wandered over to the sheep’s head and kicked it, settling a glower on Léon. “Any man can do your job now.”
It took the repetition of this idea for it to successfully seep into Léon’s harried brain. When it did, it was even more horrifying than the machine before him and the dead creature lying limp next to it. The fear of losing his livelihood at the drop of a blade was too sharp and fast a shock for Léon to try to hide from his expression.
DuPont caught it and rushed to ease the blow. “We’ll always require a respectable hand to pull the rope,” he said decisively and warmly, giving a nod in Léon’s direction that sent Mollard striding off angrily to the other side of the room, keys swaying with every step.
DuPont had loved Léon for the position of executioner from the moment he saw him with an axe in his hand, and he treated him well to keep him chopping. In general, Léon put a nice face on things, played the crowd to both their advantage, and that alone made him irreplaceable. But more than that, he was, very nearly, actually irreplaceable, as per the traditional system.
Léon’s noble blood put him front and centre at the end of a long and unbroken line of executioners. Respected men, once upon a time, father then son, then son, then son, who were all damned to the family business ever since the day one of their kin, way back when, had picked up the axe. From that moment, the line was tainted. There was no other work available to the eldest male of that line, quite deliberately, and there never would be. It was an expectation and assignation that sat heavily on Léon from the moment of his birth.
It wouldn’t have been completely impossible to find someone else whose rank would add the required polish to the tarnished job. But it would have been hard. And they wouldn’t have been a beautiful showman like Léon was. Not even little Émile, whowas a few years away yet from being able to lift the axe quite so effectively as his big brother.
Meanwhile, Léon needed the money, what little he could get, desperately. Famine had swept the nation for years, jobs were difficult to come by, especially for him, so he made sure his relationship with DuPont worked as unquestionably as good wine with good cheese.
Reassured by DuPont’s words, Léon quickly attempted to turn the approval to his advantage. “I think it’s marvellous,” he lied, eyes on the keys swinging across Mollard’s dirty pants. “Who shall we execute first? I propose I do an assessment of the prisoners and pick someone who would make a fine spectacle.”
“Wonderful!” DuPont virtually yelled. Léon stepped forward, exultant, hand out, ready to accept the keys, when DuPont continued, “But there’s no need.”
Pale, Léon floundered. “No need? What do you mean?”
“I’ve just received news that we’re expecting an influx of prisoners. The revolution is moving ahead at a faster pace, and that means we’ll be expecting the cells to be a little more crowded than usual. They’re transporting men from some of the neighbouring prisons so they can all have their day in court a little sooner. Therefore, all our current condemned are being moved up the line to make space. We’re going to do the lot tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Léon cried.
“Tomorrow!” DuPont confirmed.
“Everybody?” Léon cried.
“Every last soul. The lot. All in one go.”
