Page 92 of Love Beneath the Guillotine
“We’re close. It’s just across the Seine.”
Their path took them past what had been the King’s palace and gardens. Léon couldn’t help but study the famous buildings, thinking over the massacre that had occurred there just a few weeks prior. Was it six-hundred guards slaughtered? Seven hundred? As well as the palace staff, all of them hacked to pieces defending the King as he tried to flee.
It had been cleaned up since then, of course, the gore and the bodies, whatever wild dogs hadn’t eaten after men were pulled apart, their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths, their heads lodged on stakes and paraded around.
But unlike Léon, Henry saw the scene in a haloed light. Every scar of the battle was a mark of pride. The revolution was powering on. Real change was happening. “Incredible, isn’t it?” he marvelled aloud. “The entire course of history changed in a few hours. Finally, people will be able to choose their own paths in life. Old Louis will sign whatever he’s told to now they’ve got him under wraps.”
Léon wondered how he might have viewed the idea had he not seen up close those who came to watch his executions. He wondered how much of their ferocity was patriotism, idealism, and how much was pure blood lust—an animal instinct he’d witnessed often enough to learn to be terrified of it. “So you agree with what they did?”
“I believe they were left with little choice but to do it. He’ll never give power without force, and that’s been made abundantly clear. He’s an enemy of the people, and he’ll get what’s coming to him.”
Prescient, the words appeared, as they then reached the end of their long avenue and arrived in what had months earlier been called Place Louis XV, now renamed Place de la Révolution. Inthe centre of the enormous square stood the still-empty plinth that had held the recently toppled statue of the dead king for whom the square was once named.
But that wasn’t what drew the eye.
Off to the side, in the opposite corner, was something else raised high on its own stage. Something that would be remembered long after everyone had forgotten the dismantled statue, the old name of the square, or most of the men and women who would meet their end right there in the coming months.
This guillotine sent the same cold reverberation through Léon’s limbs as the last had. This one seemed larger, was older, and was charged with all the grandeur appropriate to the saviour of an oppressed people.
“Fabulous, isn’t she?” said Henry, pulling Destroyer up. The beast threw his black head back with something that looked like agreement, and it didn’t help Léon’s curling insides when Azazel leaned her head romantically against Destroyer’s. How the hell did this kind of news spread between French farm animals, anyway?
“She?” asked Léon, a little skeptical of the title.
“The Widow. Madame Guillotine. How did you find using it, by the way?”
“Ghastly,” Léon replied. “Heartless, soulless, distant, diabolical, and terrifyingly efficient.”
“Serving its purpose, then?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
People were milling around the square by that time, and it dawned on both Léon and Henry that all had found a way to display their devotion to the revolution publicly. They wore badges or hats or scarves in blue, white and red, or dressed head to toe in those same colours.
Léon remembered the easy accusations of a lack of fervour for the nation that he’d flung carelessly at Mollard—the look of fear that came over his face each time. He thought over the need to refer to each other as ‘citizen’, lest another title suggest he was clinging to the old ways. And DuPont’s warning to always play along recurred to him—his suggestion that it was better to kill Catherine quietly—to never be seen as not following orders, no matter who was in charge, no matter what they said.Don’t stand out.
And he tried to imagine what it must be like for people to walk past the guillotine every day, while the fear of traitors and treason hung in the air.
He would change his outfit when he got to Henry’s father’s house. He would find something and dye it the correct colours. He would take Émile and Souveraine, and he would get the fuck out of Paris the second he could. “Henri, did you say your father knows Robespierre? What’s your plan to speak with him? Don’t you think he’s terribly busy?”
“Not for old friends, surely,” he said in a too-easy way, encouraging Destroyer on through the square and towards the river. “I’m sure he can find a use for me somewhere. Writing speeches, or?—”
“Pamphlets.”
“Pamphlets are important.”
“What about…” Léon glanced back over his shoulder at the guillotine. “Do you think you’d have the heart to drop the blade?”
There was no judgement in the comment. Léon wasn’t proud of his ability to kill people. It was something a lot of people thought they could do, but when faced with it, plenty turned green. The price he’d paid was the loss of all the softness and tenderness Henry had brought out of him in recent days. It was something one needed to be able to turn off.
“I feel no guilt for killing those men who attacked us,” Henry replied, as though it was the same thing.
“You were protecting your sister,” Léon said. “And yourself.”
“And you.”
Small words that rattled Léon’s heart-cage dangerously. “It doesn’t count like that. Not in the heat of passion.”
“I know.” Henry’s words held sympathy, as did his quick glance before he fixed his sight distantly over the approaching river. “I’m genuinely not sure if I could do it. Not if I didn’t agree with it. You’re a special kind of brave.”
