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HEADS YOU LOSE

T he morbid screech of warm steel on cold stone echoed about the square as Léon Lyon, premier headsman of Reims, prepared his axe for the next condemned prisoner.

The sharpening had become a much-anticipated part of his show, and the riotous howls of the crowd sank to a murmur the second Léon applied his foot to spin the grindstone.

Pink, the water mingled with the blood of the last man he’d killed, his head sitting in a basket with four others at the side of the stage.

Audience members smiled knowingly at one another, listening to the melody of the blade that sang clear and fatal, until it was drowned out by a more mournful sound still—the desperate plea of the last to die that grim August afternoon.

“Off you go,” Léon said to the small boy who sat eagerly on the edge of the stage, clean-faced and messy-haired, a smaller version of himself.

“But you always let me stay,” the boy whined.

“Not today.” Léon raised eyebrows at an older woman nearby, who took his brother’s hand and led him away.

The boy, émile, turned back to poke his tongue out at Léon, who responded by pursing his lips to blow him a kiss.

An unseasonably chill breeze ruffled Léon’s hair, blowing a slash of blond across high cheekbones as he crossed the stage, long fingers loosening the string of his cloak.

The strange red rain that had begun to drizzle a day earlier dripped and dropped from thick ochre clouds, but Léon paid it scant attention as it spattered his naked arms scarlet.

He was busy settling the cloak in a heap in front of the heading block, an act which went unmarked by almost everyone there that day—all except one person.

The wooden outer door of Reims Prison flew open, and a bloodthirsty applause broke from the crowd.

Marie Saint-James had never once stopped protesting her innocence, and even then, as she was shoved up the scaffold’s stairs, tripping so her bruised shins added one final stab of suffering to her premature end, she pleaded with her jailer, with the people.

Pushed onto her knees, hands tied behind her back, she turned her final entreaties upon Léon.

“I looked after you like a mother. I held you to my own breast when your Mother could not. Léon! Léon, please!”

Léon’s tall, lithe form took a knee by her side.

He inspected her binds, just as he did with every other prisoner, to make sure a hand wouldn’t fly free at the last moment, making for an even more ghastly spectacle than usual.

“Do you see this crowd? If God didn’t halt them for Saint Joan, what chance do you think you have?”

Her dirty face, that he had kissed so many times, stared up at him, streaked with tears.

“But I am innocent.”

Léon refused to let his big green eyes flinch away.

“I know you are. And that’s why my axe has never been sharper.”

Léon’s words, amid the screams, the jeers, the baying for blood, were the one thing that could have brought the veil of understanding over her eyes.

It was a bitter acceptance, but it was an acceptance.

There would be no reprieve, no turning back, and the last of her hopes abandoned her, just as her townsfolk had.

All but Léon.

He said, “I’ll see to it that your girls are taken care of.” He climbed to his feet, blond hair glistening like a halo in the orange light of sunset that broke through the eerie clouds.

He shouted, “Last words?”

Marie searched the square, a rabble of hateful faces scrabbling over one another to get a better view of her demise.

But she no longer cared about any of them.

All she felt was relief that her family was nowhere to be seen.

She glanced up at her executioner, red rain smattering her cheeks as though she were weeping blood.

“May God forgive you, Léon.”

“May he keep you safe, Marie. And may you find a better place than this on the other side.”

She bowed her head to the block, and Léon lowered his blade.

Marie was thin, which made it easier to find the bones of her upper neck.

He lined up the shining half-moon of his axe between the second and third vertebrae, then lifted the weapon high.

Sometimes, he would make this moment last. It had become a game with the crowd.

When would he let it drop?

Would the condemned lose their nerve and try to run?

How messy would it be?

Some days, he let it go on and on, depending on the crime.

But not today.

Down came the axe, fast and vicious, and Marie’s head landed on his soft cloak with one stroke.

The crowd lurched forward, soaking up her pooling blood with their handkerchiefs, pushing, shoving, crawling, brawling.

Léon stood tall on the deck and raised his dripping axe high above his head.

He was handsome, by any estimation.

Beautiful, most would have said.

Lean and long, arms sculpted by his cruel trade, he was strength and youth and justice in that city.

His angelic features stood him in such great contrast to the filth and misery all around that he’d long since earned the moniker L’Ange de la Mort , and this final performance of his, to stand and bask in the adoration of the masses, while the lifeblood of his last-killed painted the stage, was what had propelled him to celebrity.

A carpet of flowers fell at his feet.

Women had been known to faint at the sight.

The deafening chant went up around the square.

“Léon! Léon! Léon!”

But what no one except Léon knew was that behind those long lashes, his quick mind was counting out thirty careful seconds.

Thirty seconds for Marie’s brain to die.

Thirty seconds so he could be sure she would neither see nor feel what was to come next.

When the time was up, he threaded his fingers into her dark hair, greasy and lice-ridden with her time in the cells, and he made a fist. Holding the strands tight, he raised her head high, her face thrust out to the crowd, not a thread of skin or sinew hanging beneath the immaculate severance he’d made.

The cheer went up, Léon plastered on his most dazzling smile, and then, once Marie’s head was safely secured in the basket with the others, his day’s work was done.

He strode down the stairs to be clapped on the back by half a dozen strangers.

He dipped his axe in a horse trough and flicked the bloody water at the thrilled crowd, who bellowed with laughter.

He slipped down a thin lane between two towering buildings, turned a sharp left, and was inside the closest tavern, on the most obtrusive stool, waiting for the first of many drinks that would be bought for him that night.