Page 15

15

A GLORIFIED AXE

T he plot had thickened, and all the way back down the stairs and out of the prison, that one word rang over and over in Léon’s mind: ‘ Merci .’

Catherine wasn’t mute at all.

But not a word during her whole trial?

Not a word to defend herself against such a heinous charge?

Not a word even to her kind cellmate, and this revelation for Léon and Léon alone?

Perhaps DuPont had exaggerated.

Perhaps she could say a little here and there.

Or maybe… Why would someone who could talk freely, deliberately keep their mouth shut at a time like that?

It was too absurd to comprehend.

Yet she had avoided torture.

She had escaped once…

Léon was utterly absorbed with such thoughts as he wound his way back out to the town square, as DuPont had requested him to do, but as soon as he turned the corner, all such musings fled his mind.

That great murder machine.

What had they called it?

The guillotine? There it shone, in all its grisly glory.

The newly forged steel was clean and glinted in an amber flash of dying sunlight, sitting high atop the platform Léon usually only climbed to wield his deadly axe.

A group of onlookers had gathered to discuss what the object might have been, but most had already put two and two together.

“Léon!” DuPont extricated himself from the workers and the Parisian from earlier, all of whom were busy strewing straw about the place.

He soon had his hands back around Léon’s arm, leading him forward.

“Isn’t she magnificent?”

“She?” Léon muttered, stumbling along with the volition of DuPont’s excitement.

“They say you can take ten heads in an hour.”

Léon glanced across, aghast. “Why would I want to do that? How would they even know that?”

“I told you, things are heating up in Paris. They’re calling for the King’s head next.”

Léon could almost see it, a cartoon image of the King—the only sort of image he’d ever seen of him—head poking through that little hole.

The notion struck him as oddly ghastly.

His axe—his skills—were generally reserved for nobility.

It was the lot of the common man to dangle at the end of a long rope.

That was exactly why he did what he did—insisted on using the axe for all.

It was a final kindness and an elevation, and it would never have been so…

careless— inhuman —as the pull of the string on that guillotine.

He always sharpened his blade, between every head.

It was, to him, a sacred duty, closer to his heart than last rites could ever have been.

There was something that struck him about the whole contraption, the very conception of it, as sad, too distant, too hands off.

Too impersonal. The dead recorded not by lives and actions, but by how quickly they could be disposed of, heads per hour.

“They call it the great leveller,” DuPont went on, as the guillotine loomed larger and more menacing with every step.

“Doesn’t matter if you’re prince or peasant, one death, quick and cruelty-free for all.”

“And the blade comes off easily?” Léon asked, ignoring the rest of his grand statement.

“Hmm?”

“For sharpening?”

“Ah! That’s the beauty of the design.” Dupont led him up the creaking wooden staircase, smooth from decades of blood, cleaning, blood, cleaning, the final climb of the condemned and the final descent of their killer, over and over.

“It’s the mouton, up there.” His arm extended towards the large stone that sat just above the blade.

“The weight of that forces the blade down so fast and hard, there’s no need to sharpen it so frequently. Maybe… Maybe not for a year, even.”

“I’m sorry?” Léon’s eyes scanned the design for the screws or levers that would release the blade, wondering if the stone must come out too, wondering, was it a one-man job?

It was while his mind was turning over the mechanics of the thing that the words sunk in fully and horror struck.

“Not for a year ? They use it blunt?”

“No, Léon, no. See, the mouton forces the stone?—”

“I heard you perfectly well. My axe’s blade is dulled after one neck?—”

“It’s hardly an axe?—”

“It’s nothing but a glorified axe!”

“What are you getting yourself worked up over? It’s the most humane method of execution we’ve come up with yet. Trust me.” His hand patted into Léon’s back.

“This is the future, Léon. And if you don’t think it’s sharp enough, you take it down and sharpen it as you see fit. Just as often as you like. But tomorrow…” He trailed off, his mind playing over the matter.

“How many do we have for tomorrow?” he asked himself, then answered himself, “I believe it’s seventeen.”

Léon gasped.

“Seventeen?”

“Seventeen. Wonderful. You watch how those heads roll, and if there’s any trouble, we’ll do it however you like next time. But it’s important we move fast on this one. It’s the first time the people of Reims will see the machine in action, and we need them to love it. I want you to put on a show like never before.”

“But—”

“And the girl? Remember, you need to make that as subtle as can be. Get her up there, get it over and done with. Can you squeeze her in somewhere good?”

The thought of Catherine up there in the chill of morning, blindfolded and disoriented, cold and crying, being laid out on the platform, her young life snuffed out so callously for absolutely nothing, made Léon ill.

He’d killed innocents before.

He’d done it only the day before—his own Godmother.

And that sat heavily enough with him up there above the wondering faces of passers-by, beneath the eyes of God, if any such thing hadn’t given up watching over him long ago, after all the sins he’d committed.

But now it felt… different.

It felt like he’d taken just about all of it that he could take.

And how he wanted Henry to save her…

The thought struck him like an axe in the neck.

He knew things like that weren’t possible.

Last-minute reprieves never came, not ever, and he’d learned to steel himself against hope, because hope only led to crushing disappointment.

But there it was.

The strange, long-suppressed ghost of hope .

He wanted to believe it could happen.

He wanted that something warm in his worn down, cynical heart—wanted to believe there was a goodness in fate or destiny or whatever celestial machine set the events of his daily life in motion.

Strange, the places his mind went, unaccustomed, thinking over the chances Henry had, the likelihood of him being run through with a sword just as soon as he attempted the rescue, his body dead and disposed of before Léon even arrived the next day to decapitate his sister.

And that whole nightmare over.

Just like that. Their lives and their story gone, scrubbed from existence and history, and then back to work the next day.

He snapped back to reality when he realised the way he was being watched by DuPont.

Far too closely.

In an attempt to guard himself from undue interest, he said, “She’ll be first. The very first of the morning. I think it will be an exciting surprise for the crowd to see her go like that. They’ll remember the machine, not her. Then we’ll move straight on to number two. And Sophie’s famous; they can’t wait to see her die. I think they’ll forget all about the girl by the time we’re through.” Léon’s well-practiced defensive duplicity allowed the words to roll off his tongue with ease.

“Perfect. She’ll be down the bottom of the body cart, never to be heard of again. Good lad. Now I have one last thing to show you.”

DuPont motioned to some men below, but Léon paid them little heed.

His eyes were back on the guillotine.

He put a foot up onto the platform where the bodies were to be laid out flat before death.

He was about to climb up, but DuPont rushed over to halt him.

“Not that way. That’s what I want to show you.”

A bleat broke over Léon’s attempted reply, snatching his attention as a sheep was shoved up the stairs towards them.

“Not again,” Léon groaned.

“Is this necessary?”

“Just one more. You need to see this.”

“Can’t you just tell me?” Léon protested, being moved aside roughly so the sheep could be lifted up onto the platform.

“Seeing is believing,” DuPont returned, rather dramatically, then, “Cart!” he shouted down.

A horse was tapped, and a cart shifted forward until it was next to and below the guillotine.

At the same time, the wooden bars were brought down around the bleating creature’s head to hold it in place.

Léon rushed back to DuPont.

“You’ll only dull the blade by doing this. Surely, you can spare the sheep and?—”

“Pull!” DuPont yelled.

The Parisian’s hand wrenched the rope, and the blade came down, just as swiftly and blindly as before.

The second sheep’s head of that very long day tumbled to Léon’s feet.

“Could you please stop doing that!” he shouted.

DuPont held up a hand to silence him.

“Just watch.”

He nodded giddily to the Parisian, who flipped the platform, and the sheep’s body tumbled directly off the guillotine, dropping with a splat and a bang into the cart below.

DuPont’s hands rubbed together.

“How’s that for efficient?”

Léon’s eyes remained wide on the sheep’s haemorrhaging carcass, dead on the floor of the deep cart.

He was utterly horrified by the manner of disposal, as careless as throwing an off-cut of meat to the butcher’s shop floor to be trod into sawdust.

“Then we simply drive them to the pit,” DuPont carried on, like a centipede slipping along Léon’s shoulder and into his ear, “tip the cart up, and that’s the lot, done and dusted, all in one go.”

“That’s dreadful,” Léon stated on a barely audible breath.

“What?” Dupont’s brow scrunched in an affable effort to understand the problem.

“What’s dreadful?”

“Everything!” Léon cried.

“All of it. Can’t you see? This whole manner of death and destruction and-and utter distance. It’s intolerable!”

That hand on his shoulder again.

“Léon, your job isn’t going anywhere. I know it’s a little different?—”

“It’s not that!” Léon pulled away sharply, the heel of his boot coming down in a puddle of already-congealing blood, and slipping with it.

DuPont reached out to steady him.

“Then what is it?” Taking both Léon’s forearms in hand, he twisted his neck about to try to meet Léon’s eyes.

“What’s the matter with you? You haven't been yourself all day.”

The man’s eyes, when Léon met them, shone clear and kind concern. It did something to Léon’s insides—spurred some kind of guilt, latent until then, but quickly at the forefront of his emotions. DuPont had always been so good to him. He meant well. He was by far the kindest man of Léon’s circle, and all he was asking was for Léon to do the job he paid him for. And why couldn’t he simply do that today? What had suddenly changed so much that Léon found these things shocking? These things he’d always been capable of handling, because he’d had no choice but to handle them.

That rain, that red rain, dropped down onto Léon’s hand, onto his cheek, and he tried to reel his racing thoughts in—compile them into some simple explanation he could give DuPont, that he could scream at him, get it out, so he could understand what was going on himself.

A man has taken émile. And I hate that man, but he’s done what he’s done for a good reason. And I find I cannot fault him for the act because I would have done the same thing in his position. And he has me in a bind, and if I do nothing, innocent people are going to die, either tonight or tomorrow morning. And it strikes me as absurd that I am to murder people in the morning with this hideous machine, while I’m trying so very hard to prevent deaths tonight. For none of it appears just or right, no matter what I do, and I am stuck, and I am lost. And I need help. And I am perfectly alone.

DuPont’s aspect darkened as he waited for Léon, the shade of worry spreading ever deeper into the fine lines of his forty-something years. He wanted to understand. But he couldn’t help. If Léon told him, he’d only send men to find Henry. And then Henry would exert the only revenge he could when pressed. Léon didn’t doubt that. His spine shot out a cruel shiver of warning at the image of émile, that knife to this throat, and those eyes like murder.

Léon was stuck. And his only bargaining chip was held behind bars and a stone wall, beyond his coercion or control.

Yet he didn’t want to use her that way either.

“Léon?” The word broke into his living nightmare, all images of blood and gore and burning flesh and a child’s body limp on the ground

“I’m tired,” Léon mumbled over the suffocating din that existed only in his head.

“Of course you are.” DuPont’s voice and aspect lightened, taking on a cajoling note. “I heard you were still running about with Souveraine at dawn.”

That bastard Mollard! “It wasn’t like that. I did go home?—”

“I’m sure you did.” DuPont chuckled fondly over the top of Léon’s next attempt at a defence, then he said, in a decidedly fatherly tone, “Listen, that’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

Exasperated, “There is nothing to talk about.”

Point blank, he asked, “When are you going to marry her?”

Sent into a miserable spin, “I-I-I… Um… I don’t…”

Turning pink as he was, embarrassed by all of it, DuPont saved him the stress of answering. “You won’t find a better girl.”

“No.” Léon looked down at his feet. “No, I know that.”

“And she loves you.”

“I… I know.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“There isn’t… Um…” Léon looked distantly across the square, shadows growing long in the ever-fading light. “Did you ever… What if it’s…” He focused on DuPont, imploring him to somehow understand his vague implication. “I don’t think I can give her what she wants. I don’t think she’ll be happy with me.”

The ripping guffaw that spilled out of DuPont crushed any hope Léon had of being heard. “She worships the ground you walk on. Don’t be ridiculous. Go over there and do it now, and I’ll tell you what. All this tiredness, all these worries, they’ll disappear when you’ve got a woman like that waiting at home for you. Cooking for you, cleaning for you. And what about little émile? The boy needs a mother.”

“Hmm,” Léon replied, as some sort of affirmative response, desperate to leave the conversation.

“Come on, lad. You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to be responsible.” Léon might have tried to argue, might have said Souveraine was as chaste as the day was long, and all the village were pigs for suggesting otherwise, but DuPont cut in with exactly the reprimand that showed he thought the same as them. “Do you really want people saying those things about the mother of your children?”

No. Léon didn’t want them saying anything. He shook his head, ashamed.

“That’s the kind of reputation that gets your head cut off,” DuPont added, something joking back in his tone.

Thoroughly confused now, Léon uttered, “What?”

“I’m just saying, had the Queen not been so much of a, well, ‘that kind of woman’, she might have been spared the blade. As it stands… They’re baying for her blood in Paris. The King’s going any day now, and just how long do you think they’re going to keep that foreigner and her bastard children around after he’s gone?”

Léon mumbled, “I don’t see what any of this has to do with me and Souveraine.”

“Don’t you?” DuPont said, a touch too cryptically. Léon’s unfed, sleep-starved, desperate and reeling mind went into overdrive, his mouth opening to form words that wouldn’t come, cut off by DuPont’s peremptory, “That’s right.”

The roiling clouds above cracked open, and the red rain began to fall in earnest. Léon held out his palm, watching the fat drops splash down like spilled blood. “Sometimes it feels like an ill omen,” he reflected.

“You and your superstitions,” DuPont laughed. “It passed through Dieppe and Rethel already, without any bad luck befalling those towns. It’s just a matter of time until it passes through here, too.” Léon, hoping that last sentence rang true, gave a small nod. “Now you go and see Souveraine, and tell her you’ll marry her.”

Léon dipped his head in acquiescence, desperate to get away. He made for the stairs of the platform, and DuPont called after him, “Then get yourself a good night of rest. I’ll expect something spectacular in the morning.”

“Ah… yes…” Léon dropped down a few more stairs. “I’ll think of something… Something good.”

DuPont raised his pleased chin, calling out. “Something like your axe thing.” He stuck a hand up in the air to demonstrate.

Léon laughed, fake but friendly, perfectly harried. “Yes. Something like that.” He stuck a half-hearted arm in the air. “But even better.”

“Something fit for the Queen, eh?” DuPont joked, with a nod towards the guillotine.

Another fake laugh, several more retreating steps. “Yes. Of course. A showstopper!”

“Bright and early!”

DuPont waved him away, and Léon spun on his heel as quickly as any man ever did. He never let up his pace, flying along the cobblestones in a blind panic.

A showstopper.

Something fit for the Queen.

Who was going to get her head cut off.

Like Catherine, who was expected to grace the debut chop of the guillotine with her slim neck first thing in the morning. And there was Henry with his blade at émile’s throat. And just how was Léon supposed to deal with any of it?

Faster and faster he flew along, his body screaming for rest, his mind on fire, nothing but nervous energy propelling him forward.

A showstopper.

Something fit for the Queen.

And by the time the little bell above Souveraine’s door rang out, Léon looked every bit as insane as a good number of people he’d put to death over the years.