Page 18

18

REVOLUTIONARY REPARTEE

H enry could see Léon’s clear revulsion of him in every action, all but the gentle touch of his fingers to émile’s hair.

He sat there, his shoulders, beneath a thin grey woollen sweater, rising against a chill breeze, his strong hand pulling his vest up to émile’s ear, while émile was perfectly content, stuffed full, warm, wrapped up safe against his big brother.

Henry thought of Catherine.

He wondered how cold she was.

Did she have a blanket?

Was it clean? What clothes had they given her to wear?

Was she alone? Was she at all safe?

He hadn’t seen her current cell, but he had seen the last one.

Filthy, rat infested, the mattress soiled and the walls bare but for moss and the etchings of despairing prisoners, and her so small in the middle of it.

He would have given anything to hold her just the way Léon held émile.

He watched Léon’s fingers, and he could almost feel the touch of his sister’s hair.

He looked at the boy’s closed eyes and long lashes, and there saw Catherine’s eyes smiling, a memory of a better time, in England, in their garden, before everything went so horribly wrong.

But then Henry became aware of Léon’s molten warning gaze on him.

He realised the way he was looking at émile, and he felt about a thousand times more guilty.

What Léon must have thought of him…

He dropped to his knees to poke at the fire.

“So,” he threw off just as casually as possible, “just to the prison and back then?”

The narrowing of Léon’s eyes and subsequent wrinkle of his lips paid due to the ridiculousness of the comment.

Léon shook his head, and a lock of blond fell over his right eye.

He threw it back carelessly and turned his face away to stare into the forest.

Yes, he despised Henry.

And Henry would have loved to not care.

But he’d had the entire afternoon to think things over.

Léon seemed nicer than he would have thought he was.

Smarter. Kinder. More astute.

Just as damnably beautiful up close as he had been across the town square, up on his scaffold, the first place Henry had set eyes on him.

He felt sick that he’d pulled the knife on émile like that.

He wanted to prove to Léon that he wasn’t going to hurt émile in any way, to meet him on some level.

So he’d spoiled the kid rotten, and while he’d more than made amends with émile, all it seemed to have served to do with Léon was to piss him off even more.

And that should have been a good thing.

Henry wanted—no, needed —to keep Léon at arm’s length.

It was bad enough that he knew who Catherine was.

He must have known who Henry was by now, too.

Or he could find out easily enough.

And Henry had one chance to save his sister—that very night.

Yet, even if he knew it was for the best that Léon despised him, actively repelled him, he couldn’t help but move a little closer, sitting on another log that he’d pulled up to the fire earlier, saying quietly, “I am sorry. For all of it. I’ll be out of your way in a matter of hours. If you could…” How to ask him to stay out of the way?

How could he trust that he would?

Maybe he should have drugged Léon’s water, like he had the wine of émile’s babysitter.

Then Léon wouldn’t have been able to leave.

Not until Henry had escaped with Catherine.

That or they were both dead.

He edged a little closer, finally catching the wary eyes.

“Do you understand why I’ve done this?”

Léon’s gaze dropped to the boy, right on the cusp of sleep, his only family, precious beneath his fingertips.

“I do.”

“I’ll go to the prison. Soon. Please don’t get in my way. You’re planning to kill her in the morning, anyway. What difference should it make to you?”

Léon made no reply, which set Henry on his guard.

Why hadn’t he simply acquiesced?

Did he know something Henry didn’t?

Was he planning something?

But there was Léon, at the crossroads he’d been dreading all day.

Should he tell Henry the truth, that the keys were fake?

Risk his anger? What time was it?

After ten? Was Mollard still there?

Did Henry have time to shoot both Léon and émile, run fast to town, shoot Mollard, kill the guards, break his sister out, and get away?

“What time is it?” Léon asked.

Henry frowned at him.

He took a moment to do it, but he pulled his watch free.

“A little after nine.”

He could make it.

Unless Léon stalled him.

“Then it’s to Paris? If you get her out?”

Henry stared at Léon, taking his measure.

He’d already told him that was the plan.

Why ask again? But what did it matter?

These people wouldn’t be able to touch him in Paris.

“That’s right.”

Léon gave a small nod.

“Because you’ll both be safe there?”

“That’s why we came here. We were making for Paris when… the incident happened.”

“From England?”

Henry was hesitant to answer, to engage with the unexpected flurry of questions, but when he did, he made sure his French accent came back thicker.

“That’s right. Just a visit.”

Léon, with a glance towards the path back to town, asked, “What’s it like there?”

Henry’s left eyebrow twitched, but he wanted Léon onside, so he answered honestly.

“It’s lovely. Quite beautiful. Where I’m from— I mean to say, the-the part where we were, Catherine and I… It’s very beautiful. Green fields and flowers and fresh air. It’s… a sort of paradise.”

With a touch more interest than just stalling conversation, “Then why on earth would you leave?”

“I ask myself that most days now,” Henry joked, offering a melancholy smile while taking up a long stick to poke at the fire.

“Probably because of all the English people,” Léon also joked.

It was a small and deadpan one, but to Henry, it felt as though his heart had been dipped in honey.

He laughed. “Worst people I know.”

“No doubt.” Léon took some meat from his plate and pulled it apart, strand by strand.

“Were they nice to you?”

“Hmm? The English? Um… Yes. They were nice to me. Mostly.”

“Funny, isn’t it? The things they do to our people, then you can walk amongst them as though it’s nothing. I don’t know how you controlled your anger. I don’t know if I…” He trailed off, having let himself come far too close to showing anger when he was supposed to be fooling Henry into thinking they were getting along.

Henry caught the animosity.

“If you what?”

“Nothing. Just…” He couldn’t help himself.

“I don’t know that I could look those people in the eye. The stories I hear from Toulouse. The atrocities those people commit. If I found myself in the presence of one of them, I don’t know if I could control myself.” Henry, knowing very little about Toulouse, besides the fact the English had been fighting bloody war there for years, searched around nervously for something to say, but Léon saved him with, “Is that why you left France? The war?”

“No. No, we left…” What to say?

“Before the fighting broke out.” That sounded well enough.

He went on quickly, “We’ve been in England for some time. And it was calm there. For a while.”

Genuinely interested now, Léon’s eyes met Henry’s, unguarded.

“Then why Paris? It’s probably the least calm place you could possibly go in all the world.”

“That’s exactly why we were going there.” Henry lit with a fresh and confiding enthusiasm, giving Léon the impression he had inadvertently stumbled upon a beloved topic of conversation, particularly when Henry didn’t hold back on his well-trodden thoughts.

“In England, the enlightenment’s still working its way into public consciousness. They have their men of letters and their academics and their poets, and those people all see sense well enough. But the monarchy are on their guard now, and there’s an old-world way of thinking about things over there that’s being shoved down the throats of anyone who will listen.” With a bitter grimace and a disparaging glance around the forest, “It’s every bit as backward as it is out here in the countryside.”

The comment ruffled Léon, Reims being, to him, and to many others, a prosperous and forward-thinking city.

“What makes you think Paris will meet your high standards?”

Henry, pinning every hope in life he had on Paris, wasn’t about to let Léon chip away at what little he had by using that tone.

With a dismissive arrogance, such as men who desperately need something to be true will often adopt when they tell themselves lies, he replied, “Paris will be different. In Paris, there is revolution. Things are changing, and for the better. No more poverty, everyone on equal footing, bread enough for all to eat. Everyone will have a home and an education and books to read. For the first time in history, it won’t matter what you are born to, king or peasant, we’ll all have a share in the wealth and happiness. What’s happening in Paris, right now, is the highest and truest calling of all mankind, and you’re either insane or ignorant to want to be anywhere else, no matter how dangerous it is.”

The outburst was a jolt to Léon’s system, both due to the vehemence of it, but also the good-hearted sentiment behind it.

It shone a new light on Henry.

Léon had him pegged as a loving brother, and that was, thus far, the sole redeeming quality that allowed Léon to sit and eat his food and talk with him.

He hadn’t expected to hear such idealism on those haughty lips, gorgeous as they were.

But unfortunately, those words couldn’t help but be augmented by Léon’s own harrowing experiences of the world and human nature, which made Henry appear to him, at best, a little lost, certainly na?ve, perhaps a touch stupid.

“I’m yet to see any proof that much is changing,” Léon replied gently.

“We’re only getting started.” Henry leaned forward on his log eagerly, speaking as though from a lectern, a compelling pink about his cheeks setting off his features with an irritating beauty.

“It’s the ideals—the principles that it’s all based on. They’re infallible. The mind and the heart over monarchy and superstition, for the first time in history. They’re dragging the priests from their pulpits and turning their cathedrals into palaces of reason. Versailles will be torn apart, and the wealth redistributed. No longer will a few rich men run the entire country, looting the pockets of the poor. And women will live in Paris—in all of France—free, married to whomever they want, or not married to whom their parents choose, or not married at all if they don’t want to be. Free to fall in love. Free to have relationships with no expectation of marriage.”

Surprised Henry took such an extreme interest in those matters, Léon asked, “You’d be okay with Catherine living like that? Unwed, but in a relationship?”

Henry replied, quite seriously, “God, no. I’d kill the first lech who thought about it.”

Léon laughed, and Henry announced over the top of him, “The point is that she could if she wanted to. In theory. And men…” He waved a hand in a swift circle, voice faltering just a little, eyes askance towards the fire.

“Men will be free to be with whomever they choose, too.”

“I thought men could already do that,” Léon rebuffed, eyes bright in amusement, waiting for Henry’s next hypocritical heel turn.

“No, I mean like… like…” He gave a small shrug, speaking more softly.

“Say they wanted to be with other men.”

The way he raised his eyes just then brought a fast scarlet heat to Léon’s cheeks.

His mouth suddenly dry, he fumbled his cup of water, knocking most of it onto the grass, but picking it up and drinking down the few remaining drops anyway, for distraction as much as anything else.

Henry watched him, taking his discomfort for distaste.

“That idea’s probably never even occurred to you, has it? Probably disgusts you to even have it suggested.”

“No.” Léon had thought about it.

Far too often. Most of his life.

But possibly never quite as vividly—or filthily—as he’d thought about Henry the night before.

And he certainly hadn’t expected Henry, of all people, to drag it out into the open right in front of him.

He murmured, “I find nothing odious in that notion. That two men… might…”

“Ah. So, you… you…” That hand wafting in his direction again.

“What?” he breathed out anxiously.

“Have you…” With a too-attractive reticence, as though it were neither here nor there, “Have you kissed a man?”

Red hot panic took Léon, and he rushed out, “No! No, no, I haven’t! Of course not!”

Henry blundered in with, “You have your barmaid, I suppose,” the words flying like an accusation, driven by a jealousy that Henry noted but deliberately mistook for anger, that Léon understood as an attack.

On what, he wasn’t sure, just that it was disparaging in some sense.

He said nothing. Souveraine and his friendship with her were none of Henry’s business, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell this dangerous and deranged stranger about his sexual fantasies, particularly those that involved him and a sharp knife.

“So simple,” Henry goaded, low, just loud enough for Léon to hear, trying for a crumb of information about his relationship with the barmaid.

He’d noted how beautiful she was, the way she’d helped herself to Léon’s person.

But Henry got nothing for his provocation.

He jabbed, “Peasant stuff, I suppose.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Léon seethed, suddenly far too aware of the precious-looking red jewel on Henry’s finger, of the clean and trimmed nails on his hands, of the many stark differences between them that spoke of two vastly different lives and histories.

Henry, finding that his unpleasant words had led to nothing but a dead end, carried on with his proclamation, only a little more resentfully than before.

“Well, for those of us who aspire to slightly higher things than boinking the first girl who comes along, there’s the revolution. When I get to Paris, we’ll draw up new laws, a new charter. We’ll make it so everyone has their say. We’ll turn Paris into the best city on the planet—if it isn’t already—and then we’ll take those laws back to England, and out to the rest of the world.”

“We?” Léon’s quizzical head tilt and mocking smile irritated Henry to no end.

“Yes, ‘ we ’,” he snapped.

“My father is friends with Robespierre himself, I’ll have you know. Or-or he was. I’m sure they’re still in touch.” There was a slight darkening of Henry’s brow, and Léon gave nothing away about his knowledge of Henry’s parents having fled Paris.

Henry’s rich and aristocratic parents.

Did Henry know where they were?

Off somewhere being rich, Léon supposed.

He watched Henry push away whatever concerns he had with the proud raise of his chin.

“And when I get there, I won’t spare a second of daylight but for the purpose of the revolution and the people.”

Léon scoffed so loudly and brutally he almost woke émile.

“‘The people.’” He ran his eyes over Henry’s fine clothes, tailored boots, soft leather pants, silk shirt that would have paid his rent for months.

“And which of your circle of intellectuals are going to be the ones to clean out the chamber pots of the wealthy while you’re drawing up your glorious charter?”

“Every man can clean his own chamber pot,” Henry returned matter-of-factly.

“Oh really? And who carts away the muck in the morning?”

On an eye roll, “That’s yet to be figured out, obviously, but?—”

Léon couldn’t help but push him, the thought of Henry’s pale and untarnished hands doing any hard work whatsoever tickling him so.

“And what will you do in this marvellous new world? Write pamphlets, I guess?”

“Pamphlets are important!” Henry declared loudly, eliciting a grunt from émile.

“Pamphlets are how you change things.” Outraged by Léon’s laugh and accompanying clap, Henry doubled down, caught up in his idealistic vision of a perfect Paris and a perfect world.

“You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll still be here with your dead-end life, chopping heads, drinking with your bar wench every night. But not me. I’ve got bigger ideas than someone like you could ever comprehend. And that’s why I’m going to Paris. And that’s why I’m taking Catherine with me.”

“You are mad to drag your poor sister into that mess,” Léon muttered.

The words cut into Henry, far deeper than Léon could possibly have realised they would.

He was immediately on the attack, throwing a furious finger out at Léon.

“You have no vision. You’re so parochial, living your petty little life. Sleepwalking through the world, not noticing a thing that goes on around you. But what more could I have expected from a headsman? You’re the very tool of the monarchy that wishes to oppress the people.”

Léon made a soft chuckling sound in his throat.

As though he’d chosen the career appointed him by the very people Henry was so desperate to defend.

“Tell me, if not me, who will your great republic find to take the heads of the people who disagree with you?”

“You misunderstand—deliberately, I think,” Henry declared.

“After the revolution, there will be no need for such things. We’ll live in a fair and equitable society with enough for all. A government of the people, for the people. All moving as one glorious machine, with freedom for all. What crimes must we condemn people for then, when everyone has enough?”

Henry had begun to fascinate Léon.

Here was an idealism and sweeping ignorance in such opposition he wondered that the two could exist inside the same man.

“Oh, Henri, how can you be so na?ve?” he asked, in perfect earnest. “All men are either corrupted or corruptible.”

“Are you speaking for yourself?”

“Indeed, I am. And for you too. I almost killed a man to get those keys today. A vile but innocent man. And you? Do you find yourself pushed in recent days? Or maybe you make a habit of stealing small children to get your way?”

Guilted close to silence, Henry said, “I do not.”

“Then there you have it. Desperate men have no morals. Desperate people will always do desperate things. And greedy people will always do greedy things. And it takes very few of each to throw your whole system out the window.”

Now it was Henry’s turn to scoff.

“Do you have such a dark view of humanity?”

“Yes,” Léon said bluntly.

“I’ve seen it first-hand my entire life. The system moves with all the care of a clock, tick tock, and if you get caught in the gears, it will grind you to gristle. The system offers a modicum of safety, but you do not want to put yourself in the centre of that mechanism if you value your limbs.”

“And that’s why you do it, then? Because you’re too scared to risk a limb?” Henry settled back on his hands, smug as a man who had already won his argument when he asked, “Is that why you executed your own father?”

There was a perfectly aimed stab at Léon’s heart.

How did Henry know so much about him?

Léon had put together enough to know that Henry must have been asking about him—that Henry had found out where he lived, who his brother was, when the boy would be at home with only a feeble old lady to defend him.

But how long had he been in town?

How long had he been watching him?

Rather than answer the repulsive question, Léon asked his own.

“Why did you choose me? Out of everyone in Reims, why was it me?”

“You work at the prison,” Henry returned.

“No, I don’t. Not really. Of every man who works there, I was the least able to help you. Why did you really choose me?”

Because I’d never seen such a beautiful man in my entire life and I thought you seemed kind …

Henry closed his eyes over the words he was sure he would never say aloud, and adopted a cold and cruel air, all the better to push Léon away with.

“Because you’re a renowned killer. I thought you’d be ruthless, and I thought you’d get the job done.”

Léon was thankful émile was asleep, so he didn’t have to hear that.

The statement was everything he’d never wanted to be.

And it was what he had become, it seemed.

This was how a perfect stranger like Henry saw him.

This was what his townsfolk must have said about him.

This, despite all his good intentions, was his legacy.

He would be remembered as nothing but a mindless, heartless, ruthless killer, so lacking in humanity, it wasn’t even worth considering how his brother’s kidnapping might have affected him.

An arm of the law.

A means to an end.

Henry could see exactly what he’d done—the impact of the blow he’d dealt.

Léon’s grasping silence filled the clearing with a ghastly, thick atmosphere, charged with sadness, an overwhelming melancholy, and for the first time Henry got a glimpse of Léon—who he was beneath the reputation, beneath the front, beneath the show with his axe, and he saw instead a whisper of the broken, lost, trapped man, who Henry had forced into a corner.

Léon said, softly and calmly, “My father was a headsman. Did they tell you that?”

Henry had already given up hope of a response, least of all one so quiet and compelling.

“They didn’t.”

“It goes down the family line, the job of executioner. You’re born into it. And I don’t claim that as any sort of defence—not for any of us. It simply is. But three generations in, my father tried to change that.” Léon’s face took on a distant aspect that pulled Henry closer.

“I know a few letters. For reading. My father sent me away to Lyon, to school. He didn’t want this life for me, so when I was six, he sent me off. And I missed him. And I missed my mother. I cried every night at school, but I didn’t once complain to him, because I knew he wanted better for me than what he’d had.”

His face fell more miserable by the second, a hoarseness to his voice curdling Henry’s insides for having set that ball in motion, even as he found himself hanging on every word of Léon’s story.

“One day—I’d only been at school for a few months—but one day, someone took note of my name. Some adult who knew what my family did. Someone so ridiculous and so cruel and so dreadful, they couldn’t stand to see me there at that school, with their children.” He glanced up at Henry.

“You probably know I’m not allowed in the cathedral. I’m not allowed to touch the fruit at the market. People won’t touch my hands, because I use them to kill. Just like you wouldn’t, earlier today.”

Henry had barely even registered Léon’s offered hand that afternoon.

He’d been so caught up in how to get him to do what he’d wanted, he’d never thought for a second that Léon might have taken the reaction that way.

It wasn’t even a rejection, only a missed connection.

But before Henry had gathered his thoughts enough to make sense of it, Léon spoke on.

“It was the same for my father, and that was what he was trying to save me from. He lost all his savings on that school, and he still said no. He said I would never touch that axe.” Léon took a moment, pulling his father’s image from the ashes of his past. “He never let me see the heads, when I was little. I knew what he did, but he never talked about it. He kept me safe from it. I took what little other work I could find, tarnished as my name was. I chopped wood. Funny, isn’t it?”

He laughed, but Henry couldn’t find it in himself to see the humour.

He was much too caught up in the sadness and injustice of it all.

The whole thing went so much deeper, was so much darker than he had ever imagined.

But Léon was a headsman now, so Henry listened on, waiting, as it were, for the axe to fall.

Léon knew as much. He quickly revealed, “My father was convicted. Sedition. And when he was thrown in prison, when he was tried and found guilty, I was expected to take up the axe. I refused. I couldn’t believe they’d even asked me to do it. But I was a cog in the machine. I was a name, a point on a piece of paper, a means to an end. There was an expectation, from my birth, from all around me, and they did everything they could to see that I ended up exactly where I needed to be. I lost my job. I lost my chance at an education. Every avenue was deliberately closed to me. But I still said no. It was my father’s only wish.”

Henry wanted him to stop.

He knew in his gut what was coming.

He knew with a horror, like watching a man about to go under the wheels of a great cart, there was nothing he could do.

“An uncle was called in to do the job,” Léon continued.

“Because, by our ‘noble’ blood, he was the next in line for the role.” Henry raised an eyebrow, but Léon assumed, him being French, he must have known Léon’s surname and had some inkling of the way the system worked.

“My father forbade me to see his execution. But I went anyway. To say goodbye, to support him. I don’t know. I needed to see it, I suppose. To put an end to it. To know he was gone.”

Léon curled arms around himself, against the cold and the memory, looking small in his sweater.

“He was so sad. I could see it, but he didn’t cry. He went down with the last words, ‘Make it quick’. Imagine that…”

He reflected a moment, then his tone fell a little harsher, firming up for the next part.

“My uncle was not an executioner by trade, and he was unfamiliar with the weapon…” Léon moved an arm in an absentminded downward motion, as though he were holding the very axe.

“He brought the first blow down, but not hard enough, because, you understand, it was his own brother. He couldn’t bear to do it. He gashed into his neck, and the scream from my father… The blood…” Léon swept the tip of his tongue over his lips.

“He stood, staggered about the place, the blood gushing from his neck, stupefied by the blow. My uncle, he brought the axe down again, but cut a great wound into his back. He was so sick, in tears up there on the scaffold, white and shaking, and my father, in such pain, screaming, so I…” Léon rocked a little, fingers moving faster in émile’s hair.

“I climbed onto the scaffold. I took the axe in my own hands, I pushed my father to the floor, and I took his head. In one blow, it was off, and it was done. And I remember when it fell. When it rolled over and he looked at me. And the look on his face…” The tears shone bright in Léon’s eyes, right on the cusp of slipping down his cheeks.

“He was so disappointed. I could see it in his eyes. He understood what I’d done, and the last thing he saw in this world was that his entire life’s work, saving me, had been for nothing. He would have chosen to be hacked to pieces on that stage before he’d ever have let me do that.”

A single tear escaped, and he quickly swiped it away.

“Heads don’t die fast. It’s not the quick and noble death people will tell you it is. He watched me, and his lips said something I never heard, and he blinked, and he cried.” His lips tilted into an expression of disgust. “And the crowd cheered. They loved me for it, and I can never tell you how much I hated them. But I promised myself, and my father, two things right there. One, that I would never stand by and let another person die with such barbarity as I had witnessed that day. And two, that I would be the end of that line. I swore to never have children of my own. And I will get émile out before it ever afflicts him.”

Henry had never once in his life been so entirely put in his place.

All the pure and honourable spirit his mind yearned for, all the romance of mankind he’d read about in great poetry, all the beauty of mountainous cliffs and vast oceans and the sun burning down and beautifying the land, here it all was right before him.

The spirit of the revolution that had drawn him, that he had pinned every dream on, all the tragic beauty he’d been seeking—here it was.

Henry fell hard, and he fell fast, that very moment, even as he tried to convince himself it hadn’t just happened.

Even as he tried to tell himself that Léon was nothing but a local fool, pretty and simple-minded, a lie he needed so he wouldn't have to feel terrible about what he had done to him, and so he wouldn’t have to miss him when they left. But the change in his understanding of Léon knocked at the very principles of who he was, or who he thought he was, and he sat there in the dark by the fire, utterly speechless.

Léon fixed him with his hard gaze. “I didn’t get your keys. I tried my best, but I couldn’t do it. The ones I gave you are fake, and if you go to the prison tonight, you won’t get in.”

The complete shock of the revelation ripped Henry straight out of the starry-eyed obsession he’d so nearly fallen into. Righteous anger and indignation swelled in his chest. He’d been correct about Léon all along! The duplicitous peasant! The absolute shit! The complete and utter?—

But then Léon also said, “I still think I can save your sister.” He focused his clear, emerald eyes on Henry’s, searching them for understanding when he earnestly revealed, “I want to help you save her.”

Henry, hurled into a dizzying spin, tried to ask how, but nothing more than a confused and indecipherable grunt-breath came out.

“Tomorrow morning, I will execute everyone else. And she simply will not appear when she’s due to. I will sneak her out, and by the time they realise what’s happened, by the time they think to search the town and investigate, the two of you will be long gone. You’ll meet me at the western entrance to the forest at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon, and you’ll bring émile. You’ll hand him over, job done. Do that, or I will never tell you how to find her, and she’ll die a death far more horrible than I would ever have inflicted on her.”

This last comment landed as a threat, setting Henry back on his guard, trying to crush down the tendrils of adoration that were springing up in his heart faster than he could stamp them out. “How do I know that I can trust you? That you won’t just take her head and send men for me while I’m waiting in the woods?”

“You don’t have a choice,” Léon said. “If I do nothing, she dies. You’ll never get into that prison tonight, and the place will be crawling with people come dawn. You’ll be shot dead in the street if you try to interfere.”

Henry watched Léon gathering his arms about his sleeping brother, pulling the boy’s weary head to his chest, his arms so strong and so gentle, making the child look as light as a feather. It seemed to Henry just then as if émile were carried through the world on a cloud, no burden at all, while the heart that held him aloft was weighed down so heavily.

When Léon had reached his full height and turned towards the cabin, Henry halted him with the gravelly question, “Why would you help me? After what I’ve done.”

Léon took a few moments, trying to decipher whatever was happening in his mind and heart that had made the change in him. “I think I just need to know it can be done. Or that I did something. That one thing.” So carelessly, so lightly, Léon gave Henry the second genuine smile he’d ever offered him, and said, “For what it’s worth, I think your ideals are beautiful. I hope you get the revolution you want, and that the result is the world you envision. And I hope your sister will be safe and happy. With you by her side to protect her.”

He walked away, perfectly ignorant that with those words, Henry’s heart had fallen at his feet, to be picked up and held and cherished, or trod into the mud and forgotten, exactly as Léon deemed suitable.

The great romance of both their lives had just begun in earnest.

Even if the two were, at that time, determined to remain oblivious to the fact.