Page 21

21

FIT FOR A QUEEN

A t Léon’s instigation, DuPont had started selling premium tickets for the day’s show.

All the choice places—front three rows, balconies, a special stand, hastily and especially erected—were sold by ten o’clock.

Vendors in the square yelled out their specials, and wine and ale flowed freely.

Léon’s shining axe leaned against his grindstone up on the great scaffold, and he eyed the three bolts that kept the blade of the guillotine in place.

Once a year, it needed to be sharpened, DuPont had said.

Léon would begin to try that theory today.

He felt something was missing without his axe, but he’d prepared for that eventuality by wearing his tightest leather pants, and entirely forgoing a shirt beneath his leather vest, which he left the top of unlaced.

It was cold up there, and his leather wrist-cuffs provided precious little warmth.

Not for him, anyway.

The crowd was enraptured by his outfit, and very few of them noticed his absent axe when he stretched his fine arm out long to slide a provocative hand up the side of the guillotine, or when he lifted the empty head basket high and pretended to unload it into the crowd.

At the opening of the prison gate, Léon held a single finger aloft, and the audience fell silent.

The first prisoner was led out into the square in near-perfect silence, that tender hand held high to quiet them, in complete control.

Step by step, the man’s final walk made barely a sound at all, bare feet on cold stone.

Up the stairs, one by one, slowly, with no words, and Léon’s hand there all the while.

A guard whispered the crime into Léon’s ear, and Léon’s heart first sank, then shrank into the black space in his chest where it all but ceased to exist. He called out, “Jean-Michel Comtois, for the crime of sedition, you are hereby to be executed, this day, August sixteenth, seventeen seventy-two. Do you have any last words?”

The man, trodden down by his life and his cell, looked out into the crowd and said, “Better to be dead than enslaved.”

Léon pulled his quieting hand away, and at that sign, a roar went up from the audience, baying for the man’s blood, screaming for his head.

Léon placed the same gentle hand on the man’s arm and brought him to the side of the guillotine.

“Do you wish for a blindfold?”

“No. I can face it.”

“It will be fast,” Léon replied.

With the help of the guards, the man was settled onto the platform of the guillotine.

He was arranged prone, shirtless, hands tied behind his back.

Léon shoved the wooden platform forward until the man’s head slid into place.

He brought the wooden lunette down to cradle the neck and guide the blade.

He moved back to the front of the contraption, gripping the rope, and raised his hand once more, three fingers in the air.

The crowd fell into an anticipatory silence.

Slowly, Léon curled one finger away.

The tension was palpable, and there were a few in the audience who couldn’t keep themselves from screaming out encouragement.

Léon curled the second finger.

“Off with his head!” came a gurgling cry.

Just one finger held the rest of the crowd enraptured.

Then he folded it.

“Godspeed,” Léon said.

He wrenched the rope back, the blade came down, and even Léon jumped with the suddenness of it.

The head was off and in the basket, blood painting the stage as it leaked through the coarse wicker.

The whole crowd looked to Léon, as they always did.

And he had no axe to hide beneath.

He’d lost his count.

Thirty seconds. Fingers shaking, scrambling for the rope, he pulled.

He did it as slowly as he could.

The neck of the man was so closely hewn it formed a suction against the metal, and made a sickening squelch as Léon heaved the blade back up.

But the crowd didn’t care how long it all took.

That was now part of the show.

Léon’s bare and beautiful arms bulged with every pull, his firm and muscular legs pressed into shining leather as he braced his body for the effort, and blood ran from the blade in festive red rivulets.

He fastened the rope, leaned his long body down, and snaked his fingers into the dead man’s hair.

With a contraction of every supporting muscle to hold himself brave and authoritative, Léon thrust his arm out long, and let the dead, open eyes fall over the crowd that screamed.

He watched them—clapping, howling with pleasure, grinning from ear to ear.

And how he hated them.

Every last one of them.

And there he stood, a smile on his lips, murder in his heart, his arm shaking under the strain and the rage.

“Next!” he cried. Then he threw the head into the crowd, spattering dozens of them in the fresh, warm blood they’d begged for as the head rolled over and over in the air, cracking down on the pavement where the crowd parted for it to be passed around, kicked and jostled underfoot, as the next condemned man came to face his fate.

And so Léon’s work day had begun.

For the next nine prisoners, the pattern repeated itself, though he didn’t give them another head to play with.

Not yet.

Chop went the blade of the guillotine, snap went the board as it was pulled back, crack went the platform as it was flipped, the body rolled, and bang, it smashed down into the cart.

It was on the tenth head, as the large basket grew dangerously full, that Léon noticed the telltale signs of the blade’s dulling edge.

That neck came open with a crack, more a slit than a slice, and when Léon raised the goods, the skin hung frayed at the neck.

He had seven to go.

Chop and snap and bang and drip, and off came the next, and this with a bruising about the wound, as of blunt-force trauma.

A creeping chill that worked its way up Léon’s arms and over his shoulders was thrown off by a stretch of his neck as he called for the next man.

He was almost done. And he’d had a feeling this would happen, which is exactly why he’d ordered the day’s executions the way he had, with the most vile criminals saved for last. He wouldn’t be pausing the show to unscrew those bolts.

Chop and snap and bang and drip, and off came the next, and this with a long string of sinew, a rip of flesh from the blade.

But the head was off.

Fast, in one blow, still what most people would have called ‘humane’.

And so Léon worked until he called for the second to last. This man, he knew.

This man was guilty.

This man had been convicted of crimes Léon didn't even want to announce to the crowd. This man had chased Souveraine through the streets at night. He hoped the man had spent the long last morning of his life, terrified of what was to come. He hoped he’d been miserable.

Léon announced what he’d done, but he offered the man no last words. Nor did he offer him a blindfold. Unlike the others, this man was laid out on his back, staring up at the blade. Léon enjoyed fastening the lunette across his neck.

The man cried. He begged for mercy. Called out for God.

Léon took the rope in hand. He yanked it, but just as the audience and the condemned screamed out, he tightened his hold, and paused the blade inches from the man’s throat.

“Do it!” cried an audience member.

“Kill him!” screamed another.

“Marry me, Léon!” called a third.

Léon flashed them his widest grin, three girls swooned to the ground, and DuPont, watching from a high balcony, nodded his approval.

Léon raised the blade slowly.

Shhhhhing ! It moved fast along its well-oiled tracks and shink ! Léon caught it. A communal groan of faux frustration swept into the air and the condemned pissed himself.

There were perks to the job.

Inch by inch, hand over beautiful hand, Léon pulled the blade back up, and it was then something caught his eyes. Something black, moving at the back of the crowd.

He looked across the square, and in full horror, his eyes focused on Henry.

His face was grim, wary, dark. The crowd parted for the magnificent black steed he rode upon, sword dangling at his knee. He pulled the horse up, side on, in the small clearing they made. He levelled his gaze at Léon, then let go a black-gloved hand from the reins, throwing back his cloak to allow Léon a clear view of the gun at his waist.

“Idiot!” Léon hissed under his breath. He let the blade drop without another moment’s stalling. Snap and off came the head, and Léon gave the man no thirty seconds’ grace. He grasped the head, lips and eyelids twitching, and he let him see the jubilation on the faces of the people in front of him. And Léon hoped he felt it when his head landed in the eager hands of his killers, only to be ripped to shreds, the pieces to be carted about as trophies for the rest of the day, before becoming scraps for hungry dogs.

Henry looked down on the scrambling, ferocious scene, both literally and metaphorically, from his seat high above the mess, resplendent on his magnificent black stallion. His lip curled in disgust just as his fingers curled around the steed’s reins, steadying the beast with a casual nudge of his foot.

Léon resented him fiercely, the way he wandered into the middle of it all, so superior. Yet some small part of him felt a stab of shame—a squeeze of embarrassment that Henry thought he was like them. But that little pit of sickness was quickly filled up with more resentment. He threw his blond head back, raised his arms out wide, and clapped. Several faces turned up to him, and he clapped again. He clapped again, and again, slow and repetitive, until he had the audience in his palm. Then he called out, “Citizens! I have another head for you now. And it is a very pretty one.”

A cacophony of hollers and shouts came back, and he quelled them with that same raised finger, all while Henry stared on, black anger burning into Léon, which Léon met with double the hatred, and a showmanship which drowned Henry’s easy grandeur.

“The lady in question has come a very long way to be here with you today, so I want you all to show her how much you appreciate her.” He began clapping again, and in time to a well-known anthem, and soon the crowd clapped the rhythm he set. He took a deep breath, and sang out loud, “ Dgieu sauve nouot' Reine. Rends-la victorieuse, Jouaiyeuse et glorieuse …” And before he could get any further, the crowd had cottoned on, and were singing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the top of their lungs for him. So happy, so excited for what was coming next, they revelled in their merriment while Léon descended the stairs and bolted for Sophie and Catherine’s cell. He took the keys from the guard and announced, “I’ll take the next one down. As soon as I get her up on the platform, I want you to bring the other girl through. I want her to watch the execution. It should be good for the crowd to see.”

The guard screwed his face up a little, wondering slightly at Léon’s unprecedented cruelty, but soon shrugged it off and gave him a nod of assent.

“Now, downstairs to wait,” Léon directed. “I want you to open the front door for me so I can present her.”

And off the man went. Léon checked the area to make sure he was alone, slipped into the cell, and for the first time, was able to behold Souveraine’s handiwork.

Sophie stood before him, seemingly three feet taller, her hair teased high into a bird’s nest with twigs and leaves to boot, the lot coated in a cascade of flour. Her face was whitened to deathly with some cornflour concoction, and smattered with a ridiculousness of black ‘beauty’ marks. Souveraine’s dress plunged low over an ample bosom, but most of that was hidden away by a dozen necklaces of every make and model Souveraine had been able to string together. Most importantly, the enormous dress, cast out stupidly wide with a large hoop, reached right to the floor and further still.

It was laughable. Utterly ludicrous. Brilliantly farcical. To anyone but Léon.

He started forward and grasped Sophie’s fingers. “I can never thank you enough for this. I’m so sorry it can’t be you.”

“Don’t you apologise, Léon.” She kissed his cheek. “They’d never let me get away with it. I’m too famous. And I’m proud to do this.” She looked over at Catherine, who sat scrunched up on her mattress, hands clasped beneath her chin, watching on with scared eyes. “Well,” she said, “under you go.” She lifted the hem of her skirt, and Catherine threw a panicked look up at the two of them.

“Henri’s waiting,” Léon said. “Just remember, it will hurt when you fall, but do not make a sound. And when you get there, Catherine…” He dropped to the floor, taking her two hands in his. “Keep your eyes closed—don’t open them for all the world. And no matter what you do, do not let anything get into your mouth.”

With a nod, she stood, then moved slowly towards Sophie. She captured her gaze, tilting her head down, as though asking if she was certain. Sophie returned the movement with a sad smile, then Catherine’s arms moved around her neck, her body trembling as she tried to hold back the tears.

Sophie’s voice came hoarse, and she wrapped her hands around Catherine’s arms. “You’ll ruin my makeup.” She dropped a kiss on Catherine's cheek as she pulled back. “It’s okay. They were going to kill me, anyway. Now you be a good girl and do everything just as Léon says. He’ll take good care of you.”

Catherine was reluctant, and Léon was glad for the firm and maternal tone Sophie took with her until she scurried beneath the hem of the dress.

“Hold on tight,” said Sophie, shuffling a little as Catherine wrapped her hands around her legs. She raised her head high, threw her shoulders back, exactly like a queen, and said, “It’s time.”

Léon’s insides stewed and churned so that he thought he might vomit as he led her down that long spiral staircase, ever so slowly, Catherine scrambling in the dark with every step, down and down, to the filthy dungeon floor. The two guards leapt to their feet with a whoop and a holler, and Sophie placed proud hands on her hips to show off her dress.

“Door,” Léon ordered, and the two opened it wide upon DuPont and Mollard, both of whose mouths dropped open at the sight.

“Citizen Cauchoix,” DuPont said, starting forward to take her hand. “It’s a shame it had to end this way.”

She looked him coolly in the eye. “I’ve no regrets. I’d kill him all over again if I got the chance.”

He laughed uncomfortably. “Well… Well, you have redeemed yourself today. You’ve shown yourself to be a fine citizen, in full support of your countrymen.” Before she could say another word, he slapped Léon on the back. “Good work. Very good work.”

Léon nodded and pushed forward, DuPont stepped aside, and Léon raised his eyebrows to the guard at the door, who flung it wide, blinding Léon and Sophie with white light over a black scaffold. He squeezed her hand tight, she squeezed his in return, and she stepped out into the last day she would ever see. The crowd screamed on sight of her, wailing laughter and jibes and howls for gore, and all the while that same joyous refrain, ‘God Save the Queen’, sang out across the square.

With a gentle hold, Léon led her slowly up the stairs to the guillotine. She walked with a stately grace every step of the way, pausing if she once thought Catherine might have missed a step, on and on, until she was centre stage.

Léon took up his axe, leaned it over his shoulder extravagantly, tilted his head to the side, and waited for the audience to quiet. It took some time, but when they’d finally screamed out their jeers and taken note of his patient pose, he called out, “Citizens… Your queen.” And up went the roar all over again.

He stepped to the back of the stage, and just like every other day he’d executed people before the guillotine came along, he applied foot to pedal, pressed the blade of his axe to the grindstone, and the screech of death sang out through Reims. High and mournful, the blade played its melody, and the crowd listened greedily. It didn’t take long. He’d sharpened it already that morning. But that was the show.

He turned back to them and yelled, “Marie Antoinette. You stand here accused of treason, of betraying your countrymen and women, and of being an Austrian pig. What do you have to say for yourself?”

She offered Léon, and by extension, the crowd, a coy smile. “Fuck you all!”

Screams, wails, furious anger, and Sophie chuckled to herself. “I piss on you!” she shouted. Léon dipped his head to hide his laugh, and Sophie said to him, “Let’s get it over with.”

With a reluctant nod, he led her to the platform of the guillotine. “Would you like a blindfold?”

She looked down at the basket of heads. “No. I’m not afraid.”

She took a seat, then looked up at Léon with a conspiratorial, serious air. “How?” she asked, clipped.

“Oh. Uh.” Léon waved a hand at the guards who, up until then, had helped load the other condemned onto the plank. “Give the lady some space, please. Some dignity in death. Move to the front.”

They did as told, with a few raised eyebrows and grumbles, but they all knew better than to interfere with Léon. He looked around, judging what best to do, aware of thousands of eyes on him, not least those dangerous and black out in the centre of the square, studying his every move with a gun at hand.

He leaned down low, gathered the hem of Sophie’s skirt around her legs, and muttered, “I’m going to have to lift you onto the platform. Lie out as long as you can when I place you down, and remember, not a sound.”

Léon’s strong arms took the bundle up easily enough, though no one paid the unusual deed too much thought—no one except Henry. He wasn’t drunk on wine and blood. It struck him as odd that those fine muscles should flex so over two legs and a satin skirt. But Henry had been far too distracted by the last beheading and subsequent mutilation to notice what had happened to the rest of that body once it was decapitated, and he had no chance to put two and two together regarding Léon’s plan.

Léon settled Sophie’s legs out long, discreetly folding Catherine’s dirty feet away in the numerous petticoats Souveraine had thought to supply. He pulled the dress down as far as it would go, and whispered, “Hold on tight.”

Standing, he glanced around for Souveraine, absently wondering that she would miss the final moment after all the work she’d done to make it happen, but she was nowhere to be seen.

What he did see were the guards below, whispering, scurrying about in a panic, exactly on schedule. He caught the eye of one and called them up with a raise of his head.

A harried whisper in his ear delivered the news he’d been expecting. “The girl’s not in her cell.”

“Girl? What girl? What are you talking about?” he responded by rote.

“The prisoner. The final one to be executed. She’s gone!”

Léon looked at the man, cool and hard, like he was an idiot. “That’s not possible.”

“She’s…” He threw his arms up in confused defeat.

“Go and look again. And come straight back. I need to know if this is the last one of the day. We can’t let these people know what’s happened. But she’s bound to be in there somewhere. Check under her mattress or something.”

Now Léon was the one to receive a withering look, so he frowned at the man twice as deeply, and sent him on his way. And that was the moment. He had to act fast. It had to be smooth. The timing had to fall just right.

He couldn’t restrain the glance he sent out to Henry, tall above the discord. He didn’t want to look at him—didn’t want to let anyone know that he knew him. But wouldn’t it be natural to look at a man like that? Standing out above the crowd, nothing subtle about him, like there might have been had he had a brain in his head.

Their eyes locked across the fray, and Léon willed him to take off, to disappear to the forest like he’d instructed him, but Henry’s expression came back defiant. Distrustful.

That handshake, that brief moment in the dark… It clearly hadn’t meant as much to him as it had to Léon.

The guards were slow with their search. Taking all day, it seemed. Léon needed approval to go ahead, needed them to confirm that Sophie was the final head of the day, so no one would think he’d rushed it. He had to buy some time, but the crowd was growing restless. And Léon had nothing but himself and his axe to entertain them with.

He walked slowly to the front of the stage and brought a hand to his chest, curling the tie of his vest around and around a finger. He pulled. Loop by loop, the string slipped free until his vest fell open to a new and deafening clamour from the crowd. Black leather dropped back to reveal undulations of gorgeous muscle, trained by the axe since the day Léon was old enough to lift it. He ran fingertips up his midline, seductive, and he tried not to look at Henry—to look anywhere but Henry—yet he could feel his eyes. Even as he gazed down at the crowd, somewhere in his peripheral vision, always, Henry loomed large and black and he watched him.

Léon’s hand tightened on his leather vest. Henry’s glove clenched around the horse’s reins. Léon flexed his abs as he pulled the vest back over his large and built chest, neck tilting, just like in Henry’s dream. Henry’s mouth went dry, his air all but evaporated, his thighs gripped a little tighter across the horse’s body.

But Léon was somewhere else, absent, as he raised his gaze to Henry’s devouring eyes. His ears were on the guards below, waiting for their final return. His hand moved fluidly, drawing the vest over his biceps, every movement charged with purpose. The show. The distraction. The fact that no one would say Léon had been anything but a loyal citizen. Reims in his pocket, beloved by all, and with the soundest alibi of any man in that city at the time Catherine went missing.

The prison doors flew open, Léon’s head turned, the crowd gasped at the flexing of a collarbone, and he saw the sorry shrug from the guard.

Time to finish it.

He ripped the vest off, ignorant of the five women and two men who fell into a swoon at the sight. He threw it down upon the heads in the basket, rounded the guillotine, and placed two strong hands on either side of the platform. “Ready, Sophie?”

“Are you sure you are? This might be the slowest execution in history.”

Léon laughed, but he felt the guilt for it. The others had been faster. What it must have been for her to wait like that, for her and for Catherine, curled up still like a rabbit in the forest, knowing she was surrounded on all sides by the sharp eyes of predators.

Léon slid the platform into place, his arms resisting the movement. He brought the lunette down around Sophie’s neck, and he fell to his knees, pretending to be occupied fixing it in place. “Do you have any true final words? For me, or for God? I won’t forget them. And I can deliver them anywhere you want me to.”

“Yes, Léon,” she replied. She turned her head to look at him, and though he could see how scared she was, she smiled, and she said, “I die proud. Remember that. I’m going to my little girl now, and I’m not at all ashamed for what I’ve done.” He gave a melancholy nod, and she added, “We got one over on them, didn’t we?”

“We did.” Léon wanted to kiss her goodbye. To hold her. But he could do nothing more than softly stroke her face and say, “I wish this life had been kinder to you. But I believe you’re going to a better place.”

“I’m glad you’re the one sending me there.” Two tears dropped onto the black of Léon’s soft vest, but that was all he saw. He crossed the stage, he took up his axe, and a primal cry broke from the audience. So many wolves howling for meat, sharks with the scent of broken skin, base animals with no sympathy and no soul.

He’d had enough of their game.

Léon spun the axe and in one clean slice, he cut short the violent and defiant life of Sophie Cauchoix, who had been his friend. Her head landed gently at the top of the basket, on the cushion of Léon’s vest.

Defeated, rotting inside, Léon swallowed down the tears and the anger, gripped his axe tight, and used his remaining strength to lift it high above his head and shout, “The Queen is dead!”

It was an uproar. Such a popping of corks and swilling of drinks and clasping of arms and kissing of cheeks as though it were the real thing. Drip, drip, drip, and tick, tock, tick, and Léon counted out Sophie’s fading existence above the celebration of her demise. He closed his eyes, and let them call to him, let them tell him how much they adored him, let them chant his name till it near deafened him. Then he lowered the axe, and made to retrieve her head, but before he did, he released the lunette from the haemorrhaging stump of her neck, grabbed a hold of the platform, slid it back and muttered to Catherine, “Hold on tight. Henri’s coming for you.”

He slammed the platform up. Sophie’s body rolled and fell five full feet to smack down on a bed of headless and bloodied corpses. A sharp tremor shook the scaffold, the ground all about Reims, and Léon stumbled back, grabbing the side of the guillotine for support. His eyes were drawn by Henry, his spooked horse rearing up, but Henry kept his seat expertly, eyes intent on the prison door, as though he expected Catherine to walk out at any moment.

Léon scrambled back to the edge of the scaffold to look down at the cart. To his great relief, he hadn’t heard a peep from Catherine. She must have held tight; Sophie’s body remained just as still as if there was no life to be found down there.

Léon knelt and said to the cart man, “They’ll be after that body if you don’t move fast. DuPont will be furious if he has to clean the mess up with the Parisians in town. Better take a quiet route.”

The man gave a sharp nod, not asking for any explanation about which Parisians, where, or why. The cart was closed, the horse was tapped, and off the bodies rolled, Catherine hidden safely away.

The cart drew some small interest from the crowd, so Léon made swiftly for Sophie’s head. Taking her by the hair, he walked to the side of the stage closest to the cart, and held her high to grab their full attention.

He was aching all over, inside and out. But his day’s work had just begun. Starting with getting Henry where he needed to be, and getting out there himself.

It should have been easy enough to slip away. He always went straight to Souveraine’s bar after an execution day. He would go there now, he would sneak out the back door, he would find Catherine before anyone else did.

He stalked back across the stage, Sophie’s head swinging in his fingers, a shower of blood falling with every step, and he glared at Henry. How was he supposed to get a message to him to tell him to be on his way? What was he supposed to do with Catherine if Henry wasn’t there? And where the hell was émile?

The crowd wanted Sophie’s head, but Léon left the stage with an easy grace, as though he had no idea, placing it back in the basket on his way past, leaving his vest behind, taking his axe.

But of course, as soon as he hit the bottom step, he was accosted by about ten men, including DuPont, who announced, “The girl—she’s missing.”

“I know,” said Léon. He indicated the guard with a head tilt. “He told me. I thought I should just finish it. We’ll execute her tomorrow, quietly.”

“No, Léon, she’s not anywhere to be found. She’s missing entirely.”

He threw out a dubious laugh. “But that’s not possible. Girls don’t just disappear from a prison like Reims.”

“No, they don’t, do they?” Mollard muttered, a piercing accusation in his eyes levelled straight at Léon.

Léon wanted to smash his axe into his skull. Instead, he said swiftly to DuPont, “When you find her, you know where to find me. I’ll kill her in the morning.”

He set one very deliberate foot in front of the other and was amazed no one stopped him. But after all, he was just the headsman, nothing more. He had nothing to do with security or the running of the place. He was no administrator. He was simply hired help, walking away.

There was an elation that came with the flight. He had, it seemed, gotten away with it. They didn’t suspect him of any ill-doing, didn’t require him as a witness.

He wanted to run now, as much with excitement as with trepidation, but he controlled his pace, his axe wedged casually over his shoulder, maintaining his relaxed gait, one foot in front of the other, around the corner, and, with great relief, directly to the door of Souveraine’s bar.

Which didn’t move when he pushed it.

He tried the handle.

It didn’t budge.

Some primitive part of his brain shot out a signal that this was deeply wrong. He’d noted her absence at the execution. Now she was not at her inn on what would have been her biggest money-making day…

He could make no sense of it.

He slammed a hand down on the door, banging it three times, but the only sound that made reply was a voice he knew too well, rich and deep as good beef bourguignon. “If you want to see your barmaid again, get on the horse.”