61. The Condemned Man
61
THE CONDEMNED MAN
H enry had been thrown into a small cell, two metres by three, with five other men.
There were no beds, no chairs, just a stone floor littered with fetid and mouldy straw.
There was one bucket to contain all excrement and piss, and not another object in sight.
The walls were covered in dirt and shit and blood, and all manner of grime.
He found a cramped space on the floor where he wouldn’t be touching any of the other men, who miserably watched him come in.
How he longed for the Witches’ Tower of Reims. How he longed for Léon.
How had he been so, so wrong?
When they read the charges to him, he could process it no better than Léon.
Sedition. Treason. Nothing a few of his articles couldn’t clear up.
But then they tightened the net.
His father had fled Paris, had he not?
Henry didn’t know. Had he not gone back to England?
Henry had no idea. Had he not stockpiled food in a time of famine?
Food that was required to serve the people of the revolution?
If he had, Henry said, it was nothing to do with him.
Only it was.
Those newly drawn-up laws, the ink still wet on the page, said it was a crime to be related to any man who did any of those things.
And it was the one thing Henry couldn’t deny.
He was his father’s son.
And it didn't matter if he agreed with him or not, didn’t matter that he would have disowned him in a heartbeat if he could. It made no difference that he hadn’t spoken to the man in years. He was linked by blood.
That first night was long, every attempt at sleep in the freezing cell broken either by one of the prisoners rolling into him, kicking out in their sleep, or the sounds of retching somewhere in the cells, fighting, crying, screaming. It was horrible. It was unspeakable. Henry got to see with his own eyes the very things the revolution had wrought. Yes, there were teething pains. But this… All these men, women, and children crammed into freezing cells for having never done a thing wrong in their lives, suffering in perfectly inhumane conditions.
How well he remembered the Cathedral of Reason—Léon, luminescent and scintillating. The wonder in his eyes beneath the twinkling lights. How good it felt to give that to him. The food and the talk and the hopes. And it was all reduced to this.
The men he trusted, who he believed in, to deliver France and all the world fairness, equality, and liberty, had instead delivered this—a stinking cell, full of men who were likely just as innocent as himself.
The scales had finally fallen from Henry’s eyes. He had always, always believed things could be made better. That human nature was higher than this. That all of it was being led by beautiful principles, that people truly wanted the best for each other—that they were capable of wanting better for each other.
Henry wept that night. He wept silently. Not for himself, not for where he lay in that filth, or for the fact that his life had ended like this. He wept because all his understanding of human goodness had gone. He wept for the lies he had wrapped himself in. Above all, he wept for Léon and for Catherine. For everything he had done to them both through his foolishness.
He knew he was going to be put to death. And his sole consolation was that Léon would not be the one to do it. Léon, he knew, would take Catherine from Paris the very second it was done. Where, he knew not. He’d have given anything to help them find a safe harbour. But he never doubted that Léon would be that for Catherine. That she had, despite all his many mistakes, found a family now.
It was cold comfort, but it was comfort.
The next day, Henry was brought to the court at two o’clock and asked to defend himself. He looked for Léon, but he never showed. Henry wondered if he knew what had happened. But he must have known. And he must have decided it was better to stay away. It would have been safer for them all.
Henry was talked over, yelled at, ignored, in a show more farcical than the trial in Reims had been. More ridiculous even than all the charges of witchcraft Léon threw at him.
A sick smile crossed Henry’s face to remember it. The stupid things he’d been accused of. And Léon, all the while, secretly defending him. Quietly keeping him safe. Playing the system.
He was so much smarter than Henry had been. He’d paid with a large piece of his soul to become the brilliant schemer he was, but he had been right all along. If Henry had only listened.
But now there was no Léon. No soft skin and warm embrace. No cocky smile or sharp quip. No wide-eyed wonder, no promises of forever. Just a sea of cold eyes, their judgement passed before Henry ever sat down in the dock.
There was only one way that Paris, under the revolution, could prevent its prisons becoming dangerously overcrowded again.
Kill them all. Kill them fast. Kill them officially.
Henri De Villiers’ trial lasted eighteen minutes and thirty-two seconds. He was found guilty on all charges and ordered to be executed by guillotine four days hence: January the Twenty-First, 1793.