62. January the Twenty-First, 1793
62
JANUARY THE TWENTY-FIRST, 1793
T he air was charged that cold and wintery day.
The people of France awoke knowing that from that morning forward, for better or for worse, the world would be irrevocably changed.
No decision to remove a monarch’s head is ever taken lightly, and countrywide, opinions were wildly varied about what should have been done with him.
Of course, those who disagreed with the decision to kill him knew better than to open their mouths, and those who wanted him dead…
If they were lucky enough to live in Paris, they made their way as close as possible to Place de la Révolution in the hopes of watching it happen.
Those outside of Paris were out of luck.
The city was on lockdown, no one in, no one out, until the deed was done.
There was very little thought given that morning to the others set to be killed.
A handful grieved the fate of Henri De Villiers, those friends of his who would miss him at parties.
But they were, by that time, becoming used to seeing one friend or another disappear in the night, only to appear one last time, briefly, with their head poking through a tight hole.
Henry knew as much, and thought only of Léon and Catherine, émile, and even Souveraine on occasion.
The family he had come to love.
The life that had been so close to perfect, in its imperfect, broken way.
The house falling apart, all of them with no idea of what the next day might bring, but together.
How he wished he’d left Paris sooner.
He thought of all the chances he might have had, all the decisions that had been made leading up to that day.
If he’d somehow been able to treat the bullet wound earlier, if he’d never gotten sick.
If he hadn’t written all those articles, even if the money had kept them fed the last four months.
If, that autumn day so long ago, Catherine hadn’t taken it into her head to go to their father’s house in Paris.
But if she had not…
And the memory of his life with Léon came back to him in bold and bright strokes.
Every smile, every touch, every angle of Léon, beautiful in his arms. The warmth of his forgiveness, the essence of his pure soul, and what it had been to give him a few months of respite from that cruel life.
That too-short period of tender love, compared to the suffering he had lived.
And now what? After all this, would Léon return to Reims?
Would he return to the job he hated as executioner?
And one day, not far enough away, would émile pick up that axe?
Henry was taken from his cell in the early morning.
He was stripped of the high-collared shirt he’d worn for days.
His hands were bound behind his back, then a guard pushed him into a chair.
The man bundled what he could of Henry’s hair into a fist, and with blunt shears, cut it away.
Henry couldn’t understand what harm it might do to the guillotine’s blade to let people keep their hair.
It was yet another of the many indignities he’d suffered under the authorities he’d once supported.
He imagined Léon would have taken quiet note of such indecencies.
Léon never took anyone’s hair, that Henry was aware of.
He parted it carefully with gentle fingers.
And it was this, after everything, that set Henry to crying on that final day.
He knew what he had lost. From the minute he was thrown into that cell, he knew.
But there were so many depths yet to be discovered.
There was a life they should have spent together, that should have unfolded each day with little realisations like these.
There was one man, one love, one soulmate, and there was but half a year in all his life that was touched with such grace as Léon held in every thought and deed.
How cruel of fate to bring them together that way.
How cruel to show them both this beautiful love, only for it to end so viciously.
He made no trouble as he was led out into the street, as he was loaded onto the back of an open cart with four other men and three women.
The biting wind cut into his naked skin, but not for long.
It would be mere minutes until he never felt the wind again.
How much would that sort of death hurt?
Would the shock of it ease the pain?
Would the cut of the blade be more horrible, or the drop of his head into the basket?
Would he be early in the proceedings?
Or would he look down upon the severed heads of the rest of those in his carriage, then fall face to face with Louis himself?
He knew the once-monarch was to be killed that morning.
And just as Henry’s cart headed north to the guillotine, so Louis Capet headed south in another open carriage, designed so the crowd could jeer and throw things at him, just as they did to Henry.
The streets were lined with guards, soldiers, thousands of eyes staring up from the road, gazing down from windows.
A rock struck Henry’s cheek, another grazed across his chest. He remained distant, reflecting only on what it was to be the object of their hatred when all he’d ever wanted was to make things better.
They had no clue who he was.
All they saw was the cart, and all they did was blindly believe their government must have been correct in condemning him.
Two long rows of angry humanity opened up into the square.
Hundreds of guns, the city on full alert for any attempt to save the once-King from his fate.
Both carts rumbled along to the echo of horse hooves, jeers, sniggers, and the dark line of the enormous guillotine came into sight.
Fear seized Henry’s heart.
He wanted to go bravely.
He wanted to face up to his fate.
But in all those months, all those articles, he never thought that blade would come for him.
He was supposed to help put the thing out of commission once and for all.
But then, wasn’t that why he was there that day?
His ‘soft’ approach to the revolution?
The other cart drew up beside his, and he saw Louis Capet, stripped of his title, sitting on a small bench.
Unlike Henry, he had a shirt, and his hands were not tied.
It was a funny sort of final kick in the teeth to see that even now the man had those few small allowances over Henry.
And this was all Louis’ fault.
All the anger of the people, Henry being torn from his loved ones, all of it because of that man, right there, who stepped down from his carriage in expensive shoes, and had his arm held gently as he was led towards the scaffold.
He disappeared into the crowd, and Henry lifted his head to get a better view of the guillotine.
And there his heart stopped.
The wind whipped Léon’s shining blond hair across his beautiful face, brought a flex of muscles as his arms stood bare against the cold.
Tears came fast to Henry’s eyes as the breath caught in his chest. Why, of all the cruel fates that could ever have befallen them, why put a man such as Léon through this?
Henry shrunk for shame.
Had he known, he would have done away with himself at the prison.
He would have found a way.
He would never have let Léon do it.
But as he made himself raise his eyes, Léon looked out long to meet him.
Over the barbarian crowd, over the rancour and the odious masses of inhumanity, there was a peace.
Léon’s smile was small, but so loving, and Henry never felt for a second that he deserved that smile.
But there it was, just as fresh as the day it was born between them.
Somewhere in the forest, somewhere in a broken-down cottage, somewhere on a lonely road in the middle of the night.
His one and only love, to be torn away from him in minutes.
Drums began to beat, a steady rhythm that sliced through Henry’s bones.
Léon tilted his head in a slight nod, and the strangest dash of hope leapt into Henry’s heart.
He quelled it fast. There was no hope.
But that one look had meant the world to him.
That one look that no one except Henry saw, because all eyes were on another prisoner.
Louis Capet needed help to mount the steep stairs.
He was half carried up, then his coat and cravat were removed.
Léon looked him in the eyes, and without a word, opened his collar wide for the blade to make free progress through his neck.
Léon walked across the stage and picked up a length of rope.
Louis appeared to make some objection to this.
Henry watched Léon throw it down, say a few quiet words to him, then, with a lowered head, Louis allowed a handkerchief to be wrapped around his wrists, binding them tight.
He was pushed to his knees in front of Léon.
Henry was shocked to see it.
Léon took a pair of shears, held Louis’ ponytail, and sliced his hair off.
He held it high, and the crowd screamed.
Something in Henry’s blood turned icy.
Léon was doing it all by the book.
Léon, with his old-fashioned axe, who wanted to treat all people with the same courtesy royalty had been accustomed to, was treating this ex-king as the lowliest of all people.
What else was he to do?
Léon had always been smart enough to work the system.
And with a family to care for, was it any wonder he’d retreated back into it now?
The hair went into Léon’s pocket.
A curious move. He’d have had more clamour from the crowd had he given it to them.
But the moment was forgotten the second he began his speech.
The audience fell silent, and his voice carried on the wind, strong and bold to Henry’s ears, a bittersweet sound, that he thought he’d never hear again, that he wished he’d never heard again, that he loved in his heart to hear again.
“Louis Capet. For betraying the people of France, who you were sworn to protect, you are condemned to death. For leaving your countrymen to starve while you grew large on their suffering; for standing by in ignorance while people watched their mothers, their fathers, their sisters and brothers and children die for a piece of bread; for allowing the degradation of all humanity through privation and pain, when you could have stopped it. For tearing loved ones apart, for destroying families, for persecuting the weak and the poor to line your filthy pockets, for opposing the revolution, for being traitor to your own countrymen, I have the very great honour of taking your head today. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Louis may have suffered a great many indignities during his imprisonment, but even then, and until his last breath, he thought of himself as a king, chosen by his God, intrinsically better than Léon, than Henry, than every other man, woman and child in the audience that day.
He was shocked at Léon’s audacity, and the truth of those words never truly penetrated his privileged and protected mind.
He said, “I die innocent of all the crimes that are imputed to me. I forgive the authors of my death. I pray to God that the blood you shed will not fall on France?—”
This last sounding like a threat, Léon pointed at the drummers, who beat their instruments in time, drowning out whatever else the man was going to say.
Léon pulled Louis to his feet, brought him around the guillotine, and laid him out long.
Louis spoke on, to Léon, protesting his innocence, but in all Léon’s time as executioner, there were few occasions in which a man was less innocent in his eyes.
“Do not mistake ignorance for innocence, Citizen Capet,” Léon said.
“It is no defence to have observed atrocities from a distance, then said you could do nothing. You, of all men, had more power than anyone to help people. You chose to hurt them. You chose to divide them. But today, you see, the people have real power.”
Léon slotted the board forward, and Louis’ head slipped into place.
Léon enclosed his neck in the lunette, and he pulled the rope.
Down came the blade, and Louis Capet was decapitated.
Léon lifted the man’s head high so he could see what he had wrought through his careless cruelty.
So he could see the anger and the blood lust—see what Léon had seen every working day for so many years.
A people poorly educated, miserable, desperate for change.
Who had needed the beautiful ideals of the revolution, the wonderful dreams that set everything in motion, that any good and pure heart would have wanted for their kinfolk.
Food, education, healthcare.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
Léon strode to the front of the stage with the head dripping, the eyes twitching, then he held it up directly to Henry.
He smiled, wide, and Henry smiled too, then laughed.
Of all the strange twists of fate.
What a wonderful thing for Léon to be able to take the head of the very man who had caused him so much suffering.
And to the letter of the law too.
Henry’s eyes glazed over.
The pride he felt in Léon was immeasurable.
The audience screamed out, “Long live the Nation!” “Long live the Republic!” and “Long live Liberty!” A man ran his fingers through Louis’ blood, tasted it, and declared, “It is well salted!” Guns fired in celebration, singing and dancing broke out, but between Léon and Henry, there was silence.
A quiet moment so close to the end, that was just the two of them, and everything Henry had worked for.
Léon threw the head in a casket, flipped the platform, and rolled Louis’ deceased body onto it.
The casket was placed on an open carriage, and it rolled away, taking with it all the soldiers, all the people who had come to see the demise of their antagonist, all the people who had come to see justice done.
But as the drums faded with the procession, so the door on Henry's carriage swung open, and careless, ignorant hands reached in, digging into his bare skin.
Léon returned to his reality. The one he’d never wanted. The one he’d been fighting to get out of. The one he’d never been able to break free from until Henry.
His partner, his lover, was shoved forward, pushed up the stairs, and forced to his knees in front of Léon, hands bound behind his back, awaiting the indifferent slice of Madame Guillotine.