Chapter 12
Twelve
Marguerite waited for hours in the court offices to find out why she was being arrested. She was still waiting when they led her down the hallway to the prison’s registration desk.
“Is this all you have?” the clerk asked, when she placed her shawl-wrapped bundle on the desk in front of him.
His tone made it clear the question was more from rote than any real curiosity.
He was a small, bald man with lips stitched in what appeared to be a permanent line of disapproval.
He rifled through her things, setting the money aside for what he referred to as “room and board,” and raised a single sparse eyebrow at the pile of candles.
“Those should make you popular among your cellmates.”
Cellmates.
She was standing on what she understood was the ‘in’ side, which included the desk with its open ledger, a line of waiting prisoners, visitors, and guards.
The guards were a different set than the ones who’d left her there.
The stubble-faced man had given her buttocks a final squeeze before departing.
The other side of the hall was clearly, horrifyingly, the ‘out’ side.
Along its far wall was a row of cells housing the condemned waiting to be called to the tumbrils.
In one, a man in his forties lay upon a filthy mattress, surrounded by half-eaten food and overturned bottles.
In another, a woman in her twenties, dressed in white, hair shorn to just below her ears, sat motionless and staring as if already dead.
Beside her, two women—the older one’s face a softer and slightly lined version of what the younger’s would now never look like, held each other and wept.
And in a third cell, a group of men barely out of their teens played at cards; their shirt sleeves rolled up, their jokes sounding too loud, their laughter too brittle.
“Here,” the clerk handed her bundle back. She clutched it tightly against her chest, as if the paisley might somehow protect her.
“You can take her now,” he added, turning to her new set of guards.
Marguerite hadn’t registered their faces, only stained uniforms, broad-knuckled hands, and weapons.
“This way.” A guard with dark hair on the backs of his hands and a club tied at his waist caught her wrist and jerked her forward.
He led her down more hallways. The only light came from lanterns strung from the vaulted ceilings, and it made the former royal palace, with its winding stairs, barred and boarded up windows, and iron gates feel like a hellish maze.
They passed through gates, so many gates, with wickets cut into them. The guard pulled a key from the ring jangling at his waist to unlock the wickets, swinging them open with a screech of heavy hinges.
The wickets were smaller than normal doors, their frames set several inches above ground level. Each time she stepped through one, Marguerite ducked her head, even though it only felt necessary, and lifted her feet, which was, if she wanted to avoid tripping or barking her shins.
“I need to see my lawyer. The warder said I could see my lawyer,” a man’s voice demanded insistently as they walked past a row of cells.
In the court offices she’d been offered a chance to contact a lawyer.
She’d searched her mind. Do I know any? Any that aren’t Girondins?
That would only make things worse. Perhaps she should contact a friend?
But did she dare drag a friend into the muck of her troubles?
Could she even be sure they were her friends?
She thought of Victorine’s visit to her apartment. Had her desire for a neighborly chat actually been to see if she’d fled? To prevent her from leaving? Had she left the note? Or had she denounced her?
“Take my letter to the tribunal, citizens please. I beg you. It will prove my innocence,” another man cried, his voice joining the calls for a lawyer. A woman’s voice rose in hysterical laughter.
The guard in front of her halted so suddenly, Marguerite nearly ran into him. He pulled a key from the ring at his waist and began unlocking a cell door. How many doors? How many gates now lay between her and freedom?
She’d lost count.
She felt the burn of tears forming against her eyelids and blinked rapidly, refusing to let them fall, reaching for anger instead.
She’d had no control, no choice about the family she’d been born into, the man she’d been made to marry.
The canvas had been her only place to explore, to dream, to show the world as she saw it. To be her true self.
The guard swung the cell door open.
Pale faces turned to look at her from narrow trestle beds set end to end on either side of the cell; a long, cramped room with a half-arched ceiling, and a single-barred window high in the wall at the far end.
The beds were separated by tall wooden head and footboards, which provided a modicum of privacy; the beds and their partitions were a luxury for which Marguerite had paid dearly.
Moldering straw littered the floor. She smelled the bucket that served as the communal toilet, before she spotted it beneath the window.
The guard grabbed her wrist, jerking her forward, then shoved her inside. Still clutching her bundle, she stumbled towards an empty bed. Her husband’s death and her father’s flight had made her believe that at last, she could spend her days painting whatever and whenever she wanted.
Now, she didn’t even have a sketchbook.