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“We? We? I will ignore for a moment that you have included me in your daft plan, and point out that since the escape of the comtesse de Tonnerre, Robespierre has been on a tirade. If any more prisoners escape, he’s threatened to have the guards guillotined. If you go into the Conciergerie, you go alone. And you will not come out alive.”
“Then give me another alternative,” Ramsey said, taking her hands in his. He half expected her to put the dagger to his throat again, but she allowed the contact this time. “Miss Martin, if it was someone you…someone you cared about, what would you do?”
She blew out a sigh, and her eyes wouldn’t meet his. “There’s nothing.”
“I don’t believe you. There has to be something.”
She looked at him. “It’s mad. It’s suicide.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Damn you! You haven’t even heard what it is yet.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take any risk.”
Alex shook her hands, pushing his away. “I knew you would say that, and I knew if you did I would have to help you.”
Ramsey tried to grab her in an embrace, but she brandished her dagger again, warding him off. He held up both hands. “Very well. I’ll simply say thank you.”
“Don’t say anything yet. Once you hear my plan, the last thing you’ll want to do is thank me.”
Chapter 19
Gabrielle stood on the swaying tumbrel, feeling the breeze tickle the nape of her neck. Her head felt oddly light, deprived as it was of her thick, heavy mane of unruly brown hair. The loose, uneven strands brushed the skin on her neck like long, pointed fingernails. Would she feel the blade of the guillotine, or would death come fast and sweet as promised?
She clenched her hands on the cart’s rough rail and tried to think of something else—something other than blood and death and the swish the blade made when it fell in the Place Louis XV, now the laughably named Place de la Révolution. This wasn’t a revolution. This was murder.Hermurder. Her stomach roiled, and she closed her eyes and tried to think of happier times.
Mrs. Cress would love this short hairstyle. Of course, she’d bemoan the artless way in which the hair had been hacked off by the prison guard, but give Cressy a pair of shears and she’d have Gabrielle’s hair cleverly styled in mere moments. Gabrielle would miss Mrs. Cress—her brash speech and her unfailing loyalty. She’d miss Diana too. Diana had been a good friend, someone she could count on in a crisis. If only Diana were here now, she’d turn her famous imperious stare on these raucous revolutionaries and have Gabrielle free in a moment. She smiled, and then she sighed.
She could admit it. She would miss Ramsey. Pathetic to even think of the lying, deceitful scoundrel. He was the reason she was standing here, being squeezed ever tighter as guards herded more and more of the condemned onto the already packed cart.
She shouldn’t have trusted him. She shouldn’t have believed him.
She wished he were beside her. She’d like to see him mount the scaffold, face Sanson and his assistant, who worked with that awful blood-red rose clamped between his teeth. She liked to imagine Ramsey would grovel and beg and fall to his knees as the crowd jeered. The assistant would drag him, kicking and screaming, to Madame Guillotine, tie him down, and whoosh! The blade would sing. Ramsey would be no more.
The tumbrel jolted as the horses began a slow plod toward the Rue Royale, now the Rue Nationale. Gabrielle shook her head to clear it, feeling those loose strands of hair on her neck again. She was as bad as the peasants waiting to taunt her and the other condemned as they left the security of the prison. For now, she had bloodlust too.
Only she was the one who would die.
Gabrielle turned and took one last look at the Conciergerie. She’d spent a sleepless night in a large holding cell with walls and floors of cold stone. Even if she had not been shaking with fear at the knowledge her death was imminent, she would not have been able to sleep. Unlike La Force, she had not been surrounded solely by nobility. The other prisoners were mothers, daughters, bakers, seamstresses, shop girls. All had been denounced by loyal patriots. Gabrielle doubted a single prisoner had committed any real crime.
The weeping and whispered prayers of the other women kept her awake. She had said her own prayers, made her own peace, but she hadn’t wept. She’d come to France knowing her death might be the inevitable result. Gabrielle had come to save the comtesse de Tonnerre and her daughter. If she lost her own life now, it was no one’s fault but her own.
As the horses plodded forward, Gabrielle turned and faced forward. Along the sides of the narrow streets, men and women stood waiting for the condemned to pass. Most averted their eyes, but a few stared at them and screamed,“Liberty, equality, fraternity!”
She knew they were closer to the Place de la Révolution when the crowds grew thicker and more vehement. She was in the last cart, which meant most of the peasants had exhausted their ire and their supply of rotten produce by the time she passed. At least she would not go to her death with rotten cabbage in her shorn hair.
“Is that it?” the man beside her asked. Gabrielle had hardly taken note of him. He stood like she, with head held high, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the side of the cart to keep his balance.
Gabrielle looked at the tumbrel in front of them. Just beyond it, the street opened into a wider avenue, which would lead into the Place de la Révolution.
“Soon,” she murmured, placing her hand over his. It was little comfort to either of them, but it was all the consolation she could give. There would be no comfort when the bloody blade of Madame Guillotine, glinting red in the early morning sun, came into view.
The tumbrel jolted as a wheel bumped over a rock in the street, and Gabrielle swayed and almost fell. Releasing her fellow prisoner’s hand, she grabbed the sides of the cart with both hands, just in time to brace herself when the horse unexpectedly reared and the cart pitched backward. Those prisoners who had not grabbed on fell over others, and one man pitched over the back of the cart, only to be trodden upon by the horse of the guard at the rear of the procession.
Gabrielle turned away from the gruesome sight in time to watch as a large market cart rolled between the tumbrel and the exit to the wider avenue, cutting them off from the rest of the convoy. The tumbrel’s driver yelled for the farmer to move the cart, but the large conveyance didn’t budge, effectively sealing them into the tight street. The passageway was so narrow the tumbrel did not even have room to turn around.
Her heart pounding, Gabrielle eyed the jeering peasants they’d passed. Even more than the guillotine, she feared an angry mob that took justice into their own hands.
