AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“He’s dead. Leave him.”
The voices crashed over him, rousing him from the only peace he’d known in months.
“He’s awake.”
Laurent opened his eyes and scowled at the men looking down at him. He struggled to sit. One glance beyond them told him he was no longer in the prison courtyard. Where was he? Where was the mob? Perhaps this was the mob. Perhaps they’d saved him for last.
“Well,” he rasped. “Go ahead and kill me.”
“It’s tempting,” said a tall man with dark hair, who was dressed in the revolutionary garb of the sansculottes, in simple trousers and carmagnole. He was larger and healthier than most peasants. His shoulders strained his dingy brown shirt, hinting at muscles and power beneath. His size and strength meant he wielded more authority. That and he had a pistol. At one time in his life, Laurent would have given his right hand for a pistol.
Laurent stared at the pistol. “Can you shoot straight, citoyen?”
“As an arrow,” the man answered, his accent not that of the poorer faubourgs like Saint-Antoine, but not that of Versailles either.
Laurent squared his shoulders. “Then do it. Right between the eyes or through the heart is preferred, though I doubt you care for my wishes.”
“Not particularly, no. You deserved to die at the hands of those lunatics, but I saved you.”
“For the guillotine?” Laurent asked. It was a stupid question, but clearly some peasant had damaged his head. Laurent’s temple throbbed, and he had a vague memory of a wooden axe handle coming down on him. He’d lost too much blood. Why else would he believe this revolutionary had come to save him?
“I saved you forhim.” The man grabbed Laurent’s hand and pressed what felt like foolscap into it. “Now stand.”
He roughly yanked Laurent to his knees. The world rushed at him, green and brown and red, but he managed to rise and stay on his feet. He was no longer inside the gates of La Force. He was free and weaving along an alley. If the muted sounds of violence in the distance were any indication, he was not far from La Force and the mob carnage being wrought there.
At the end of the alleyway, the big revolutionary pushed Laurent toward two men standing at the corner of the courtyard wall. One had auburn hair peeking out from under a rag on his head and the other blond hair under a cocked hat. Three men. Laurent thought he might have a chance to escape them...except for that pistol.
Just then a fourth man ran full tilt from the adjoining street. He was dressed in sansculottes and carmagnole like the first. “Lads! This wye. We hae a problem.”
Laurent couldn’t place the accent at first—French tinged with Scottish? A Scot?
“You too!” The Scot pointed to the revolutionary pushing Laurent. “Leave him.”
“We need him and what he knows,” the revolutionary argued.
“Leave him!”
“Bloody hell,” the revolutionary growled in English. Then he reached into his bloodstained vest and pulled out a slip of paper. “This is a house where you’ll be safe,” he said in French. “Go now, but stay off the main avenues.”
Laurent took the paper. “And if I don’t go to this house?”
The revolutionary gave him a hard look before running after his compatriots. “Then don’t expect to survive until tomorrow,” he called over his shoulder.
And he was gone.
Laurent leaned against the wall of the alley, his head throbbing even worse now, and opened the paper.
6 Rue du Jour
Laurent did not move. One moment he had been inside the prison courtyard, fighting the mob climbing over the walls and crashing through what should have been a locked gate. The next moment he was free and being told to go to a house on the Rue du Jour.
He had the urge to return to the prison. Perhaps he could save some of the women and children, and when he died, take a few of the revolutionaries with him. But he remembered the last images of the courtyard before he’d closed his eyes. He’d watched as two women tore at the dress and hair of Camille. She was covered in blood, and he’d hoped she was no longer alive. Once, in another life, when he’d been the Marquis de Montagne and she the Vicomtesse de la Chapelle, they’d danced in the gardens of Versailles and sipped champagne. He’d kissed her once, her lips as sweet with the wine as the strings of the violins.
There was no sweetness in France any longer.
It was too late to save the prisoners who’d been in the courtyard.
Laurent had a choice. He could lie down here and die or he could try to make it to 6 Rue du Jour. Whatever lay in store for him there, he did not think it was death.
