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Tristan looked up and saw La Force was just down the street. From the outside it appeared to be an ordinary house. It had been a house at one point, in fact. Now it held the imprisoned nobles who hadn’t been quick enough to escape the revolutionaries, as well as those citizens accused of disloyalty. Tristan had no wish to go inside and to see so many of the people he had been instrumental in putting there.
But they were approaching the entrance now, Dewhurst walking as confidently as before, and Tristan pulled out the forged orders Miss Blake had made for them. Dewhurst slowed as they walked through the entrance, wide enough to allow carts and horses through, and Tristan took the lead, looking about for the man who appeared the most senior. He didn’t have to look hard. A man approached him immediately, dressed as a soldier and with a face weathered and hardened.
“Citoyen, what can I do for you?”
“Orders signed by Citoyen Lindet of the Committee for Public Safety.” Tristan held out the paper. “One prisoner was left off the list to be taken to the Conciergerie. We’re here to collect him.”
The soldier’s eyes narrowed as he read the documents. “Everything looks in order.” He gestured Tristan and Dewhurst to follow him. “I’ll have him brought out. Wait in the guardhouse, if you like.”
“Thank you, citoyen.” Tristan moved that way, but once the soldier with their papers walked away, he didn’t move any closer.
“Let’s sit down. This will take an age,” Dewhurst said.
“I’d rather not mingle with anyone. If they recognize me, we’re in trouble.”
“Even your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.” Dewhurst put an arm around his shoulder and dragged Tristan toward the small building that had probably originally been used by footmen and grooms who waited upon arriving conveyances.
“It’s not a good idea.” Tristan kept his voice low, but didn’t fight Dewhurst’s grip. He didn’t want to attract the other soldiers’ attention.
“Yes, it is. I want to hear any news, and they have wine.”
Tristan bit back a rebuke. Dewhurst was obviously an incorrigible risktaker. Tristan wished Ffoulkes had come with him. The blond man seemed far more levelheaded. Dewhurst greeted the soldiers jovially and laid down his assignats to join their game of hazard. Tristan sat back in the corner, keeping watch on the courtyard for the return of the leader.
“Another man need shaving by the National Razor?” one of the soldiers asked once the die had been thrown.
Dewhurst shrugged. “I didn’t ask questions. That only causes trouble, eh?”
The other men laughed, but Tristan frowned. Once he’d been of that opinion. He’d thought it disloyal to question the leaders of the revolution. Now he realized that those who weren’t questioned gained too much power. Was that why they’d wanted to depose the king? Because he was seen as divine and therefore above reproach?
“Do you have anyone interesting inside?” Dewhurst relinquished the die and paid what he owed. Tristan assumed he was losing on purpose. Everyone liked a man who lost amiably.
“No.” A young soldier with long brown hair shook his head. “We had a former marquis, but he sneezed into the basket.”
“Now just old men and women who cry about how innocent they are all day,” said another soldier who looked far too young to be so callous.
“What if they are innocent?” Tristan asked more to himself than the others, but he’d spoken aloud.
“If they was so innocent, they wouldn’t be here,” the young soldier answered.
Tristan rose. “No? People lie. Accuse neighbors out of vengeance and—”
Dewhurst laughed loudly, cutting Tristan off. “He thinks too much, and he forgets that’s why we have the Tribunal. If anyone is innocent, the Tribunal will find out.”
Tristan glanced at Dewhurst. The soldiers didn’t believe that any more than the rest of Paris did. But Dewhurst’s dark eyes were filled with warning.
“You’re correct, of course.” Tristan walked away, the men’s conversation fading as he stepped into the shadow of La Force. The prison, which held hundreds, was eerily quiet. Tristan could almost feel the despair of the condemned seeping out through the stones of the building. Quite suddenly, he wished he could free all of them, not just the locksmith.
Tristan clenched his hands. What was happening to him? What had Alexandra done to him? He closed his eyes and remembered the face of the Duc du Mérignac as he’d watched his men defile Tristan’s sister. He couldn’t bear to think of the attack he’d endured, but it had been enough to see the duc’s impassive look as sister had been raped.
He wasn’t sorry the duc had gone to the guillotine. He wasn’t sorry the man’s family had suffered as they’d made his family suffer. Revenge was not noble. It was petty and vindictive, and Tristan could accept that he had acted as badly as the duc in some regards.
What he could not accept was how he’d allowed his hatred for the duc to extend to all of the nobility. He’d wanted to punish them all for the sins of one man. Like the young soldier, Tristan hadn’t wanted to see how petty vindictiveness opened a door for injustice. And now all of France paid the price as the bloodthirsty Robespierre put hundreds to the guillotine every week.
He still believed in the ideals of the revolution, but if he’d worried he’d resent being made to flee the country because of what the league would make him do, that worry was past. He had done enough harm, and perhaps when the papers he’d collected about Robespierre were made public, the country would see the man for who he was and his reign would end.
“Here you are,” said the soldier leading a man on the early side of forty. His hair was long and unkempt, his clothing black and plain and much worn.
His hands were bound in back, and he looked up at Tristan with dull eyes. He’d probably waited for his name to be called each morning and now that it had happened, he was glad for the waiting to end.
