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I squeezed my eyes shut against the memories that assaulted me on a tide of shame and fear. My uncle did the unspeakable, and yet my parents castmeaside. That same pain was now echoing in Armand’s footsteps as he walked away. He’d used me too, then discarded me like a rag.
I straightened my collar and marched out of the Bastille, head held high, while inside I was collapsing. Forsaken yet again. Jeanne de le Motte, at least, had been sentenced to a public lashing and life in prison. I considered attending her flogging to cheer me up but opted to get drunk instead.
Night fell while I wandered the volatile streets of Paris, stumbling drunk, and attempting to drown my heartache in a bottle of wine. Protests of earlier that day had morphed into a full-blown riot. News of the verdicts had spread; thelibelleswere already printed and circulating.Affaire du collier de la reine—The Affair of the Queen’s Necklace, they called it. They claimed Marie Antoinette had commissioned an exquisite diamond necklace during a time when the people were on the brink of starvation and had blamed an innocent—Jeanne—when her ploy had been discovered. That Antoinette had nothing to do with Jeanne’s conspiracy and had turned the necklace down—twice—was of little consequence.
Mobs of dirty peasants, I found, weren’t known to let trivial things like facts get in the way of a good outrage.
I cursed and angrily shoved my way through throngs of uncouth mongrels who stank of the chamber pot, demanding the King and Queen’s heads, demanding lower taxes and food for their children. A bunch of whining sops…and me caught in the midst.
I peered blearily for a street sign but saw only shouting, angry faces. I wished I’d waited until returning to my flat before drowning my sorrows. Swinging from a tall pole, an effigy of the Queen burned, lighting the dark night and casting dancing shadows, adding to the chaos. Hands shoved. I was a trout pushing upstream, the crowd thrusting me back and sullying my rich red coat with their grime.
Then a group caught me in their net, and I was surrounded.
“We have a lord among us,” one man told his fellows, each stinking of sour sweat as they made a ring around me. “Are you one of the Queen’s men?”
“Piss off,” I slurred and tried to push past.
“He’s of the Court, bien sûr,” another said, the circle closing tighter around me. “Aren’t you, Monsieur Dandy?”
Hedaredput his grubby fingers on me, shoving me. Too drunk to keep my footing, I stumbled back. Rough hands caught me from behind and shoved me forward. For a few terrifying moments, I was tossed among them like a rag doll. The wine bottle was ripped from my hand, the ruffled collar torn from my neck, the wig plucked from my head.
“Ah, a golden boy,” one man seethed, gripping a fistful of my blond hair and painfully wrenching my head. “A cherub, he is.”
“Damn you all to hell!” I cried, fear burning up the alcohol, leaving panic to streak through me like fire. “Get your filthy hands off me. Do you know who I am?”
The man hauled my face close to his.
“We know who you are,” he seethed. “You’re one ofthem.”
His meaty finger jabbed at the burning effigy that was swinging wildly now. As I watched, it touched the roof of a distillery. A surprised cry went up as a fire blazed fast along the thatch and dry wood.
“Let it burn!” someone cried, and the shout was taken up.“Let it burn! Let it burn!”
The brute holding me turned back to me, eyes wide enough to show the whites. “Oui, let it burn. And you with it!”
“What? No!”
The man hauled me to the distillery door, while others shoved their shoulders against it to bust it open. The entire structure was burning now, the smoke filling the streets.
“No! I’m not of this Court! I’m not even French!” I cried, my heels scrabbling along the cobbles as they dragged me to the inferno.“I’m royalty, you animals!”
A poor choice of words, in hindsight.
The man’s eyes flared, his lips curled, and another verdict was rendered right then and there—death. He shoved me inside the burning distillery and the door slammed shut behind me.
Coughing, eyes streaming, I threw an arm over my mouth and heaved against the door. No avail; they’d barred it from the outside. The roof of the distillery was swallowed by orange and red flames, embers falling and igniting tufts of hay that cradled bottles of wine. I stumbled past crates of liquor, searching for another way out. I came to a corner—a dead end—and turned to go back when a blazing beam came down, barring my way.
“No,” I whimpered, sinking my back against the wall and sliding to the dirt floor. “Not like this. I don’t deserve this. I did nothing wrong!”
“Indeed, you didn’t,” came a voice in the chaos. Smooth, refined English. Like cool water.
Blinking through thickening smoke, I peered around to see a man sitting casually on a crate. He was dressed in a strange white suit, pristine and untouched by soot. His dark hair flowed down his shoulders from under a white velvet hat, and odd spectacles were perched on his nose.
“So unfair, how those peasants treated you,” he said. “You,the son of a British lord.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ashtaroth,” the man said, though even in that smoke-filled room with death licking at me from all sides, I knew he wasn’t precisely aman.
