Where the Light Falls(43)
He snapped at the younger man now: “Remy, that’s enough. We’re going.”
“Agreed, André. They’re no fun in this place—take me over to the Left Bank.” The handsome young man’s words slipped out, slurred and slow. “I’ve told Celine I’d visit her tonight.”
“Not tonight. I’m taking you home.”
The man called Remy lowered his head onto his brother’s shoulder as they shuffled out of the café. A stunned silence hovered across the café in their wake. Jean-Luc turned his gaze back to his dinner companions. To his left, Gavreau was chuckling, and to his right, Merignac looked as if he had lost his appetite.
Folding his thin hands on the table, the old secretary propped himself up on his elbows. “They should not allow fools like that into establishments like this. Even if they do wear the uniform.”
How undemocratic you sound, Jean-Luc thought to himself. But he simply lifted his spoon and tucked back into his flavorless stew.
Removing a pristine white handkerchief with which he now dabbed the corners of his mouth, Merignac looked up. “Citizen St. Clair, I hear that you just defended a widow. An unfortunate woman who had been preyed upon by a villainous marquis? My employer followed that case, in fact, with interest. He approves of your work.”
Jean-Luc nodded, swallowing his stew and the involuntary smile that tugged on his lips, surprised that his drudging work had been noticed by anyone outside his department. “Citizeness Poitier. A worthwhile cause, reinstating her to her proper home.”
“Speaking of widows,” Merignac said, once Jean-Luc had finished. “Now that Citizen Capet is dead, the question remains: what to do with his Austrian widow? Should Antoinette lose her head as well?”
Jean-Luc, too, had thought much about the question of the deposed queen. He had been shocked when the king had been sent to the guillotine; he could never have imagined, at the outbreak of the Revolution almost four years ago, that the country would go that far in its quest for liberty. But it was treason to say so.
Merignac leaned his chin onto his hands, his face angled toward Jean-Luc as he asked: “Well, citizen? What do you think ought to be done with the Austrian woman?”
Jean-Luc swallowed hard, dabbing the corners of his mouth with his napkin before answering. “I do not wish to see her returned to Austria, where her royalist friends might make more trouble for us.”
“What, then?”
Jean-Luc wavered a moment before answering. He recalled the political pamphlet he had read that morning, another installment put out by the cryptic “Citizen Persephone,” this one calling for reason and clemency in the sentencing of Marie-Antoinette. Jean-Luc agreed with that argument now as he answered: “I think a life spent under house arrest would be sufficient punishment.”
“Come now.” Merignac offered a tepid smile, his head leaning to one side. “You are a smart man, Jean-Luc St. Clair. You know she would relish a house arrest. She’d spend her time eating brioches and drinking the finest wines while bedding her guards.” He sniggered, looking down to his full bowl of stew, which he still refrained from touching. After a pause, he sighed. “My patron, Citizen Lazare, believes that for her, it must be the blade, just as it was for her husband. While the Austrian consort lives, she serves as a symbol of the monarchy, a rallying cry to inspire our enemies at home and abroad. It is a matter of simple logic: either she dies, or our revolution shall perish. So, send her to the guillotine.”
Jean-Luc cleared his throat, lowering his eyes as he took a sip of wine.
“But I think the idea of the guillotine makes you…uncomfortable, Citizen St. Clair.” Merignac was looking at him appraisingly, his dark eyes narrowed.
Jean-Luc turned to Gavreau, whose lips were stained purple, and held out his glass for a refill of wine.
“Do you know whom we have to thank for the widespread use of the guillotine, Citizen St. Clair?” Merignac asked.
“Joseph-Ignace Guillotin,” Jean-Luc answered, turning back to his dinner partner as he lowered his wineglass. “That is from where the name is derived.”
“Precisely. Doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. And do you know, Jean-Luc…may I call you Jean-Luc?”
“Please do.”
“Excellent. Where was I? Oh yes, do you know why the guillotine was chosen as our new means of execution?”
“To offer a more humane form of capital punishment.”
“Just so.”
Jean-Luc swallowed, clearing his throat. “I grant you, the apparatus itself might be more…humane…than the gallows, where a man can writhe for upwards of an hour in unimaginable pain. Or beheading by an ax, where failure to land a clean blow can necessitate several hacks before the head is severed. It’s just the—”