Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

It wasn’t Picot. Both Picot and Le Bourgeois had been killed the night before. Tried, sentenced, executed, all within the space of an hour. This man was someone else entirely. A thief, a murderer, a rapist. Expendable fodder from Paris’s overflowing prisons.

Querelle, of course, was not to know that.

In the rain, in the dark, one bound and hunched man looked much like another. It was necessary, for the sake of the charade, that Querelle think it was one of his comrades, that he see in the arc of the ax the intimation of his own mortality. To be told, at a remove, in simple, whitewashed words that his comrades were dead would not have at all the same effect.

It all made André sick.

“Such brave defiance,” purred Delaroche, his chin practically resting on the prisoner’s shoulder. “Such unwavering insolence. But, as you shall see, Monsieur, Madame la Guillotine will not be defied, not for all the bravery in the world.”

Despite the freezing air gusting through the window, sweat beaded Querelle’s forehead.

André spoke, his calm voice unnaturally loud in the waiting hush. “There is, of course, still a chance for a pardon.”

Outside, two soldiers helped the bound man to kneel. With rough efficiency, they settled his head in the hollowed trough designed for just that purpose.

“A pardon?” croaked Querelle, never taking his eyes from the figure of the man on the block.

“A pardon,” repeated André quickly, as Delaroche opened his mouth to say something, undoubtedly taunting, pointless, and time-wasting. “I have a pardon with your name on it. All it lacks is the First Consul’s signature.”

Querelle’s nails scraped against the stone of the sill as his hands opened and closed, seeking some sort of purchase. He cast an agonized glance out the window, at the man kneeling on the scaffold. He looked back, uncertainly, at André.

“Should you choose to change your mind, Monsieur Fouché himself would personally obtain the First Consul’s signature on your behalf.”

Delaroche pushed his way forward. “A throat is made to be used, Monsieur. And, if not, it must be . . . cut.”

Querelle looked from André to Delaroche and back again. “How do I know you won’t kill me anyway?”

It was an excellent question.

“Do you doubt the word of the Minister of Police?” demanded Delaroche.

Since that was precisely what the man was doing, there was no easy answer to that. Insulting one’s captor might make good theatre, but it made very poor sense.

André looked quellingly at Delaroche. “Should you do nothing,” he said sensibly, to Querelle, “you will most certainly take your place on that scaffold at dawn. Should you change your mind . . .” He held up the rolled piece of paper, tied with an official-looking red ribbon, letting Querelle’s eyes and mind rest on it and the possibilities it implied.

The condemned man’s eyes darted back and forth, to the window and back again, like an animal in a snare. André could see the wild thoughts going through his mind. The still man on the scaffold, the knife that hadn’t fallen, the offer of pardon . . . What if it were all a sham: trial, condemnation, execution, all of it? What if it were only a bluff? A gleam of cunning lit Querelle’s bloodshot eyes, gone glassy with fear and a desperate man’s desperate hope. If they were bluffing, he could continue to refuse.... He had held out this long against Fouché, why not longer? They might be lying about Picot and Le Bourgeois. If they killed him, they would never know what he had to tell. They wouldn’t kill him, not now—nor that unfortunate dupe of a decoy in the courtyard, all done up to look like a prisoner. It was a bluff, a sham, it had to be....

André only wished it were.

“And what if I don’t?” Querelle said belligerently, just as the low rumble of a drumroll sounded in the courtyard below, like a swell of thunder in the night.

“Ah,” said Delaroche, his eyes lighting with a feral glow. He turned to the window, leading the others to follow suit. “If that is your choice . . .”

With a shrill whinny of sound, the blade swooped down, slicing through flesh and bone before landing, with a moist thunk , on the wooden block below.

Delaroche watched with unmistakable pleasure as the soldiers went about their grim business.

André could see fear and disbelief warring on Querelle’s torchlit countenance.

The soldiers on duty barely looked at the head as they picked it up by the hair and tossed it into a waiting basket. Another grabbed the dead man by the legs, making a crazy pattern through the matted sawdust as he dragged the headless torso from the block. There was no roar from the crowd; there was no crowd to roar. This was nothing more than routine.

In the cell above, the condemned man’s complexion, tanned from years on shipboard, turned an unfortunate shade of green, like an unripe olive.

“There were five of us,” Querelle blurted out, levering himself away from the window with both hands.

“Five what?” prompted Delaroche, leaning forward.

Querelle took a deep breath, his lungs laboring as though he had been running. “Five of us who landed in October. In the service of the King.”

André nodded to the deputy at the table, signaling him to begin writing. There would be an official report of Querelle’s testimony prepared later, one that left out such inconvenient little details as the means employed in obtaining it.

Pushing away from the window, Delaroche advanced on the prisoner. “I take it this means that you are, at last, prepared to talk to us?”

Through the bars could be heard the terrible sifting sound of sawdust being swept with a long-handled broom, clearing the scaffold to make it ready for its next occupant.

With great effort, like a man with the ague, Querelle lowered his head down and then lifted it up again.

“You appear cold, Monsieur Querelle,” said Delaroche. He gestured to the guard. “You! Fetch our friend a blanket. It wouldn’t do to have him catch a chill. Not now that he has agreed so generously to assist us.”

Something in Delaroche’s voice made the condemned man shudder harder than ever. Which was, of course, exactly what it had been meant to do.

Cutting in front of Delaroche, André plucked the blanket from the hands of the guard and handed it to the condemned man. Querelle’s hands shook as he attempted to arrange the square of wool around his shoulders.

“I do hope you will justify our confidence in you, Monsieur Querelle,” said André quietly. “I should hate to think that you were abusing the generosity of the First Consul.”

“There was a plot,” Querelle said slowly.

This was it, the point of no return. André could see Querelle’s hesitation; it leached out of every line of his body. Venal the man might be, but these had been his comrades. He had endured four months of questioning without breaking. The interrogators at the Temple, where Querelle had been held until now, were seldom gentle in their methods.

Squick, squick, went the sound of wet sawdust being swept off the scaffold below. The sawdust was matted black with blood. The red ran down with the rain, staining the sides of the platform.

Querelle turned back to André. “There was a plot. A conspiracy,” he elaborated.

“To kill the First Consul?” asked André, holding up a hand to silence Delaroche.

“Oh no! N-no!” It would, thought André, be rather cheeky to admit to attempting to kill the same man from whom one was currently seeking a pardon. “We were just going to, er, kidnap him.”

“A likely story,” sneered Delaroche. “Think about it. Think hard.”

The prisoner gathered the tattered shreds of his courage. He had only one card to play, and he knew it. “I’ll think better once that pardon is signed,” he said.