as he thought that he was going to make good his escape. Ironically, on the day before he was scheduled to die, he had learned that the man who was responsible for his arrest would soon be following him up the steps leading to the guillotine. One of the guards had told him that Sergeant Bibot had also been thrown into a cell in the north tower, for allowing the Duc de Chalis to escape. The guard, a bloodthirsty old peasant, had found the irony amusing, but the fact that Bibot was to die brought little comfort to Leforte. Instead of dwelling on the thought that the man who had brought him to this fate would share it, Leforte thought about de Chalis, an old man who had won his freedom. It seemed monstrously unfair. De Chalis was in the twilight of his years; he could not have long to live. Leforte was thirty-seven and in the prime of life.
He had been very much afraid, but now the fear had spent itself. Leforte felt numb. He found that singularly puzzling. Over and over, he kept thinking to himself, “I’m going to die. Why don’t I feel anything?”
They put him in the tumbrel, a crude, two-wheeled wooden cart, and a small escort of soldiers of the Republic formed up on either side. The driver, who reeked of garlic, looked at him only once, dispassionately spat upon his shirt, then turned his back on him and flapped the reins up and down several times to get the horses moving. The tumbrel moved forward with a jerk, going through the gate with Leforte as its sole piece of human cargo. The marquis took a deep and shuddering breath, resolving that he would not give the peasants the satisfaction of seeing him cower in fear. In point of fact, he was not afraid. He had accepted death with a deep despondency and he had run the gamut of all possible emotions. There was nothing left.
I will go to my death with dignity, he thought. To the very end, I will show this rabble that I am better than they are.
The street was lined with people. He was surprised to see how many of them had turned out to see him off. The noise was deafening. They laughed, they screamed, they jeered and rushed the tumbrel, trying to grab a piece of his clothing, to touch him, strike him, spit upon him, or throw garbage at him.
They followed the tumbrel as it proceeded down the street toward the Place de la Revolution and the soldiers made only the most token efforts to hold them back. The cart turned down another street and an old woman tried to clamber up onto the tumbrel. Leforte stared through her as she screamed unintelligibly at him. One of the soldiers pulled her off the cart, then turned to look at Leforte with a mixture of disgust and irritation. A hole appeared in the middle of the soldier’s forehead.
Leforte stared at it and frowned. The cart lurched forward and the soldier fell, being left behind as the procession continued. Puzzled, Leforte turned around to stare at the fallen soldier and then another soldier fell. This time, he heard the shot. Almost immediately, another shot rang out and the driver pitched forward off the tumbrel to fall in a lifeless heap upon the street. Another shot, another soldier fell.
The mob went wild.
“What the hell?” said Finn. “Someone’s picking off the soldiers!”
“Did you tell them to-”
“I didn’t tell them to shoot anybody!” Finn said. “They’re not even supposed to be here! I sent word to them to wait in the square until Leforte arrived!”
All around them, the crowd was surging in all directions as people ran in panic from the shooting, shoving each other and trampling those unfortunate enough to have lost their balance in the melee and to have fallen. Only one soldier remained from the small squad assigned to escort the Marquis de Leforte, and he had no desire to join the others. He dropped his musket and ran for the shelter of a building across the street. The horses, wearing blinders and by now long used to such cacophony, remained standing where they were, but they sensed the fear around them and pawed at the cobblestones skittishly. Leforte stood in the tumbrel helplessly, his hands bound, not knowing what to do.
“Up there,” said Lucas, pointing to a window on the second floor of a house across the street.
“Let’s go,” said Finn.
They pushed their way through the mob and rushed toward the house from which the shots were coming. By now, however, they were not the only ones who had marked the room on the second floor and they made it through the doorway of the house just ahead of several other men, one of whom was brandishing a pistol. The door to the room they sought was open and they all burst into the room to find not a gunman, but a small boy of about twelve or thirteen years with jet black hair and piercing dark eyes. He sat slumped against the wall beside a man’s corpse and as they entered, he began to cry.
“My father!” he wailed. “That man killed my father!”
At the same moment, a cry went up outside and they heard the sound of horses hooves upon the cobblestones. One of the men who had rushed into the room behind them ran over to the window, with Lucas just behind him.
“It’s Leforte!” the man shouted. “Leforte is escaping!”
As Lucas reached the window, he saw the tumbrel being driven down the street at a furious pace, the horses being whipped up by the same old woman who had only moments ago tried to climb up into the cart.
“Stop him!” cried the man, leaning far out of the window. “Stop him, he’s getting away!”
The boy kept wailing about his dead father. The men who had rushed up into the room behind Finn and Lucas ran back outside, after the one armed with the pistol let off a wild shot in the direction of the escaping tumbrel. Finn and Lucas remained behind with the boy.
Lucas kneeled down beside him, putting one hand on the youngster’s head. “What happened, son?” he said.
“My father,” sobbed the boy, “that man came in here and killed my father!”
“ What man?”
“He killed my father!” the boy wailed. “He killed him! Then he hit me and said that if I made any noise, he would kill me, too!”
Finn bent down over the father’s body. “Shot through the head,” he said. “From behind.” He stood up. “Look here,” he said, as Lucas tried to comfort the boy. He pointed to a pair of pistols lying on the floor beneath a table by the windowsill. “He had several pistols, already loaded. That’s how he was able to shoot so quickly. There’s only two here, I figure he had at least two or three others. He heard us coming up the stairs, grabbed up the pistols that he could carry, jumped through the window down into the street, and lost himself in the crowd while his confederate made off with the tumbrel.”
“You don’t think that one of-”
Finn held a finger to his lips. “Not in front of the boy,” he said. Finn had noticed that the boy had stopped his wailing and was only sniffling now, watching them fearfully. “It’s all right, son,” said Finn. “Nobody’s going to harm you now.”
“Come on,” said Lucas, helping the boy up. “Where is your mother, do you know?”
“No,” the boy said, pulling away from him as Lucas tried to help him to his feet. “No, don’t touch me!”
“It’s all right, “ said Lucas, pulling him up by the arm as the boy struggled with him. “We won’t hurt you, I promise you. Don’t be afraid. There’s nothing-”
Something fell to the floor with a thump and Lucas glanced down to see a pistol lying on the floor.
“What…”
The boy jerked away and pulled another pistol from inside his tattered jacket, swinging at Lucas with it. Instinctively, Lucas blocked the blow, but the boy had twisted free from his grasp and he quickly made for the door. Finn leaped across the room and brought the boy down with a flying tackle.
“Merde!” screamed the boy. “Let me go, you big ox! Let me go or else I’ll kill you! Let me go, I said! “
He squirmed in Finn’s grasp like a little fish, kicking and clawing at Finn’s face in an effort to get at his eyes.
“I’ve got him,” Lucas said, grabbing the boy by the scruff of the neck and hauling him to his feet. “All right now, you little hellion, you’ve got some- HUHHH!”
He doubled over as the boy brought his knee up hard into his groin. The blow made Lucas release his hold upon the boy and he tried to run again, but Finn kicked his feet out from under him, sending him sprawling to the floor. Immediately, the boy was up again, but this time Finn brought him down with a right cross to the jaw and he fell to the floor again, unconscious.
“Little bastard,” Delaney said. “You all right, Lucas?”
Still doubled over and clutching at himself, Priest looked up and nodded, his eyes wide with pain as he fought to get his breath back.
