John Kearns

La Place

 

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La Place de la Revolution held all the people it could.  Yet still more came.  The crosscurrents of humanity shunted the woman this way and that.  She tried to hold her ground.  But she could not. 

 

This suited her, nonetheless.  Her thoughts surged and superimposed over one another.  Her ebbing mood was discordant with the flowing spirits of the rowdy Parisians around her.  La Place shouted and laughed and strutted and jigged.  Doubtless it was merriment: but bloodthirsty merriment.  A mood she did not and could not share. 

 

For her man was just now being brought from the jail to the scaffold. 

 

In the distance the guillotine swayed as she rocked among the swarm of citizens.  It stood not as tall as she had imagined.  She had expected it to tower over the fountains and statues and the porticoes around La Place. 

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She had envisioned it as wider and more imposing.  But for its sharp-angled blade and its being the focus of most eyes, it was almost negligible.  It did not need to be wide, she realized.  It only had to be wide enough for- 

 

Her heart was broken and would be shattered more.  What more damage could be done to it than what had occurred the day she heard her beloved’s sentence?  The woman could not imagine a greater pain.  Yet a greater one would surely befall her as the mouton pushed the blade through those infernal narrow grooves.  

 

For even as the sentence was handed down, … her beloved still lived.  

 

For even as they awaited the day of execution, … her beloved still lived.  

 

For even as she waits among the morbid ruffians or his arrival in horse-drawn tumbrel with the eight assistant assassins, … he lives yet.  

 

When the blade comes down, he will be no more.  And what will she be?  What will her life be?  To never hear his voice again.  To never share wine or a meal with him.  To never hold him in her arms again. 

 

It could not be.  And yet it would be — before the hot sun from which she had to shade her eyes would set.  

 

Hawkers sold fruit and hunks of bread.  People bought them and ate.  How could they eat?  

 

Would she carry on like a brave widow?  Would she plot revenge?  Would she turn to drink and debauchery?  Would she labor without rest for the Rights of Man in his honor?  Probably one of these.  Possibly none.  

 

The tumbrel arrived.  Soldiers marched before and after it, the executioner and assistants among them with solemn stride.  

 

They had shorn his hair!  He did not look himself, yet surely was.  Tears filled her eyes against her will. 

 

The man stood bravely as she knew he would.  She thought he saw her.  She would always believe he had. 

 

Some charges were read.  Something about treason to the king or to the cause or to something.  Who could distinguish loyalty from treason in these shifting red tides?  Did it matter?  The sentence was read, which the throngs already knew or they wouldn’t be here. 

 

Did the woman have to watch?  She did not see why she should be obliged to.  In her bones and her blood and nowhere more conscious than that she knew she had to be here.  Her soul and body needed to be near, as his soul left his body.  Her heart needed to beat nearby as his heart beat its last.  Beyond that, she knew nothing.  

 

A couple of the assistants removed the clothing that was near his neck and placed her beloved prone on the bascule.  Others bound his arms and legs with leather straps.  Still another  slid the bascule forward so that it obtruded through the lunette, which was fastened tight around his neck.  

 

The executioner released the declic and the mouton sped the blade.  Eighty nine inches it fell.  Eighty nine inches in all.   

 

The woman swooned.  Falling back with closed eyes upon the crowding strangers, she sent her soul out to his.  

 

She heard the thud.  

 

Then she heard the cheers, the vital, vicious, morbid, joyful roar of a crowd who watches one die and feels to its roots that it still lives.   

 

She opened her eyes for an instant.  Blood still pumping from the neck of her beloved’s body, his head was held aloft on a pike for the admiration and approval of the mob.  And for an instant her beloved saw the rabble cheering.  For an instant he glimpsed the swooning woman taking a final peek at the macabre spectacle. Then all was darkness.  

 

For him.  And for her.  

 

 

John Kearns’ novel, Worlds, featuring several excerpts published by Danse Macabre is now published by Boann Books and Media LLC: Worlds

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