Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  This early in the morning and with the excitement of the day before, there was no one at the Jardin des Plantes but the caretaker. The skin of the new aerostat—red and white striped this lime—sparkled with a sheen of morning dew. It was taut, still filled with just the right amount of gas, and even in the midst of his anxiety over Gabrielle and Dominique, Max felt a flash of pride in his new invention.

  He had a little difficulty releasing the mooring ropes by himself, but then Gabrielle was suddenly at his side to help him. He gave instructions and she followed them precisely, although in a strange, tense silence.

  He took the balloon up through blanketing clouds thick as rain that soaked their skin and clothes. Up until they burst out into an icy blue sky shimmering with sunshine. And higher still, until he began to feel the telltale sharp pains in his ear and jaw that told him if he went much higher he would run out of what he thought of as breathable air.

  At this height what air there was was cold and dry, and his extremities quickly grew numb. He worried about Gabrielle and kept asking her if she was all right. She wouldn't answer him. Except for her eyes, which blazed now with a strange light, her white face could have been carved from marble, it was so expressionless.

  He navigated using his mariner's compass, the sun, and those years of experience sailing a ship across a wide, flat ocean, praying all the while that the road to Reims would still be beneath them when they descended back through the clouds.

  After a couple of hours, when he figured they had come far enough to be only an hour or so behind Louvois, Max decided to bring the balloon down. The cloud cover seemed to have thickened, and as they sank into it, the world became a suffocating white shroud. Max had visions of church steeples and trees waiting below for him like spikes in a wolf trap, and then suddenly they were free, skimming across the green and brown earth, and there below them was a road. Let it be the right road, Max prayed.

  By alternately varying and throwing out ballast, and pulling on his risers, Max maneuvered amid the low-altitude winds, able to follow the twists and turns in the road as he searched for a black berlin. Gabrielle, who had stood unmoving the entire time, clutching the edge of the aerial car, suddenly leaned way over the side.

  Alarmed, Max grabbed her arm. "Careful, ma mie. " He tried to smile. "Remember, it's a long way down there."

  "He'll be in a black berlin," she said. They were the first words she had spoken since standing on the stairs in Simon's pawnshop.

  "Would you recognize it?" he asked, careful to keep his voice neutral.

  "Yes."

  It seemed only moments later when she pointed. "There. There he is." There was no excitement in her voice, only a hard resolution.

  Max aimed the balloon for a spot in the road beyond the approaching carriage. He controlled the speed and direction of his descent by carefully shedding ballast and pulling on the risers. He glided the balloon onto the downhill side of a wooded, sloping rise just as the berlin crested the top.

  The team of horses reared in their traces, whinnying in terror, and the berlin slewed off the road into a gully. Max pulled on the rip panel—another of his inventions—venting gas rapidly and collapsing the balloon almost immediately, before it could rise again.

  — Max vaulted out of the car, hauling Gabrielle with him with the strength of his right arm. He held his pistol in his left hand, but he switched it to his right as he and Gabrielle ran toward the berlin. The coachman, terrified already at the sight of the balloon seeming to descend out of nowhere right on top of him, abandoned his master and took off running down the road.

  It was so silent Max could hear the moisture dripping off the trees. Clouds of vapor billowed around the horses' heads and one stamped his foot nervously. The black berlin was tilted at an angle, one wheel in the ditch, and there was no sign of life behind the dark, curtained windows.

  Max slowed down, grabbing Gabrielle's arm to hold her back, and they approached the carriage warily. He pointed the pistol at the door.

  "Louvois. Open the door and let the boy down. Slowly and carefully."

  The door swung open. Dominique was dangled out over the side, held by invisible hands.

  His face was dirty and smeared with dried tears. His eyes went immediately to his mother. "Maman," he croaked hoarsely, and Max heard a sob tear from Gabrielle's throat. He let out a slow, shaky breath, for the boy appeared to be all right, then caught it immediately when he noticed the big carving knife held tight to Dominique's throat.

  "Throw the pistol on the ground, Saint-Just. This way," said a cold voice, "or I'll slit the boy's gullet."

  Max didn't hesitate. He tossed the pistol toward the carriage door.

  For a long moment nothing happened, and then Dominique was whisked back inside. Gabrielle cried out and took a step forward. Max flung out his hand, stopping her.

  Clutching Dominique tight under the armpits, Louvois descended awkwardly from the berlin, still pressing the knife under the boy's chin. He backed up a step until he was leaning against the open carriage door. He hitched his hips onto the edge, balancing Dominique against his stomach. Shifting his arm, he clamped his hand across the boy's mouth and pulled his head back, gruesomely exposing the small, pate throat to the silver blade of the knife.

  "Now, Gabrielle . . ." Louvois Was panting hoarsely and his eyes bulged insanely behind the distorting spectacles. "You will pick up the pistol. Pick it up!" he snarled when she didn't move.

  She stumbled over to where it lay and picked it up. Max made a tiny, reflexive movement, and the knife blade jerked. Dominique's eyes opened wide, and a muffled sob came from behind Louvois's hand. A tiny trickle of blood oozed down the boy's throat, and Max clenched his fists, forcing himself to stand still.

  Louvois smiled. "Please do not move, Monsieur le Vicomte. I'm feeling rather nervous, as you can see ... Do you love your husband, Gabrielle?"

  "Oh, please don't . . . He'll do as you say." She turned pleading eyes to Max. "Won't you, Max?"

  Louvois laughed. "Do you remember, Gabrielle, that first time we met in your mother's house?" Gabrielle stood unmoving, looking bewildered. "Do you remember?" he shouted.

  "Y-yes," she said quickly.

  "I promised that day I would find the price of your pride and that I would destroy you with it. I have found your price, Gabrielle. And you owe me. For the scar, for the years you made a fool of me, for thinking yourself so damned invincible. Well, you're not invincible now, are you, my fine and haughty aristocratic bitch?"

  "I will give you whatever you want, anything. Only let my son go."

  "Anything?"

  "Yes, yes. Anything."

  Louvois turned and looked full into Max's face. "Then you will give me his life."

  "No!" Gabrielle cried. "You can't—"

  "Not me, you. You will shoot him dead yourself, with that pistol. Before I count to five. If you don't, the boy dies by my knife. It's your choice, Gabrielle. Your man's life, or your son's. You, my dear, will do the killing, and then I will let you live with it." He laughed again. "That will be my revenge, and I will own you then, Gabrielle. Oh, yes."

  Silent tears poured down Gabrielle's face. Slowly she shook her head back and forth. "No, no, no . . ."

  "One."

  "Do it," Max said softly and to her alone.

  "Two."

  She turned to him, her love, her life, and her face twisted with anguish. "I can't ..."

  Do it, my love. I am not afraid of death, he told her silently, with his eyes, with his heart. I would die for you with no regrets. "Do it. For our son."

  "Three."

  She raised the pistol and pointed it at his chest. It wavered a moment and was still.

  "Four."

  "I love you, Max."

  "I know, ma mie. "

  "Fi—"

  She pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot echoed through the trees, and Louvois screamed.

  For Dominique had bit down on the web of Louvois's hand, so hard his tiny teet
h pierced the skin and flesh clear to the bone. Reflexively Louvois dropped the knife and flung the boy away from him, and Max launched himself through the air.

  He hit the ground on a roll, scooping up the knife and coming up on his feet, smacking Louvois in the chest and sending him crashing against the side of the carriage. For a moment nothing happened, and then the heavy lids fell over Max's eyes and his lips tightened into a smile.

  Slowly, silently, he slid the knife between Louvois's ribs, hurrying it deep in the thin chest. He held it there, twisting until the blood gushed from the lawyer's mouth and his eyes stared unseeing at the gray sky overhead.

  Max stepped back, letting Louvois's body fall to the ground. He walked away, without looking back, over to where Gabrielle knelt on the ground, hugging her son tightly to her chest. He knelt beside them, gathering them both into his arms.

  "Papa," Dominique said, squirming out of their embrace. "Maman shot you again."

  "No, I didn't," Gabrielle said, sitting back on her heels, laughing and crying at the same time. "I missed."

  Max smiled, shaking his head. "Gabrielle ... did you mean to miss?"

  "Of course!"

  He laughed and turned so that she could see the tear in the arm of his coat, and the slowly seeping stain of blood. "If you're going to continue firing weapons when I'm in the vicinity, ma mie, then I really must teach you how to take proper aim."

  "Oh, mon Dieu ..." She fell against him, burying her head in his chest. He hugged her tightly, as if he would never let her go.

  They held each other for a long time, and then she raised her head and looked over his shoulder at the heavy black berlin and the body of the man lying beside it, and she shivered.

  "Don't be frightened, Maman," Dominique said, wrapping his arms around her waist. "That bad man is dead. Papa gutted him."

  Max shifted his shoulders, wanting to shield her from Louvois, even in death. "It's all over," he said.

  Turning back within his warm, strong embrace, she laid her palm against his lean cheek, and her lower lip trembled softly. "Oh, my sweet love . . . it's only the beginning."

  Maximilien de Saint-Just looked down at her beloved face, and lost his heart, his soul, all over again, to a pair of violet eyes that beckoned, promised, fulfilled. I know everything about you, those eyes said. Everything. But I want you still ...

  And I will love you always.

  Author's Note

  Bastille Day, July 14, 1789 —the day the Bastille was stormed by the people of Paris—has come to symbolize for France the triumph of liberty over tyranny. Since that day two hundred years ago, the French have celebrated Bastille Day much in the same manner as we celebrate our Fourth of July, with fireworks and picnics. This July—their bicentennial—they plan to throw the biggest party ever, and as only the French can do it.

  In the two years after the great fortress was stormed by the mob, it was dismantled stone by stone. Parisians, always an enterprising lot, made pieces of the stone into bracelets, paperweights, and cockades and sold them as souvenirs for years to come. The day the Bastille fell was the beginning of the end for King Louis's reign, but it was not the end of tyranny, as so many had hoped. As various factions within the new republic fought for power, the revolution turned bloody. A new form of execution was put into use—the guillotine. Thousands of people, including Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, lost their heads, and the early years of the 1790s went down in French history as the Reign of Terror.

  Max and Gabrielle and the other characters in this book are all figments of my imagination. But I believe they do exist in some mysterious dimension where they live and grow old, argue and make love. And this is what happened to them:

  Max—being a stubborn male with more courage than sense—wanted to stay in France and continue the fight for liberty and equality. Gabrielle, with the blood of Sebastien in her veins, cared only about survival. Gabrielle threatened to take their children (by now they had a new baby in addition to Dominique) and leave France without Max. He suspected it was all a bluff, but he wasn't interested in testing his theory. Hadn't he learned the hard way that his life was nothing without his Gabrielle?

  So, in 1791, the vicomte de Saint-Just and his family emigrated to Le Mississippi, where they lived out their lives with much love and laughter, producing three more children and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  Simon Prion remained active in the revolution until he inadvertently chose the wrong side in one of the political power struggles. He and a grumbling, scolding Agnes had to flee Paris a bare step ahead of Madame Guillotine. They joined the Saint-Justs for a time in America, but when the Reign of Terror ended in France, they returned to the pawnshop in the Palais Royal.

  For to the end of his days, Simon Prion remained convinced that the Palais Royal was the center of Paris, and Paris was the center of the world.