by Jamie Carie
Scarlett ground her teeth. She wouldn’t care about being trampled if she didn’t have André. She wanted to be with Christophé! Looking over to Stacia, she shouted. “Will you take André?”
Stacia nodded, wide-eyed, looking afraid to do much of anything. Scarlett turned to look at Antoine. “I must walk this part with my husband. Please, take Stacia. I know she will keep André safe.”
He looked at her for a long moment and then agreed with a signal of his hand. He stopped their troop and waited while Stacia and Scarlett dismounted. “It’s not the right time, my dearest. But—” she gestured with a hand toward Antoine—“he is a good man. I have a good feeling about him.”
Stacia’s eyes grew wide. “You must be insa—”
“I know.” Scarlett pressed a kiss upon Stacia’s cheek. “Don’t let anything happen to André.”
Stacia approached the man’s horse. Antoine had dismounted and offered Stacia his hand. Scarlett watched as Stacia reached for it, grasped it, and then took a sudden bright breath as the tall man hefted her up without any of Stacia’s aid, to land perfectly in the saddle. Stacia settled herself as Antoine climbed up behind her. Scarlett handed up the baby and watched while Stacia placed him into the sling.
Émilie had dismounted and took up Christophé’s other side.
Scarlett turned to Christophé, grasped his face between her hands, and leaned up to kiss him. She knew not what might happen next. All they had was their combined breaths, their skin touching, their lips pressing.
Christophé broke free first. “How are you? Are you still bleeding?”
Scarlett grasped his hand and turned toward the square, where the guillotine sat like a giant bloody statue. “No. The rest did me good.”
They pushed their way through the throng of cheering, shouting people.
She stopped toward the front and saw them. Carts, one with four men, one with six. Her gaze locked onto Robespierre. His clothes were torn. The blue coat that he loved so much was ripped and dirty. His stockings were around his ankles as he climbed out of the cart and stood with four other men. They all looked terrible, their faces, their dissembled clothing, all except one, Saint-Just. The Angel of Death looked exactly as he always had.
Scarlett clutched the front of her dress as she watched Robespierre. His face was shattered, bruised and bleeding, swathed in cloth like a mummy. She couldn’t tear her eyes away.
The scaffold stood huge in the mid-afternoon sun. She watched as a crippled man, mumbling and incoherent, was carried up the scaffolding steps to the platform. He was strapped to a board, which took many minutes, as his twisted body couldn’t be pressed flat against it. His body sidewise, they slid him onto the guillotine, positioning him under the blade. Scarlett turned away, clutching Émilie’s hand, leaning on Christophé for support as the sound of the blade whooshed though the air.
A great cheer rose from the crowd.
She swallowed hard as the executioner raised the dead man’s head.
It was a play to them, wasn’t it? Scarlett looked at the manic faces around her. “God, Your creation! Oh, God, what have we done?”
Christophé’s arms encircled her, and she shivered against him.
The next man was led up the steps. Saint-Just. He lifted his head and glared at the screaming crowd, who roared afresh when his young, angelic head was held high in the air.
Robespierre was last.
Scarlett pressed her fist over her mouth as the executioner removed his robin’s-egg blue coat. He tossed it into the crowd. They raised their hands to grasp at the souvenir. Next, he ripped off the bandage around Robespierre’s head. Scarlett could see the jaw fall open, as though unattached. She gasped and pressed her body into Christophé’s. “God, have mercy.”
Émilie stood straight and tall. She didn’t move. Her face didn’t change. Scarlett watched as the young girl disengaged herself from them and walked forward. As though sensing something of import was happening, the crowd in front of them parted. She walked until she was in the very front.
Scarlett looked at Christophé. “What is she doing?”
Christophé looked down, tears in his eyes. “She is telling him that she forgives him.”
Scarlett began to sob quietly into Christophé’s shoulder.
AS ROBESPIERRE WAS strapped to the board that would slide him beneath the blade, he looked one last time into the crowd. These were the people he had fought so hard for. And now, they hated him. There was one face though . . .
One face that didn’t hate him. His gaze locked with that of a young woman.
As the crowd roared their approval of the Master of Terror going to his death, Émilie St. Laurent stared into his eyes. As the insults flew all around him, he held to her sweet, innocent face, her righteous faith in something he, until this moment, had not been able to grasp.
She blinked, and he suddenly knew.
What had he done? In the name of freedom? In the name of finding his solace? To be loved? For that was what it had really been all about. What had he done?
Forgive me! he cried within as they leveled his body and slid it under the blade. For I have sinned!
Émilie turned her face away. She didn’t need to see the final moment, didn’t want to see retribution. As the crowd roared their approval of the beginning of the end to Terror, Émilie St. Laurent turned away from them, knowing that at the end he had understood. Somehow, she was sure. A little sob broke from her throat. Someday, in heaven, she would see her family, they would all be together. It was her prayer that Robespierre, too, would be there. Forgiven.
Finally whole.
Émilie looked up but she didn’t focus on the crowd of hate around her. She didn’t listen to their screams of jubilation at what they thought was a new freedom. No. She saw the light shine down on a man and a women, her brother and his beloved, and she knew that, somehow, they were all going to live. They were going to live . . .
And love each other for a long, long time.
Epilogue
Six Months Later
Scarlett walked down the aisle of lavender-strewn flowers and bright leaves, arm and arm with Émilie. They were dressed alike—simple, white muslin gowns that flowed from high-waisted ivory ribbons. The only difference was that Émilie wore an interwoven twine of ivy leaves in her hair, a green crown, the hue of which she could see. Scarlett’s crown was interwoven with blood-red roses that cascaded down her back in a leafy red train.
A symbol of all they’d known and seen.
Christophé stood at the front with the magistrate they’d hired to do the ceremony, as France had no church. Christophé wore his only suit of black breeches, a black tailcoat that fitted him none too well, and white stockings, shirt, and stock. But his face.
Scarlett grasped hold of Émilie’s arm as she looked at her beloved’s dear face.
“He has never loved anything like he loves you.”
Émilie’s whispered words caused her to falter in their walk, their silken, red slippers touching as they turned, for a moment, toward each other. Scarlett looked down at her soon-to-be sister-in-law’s young face and saw the mercy of God.
She exhaled a sudden breath on three words: “And I, him.”
Émilie handed her off to her brother, gave them both a long, happy glance, and then went to her chair in the front, beside the newly married Jasper and Scarlett’s mother, now Suzanne Montpelier. Stacia sat beside Antoine; they were never very far from each other these days and already hinting at a wedding of their own. Stacia was young to become, overnight, a mother to three small children, but Scarlett had already seen a side to her sister that showed she could take on the task. It helped that she seemed to have an inborn love for the motherless children and got along so well with Antoine’s sister.
Scarlett turned from those happy thoughts toward the man beside her. She thought back on all her dreams. As a young girl, as a young woman, as Daniel’s bride even. She hadn’t known. She had never truly grasped finding her other h
alf . . . until now.
Christophé reached for her hands. He held them tightly, as though afraid. She looked up and commanded with her eyes that he look at her, really look at her. Standing there, while the magistrate began the words that would make them man and wife, she willed him to see the truth of her heart.
The truth of their forever.
His hair had grown. His face was shaved, but he still had the dark shadows of a beard on his cheeks and chin. As the man of the law spoke, she memorized this moment and each fleck of color in his startlingly beautiful blue eyes, each line just starting to form around his eyes, each movement of his face as he said the vows. With everyone watching them, she allowed her gaze to rove with love over this man God had given her.
The magistrate’s speech talked of man and wife and the law that would bind them together. But all Scarlett could think of was Christophé’s prism and the colors he had shown her. She broke then, crying a little as she spoke the words when they were demanded of her, but knowing . . . knowing that this man was the light in her world. She thought back on the stars in his heavens, of the microscopic world that thrilled him, the scratching of numbers and mathematical signs that she would never understand, but that gave his eyes a blazing light of passion. He would only and ever be all that brought her a new and glorious world, one she’d only been able to imagine. Until now.
She remembered his first word to her—color—and then she thought back on her father and the name he had given her.
And then, she considered God and how He planned it all.
CHRISTOPHÉ SAW COLOR everywhere. His vision was overly bright today. He saw the red in her lips. He saw the white of her gown, knowing it to be so pure that the color blurred away into nothing but brightness. He saw her glorious hair, and in her eyes he saw her love. He repeated his lines, not knowing what he said, not caring, as long as what they spoke made her his, forever.
He was so glad to grasp her hands and say the words of his heart out loud for everyone to hear. “I love you.”
It wasn’t raining.
It was sunny and bright in Jasper’s garden as a new day dawned for them. For France. The bloody Terror was behind them. A new day, full of possibilities, stood before them all. And it was filled with hope.
As Christophé and Scarlett took the sacraments of Communion, drinking from the cup of His blood and eating from the holiness of His broken body so that they might live, they stood in unison under an azure sky.
“Thy kingdom come.” Christophé’s gaze glowed as he stared into her eyes.
“Thy will be done.” Scarlett’s beautiful lips curved.
A bird screeched above their heads, and they both looked up.
They all looked up.
And there, in the clear blue sky . . . arched a bow of color.
A perfect rainbow.
The promise of a future filled the air and all their hearts. Scarlett and Christophé gazed into each other’s eyes, knowing . . .
God’s blessing, a sanctification, a benediction, a healing, and a future.
It was a great day indeed.
Christophé looked back up at the arch of color, saw each hue as a calculation, then looked at his wife’s face . . .
And saw the dawning of a new day for them all.
