Scarlett scrambled up the first two branches. Her foot stretched for a far branch on the other side of where Stacia, Émilie, and her mother clung. It slipped, causing a yelp to sound from her throat. Christophé started to come up behind her but then they all heard a great crashing sound behind them.
Overcome with fear, Scarlett scrambled for the branch, this time aiming for a knot in the wood to help steady her. With a mighty step, hanging onto the branch overhead, she landed on the stout limb.
The sounds of men shouting and the rustle of the bushes broke into their little clearing. Scarlett looked down and saw that Christophé had two choices. He could leap up after her, which might give them away, or drop to the ground to protect their hiding place. Her heart beat in her throat so that she felt like choking as she watched him weigh the options and then drop from the branch and walk over to stand with Jasper, away from them.
She watched as a dozen men surrounded them, rifles pointed at their chests.
“State your names, citizens!”
Scarlett’s brow knitted in anxious thought. The booming voice sounded vaguely familiar.
Jasper and Christophé stood erect, chins up and spines stiffened as they were surrounded. Jasper spoke first. “Mon Dieu. We go to London for science. We have done nothing wrong. See?” He pulled out the passports and Scarlett’s heart chilled—those were the papers for her and the women.
Jasper must have realized the same, for he looked to Christophé, who quickly pulled the wadded papers from his pockets. “We have passports for travel to London.”
The leader spat. Scarlett suddenly recognized him from her hiding place and took a long quivering breath. Henri Vonriot, one of Robespierre’s supporters in the Convention. Suddenly it all seemed to Scarlett madness and hopelessness. They would be caught. Christophé and Jasper would be imprisoned. They might all be imprisoned. What story could they conjure to explain false passports, a sudden trip to London, and hiding in a tree?
The men circled around Christophé and Jasper, while Vonriot reached for the papers. A long moment went by while he smoothed them out and studied them. Scarlett held herself very still as one man looked around the area and then up. André started to move. Scarlett prayed as never before, begging God for peace to flood her and the babe. As she relaxed so, too, did André.
The leaves were thick, their clothes were dark, but Scarlett knew that if the man looked closely enough, he would find them.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
Other voices joined the questioner, and Scarlett looked down. A finger pointed up into the tree. She blinked and blinked again, numb now.
There, just below, was a malevolent gaze staring straight into her eyes.
IT WAS 8 Thermidor, according to the Révolutionary calendar, a sunny day just before noon. Robespierre rose from his seat in the packed national Convention hall to give the speech he had labored over all night. It was time to strike.
He could feel their eyes upon him as he stepped up to the rostrum. His hand rose to find his green spectacles buried in his white powdered wig. He shook the glasses free, settling them on the bridge of his nose, cleared his throat and began.
It took two full hours to say everything he had to present. His words were slow, laborious, and carefully meted out with just the right note of reproach toward the Convention members for their neglect at snuffing out the conspirators. He didn’t like to think of their end, how they would die, he only considered them an evil that must be sponged away from the virtue of the people. He paused after an especially weighty sentence to raise his spectacles and meet each man’s eyes, as if he were able by just looking at them to see the truth in their nature and name them enemy or friend.
The end of his speech became more personal. He rebutted the title
dictator,
as some had secretly called him. His was a life laid down for his country. Those that called him names were vipers and snakes and must be punished.
He paused to look about the crowded room of friends and foes, but before he could go on someone shouted out, “We must examine the accusations made toward these people you mention. We need a careful and rigorous examination!”
Robespierre was taken aback. He had always been able to convince them to the point of clapping, stomping, cheering heights for anything he presented to the Convention. It was why he sweated and struggled so over his speeches. To make certain they were perfect and unquestionable. He felt a slip of fear, like a dark shadow, pass over his body. Rallying, he blasted the man for his audacity.
A small group began to clap. Just as Robespierre was prepared to allow his lips to curve into the semblance of a relieved smile, another man stood, Bourdon de l’Oise. “I demand proof before any names are publicly announced.”
Robespierre struggled to sustain his calm—this was Joseph Fouché’s friend, both names on his list of conspirators.
A third man strode up to the rostrum and moved Robespierre aside.
“This
is our enemy,” he bellowed. “Judge him! Judge Robespierre!”
Robespierre turned and walked out of the hall.
The next day Robespierre went back to the Convention ready to name names. Saint-Just, his right hand for the last few years, had agreed to be the one to read the list. Robespierre watched with satisfaction as the young man took the rostrum. Working together, they would convince these men of the conspirators and then . . . then Robespierre would be safe.
But as Saint-Just launched into the demands for punishment of such evil, another man rose and rushed the stage, demanding to speak. Saint-Just yelled back, but the president for the day rang his bell with such force that every time Saint-Just opened his mouth, no one could hear him. Finally Saint-Just gave up.
In a panic Robespierre watched as several other men, one after the other, spoke against them. When he rose to make his own way to the front to defend himself, he was shoved aside. When he tried to yell out his request to speak, the bell rang and rang and rang, until finally, he gave up too.
Suddenly someone stood and said the words Robespierre hadn’t allowed himself to consider he might ever hear. “Arrest Robespierre!”
Robespierre watched as his place in the universe swayed, groaned, and then crashed down around his head. It was gone—all of his power and authority and strength. He watched as if from another place as the men voted to arrest Robespierre and Saint-Just.
Hours later Robespierre sat in a stupor in an upper room of the Hotel de Ville. There were several men in the room—Lescot-Fleuriot, Payan, Couthon, and others—who still believed in him. They took turns pleading with him to make an appeal or raise up an army to fight.
He sat there and stared at the scarred wooden table and the quickly written pages they had drawn up for him to sign. How could he sign them? He was without authority. The law—the very law he had painstakingly written almost single-handedly over the last two years, the law that he had breathed out of his own mouth in speeches and small gathering talks—that law said that he was accused of treason, without the ability to defend himself, without recourse. Just as the thousands of others who had been accused and guillotined without proof or defense. And the law said the penalty for his sin was death. A penalty he himself had doled out more times than he could count.
How could he now take the coward’s way of signing his name on a document as if he were still a deputy of the Committee? To do so was to spit in his own face and call himself the greatest of liars.
He looked around at the men who were willing to fight for him and felt nothing but disgust. They were as children, begging for a reprieve from punishment. Robespierre loved the law. Worshipped it. It kept him safe so long as he could keep each letter of it. Now . . . he realized his god had turned on him and abandoned him.
Just as his mother and father had.
The men in the room turned as they all heard a commotion coming up the stairs. Philippe Le Bas, a look of terror on his face, pulled out a gun, raised it to his head, and shot. The men jerked, fell back, cries coming from their throats as the force neared the door. Augustin, Robespierre’s younger brother, turned, ran, and jumped through a window. Gobeau raised a stiletto, turned it on himself, and plunged it into his chest.
Robespierre lifted the pistol that he always carried with him to his mouth. As the door burst open, he, too, escaped in the only way left to him.
He pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirty-One
André was miserable, going in and out of fits of sobbing, cries that made the men look at Scarlet as if they might, at any moment, use the saber on the end of one of their rifles to silence him. Christophé’s anger burned within him each time they eyed her.
Every time the babe began crying, Scarlett panicked, slowed to jostle him, to take him from the sling to hold in different positions. The guards had tied all of their hands except Scarlett’s, as she was the only one allowed to carry her son. Christophé could tell that the added weight and walking all night, combined with the fear of what was to come, had such a crushing effect on her body that she could hardly keep her trembling legs from collapsing.
And then the worst. The bleeding had increased so that she left a dripping trail in her wake.
Christophé saw the blood and started to speak, but then stopped as they all heard horses approaching. The soldiers backed them off the road, their rifles aimed and ready. When they saw the uniform of the Patriots, Vonriot ordered the men guarding them to lower their weapons.
The riders dismounted and approached. “Henri Vonriot, lay down your weapons. We have a warrant for your arrest.”
“What?” The startled man pushed forward. “By whose authority and on what charges?”
“By the authority of the Convention. Robespierre has been arrested, along with Saint-Just and all of his followers. You are to come with us immediately.”
As the commander of the small force spoke, all the blood drained from Vonriot’s face. Scarlett looked at Christophé, eyes wide and panicked.
Christophé shook his head slightly, stilling her.
Vonriot looked at his men, pulled a pistol suddenly from his belt and raised it to his head.
The crack of the shot jerked through Christophé’s body. He saw Scarlett jerk, and André’s frightened wails filled the woods around them. The officer looked momentarily shocked, and then disgusted. He motioned for his men to gather the weapons of the others.
“Who are these prisoners?” he demanded, looking at Stacia for an extra moment.
One of the other officers under Vonriot spoke up. “We have their passports here. They say they are scientists on the way to London for a scientific meeting.” His voice shook, and Christophé wagered the man thought he might be going to one of the many prisons in France now.
“Why did you arrest them?”
“We have reason to believe the passports are forged.”
“Let me see the papers.”
The officer took his time looking them over. “They appear authentic to me.” He pointed to Christophé. “Explain yourself and your business.”
Christophé launched into his practiced speech, almost yelling to be heard above the crying of the baby. When he finished, they all waited while the man weighed his words—but his gaze kept swinging back to Stacia.
“You will go with us to Paris where we can look into the authenticity of your tale.”
Scarlett struggled against tears at the officer’s pronouncement. She glanced up and caught him looking at her with clear concern. “You will ride with me,” he said in a tight voice. He looked around at his men. “Untie the prisoners and use the bindings on the soldiers. We will send someone back for Vonriot’s body.”
Soldiers came to help Scarlett onto the man’s horse, hoisting her to sit in front of him sideways, practically on his lap. One of his arms supported her, keeping her from falling. She looked down from the height and noticed Christophé looking at the man like he would like to land a solid punch on his pretty face. She quickly looked away, afraid of what might happen next. As she watched, her mother was lifted, with some huffing and puffing from the soldier doing the lifting, onto another man’s horse. Émilie was assigned to a young, thin man’s care—the soldier looked barely older than she. Stacia climbed nimbly onto the horse of a handsome, young man, who promptly wrapped one of his arms around her waist, clearly pretending it was because she might need his aid to stay balanced.