"Well, here, you must get something to eat, I'll get—"
But he gets nothing, and neither do I.
There is a rattling at the front door lock and it opens and four soldiers march in, followed by two men in civilian clothes. I see Bliffil rise and edge toward the door, his face expressionless. He points to me and the two men come forward.
Uh-oh.
"You will come with us, Jac-key Fay-bair," says the taller of the two, in English. "Corporal, take her out."
I am betrayed ... I am undone...
Jared leaps from my side and grabs Bliffil by the throat before he can get out the door. "You dirty bastard. You gave her up, and I'm going to kill you for it."
Bliffil says, "No, no! You don't understand! You don't..."
But then Jared's balled-up fist smashes into his face and his nose flattens and his nostrils spurt blood all over his shirtfront, and he doesn't say anything more. Joseph is about to hit him again, but the butt of a French Marine's musket slams into the side of his head, and he goes down.
"Back! The rest of you! Back against zee wall!" shouts the tall Frenchman. Sharp bayonets force my friends back away from me. Bliffil, holding his hand to his face, rises unsteadily to his feet and staggers out the door, supported by a soldier. A barrage of curses and threats of future retribution follow him out. "Take her! Bind her hands!"
Hands are put on me and I am dragged out the door and into the hallway. I take one last look at Jaimy and then the door is closed and locked. Good-bye, Jaimy...
The tall cove puts his face to the grating on the door and shouts to my friends inside, "You, English! You will be treated to a spectacle! Look out into the courtyard in a few minutes!"
My hands are bound behind and I am shoved forward, down the hall, around a corner, and then into the bright light of the courtyard. The place is empty, except for the whipping post and a box with a board leaning against it. Am I to be whipped?
My mind reels as I am pushed relentlessly forward, but, strangely, not to the post, but rather to the box. What is going on here?
"English! My name is Monsieur Jardineaux! I am the Chief Prosecutor in this district!" Faces appear at the prison windows. I think I recognize Davy's face among them.
I am taken by the arms and forced to stand on the box.
"What we have here...," continues Monsieur Jardineaux, gesturing to me. He is plainly enjoying himself. "...ees the pirate Jac-key Fay-bair, sometimes known as La Belle Jeune Fille sans Merci. Not looking very belle right now, ees she?"
I don't say anything. I just try to keep a semblance of the Look on my face.
"What we also have here is an object called a bascule." He points to the board and nods to two of the soldiers. They immediately hold the thing up in front of me and I see that there are three sets of straps hanging on it. I also see dried blood on the upper end of it. I start to tremble. Is it a device for torture? Oh, no ... Please, Lord, let my end be quick.
"And what is this bascule, you are wondering, eh? Well, it shall all be made very plain to you, yes, very plain. Strap her in," orders Jardineaux, and I am shoved chest-first up against the thick board.
The bloodstained top edge comes up only to my breastbone, and as the straps go around my shoulders, my middle, and my knees and are firmly tightened, I realize with the deepest of dread just what this board is for, and it hits me that my prayer was just answered—my end will be brutal, but it will be quick. Thank you, Lord. Now just help me not disgrace myself and bring shame upon the Service. Head up now, girl, for the last time ... Stop blubbering, stop it now!
"What you see here is the very board that binds the condemned down on the base of Madame La Guillotine."
There is a roar from both galleries of English prisoners. We'll get you, you frog-eatin' bastards! We will avenge you, Puss! We'll kill ten thousand of them for the one of you. A hundred thousand! Miserable cowards, to kill a girl! We'll hunt Bliffil down to the very ends of the earth, and he will not die slow, count on that! Oh, this can't be happening! It can't—
"Calm down, gentlemen, and attendez-vous," says Jardineaux. "I regret that the guillotine could not be moved here so that you could witness for yourselves this—"
"What about a trial?" bellows someone from the officers' quarters, echoed by many a hear! hear! "You call yourself a lawyer!"
Jardineaux raises his thin, dark face to Captain Blackstone at the window above, for it was he who called out.
"My dear sir, there has already been a trial, in absentia, and she was found guilty, most guilty of Piracy and Murder and sentenced to death. Simple as that. And now that we have her, that sentence is going to be carried out in full. We shall see just how much mercy Madame Guillotine will have for Jac-key Fay-bair, the Beautiful Young Girl Without Mercy, as this one was called after she wickedly tortured and killed French citizens. I suspect it will be very little."
More roars and curses from above. Things—cups, bottles, pieces of chairs, anything that will fit through the bars—are thrown down, but all is in vain and all dismissed with a laugh from Jardineaux.
"If I may continue: I regret that the guillotine could not be moved from the center of town at such short notice—you see, a number of counterrevolutionaries had recently been captured and had to be accommodated."
Jardineaux leaves my side and advances to the high, strong wooden gates that guard the outside entrance to the courtyard. "Pin up her hair!" he shouts as he walks. "The High Executioner does not like to have hair in front of his blade, especially if it is female hair. He swears it dulls the edge, and we can't have that, can we? If the Queen, herself, could have had her hair pinned up on her journey to the same place, then why not this piece of trash?"
I feel hands behind my neck, taking up what little hair I have and pinning it up and out of the way.
"Open the gates," shouts Jardineaux, and the ponderous doors swing open. "Observe, English!"
Through the open gates we can plainly see down to the center of the town, and there, standing like an obscene relic from a more barbaric time, is the guillotine, its blade being once again drawn up.
"Madame has done her work for this morning, it seems, but she has one more head to take, and all of you will be able to watch. Her head will drop into the basket at noon. I shall make sure the executioner holds it up facing in this direction so that all may see. Au revoir, Messieurs, I hope you enjoy, or at least take a lesson to what awaits the enemies of la République de France."
With that, I am picked up and thrown, bound to the bascule, into the back of a cart that has come into the yard. The driver chucks the horses, and I am taken out of the prison to my doom.
On the way to the execution place, I hear shouts of joy. "La Belle Jeune Fille sans Merci! Stand her up that we may see her."
And they do stand me up, and then put me back down. I am helpless through all of it. And I am called salope and chienne, and any of the number of words they have for me.
I try to be brave, but then I never was very brave and Oh, Lord, I commend my body to the sea and my soul to Thee and...
...and then I am lifted up and the bascule is placed flat down on something and I am facedown again and being moved forward and something comes down wooden and heavy on my neck and I hear a young girl's voice cry out, No, no, please, not me ... please ... Is that me crying out? It must be me, but in all my terror, I don't know. I don't know anything for my mind is gone. There is only the terror ...oh, horror... but through it all I hear a roar from the crowd. Then there is the sound of the hissing steel coming down and then an awful thunk and I feel a terrible blow to the back of my neck. I feel ... nothing ... all is darkness and silence.
PART II
Chapter 14
I awaken to find myself ... I don't know where. I feel around with my fingers and find that I'm lying on my back in what seems to be a box. It is pitch-dark and my head throbs with terrible, thudding pain. I try to recover my senses, but my mind reels and spins and Oh, God, please help me ... My hands, not tied now, lift upward and my knuckles encounter a wooden lid not three inches above my nose. Trying to quell my mounting terror, I move my fingers up to my neck and find that there is no deep and final cut there. What, no wound at all?
Am I in Hell now, my head restored to my shoulders only to suffer unspeakable and eternal tortures for all of the wrongs I have done? Oh, Lord, was I really so bad as to deserve this?
I feel the box jostled and sense myself being lifted, what...?
What if I am still living and this is a coffin and I am being taken to be buried alive, my dying screams heard by none 'cept the waiting worms? Oh, please, God, not that!
I give in to blind panic and try with all my might to push the horrible lid up and off me. Then I pound my feet against the bottom, but it, too, is solid and does not yield.
"Shaddup in there or I'll give ye another whack wi' me club," I hear from outside.
I stop struggling ... If those are the Devil's imps I hear outside, cursing and swearing as they carry me down to Hell, they sure sound a lot like British seamen ... and if this is the River Styx, I'd say that it sure feels a lot more like the waves of the open sea. Maybe...
As I lie there, it dawns on me that it was not my head that fell into the basket yesterday, no, it must have belonged to some other unfortunate soul who was forced to suffer under the blade in my place. Poor girl ... I pray for her as I lie there waiting to see what is going to happen to me. I pray for Jaimy, and, yes, I pray for myself, as well. It is not something I usually do, but I have been sorely tried.
Eventually, the boat in which I have been riding bumps against some wharf and the lid is lifted from my box. Two rough-looking coves grasp my arms to lift me upright, then shove me out to stand on the swaying pier. Then I am again bound and a hood is placed over my head and I am thrown in the back of a carriage and it rumbles off. I have a good idea where it is going and I soon find out that I am not wrong.
The carriage stops, muffled orders are given, and I am again yanked out, led up a flight of stairs, and brought into what I sense is a large room. My hood is whipped off and I behold a man sitting behind a desk, looking at me with a very measured eye. I realize that I have been in this room before, and on that occasion looked out that very same window over there. Then I was in the company of Sir Henry Dundas, First Lord of the Admiralty, delivering evidence of a large spy ring. Now, I suspect that the man at the desk is the new First Lord, Thomas Grenville. My hands are tied in front of me, which I have always found to be a good thing if one is to be bound. There is a loop around each of my wrists and a six-inch length of line between. That might also be a useful thing.
Bliffil stands next to me, a bandage across his swollen nose. I reflect that this is the second time Bliffil has had his nose flattened because of me—first by Midshipman Jenkins, back on the Dolphin, and yesterday by Jared in the prison. I hope he enjoyed both to the fullest degree, the bastard. I sense some others behind me as well, and I turn to see two men in black garb standing against the wall.
"This is the one, then?" asks the man at the desk. "Our new spy?"
Spy?
"Yes, my Lord," replies the man who stands beside him and who I recognize from the last time I stood in this room—he is Mr. Peel, the Chief Intelligence Officer, a deputy of the Prime Minister himself.