Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [132]
“A fall,” Amadé quickly says.
I say hello to Gilles, who’s also in full-on actor mode, and take over cleaning my cut. There’s a lot of blood on the cloth. I must’ve hit my head pretty hard.
Gilles gives Amadé a look. Amadé shrugs. “Too much to drink,” he mouths. They think I don’t see them.
The two men talk. I don’t catch it all but I do hear the word trial and the name Fouquier-Tinville—again. I know that name. He was the chief prosecutor for the Tribunal during the Revolution. The movie must be about the French Revolution.
They keep talking but I’m not really paying attention.
Gilles says, “The bounty’s been raised again.”
“Has it?” Amadé says. “When did that happen?”
“Just this afternoon. Every man, woman, and child in Paris is trying to catch the Green Man now. After that huge fireworks display last night. Everyone’s dreaming of what they can buy with the money. The guards are very busy tonight. They’re questioning all who pass by.”
I stop dabbing at my head. I’m paying attention now.
“They wounded him, didn’t they?” Amadé says. “They shot him. That’s what the paper said this morning.”
Gilles nods. “I’ll wager he crawled off somewhere to hide and died there. The guard will find him soon enough. By his smell.”
The Green Man. That’s what they called Alex, but Alex lived over two centuries ago. There was a bounty on her, too. I start to shiver. I feel dizzy again. And scared. It’s too perfect, this movie set. This fake world. Something’s wrong.
Amadé notices me shivering and tells Gilles to hurry with our food. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I just need something to eat. A few minutes later the food arrives. Roast chicken, he tells me, smirking, then he makes a joke about the lack of crows in Paris. I try some of it. It’s terrible. Nasty and stringy. Eating it doesn’t make me feel better at all, and watching Amadé eat with his hands doesn’t help, either.
That’s it, I think. I’m out of here. I’m going to hit the ladies’, wash my forehead properly, and find a cab. I ask Amadé where the facilities are. He says I have to walk through the kitchen, so I do. The kitchen’s in character, too. Birds, the kind with feathers on them, are hanging from the ceiling. A bristly pig’s head lies on a table. Eels are squirming in a basket. I turn around in circles looking for a door with W.C. on it but can’t find one.
“Out there!” a man snaps at me, pointing at an open door. I go outside but there’s nothing here—nothing but two men peeing on a pile of garbage.
I start to panic. A thought, whispering in my mind ever since I fell in the catacombs, is shouting at me now. I run back to the table.
“Look, I think I’m having a reaction,” I tell Amadé. “I think a drug I’m taking is mixing badly with some wine I drank. I need help. I need to find a taxi. I need to get home.”
“Where are your rooms?” he asks me.
I’m about to tell him when the dizziness hits me hard. I can barely stand up.
“Come,” he says, wrapping his arm around my waist. “I’m taking you to my home.”
I half walk, half stagger out of the Palais. On the street, we’re mobbed by children. They are so thin, and dressed in rags, and they seem to be everywhere. One of them runs up to us, begging for food. Amadé tells him he has none.
“It is heartbreaking,” he says. “The orphanages of Paris are full now. These here must live on the streets. Their parents were guillotined, perhaps, or their fathers killed in the wars. Danton and Desmoulins, fathers both, tried to stop the worst of Robespierre’s excesses. They tried to appeal to him to show mercy. But Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon—none of them had children, only ideas, and there is little mercy in ideas. Poor things. They will likely be rounded up and sold off to factories or farms. To be worked to death. It is what happens.”
“In the movie, right?” I say, desperately wanting him to agree with me.
He frowns at me. “How is your head now?” he asks.
“Still spinning.”
We walk for some time. The route looks vaguely familiar, but I don’t see any shops I recognize. No Carrefours. No Paul bakeries.
“Here we are,