Revolution - Jennifer Donnelly [68]
There’s a yelp as my foot connects with the man’s head, then sparks as his poker misses me and hits the stones. I heave myself over the top and come down on the other side. Waves of pain shoot up my ripped leg. I stumble and fall. I want to be sick, but I hear the guards again. I hear them shouting, hear their oaths and curses, and I know if they catch me there will be no guillotine for me, no quick death—just a rope thrown over the nearest lamp iron.
I stand up and run. Not to the Palais-Royal, where I am called Alexandre and go about in britches, but west to the Church of St-Roch and the Valois Crypt. There’s a passage leading from the crypt to the catacombs. Orléans told me of it before he died. He said it might someday prove useful. I keep a lamp hidden there. An eternal flame, burning for the Valois dead, lights it.
I have a rule I follow in the catacombs—eyes down. But sometimes I forget and then the shriveled hands, still clenched in fear, and the shit-stained britches, and the rotting heads piled high against a wall, make me want to scream. But I do not, for I know if I start I will not stop.
I keep a blanket here. A hunk of cheese. I have wine also. I used to drink it down fast when the dead would talk to me so I could tell myself I was only drunk, not mad. I drink it slower now.
I will rest here for a night, perhaps two, and write my account, for I can do little else. It will be even harder for me from now on. They will be waiting, and I can neither climb well nor run fast with a torn leg and I must be able to do both, for I must not be caught. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window.
He waits for me, too.
And I—I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone—I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him.
I turn to the next entry, but the pages are blank. Another newspaper clipping is wedged between them.
GREEN MAN NEARLY CAPTURED
Paris, 13 Floréal III—A captain of the Paris Guard was grievously injured last night as he tried to subdue a person believed to be the Green Man.
Captain Henri Dupin stopped a suspicious-looking woman walking away from the Rue de Berri shortly after a round of fireworks was set off there. She was carrying a basket, which Dupin searched.
“The basket was empty, save for some paper fuses. It, and she, smelled strongly of sulfur,” Dupin said. “When I detained her, she hit me in the face with a lamp. The doctor now fears for my sight.”
The near-capture of this dangerous woman has led many to suspect that the Green Man is no man, but that he is, in fact, a woman.
In response to the attack of one of his guards, General Bonaparte said, “I wish to reassure the city of Paris that I am doing all in my power to capture this madman, and I appeal to all citizens to be vigilant and to report any suspicious behavior.”
Shortly after making this statement, Bonaparte increased the head price on the Green Man to two hundred fifty francs.
4 May 1795
They call me a woman now, and mad. They write it in the broadsheets. They cry it in the streets. Bonaparte speechifies in the Assembly, makes comparisons to Shakespeare in hopes of greatness by association, and laughingly says that I, being a lunatic, will simply walk into the Seine one night and drown myself like mad Ophelia. How convenient.
Poor Ophelia. She was the smartest of them all, worth more than her toadying father, her dupe of a brother, and Prince Dither put together. She alone knew that one must meet the world’s madness with more madness.
Let them bluster. Let them threaten. If they want me dead, they will have to make me so. I will not do it for them.
I’ve been in the catacombs for days but am back amongst the living now. My