The Terror Time Spies (26 page)

It wasn’t the homely sight of a ‘Hotel’ that so struck the seven year old, it was the sounds all around the great and famous
Place de la Revolution
.    For that is just where the detour had just taken those barrels, because the cart drivers had spent the entire day sightseeing, then noticed a stream of excited people, so followed them here. 

The great Paris square were a King had already died was filled with onlookers, jostling around a great wooden platform, bearing the object of their fascination:  That new Frenchie killing machine -
Madame Guillotine
herself
. 

The weird contraption looked like something that Spike had seen at an English country fair, although from the buzzing excitement of the French mob, the brave little girl realised that it most certainly wasn’t a tombola. 

Spike saw the slanted axe blade gleaming high above a flat bench.  Then the headsman’s block, as yet unused that day, so still clean and shiny.  She also saw a large wicker basket and the fresh straw all about it’s base, waiting for another poor Frenchie head to be delivered, sharpish.

The mob in the terrible square were crowding around it expectantly and men and women walking through them, selling sheets of paper to the audience, carrying the lists of victims to be executed that day, and the times of the event too, like play lists at a vaudeville. 

Of course, free and brave Englishmen might find this all very shocking indeed, and very French too, until they remembered that the same thing happened in England too, at spots like London’s Tyburn, although it was a rope that they used there for common criminals, and silken ones for criminal aristocrats.

There was an especially raucous, even jubilant quality to this Revolutionary crowd, waiting for their Madame to get to her work again.   Not to mention the mob’s size and colourful outfits, while hawkers made a killing selling wine, beer and saucison - French sausage.   

It all gave the Revolutionary Square a carnival feel, as the adults jostled about, looking greedily at their newly acquired programmes, as if they owned the lives about to be sacrificed in front of them all.

“’ere,” one cried, thrusting a dirty finger at the list, “DeBouchiville.  Husband ‘an wife.  The Comte du Rene, and Beaulieu too.  A fine batch.”

“Malplaquet,” another ventured, spitting on the cobbles, “Tessonard.  Filthy Girondins.”

Spike hadn’t understood this, nor quite connected the terrible axe with all that was going on and so, thinking it really a carnival, the little girl was not surprised to see how many children were in the Square too. 

They were all over the place, in fact.  Near the cart a group of little girls were dancing in a circle, as if it was May day, singing a lively song.  Boys darted in and out of the crowd, some trying to sell candy, or programmes, others just for the fun.  Some, as Spike noticed a boy near the cart, were engaged in another activity - pickpocketing and filching. 

Many of the children were dressed like the grown ups, in miniature red Liberty caps, or with tricolours at their wastes, while others looked as poor and emaciated as any wastrel Spike had ever seen in London.  These children didn’t seem attached to adults at all, because, during the four years of Revolution, the number of abandoned foundlings in Paris had doubled.

Spike was peering from over the top of her barrel, and her eyes had fallen on the heavy metal grilling over a drain nearby, where a reveller dropped one of those play sheets.

The grill suddenly lifted up and out of it poked a little head, followed by a body.  Then came another, and another.  Children were emerging from the ground itself, like sewer rats. 

As they climbed out they darted into the crowd, like vanishing brigands.  Spike ducked back inside her barrel though, because a ghastly old women had just appeared right in front of her, grinning evilly. 

She had only one black tooth and her face looked so ancient that it seemed that her skin was dripping off the old witch’s cheeks, like candle wax.  She was wearing the filthiest clothes too, grubbiest of all the old Liberty cap on her head, holding up a bundle of filthy wool and two long knitting needles.

Thankfully she hadn’t seen Spike, watching her nervously through the spy hole, but she was grumbling loudly to herself.

“Couchons,” she grunted, “Pigs.  Make way, I say.  Les Tricoteuse have come to enjoy the show.”

She jabbed a man in front of her with one of her needles, who swore and swung around angrily but, seeing her and others behind, armed with needles too, stepped quickly aside. 

So famous were these ghastly women in Paris, and such a prominent fixture in the spectacle of execution, that a fearful corridor appeared before them immediately. 

Les Tricoteuse
, or Knitting Women, almost symbols of the Revolution itself, marched forwards to take their place at the foot of the great scaffold. 

There, day in, day out, they would come to knit and darn, knit and sew, like cackling furies, as heads were unsewn from tender French necks.

Just as the weird took their seats, a shout went up too: “
Sanson is coming
.”

Spike was peeking over the barrel again and now she saw a very austere character mount the scaffold steps like a ghost.  The reappearance of the black clothed Public Executioner, Sanson, who seven months before had pulled that little lever that had ended a King’s life, meant only one thing: The entertainment was about to begin again. 

A hush fell over the hungry Revolutionary Square now, except for a single shout:  “
There.  Les Fournees
.”

It meant ‘batches’, prisoners destined for execution, divided into batches of twenty or more, and now Spike saw two large tumbrels - open wagons - trundling across the square, with prisoners standing or kneeling in the backs, as armed revolutionary soldiers walked at their sides.

The second ‘batch’ looked much the worst for wear, its passengers in torn and filthy clothes, sans-coulots, and mostly bare foot too - as down trodden as any human being could be. 

Nell looked down at her own Sans Culots and wished she had never come to horrid Paris.

These prisoners were criminals from one of Paris’s twelve Houses of Arrest and their crimes ranged from anything from murder, to assault or theft. 

It was the first tumbril that the eyes of the crowd were eagerly turned on now though.  The figures in this cart were far better dressed, and among them were men, women and children too.  Some of the adults stood and looked out defiantly, others sobbed, while some seemed so numb they were hardly alive at all.

One of the women was an old lady, dressed much like Comtesse St Honoré had been in Peckham, although her elegant dress was filthy now and very torn.  Beside her stood a husband and wife and, in between them, a handsome young boy of about eleven:  The old Lady’s grandson.

Spike saw his terrified little face and his frightened, innocent blue eyes, and the seven year old shuddered, as the tumbrel lurched towards the ghastly scaffold. 

The crowd were spitting and jeering horribly now.

“Filthy Aristos,” they hissed, hurling tomatoes and rotten vegetables and secretly terrified that such a thing might happen to them instead. 

In fact several of the prisoners were not aristocrats at all, but clearly destined to be the first batch.  Soon the soldiers were forcing them off their cart and up the wooden steps.

The first man to mount looked like a lawyer, although he was only a notary.   He was shivering and looking pleadingly around the crowd. 

The executioner meanwhile was examining the traces of the Guillotine most methodically, to see that they were well enough oiled, as an official in a Phrygian cap read out the name and charge.

“Millet, Antoine,” he boomed, “Counter-revolutionary and Enemy of the People.”

Millet spoke though, as two soldiers took hold of his arms and pulled him to the machine.

“
I’m innocent.  My neighbour who denounced me wanted the deeds to my..
.”

The crown shouted him down, as they dragged him to the Guillotine and laid him face down on the long wooden table, below the suspended axe blade.  His head was sticking out between those wooden polls and Sanson nodded to guards below the scaffold. 

A deep, ominous drum roll began, just as it had for a King, and the crowd at last fell silent.  Poor Spike’s heart was in her mouth, as that handsome, blue eyed boy buried his head in his mother’s breast, and the unfortunates looked on too. 

The drumming stopped abruptly and Sanson pulled the lever. 

There was a sharp sliding noise, but Spike didn’t see what happened next, because a man in the crowd had hoisted his son on his shoulders and blocked her view.  When he lowered the child again though, Spike was amazed. 

The man’s head had vanished, as if by magic. 

Spike blinked and for a moment the little tom-girl thought of witchcraft, and the Nometer, until she saw that the straw was spattered with what looked like red paint.

“Pearl two, drop one,” cried the old crone, at the front of the crowd, with an evil chuckle and the other women burst out into a horrible cackling.

Spike was trembling, not sure if this was real or theatre, as soldiers took hold of the headless body and lifted it into a waiting cart, like an old sack.

That little family had mounted the scaffold too now and Spike wanted to cry out to the handsome boy:  “
Don’t fear.  The Pimples are here
!”

The silly words choked in her mouth though, and poor Nellie Bonespair knew it was both useless and foolish.  Only she was here now, hiding on a barrel cart, all alone in Paris.  Spike wondered if the others had managed to crack her secret message and where they were now. Wondered if the boys were here at all.

The father kissed his wife and son, turned and spat defiantly, as he stared loftily at the French mob. 

As the man with the list read out his name, “
Marquis D’Evremonde,
” a great whistling erupted and Spike wondered what this man could ever have done, for so many to hate him so.  The guards stepped up, but the Marquis pushed them aside, used to ruling other men, and laid himself down. 

Spike turned away, of her own accord this time.  The awful drum role started again, and this time Spike heard and imagined everything, and wished for the rest of her days that she hadn’t.

She heard Sanson pull the lever and the glinting blade fall.  She heard a roar in the crowd, which parted now with a gasp because, as Spike opened just one eye again, she saw something rolling through them, like a ball, that stopped right in front of the barrel cart, just where Nellie was hiding.   

It was the Marquis D’Evrimonde’s poor head, with its eyes still open, staring up accusingly, a silent curse on the head’s dead lips.  Poor Spike was sure those eyelids flickered, as a glance of recognition at Spike’s hiding place flashed from its pupils, and then they closed forever.

“Taking us to a wine cellar, a startling mechanical discovery and, or so Spike’s convinced, a meeting with the real Madame Guillotine…”

A brilliant dawn had broken
across Paris, a city the intrepid Pimpernel Club had been circling all bustling morning.  Now William Wickham’s Chronometer said 11.30 –am, for  Hal had put it forward by an hour, as Francis yawned heavily and Armande leant out of the window, still giving Skipper instructions. 

Henry B was fiddling with the Patent Revolutionary Time Piece still, flicking that catch aimlessly, thinking it silly not to do anything, and turning the dial around and about, in line with the Roman numerals. 

The little Glove came parallel with the raised twelve O’clock suddenly, when the Pimpernel’s carriage pulled up in front of a peculiar looking building, in a cobbled Cul-de-sac, with a boarded up front that said this on the top:

ROUBECHON - Négociant en vins – Depuis 1772

After getting lost for several hours in the darkness and the daylight Paris streets too, Armande St Honoré had just recognised his surroundings and led them safely to the vintners.  There was nobody about and the place was set back, away from Parisians waking to a new day of wonder, work and utter horror. 

“Come on,” whispered Hal, sliding the Nometer back inside his shirt, as the three boys climbed out onto the Paris cobbles and looked around nervously. 

Henry had pushed all thoughts of magic or visions far from his mind now, thoroughly glad to get down to something practical again.

“Well done, Skip,” cried Hal.  “You found it all right.”

Skipper Holmwood shrugged.  It was Count Armande who had done all the real work, spotting street signs in Paris, since the coachman’s son couldn’t even read. 

They had also noticed a sign for the Rue Beaulieu just nearby and the Temple Fauberg too, which meant that Henry’s Grandmother was somewhere just around the corner.