Page 40 of Souvenir Heart

A broad-shouldered guard stood at one end of the hall, a scroll of paper in one hand. He stank of sweat and wine, and was accompanied by a rust-colored, multi-jowled Bordeaux Mastiff named Louis. Unrolling the scroll, he began to read. “Aine, Des Isles, La Fonchais, Bellecourt.” The names divided the prisoners into groups on either side of the hall. To the right were those destined for the carts; those to the left were granted one more precious day of life.

“Picot de Limoeelan? Limoailan? Limoëlan,” the guard’s reading skills were limited, and he stumbled over the name. His fellow guards howled with laughter, as if this garbled pronunciation was as entertaining as a pantomime.

A movement to her left caught Marguerite’s eye. She glimpsed an elderly man, wearing an embroidered waistcoat over his night shirt, one slippered foot raised, as if trying to decide whether to step forward, whether they were truly, horribly calling his name.

What would she do in his position? Pretend she didn’t know who they were calling? Straighten her spine and step forward? Or crumple into a heap like the man across from her, who clutched at his thinning hair, moaned, “It’s a mistake, a mistake, not fair!”

The guard continued to read; the dog bent his massive head and licked his genitals.

Marguerite liked to imagine she’d be brave, like Joan of Arc—though, on second thought, things hadn’t turned out well for Joan.

“Kolly, Momoro …”

Her fear as the roll continued was gut-wrenching. Her relief when it ended, and she found herself among those herded back into the cell, dizzying. Dropping onto her narrow bed, she unwrapped her shawl with hands that felt as if they didn’t belong to her, then attempted to pull on her stays. Dressing as elegantly as each could manage was a ritual as sacred as mass to the women in the cells. After breakfast, they would descend through the barred wickets, past the guards, and down into the prison courtyard. There they would spend a few blessed hours in the warmth of the sun, enjoying each other’s company and the unobstructed view of the sky.

“I can help you with those if you’d like.” Marisol, the sparrow-like former hairdresser who occupied the bed across from hers, offered.

Marguerite looked down at the hopeless mess she was making of the business. “If it’s not too much trouble…”

“Not at all. Mine lace up the front. So much easier, though not as elegant. But then I’ve never been a lady, like you.”

She turned so Marisol could lace her up, finding herself fortified as much by the woman’s kindness and companionable chatter, as by the snug embrace of the fabric as each crossed ribbon was tightened. “We are all equal, citizeness,” she said, because she still wanted to believe it.

“Of course, of course. There you go. If you’d like, I can help you with your hair when you’ve finished dressing.”

“No, no. That would be asking too much. You are too kind.”

“Not at all.” Marisol shook her head. Up close, her face was too thin, with lines at the corners of her mouth and gray eyes that testified to an almost desperate readiness to smile. “Indeed, you’d be doing me a kindness. I’ll go mad...” She gave a shaky laugh. “Madder, in this place, if I don’t keep my hands busy.”

“You draw?” She rattled on without waiting for an answer. “I’ve seen you with paper and pencil. I wish I could draw, but hair is my only talent.”

Every time Marguerite tried to take out the pencil and paper Marcus had given her, she was reminded of the drawings and paintings she’d had to leave behind—and her hands began to shake. So much work…would she ever see any of it again? Her three best pieces on the easels, ready for submission to the Louvre salon. A tremor ran through them now.

Why had Marcus slipped drawing supplies to her? Why was he offering to take her to England? Could he really do it? Who had sent him? Was he an English spy? Or a French one?

The question began to repeat in a seemingly endless unanswerable loop—rescue or trap? Trap or rescue? She shook her head as if the motion would make it stop, then pulled on a petticoat.

When, at last, she was fashionably attired in the despised red, white, and blue, her hair arranged by Marisol in an artful tumble of curls down her back, she joined the oddly fashionable parade of women heading down to the courtyard. In her hands she held her laundry, wrapped in her shawl.

The women’s side of the courtyard was separated from the men’s by yet another set of bars. The primary difference between the two was the almost unimaginable luxury of a fountain on the women’s side. It was far from elegant, just a simple, round-lipped trough set into a niche in the wall, but Marguerite reveled in the feel of cool water on her hands, sunshine on her face, and the opportunity to wash her small collection of underthings. She had a sliver of rosewater-scented soap lent to her by one of her cellmates, a straight-backed older woman with fine white hair, who was rumored to be a vicomtesse.

As she wrung out a freshly washed fichu, she was aware how much pleasure she found in things she’d barely given a thought to before her arrest; the delicate rose scent of the soap, the soft whiteness of newly clean clothes, the musicality of the conversations between the women and men in the courtyard.

Bars separated the men’s and women’s sides of the courtyard, but they were wide enough to allow the passage of words, hands, and even kisses. In what were almost certainly the waning days of their lives, lovers made little effort to conceal their affections.

She watched as a young man with fashionably cut short hair and wisps of mustache, clutched an equally young woman through the bars, his hands sliding down her back to cup her hip as he drew her closer.

She thought of her fantasy lover, the unsettling way Marcus resembled the man in her sketches, and turned away. Spreading the fichu on the lip of the fountain, she smoothed the linen, so that it would dry flat.

She’d been married at fifteen to a man whom she’d met only twice before the wedding. Gerard had been eleven years older, not unhandsome, not unkind, but not particularly interested in her. Marguerite had been anxiously curious about sex, but lovemaking, if you could call it that, had turned out to be sticky, awkward and uncomfortable.

She picked up a stocking from the pile on the shawl, plunged it into the fountain, and began scrubbing.

Sex had remained that way throughout her thirteen years of marriage. And even though she’d never entirely given up hope that it might get better, the only thing that changed was the frequency of the act—from obligatory, to perfunctory, to desultory as Gerard became increasingly convinced that she was incapable of giving him a son.

Her only real value to him, as he’d said.

She glanced back at the couple entwined around the bars like a writhing vine.