Chapter #9
Karma
How many times had I awoken on velvet pillows and silk sheets? How many times had I awoken ignorant of the future, but confident of my own security? All that sanctity and assurance was lost to me when the moving carriage jostled me awake.
I had no memory of where I was, or even who I was. I felt drained and lightweight as a feather. All that penetrated the fog of my muddled brain was that I was not in bed, and that my wrists pained me terribly. When I looked down, I saw that thick, metal shackles hung off my wrists like oversized iron bracelets, connected by an even heavier chain with the nastiest lock I had ever seen.
At first, I merely stared at them. With my mind in chaos as it was, their presence did not make sense to me. A coarse traveling cloak covered the remnants of my dress, hiding everything but these monstrosities that seemed to swallow my small wrists. I raised my arms and my muscles quivered with the effort. A pain shot through my shoulder, and I let my hands drop back onto my lap until it passed. Raising my forearms again slightly, careful to not cause another spasm of pain, I experimentally stretched my wrists apart, testing the length of the chain until they ended their progress with a loud clank.
"You will get used to them; I promise you that, Madame la Comtess."
Inspector Georges Clavell's features stared impassively back at me from across the carriage with his thin mustache, rigid posture, and full uniform that I remembered well; but it was the memory of another face brought me completely awake.
"Raoul!" I was trembling, but not from the weight of the chains.
"Yes, 'Raoul'," he said calmly. "Comte de Chagny. You know him, don't you? You killed him, after all."
My mind would not even give me the comfort of amnesia; I remembered everything. I remembered being shot, I remembered Raoul's weak hands pressing my own into his wound, and the blood so much blood baptizing us both unto his death.
It occurred to me then, in the vague way thoughts manifest themselves, that my wounded shoulder had been bandaged. That process was absent from my memory. I experimentally rolled my shoulder and regretted the act. The wound was tightly bandaged, and apparently clean, but I could still feel the bullet under the skin, grating against my shoulder bone.
Inspector Clavell answered my unspoken question. "Your sister-in-law insisted you be treated. I would not allow for her to call a doctor, as there will be one at the end of our journey, but she dressed your shoulder and gave you that cloak before we placed you in the carriage. The woman has an odd sense of loyalty."
"Where is she?" Céleste had disappeared sometime during the chaos, but when exactly and why I did not know.
"She is at home, suffering from shock. You will see Madame Robillard at your trial. I should remember thank her, too. Up until the end, it truly was an enjoyable evening. I do not think I have ever had such wonderful Tiramisu in my life."
"Trial?" I asked. Information was coming at me too quickly, and I struggled to find my place in it.
He plowed on in his conversation, content to be both speaker and listener. "Though I cannot figure out why you did it. I never thought Swedes lacked originality, for all their Viking stories. This whole thing reeks of predictability."
"What are you talking about?"
"Your motive for murder, Comtess," he seemed to relish my confusion, explaining the events as if reciting a fairy tale to a child. "It really lacks originality: A jealous woman, driven to madness upon learning that another woman was carrying her lover's child, kills her own husband to be free. It will be the most notorious story in all of France as soon as your guests return to their homes. And popularity is far more important than substance these days, you know."
Any lawyer could have pointed out a thousand flaws in his fairy tale motive. Where was Gilles? Had anyone actually seen me shoot either Raoul or Javier? And if so, why would I have been shot too? There was one thought, though, that I grasped in my grief and panic that I felt was enough to show this man I could not have done any of this.
"I- I didn't kill him…." I insisted. "He was my husband!"
I struggled to raise my arms to hide my face and spare myself the humiliation of breaking down in front of him, but my chains were too heavy, my spirit too weak, and my arm too sore. I had a sudden, horrifying image of Raoul's prone and lifeless body, his beautiful blue eyes, closed forever to this world. Another quickly followed, of the same man, alone in a cherry-wood casket, no one to mourn him, no one to care that he had lived.
"Where is he? Where have you put him?" I demanded. The inspector yawned and removed a neatly folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. He used it to wipe the sweat off his brow, then returned it to his pocket.
"You forfeited all rights to act as the mourning widow when you killed him, Madame. His family will see that he goes to his final rest."
I had to swallow my revulsion at his being spoken of like a lifeless object. "I am his family and I didn't kill him!"
The officer held up a hand "You may save the theatrics, Madame. I grow tired of it now. We will be arriving soon, till then I would appreciate it if you kept your murdering mouth shut."
"But wha-" He drew back his gloved hand, and slapped me across my face. In my weakened, bewildered state it didn't take much to send me sprawling back against the seat.
I had fainted a few times before in my life; from shock, exhaustion, and, most recently, blood loss from a bullet would, but this blackout was different. I had feared Gilles's hard fists, but I had at least expected those blows; now, this sudden strike from such a calm man took me totally by surprise. My vision darkened, and I was neither awake nor asleep, blind to my surroundings, and conscious only of the pain that radiated from my injuries. I sucked in a harsh breath, wincing as my jaw throbbed. Breathing did nothing to lessen my aches, but I continued to breathe, each pained gasp coming with sharpened cruelty.
The inspector was grinning at me when I finally came to, straightening the end of his glove.
"I already asked you to keep silent, Madame, and I will not do so again. If you cannot learn through words I shall be forced to reckon with you in different ways. Don't let it happen again."
We sat in silence for several moments. I cradled my throbbing jaw in my right hand and tried desperately to swallow the tears of humiliation. I would not let him see me cry. If I could not have anything else, at least I might have my dignity.
"You may be wondering where we are going. We are heading to the local law enforcement. I cannot properly interrogate you in the Robillard home. From there, you will be tried and I daresay found guilty. If the court is lenient, it will be hanging. If not, and I will do my best to make sure it is not, you will wish you were never born."
I could not stay upright any longer. I slumped on my side on the bench and willed the waves of physical ache to leave me. But as they finally began to lessen, another surged just as strong. There are things I know with absolute certainty when I am with Raoul: I am safe, I am secure, I am his wife, I am loved. But now that he was gone, what was I?
"Why?" I nearly sobbed. "Why are you doing this to me? I am innocent!"
"I uphold the law, and you broke it. You murdered one of the finest men I have ever met and you deserve full recourse," he was not looking at me, and though he spoke to me, he was lost deep inside his own thoughts "I will never understand how you ensnared him, but even great men are weak. The best men can compromise their morals for the female form. He was only human, for all his virtues."
"You're jealous that he married me?! Or is this recourse because Lady Simonette would never have to courage to do what my husband did?" I was risking another slap, but the advantage of having nothing left, is that you have nothing left to loose.
I saw a glimmer of amusement and something like respect cross his face when I hurled my words at him, but it was fleeting. He leaned forward in his seat until nothing but his mustached-face encompassed my vision. Up close, I could see that his eyes were a mixture of green and blue, and when he smiled, they could even be considered beautiful. But every kind thought I had of him vanished when he gripped my shackles and pulled me upright.
I cried out as the skin of my wrists rubbed raw against metal and the bullet in my shoulder shifted again.
His voice was quiet, like he was telling me a remarkable secret, to be kept in confidence. The words tickled in my ear. "Over seven years ago, Madame, you kept me from upholding my duty when we tried to catch that deranged madman. You know who I speak of… Do you know what it's like to try and explain to your superiors that you want to chase a ghost? To convince them, and then come up empty handed? I had to beg and claw my way back to the bottom like some worthless whore when I could have been a politician by now. It was all your fault, Comtess, and you did nothing but bloom and marry one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Everything you do comes back to you in some way. The Indians call it 'Karma,' I call it your 'just desserts'."
He threw the chains back at me and the conversation was over. I did not even have the luxury of losing my thoughts to passing scenery; the drapes had been drawn. There was nowhere to look except at my captor, or the shackles he had put me in. I choose the latter, a symbol of my impending doom.
When the Inspector insisted that I had forfeited all right as a mourning widow, he had meant it literally. As I stared at my shackles, I realized something was missing. The fourth finger of my left hand was bare: they had taken my wedding ring. Neither did I have the necklace Raoul had given me on our anniversary, or my earrings. I had lost all tangible evidence of my husband save my own memories.
I could feel my sorrow growing deep within me. It quivered in my pit of my stomach like a caged animal, waiting for an opportunity to free itself. But if I did not think, it could not live and as I stared at my shackles, I slowly killed all thoughts within my head, until it was nothing more than an empty cavern. Only when I felt the last vestiges of my mind disappear, did I allow myself to breathe, to simply be.
We sat in silence for several minutes while the driver picked our way through the streets. I suspected the carriage belonged to Lady Simonette; I doubted usual ones touting criminals were lined in silk and lace. Clavell kept one hand on a leather-bag sitting next to him. It was old and worn, and had the emblem of the Paris gendarmes on the side.
The carriage suddenly stopped and I was nearly thrown into the Inspector's lap. We both heard commotion outside and a sound like a human cry. The cracking of a whip followed while the driver urged the horse on. We did not move.
With a muttered curse, Inspector Clavell opened the carriage door and began to step out. He stopped before leaving me and fixed me with a stony look.
"We do not need you alive to try you, Comtess. Don't do anything funny," then he was gone.
I did not dare leave, but I did stick my head out, pushing aside the drawn curtains. Lying in the middle of a road, was a young, olive-skinned man, wailing in pain. The driver had come down from his perch and was arguing with several people gathering around the scene. The man was not dressed in the usual peasantry garb, but a rough more colorful outfit, clearly marking him as a foreigner. His words were clipped and garbled in a language I had never heard before, but a young girl, similarly clothed, stood near him, wailing in accented French that the carriage had run over her father.
Inspector Clavell tried to shoo the little girl away, but she only cried louder. She would not allow him to look anywhere but at her, and she had his complete attention.
At that moment, the door on the other side of the carriage, farthest from Clavell, opened, and three young faces appeared. One was a boy, the younger two, girls; the eldest couldn't have been more than eight. They looked as if they might be siblings, sharing the same sable hair and dark eyes. The girls had half of their hair pulled back, hidden beneath colorful headscarves, while the rest swung in two thick plaits in front.
They took me in as I did them with similar gape-mouthed expressions; they clearly hadn't anticipated my presence. Their unease evaporated when their collective gazes stopped on my shackles. The youngest girl tugged on the boy's sleeve and whispered something in his ear. The boy grinned at me and reaching a thin arm into the carriage, removing the gendarme bag on the inspector's side of the carriage. I was clearly no threat to them and they helped themselves to everything in his bag.
One of the children climbed into the carriage and stood in front of me. She smiled, and I smiled back as it seemed to be the only thing to do. She parted the edges of my cloak until the remains of my attire were visible to all. The red silk was almost unrecognizable, covered in brown stains, and the right side had a white, chalky substance smeared across it from the gravel when I had kneeled beside Raoul.
The young girl placed her hands on both of my wrists and raised them. She let them drop again and ran her tiny hands along the chain from one bracelet to the other. She tugged on one of the shackles, as if she had the strength to break them. When it was clear that she could not, she gave me an apologetic smile, and then started to search around me for goods.
She had the confidence and bearing of an expert thief and the body of an innocent. She knelt down on the floor and ran her fingers along the bench board behind where people rested their feet. Several times, she knocked with her tiny fists and waited for the board to give up some kind of secret. She knocked and knocked until she was rewarded with a hollow response. Then, standing on her own two feet, she kicked the bench and a perfect square of wood fell free.
She let out a small cry of triumph and reached in with both hands. She pulled out a battered, wooden box and presented it to her companions. The boy grabbed it with equal enthusiasm, and opened the box to reveal an assortment of jewels and money.
I knew that noblemen and women found clever ways to hide precious wealth from robbers when they traveled, but I had no idea how much wealth was considered essential for travel. Lady Simonette was a fool, and judging by the contents of the box, she was also an incredibly wealthy one.
The children helped themselves, stuffing their oversized clothes with Lady Simonette's jewels and money until they could carry no more. The little girl pulled free a small gold crucifix on a chain and held it out to me, offering it. At first she seemed confused that I didn't take it, but then she seemed to suddenly remember my predicament. She laughed at her mistake, unfastened the necklace, and reached over to put it around my neck.
When they had taken their share of booty, two of the children ran off. The younger girl stared at me for a moment then said something that sounded like "nash!" She gestured frantically at me, then someplace off in the distance outside the carriage. Then she too was gone.
I snapped out of my astonishment when the girl disappeared. I looked outside again, and saw my captor in the same place he was before, though now it had drawn a larger crowd of local citizens.
I realized then what the girl meant.
Leave… run… I could get away!
I dismissed the idea immediately. Dozens of people had gathered around the carriage and Clavell would shoot me before I made it down the street. But still… did it matter? I was doomed anyway. At the end of this journey Clavell would do his best to make sure I was hung, and if I were let free… what life did I have now that it was shattered?
I gave one last glance at the argument between Clavell and the people, then eased myself out on the same side as the mysterious children, being careful not to let my chains catch on the door handle.
I started walking, beginning at a slow pace that gradually picked up speed the farther I got from the carriage. People passed by me on all sides, all intent on seeing the commotion I was leaving behind.
I did not look back. I did not look forward. I kept my head down and tried to conceal my shackles in the folds of my cloak. I stared at my moving feet and looked up only when I sensed an impending impact with someone walking the other way.
But when I turned a corner that led down a random alley-way, I ran for my life.
I ran, ignoring the way my shoulder jolted in pain with every footfall, the way that every breath seemed laced with fire. So often in the last day my consciousness had focused solely on my physical pain, my emotional anguish, but now I found myself wondering bemusedly what the karmic 'reward' for these actions would be.
A/N: Please review!