I forgot to put the warning, sorry . . .
CHAPTER 2 WARNINGS: mentions of execution and murder
"I do not think I have heard that one before," said Combeferre, smiling around his pipe.
"I didn't really have bad relations with my parents, not for many years," said Enjolras. "My parents were strict, but loving. As such, I prefer not to speak of this incident. It was an exception." He paused. "At least, up until I formed Les Amis. Then my father disowned me." He sat down beside Combeferre, who brought an arm around his shoulders.
"I am very glad we were able to reunite, though," Combeferre said.
"Brothers forever."
"Doth mine eyes deceive me, or are Enjolras and Combeferre both smiling?" cried Courfeyrac, lifting a hand to his forehead. "The only thing that could make this any more astonishing is if Feuilly also graced us with a smile!"
"Shut up, Courfeyrac," said Enjolras, who no longer smiled.
"Really, I don't know what you three have against smiling."
"I said shut up."
"Perhaps I should go next?" Combeferre cut in.
"Please, Jean-Marie," said Enjolras.
"Let's play the French Revolution," Jean-Marie suggested to Jacques and Cyrille one summer evening.
"Yes!" said Jacques, his eyes alight.
"How?" asked Cyrille.
"Me and Jacques will be the resistance, and you can be the queen," said Jean-Marie as he scoured the ground for a suitable stick to act as his rifle. Jacques joined him.
Cyrille spun on her toes, her pink dress swirling around her. "The queen!"
"And then we'll behead you," said Jacques, with a nasty smile.
Cyrille stopped, her eyes wide, her jaw slack, her lips trembling into a pout. "No! I don't want to!"
"It will be fun," said Jacques. He brandished his stick, then maneuvered Cyrille over to a tree. "That's your palace. Now me and Jean-Marie will come storming in and make you prisoner and take you away to the guillotine!"
Cyrille stomped her foot. "No! Jean-Marie!"
"Just play, Cyrille," said Jean-Marie. "At least for a little bit."
Cyrille still grumbled, but she complied.
"Now," said Jacques, "I will be Saint-Just, and you can be Camille Desmoulins."
Jean-Marie nodded. He and Jacques walked around Cyrille's tree, bearing their stick rifles and staring hard at Cyrille until she looked about to burst from anxiety.
"Got you!" Jacques yelled, and the two boys launched themselves at Cyrille. The girl screamed and dropped to the ground, curling into a ball. Jacques grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet. "Now to the guillotine!"
"No! I –" Cyrille glanced at Jean-Marie and smiled all of a sudden. "I'm too beautiful and rich to die!"
Jean-Marie grinned. "Your reign of terror has ended!"
Cyrille pretended to faint into Jacques' arms. "No!"
"Help me, Jean-Mar – I mean, Camille!"
"Yes, Saint-Just!" Jean-Marie held up his sister from the other side and the two of them dragged her to the old rotted stump by the road.
Jacques examined his stick, as though checking for sharpness. Jean-Marie cast a baleful gaze on Cyrille. "Any final words, your highness?"
She lifted one pitiful hand. "Tell everyone how beautiful and rich I was."
Jacques nodded to Jean-Marie and handed him the stick. "Will you do the honors, Je – Camille?"
"Of course, Saint-Just." Jean-Marie made several cutting motions through the air with the stick, then poised it above Cyrille's neck. "Viva la France!" He brought the stick down, stopping it just short of Cyrille's pale skin. She let out a strangled gasp, then flopped over the stump.
"Viva la France!" Jacques shouted, and he and Jean-Marie ran around the stump yelling and shooting their imaginary rifles at the sky.
"Jean-Marie! Cyrille! Time for dinner!" the maid called from steps of the Combeferre house.
"Coming!" Cyrille revived and bounded away.
Jean-Marie paused once to shout back at Jacques, "See you tomorrow for our own executions!"
Jacques shook his stick in the air. "Tomorrow!"
Jean-Marie and Cyrille could not stop laughing as they rushed past the maid and into the dining room where their parents and older brother, Étienne, already sat at the table.
"What were you playing now, children?" asked their mother with a gentle smile.
"The revolution," gasped Cyrille as she sat down.
"Cyrille!" said M. Combeferre. "We have a king again. You cannot play that anymore."
Jean-Marie groaned. "It's just a game."
M. Combeferre looked at his son, his eyes icy. "I said no more."
Jean-Marie sighed, but he nodded.
That night, the silence woke Jean-Marie. He sat up in the darkness, feeling the cold night envelop him, listening to nothing. Then a sharp sound like thunder rang through the house and he involuntarily let out a small scream before diving under the blankets. From the safety of his little cave, he heard the pounding of feet and voices yelling, weeping. He did not dare move. Terror filled every part of him and his throat constricted so he couldn't make anymore noise.
The door opened and someone ran in.
Jean-Marie squeezed his eyes shut and prayed.
"Jean-Marie? Jean-Marie, where are you?" cried his mother.
He opened his eyes. "Maman . . .?"
He pulled back the blankets and as soon as his mother saw him, she wrapped him in her arms and wept into his hair. He held her tight, his mind racing. Something had happened, something horrible, and one part of him wanted to know what it was, but the other part just wished he could remain in his mother's arms forever and not worry about it.
Cyrille was dead.
A poor, hungry rogue had broken into the house that night. Cyrille happened to be downstairs getting a glass of water. The wretch must have seen her form in the dark, outlined by her candle, and panicked, shooting his gun without thinking.
The next few days passed in a chaotic blur for Jean-Marie. People he had not seen in a long time – like his aunts and uncles and cousins – as well as people he had never seen before – doctors and police – came rushing to and from and about the house. The adults kept talking and talking, and there was lots of crying and shouting and silence. Jean-Marie wished with all his heart that he could return to yesterday when everything was bright and perfect and he and Jacques and Cyrille were together again and playing at death but not really believing it existed.
The next day, Jean-Marie and his family attended the trial of the murderer. He was bored and did not really know what was happening. But he did know that the trembling man in rags standing in the front of the room had killed his sister, and Jean-Marie hated him as he had never before hated anything. It frightened him, and his mother had to take him outside when he began wailing in the middle of the judge's sentence of death.
When Jean-Marie's family returned from the trial, his father told them that they were leaving the big country house and his pony and the rolling hills and the trees and the winding river and Jacques and that they were moving to the city of Paris.
Jean-Marie always knew where the world and his life was going – down a steady, predictable, and beautiful road that never ended. He always knew – or thought he knew – that it would go on forever. But now he saw that it fell off a cliff. It ended with Cyrille's death and there was no going back.
Paris steeped on the land like a cold ocean of infinite depths. A blanket lay upon the city, stifling humanity. Jean-Marie found no relief from the suffocation either outside or inside the house. The place became a tomb, a sepulcher for the remains of the Combeferre family. His older brother Étienne left for university again soon after the move, and Jean-Marie saw little of him. The parents dismissed all but two of the servants, and they themselves retreated behind doors, only emerging for meals. None of them ever arrayed themselves in anything but black. Words rarely left lips. Silence reigned. A governess as cold and dark as the city they lived in came every day to teach Jean-Marie, and left him with homework which he completed in time for the next lesson. Aside from her, no one besides the residents of the house dared to enter its dim sanctuary of death.
After he completed his duties, Jean-Marie wandered the house for hours, before eventually returning to his room with only his books for company. He read every single book in the house, multiple times over. But words could only offer him so much comfort before he thought he would die if something – anything – did not happen.
The years slipped by, almost without Jean-Marie even noticing them. One day, he left the house and ran down to one of the great churches. He stopped before the massive doors and stared up at the worn stones piled up to heaven. The carved saints in their little niches gazed down at him with their blank eyes and serene faces, their hands raised in cold blessing. He went inside. The few people there ignored him. He looked up at the ceiling, so high above him it might as well have been heaven. He looked at the painted angels and celestial beings and apostles and Christ himself. He looked at the carved figures in the walls and pillars, at the gold-inlaid wooden boxes containing the sacred relics of the church.
Jean-Marie felt like screaming, but one cannot scream in a church, so he knelt at a bench in the back and he prayed has he never prayed before. He wept with every word, and without realizing it, he raised his voice as the tears flowed like a river: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What is this strange land you have brought me to? Why did you take my sister from me? Why did you let that wretch come and destroy everything I hold dear?"
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and through the tears, he saw the priest. "My son, it is good to pray, but you must either make your petitions be known in silence or else leave." Jean-Marie did not speak, but nodded, wiped his eyes, and left the church.
Jean-Marie walked back to the house, almost without caring where his dragging footsteps led him. He looked down at the cobblestones, he looked around at the buildings, and he looked at the people passing by: fathers, mothers, children, businessmen, traders, craftsmen, thieves, murderers, rich, poor, the righteous and the sinners, a rush of Humanity going, going – and where were they going? In the end, they would all end up either in Heaven or Hell, and what decided that a man would go to one and not the other? Jean-Marie thought of the murderer and Cyrille, and wondered what did it take to cause a man to break into a house and to fire at the first living thing that he saw? He was poor, he was hungry, he was desperate, he did not know what else to do. Maybe he could not get a job. Why? Possibly because he was uneducated. He had no talents or skills that respectable businessmen desired. He had no hope because he was ignorant. If the world possessed knowledge, it could be liberated. Knowledge itself wasn't necessarily a doorway to Heaven, but it was a rung on the ladder to Paradise.
And in that moment, Jean-Marie realized he forgave the man who killed his sister. The blanket which covered the cold and dark city lifted and he felt the sun for what felt like the first time in years since he left the big house among the rolling hills and rivers. Jean-Marie returned to his room, feeling numb, but liberated.
Jean-Marie never thought of going to university before, but now he knew that he needed to. He would learn all that he could, and then he would work for the knowledge of all people so that none would be so desperate that they would be driven to kill ever again.