Gudule Troulliefou awoke that morning and began the same ritual she had practiced for the past 18 years. Groggily picking a few stray stalks of straw from her stringy gray hair, she stumbled out of the female prisoners' sleeping quarters behind the building to urinate. It was hardly a proper latrine, but it offered a semblance of privacy.
Hoping that she was not already too late, she hurried to the prisoners' mess hall. She had learned the hard way that prisoners who didn't make it to the table in time didn't eat. Minister Frollo only allowed them a few minutes to eat; apparently he would prefer the guards' time to be spent watching the prisoners working.
Gudule was hurriedly shoving her piece of bread into her mouth as a guard shooed her out the door. Head down, she shuffled into the moving crowd of prisoners as they headed out to the field for the day's labors.
Weeds. Today, they would be pulling weeds out of fields. Mutely glancing around, she could see both white and brown faces among her fellow prisoners, but by the end of the day everyone would be the same color: dirt color.
But all faces blurred together as the years went by. Minister Frollo did not discriminate; anyone he could legally sentence to "community service" ended up in the labor camps. The lucky ones served sentences with end dates, but many of them had no idea when (or if) the would be able to leave at all.
It could be worse, Gudule reflected, her joints creaking as she bent down to tug at a stubborn weed. There had been a drought a few years back, and all of the prisoners had been hauling water long distances in the heat. Crops all over France were failing, with the exception of the fields that the Minister of Justice kept thoroughly watered with slave labor.
When winter came that year, everyone but the Minister of Justice ran out of food. Because Frollo now controlled the market, he could charge whatever he wanted. After people ran out of money and the winter dragged on, people took out loans against their belongings—most of which were ultimately defaulted upon, leaving Frollo with even more houses and land to collect.
Gudule never ceased to be amazed at how many people Frollo could defraud without breaking a single rule (and therefore free from legal liability for any of his actions). She could only hope that his own outrageous behavior would catch up with him in the end.
But through all of her trials, one thought never faded from her mind. What had ultimately become of her two children, that disappeared on the day of the camp raid? She was almost certain that they had gotten away—she had hidden them well—but she had never heard news of them since. They would be adults now, with lives of their own. Her son would do well, he was a natural leader who looked out for others. But her poor daughter had been so very young when she disappeared. Gudule wanted nothing more than to see her children again. The thought gave her the strength to persevere through each grueling workday, the will to live when she just wanted to curl up and die.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Clopin Troulliefou brought his sister another blanket to place between herself and the cold, hard ground. She was completely exhausted and needed to rest. Disappointed though he was that she had not remembered the camp raid, she was still his baby sister and still his responsibility to protect.
She was his only remaining relative, after the family had been ripped apart. The last promise he had made to his mother was that he would protect his baby sister no matter what. Neither Clopin nor his mother would have ever dreamed that "no matter what" would include sleeping with the Minister of Justice…but a promise was a promise.
"I'm doing this for you, Mom," he mumbled under his breath as he carried more pillows into his sister's wagon.
When he said the word "Mom" he suddenly remembered that, with Frollo's death, all of his slave laborers would be free to return home; the newly-unemployed guards would have no reason to force them to continue working. Most likely his mother had ended up in a labor camp; he allowed himself to entertain the hope that he could find her among the freed prisoners.
But this hope brought with it the scary reality that his mother was going to ask about her grandchild's father. He couldn't be so cruel as to break her heart with the truth. What was he going to tell her?
