Froella was there to see the Captain Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier carry Esmer off in shackles. As she predicted, the fool had returned to the Notre Dame cathedral once or twice in the past week, screaming his head off about "sanctuary for his people" or whatever, claiming they had a right to it. And Modette was still nowhere to be found. Oh, wherever she was, she'd surely come crawling back to her mother now. And then the real penance could begin.
As the gypsy boy was being hauled off, he locked those dynamic green eyes on Froella. She waved sweetly.
He spit at her.
It lit her on fire.
Froella cupped her cheek and ran to her room, locking the door. Slowly she took a look around, felt the warmth of the glob on the side of her face. And what was she doing, what was she doing she put her finger in her mouth and sucked. Long and hard.
It tasted like… nothing.
Warm nothing.
She slid to the floor, touching herself as she had never before in her life. This would be her last chance to imagine the boy inside her. But she could give him one last chance to be hers. Of that, that was the least she could do.
Froella had to hand it to Monsieur de Gondelaurier; she had asked him to play up the fact that his cousin was dead and he was shedding tears as he had not since reading Les Misérables. If he was a woman and she were his lover, Froella would throw a bouquet of roses at his feet.
"For the crime of committing murder against my dearest cousin Phoebe de Chateaupers, I hereby sentence you to death by hanging," he read. "Do you have any last words to say on your behalf?"
"Sanctuary," Esmer screamed. "Justice!"
Froella snorted. If he was trying to call out for his little gypsy friends, it wasn't working. God would always have the last word.
Captain De Gondelaurier rolled his eyes—Froella guessed he wasn't too happy about Esmer's little trysts with his cousin either. "Very well," he continued. "Guards?"
The guards approached the boy. They began to untangle the rope they brought.
"Hang the hell out of him, in Jesus' name I pray!" The nun turned several surprised eyes on her. Did she just say that out loud? She covered her mouth. "That wasn't me."
Her guards slowly fastened the rope around the boy's neck. The entire city of Paris was there to witness the hanging, and Froella was in the front, beaming with pride. At last, now there was nothing standing in the way of the treasured relationship between her and God and, despite the eyes all around, Froella laughed. It was short, and came out as a burst of release.
Suddenly, she felt herself being knocked off her special viewing place on the dock by a little hard body into the swampy water. All the times in her life she bathed her, she knew where that body came from—Modette.
What was she doing here? Who let her out of her room; one of the nuns? With all the sins her daughter had committed in the last few months, she shouldn't have been able to move for the next month or so.
Froella caught sight of Modette's furious face—the boy's coughing as that annoying gypsy girl sliced the rope, sending him crashing to the ground. She noted in equal parts sheer amazement and infuriated disbelief his ability to stay aloft solely from balancing on his tippy toes. But what did she expect? He was bound to be flexible; she was an acrobat.
Finally, Froella came to her senses. She sputtered and spluttered, flailing her arms. "I can't swim! I can't swim!"
"Funny," the puppet on that skinny little gypsy broad's hand asked. "We all thought you could walk on water!"
The nun splashed around in the water, but by now everybody was just waiting for her to drown. "Phoebe, avenge me! Arrest…" But Froella didn't have time. She sank into the murky depths below. Nobody extended a hand to her. But she was okay with it. Now it would just be a matter of time before a raging mad God took his revenge upon these people. Especially upon that gypsy boy.