The Game Called Revolution - - (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

the deck. Reddish-orange fountains of lava were hurled into the air from Mt. Erfunden.

“That certainly takes care of the factory,” Victor said.

Pierre nodded. “Agreed. Let’s just hope that was the only one.”

“Are we going back to France now?” Celeste asked.

Pierre put an arm on her shoulder and led her into the Dämon. “You’re damn right, we are. We’ve earned it.”

They did head back to France, only stopping along the way (very briefly, due to the incoming lava flows) to pick up Jean-Paul de Fleur and the survivors of the battle he had taken part in. Jeanne gave her brother a severe talking to for his participation despite the fact that the injuries he had received at the hands of Farahilde Johanna hadn’t yet healed. He simply smiled and lightly brushed aside her concerns.

 

***

 

The Tuileries, Paris, September 24, 1789 (Infini Calendar), 4:30 p.m.

King Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and their two children, Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse, were currently hiding in the royal bedroom. They had fled here as soon as the angry mob had rushed the palace gates.

“What do they want this time?” the queen asked, the tension evident in her voice.

“Who knows?” her husband answered. “Let’s just wait them out, and hopefully they’ll get tired and leave.”

Marie-Thérèse, along with her brother, was clinging fiercely to their mother. “Are we going to be all right, mama?”

“Of course, my love. Not even the angriest mob would dare harm innocent children.”

“They said bad things about our father,” Louis-Charles replied.

“They’re just jealous that he’s the king,” Marie Antoinette said.

Suddenly there was a crash at the door, accompanied by furious voices.

“They’re in here!”

“Break the door down!”

“They won’t escape this time!”

Louis XVI braced himself against the dresser and oak table he had placed in front of the door as a barricade. The people outside attacked from outside, their voices growing even more bloodthirsty.

The children added their own voices with their terrified bawling. Their mother tried to soothe them, but to no avail.

Gradually the door was torn down piece by piece, and the mob charged into the room, overpowering the king. They seized him and dragged him out of the room. The screams of his family behind him revealed they, too, had been taken.

The mob dragged them outside to the Place de la Révolution, where a scaffold and two guillotines awaited. They forced the king and queen to mount the scaffold where they forced them to their knees to face a large crowd of thousands.

“What is the meaning of this?” Louis XVI shouted.

A voice behind him announced, “That should be perfectly clear.” Louis XVI watched as Maximilien Robespierre strode past them and began examining the assembled crowd. “As I’ve said time and time again, you have driven our once-great country to ruin. The people can take no more, and they now demand your deaths.”

Deaths. Plural.

“Please! Do what you will with me, but spare my family. Everything that has happened is my responsibility. I’m the reason for all of this, so I beg of you: Let my wife and children go!”

Robespierre turned to address the crowd. “What say you, people of France? I agree these children are innocent. We should not hold them accountable for the crimes of their parents.”

The crowd voiced their assent. After all, many of them shouted, what kind of monsters would put to death blameless children?

Robespierre returned his gaze to the king and queen. “Your last request is granted, my liege. Louis-Charles and Marie-Thérèse shall be spared.”

Louis XVI gave a fleeting smile, and then turned to look at Marie Antoinette. “What of my wife? She is also innocent.”

In response, Robespierre did something that was uncharacteristic for him: He laughed. “Innocent?” He again turned to address the crowd. “Is this woman innocent?”

“Of course not!”

“She gave him all his bad ideas!”

“She was pulling his strings the whole time!”

“If she’s innocent, I’m the king of England!”

“And what,” Robespierre said, “shall we do with her?”

The crowd gave a single answer. “Off with her head!”

Marie Antoinette struggled in vain against the ruffians holding her down. “Have mercy!”

Robespierre grimly shook his head. “It is too late for that now.” He motioned for the members of the mob holding the king and queen down to force them into the guillotines. Someone yelled for the children to be turned away so they wouldn’t bear witness to what was about to happen. “Yes, that’s for the best. They don’t need to see this.”

The children yelled, “Mama! Papa!” However, their crying soon devolved into unintelligible wailing.

As the children were led away, Robespierre asked Louis XVI, “Do you have any last words?”

The former king, numb with shock and disbelief, simply said softly, “What has become of my beloved France?”

Robespierre leaned in and whispered, “Only what you have caused it to become.” He stood up and raised his voice for all to hear. “Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, for the crime of high treason, you are hereby sentenced to death! And with your deaths, a new and greater France will be born!”

He motioned to the executioners, who initiated the drop of both deadly blades at once. In the split second before his head was severed from his body, Louis XVI’s question echoed in his head. What has become of my beloved France?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART IV

Je vous ai tout pris

(I Took Everything from You)

 

1

 

 

 

 

Loire Valley, France, March 20, 1790 (Infini Calendar), 12:01 p.m.

Robert Westerfield trekked through the southern edge of Loire Valley, a woodland area in central France. This was a remote region that very few people inhabited, since it was quite a ways from big cities such as Paris and Versailles.

Westerfield was smartly dressed in a brown bowler hat, brown slacks and a vest and tie over his shirt. In addition, he carried a leather briefcase with him. If anyone had seen him, they probably would have thought him very much out of place in this environment.

He was a reporter from England, and his publication, The London Thames, had sent him to France to cover the civil unrest that began the previous year. Since arriving in this country, he had interviewed countless people, from ordinary citizens to high-ranking government officials (the latter of which usually preferred the talks to be off the record).

He now had most of the story written. It all began back in July when an angry group of Paris citizens, fed up with their country’s skyrocketing inflation and massive debt, attacked a prison in the city called the Bastille. The building was destroyed and its warden killed by that mob.

On the same day, a completely different group of people attacked the royal palace at Versailles, while complaining about the high cost of bread within the country. The royal family managed to escape on their revolutionary airship, but it later crashed in a village in the north of France called Varennes.

However, no one knew what had gone on aboard the royal airship while in flight or why it had crashed. Westerfield only had one clue: An elite branch of the French military called the Order of Tradition was involved. In fact, they had been involved in several pivotal events during the revolution. If he wanted to get the whole story about the country’s civil unrest, he needed to find a member of the group and ask them.

Unfortunately, six months ago the king and queen were executed in an uprising. The new regime, called the Legislative Assembly, swiftly issued warrants for the arrests of all members of the Order. The head of the Assembly, Maximilien Robespierre, publicly condemned them as dogs of the king (since they answered only to him) and traitors to France because, as he argued, they had blindly served him despite the damage he was doing to the country. The French people had previously supported the Order, but on September 24, 1789, they turned against them. Robespierre was a very effective public speaker.

The Order of Tradition promptly fled Paris in their airship and disappeared. Despite a thorough search by the new government, none of them had been found.

Fortunately for Westerfield, though, he had recently acquired a lead on the possible location of a woman matching the description of the Order’s commander. That is what brought him out to this forest in the middle of nowhere.

After wandering through the woods, he came to a clearing and found what he thought he had been looking for: a simple wooden shack. It was overrun with vegetation and clearly had not been well taken care of, but a well out front with a bucket on top suggested someone was currently living here.

Westerfield walked up to the front door and knocked on it.

There was no answer.

He inquired in his British accent, “Hello? Miss Dufleur? Are you in there?”

No answer.

He tried looking through the windows on the front of the shack, but with all the vegetation growing around them he wasn’t able to see much.

He thought to himself, perhaps no one really lives here. Even so, he had travelled too far to give up now. With that in mind, he returned to the door and slowly opened it. He cautiously poked his head inside.

He was suddenly greeted by the sharp end of a rapier pointing at his head. Standing in front of him was a disheveled young woman with reddish-brown hair and a purple eye patch. She was dressed in simple peasant clothing, but the icy look in her eye told him she meant business.

“Who are you?”

He put his hands up. “B-Begging your pardon, ma’am. M-My name is Robert Westerfield. I’m a reporter for The London Thames.”

She kept the rapier pointed at him. “You’re English? What are you doing all the way out here? Did Robespierre send you?”

He frantically shook his head. “No, ma’am. I was sent here to write a story on the revolution that’s been taking place in your country.”

She didn’t look convinced. “Then go write it. It has nothing to do with me anymore.”

He swallowed and summoned the courage he needed. “But I believe it does. You are Jeanne Dufleur, are you not?”

“What if I am?”

“You were the leader of the Order of Tradition, isn’t that right?”

“So, what?”

“The Order was involved in key events during the beginning of the revolution last year, I’ve been told. Maximillion Robe Spear said that you were traitors to France, but I want to hear it from you. Please, tell me: What is the truth?”

For the first time since he entered, Jeanne de Fleur lowered her sword. “First of all, Monsieur…Westerfield, was it?”

He carefully put his hands down. “That’s right.”

“You should work on your French pronunciation.”

“M…My apologies, ma’am. I’m still not completely fluent yet.”

She sat down at the small table in the center of the room. Now that Westerfield had a chance to look around, it looked like the entire shack was one room. A simple cot accounted for a bed a few inches behind the table, and a dilapidated stove stood a few inches to the right of the cot, against the wall.

“If you’re serious about printing my story, I’ll tell it to you,” she said.

“Much obliged, ma’am. But if I may be so bold…why do you suddenly trust me?”

She let out an exhausted sigh. “It isn’t that. It simply occurred to me that whether or not someone kills me is irrelevant. I have nothing left to live for. Right now, I merely exist. That’s it.”

He didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He