Chapter Text
They caught up with him two-and-a-half years later, on the outskirts of the town his father said was named after their ancestor, and his brother had argued was the other way around.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, he could hear them fighting again, raised voices shouting just outside the door.
Then he woke up properly, and realised it was only someone arguing with a jailer outside, and that it did not matter anyway. They were dead and Theodore was chained up in a dank prison cell in Calvi, waiting for the guillotine.
On the day of his trial, they dragged him out to the Town Hall, along with six others awaiting sentence. The hall was packed with people, muttering and pointing like noisy gulls. Theodore ignored them. The magistrate's voice was clear and carrying as he read out the list of names.
Eleven counts of murder.
Eleven Stradoni headstones, and Theodore had been wrong; they were not heavy at all.
“There'll be a fucking riot if they execute him,” muttered one of the other prisoners behind him, sounding bitterly amused.
Theodore thought about this, the magistrate's words fading into a legal drone in the background.
He had killed eleven people. His name was famous over half the island now. On the other hand, that meant that half the farmwives in the crowd outside had spent evenings exclaiming over his light hair and wide blue eyes, as he told their children stories of daring exploits, turning his brother's knife over and over in his fingers. Everyone understood that Theodore was only doing his duty. He was a hero, following the rules of vengeance.
Besides, he was very young, and terribly handsome.
In the end, the man behind him was right.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the bagne of Rochefort. On their way back to the gaol, he heard the clink of something being passed over from one prisoner to another.
“There you go, you miserly bastard,” someone behind whispered, sounding annoyed. “He missed the death sentence after all."
The man who had spoken earlier laughed, like stones crunching together. “Oh, Rochefort's still a death sentence all right. Just a slower one.”
* * *
The crowd that gathered for his exposition was muttering and restless. No matter how hard Theodore looked, he couldn't see Cristina Cavanu, and he didn't know whether to be grateful or sorry. He didn't know why; he had thought somehow she might be there.
The guards tied his hands behind his back and painted the names of the dead on the placard above his head, as if he should be ashamed of them.
They read out the charges, and the sentence once more. Theodore closed his eyes and pictured his family. They would have been proud of him. He was sure of it
Then they pushed the brand into his shoulder, and he screamed. He felt it go through his skin, the layer of fat beneath bubbling and melting as the letters seared through into the muscle.
TP. Travaux forcés à perpétuité.
Hard labour for life.
“You're a dead man now,” a guard told him mockingly; a nameless voice with the face behind it a blurred impression of heat and pain.
No, thought Theodore, through a haze of agony and the smell of scorched flesh. I've been dead for nearly three years. Now I am in hell.
In fact, the wagon with its cargo of chained, sunburned convicts en route to Rochefort did indeed bear a mocking resemblance to the tormented carvings around the door of his old church. Three men fell sick on the way and had to be carried; two died. With his hair cropped close under the green bonnet, and dressed in a scarlet smock two sizes too big, Theodore suspected he looked even younger than usual and scowled.
They arrived on rainy Thursday, in the early hours of the morning. It was shortly after sunrise, and the drizzle leaked down sporadically out of the red sky like angry tears
Every newcomer to the bagne was chained by the ankle to an old hand. His was a man named Yves Barbeau; a tall, taciturn fellow with muscles like slabs of meat and thick black hair that reminded Theo of the wild boar back home. Like everyone else, he stank with an unpleasant miasma of sweat and mildew and human excrescence.
In Corsica there had been streams and rivers to wash in; the cool shock of the sea; every so often a cottage with a soapy basin heated on the stove. Theodore had never regarded cleanliness as a privilege before.
Now he understood that it was one that would not be extended to him again. The harsh baptism on arrival in cold dirty water had done nothing to remove the grime of a Corsican gaol; it was merely an exercise in shivering humiliation. Looking at Barbeau, he saw that he would very soon be crawling with lice.
They were set to work on the grand fatigue, breaking up rock and clearing scrub for the road. It was mid-July and the sun beat down like a curse. It was not the vital heat of the island but a torrid closeness with the damp, oppressive quality of a fever-dream. Flies thronged the air, settling on any exposed piece of skin; worse than the flies were the mosquitoes. They crawled under sleeves and necklines, turning the itchy wool into a torment.
The ground around the work-site was swampland, muddy and treacherous. In the distance he could just see the Atlantic ocean, a taunting strip of sparkling blue.
Staring at it, he missed his footing for the third time and bit out a curse. Barbeau looked round with a scowl, glaring at him.
“Be more careful, can't you?” he growled, jerking his half of the chain, so that Theodore went sprawling into the muddy water, the manacle grinding painfully into his ankle. Grimly, he pushed himself back up, wiping the stinking mud from his hands onto his already filthy smock.
Rations were passed out in the work break: a loaf of mouldy black bread, watery bean soup and a portion of wine.
“How long have you been here?” Theodore asked Barbeau, inspecting his lunch.
His bread appeared to have been colonized by two separate colonies of green fur that were now battling it out to the death
“Seven years” Barbeau answered, and helped himself to Theo's wine ration.
“Hey!”
Theodore stood up indignantly, and then realised that there was nowhere to go. He could do nothing without Barbeau's agreement, and the other man was easily twice his weight. He made to sit down, and was sent sprawling once more as Barbeau jerked on the chain. The dubious bread plummeted into the swamp, absorbing muddy water like a fat black sponge.
Barbeau snorted with laughter. “My apologies lad, but someone should teach you not to be so uppity. It's share and share alike round here.”
Theodore pulled his face out of the dirt, fists clenching as he looked at Barbeau. His chainmate didn't move from his seat on the pile of rock; only gave another bark of laughter. “Are you going to hit me? Go on then- but it will only get you a flogging and I warn you that's not something you want. You won't look nearly so pretty with half your skin missing.”
Theodore glared at him. “Be wary of me!” he whispered, with all of the venom he could muster.
Back home, people respected those words. They meant that death was coming for you; that you had insulted the honour of a man who would pay you back for it with a knife in the ribs while you slept.
Here Barbeau only laughed at him again. “Wary of you? Come off it! What are you, twelve? Thirteen? Or are you a girl in disguise, perchance?” He reached out to ruffle Theodore's cropped hair, knocking the green cap into the mud.
Theodore jerked away, splashing more foetid water over his smock, dulling the scarlet to the colour of old blood. He stared down at the cap, the dirty smudges against the green. The touch of air on his scalp was like cool fingers after the itchy wool.
Then the guard's whistle blew, signifying the end of the break, and he jammed the soiled thing back on. There were strict penalties for being out of uniform.
By the time they were brought back to the salles he felt half-dead. The stench of the place hit him in a reeking nauseous wave, and he gagged. The wagon had at least been in the open air. Here they slept in long dormitories; a sloping plank on either side to serve for a bed. Under each man's place was a bucket-de-nuit half-full and reeking.
No one else seemed particularly bothered by the noisome air. The long room was filled with men in red smocks, all chained in pairs. Convicts talking, playing cards, singing.
He was tired and hot and miserable; all he wanted was to lie down, even if it was on a hard plank in a crowded, stinking, noisy room. To let everything slip away into dreams and oblivion.
Instead, he was dragged over to the middle of the salle, where Barbeau became embroiled in a complicated card game, the rules of which were unfamiliar to him.
“Deal the new lad a hand” somebody called out. He lost quickly; to the vast amusement of all, although it was not clear to him entirely what was forfeit. The colours around him seemed too bright, unreal. He looked around at the noisy, crowded space; at the forçats he was playing cards with, and wondered what their crimes were.
He wanted very badly to be outside, under the watchful stars. He had spent the greater part of the last three years in solitude. Now he realised, with something that was almost pain, he was never going to be alone again.
At last, the whistle blew for lights-out and a guard went round fastening the chains to a long bar at the foot of the bed. Even in sleep, men were coupled together.
The plank was hard, but Theodore was used to the ground. More unsettling were the noises. He had slept plenty of times in one-roomed cottages, but he was not used to the noises of hundreds of people all crammed under one roof.
There were grunts, snores, whispers, coughs, the never-ending scraping clank of the chains; a myriad of small sounds that added up to a cacophony. Despite the darkness, he felt somehow on display. Finally, oblivion descended like a hawk, swift and dreamless.
He was woken by the touch of hands on his ribcage. Disoriented, he tried to look around; the hand on his torso was replaced by one over his mouth. For a moment, he thought, very calmly: Oh. The Stradoni have come to take their vengeance on me.
It was almost a relief.
Then here was a weight on his back, and a low voice whispered in his ear: “Just keep quiet, sweetheart, and don't make a fuss.”
It took Theodore a long, disorientated moment to remember where he was, another to understand what was going on.
Shortly after that, it became very clear that whatever Barbeau had been expecting, it was not that that Theodore would jack-knife sideways, head-butt him in the nose, and then do his level best to strangle him.
Unfortunately, even scalding indignation was not enough to allow Theodore to overcome someone approximately twice his size in a fistfight.
“You're goig to regred dat.” Barbeau whispered nasally, pinning Theo where he was with one hand and clutching his nose with the other, and shouted loudly for the guards.
From around them came annoyed yells and shouts for silence, but Barbeau refused to let up.
When the sound of booted feet came into earshot, the grip on Theo's shoulder shifted and Barbeau dug his fingers hard and savage into the half-healed brand. Theodore choked back a scream as he felt the skin crack and split, and then there were lanterns and a voice shouting:
“What's the matter then, you sons of whores? Decent men have little enough time without running after you dogs at all hours of the night as well!”
“If you blease, sir” Barbeau spoke up quickly, with a tone of injured innocence impressive in a man sporting a broken nose. “Dis dew one bade indecent broposals do bee sir! Ad when I refused hib, he hattacked be sir!”
“Is that so?” The gard-chiourme dealt a sickening crack to Theodore's skull with his stick, and laid about his shoulders and forearms when he raised them protectively. “Well we'll take it up with the Commissaire tomorrow, but right now you can fuck off back to sleep! And that goes for the lot of you!”
They were hauled before the Commissaire first thing in the morning, a guard standing to attention on either side, as a tall, thin man regarded them over a pair of spectacles.
“Ah, the Corsican. One-seven-eight-nine-six. Causing trouble already? Well, you will soon learn we do not tolerate such habits here, whatever may be the case on your benighted island.” He looked down at the register before him. “The punishment for sodomy here is the barrel, followed by forty lashes of the bastonnade.” He looked Theodore up and down, as if considering. “You will receive thirty, and think yourself lucky; if there is a second offence I will not be so lenient. As for you.” He frowned at Barbeau. “You will be in the cachot until 17896 is healed”
He looked at them, thin-lipped. “You gentlemen are going to be chained together for three years, at the least. You will learn to get along with each other. I do not allow troublemakers here.”
The cachot was solitary confinement, which did not sound particularly like punishment to Theo, though the prisoner he asked said it sent men mad.
He had seen someone on the barrel yesterday, an attempted escapee with a sign around his neck detailing his crime, even though almost everyone here was illiterate.
He had not expected that he would have to stand on the barrel in a dress.
There was another forçat undergoing the same punishment, a man by the name of Antoine. He was a little older that Theodore; perhaps twenty-five or twenty-six. He laughed good-naturedly at the guards as they shoved him roughly into the oversized gown. Theodore wondered that he could joke at humiliation in such a way; for himself it was all he could do to stand there, curling his hands into fists to try and stop them shaking.
“How can you be so cheerful?” he asked in an undertone, when the guards went to fetch the extra chains.
Antoine grinned at him. “Ah! It speaks after all. I was wondering if you'd lost your tongue completely. As to my liveliness; it is no mystery. We are going to put on a fine show for these men -it's not often anyone gets to see some skirt around here; never mind what's underneath it. When you haven't got a choice, you might as well make the most of what you do have; it's always better to be happy than miserable. Shame's for those who can afford the luxury of it. Besides,” he lowered his voice further “to tell you the truth, I'm more worried about the bastonnade. I've only had ten strokes before – that was for smoking, and, I can tell you, that was bad enough.”
Then the guards came back, and they were marched to the barrels; the show had begun.
Antoine made faces and laughed when people jeered and threw things and tried to look up his skirt. Theodore was grateful; it let him pretend that the whole thing was not really so bad after all. He looked straight ahead, trying to ignore the fact that people were laughing and making rude remarks about him right under his nose.
In his mind, he pictured the all the ways that he would kill Barbeau, one after the other.
The evening sun was red and low in the sky when they were taken down, and marched away.
The bastonnade was done in a small cell, adjoining one of the main salles. “That's François de Giraux” Antoine whispered to him, looking white and worried. “He's the executioner for the bagne.”
They were both ordered to strip to the waist. “17896!” one of the guards said, and it took Theodore a moment to remember that was him now.
He was made to lie down on a low bench. Incongruously someone had thought to put a thin mattress on it, as if somehow that would make things better. Antoine was made to hold his feet; a guard took his arms. Theodore gritted his teeth and concentrated on trying to still the tremors that running up and down his spine. He did not want Antoine to think that he was afraid.
Then the tarred rope came down, and thought was wiped out under the screaming pain of each burning thud .
* * *
He woke lying on his belly in the infirmary with his back ripped into bloody furrows, in more agony than he had thought possible.
It was two-and-a-half weeks before he was released, the open wounds crusted into a half-healed mess. Antoine was not; his back had become infected.
“Enjoy your liberty!” he called, laughing weakly at his own joke, as the guards took Theodore off to be manacled to Barbeau once more. “Tell Eugene I'll be out in a week.”
Theodore was not sure how he was supposed to do this; he only knew Eugene from what Antoine had told him, and besides he was in different salle and work-gang.
In the end, it didn't matter. Before Theodore had a chance to pass on the message, Antoine was dead.
* * *
Barbeau's nose had set crookedly; unfortunately his temperament had suffered no similar improved during his stint in the cachot.
The first time they were on a work detail, he dragged Theodore out of sight of the guards and shoved him backwards onto the gravel.
“You try anything like that little stunt again” he growled, using two knees to grind the stones into Theo's back, “and you will regret it a lot more than this, understand?”
Theodore nodded, gasping for air. He could feel blood starting to seep through the bandages.
The next time, he gritted his teeth and imagined how Barbeau would look, blue and kicking, as he strangled slowly in a noose.
* * *
It took him three months to heal.
In that time he had added four other names to his list; and that was not counting the guards, whose constant blows he hated in the same way as the flies, the humidity and the black bread that was impossible to eat. His life had descended into an exhausting cavalcade of wretchedness. The tremors in his hands spread and the frequent muscle tics made it difficult to sleep; despite this, his constitution remained as robust as ever. By now, he almost didn't care what happened as long as there was an end to it. It was not as if death was in short supply here. Men succumbed every day, of malaria, and typhus, and misery.
But Theodore had spent years methodically planning and executing other people's demise. In a way, the familiarity was almost comforting. The problem was how to do it.
He had nothing to trade; even his body was a commodity belonging to Barbeau, exchangeable for tobacco, money or wine. There were several thousand men in Rochefort; but the ones that Theo had contact with were limited and, of those, the only one he had any sort of liking for was Thierry-Henri.
Thierry was a small man with brown skin, long, dexterous fingers and an expression like a kindly squirrel. He was half-American; he'd told Theodore once that his mother had been a slave out of Saint-Domingue. “My parents came here looking for a better life,” he'd said, wryly. “If I find it, I'll let you know.”
Unfortunately, Thierry-Henri was chained to Baptiste-le-Roux, and if there was anyone in Rochefort that Theodore disliked more than Barbeau, it was Baptiste.
“You should kill him,” he told Thierry, bluntly and quietly, while the others played cards.
Thierry looked at him with a face full of mild reproach. “Calvi, do you know what I'm in here for?”
Theo shook his head. Some forcats liked to boast about the things they'd done to get locked up here, but Theodore considered that a person's crimes were his own business. He wasn't about to go prying.
“I was a clerk.” Thierry told him. “In Lyon. I lost my job; I couldn't get another. So I forged a passport. I knew it was stupid, but I had a wife and two little girls to feed. They sent me to Toulon.”
He shook his head. “There was a riot. I wasn't in it, but two others were. They transferred me here; my friends were guillotined.” He looked at Theodore. “Whatever I might have done, I'm not a killer. Besides-” he made a gesture. “Look at me! Even if I wanted to, I'm just a clerk. You know what Baptiste did to his stepson and those girls in Nîmes- the only reason he's still alive is because his cousin was the magistrate and half the jury was terrified into submission!”
There was a pause. Then Theodore asked, carefully “If I wanted to get something; something against the rules...how would I go about it?”
Thierry looked at him with worried hazel eyes, but he said, very quietly: “What sort of thing?”
Theodore thought about it. “Wire. Thin but strong.”
Thierry nodded.
Two days later, the next time they had a chance to speak without being overheard, he whispered to Theodore: “You see those men over there?” He gestured discreetly to the other end of the salle, where another group of men were engaged in talking and playing cards. “Most of them are haute pègre, not the type you want to cross. That fellow there, Jacques Collin, “Cheats Death,” they call him: Trompe-la-Mort. He looks at you. And that one.” He pointed. “Dannepoint. La Pouraille, he's called. He's on the demi-chaine, works in a factory. They'd have access to wire there.”
“That's all very well,” replied Theo in exasperation. “But how am I going to get them to talk to me?”
Theirry gave him one of his rare, nervous smiles. “Don't worry about that. It's Baptiste's greatest ambition in life to get in with those con-men: they say they never accept a job under ten thousand francs. Leave it to me.”
“I haven't got anything to trade,” Theodore told him, perversely morose.
Thierry looked at him, a weary cynicism in his expression that made him look older than his twenty-nine years. “I'm sure you'll think of something.”
* * *
The next day was a Sunday, which meant Mass. They filed in long rows onto the benches. The chapel was the only building here that Theodore liked. He wasn't particularly religious but the whitewashed walls and solemn chanting reminded him of home. Mass was the same everywhere. On one wall was a flaking mural depicting a kneeling Mary Magdalene washing the feet of Christ. The painting was starting to degrade in the damp climate, but it had clearly been done with careful attention. If he looked at the supplicant Mary from the right angle, she looked like his sister Angioletta.
He couldn't imagine Angie washing anyone's feet; but there was the same combination of olive skin and blue eyes; the same red lips - even a curl of yellow hair escaping from the veil onto high cheekbones. Some days he couldn't look at it, but today his eyes were drawn there, trying to match up the details, to make the fading image in his memory spring back into focus.
Barbeau noticed him looking, and barked out a short laugh. “Look at that! It's like a mirror. Hey, P'tit Jean – don't our Calvi look like the Virgin here?”
Jean laughed. “You old apostate – that's not the Virgin; it's Mary Madeleine.” He peered closer. “Hah-- you're right though- it does look like Calvi.”
Barbeau grinned. “That's even better! The patron saint of whores!” He clapped Theodore on the shoulder. “Come along Madeleine, you're holding up the line.”
The muscle in his forearm jumped, and Theodore gritted his teeth and thought of Barbeau bleeding out, of the way the skin on his neck would part under a knife, the choking sounds he would make.
By the next day, everyone was calling him Madeleine.
That evening la Pouraille crossed the salle to talk to him.
It took him another two months to get the wire, rolled tight inside a hollow coin. Barbeau didn't like him talking to la Pouraille, but there was not a lot he could do about it; it didn't do to cross the swell-mob. He remembered what Antoine had told him, so long ago it seemed like years: Shame's for those who can afford the luxury of it.
Before he had tried to make himself out of stone; now he must be wax. He tried to remember the things the girls back home had found charming, the stupid things his sisters had done to get boys to notice them. Unexpectedly, the image of wide brown eyes sparking warmth in the firelit darkness swam to the top of his thoughts. Viciously, he stamped it down.
He would not think of that now.
* * *
After the weapon, the hardest part was the timing.
* * *
It must be at night, he decided. He wasn't going to lose his head for killing Barbeau alone. Vengeance was meant to be bloody.
Three men were the most he could hope for. He was quick, but small enough that any one of them could take him down in a fair fight. Regretfully, he crossed out Baptiste and Rene. They were the worst, but Baptiste slept out of reach, on the other side of the salle, and Rene was a guard. There was no way he could hope to take down either of them.
That left Arguillard and Petit-Jean.
Jean and Arguillard were coupled together, and slept to the left of Theodore and Barbeau. Under cover of darkness, both had found reason to roll into Theo's bunk, the clanking of chains carefully muffled; in the morning favours would find their way into Barbeau's pockets. Neither of them were small; but Theodore had garrotted fat Maria Stradoni and her husband Pedru, who had been over six foot tall.
He could do it.
One by one, he would kill them in the dark. Garrotting was quiet; if men thrashed briefly and then lay still, well, that was nothing to remark on here.
And then, tomorrow, there would be the guillotine.
All morning, Theodore was keyed up with restless energy, even more than usual before an assassination. In twenty-four hours it would all be over, one way or another.
* * *
It was later that day, while they were at work on breaking up a ship, when the garde-chiourme came.
“You two!” he shouted. “With me!”
“Why?” Theodore asked, and winced as the guard cuffed him. He felt his breath come faster as he fought to keep the panic off his face.
How had they found out?
The coin with the wire was still in his shoe; the two sticks for the garrotte handles were beside his pillow, masquerading as a crucifix.
He felt like crying out with impotent fury. He couldn't be executed without carrying out his plan!
It wasn't fair.
They were not taken to the Commissaire however, but to the blacksmith. He watched in bewilderment as the link that bound him to Barbeau was swiftly removed, and another put in its place.
With a jolt, he recognised the other man in the room; a heavyset fellow, around forty years old with a broad face and short, reddish hair. It was Jacques Collin, the one they called Trompe-la-Mort. Theodore had spoken to him now and then whilst he was working on la Pouraille.
And now, apparently, he was Theo's partner. Which was impossible. You couldn't just change; that wasn't how it worked. The rule was three years, at least, unless one of you died or was locked up.
Behind him, he heard Barbeau shouting as Theodore and his new chain-mate were shoved out of the door and back to the hulks.
As soon as the guard had turned his back, Trompe-la-Mort grinned down at him, with a face full of ruddy good humour, and said, in truly terrible Italian:
“Good afternoon to you, little Madeleine.”
Theodore stared at him. No one had spoken anything to him except French since his arrival, and to hear the sound of a language that was almost his own was like being given an unexpected gift; albeit one with horrendously butchered grammar.
“What's going on?” he demanded. “What in the name of shit just happened there?”
Trompe-la-Mort assumed an expression of utterly unconvincing wide-eyed innocence.
“My last partner came down with an unfortunate bout of malaria, and I had a fancy to be coupled with somebody new. So I arranged for your friend Barbeau to be given an unexpected promotion to the demi-chaine.”
Theodore stared at him, as the whistle rang out for the work break.
“You. But. That's impossible!”
Trompe-la-Mort shrugged carelessly. “It wasn't cheap, of course but what is, these days?”
“Why?”
Another shrug. “Ever since Jean-Russe died, Barbeau's chainmates have a habit of going young, and a little bird tipped me off that you might be following them soon. It seemed a terrible waste. They might throw us in here to rot, but we don't have to oblige 'em straight away, do we?”
Theodore was stuck by a fury so intense he was actually rendered speechless. He had been so close! Weeks of planning: for nothing. He would be reassigned beds now; it might be months before he got another chance at any of them.
“It was Thierry-Henri, wasn't it? He tipped you off! Of all the little interfering pieces of- shit!”
The last word was half a scream. Careless with anger, he had moved without thinking, letting the manacle scrape against the raw flesh of his ankle.
“What's the matter?” Tromp-la-Mort asked, sudden concern in his voice. Theodore shook his head, gritting his teeth. He should be used to this by now; carelessness was no excuse.
“Show me.”
It was not a request and, reluctantly, Theo held out his ankle, wincing as Trompe-la-Mort gently moved aside the iron ring to expose the bloody flesh and oozing sores underneath. “Christ! Where's your pad?”
Theodore shook his head. An aide in the infirmary had shown him how to put together a paterasse, as the other inmates wore, but it had been made abundantly clear to him that any belongings he might lay claim to were, in point of fact, the rightful property of Yves Barbeau.
“No wonder they die,” Trompe-la-Mort muttered. “What, did he drag you across the yard by one foot?”
Theodore frowned. “We didn't exactly play cards for links.”
His new friend grimaced and one of the wine-ration bottles out of his smock. Uncorking it with his teeth, he doused something that most definitely was not wine over the wounds, ignoring Theodore's harsh intake of breath. Then he unwound a piece of rag from his own leg and bandaged it over the ankle. “That'll do for now. Don't worry; give me a day or two and you shall have a famous pad. Yves shan't trouble you any longer.”
“I would have killed him!”
The words came out in Italian; a strangled shout of fury. “Come tomorrow, he would have been a dead man, if it weren't for you. And two more with him!”
Trompe-la-Mort raised his gingery eyebrows, and gave a low chuckle. “Well then, dear boy, it is a good thing for you I paid to have you moved. Don't you know that the punishment for killing another forçat is the guillotine? Who else were you planning to send to the devil tonight?”
“Petit-Jean,” he admitted. “And Arguillard.”
The eyebrows went up again. Theodore half-expected him to ask why. But all he said was: “And just how were you planning to accomplish this little miracle?”
Tersely, Theodore told him.
Trompe-la-Mort frowned. “Little Madeleine,” he said. “It is not that it is a bad plan, but if you are going to kill someone there are better ways than risking your own neck. Come now, we shall find a way to settle these fellows; one that does not involve you having a terminal meeting with the Abbey of Mount Regret.”
For a brief moment Theodore thought of saying that it didn't matter. That Arguillard called out the name of his sweetheart, and Petit-Jean was fast and apologetic, and neither of them were like Baptiste, who did in daylight and liked it to hurt while Thierry-Henri looked miserably the other way.
But he was tired and numb with a weary exhaustion that went all the way to the bone and, above all, he did not want to answer any more questions. So instead he let Trompe-la-Mort fling an arm around his shoulders, and talk with wide, expansive gestures about the philosophies of someone called Rousseau.
* * *
Yves Barbeau died three days later, when the mast from the ship they were breaking up fell and crushed him. It was an ugly death; he lay there for six hours, his cries growing progressively weaker.
Theodore had never felt pleasure in someone else's dying before, and it shocked him, the terrible undercurrent of joy that ran through him with every yell.
It was a well-known fact that the mast had been rotten. The Comissaire ruled the death an accident; they were not uncommon. What the bagnards whispered in the salle before lights-out was a different matter. Word had begun to spread of the exact reasons Theodore Calvi was in Rochefort and besides, everyone knew that Trompe-la-Mort was gone on Madeleine.
Nobody crossed Trompe-la-Mort.
Petit-Jean and Aguillard were working together on a ship in the harbour, replacing oakum on the outer hull, when the rope they were suspended on snapped. The weight of their chains pulled them down too fast for any rescue to be made.
A halt was called to the work, so that the other ropes could be checked, and witnesses questioned.
Theodore Calvi – although nobody called him that any more – stood on the deck, looking down at the place where the two men had vanished. “He's taken it hard, poor lad” Trompe-la-Mort said to the gard-chiourme on duty. “They were in the next bunk over when he first arrived.”
The guard nodded. It was like that sometimes, with the young ones. Took them a while to toughen up.
Theodore stared down at the razor-blade, dancing over his knuckles. For the honour of the Calvis, he told himself; but honour seemed like a slippery, abstract concept, unreal and far away.
He tried to picture his families' faces and could find only a blurred mixture of details that refused to meld together into a whole. But when he looked down, his tanned fingers on the railing were utterly steady.
* * *
The next day they announced an execution.
It was Thierry-Henri.
Theodore had forgotten that death could do this; could sneak up on you and remove all of your insides at once.
They said that he had attacked a gard-chiourme, and not just any guard but Simoneaux, who everyone knew was a stickler for duty. Hitting a guard was an easy way to commit suicide; they all knew the penalty.
Theodore tried to imagine Thierry hitting anybody and felt his insides clench in protest.
“Can't you do something?” he appealed to Trompe-la-Mort. “Please, Jacques?”
The big man shook his head, sorrow in his eyes. “If there was another day, Madeleine...if I had known before...”
I knew, thought Theodore. I should have known. This is my fault.
They assembled the whole bagne on the quay to watch.
“You don't have to.” Trompe-la-Mort told him. “You can be ill; we can arrange that.”
Theodore shook his head furiously. He would not compound his betrayal further.
They paraded Thierry down the long quay, in front of the assembled crowds. There was a guard on either side, dwarfing him. His eye-sockets were like bruises in his gentle, squirrel-like face, but his expression was calm and hopeless.
It was customary for prisoners to give a speech before their execution, but Thierry-Henri was a quiet man who stammered when he was nervous, and even the Comissaire was not that cruel.
Instead he looked out over the crowd, eyes searching, ignoring the shouted slurs. When he reached Theodore's, he stopped. Theo thought that he was trying for a smile, but when it didn't come, he gave a single jerky nod.
Theodore bowed his head in return. Why, Thierry? he thought. But he knew why. Thierry was not Theodore; he was not a murderer. Theodore had been his only friend, and Theo had not spoken to him since his transfer. Thierry-Henri had saved his life, and in return Theodore had left him in hell.
I would have saved you. I should have saved you.
When he looked up, Thierry's eyes were still fixed on him, steady and clear as the night sky over the Mediterranean. Theodore wondered if he had managed to find out what happened to his girls. Thierry had written letter after letter, asked every prisoner who came in from Lyon, but no word ever came.
They pushed him to his knees and pulled the strap tight. The triangular blade glinted dully in the watery sunlight. When it fell, it made a sound like an axe going though wood.
Theodore watched as Thierry-Henri's head dropped slowly into the basket.
* * *
There was a period of time following the execution, of days that came one after another, and in them Theodore lost himself.
He knew that he would have to kill Baptiste at some point, and that he would enjoy it, but the certainty was cold and pointless. Thierry-Henri would not have wanted him to enjoy it.
Thierry, for reasons that Theodore had never been able to fathom, had not wanted anyone to die.
Distantly, he was aware of Jacques telling people to leave him alone; bribing a guard; threatening to break someone's arm. He was even grateful, in a remote kind of way.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered how much it had cost to bribe the guards into swapping his chain over.
A lot, he supposed. Probably more money than Theodore was ever likely to see in his life.
Once, he looked up in surprise at Jacques pressing gently on his shoulder. It was the sort of thing that happens all the time; a gesture of comfort of the kind that passes daily between friends, and it took him a moment to place why it should surprise him.
It was because he could not remember the last time that anyone had touched him in that particular way. The closest thing he had had to a friend in six months was Thierry-Henri, and Thierry had flinched away from touch like a cornered animal.
* * *
It was just over a year later, and warm enough to sleep shirtless.
Almost everyone who had arrived at Rochefort with Theodore was dead, because that was what happened at Rochefort.
It was some time in the dead watches of the night, and Jacques was going over the details of the escape plan again, in distinctly Corsican, but rather better, Italian than he had possessed previously, although to Theodore's ears his accent was still atrocious.
“Are you listening, Madeleine?”
“'m listening.” Theodore protested sleepily. He did not mind being called Madeleine so much now; he was used to it, he supposed and besides, it sounded different in Corsican.
At the moment, it mostly sounded like a low rumble, because he was lying with his head on Jacques chest, on a cushion of wiry rust-coloured hair.
He was aware that this was, in fact a very stupid thing to do; if he fell asleep like this, they would both be put on the double-chain for sharing a blanket, and the escape plan would be in ruins and Jacques would be furious.
But he was too tired and comfortable to shift right now; besides Jacques would probably move him even if he did fall asleep.
He felt himself drifting, thinking about bits of the escape plan; and what they'd do if it worked; and if he could find somebody to punch Ferridonc in the nose in just the right way it would stop his damnable snoring.
“Jacques?” he said, quietly. “Are you asleep?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You're not going to die, are you?”
Jacques laughed, which was irritating because it meant Theodore's pillow was suddenly a lot more bumpy.
“Have you forgotten?” he said softly. “I'm Trompe-la-Mort.”
He pushed Theodore gently back on to his own side of the plank. It was like being subjected to a very careful earthquake.
“Now go to sleep, Madeleine. We're escaping in the morning.”