Belle Morte Bites (Belle Morte 4.3)

Vive la Révolution: Part One

Paris, 1793

The Paris that Isabeau Aguillon had returned to was very different to the one she'd left behind almost sixty years ago.

The Committee of Public Safety, chiefly spearheaded by Maximilien Robespierre, had seized control of the city, and terror was now the order of the day. The air was ripe with it, tense and charged with rage and fear, and Isabeau couldn't imagine how the citizens of her former home had coped for the past year. She'd only been back here for a few days, and every instinct she possessed was screaming at her to run.

But she couldn't.

She had to find her friends.

For the past thirty-three years she had travelled Europe, revisiting Italy and then passing on to spend a few years here and there in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Sweden. She'd intended to travel to Russia next, but then news of the French Revolution had spread across the continent, and suddenly nothing else mattered but getting back to France.

When she'd first left Celeste and the others, she'd honestly thought that she would return, but it had seemed less and less likely as years slowly turned into decades. It had been so long since she'd seen them, but she'd never forgotten them, and when she got word of the trouble that had befallen her home country, all she could think of was making sure that her old friends were alright.

Two young women passed her on the street, both of them slowing and looking her up and down. Isabeau smiled benignly at them, clasping her hands in front of her to draw their attention to the tri-coloured fabric of her skirt, worm just short enough that they could see that the buckles of her shoes were made from revolutionary cockades. Another cockade was pinned to her jacket, brightly displaying the red, white, and blue colours of the revolution.

All Parisian citizens were required to wear that national ribbon now, and Isabeau's tri-colour skirt was one step further. These days, anyone accused of being counter-revolutionary would likely be arrested or executed, and accusations needed no evidence. If either of these two women didn't like the way Isabeau looked, or disagreed with something she said, all they had to do was denounce her. Prisoners were still offered a trial, but it was utterly devoid of any kind of justice, a complete farce from start to finish. Thousands upon thousands had already been executed, sometimes dozens at a time, guillotined so frequently that the flagstones at the Place de la Révolution became a sea of blood and death. The reek of carnage was chokingly thick in the air, even to humans, and every day more and people died, their heads rolling under that terrible blade.

Neither of the women smiled back, but there was nothing hostile in their expressions or body language, and they quickly moved on. Both of them wore cockades pinned to their skirts, and it occurred to Isabeau that they must have had the same concerns as her – the fear of accusation, arrest, slaughter.

Every citizen, even those who supported the most bloodthirsty aspects of the Revolution, had to be careful of everything they did, everything they said, everyone they talked to. Anyone could be denounced at any time, for anything. Or even for nothing at all.

Isabeau kept moving.

The streets of Faubourg Saint-Germain were silent when she reached them, the windows of the houses all dark and covered with curtains. The district was a favourite of French nobility, the kind of place that Isabeau's father had hoped she would live in once she landed a wealthy husband. It wasn't where she had thought that Celeste would end up, such a far cry from the country home that Isabeau had shared with her, but apparently this was where she lived now.

So far the Faubourg had survived the terror plaguing France, but that wouldn't last.

The king's head had already rolled, and it was only a matter of time before his imprisoned queen followed him into death.