Tara Across Time--NaNoWriMo

Chapter Two

The roar of the crowd was defeaning to Tara's ears. As she looked around, people were jeering at chained prisoners riding  in a crude wooden wagon. In the distance  Tara could see a curved knife suspènded between two grooved rails.

"A Guillotine!" Tara said, looking around in hopes no one heard her. "My God!" she said in a muffled voice. "I must be in the middle of the French Revolution."

There she stood with casual wear from the 21st  Century  in the midst of a sea of women in long, well-worn dresses with the same revolutionary  sock caps worn by men. Many wore dirty, loose-fitting  shirts looking more  like baggy shrouds. Their slacks  were baggy. Some had shoes and others  bound their feet in cloths.

The prisoner wagon halted before the Guillotine  wherefore an elegantly dressed woman was led in chains followed by her husband  in long, aristocratic  coat with a white ruffled shirt.

"This must be King Louis the  16th and Marie  Antoinette."

This time Tara was too loud.  A uniformed  guard noticed her strange dress and was soon dragging her to the scaffolding  as the Guillotine's came crashing down on the king's  head. His head rolled intoma basket to the insane cheer of the mob.

The guard held  her tight while the bare-chested executioner  with a black hood over his head placed the wooden brace over the head of Marie Anoinette. Tara looked away in horror as  the  falling knife was  followed by even louder cheers.

Tara  could hear  someone  saying, "Tell us to  'eat  cake,' will you!"

Next the guard marched Tara onto the scaffolding. The crowd booed her because  of her strange  clothes.

"Spion! Spion!" the blood  thirsty mob roared.

Tara was a bit rusty with her high-school French, but she knew that she was being accused of being  a  spy against  the French Revolution. She stepped forward  with supreme  confidence  while she was trying to hold back the inward fear she had never experienced  in her life. She had never been accused of anything  more than shoplifting, and certainly not spying. She had to think fast.

"I'm  American. I love--she hesitated--Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" It was a good thing she had read Dickens's "Tale  of  Two Cities."

The mob quietened as a raggedy  old gentleman stepped forward. "You're  American, not a spy of the English  Crown?"

"No  sir."

"How did you  get to Paris?"

"I was lost near the warf in the city of Baltimore  when I  was taken as a man by mistake. Hence, these strange American  clothes."

"Can you prove you're  a friend of our Revolution?"

"Citizen, I can only try if you are not going to allow me to testify on my behalf in your assembly."

"How, American?"

"Listen."

Tara  had spent hours watching her favorite  movie Casablanca  in which a tearful gathering of French  refugees  in Rick's nightclub sang a stirring version of "Les Marseillaise" in defiance of their Nazi oppressors.

Tara's  voice projected string patriotic conviction as she began. As she began she  invited the mob to sing along.

Allons enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de glorie est arrive!

Contre nous de la tyrannie

L'entendard sanglant est leve

Entendez-vous dans les camgnes,

Mugir ces feroces soldats?

Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras

Egorger nos fils, nis compagnes!

Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos bataillons!

Marchons! Marchons!

Qu'un sang impur

Abrevuve nos sillons!

Tara was singing for her very life as she caused the mob to cry tears of national  conviction.

At the end the crowd roared with approval.

Tara then bowed low. She  asked the old man to translate  for her.

"I place myself as an American  in the service  of  the Republic  and Citizens of France!"

There would be no execution for Tara  within sight of Notre Dame Cathedral  in the distance that  day nor trial in the Assembly of  Citizens  the next  day.

She was soon  joined by a French  Revolutionary  Army  Captain, who dismissed  her armed guard who unbound her.

"I am Captain  Renault of the Revolutionary  Army. May I  be of service?"

"I would graciously  accept your  hospitality, Captain!"

Captain  Renault took Tara  to his house  on Rue Morgue and placed her under the care of his governess. His wife had died delivering his third child.

Circumstances  of the times  dictated that  he not seek a second wife among the decimated French Aristocracy. Although  many  of them renounced  their ancestral  titles, and gave much of their wealth to tge new government, it wasn't  always  enough to satisfy the anger of the  mob in Paris.

The governess was wise enough not to provide Tara  with an elegant  dress. She found Tara's bra intriguing. And the zippers of her clothes  even more so. Nothing like buttons or hook-and-eye fasteners. Tara was satisfied  with  modesty--although she  would have  loved to bare herself  before her new benefactor.

The next day Captain  Renault took Tara around Paris to see the Notre Dame Cathedral  and Versailles  Palace, which was now occupied by the Revolutionary  Government.

On the way home through throngs of revolutionaries, Captain Renault in a surprise turn said, "Tara, will you be my mistress?"

"I'm not virgin if you were insisting."

"That's all right. There's something fresh about you. It's as though you haven't been born yet."

"Beds are small in 1790's France, aren't they." She kissed him.  "I'm young but won't disappoint you."

Captain Renault's eyes raised. "Funny way you have of talking as if all this is history, Tara."

"You don't know the half of it."