Surrender to a Stranger Read Free Page B

Revolution made the people feel something was being done.
    The prison called La Conciergerie adjoined the Palais de Justice in which the Revolutionary Tribunal held its sessions. The severe, imposing castle dated back to the end of the thirteenth century and had served as a prison since the 1500s. Dark, cold, damp, and evil smelling, the Conciergerie was widely recognized as the worst prison in Paris. As Jacqueline walked with the guards along twisting corridors and up narrow staircases, their way lit only by the faint glow of an occasional torch mounted on the thick stone walls, she could hear the scratches and squeals of rats scurrying out of the way of their feet. She had grown used to those sounds and was no longer terrified by them. The one time a rat had decided to invade her small cell she had consolidated fear with fury and smashed the loathsome creature over the head with her soup bowl until it lay dead. She decided if she was to die in prison, it would not be from the plague.
    The fumes that assaulted her as they reached the floor of her cell made her stomach wrench and her throat constrict. The hallway was thick with the stench of sewage and sickness, of unwashed bodies and fouled floors. She lifted her hand to her nose and tried to breathe through her mouth, but the fetid air was so bad it threatened to choke her. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to take small, shallow breaths. It had taken her days to grow used to the stink when she first arrived here. Her short trip to the Palais de Justice had been an almost welcome reprieve from her miserable surroundings, and her nose had quickly grown used to inhaling cleaner air. As she was only staying here one more night, she doubted she would be able to adjust to the stench again.
    “What’s she doing back here?” demanded Citizen Gagnon, the jailer of the wing they had come to.
    “She is sentenced to death, but it was too late to take her to meet Sanson,” commented one of the guards indifferently.
    “Missed the last cart, did you?” asked Gagnon, his voice heavy with sarcasm. He lifted a torch from the wall and stood before Jacqueline. He was a huge bear of a man, with enormous shoulders and thick, strong arms straining beneath the dirty, ragged clothes he wore. His skin was black with years of grime, and when he smiled he exposed an uneven set of brown, rotting teeth. Unlike most of the prisoners, who tried to wash themselves and their clothes as best they could in the icy water of a fountain located in an open courtyard below, the jailers were quite accustomed to their own filth.
    “Well, my beauty, you’re in luck, because your room is still available,” he joked as he led them down a hall while sorting through an enormous iron ring of keys.
    He stopped in front of a wooden door with a tiny grille window and inserted a key into the heavy lock. The door swung open with a groan to expose a small cell, perhaps nine feet square, accommodating a trestle bed with a coarse woolen blanket, a table, and a chair. Jacqueline raised her chin, drew her shawl up around her shoulders, and calmly stepped into the room. She could hear the hasty footsteps of the soldiers retreating down the hall. Undoubtedly they were as anxious to leave the foulness of the place as she was. She examined her surroundings for a moment and then turned to face her keeper.
    “My candle is gone,” she pointed out. “I would like it back.”
    “Certainly, certainly,” replied Gagnon agreeably. “You remember the fee?”
    “I paid for the one that was in here,” Jacqueline stated flatly.
    “Ah, but I was not expecting you to return, so I sold it to another,” he told her with a shrug. He slowly looked her up and down, causing Jacqueline to draw her shawl even tighter around her shoulders. “Have you any money?”
    “I will write my maid and instruct her to bring some tomorrow,” she replied.
    The jailer shook his head. “Tomorrow you will expose your pretty little neck