“But we are almost finished. France is almost cleansed. Only a few remain, and today, I bring you a great victory! I bring you one of France’s worst problems, with her finery and her parties and her waste and her food!”

Scarlet’s heart rose to her throat. “Oh no. Oh no.” She searched the lines of people, searched the carts, looked among the guards.

Robespierre continued. “Thanks to our gracious Seamstress,”—when he pointed in her direction, the eyes of every person in the crowd turned to her, and she stood frozen, not daring to make even a change in facial expression—“we bring you today, Marie Antoinette.”

The shouts of the people filled Scarlet’s head, slammed through her ears, and ached all the way into the center of her soul. Then, at the edge of a group of prisoners, three guards stepped forward, shoving aside the crowd in their way, and led her lovely friend Marie forward through the crowd of people, who soon learned to part and make way.

Tears filled Scarlet’s eyes. She was not close enough to see facial expressions or really to make out any of her features, but Marie walked regally, with head held high, slowly, gracefully, through the crowd of jeering, cruel bystanders. She stepped carefully up onto the stairs, circled around, and stood before the square. How changed she seemed! Gray strands of stringy hair fell down around her shoulders midway down her back under a white wig thrown, tilted and haphazard, onto her head. Her frame, instead of round and buxom, had become sharp and emaciated. No finery, cheeks sunken, she hardly looked herself. If Robespierre had not announced her, Scarlet would not have recognized her friend.

Scarlet shook her head, waving her arms. “No, no. I do not denounce her. It is a lie.” Her eyes not leaving the slender form of her friend, Scarlet willed her to understand. Never had she felt so helpless in the face of need. But even as her mind scrambled and she exercised every available possible option for rescue, she could not summon anything useful.

And then Robespierre indicated they were to begin, the crowd growing ever restless. Marie was forced onto her knees, her head placed chin down onto the semicircle carved for that purpose, and with a swift release of the rope, she was gone.

Scarlet collapsed into a heap on the platform, and the world went black around her.

Chapter Twenty-Nine