He gives a loud sigh, relieved to be free.

“Quick, put this on!” I thrust a garment at him.

He hesitates, considering whether to trust me, as behind us the cacophony of chaos plays like an orchestra. I smile sweetly at him. He frowns and grabs the garment, then throws it over his head, his hands getting caught in the sleeves, which I tied in knots so he wouldn’t have time to lash out at me.

Then I scream, a shrill scream that echoes in the night.

“Escaped prisoner! Escaped prisoner!” I screech, backing away from him.

He has just pulled the garment over his head and stands, chest exposed, fighting to make sense of his sleeves, preparing to defend me from an escaped prisoner. But his cramping muscles betray him and he falls over.

I bend toward him. “Forgive me, St. Juste, but I daresay they won’t hold you for long.”

The look of sheer confusion on his face is a beautiful thing. Raised voices and the thunder of boots on cobblestone ring through the darkness. I turn and flee, running into ten guards. I point at him over my shoulder and put on my best sobbing voice.

“There! One of the prisoners! Mon Dieu, he must have gotten out through the privy, for he reeks! He grabbed me and tried to slit my throat!”

The privy smell thus explained, the guards hurtle toward St. Juste, who has struggled to his feet and is still trying to shrug on the prisoner’s robe that I gave him—making it look as if he might just be an escaped prisoner trying to free himself from the incriminating uniform.

“We have you cornered,” the guard nearest St. Juste crows as I disappear into a shadowy side street and start to scale the wall. I reach the roof in seconds and shelter in the shadow of a gable.

The scene below me would not work in daylight, where the guards might see St. Juste’s clean-shaven skin and the clean but rumpled clothes he wears. But in the darkness, even by torchlight, all these things are made invisible by the guards’ desire to have captured a prisoner.

“Put your hands up and get down on your knees!” they roar at him.

St. Juste’s face is a portrait: comprehension sweeps over him, as well as clarity, anger, and something else. He looks past the guards and searches for me at the roofline, his eyes blazing.

“You are making a mistake,” he says in a voice weak from so many hours of disuse.

“Not another word from you!”

“I am not a prisoner. My name is Enjolras St. Juste.”

“St. Juste?” The guards pause. “We’ve got a stupid one here. Don’t you know all the St. Justes are dead?”

The guard speaks the terrible truth. All the Marats, the Dantons, the Robespierres, the Mirabeaus, the Desmoulins: every man, woman, and child bearing those family names was set dancing by the noose of Montfaucon, where what’s left of their bodies still hangs today.