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Paris
10 April 1792
A Tuesday
"Do you even know how to use that?"
Laurent took another bite of stale bread, all that he and Césaire had been able to afford between the two of them. The king was a virtual prisoner in the Tuileries, but it hadn't really brought the price of bread down, and Paris simmered in discontent. They two of them were cutting classes, too hungry to focus, and too restless to sit still. The bloating body of a dead bishop hanging from a lamppost twisted in the spring breeze, like some sort of deranged kite.
Césaire cocked his tricorn rakishly, brandishing the saber he'd gotten from only-god-knows-where. The mid-day light flashed on the blade. The tricorn was too big, even with his fluffy halo of honey-colored curls, so he'd found a Phrygian cap and wore the tricorn on top of that. And he stood a few inches shorter than Laurent, which made him look even more ridiculous from his perspective. "Of course I do. The sharp end goes into royalists and aristos!"
"Stupid, you still cried when they pierced your ear," Laurent shot back with a smirk, and handed off the heel of bread to Césaire to take his share. There wouldn't be wedding rings in their future, but the matched set of gold earrings — one for Césaire and one for Laurent — was declaration enough. That, and scandalizing their elders by addressing each other with the intimate "tu" in public.
"Pfft," Césaire flashed him a rude one-handed gesture. "I'm going to steal that cloak next time you're not looking."
"We live together, you think I wouldn't notice?" Laurent laughed lightly. The bishop's body thumped dully against the metal of the lamppost. He'd traded a handful of sous and several hours of his time translating pamphlets from French to Flemish for a Girondin in exchange for the silver-trimmed riding cloak. And he didn't even know how to ride a horse properly.
Between the both of them, the bread was gone in two more bites, and Laurent wondered if they'd be able to bribe their way into one of Danton's salons for the food. He'd translated several of Georges Danton's pamphlets and speeches before, so he was sure he and Césaire would find their way in. If Danton wasn't with the Cordeliers tonight; Laurent and Césaire had been kicked out of the last gathering of the Cordeliers Club for rewriting a revolutionary anthem with bawdy lyrics about Marie-Antoinette's pussy.
Les petits Jacobins maudits. The little Jacobin shits. Also known as Laurent-Jacques Martelier and Césaire Viallat, two incorrigible children of the Revolution. An inseparable pair of nineteen year-olds who were too young, too educated, too mouthy, and hungry for both a new order and bread.
The wind shifted, and so did the rot from the dead bishop. "Ugh. Well, I'm not cutting him down," Césaire said casually. Then he thought about it for a few seconds. "Do you think we would get paid for that?"
"We'd still have to get a cart," Laurent pointed out, unhelpfully. "I'm not carrying him all the way to the cemetery between us. And if you say it's 'for the people,' I'm stabbing you tonight."
"We could steal a cart," Césaire suggested. "If you know how to drive one."
"I don't. And what would we feed the horse? Pamphlets?"
"Ouais, I think you're right," Césaire sighed and made a face at that, then he moved to walk away and upwind of the dead bishop. Laurent followed, of course, adjusting the leather satchel at his side, which contained quills, an inkwell, paper, spare oil for a lamp he'd misplaced, and more than a few wrinkled pamphlets from every faction across Paris.
If someone wanted a translation done, they went to go find the Martelier kid. He and Césaire were Jacobins through and through, but Laurent didn't care about where the pamphlets came from, even if it was royalist shit that made him gag. He and Césaire argued about it from time to time, but even Césaire shut up when rent came due. His clients paid for his services — Jacobins, Cordeliers, Girondins, Feuillants. Not always enough, because bread was becoming more expensive than bullets.
"Do you know the English have a cheese called 'Le Fromage de l’Évêque Puant'?" Césaire popped off. A bunch of half-clothed children ran past them in the street, bare feet slapping on the churned up filth of both humans and animals.
"'Stinking Bishop,'" Laurent echoed lazily and in English. "I don't care what it's called, I'd still eat it."
"I could empty an entire cheese shop," Césaire said, kicking a loose cobble as they rounded a corner into a once nice neighborhood, where the upper-crust bourgeoisie and some aristos had infested before the Bastille fell, and some of them fled Paris and the entire country.
"The English also have a dish called 'spotted dick,'" Laurent continued, using the foreign word for the dish, as they peeked through iron fences at the wrecked grandeur of the obscene wealth of the Second Estate, their hôtels particuliers — mansions — now abandoned like shed snail shells. Mobs had ransacked a few, others were boarded up, and others were burnt out cinders. Gardens were overgrown and wild. Then Laurent smirked.
Césaire tested the bars to one mansion with his hands, looking up at them to see how easily they could be vaulted. "What's that mean?"
"Le pénis tacheté," Laurent deadpanned. "It even has pimples."
Césaire blinked. "That's a joke, right?"
"No, they really do have a dish called that. I learned it in class."
"That entire island is cursed," Césaire said with a shake of his head in disbelief, his too-big tricorn bobbing. Then he pointed at the big mansion closest to them. "I bet there's still something good in there." Laurent completed the statement without either of them needing to verbalize it: and if we can't use it, we sure as hell can fence it. For the people.
Césaire grabbed the top rail of the iron fencing and hauled himself over it, his red Jacobin sash somehow not getting caught on the sharp finials on top. He landed on the grass of the ruined garden, and turned to Laurent with a grin, "'We must cultivate our garden.'"
"I don't think Voltaire had breaking into aristo gardens in mind when he said that," Laurent grunted, getting his hands around the rail next to pull himself up and over, thumping onto the grass next to Césaire, his riding cloak swirling around him. He jabbed a playful finger into Césaire's coat lapel. "I see your Voltaire with raise you with Rousseau: 'You are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.'"
Césaire struck a thinker's pose, a wicked grin playing around his lips. "Rousseau also said man was born free, meaning we are free to loot. Or redistribute."
He winked, and his red sash bobbing, then made a straight line for the mansion with the same reckless swagger that had made Laurent fall in love with him almost four years before. Césaire, a law student from the Collège de Paris, savaged the American, Thomas Jefferson, to his face, in a salon attended by savants and academics from all over Paris, about flouting French law to keep his slaves. And Laurent, a languages student representing the Sorbonne at the same salon, knew then he wanted Césaire to utterly ruin him.
The windows and doors of the mansion had been covered up with rough boards nailed over them and, peering through the cracks in between them, the interior of the place looked like it'd been looted. Yet, any shoe prints left on the floor were coated with a layer of dust, so no one had been through recently. Shattered glass was strewn both inside and outside boarded doors and windows.
With a heave and a yank, they tore off one of the boards off the front door. "The ironmongers still giving a few sous for nails?" Césaire asked, eyeing the bent nails at the end of the board he was holding. He switched to Arpitan, the mother tongue that both he and Laurent shared, as Roanne wasn't all that far away from Lyon. It was removed far enough from Paris that no one here would understand what they were saying, which was the point.
"They're a bit bent," Laurent pointed out in the same dialect. "We can probably get more for the wood if we don't hoard it for firewood ourselves."
Césaire sighed. "Let's hope the filthy aristo's gardener left behind a wheelbarrow or something. We still don't have a cart. Oh, wait, almost forgot this." He dug around in his coat's pockets and pulled out a stub of candle.
Laurent's eyes widened. It was real beeswax and probably worth a livre or two even half-spent. He tossed the boards to one side. "Bon sang, where'd you get that from?"
"Couthon's place," Césaire said. "Didn't think he'd miss one."
"Still transcribing meeting minutes for that old pervert?" Laurent pulled off his satchel to find the rushlights he kept wrapped in waxed cloth, and his flint and tinder kit.
"Yeah, and it paid out better this month than the card table." Césaire sniffed. "I mean, what's Couthon going to do about it? Wheel after me really fast in his chair?" He waved a hand dismissively. "C'mon, let's see what awaits us in this lair of iniquity."
Weak grey light shafted through the boards that covered up the glassless windows. Rain had gotten in, because of course it had, and the scent of old dust and mildew hit Laurent's nose. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he spotted a stain of the slimy stuff climbing its way up wallpaper that had been expensive once.
He heard rather than saw Césaire investigating the room around them. He knelt and pulled out a rushlight, laid it on the floor, and struck the flint and tinder. A few knaps and it stubbornly refused to light.
"Liberty, equality, do your job you miserable bastard," he muttered. Finally, the tallow-soaked reed caught. Limpid light and sooty smoke cast by the rushlight illuminated him and the nearby wood-paneled walls.
"Here," Césaire added, touching his ill-gotten candle to the flame of Laurent's rushlight. The wick flared.
The grand vestibule rose high above their heads, the debris on the tile flooring crunching beneath their boots. A massive staircase rose into the upper floors, the iron balustrade stripped in jagged gaps by other looters before them. A chandelier lay crashed where it'd fallen from the ceiling, its glass wax catcher shattered, the brass frame bent. The crystal fittings it might have had were long gone.
"Ouah," he heard Césaire say. "Look at these moldings!" But Laurent wasn't paying attention to him. He was looking at the floor.
"This is an outrage," he finally muttered.
Césaire rolled his eyes. "Now you sound like Robespierre when he gets wound up. What's wrong with the floor, oh learned savant?"
"This," Laurent pointed at the floor. He hadn't noticed it earlier, intent on trying to get the rushlight to catch flame. "They didn't stagger the seams — all the pressure's going to shift into a fracture line." His brows knit together in disapproval. "Look, it's cracked like glass. That's probably good Neapolitan tile, but the asshole who laid this forgot the reinforcement layer under the subfloor. Breaks like glass in the cold." His free hand gestured expansively at the vestibule, and by extension, the entire mansion. "All this stolen wealth and they couldn't hire a carreleur who wasn't a fucking joke?"
"Ah, yes," Césaire tilted his head to regard the cracking tile too. "I forgot. This probably offends your ancestors, doesn't it?"
"All six generations," Laurent replied. "There, look at the baseboard line. Too much lime in the grout. It's flaking." One of his earliest memories was a prismatic waterfall of colored glass tiles meant for mosaics as he sorted them into little boxes, while his father and uncles planned the layouts for their next job in worn sketchbooks. His family traded as carreleurs — tile layers and mosaic makers — crafting works of art in glass, ceramic, and marble for rooms they would never be invited into.
"Perhaps you should write a pamphlet?" Césaire suggested, moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with him to regard the floor. He removed his stupid oversized tricorn as if paying his respects to a grieving widow, or maybe a priest conducting mass. Solemnly, "Call it, 'The Moral Failure of Bad Interior Design Choices.'"
Laurent looked over at him. "Mon amour, let me remind you of the time you almost started sobbing when someone dropped a copy of Candide in a mud puddle outside the Palais Royale."
The barb landed on the bookbinder's son, because a flush of color hit Césaire's cheeks just like he'd expected it to. "That book did nothing wrong to deserve that! Did you see it, Laurent? It was art! Tooled doeskin leather cover, brass fittings, hand-copied pages, gilded end papers, and a spine I could just reach out and stroke for hours — "
Laurent shut him up with a kiss.
Césaire leaned into it, his hat in one hand, a burning candle in the other.
Finally, Laurent pulled back, and with a wicked twinkle in his eye, "Will you ever talk about me like you do your books, mon amour?" He skipped back a step, laughing, turning to run further into the decaying mansion.
"Hey, did you just 'vous' me?" he heard Césaire yell after him, his own laugh hitching in his voice. "Asshole."
He emerged into a large room that might have been a grand salon, or a ballroom, a room big enough to house an entire tenement slum of Parisians. Ugly cherubs graced the ceiling, and dark patches on the wall showed where paintings and tapestries might have once hung, but not even the frames were left. Empty alcoves marked where statues once stood before they'd been looted. Grimy light and flame flashed off of the silver thread of his riding cloak as he pirouetted a circle in the middle of the gouged and chipped marble floor.
He was still laughing when Césaire caught up, one hand cupped protectively around the glow of the beeswax candle. "Idiot, don't go running off on me like that," Césaire grumbled, but the warmth in his voice betrayed him. He circled, and Laurent matched his movement, like they were dancers in a quadrille but only for two.
"I'm the idiot?" Laurent teased. "Who was the one who had to keep you from throwing fists at a man twice your size last week at the cabaret?"
"He said something admirable about that rat bastard Hébert," Césaire retorted, his smile widening. "I couldn't let it pass. The man writes like a pigeon shat all over his pamphlet and then he just drew a line between the droppings to decide which bits to print. I ask you, what wit is there in that?"
Laurent's tone was light and teasing, feeling a familiar stirring within as he let his eyes wander over his lover cast in the dim light of the candle, and he could see Césaire doing the same as their movements followed a song that had long since ceased to play in the ruins. "Yet, Hébert holds an audience — "
" — while profiting off of the very same people the aristos kept their thumbs on," Césaire countered, his gaze turning sly. "Like you and me." He held out a hand to Laurent, who grasped it and let himself be pulled closer. Césaire tasted of sweat, olive oil, of the shaving soap he'd used this morning, of the tanneries and tallow renders that were omnipresent near their shared garret in the Saint-Marcel.
"No lust for power, Viallat?" Laurent teased, breaking the kiss, green eyes glittering.
"Power is for madmen or corpses, Martelier. I intend to be neither," Césaire replied in a near whisper in his ear, still sly. His free hand pressed against Laurent's back, sliding down. "And I'd rather lust after you."
They were being stared down by hideous baby cherubs and copied Venetian frescoes, but they'd made love in odder places. A memory came to him, of Césaire's honey curls luminous in occluded afternoon light, pages of The Declaration of the Rights of Man scattered around the garret floor, his teeth biting into the skin of his fist to keep from crying out too loudly as Laurent thrust into him again and again.
"Maybe," Césaire teased in a low whisper, "I want to hear all the dirty things a man can say when he has the Tower of Babel in his head."
"Oh? Is that the way you want to play it now?" Silk-smooth, his words were in fluent Ligurian, and then, like a shapeshifter formed from language and syntax, he added in Sardinian, "Do you want me to teach you how to say 'Fuck me' in twelve different ways?"
Césaire was the only one outside of his family who knew Laurent's true talent, his secret, the one his parents had forced him to downplay for his own safety. The heady and terrifying talent that caused his father apprentice him as a notary instead of following the family custom of a tile-layer, and what put Laurent's name on the lips of everyone in Paris who needed their words translated into other tongues.
The men who jockeyed for power in the new order saw Césaire as the bright, burning boy who wielded words like knives. But it was Laurent, standing in shadow, who made certain those knives hit their mark.
"I have no idea what you just said," Césaire's own voice matching Laurent's sleek tones, sending a frisson of wicked excitement through him, the pressure building. "But you can teach me." He leaned in for another kiss, and Laurent's mouth closed over his and —
Something burning.
"Oh shit!" Laurent yelled, as his hair crisped and threw off embers. The open candle flame Césaire was carrying had dipped ever so slightly tipped in the wrong direction. Laurent's own rushlight was almost burned to a nub, and he dropped it on the floor to try to put the fire on himself out. He slipped and landed on the hard marble on his ass. "Fuck! Put it out!"
Césaire yelped. "Shit, I'm sorry! I didn't mean for that to happen, oh fuck!" Then the light went out entirely as Césaire fumbled the candle to the floor to try to put out the fire he'd accidentally started.
The acrid stench of burning hair filled the room, the panicked breaths having nothing to do with anything pleasurable. Laurent's cinnamon brown hair was long, but without queue and powder, a bourgeoisie affectation that had no place in the France to come. And now, it was also singed.
"You're all right, right?" Césaire asked, bending over him. "I didn't get you too bad, did I?" His hands patted him down frantically.
"Fuck," Laurent groaned again, straightening up. "That's just fucking lovely. It didn't all burn off did it?" He shot a glare at Césaire.
"I think you have enough left to cover your dignity," Césaire said after taking a moment to survey the damage. Then they both burst into giggles.
"This is so stupid," Césaire gasped out between laughter. "We should do this more often."
Laurent's laugh was quieter, but no less merrier. "Breaking into filthy bourgeoisie mansions or setting me on fire? C'mon, it stinks here now, no thanks to you, dummy. Let's get out of here. Where did that candle roll off to?"
Césaire blew a raspberry at him. Desire had died screaming in the fire that Césaire had unintentionally set off, and the stink it'd left behind did nothing to recharge the atmosphere. The candle was relit, with a fresh rushlight to supplement it, and the two of them crept further into the ruins of the old order.
The vast kitchens had been emptied of any cooking implements and racks. No one had tried to rip the stoves from the walls, however, but neither Laurent or Césaire were equipped to try.
The rest of the ground floor was thoroughly picked over or damaged. A broken pianoforte in one room, expensive vases now toppled into broken crockery. In Laurent's opinion, the tile work remained unimpressive, and it got worse when they entered the mansion's bathing vestibule.
"Glass tiles? Slippery deathtrap," he muttered, staring down at the floor under his boots, while Césaire rummaged around elsewhere in the room. "All look, no texture variance, no sense. I hoped no one walked through this while still wet."
Dust motes flitted in the low rays of the setting sun. There was enough natural light in here they'd extinguished the candle for now. Another hour or two spent here meant getting back to their garret in the dark. Although, when he thought about it, he wasn't particularly rushed to get back either, not when they had this whole space to themselves.
He licked his lips, realizing he hadn't had anything to drink in a while, and there had been no wine left over in the cellar. A bas-relief of the Three Graces decorated one wall, and the spigot and basin beneath it suggested it'd once been a working fountain, but no longer. His eyes traced the lines of grout until — there. A marble panel set into the tiled floor. Right, he remembered: this was the aristos' baths, there would be some way to get water, and probably at least three servants to scrub their tender skin.
With a grunt he heaved it up, hoping it wouldn't be dry. He was rewarded with a stone basin filled with clear water beneath it. He dipped a finger in. The water smelled faintly metallic, probably from the pipes running from the rain-fed cisterns on the roof, before gravity drew it down to the mansion's holding tanks down below. The cool water soothed his throat. "Césaire, over here! Finally the rich are good for something."
Césaire stuck his head back in, as if ready to say something, but the sight of the water was enough to shut him up for the moment. He knelt, drinking his fill. "Maybe I should give it a blessing, like a priest and the Eucharist. A special Jacobin blessing."
Laurent arched a skeptical brow at him. "We don't have any bread for sacrament."
"Then, that's just thematically appropriate. We have no bread, and no one else does either." He poked Laurent in the shoulder, and said with a wry grin, "Anyway, I want your big brain to come see what I found."
Then it was Césaire leading, Laurent following, as it was ever. A large room with glittering mosaics opened up before them, the grates on the floor indicating it had once been a luxurious steam bath for the mansion's former occupants. The lowering light of day slanted through a skylight, its design echoing the motifs from the Ottoman east. But, he doubted the Ottomans ever had mosaics like this.
"Fuck, what is that?" Laurent's eyebrows climbed to his hairline, the profanity slipping from Arpitan to French. Putain, c’est quoi ça?
"I know, right?" Césaire snickered, pointing at the offending mosaic on the far wall from them.
Laurent picked out the fine glass stock and colors, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was the mosaic depicted what he assumed to be a goddess, or perhaps a nymph, lounging amidst flowering vines and flanked on either side with satyrs armed with fully erect and threateningly oversized dicks. As easily as breathing, he translated the Latin spelled out in green and blue glass tesserae above her: "Per voluptatem, ingressus." Through pleasure, the entrance. And the goddess herself sat with her legs apart shamelessly, her fingers holding open her ….
"She's doing what I'm thinking she's doing, isn't she?" His eyes narrowed, but he didn't take his eyes off the offending mosaic.
"Hmm, her gesture does seem rather invitational, I agree," Césaire said, as casually as master artist discussing his work.
Laurent gestured at the mosaic with both hands, teetering somewhere between bafflement and outrage, maybe both. Maybe over the waste of good tile for this. He wasn't sure. "But why?
Césaire pointed at the Latin. "Look, at least it doesn't say that this is the best of all possible worlds. Although, if Voltaire were here, he'd probably approve."
The steam bath itself was dusty and dry. Some of the tesserae were possibly worth chiseling out for resale, but for mere fractions of a sous individually, perhaps a handful of sous for a bag. His artisanal blood rebelled at the idea of destroying art for petty cash, however, even if it was art in extremely poor taste. There was, however, something in the curve of the goddess' anatomy. Laurent stepped further inside and closer, his brow furrowing in curiosity.
"There's something here," he murmured.
"Yes, there's a cunny, Laurent," Césaire sighed. "I know what one looks like, up close and personal, and so do you. Ouah, wait, why are you touching her there?"
He tilted his head, squinting at the tesserae. The lines didn’t match. His finger followed the curve, where it repeated more than it should have. There was a tension in the groutwork — something mechanical beneath the vulgarity.
"You keep stroking her like that and I'm going to be jealous. Nom de dieu, 'The Day My Beloved Threw Me Over for Wall Tiles.' Actually, do that again, I think I’m getting stimulated by tile work.”
Click.
A scraping sound, a squeal of hinges that'd gone without oil for too long, the drag of something large and heavy. Whatever it was, it was in the vestibule. Both of them twitched, and with a hiss of metal, Césaire's saber was drawn and in his hand.
"What did you do?" Césaire hissed at him in a low whisper.
"There was a button on her button, so I pushed it," Laurent snapped back, trying to keep it quiet, although once the words were out of his mouth did he realize how absolutely stupid they sounded. The only weapon he had was a small folding blade used for cutting quills and fruit, hardly a deterrent to anyone, but he fumbled through his satchel for it.
"There was a what on her what?" Césaire's expression was one of confusion, trying to parse out what he'd just heard. "Nevermind, we can talk about that later." He gestured with a palm. "Stay back."
"Absolutely fucking not." The little folding blade was in Laurent's hand now. It wasn't much, but it was something.
Césaire rolled his eyes, but squared his shoulders to approach the door leading from the steam room to the vestibule. He hefted the saber, and and jerked his chin towards the exit to the vestibule. "Un, deux, trois!"
They leapt out into the vestibule, Césaire with his saber at ready, and Laurent behind him, standing back to back. The little folding knife was pathetic, but he'd give as good as he got.
Which was … nothing. The vestibule, as he saw it, was unchanged. The cistern set into the floor continued to burble water.
He blinked, and heard Césaire say quietly, "Uh, I'm pretty sure that wasn't there when we walked in, mon amour." And Laurent turned to look over Césaire's shoulder.
The bas-relief of the Three Graces had moved. Swung open, actually, to reveal a short passage beyond and another door that appeared to be of plain oak. Unadorned, it gave no clue what lay beyond. A heavy crossbar secured it.
"You fingered a goddess' passage and opened up a secret passage?" Césaire muttered, disbelievingly. "I hate how that makes sense."
"I looked at that wall," Laurent seethed, pointing at it and stalking over to the portal that had swung open. "I looked at it. I didn't see the joinery at all." He peered at the hinges, running his fingers on the frame, swinging the door lightly back and forth. It made the same squeal they'd heard earlier. "No cracks. No seam shift. It's flawless. I could just sit here and study this all day."
"Mon chéri, I love you but why are you like this?" Césaire sounded exasperated, but his lips quirked in amusement. "Are you sure you just weren't distracted by nymph tits? Also, are you ever going to blush that hard for me as you are for a door?"
"It's a nice door!" Laurent replied, giving his love a playful punch in the arm in return. He looked down at where the vestibule's tile ran to the edge of the plain wooden door and then underneath it. "Here, it's worn down. The grout's discolored, and they never got it fixed."
"'There was a button on her button'?" Césaire repeated with a waggle of his eyebrows. "Really? Right there? The fucking aristos were more depraved than I thought." His saber's tip remained pointed at the locked door. "What do you think is behind that?"
Laurent shifted uncomfortably, regarding the plain wooden door. "The aristos never missed an opportunity to gild their chamberpots, why would they leave this plain?" The vanished class was nothing if not about excess in every aspect of their lives, their wealth accumulated parasitically over decades and centuries. His eyes narrowed, studying the door. It looked old, but judging this sort of wood-grain was beyond his level of skill.
"'Per voluptatem, ingressus,'" he repeated, knowing that Césaire knew Latin perfectly well as part of his legal studies, although, in Laurent's opinion, he also needed more work on his pronunciation. "'Through pleasure, the entrance.' What do you think that means?"
"'Eat pussy, ascend to heaven'?" Césaire suggested and now it was Laurent's turn to roll his eyes. He pointed the tip of the saber at the crossbar. "Is it meant to keep people in or out? There's no lock on it from the outside except for the bar."
"Maybe the aristos were confident no one would lock them in?" Laurent suggested. That would be the sort of hubris he'd expected from them. "If this were Thérèse philosophe, I'd almost think this was some sort of secret pleasure room. It's missing the priests waiting to jump out of hiding to lecture us on sodomy, though."
"Pfffft," Césaire sputtered. "Do we even need a lecture? We are the sermon. You and I could give them a demonstration."
Laurent side-eyed him slowly. "You want to fuck with a priest watching?"
"National Assembly said you and I were good last September, so why not?" Césaire replied flippantly. The penal code had been rewritten and reissued by the government last year, which quietly dropped the part about 'unnatural acts' and 'crimes against nature,' probably because half of the assembly members were doing it themselves. Then he pointed at the crossbar. "Get the candle. I'm gonna open that."
"Ouais, and hope the aristo who owned this place didn't fancy himself to be the next Gilles de Rais," Laurent added, naming the infamous child-killer from centuries ago. Nightmares about the infamous killer were practically a right of passage for every French child who'd heard the stories handed down generation after generation.
Césaire nodded, his expression sobering, and then he nodded decisively. "Only one way to find out."
The crossbar thudded to floor, the sound echoing loudly off the tiles off the vestibule. The plain wooden door swung open, revealing a flight of stone stairs descending down into the earth in a tunnel of rough-hewn stone, and presumably running beneath the mansion. And it was utterly black.
Laurent stomach fluttered and not in a good way, and not because he hadn't eaten enough recently. Maybe it would be better to just slam the door shut and never look back. He glanced at Césaire, whose jaw was set, and he knew he was going to press on. And Laurent would follow, as he always did.
The two of them surveyed the stairs downward into the Stygian black. The air was cool, and didn't smell rotten or stale, so ventilation was coming from somewhere. Laurent spoke first. "Perhaps the part of the cellar that leads to the cistern or water tanks?" The candle he held seemed pathetic. Or, he thought, was this part of the labyrinth of ancient Roman quarries that honeycombed the earth beneath Paris. He'd heard the stories. Nothing good ever happened in them. And the worn stones looked older than the mansion above.
Césaire made a low hum in the back of his throat, and then he kicked the crossbar down the stairs, where it slid on the steps to the bottom with a crash. "Just so no one surprises us from behind and locks us in." At Laurent's skeptical look, he added, "Can't be too careful." Saber up, he took the first steps downward. "C'mon, let's see what's here that the aristos thought was worth hiding."
"Just not so far, I don't want to try to retrace our steps if the candle goes out," Laurent muttered, his voice hushed. Intellectually he knew no one was here to overhear him except Césaire, but his voice dropped anyway. That was human instinct when faced with the uncanny and the unknown.
Césaire responded in a whisper too. "Fair. If we don't see anything interesting in five minutes, we're out."
The stones were dry as they proceeded downwards. Laurent estimated the stairs descended into the earth by at least fifty feet, but the darkness made that a guess at best. The foot of the stairs stretched into a corridor before them, and what appeared to be the edges of ornately carved arch on one wall of the corridor. The corridor continued on in the darkness, but they stopped to examine what the arch revealed.
"Oh, so this is what they're hiding down here," Césaire's whisper turning sharp, sardonic. The heavy wooden double doors curved above them, carved with scenes of demons and devils and most damningly, a fleur-de-lys, the symbol of the Bourbons and their grip on France for centuries. "Fucking aristos. Figures they'd merge hellfire with the monarchy."
"So did Baron de Rais," Laurent reminded him. The infamous baron had stolen children, raped and murdered them, allegedly in service of the Devil. To the revolutionaries of Paris, the depraved fifteenth century aristocrat was exactly why his class couldn't be trusted. They had always been predators. He was suddenly reminded of the sermons his parents would drag him to at Mass, and getting out of here sounded like a really good idea. "Maybe we should — "
Maybe he shouldn't have said anything, because Césaire's lips pulled back in a snarl, "Then let's bring it to light." He grabbed one handle, shaped like the hated symbol of the Bourbons, and pushed.
It swung open into a wide dark space, the candle barely adequate while they stood on the threshold. Laurent's eyes cast down, where the floor was the same color as the rest of the room, and his stomach lurched, his eyes telling him he was standing over an abyss, even as his feet rested on something solid. Chips of glass or mirror glittered just beyond the reach of the tiny cone of light. Césaire stopped short, his breath loud, saber still up and ready as his eyes darted around for invisible enemies.
Don't look down don't look down don't look down. He couldn't help it though. Whoever commissioned this design decision was either evil, or genius or possibly both. He wanted to admire the craftsmanship, while also simultaneously cursing it. He closed his eyes, backed a step up, and his shoulder bumped something. And his heart stuttered as he turned to look.
The demon's fangs gaped wide, its eyes glittering with malevolent glee, wickedly curved talons ready rend and tear. Laurent skittered back from it, almost dropping their one source of light. "Aghhhhhh!"
Césaire whipped around, the saber flashing in the candle flame. The blade stabbed at the creature — and hit its mark with a loud, metallic scrape.
"The fuck is this?" he muttered, pulling back. Laurent's blood still thrummed in his ears, as he skipped back another step, eyes wide. The weak flame of the candle reflected off of the demon, which seemed to twitch and move in the shifting light, but it made no attempt to lunge forward at either of them.
Césaire poked it in the mouth with the saber, and it didn't move. Then he reached out a hand and rapped his knuckles on demon's muzzle, and was rewarded with a hollow knocking sound in return. "It's a statue," he said, with a hitch of relief and a nervous laugh. "Bring the candle over," he gestured to Laurent.
The flame seemed to bring an almost greenish sheen to the statue, and he forced himself to focus. Focusing on something else let him pretend he wasn't fraying. "It's a brazier," he said, tracing the bowl where the flame would be lit with a finger. "Crushed oyster in the glaze to make it glow slightly when lit. Not cheap, but that's nobility for you. Wait, I think there's a wick in its mouth." He looked at Césaire, questioningly and swallowed. "Should we try to light it?"
Césaire seemed to consider it for a moment, and then crossed his arms in a pose."Hell's just a scam the priests tell to keep people in line. So is Heaven. Light it, what's the worst that can happen? If the Devil shows his face, we just stab him in the balls until he gives up."
That elicited a small sputter from Laurent, and he felt the tension across his chest ease slightly. "Alright, both of us together then," he said. Césaire placed his hand on Laurent's and they both shoved the candle into the demon's maw.
The demon's glass eyes flared to life with the flame borrowed from their candle, its open-mouthed leer now aglow. Above it, on the wall, undulating figures appeared — more sculpted demons, their bodies writhing in light and shadow. Then, by some hidden mechanism that Laurent couldn't even begin to guess at, another brazier lit itself a short distance away from them, and then another, and another, until the room was ringed with demons and burning hellfire.
Césaire's hand tightened around his, both of them flinching, breaths catching. "Ouahhh," Césaire breathed, staring up at the ceiling. Laurent felt Césaire's shoulder press closely against his, and followed his gaze up. A tremor rattled through him.
Demons, men, women, creatures in-between — their forms undulated beneath the domed ceiling, their faces contorted in pain or pleasure, Laurent could not tell. Mortals and demons cavorted together, many copulating shamelessly in an endless spiral of erotic iterations. Light reflected on crystals and mirrors, scattering flame-colored light across the grotesquery of the high ceiling. The floor was a black obsidian mirror, flecks of glass or mirror embedded in it gleaming like stars in an inky sky. He saw himself looking back, framed in brazen lust.
His throat constricted, light scattering in roiling, prismatic patterns before his vision. His pulse thudded in his ears, too loud, too much, too everything at once. Césaire. He was saying something, but he couldn't hear, there was too much —
"Laurent, mon cher, look here, c'mon." A finger snap, a hand holding his tightly. "Here, watch me, good, good."
He tried to say something, but the connective tissue frayed and tore between his mind and the words that emerged from his lips. Frisian crashed into Swedish crashed into Achaean crashed into Breton. It wouldn't stop. He couldn't stop.
Another finger snap, and a sense he was being pulled along. "There's a place to sit over here. Close your eyes, and repeat after me: amō, amās, amat, amāmus, amātis, amant …. "
Latin. Present tense in the first conjugation. Something his agitation could grasp and hold onto. The rules didn't change, it wasn't slippery. He let his eyes slip closed, the afterimages fading into echos.
"Amem, amēs, amet, amēmus, amētis, ament." Subjunctive active. He swallowed, his breathing easing as he recalled his Latin lessons. A dim memory of his parents arguing in low voices where they should direct their son's unnatural fluency in many tongues. His father begging him to stop, to pretend to be ordinary, or he might be stolen away from their home as a curiosity by savants and an amusement for aristocrats.
Another finger snap, slightly down and to the side. He felt the brush of something soft through the cloth of his trousers, and a tug as Césaire directed him to sit with a little push. "Down. Sit. Don't open your eyes, and for fuck's sake, don't look behind you." Snap. "What conjugations come next?"
Laurent settled onto the soft chair, sprawling, a deep sigh escaping him. The movement must have kicked up a film of dust, for his nose itched to sneeze from it. He could hear the sound of breath, his own, Césaire's, and the room itself. Exhaustion made his limbs feel like lead, and some part of him wondered what Césaire saying he shouldn't look, but he didn't feel like challenging it. Instead, he held onto the rope Césaire had thrown him when his mind was drowning. Now he followed it to the surface. "Amor, amāris, amātur, amāmur, amāminī, amantur …. "
A weight settled next to him on his left. He felt Césaire's thumb trace the thin line of the scar at his temple, the scar left from a childhood accident that should have killed him, and if not killed him, should have left him stupid and simple. Instead, it changed the shape of his life. It made him different. Children's tongues were supposed to harden, to shed the talent for languages unless constantly cultivated as they grew. For Laurent, that never happened. It was a blessing and a curse.
Cloth rustled, and the riding cloak he was still wearing was pulled up over his head to drape there, and he exhaled, his breathing easing, the frantic beat of his heart slowing. The fingers of his right hand tapped nervously on his knee.
"Better now?" Césaire asked in a low voice into his ear in the familiar cadence of Arpitan, and Laurent felt his touch on his shoulder. Their shared dialect from home, the connections between words mending, strengthening.
"Mm, can I stay here?" He hated how whiny he sounded, but he didn't feel like more at the moment.
"Stay there. The aristos had to keep the good stuff down here somewhere." He felt Césaire's weight lift off the seat from beside him. "They had to take breaks in between … whatever it was they were doing down this place." He snorted. "I'm going to walk behind you, don't look." The sound of Césaire's shoes clicked on the floor. "There's some cabinets over here, an armoire, ouah, this mirror is going to make me sick. It's got devil cherubs with bat wings all on the frame. All this wealth and no taste."
Then he heard a muttered "Books, why would they keep books down here?" and the rattle of a cabinet door opening. Laurent tilted his head to listen to Césaire, expecting a rant. He didn't disappoint.
"Do you even know the craftsmanship in this? This, this is auroch hide. It has a slightly different grain than cowhide. Do you know how rare that is? One auroch can keep a family of peasants fed for months. And they stuck it down here in this fucking crypt? Oh, now here's the gold foil on the pages, so it flashes like a reliquary when you tilt it. I cannot fucking believe they wasted this on a copy of Les Bijoux Indiscrets …. "
Laurent perked up, recognizing the title. It was banned, but all the boys in his Lyon neighborhood passed around loose pages like it was sacred scripture. "Isn't that the one that Diderot wrote about the talking vaginas? The one with the sultan and his magic ring he'd use on women's 'jewels' to get them to talk?"
"Talking vaginas, and about the things that go in and out of them. In my opinion and experience, cunnies are more honest than priests," Césaire said, and Laurent imagined his head bowed over the pages. "Look, the assholes even wrote in the margins." He cleared his throat and affected a noble-born's lisp. "'Try this with M-T.'"
Pages rustled. "Title page, title page … ah, here we go, someone wrote here … 'From Axel F. to …' I can't make this out. 'May your nights be less tedious.'” A pause. "You don't think that's Axel von Fersen?" He let out a mock-scandalized gasp and now Laurent giggled, but Césaire was just getting warmed up.
“'At the touch of the ring, the jewel began to speak, revealing with perfect candor the full extent of its adventures — often to the dismay of its owner.' The note here says 'I knew a Marquise whose jewel sang better than this one.'”
“The jewels began to murmur among themselves; and one, more impudent than the rest, burst out laughing and said, ‘We are no longer slaves to silence!’ Pfffft, I can't believe this shit. Someone wrote here, 'Jewels speak truer after three bottles of Burgundy.'”
“'Ask for Sophie at the Palais-Royal, she knows page 112.'”
"'Do not loan this to the abbé. He returned it sticky.' Oh no no no, that's just nasty."
"'Vicomtesse suggested lavender pessaries for an even more pleasant experience.'"
“'The jewel spoke, not by the will of its mistress, but by that of the Sultan, and recounted with frightening accuracy all that it had known.'" A pause, then in terrible Italian, “'Nessuna inquisizione qui, solo confessione carnale.' I think?”
“'No inquisition here, only carnal confession,'" Laurent translated into French between his snickers. After he'd had his first girl, he was convinced that Diderot had oversold the experience, for she'd tasted like nothing the philosopher had described.
“'It is not the man alone who seeks joy, but the jewel too must be awakened, courted, and satisfied.' Yes, Monsieur Diderot, you're stating the obvious … wait, what is this language. 'Fuk mi bon tems, je sux roi.' That's gibberish.”
Laurent nodded from under the cloak. "I think it's supposed to be the English 'fuck.'" The word fell as gracelessly as a turd, but English was often that way.
"I'm taking this home with us, I don't care, this is too good," he heard Césaire cackle. Then there was the sound of what Laurent thought was more books being pulled off a shelf.
"What is this? This is in English, I think. Fennie … Hole?" Césaire murmured to sound of pages being flipped. “Zat stoo-pen-duss mah-sheen — een-flaymed weez ze rahj of luv — ’e shott ’eez leek-weed arr-oh deeeep eento mee.'" A baffled pause. "What?"
"Fanny Hill," Laurent groaned from under the cloak. "It's an English holy book of filth. 'That stupendous machine'? 'He shot his liquid arrow deep into me'? It means he shot his load into her cunny, you idiot. You're making English sound even worse than it does normally. Here, give me that — " He pulled the cloak off his head and stood up from the settee.
"Wait, don't turn around — " Césaire's voice rose in alarm.
Too late.
Louis XVI's moon-shaped face stared back at him.
The rest of the grotesque and decadent room momentarily forgotten, Laurent yelped, nearly jumping back. "What the fuck is he doing here?"
Césaire stood in front of an open cabinet to the right of His Majesty. He jerked a thumb at the king, but his eyes sized up Laurent carefully, perhaps expecting him to suffer another bout of inward collapse and to intercede. "I warned you. Who's the idiot now?"
Laurent blinked, his brain slowly catching up to what he was seeing. There was Louis XVI, larger than life, in his ermine, velvets, and gold, standing in the hellish pleasure crypt. "Oh. Ohhh. He's still in the Tuileries, right? But why is he here?"
Césaire twirled a finger around the room and its infernal decor. "Why did the aristos want a portrait of His Majesty down in here? I have no idea, and they didn't exactly leave any notes behind." He peered at Louis. "Do you think he has any idea what a cunny actually looks like?"
He thought that over for a moment, as if the question was worth serious consideration. Then, finally, Laurent suggested, "Maybe that's a bet you should take to the gambling tables next time." He pointed at Louis again. It was a rather good likeness, down to the piggish, dull eyes. "But no, really, why?" There was no rhyme or reason that suggested why their now-absent lords and ladies would want him here, of all places. Louis XVI was no Louis XIV, where the king anchored the center of the universe as the sun, the axis that everyone else spun around.
Laurent scanned to the left and right of him, and let his eyes dart up towards the ceiling, that still seemed to crawl with eerie life-likeness. The chamber was large and oval, ringed by braziers that were identical to the first one they'd lit when they first entered. He forced himself to focus on them, and then to the mirrors that magnified their light, washing the entire chamber in an infernal glow. His carreleur instincts spotted layers of modern plaster and terrazzo laid over ancient stones. There were fainting couches, settees, and a low decorative table in the center of the room where he stood. Placing each object was grounding, stabilizing, maybe except for Louis XVI. And then there were …
"Those are racks, aren't they?" he said. Instead of iron restraints, silk-lined manacles stood open and waiting. Laurent sighed. No, obviously silk, they couldn't risk having marks left on their skin. He felt movement at his side, and Césaire was stuffing a pair of books into the satchel he still had slung there, the one with all his quills, spare paper, and inkwell.
"What are you doing?" Exasperation and amusement colored his voice. "You want to take these back with us?"
"Of course!" Césaire retorted, shoving Fanny Hill into the satchel, and gave it a loving pat. "Not only are the colophons a masterwork, but you can also teach me English filth in your spare time. C'mon, help me open the rest of the cabinets."
Another piece of furniture caught Laurent's eye. "Césaire?"
"Ouais, mon cher?"
Laurent side-eyed him. "That's a really big bed over there. With rings for restraints."
Césaire struck a thoughtful pose, both of them looking at the massive bed with its red drapes. The sheets looked to have a thin rime of dust on it, but otherwise the bed was made. "Room enough for … how many do you think? Eight? Ten?"
Laurent pointed behind him as if stating the obvious. "Louis is looking directly at it."
"He is, isn't he? That seems to be in keeping with the royal character. Watching, and not doing." He tilted his head, thinking, and then a slow smile of glee blossomed on Césaire's face, and then he threw up both arms in triumph. "I know! We should reclaim it for the people!"
Now it was Laurent's turn to snort as Césaire grasped his hand and eagerly tugged him towards the bed. "With the king watching?"
Césaire tossed his tricorn and cap off to one side, the fires of hell glinting on his blond ringlets. "He watched the country rot for ten years, he can handle watching us." He turned his head to address the king. "Begging your pardon, your majesty, our most Christian King, my love and I are about to commit the sin of sodomy. And then we'll do it again — ouah!"
"You're always too loud," Laurent murmured in his ear, one arm pulling Césaire close in an embrace, their bodies pressed together.
"You like me loud, you love me for it," Césaire reminded him, with a sly curl in his voice. "You've loved me loud since the day we met at the salon."
"You're a menace, Césaire," he quipped back, and then kissed him, relief and desire threading through him at once. He'd been so nervous then, uncertain if Césaire shared those feelings. The emotions that had roiled beneath the surface weren't ones a man was supposed to have for another, but Césaire had shown him that he needn't be alone.
Césaire was the first to break their kiss. "Well, if you're feeling better, notice we're not in the garret tonight. It's just the two of us — and His Majesty, but he doesn't get a say — so I can be as loud for you as you want."
"Oh, shut up." Laurent's teeth nipped Césaire's jawline, and then he shoved him towards the bed, raising a small cloud of dust as he landed on his back on the sheets, and then Laurent was on him.
True moments alone together were rare. In their rented garret, there was always someone else nearby. Their moments were stolen when they could, usually reduced to fumbling for one another in the dark. Laughter and pleasure was hidden behind a muffling hand. Just because the government no longer chose to pursue men like them did not mean approval from others. Laurent was sure their landlady had suspicions, but she fed them from time to time anyway.
He'd long since mapped every inch of his lover's body, all the little places that made Césaire squirm and beg and break apart under his touch. He could find them even if he were struck blind. Each curve, each angle, the way his skin lay over his collarbones and ribs and hips.
“Amō. I love. Amās. You love. Amat. He loves .…” Laurent whispered into the hollow of Césaire's neck, inhaling his familiar scent, planting devouring kisses down, and down, worshiping his lover's bared skin with breath and word. Césaire trembled beneath him, his usual bravado stripped raw, inchoate whimpers tumbling from his lips.
The whimpers grew louder, more shameless, as Laurent's tongue laved up the length of his cock. A sharp gasp, and a breathless inhalation as he took his lover in his mouth. Césaire's fingers tangled in his long hair. He tasted salt, his lover's body admitting its need.
"Ah — ah — ah — more — "
Each nonsensical babble only stoked Laurent's own excitement, his hand working his own cock even as he worked upon Césaire's.
Césaire's hips bucked, spreading open brazenly. "Laurent, please, I'm — I'm — "
Laurent cut him off with a savage kiss, his fingers playing across Césaire's chest. "Oh, no, you don't. Not until I tell you you can." Césaire whined through his teeth.
His eye fell on Césaire's red sash, lying discarded on the bed, not having made it as far as the floor with the rest of their clothes. He picked it up. "Amāmus. We love." Then he grabbed Césaire's wrists and bound them with the sash, looping it through one of the rings on the bed's headboard. "Amant. They love."
Césaire's impatient whine grew louder, his arms now bound above his head. "Bastard," he muttered affectionately. "You're not going to leave me like this, are you?"
Laurent sat back on the edge of the bed, admiring his handiwork, admiring the way the hell-light gleamed off of the planes and angles of his lover's body, flush with desire. "You did say you wanted to hear all the dirty things a man can say when he has the Tower of Babel in his head, hm?" He leaned over to pull open his scribe's satchel lying on the floor. "Let's start with this, the holy book of English filth." He flourished the copy of Fanny Hill at Césaire.
He flipped open to a random page, and selected a line to translate into French. "'Thus, after a few sighs, struggles, and a faint cry or two, I resign’d my virgin flower upon the altar of Hymen.'”
"Oh no no no — "
Laurent reached over to stroke Césaire as he kept reading. “'…not the play thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a Maypole, of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observed, it must have belonged to a young giant..' Honestly, the author never met you, you have a very fine maypole. Louis over there probably agrees too since he's probably never seen his own."
"I can't fucking believe this."
Laurent paused at the next one, sounding out the best rendition in French in his head. Even for English, the tortured syntax and metaphors were exceptional. Finally, “'Her sturdy stallion had now unbuttoned, and produced naked, stiff and erect, that wonderful machine, which I had never seen before … the flaming red head as it stood uncapt, the whiteness of the shaft, and the shrub growth of curling hair … the roundish bag that dangled down from it … perfected the prospect.'”
Césaire stared at the book, then back at him, bug-eyed. "No, absolutely not, it does not say that. You're making that up."
Laurent shrugged with the one hand holding the book, and tucked it away to one side. "The English are a mysterious people." His other hand picked up a little tempo, and Césaire's eyes nearly rolled back, a burble of pleasure in his throat. Laurent leaned in, and in a conspiratorial near-whisper, said, "How shall we take care of your 'wonderful machine'?"
"I think you can start by giving me it," Césaire said, an impish gleam in his eyes. "C'mon. Up."
"Brat," he teased, moving to swing his legs over Césaire's hips. Grasping the headboard, he pulled himself up, until Césaire was eye level with his cock. His back arched as Césaire's lips closed around the head of his cock, tongue teasing, swirling, and Laurent's hips bucked. He gasped, hands tightening on the headboard, the pressure in his groin building. "Ohhhhh, mmm. You know how to use your mouth in more than one way."
Césaire's tongue flicked and sucked at him, and rising moans escaped Laurent's lips as the pressure built, threatening to crest over. With a hiss, he pulled away, his hands frantically darting for his satchel again.
"Finally, some use for this," he muttered, and Césaire smirked knowingly. The little vial of olive oil was intended for a portable lamp, but the lamp had gone missing some time ago, and Laurent suspected he knew who took it. But it wasn't important now.
"Don't keep me waiting," Césaire goaded.
The scent of the oil was warm, earthy as Laurent slicked up his fingers and then reached down underneath Césaire. Greedily, Césaire pressed himself down, his movement limited by the red sash still binding his wrists. He poured out more oil, and watched his lover's face as he slid one finger inside him, and then another. Césaire's brow was furrowed, his mouth rounded in a small "oh" as he focused on the fingers stroking in and out of him. He flexed, tightening around Laurent's fingers, demanding and eager.
"Ah — ahh — stop dithering around, Laurent." His eyes flashed in challenge. "Stop teasing and fuck me already."
His own arousal was already on edge from just watching his lover's pleasure. Laurent leaned over him an kissed him deeply. "Are you sure you don't want to know what Fanny Hill has to say about something like this, mon amor?"
"Start reading and I'll kick you. Fuck now."
"Oh, is that how you want it? Fine then," Laurent sputtered a laugh. He threw one of Césaire's legs over his shoulder, and Césaire shifted to meet him. Césaire's body resisted only for a moment, and then yielded to him as they merged as one. His breath caught, ragged in his own ears, as he savored is lover trembling beneath him, his heat snug and surrounding him.
No, not yet, not so soon.
He kissed Césaire roughly, and began to move. Césaire quivered, moaning with each thrust. He was tight, so tight. Laurent's breaths came in sharp gasps, fighting for control. "Amem," he rasped through his teeth. "Let me love, may I love … "
Césaire's cries were wordless, urgent, mewling, the tendons in his neck stretched taut, his head thrown back. The red sash jerked. Laurent's hand pumped around Césaire's cock, his lover clamped tight around him as he thrust again and again.
A sob of bliss ripped from Césaire's throat, and the scent of his release tingled Laurent's nose, and splashed across his belly. He gave in, his thrusts turning frenetic, rougher, and release finally came, driving everything else out of his mind for a brief moment of pure ecstasy.
He collapsed against Césaire, their kisses desperate, hungry, lungs still gulping for air. Sweat cooled on their bodies. Laurent reached up to undo the sash still binding Césaire's wrists, and Césaire embraced him.
"Amo te," Césaire breathed into his ear. You I love.
"Amo te," Laurent echoed, the back of his fingers stroking Césaire's cheek.
They lay curled against each other for a little while. And for a time, Laurent could put aside the other gnawing hunger still in their bellies, the roaming mobs shouting "Á la lanterne," as they strung up another priest or aristocrat who'd stumbled into their path, the words that dueled like blades between members of the National Assembly, the looming threat of war with Austria. No, it was just him, and Césaire.
He'd once told Césaire that his eyes reminded him of a cloudless summer sky. Césaire responded that he was genius with languages, but shit at poetry. And then told him to shut up and kiss him.
"Louis is still watching us, isn't he?" Césaire finally sighed.
Laurent lifted his head up long enough to regard the portrait of France's useless king, stuck on the wall between two grotesque demonic braziers. Yes, he was still being useless. He flopped back down next to Césaire. "Ouais, looks like it."
"We're going to miss class again tomorrow too."
"It's worth it."
After another long moment, Césaire stretched like a cat, and rolled out of bed. He stood, shamelessly naked, and Laurent let himself admire the view. "Now, where were we before we got distracted reclaiming the bed for the people? Ah, right, the aristos must have left some snacks around here …. "
All the little mundane concerns of life pressed in. Laurent watched his lover wander from cabinet to cabinet, throwing open the doors and muttering to himself. Food was scarce, prices were rising, and war was coming. Whatever tomorrow brought, though, he was sure he and Césaire would find a way through. He sighed, and reached for his satchel to pull out Fanny Hill again. Maybe some of this tongue-twisting English would come in handy. Somewhere.
"Ouah. Please, oh God no, this is not what I think it is," he heard Césaire swear, and he looked up. Césaire had thrown open the cabinet doors to shelves filled with … columns … of something. He slid off the bed and padded over across the cool terrazzo, his eyes widening as he realized what the columns were.
"They're even labeled," Césaire said in disbelief. "Look, this one belonged to a vicomte." He hefted the plaster cock up to show the letters etched under the balls. "The fucking aristos made plaster casts of their own cocks."
Laurent took it from him and appraised it with a critical eye. This one was thick with an unappealingly bulging vein on one side. "This one's got air bubbles. Aristos can't even make a proper cock." He thought about it for a few seconds. "Do you think we could get a collector or a curiosity shop to pay for them? I would think that a vicomte's cock would be worth more than a few sous, but bread's bread."
Césaire scratched his cheek, and shrugged. "We could try. Let's just make sure this never gets back to Robespierre. Or Danton." He turned back to the cabinets. "Now, help me open the rest of these, and let's hope we don't find any more party favors the aristos left us."
Paris
17 April 1792
Tuesday, again
The lighting wasn't the best, but someone had shattered the large picture window of Café Procope. Again. So the owners had placed boards over it, and in so doing, plunged their corner into gloom.
Laurent scribbled away on a piece of yellowed paper, copying German nouns to their French equivalents. Les Allemande couldn't even get the genders of some of their nouns correct. What was feminine in French was masculine in German, and vice versa.
Across from him, Césaire's own books and papers sprawled over the rest of their little café table. He'd somehow managed to get his hands on a book of Eastern philosophy, something called the Tao Te Ching. It'd been translated to Greek, and now he was copying into French. His journal was crammed with little scraps of knowledge from the lands far across on the other side of the world.
Laurent could translate the Greek for him when he hit a snag, but the original script was beyond his knowledge. His peculiar gift required him to listen to people speak the language first, which he absorbed with terrifying speed. And then, only then, if he could connect the sounds to written text, could he begin to parse it. Sometimes that took months. Inconveniently, Paris was bereft of anyone who spoke Chinese.
Outside, a crowd started singing "Ça Ira" again while also yelling "Á la lanterne." Someone yelled, and there was a crash of whinnying horses, more shouts, and thuds that were probably truncheons hitting people.
Inside, the coffee was burnt. People were shouting in here too, with debates flying between men in accents flavored with Parisian gloss, to the rougher dialects of Provençal, Breton, Alsatian. Somewhere, a lone voice carrying the stretched vowels of Niçard argued about the Assembly's latest posturing towards Austria.
"Inkwell's almost out again," Césaire sighed, picking up the inkwell on the table the two of them had been sharing and peering into it as if it'd betrayed him. "Think we have enough aristococks to barter for some more?"
"I'd rather not waste them," Laurent responded matter-of-factly, not looking up from his German homework. He could probably run rings around his language professor, but appearances had to be kept, and a refresher never hurt. "Charcoal and water isn't ideal, but I think we can get by for now."
They'd scraped together enough for a carafe of coffee, and he refilled Césaire's cup now. Briefly, Laurent's hand brushed over Césaire's, their eyes meeting each other's across the table. Césaire acknowledged the touch with a smirk and a knowing twinkle in his eyes. It wasn't much, but it was all they were allowed.
"I got a letter from my parents," Césaire said, swapping to their shared Arpitan, which granted them a modicum of privacy in this crowded space. In the street outside, wood and glass shattered. "They want me to come home for a few months. Why don't you come with me? Lyon isn't that far, you know. Just down the road from Roanne. We can take a river barge from Orléans. You can check in on your family too."
Now it was Laurent's turn to sigh. Last time he'd gotten into an argument with one of his brothers over the length of his hair, and his mother was still trying to get him interested in one of the Suchet cousins. The girl was his own age, and she seemed sweet enough, but too bourgeoisie for his taste. Still though ….
His eyes glittered as he thought about it some more, his cheek resting in his hand. "Ouais, I think I will. It's, what, two days to Orléans, another week by barge to Roanne? Better than Paris in the summer."
A loud roar in another corner of the café caught their attention. Césaire made a small noise of disdain. "Hébert's holding court again."
It was Laurent's turn to smirk. "You should tell him your line about how you think a pigeon shat all over his pamphlet, and then he just connected a line between the droppings to decide what to print."
"And have him steal that from me? Non." Césaire laughed and drank his bad coffee. "Desmoulins is supposed to be in here, I heard. I hope they have a slap fight." He was practically vibrating, and Laurent suspected it wasn't from the coffee.
"Césaire?"
"What?"
Laurent peered at him suspiciously. "Did you do something?"
"Pffft, me?" Césaire said slyly. "Of course not. I might have been inspired, however."
He was about to ask Césaire if this inspiration was something that would get them both hauled before a tribunal, when the door from the street exploded open.
Ah, of course, Laurent clocked it immediately. Camille Desmoulins never passed up the opportunity for a dramatic entrance. The man was three highly-literate badgers disguised in a frock coat and topped off with a crooked cravat. Half the crowd in the café promptly groaned while the other half leaned in.
He held his breath, watching Desmoulins scanning the crowd, his face showing a flicker of distaste at spotting Hébert watching. Hébert lifted his coffee cup in the mockery of a toast.
Césaire sipped his coffee.
"Get down from there!" the café's proprietor shouted, like he did every time Desmoulins launched himself onto one of the tables. Like every time, Desmoulins ignored him.
"Citizens!" Desmoulins shouted like he was standing outside. He glanced at the pamphlet he carried with him. "I bring you words that will stiffen your resolve, penetrate your apathy, and leave tyranny gasping for breath!"
Heads around the café turned at that. Laurent blinked. Stiffen? Penetrate?
Desmoulins continued, "The old regime lies spread and vulnerable, its perfumed guards disarmed, its golden gates flung wide — and shall we not enter?" Laurent saw a flash of panic across the other man's face as he read off the pamphlet, but he squared his shoulders and carried on, voice booming. "Shall we not take our righteous pleasure in the tender crevice of sovereignty, where for too long only kings have thrust their scepters?"
"Oh my god," Laurent whispered, feeling his cheeks heat. He wanted to crawl under the café table. Césaire affected the poise of a man listening to a clerical sermon.
"No! The crown has been moist with privilege for too many years, while the rest of us have been denied the warm embrace of justice’s folds! The monarchy is not inviolate. It is not sacred. It is not even firm!" Desmoulins preached with absolute conviction, because it was too late to back out now. It was too late the moment he kicked the door open to Café Procope. "It is flaccid with corruption, hanging limp in the cold air of reason, trembling at the approach of the people’s stiff resolve!"
The café had gone still, silent as a crypt. Laurent risked a glance at Hébert, surrounded by his fawning supporters. Hébert's expression was stony.
Laurent begged a God he didn't quite believe in that Desmoulins would finally break off and stop embarrassing himself. He side-eyed Césaire, wondering what drove him cause Desmoulins to self-detonate in public in the most spectacular way possible? They needed to talk.
There was no God. Desmoulins kept going. "For too long, we have been denied entry. For too long, our freedom has rubbed uselessly against the silk-lined barricades of aristocratic desire."
"Today, we enter. Today, we erupt. Today, liberty receives us all, unashamed, uncloaked, and slick with the sweat of righteous exertion! Let the moans of freedom echo from every boudoir of power!”
Desmoulins finished with a flourish. The only sound that could be heard was the crowd outside chanting for bread.
Then someone started clapping. Slowly at first, and then more and more, until the rafters of Café Procope shook with applause and shouts and "Encore! Encore!"
Césaire leaned in and whispered into Laurent's ear, and poked him in the arm. "Look at Hébert. Look! He's so pissed off now. He never gets that kind of applause." Laurent risked a look, and indeed, Hébert wore the expression of a man who'd just bitten to a cake only to find it was filled with rotten vegetables.
"Césaire," Laurent hissed at him in exasperation.
"Desmoulins never checks his drafts after he writes them," Césaire said, sitting back in his chair with a smug grin. "And I have that lovely Fanny Hill to thank as a muse."
Laurent winced, pinching the bridge of his nose with an exhale. "I don't know whether I should kick you out onto the street, or admire how genius that was. Now Hébert's going to be lobbing dicks at Desmoulins in Père Duchesne for the next week." A snicker of relief finally escaped him, turning into full-body laughs that left him teary-eyed.
"You wouldn't have me any other way," Césaire said, slipping back into Arpitan with a wide smile. "You can thank me later." In bed.
"How much later?" Laurent asked, his tone arch. "Let me remind you that our classes start early tomorrow. So, if you want me to show you my gratitude, we should probably get started now."
"Then we shouldn't wait." Césaire winked, and started shoving their books and papers into his satchel and Laurent followed suit, not caring if everything was out of order. That could wait.
They slipped outside into the riot, and past the angry mob. Césaire slipped his arm into Laurent's as they walked back to their garret in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, thinking of the summer to come.
Les petits Jacobins maudits had struck again, but this time no one was for the wiser.