Monstrous Design

by Kat Dunn

  ‘Anything else you can’t tell?’ asked Edward.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘I put everything in my letters,’ said James. ‘I didn’t find the girl. I’ve already told Wickham I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.’

  Edward considered him for a moment. ‘You went to see your fiancée, didn’t you? Is that what took you so long?’

  James blushed, but said nothing. Camille was a problem he didn’t want to think about. He had known she wouldn’t let his betrayal slide, but once he proved Olympe’s powers to his father Camille could play whatever silly games she liked. He would have already won.

  ‘I’m not sure I see why you would,’ said Edward. ‘Quite plain, really.’

  The urge to snap at him, to defend Camille, rose, but James caught himself. She wasn’t his to defend any more. Camille would never forgive him; Edward wouldn’t either, when he discovered the truth, and it was inevitable he would. But if that happened now, everything would be lost; he’d tell Wickham, they’d take Olympe and every awful thing James had done would be for nothing.

  He joined Edward in the act of nonchalance, sitting at a card table and pulling out a tin of snuff. ‘I ran into her, yes. Didn’t expect her to follow me back to England like a love-sick puppy.’

  ‘Don’t be cruel, James, it doesn’t suit you.’

  It didn’t, did it? That’s what everyone thought of him: nice. Not clever, not strong, not sharp. He didn’t want to be nice. He wanted to be someone.

  ‘Look, she’s here now but it will be easy enough to keep her busy with Hennie, it needn’t get in the way of the work. Wickham says he wants to try again, with these new ideas in place.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re still interested?’

  ‘Of course I am—’

  Edward carried on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Only, you’re a terrible liar, James. Those letters – vague to the point of obfuscation. You’re hiding something. Perhaps it’s just this fiancée, but I can’t shake the thought it might be something else.’ He leaned forward, an intensity burning in his eyes. ‘I don’t have any family, James, I don’t have a fiancée or a country house or anything other than my own wits. Wickham, the work, you – that is all I have.’

  The room was too quiet. James’s thoughts too loud. ‘I know, Ed. I know,’ he said.

  They were both all in, but they’d chosen different places to lay their bets.

  Edward’s voice softened. ‘We were like brothers, once.’

  ‘We still are.’

  ‘Are we? I’ll ask you again. Is there something you aren’t telling me?’

  Sweat prickled under James’s arms and his stomach cramped with nerves. ‘There is nothing. You are mistaken.’

  Those intense eyes fixed him in place like a pin through a butterfly. Then Edward stood abruptly. ‘You can’t play both sides at the same time. Whatever it is you are doing, decide quickly.’ He stalked out of the room, pausing on the threshold to look back. ‘Before we decide for you.’

  6

  Henley House

  Soft candlelight flickered in the dining room, illuminating the party that had expanded considerably since Camille’s arrival. It hadn’t taken long for word to get out that two genuine French refugees from the Terror had arrived in Henley-upon-Thames, and before they knew it half the local gentry had invited themselves to dinner and Lady Harford was in a flap about how to stretch a leg of mutton among thirteen people.

  As carriage after carriage arrived, disgorging more nosy neighbours, Camille’s heart sank. A healthy audience for her performance as a pitiful orphan fleeing bloodshed was one thing, an entire company of onlookers was quite another. She could feel the focus slipping from her. In a haze of coal and pipe smoke, her lungs felt too tight, as though she could never fully catch her breath. She needed Ada. Ada had brought out the best in her; attempting this alone could bring out the worst.

  The plan was only half in place. Camille had been welcomed into their home – now she needed to back James into a corner and force him to reveal Olympe’s location. It was going to be bloody difficult to do that stuck at the far end of a table stuffed with drunken landed gentry. Every time Camille caught a glimpse of his golden head amid the shimmering candle flames, dishes of roast beef, mutton, mackerel with herbs, beetroot and spinach that had been conjured up to sate Lady Harford’s panic, she felt the vast distance that split them.

  As she watched James, she realised someone was watching her too; Lord Harford trained an assessing gaze at her across the table. She offered a small smile but he didn’t return it. They had spoken once, briefly, in the drawing room waiting to go down to dinner, where he’d echoed his wife’s welcome in tones that rang hollow. Perhaps he was thinking about his affair with her mother – Camille certainly was. Did he know it had led to her death?

  She pushed an over-cooked carrot across her plate. As much as she wanted to confront him about it, she couldn’t lose sight of why she was here. She was leader of the Bataillon des Morts, and she had a job to do.

  The local vicar and his wife, a Mr and Mrs Banbury, had been the first to arrive uninvited, to offer spiritual succour to the poor afflicted young people. Soon after followed Lord Beauchamp, a baronet from a few villages over, his wife in a towering wig, and her spinster sister in no wig at all. Finally the party had been completed by a Mr Penge, a lawyer with chambers in Henley itself, who had been due to visit Lord Harford on other business anyway, and considered it prudent to stay in order to get a first-hand account of the state of the world across the Channel and expropriate a large quantity of claret from Lord Harford’s cellar. James’s friend Edward had departed before Camille had emerged from being fitted in a spare outfit of Hennie’s. That had only piqued her curiosity further.

  Al blossomed under the attention, laying on an accent thick enough to cut with a knife. The party fell into rapt silence as he embroidered the narrative of their passage from Paris to England, inventing Revolutionary forces set at dramatically satisfying points along the way ready to thwart their desperate escape.

  ‘What a breathless tale.’ Lord Harford spoke softly. ‘It could almost come out of The Morning Post.’

  He was still watching Camille closely.

  Ah. Perhaps he was thinking about something else.

  ‘Indeed, sir, we live in extraordinary times.’

  ‘You must be entirely relieved to have reached a bastion of civility once more,’ said Mr Banbury over his wine. ‘England stands ready to protect those in need, sir, and it always will.’

  Al nodded somberly. ‘Alors, oui, I am – ’ow you say – so terribly grateful for la gentillesse – the kindness – your great country has shown me, when my own country rejects me completement. C’est tragique, la belle France reduced to a brawling mob.’

  Camille gave him another surreptitious kick under the table.

  Al looked at her sadly. ‘Vraiment, I think that ma pauvre Camille has suffered so much more than I, she has quite lost her sense of humour.’

  ‘Oh, Camille never had a sense of humour, did she, James?’ said Hennie, chewing a piece of mutton. ‘If she ever cracks a joke, that’s when we’ll know she’s really lost it.’

  ‘Henrietta,’ admonished Lady Harford. ‘A lady does not speak with a full mouth. Do not make me reconsider your readiness to join the adults at the dining table.’

  ‘Sorry, Mother.’

  Camille could barely stomach the rich food. It was surreal to see so much luxury spread across the table – fistfuls of candles, fragile china, mounding heaps of food. And the people, ruddy-cheeked, in lace and silk, old-fashioned wigs and glittering jewels. The Revolution would have chewed them all up and spat them out without breaking a sweat.

  Dinner drew to a close, and the women left for the drawing room while the men stayed at the table for port and cigars. Camille fidgeted through two rounds of tea and mind-numbing small talk, cursing the stupid English tradition, until finally the men rejoined
them. Thankfully, the vicar and his wife had taken themselves off home, so the room grew a little quieter.

  Before Camille could buttonhole Al to report back, Hennie drew her and James to sit with Lady Harford.

  ‘I have been thinking about it all day and Phil has too so we absolutely must know: Camille, will you and James still marry?’

  James choked on the glass of port he’d brought with him. All coherent thought fell out of Camille’s head like the trapdoor opening under the gallows: a short, sharp drop and she was entirely gone, dangling at the end of the idea.

  Marriage.

  Then she struck a second thought, toes finding purchase on the ground so she could breathe.

  Wedding.

  She needed James distracted, off-kilter. Prone to mistakes.

  This could work nicely.

  Hennie was still talking. ‘I think I would look very well in lavender and it would be a lovely flower to decorate the church with—’ She caught up with herself and blushed. ‘Though I suppose you’ll need some time to recover.’

  Lady Harford had tears in her eyes again. ‘Oh, but you must, Camille. Once we have you as legally part of the family you will be safe. No one can ever force you back into that dangerous, awful place Paris has become.’

  Camille looked down, as if overwhelmed by emotion. ‘Since Maman and Papa were … since they died, I have been so perfectly alone. I could not dare let myself hope to ever be among family again. Now that I am, my feelings towards James remain the same, but I understand if things have changed in my absence…’

  They all turned to look at James expectantly. He stared back, expression fixed. For a moment, Camille wondered if he would have the guts to reject her in front of everyone. The silence stretched out too long, then he spoke, voice little above a whisper.

  ‘No. Nothing has changed.’

  ‘Oh, James, that’s not very romantic. Maman, make him be nicer to Camille.’

  ‘Look, Hen, maybe we can talk about this later—’ he said.

  ‘Of course, we must discuss details when Camille has slept,’ said Lady Harford. ‘I will see you safe. It is the very least I owe the memory of your dear parents.’

  Camille leaned back in her chair, forcing a weak smile to her lips. Inside, she felt cold. All she could think of was Ada. This might fit the plan, but it came at a price and now she wasn’t sure she wanted to pay it.

  Oh god, what had she done?

  7

  A Slum Near Rue St Denis

  Ada tracked the snatchers’ cart from the Right Bank, past Les Halles market and over the river as they wound further and further south. It moved slowly, drawn by a tired-looking dray that picked its way wearily though the night-time streets. She kept as close as she dared, slipping noiselessly from doorway to alley to keep out of sight. They stopped once to add another body to the pile – a middle-aged woman who had been hit by a mail coach and left for dead. Ada watched the men heft the body on top of Guil, bile rising in her throat.

  God, she hoped this gamble was worth it.

  Across Paris she could see the rot spreading. Inflation and disease boiled out of control. Assignat notes were worth more for the paper they were printed on and the poor of Paris died in droves – Robespierre might have fixed the price of bread, but even the lowest price was too high when you had nothing.

  Instability had rippled from the competing centres of government, the National Convention, the Paris Commune and the Committee of Public Safety, after the Festival of the Supreme Being; Robespierre had hardly been seen since his failed attempt to cement his authority and rumours abounded. The Law of 22 Prairial that had sent Al to the guillotine had made a capital offence of so many things that the gutters flowed with blood, and even the mob grew tired of executions. The war with Austria was over, soldiers with nowhere to go flooded into the city, and people had begun to question whether terror should still be the order of the day – or if it ever should have been. What was the point in their new republic if more people died at home than in war?

  Ada heard the news day after day as she sat at her father’s breakfast table, sneaking the papers after he was done with them. She wanted the Terror over as much as the next person, but she was afraid of what would follow; a kinder revolution seemed no closer. Robespierre had retreated further into dictatorship, losing what scant support he had remaining, and anyone else with half a plan had already lost their heads to Madame La Guillotine. Once his grip on power failed, what stood between the people and the return of everything they had fought against? Monarchy, subjugation, starvation, all waited in the wings.

  In that void, it would only be a matter of time before the duc struck.

  Ada’s biggest fear was that by splitting the battalion, they had doomed themselves. Their strength was together. Divided, she felt lost. Camille should have been the one to stay in Paris. She was the one who could execute a plan amid chaos.

  Still, Ada had to try. So she’d gone back to the last reliable way they’d found to locate the duc: dead bodies.

  They had discovered his abbey hideout before because Léon had told them about deliveries of cadavers. With the rise in executions the medical schools had no end of headless corpses, so the body snatchers had been put out of work. Only the duc would need intact bodies now; the last place left where the snatchers could still get good money. Léon hadn’t exactly been delighted to see the battalion again, but he had agreed to help.

  It was a bloody awful plan, but it was the only plan they had.

  The weight of Camille’s expectations rested at the back of Ada’s mind. Camille had trusted her with this. She couldn’t let her down.

  As the first pale grey hints of dawn stretched across the sky from the east, the cart lumbered past the Luxembourg, the deconsecrated monasteries of the Carmelites and Capuchins and the monumental Val-de-Grâce just barely preserved. Then through the city gates and into the Faubourg St Jacques where, beyond the mounded earth embankments of the new city walls, Paris rapidly faded into farmland. At the Observatory they turned sharply right.

  Ada flattened herself against a wall as the carriage rumbled to a halt outside an unassuming house with a shabby frontage and a dirty yard wrapping around the side.

  The street was silent. It was just her and the snatchers.

  And whoever was inside that building.

  The plaster might have been flaking, but the shutters had been newly restored, and candles burned in the windows. There was money here. The blond man rapped his knuckles on a side gate, and a servant opened it wide enough to allow the cart through. The gate was locked behind them.

  Ada swore.

  She was no use to Guil stuck outside.

  Keeping flush to the buildings, she followed the high wall that bordered the yard until she found what she was looking for: a gnarled tree that stretched a branch over it. Half the gardens out here had been planted as orchards long in the past, and now fruit trees made their home wherever they saw fit.

  Tucking her skirts into her belt, she clambered onto the branch that overhung the duc’s yard, then dropped onto the packed dirt, skinning her knee in the process. The yard was half-earth, half-straggling remains of a grove of apple trees. Stables stood at the far end, several horses closed in for the night, and a small carriage tucked under the roof.

  The body snatchers had pulled up to the servants’ entrance and waited impatiently.

  Ada hunkered down behind the tree trunk and held her breath.

  The wait dragged on, and for a tense moment, she thought they might give up and leave, before the sound of a key in the lock broke the silence.

  The door eased open.

  A tall, smartly dressed man with closely cropped grey hair and piercing blue eyes stepped outside.

  They had found the duc.

  8

  The Drawing Room, Henley House

  Lady Harford waved her husband over to inform him of the wedding news, which he took coolly, another assessing eye cast over her. Camille wondered if h
e could smell the revolutionary on her somehow. Offering their congratulations, the Beauchamps and the lawyer Penge took their leave, and the family – plus Camille and Al – were alone. Hennie pulled James in to make up a four for a game of whist, so Camille requested Al join her to take a turn about the room.

  ‘What did he say?’ Camille hooked her arm through his and steered him towards the outskirts of the room. It was large enough to contain various arrangements of sofas, card tables and writing desks. The walls were hung with a silvery lilac paper that perfectly matched the upholstery and pale, glossy wood.

  ‘What did who say?’ said Al.

  ‘James, you fool, who else?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not much. Sank several glasses of port and stared into the middle distance like a brooding hero in some novel. I can understand what you saw in him, if you like that sort of thing.’

  Camille ignored the comment. ‘He’s rattled. Good.’

  ‘Your dramatic entrance was, in fact, dramatic. But why are we talking about that when, unless I am very much mistaken, you have you arranged for yourself to be married at the earliest convenience? Do you think Ada will mind having three people in your relationship?’

  She pinched his arm. ‘Stop it. You know it’s a good idea. If they think I’m nothing but a helpless girl fixated on some romantic notion of marriage, then they’re not going to notice anything else.’

  He narrowed his eyes. ‘Hmmm. Almost convincing, but a little shaky on the dismount. Looked to me as if you were backed into a corner.’

  ‘I can handle it.’

  ‘Don’t get in a huff, you know I’m on board. Wagon hitched firmly to your star. Anyway, it’s quite fun watching you put on a pretty dress and pretend to be a girl.’