Monstrous Design

by Kat Dunn

  Everything came into sharp focus with a rush, the threat in Wickham’s words writ large. A week ago, James might have dismissed it as posturing, but not now. Now, he had seen what Wickham was capable of.

  ‘Stop this. My father isn’t competing with you. He hasn’t seen the girl. He thinks electricity is a fad. You’re not competing with anyone, so you can leave him alone.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘I swear on my life.’

  Wickham hesitated on the opposite curb. ‘Oh, well, then. All right. I yield.’

  James blinked. ‘Really?’

  Wickham laughed. ‘No, James. You’re so good at telling lies I thought you might at least be able to spot one. Not nice to be taken for a fool, is it?’

  ‘I wasn’t—’

  ‘I don’t care. You’ve chosen your side, and now you must live with the result. You will not get in my way again. Any of you.’ Wickham looked at the house, then back at James and smiled. ‘There are so many of you. You cannot keep your eye on them all at once.’

  James flew forward, driven by guilt and anger.

  Hennie, his mother, his father, Camille – all in Wickham’s sights because of James’s choices.

  ‘Don’t you dare threaten my family—’

  A scream, the crash of hooves. James flung himself back just in time to dodge the speeding carriage that had come hurtling round the corner. The driver was yelling at him, horses bucking and rearing in their harnesses. In a single breathless, terrifying second, he saw himself take Edward’s place on the operating table. Wickham’s next experiment.

  He landed on the pavement hard, light and shaky from shock. Someone climbed down from the cab to check on him, but he looked past them with mounting dread.

  Wickham was gone.

  11

  The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

  The boat bumped up against the Vauxhall stairs, nestling among countless other ferries that brought people from across the city to this small, glamorous spot on the south bank of the Thames. Camille took Al’s hand as they stepped onto the wharf, craning up at the grand stuccoed entrance to the pleasure gardens. They passed between ornately clipped hedges, and then spilled out into the riotous gardens.

  On both sides were long curved stretches of chinoiserie pavilions and draped cloth, set for suppers, drinking, tea, illicit liaisons and public spectacle. At the centre was a huge circular building many storeys high, ringed by balconies like tiers of a cake; an orchestra played on the central level, and on the others drunken revellers hung over the edges. Around it a dance floor took up a huge space, countless couples swirling together, and along the fringes were acrobats, jugglers, sword-eaters and strongmen. Beyond, the gardens disappeared into a dense forest, punctuated by follies and ruins, pavilions and benches, and lit by torches as the summer nights grew shorter.

  Camille clung to Al’s arm. The chaos of excess was overwhelming. A bloody riot or a violent crowd she knew how to handle; this was too alien. All she felt was scorn at these naive, self-assured people, so confident that the world was safe, their lives happy, and all there was to life was celebration.

  As their party swept past a display of tightrope walkers and tumblers, the hair prickled at the back of her neck with the sensation of being watched. She shook it off. She was worried about too many things: Ada and Guil in Paris, Lord Harford’s suspicion, the ‘trouble’ James had come to her about. Her mind was full, that was all. No use jumping at shadows.

  ‘What shall we do first?’ Hennie was practically bouncing, darting back and forth between them. ‘There’s the Turkish tent or the rotunda and fireworks soon, and – oh, look! Look! Balloon rides!’ She spun back to her mother. ‘We must go, I insist upon it.’

  Camille tensed at the thought of a hot-air balloon. She had only seen one once, back at the start of the job to rescue Olympe when she had sent Ada up in it to cause a distraction. It had ended badly, with Ada crashing into the very prison they’d been trying to break into.

  Lady Harford watched her beaming daughter with delight. ‘Of course. We wouldn’t want you young people missing out.’

  It was only a short wait at the balloon ascent site, and soon they were being ushered into the basket, Molly helping Lady Harford the few steps from Bath chair to bench inside.

  Camille felt queasy. ‘I – would rather not.’

  Al patted her hand. ‘All right, old thing. I’ll stay on terra firma with you.’

  Hennie and Phill hopped into the basket. ‘Spoilsports.’

  The balloon began to rise; Camille’s face upturned to follow it. Was there anything she could have done differently, back at the start of all this? If she’d known the truth about Olympe, would she have turned down the job? Could she have found another way to thwart the duc?

  She had sat on the fence between the Royalists and the Revolutionaries, thinking she could play both sides against each other, that she didn’t care what happened to the Revolution. Was that really true?

  The balloon crested the trees and she lost sight of it.

  She gripped Al’s arm and steered him away. ‘Let’s talk.’

  ‘About James?’ Al plucked a glass of champagne from a passing servant. The crowd swelled and rolled around them, laughter and shrieks punctuating the cacophony of music competing from every direction.

  ‘Yes. We’re so close to getting everything we came for and getting out of here I don’t want whatever mess he’s made getting in our way.’ She took a deep breath, despite the catch of her lungs. ‘But first, I owe you an apology for earlier. I was cruel.’

  He gave her an odd smile. ‘Apologies, dresses, crying. English Camille is strange.’

  In her flimsy gown and slippers, hair curled and pinned, it wasn’t just the pleasure gardens that felt alien. Her own body wasn’t hers any more. Al was right. English Camille was strange, and she wasn’t sure how well she liked her.

  ‘Maybe English Camille is trying to be a better friend.’

  ‘Surely a sign of the apocalypse.’

  ‘Ada said something to me once: that I’m hard on you because I recognise too much of myself in you. I think she’s right. You say and do all the things I want to but don’t let myself because I’m worried if I do everything will fall apart, and then I wind up angry and jealous because you do it and nothing does fall apart, so maybe I’m keeping such a tight rein on myself for nothing.’

  ‘Funny way to be my friend – to apologise, then tell me how much you don’t like me.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Let me try again. How are you? That’s what friends ask, right?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ He waved a hand. ‘Bored, hungry, cripplingly depressed. The usual.’

  ‘Won’t you be more bored if you leave the battalion?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. I will have a long, boring life ahead of me. I’m thrilled.’

  Reaching the depths of the gardens, they came across a hedge maze, well-tended and over six foot tall. A woman in an owl mask stood at the entrance taking pennies.

  ‘Risk getting lost with your sweetheart, sir?’ she called to Al. ‘It’s mighty quiet inside and no one knows what may go on.’

  Al looked mildly ill at the prospect of Camille being his sweetheart, but she wasn’t paying attention.

  She’d felt it again. That sense of being watched.

  Halting by the entrance, she scanned the crowd. Had James caught up with them?

  Only – no – a shadow darting across the corner of her vision. She spun, tracking its moments – but it was nothing. Just a trailing swag of fabric flapping from a branch.

  ‘Well? Shall we?’

  She startled. ‘What?’

  ‘Get lost for a bit?’ Al gestured to the maze.

  Camille looked for the balloon against the night sky, trying to judge whether it had begun its descent. As the last of the red-stained clouds faded and dusk fell, a prickle of stars began to wink to life.

  ‘Weren’t you just saying you were jealous of me for being an impuls
ive, feckless dandy? This is exactly the sort of ill thought-through, self-indulgent thing I would do, so I think it would be good for you.’

  ‘I’m not sure those were the words I used, but…’

  Al was already pressing a coin into the woman’s hand and she removed the ribbon barring the way. The maze was dense and dark, and entirely unknown.

  To hell with it.

  Camille stepped inside, and at once the noise of the gardens ebbed.

  It was cooler in here, the smell of loamy earth trading places with perfume and sweat, the gentle rustle of wind in the laurel hedges covering fiddles and organ music. They took the first two turns at random, following the sharp corners and dead ends until Camille had no idea where they had started.

  ‘What would it take for you to stay with us?’ she asked, as they paused at a fork in the path. Occasionally, they could hear voices through the leaves, giggles and the panting breath of other attendees wandering the labyrinth.

  ‘This isn’t about you offering me better terms,’ he replied. ‘The battalion made sense for me for a while, and now I’m not so sure it does.’

  ‘We need you.’

  ‘That’s sweet.’ He patted her hand. ‘But, no, you don’t.’

  ‘I’m not a charity, Al, I don’t keep people around out of the goodness of my heart. If I say we need you, we need you.’

  He laughed. ‘I think you’ll find you are a charity, my dear. Helping those in need? Never seeing a proper bloody pay cheque for it? Charity, through and through.’

  The maze was getting darker, the passages narrower; she was certain they must be nearing the centre. ‘We’re your family.’

  ‘My family is dead, Camille. It doesn’t matter how many people we save, they’ll still be dead, and your parents will be too. It’s about time you got that through your thick skull,’ he snapped, and for a moment she saw behind his mask of indolence and red wine. Saw the death of hope, the loss that hollowed him. The unravelling.

  She saw herself.

  Before she could speak, they ran headlong into one of the parties of revellers they had heard through the hedge-walls. Seven sheets to the wind and reeling like boats bobbing in a storm, they brought a moment of chaos, apologies, heels stepping on toes, skirts caught on branches, laughter and noise and chatter, and once Camille had disentangled herself Al was nowhere to be seen.

  Bloody typical. Things get difficult and off he runs. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and considered the path ahead and behind her. Which way had he gone? Was there any point following him? It was a maze, for god’s sake; what chance did she have of tracking him down? They could both find the exit and regroup.

  Camille strode on, making choices as best she could. There had to be an end. The party carried on here too, wilder and darker, beauty turned to horror. The sharp yapping of two lap dogs fighting. A man pissing noisily into a bottle, grunting and hunched against a hedge wall. A couple locked together in the shadows, like a many-limbed beast, a medical curiosity from the duc’s labs, the human form conjoined and distorted.

  Heat rose to her cheeks. And worse, a flash of longing: she missed Ada. They had never been apart so long.

  What if Ada didn’t miss her?

  A dark smudge broke the solid line of green hedge before her, and Camille found the exit. Or, rather, an exit. It was not the one they’d come in through. It was blocked by two planks, which she pushed out of the way to step into a dark, forest-like cluster of trees. Rose-strewn trellises blocked either side, so she couldn’t follow the edge of the maze back around to the front. There were only the trees, the distant sound of the river lapping its banks, and the moon above.

  Surely there would be another path back to the party? It would be better use of time to find that than risk the maze again. Camille walked into the trees.

  Her lungs were beginning to bother her, her breathing a little too shallow, that ghost of a fever hovering around her thoughts making them curl and twist and flit away from her grasp. The stars were so bright. A net of silver spread above her; she remembered the way Ada would take her hand and point to each constellation, explain the paths they took across the sky.

  All things had an end. Maybe even stars could die.

  Her thoughts stopped abruptly.

  She heard something.

  The crunch of footsteps behind her.

  She stopped, and the footsteps stopped too, a moment out of sync. Her heart began to race. The lights of the party were all but gone, even the maze had vanished from view.

  Camille gasped. Beneath her feet the ground was cold, her useless slippers so thin she felt every ridge and bump. She strode faster, hating the hitch in her chest, so fast her feet slipped on the gravel, her skirts tangling around her legs, and she tumbled into a clearing.

  Once more, the footsteps stopped a moment after hers.

  On the grass of the glade, she moved silently, scanning the trees. Her nerves alive with adrenaline as she listened, listened.

  But there was nothing. Only the distant sound of voices, and a cold breeze.

  At last, she relaxed, and rubbed her hands over her face.

  Stupid stupid stupid. Jumping at shadows. What happened to Camille of the Bataillon des Morts, who broke into prisons, jumped off buildings and stormed the guillotine scaffold?

  Pathetic.

  A scream went up from somewhere distant, the crowd enthralled by a fire-breather or a tumbler perhaps. Camille turned.

  And found herself face to face with a dead man.

  12

  Ada’s House, the Marais

  The spread in front of Ada was obscene.

  It was just dinner for two, her and her father, but the servants brought dish after dish – pats of glossy butter, a large round pie, steaming tureens of soup, and a whole side of salmon swimming in sauce. There was one sop to revolutionary solidarity in the loaf of tough, gritty pain d’égalité served alongside. They sat at either end of the table, dishes and bottles and jugs a barrier between them. It was late; with only a few clusters of candles on the table, the rest of the room was thrown into shadow. Ada picked at her food in a silence, punctuated by the clatter of cutlery on plates, the ring of glassware.

  What was Camille doing right now? Had she found James? Ada let herself entertain the fantasy for a moment that Camille had already succeeded in rescuing Olympe and her real family were on their way back to her, that they would stand side by side and face the duc together. Instead of Ada alone, stumbling into the unknown.

  ‘How was it today?’ her father asked between spooning sauce over his fish. ‘What little adventures did you get up to? How were your pupils?’

  The lie Ada had told came back to her and she only stumbled for a moment. ‘Quite well. They took to the piano nicely and will make good players with some study.’

  ‘I thought you were tutoring English composition?’

  ‘Oh. Right. They asked for a little music too.’

  Ada thought about what she’d been doing instead, the research notes she had written up, the study she had made of the duc’s work.

  ‘Have you given any thought to what you will do after? I haven’t seen that charming young man of yours around recently. I found myself wondering what his intentions were…’

  She put down her fork. He really didn’t understand her. Even this fictional tutoring was only a distraction from her real job of marriage.

  ‘I thought I might enquire at the university about sitting in on lectures. I understand they are considering admitting female students on an individual basis, though they are not yet intending to grant any degrees.’

  Unbidden, the memory of the duc came to her mind, the words he’d used: talent, invaluable.

  Her father laughed, awkwardly. Poured himself more wine. ‘Come, come. Perhaps a lecture or two might make interesting entertainment now, but what of your poor beau? When you marry, you will be far too busy running your own household.’

  The thought of Guil sent another flash of
guilt through her. Here she was, comfortable at home, pursuing her passions in the name of doing the battalion’s work. And where was he? Courting danger on his own and wearing a uniform that only brought back shame. She shouldn’t be enjoying this mission, especially not her time with the duc.

  And yet, at times, she was.

  She took up her cutlery again, bowing her head as she cut her food into bite-sized morsels. ‘I would hope that whoever I chose to spend the rest of my life with would understand my passions and want me to live in a way that made me happy.’

  ‘Yes. Well. Within the bounds of what is appropriate.’

  ‘And who decides what’s appropriate?’

  Before he could reply, the door opened and the footmen brought in the next service, a large stew put in pride of place in the centre of the table.

  Ada let the conversation take a more civil turn. Her father might be frustrating and unable to see beyond the end of his nose, but she knew he did care for her, in his own way.

  It was only a shame that he didn’t understand her.

  She found herself longing suddenly to be back at the duc’s house, away from this false propriety and family obligation. She wanted the pen in her hand, the words in front of her full of possibility and challenge, instead of this suffocating tomb.

  Her father had started some story about the printing rooms that day and Ada tuned him out, making the right noises whenever he paused. Despite herself, she was hungry, so she reached to serve herself a portion of stew. Her fingers closed around the ladle and she yelped. A searing heat met her palm; she pulled back, upending the spoon from the pot and sending a splatter of stew across the tablecloth.

  Her father was at her side in a flash, servants dashing for a cold compress, a poultice, another mopping the spill, another at her side offering water. Her father crouched next to her and unpeeled her fingers one by one, until he could see the angry red weal across her skin. He drew in a sharp breath.