Monstrous Design

by Kat Dunn

  Al refilled his glass and clutched it between two white-knuckled hands. ‘So. What the bloody hell was all that?’

  ‘I … don’t quite know myself.’ Camille recounted her meeting with Edward, his resurrection and his suspicion that she and James were working together to usurp their research.

  ‘They resurrected him?’ Al looked queasy.

  ‘By all rights he should have been dead. You didn’t see him under the carriage.’

  ‘Thanks, I don’t need more imagery. He already looked … gone off.’

  ‘No one has ever survived death like that before, who’s to say what’s normal?’

  ‘No offence to Ada,’ said Al, ‘but so far scientists seem an absolute bag of dicks.’

  Camille held the glass to her mouth but didn’t drink. ‘I don’t know if it’s a miracle or a nightmare.’

  ‘So the duc has an English rival in this Wickham. They must be working on the same sort of research, or why else would they have taken Olympe?’

  The words ‘eliminate the competition’ crossed her mind but she didn’t voice them. ‘They took James too. This must be the trouble he wanted help with.’

  She thought of the flash of red she’d seen on James’s arm. He’d been hurt, Wickham had threatened to kill him. Maybe he already had – no, no, she couldn’t let herself think like that. Until proven otherwise, James was alive.

  She was still so angry with him, but the thought of him dead was like a cold stone weighing her down. One by one, she was losing everyone she had left. Maybe she really would end up like Lord Harford, alone, surveying the wreckage of her past.

  The fireworks had finished and the crowd was dispersing from the viewing area, pouring into the supper boxes and dance floor, wrapped in silk and feathers and lace, chattering and laughing, oblivious to the drama that had taken place so close by.

  Al rolled his shoulders. ‘All right, stop moping. The way I see it, nothing has really changed. The job is still the same: find Olympe. Only now we’re up against someone a bit scarier than your pathetic ex-fiancé. Two people – this Wickham, along with that chap killed by the carriage, but who seems to have shaken it off all right. I suppose there’s James too – but it didn’t exactly look like he was on their side. It’s two against two, at worst. I don’t mind those odds.’

  He was right, they’d faced worse – though Edward seemed unaffected by Olympe’s powers and Camille didn’t know what to make of that.

  ‘You’re right. The plan is still the plan.’ She rested her head on her arms and shut her eyes against all the awful things that would not stop coming. She felt so impossibly bone weary. ‘Al. Tell me it’s going to be okay.’

  ‘It’s going to be okay.’

  ‘Liar,’ she mumbled.

  He gave her a soulful look. ‘I have never uttered a lie in my life, I will not start now.’

  Before Camille could say anything else, Hennie appeared from out of the crowd, bouncing towards them.

  ‘Maman, I found them! The beastly things have started eating without us.’

  Phil followed Hennie, pushing Lady Harford’s Bath chair. Lady Harford clasped a hand to her chest. ‘Camille! You frightened us, disappearing like that. I worried you could have been hurt!’ Hennie stopped, looking at the mud and leaves clinging to the hem of her dress and frowned. ‘What happened to you?’

  But before they could answer, the waiter arrived again and seats were rearranged to accommodate the Bath chair, along with more food and drink.

  ‘Where is James?’ asked Lady Harford. ‘He promised me he would not miss this evening, and yet I have seen him for only five minutes!’

  Camille and Al exchanged a look. ‘We saw him – he gave his apologies. He had to go.’ It sounded unconvincing but she was too tired to think of anything better.

  Lady Harford seemed to accept it easily enough, tutting about children neglecting their parents, and soon they were distracted by their meal and Hennie and Phil’s breathless stories of the balloon ascent and the contortionist and the quadrille that had gone so fast Hennie had nearly been sick.

  As they left the gardens, Camille paused.

  Looking back at faux stucco buildings, the dancers, the lanterns, the life and the excess, she felt the spasm of a cough building. The tightness in her chest. The fever lighting her skin.

  Dark things lurked behind the lights and laughter. They left, trailing the stench of rot.

  2

  Ada’s House, the Marais

  10 Thermidor

  28 July

  Ada woke early, sweaty and tangled in her sheets. Her hand throbbed like a heartbeat, an exquisite point of pain that wiped her mind blank.

  Her maid arrived to dress her, bringing a tray of breakfast. As she sipped at her coffee, her burn was cleaned and redressed. She observed the puckered, shiny skin rising in a bubble in the shape of the ladle where it had nestled in her palm.

  The night before came back to her slowly. The shouting crowd. The exultation.

  Robespierre has been arrested! The Terror is over!

  Quiet dread crept in.

  If Robespierre was gone, who next? What would become of the Revolution?

  Paris was raw and split open, like a wound not yet scabbed over. Every tussle, every blow would break its fragile skin open again, and the city would bleed.

  Her father peered around her door as her maid carried out a bowl of soiled water.

  ‘How’s the patient today?’

  ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘Are you sure you should be up?’

  Ada smiled placidly, held her neatly bandaged hand for him to inspect. ‘Why, I’ve had worse from tending fires.’

  He took her hand, face drawn tight in concern. Then seemed satisfied. Pressed his hand against her cheek. ‘My angel. Such a good girl.’

  It was as if their conversation the night before had never happened. Her father was so good at fooling himself.

  ‘Your gentleman caller is downstairs,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t keep him waiting, you string that poor boy along too much as it is.’

  ‘In a moment, Papa.’

  He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then left her to finish her toilette.

  Her outfit was already chosen. The reliable grey pelisse over a refined yet sensible dress. On her dressing table lay her tricolore cockade. She had pinned it to her breast every day since – for as long as she could remember. Should she wear it today? Ada thought of the crowd the night before, the glittering hunger in their eyes. The Terror is over.

  Perhaps – yes. But carefully.

  Ada pinned it to her chest, where it could be tucked under her pelisse if required.

  Alight with nerves, she went to leave her room and without thinking, she closed her hand around the door handle. She fell back, nauseous with slicing pain. When it receded, she took the glass of laudanum from the night before and drained it.

  She could not afford to show weakness today.

  In the parlour, Guil was in lively conversation with her father. He was a better actor than she gave him credit for; seeing him now, there were only the smallest tells betraying the state he was in after seeing Jean-Baptiste. He spoke lightly, but Ada could see his hands knotted behind his back, the tap of his foot on the floor.

  She cleared her throat to announce her arrival.

  ‘Ah, good morning, citoyenne.’ Guil kissed her hand.

  ‘Good morning.’

  She was grateful to see him. He hadn’t abandoned her, however much she had pushed him away. However much he was hurting.

  Her father grew sombre. ‘What news we wake up to this morning. A different world to the one we left last night. Robespierre is no more.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Ada hooked her hand through Guil’s arm and led him towards the door. She couldn’t stand hearing her father give forth on the Revolution. Not now. ‘We must be going, I don’t want to be late.’

  On the street outside, the carriage was waiting. Guil opened the door and held out his hand to
help her up.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Ada nursed her burned hand, running a thumb over the bandage. Then she pulled out a pair of thin cotton gloves from her pocket and put them on.

  Show no weakness.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  The carriage crossed the city and outside the windows, Ada watched crowds pull down notices from the Paris Commune, from the Committee of Public Safety. A rotting head was paraded on a spike. In a square, a well-heeled mob turned on a band of sans-culottes. All around, rumours swirled. Had Robespierre tried to shoot himself before he could be arrested? What would the result of the trial be – surely they must convict – but what if they didn’t? Who would take over? Who was left?

  Paris whirled around the power vacuum now at its centre. The duc was a spider that had waited at the edges of its web, and the city thrashed and tangled itself in his threads. He was already gathering his allies – how much longer did they have to stop him?

  ‘What news from Saint Lazare?’ she asked.

  Guil shook his head. ‘It was chaos by the time I worked my way in. Allegiances were shifting too quickly; no one knows who to trust, so no one would talk to me. The prison was home to any number of Royalist sympathisers, and I witnessed more than one walking free. Whoever the duc was targeting, he will have them by now.’

  They passed the Luxembourg and the Au Petit Suisse again, and Ada felt another pang of loss. She wondered what Camille was doing right now. If she would be proud of what Ada had managed, or disappointed.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I shouldn’t have acted without you, you were right to be angry.’

  Guil looked up, eyebrow raised. ‘A change of heart?’

  She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Please, don’t rub it in. Father was right; we have woken up to a changed world. I don’t want to navigate it on my own.’

  ‘You will not have to. We may argue, but I am not going anywhere.’ Guil squeezed her hand again. ‘Have courage. We cannot falter now.’ He hopped out of the carriage a little way before they arrived at the duc’s and paused for a moment. ‘Remember, you must play the players, not the game.’

  The Rue Faubourg Saint Jacques was quiet compared to the city, peppered with carts and foot travellers drifting along the road. The misrule of the city had not reached this far, and the duc’s house looked terribly normal. Shutters were open, windows cracked to air rooms. A maid was scrubbing the doorstep. Ada lifted her skirts and stepped down to the cobbles.

  It was time.

  The duc was waiting for her in his study, facing the window that looked over the orchard behind the house, and westward across open fields. Ada swept in and presented herself.

  ‘Good morning, Monsieur le Duc. Is everything ready for our work today?’

  When he turned to her, the look on his face was something she’d never seen before.

  Excitement.

  ‘Our work today? Yes. Oh, yes. We have much work to do. Come.’

  Together, they descended to the cellar. It was a full height room, stacked with boxes, wine bottles, empty crates, broken furniture and other supplies. A well-trod path led between the boxes and stopped at a dead end.

  Or what looked like one. The duc felt along the edge of the wood panelling, and with a click the wall swung open. Behind, a ragged hole cut into the earth.

  ‘After you.’

  The skin at the back of Ada’s neck prickled. If Guil could see her now, he’d call every risk she’d ever taken child’s play.

  She stepped into the tunnel and felt a rush of hot, damp air against her face. The duc lit a storm lamp and followed, sending shadows lurching in front.

  ‘Did you know there are mines stretching all across Paris?’ he said. ‘Mostly here on the left bank. For centuries, men dug for gypsum and Lutetian limestone, that noble stone that gives Paris its beautiful face. Immense caverns stretch under the Val-de-Grâce, the Observatory, all the streets around here. Twenty years ago, when I was a young man and just beginning to put the pieces of my work together to create Olympe, the Rue d’Enfer collapsed into the mines not far from here. It was then that I discovered these tunnels. This abandoned world.’

  Their path sloped down, square cut into the rock face. The walls were covered in a thousand chisel and blade marks, each inch carved by hand, and the floor was clean of rubble. Her descent was all too easy.

  ‘I bought this house, seeing then its value. To have access to one’s own private Paris, to come and go unseen, to work in private, the freedom these things grant – essential for the scientific mind to do its best work. Of course, since then Monsieur Lenoir has emptied the cemeteries into the tunnels like a woman throwing a slop bucket from a window. But he barely touched a fraction of the space. And so my reign in the underworld continues.’

  They reached a crossroads, the tunnel forking in three directions. One led up, the air cooler. Another had caved in entirely a little way along. The third led down again, a set of broad stone steps cut roughly into the rock. From below came a red glow, and the soft sound of movement. The duc lifted the storm lamp, casting light on the first few steps.

  ‘I am trusting you, Ada Rousset, showing you this realm of mine. You have proved yourself to be quick, to be bold. I hope you are also clever. I hope you understand who can really offer you a future.’

  Ada swallowed, her throat dry. ‘I understand.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled and led her down the steps. ‘Welcome.’

  The tunnel bloomed into a large cave, easily twice Ada’s height and broad enough to contain a whole laboratory. Storm lamps were strung from cables hooked along the ceiling, and the whole room was warm and humid. Here were the bodies she couldn’t find. In jars and stuffed displays, wired skeletons and bristling resin arteries, the laboratory they’d found in the abbey had been replicated. Ada looked around in horror and fascination. How easily she’d been duped by the display above ground.

  ‘I thought you said you weren’t trying to recreate Olympe?’ she asked, fighting to keep her tone even.

  ‘I am not. But why throw away a strand of research that has been so fruitful? Electricity and the human body are a puzzle I will solve, one way or another.’

  ‘Yes … of course. And is that what you have planned today? The experiment I am to assist you with?’

  ‘Ah, today, today. And what a day it is.’ The duc almost seemed to be speaking to himself. He went to the far end of the room and hooked his lamp to a peg in the wall. ‘I woke to a world changed this morning. The sun shines on our dear France again. The way forward is clear. The future presents itself to us, fragile and needing protection. Needing bravery. Needing someone to step into the breach and do what must be done.’

  Ada folded her hands in front of her, careful to avoid aggravating her burn.

  ‘Indeed. France does need … direction.’

  ‘And with that madman gone, our allies are free again to join our number.’

  She stopped breathing. Oh god, this was it. The duc caught the edge of a curtain hanging at the back of the cavern that Ada hadn’t realised covered another entrance.

  ‘There is someone I think you might be interested to meet.’

  He disappeared for a moment, then returned leading someone. Ada held herself still. It was a woman, perhaps in her late thirties, with striking blue eyes and black hair pinned into a messy knot on top of her head. She wore a dress a good while out of date, but Ada could tell that meant little to her. There were burns and stains along its sleeves, and the hem had begun to fray. But those eyes drew Ada’s attention back to her face. There was something familiar in the line of her brows, the tilt of her mouth.

  The duc ushered her forward. ‘I’d like you to meet my sister.’

  Ada reeled. On reflex she curtseyed as the woman crossed the room and offered her hand.

  Ada took it, searching her face. Yes – she could see it. The resemblance to the duc was there. This was the person he had been trying to free from prison? Of cours
e – his family would be as important as any other ally.

  But there was something more. The expectant way the duc watched her.

  Ada placed it just before the woman spoke.

  ‘How do you do? I’m Clémentine,’ she said, with a cool smile. ‘I believe you have met my daughter, Olympe.’

  3

  Wickham’s Study, St Bart’s Hospital

  James woke to the feeling of needle-sharp teeth devouring his arm. He swam towards consciousness, tugged by the searing pain along his forearm, to surface in a room, storm-dark and lit by lamplight. Wickham and Edward loomed over him. Something flashed, and he watched the curved surgical needle descend, puncture his skin, and rise again, pulling the two sides of his wound tight. His arm – he had cut his arm. The thought formed and slipped away. The pain was too much, like a bell ringing inside his head and he dry-heaved, before sinking under again.

  When he woke again, the bell was gone. The pain still hummed insistently, but it was confined to his arm; the rest of him felt mercifully clear.

  He sat up and found his feet were bound, and his good hand tied to the leg of a desk. He recognised Wickham’s rooms at the hospital, the muddled, overflowing shelves and cabinets as familiar as his own bedroom. His tutor and Edward were gone, the only proof of his pain-fuelled dream in the neat set of bandages around his arm.

  And he wasn’t alone. Olympe was at the other end of the desk, trussed up even more thoroughly, a silk stocking stuffed in her mouth. It pulled at his stitches, but he could just about reach with his injured arm to remove it.

  ‘Thank god.’ She was tearful, voice hoarse. ‘I thought you were dead. There was so much blood and they were sewing for so long.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said.

  It wasn’t true. He felt lightheaded and queasy and as he came back to himself his utter failure settled over him like a heavy cloak. Everything he’d done, all the lines he’d crossed to be able to bring Olympe to his father, it had been for nothing. He had dangerously underestimated Wickham. James had known he was a brilliant surgeon who purused his research with an intoxicating fervour; he’d known he had to be willing to do things regular people wouldn’t in order to break ground in surgical fields. But he’d never thought it would come to this.