Monstrous Design

by Kat Dunn

  ‘Edward persuaded Wickham to fix your arm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think Wickham wanted your corpse, but he gave in.’

  James blinked, sized up this new information. He had hurt Edward badly with his betrayal, but his friend had still looked out for him. It was more than he deserved.

  Olympe was deflated, close to the girl he had found lost on London’s streets only two days ago. ‘It’s so stupid, I have all this power and I can’t do a damn thing to help anyone.’

  He looked at her bindings, a thin cord around her ankles and wrists. Her hands were gloved, but a seam was coming loose at one finger.

  ‘Yes, you can. Stay still.’

  He leaned over again, reaching and reaching with his bad arm, skin twisting and straining at the stitches, to grab hold of the loose thread and pull. With a grunt of pain, he tugged at the seam until it unspooled itself, the two sides unpeeling.

  ‘There. Now you can do something.’

  He’d had his own experience of trying to contain Olympe’s powers and was thankful to see Wickham had thoroughly miscalculated.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Remember what we practised?’

  She caught his meaning, a hint of hope in her eyes, and summoned a ball of electricity the size of a farthing. Slowly, it flowed up her finger towards the rope around her wrist. When it made contact, the rope sizzled and an acrid smell filled the air – but it was short-lived. The ball flared and shrank in size and Olympe screwed up her face in concentration, roiling clouds of grey and purple and blue bursting across her cheeks – then she lost control, and the electricity surged, and died as soon as it hit silk.

  James looked anxiously towards the door, but no one came.

  ‘Try again. You need to get close enough to burn through the rope.’

  She did, two, three times more, but each time no sooner had she got the charge to the rope than it slipped out of control.

  Her expression stormed. With a yell of frustration, she let a burst of electricity flare from every exposed part of her body. It caught a nearby jar that shattered, and a diseased heart went skittering onto the floor.

  ‘This is hopeless.’

  James tensed, suddenly on high alert. The show of power was almost impressive, forceful and controlled like a muscle flexing, but also inhumanly powerful and so vulnerable to her emotions.

  ‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘He’ll hear you.’

  ‘I don’t care! He’s got us trapped, what does it matter what he hears?’

  ‘It’s not over yet. We have to try and do something. My father—’

  ‘Oh, shut up about your bloody father! This isn’t about you, James!’ Her hair floated away from her head as a wind whipped around them. ‘This is about me, okay? About me getting to live a life that’s more than being someone’s pet project, some object to be fought over. All these men, so desperate to understand what I am, but what about what I want to know? Do you get that? What it feels like to wonder if you’re even human? If you have a soul?’

  ‘You’re human, Olympe—’

  He’d been so selfish. He’d thought only of himself. Hurt and used people because of course what he wanted mattered more than what other people wanted. The truth broke over him like a wave, the world shifting around until he saw that he stood in a much different place than the one he’d thought himself in.

  He had so many amends to make.

  ‘Am I?’ said Olympe. ‘No one will treat me like it. I am more desperately alone than you could ever imagine. So, yes, I am going to get upset. I am going to sulk and scream and you have no right to tell me not to.’

  Another wave of sparks billowed across her face, dissipating into nothingness. He looked at her, kneeling on the floor, hair hanging loose around her face, eyes shining with unshed tears, and bowed his head.

  She shut her eyes, drew in a few shuddering breaths. ‘These bad things seem to follow me. First my mother, then Camille, now you. Sometimes I think I might be something worse. Wherever I go, it’s as though I’m some evil charm that tempts men into greed and avarice, ambition and arrogance. I poison everyone around me.’

  ‘That is not true.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Would Wickham be trying to hurt you if it weren’t for me?’

  James thought about all the choices he’d made and the justifications he’d given himself. ‘What people do is their own choice. You can’t blame yourself for it. We all have to war with our worst instincts; if people give in, that’s on them.’

  A small, hopeful smile crossed her face. ‘You really think that?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve made my own bad decisions, but I can’t blame them on anyone other than me. What the duc and Comtois did, what Wickham is doing now, that’s never going to be your fault.’

  She didn’t reply, and the silence in the study seemed loud. Rain spattered against the window, a shock of noise and movement. Night was closing in.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Before, I told you I give up, but I don’t. Bad things might keep happening, but I have to believe good things will too. They’re worth fighting for.’

  James blinked back the sudden tears that threatened.

  The door slammed open and Wickham came in, followed by Edward.

  ‘Ah. You’re awake. No sudden movements, you don’t want those stitches to tear. Edward – set the girl up,’ ordered Wickham.

  ‘You don’t have to do what he says,’ said Olympe, but Edward hid his face as he untied her.

  Now James knew Edward had fought for Wickham to stitch his arm he saw something different in his expression – a war in himself, torn between loyalties.

  As soon as her arms were loosed from the desk leg, Olympe threw herself at Edward, a cloud of electricity rushing over him; but like before, it ran over him like water, his skin blistering red with jagged lines and he didn’t seem to feel it. He threw her slight figure over his shoulder and carried her out to the operating theatre as she hammered her fists on his back.

  Wickham paused, hand on the doorknob, to take in James with a small, smug smile. Then shut the door with a click and James was alone.

  Bad choices had got him here; only good ones could get him out.

  4

  The Catacombs

  Sometimes Ada thought about who her mother would have been if she hadn’t died when Ada was ten, tangled in her bed sheets and slick with fever sweat.

  What she would have thought of Paris – if they would have even come to this dreary, angry city. Ada thought about how her face would have matured, when grey would have started to speckle her black curls. If crow’s feet would mark her eyes, or laughter lines would arrive first. As the memory of her mother’s voice, her smile, the feeling of her arms holding her faded, Ada held on to whatever little things she could.

  How her mother would talk to food as she cooked it, or always have a pencil tucked behind her ear. That papaya was her favourite fruit, or that she would put rum in her coffee after fighting with Ada’s father. Ada held onto her mother in fragile, crumbling pieces, and someday she knew when she opened that box to look at those memories she would find nothing but dust.

  Olympe would have no such problem. Marie-Clémentine de l’Aubespine was sharp, young, standing upright with healthy flesh on her bones. Of all the reactions she thought she’d have on meeting Olympe’s mother, anger was not one. It rippled through her like a fire catching. Resentment at how unfair it was – how unjust – that Olympe’s mother was here and hers was rotting in the loamy earth across an ocean. In that moment she wished her dead. She wished all mothers dead, so that everyone could know the pain she felt. It was the impotent rage of a small child. If Ada couldn’t have her mother than no one should have one.

  But now was not the time for that. It was never the time for Ada to think like that. She rolled her anger into a tight pellet and swallowed it whole. Ada was a good girl. Ada didn’t get angry or jealous or spiteful. She did the right thing.

  S
he did what was needed.

  ‘How do you do, Madame de l’Aubespine?’ She kissed Clémentine’s hand.

  ‘No need for such formalities,’ said Clémentine, withdrawing her hand. ‘My brother tells me you liberated my daughter from that awful prison. I am in your debt.’

  ‘We would have done the same for anyone,’ said Ada. ‘All we’ve ever wanted was to help people.’

  ‘Philippe has told me about you. Your mind, your intellect.’ Clémentine watched her so closely it was as though she could see through Ada’s lies.

  Ada blushed. ‘I’m nothing special.’ She would rather it was anyone else acknowledging her talent, but at least someone was.

  ‘Do not minimise yourself,’ said Clémentine. ‘It is something I promised myself when I was young, that I would never speak badly about myself – other people would do that enough for me. In my generation, a scientific education was even further out of the hands of women, but Philippe saw my potential and we worked together.’

  ‘You worked together?’ Ada asked.

  ‘Has he not explained?’ There was amusement in her voice, and Ada had a sudden image of their relationship, the sharp younger sister running rings around her distracted older brother. ‘I was his laboratory assistant for many years. As you can see, there is something of a large age gap between us. Our parents passed when I was young, and I grew up as his ward. He pursued his studies, and so I was exposed to science and its methods, far more than any other woman around me. And when Olympe came along, he looked after us both, in a way not many men would have done.’

  Ada’s stomach turned. None of this made sense. If Olympe’s mother had been involved with the duc’s research, then surely she would have known about the experiments he’d done on Olympe? Or had it somehow been kept from her? How was that even possible?

  She remembered Jean-Baptiste in the Café Corrazza, hands wrapped around his coffee, speaking darkly of the Royalist ally the duc was trying to free.

  ‘How … progressive.’

  ‘Come, it is hardly shocking.’ Clémentine circled the room, keeping her gaze trained on Ada as she passed from dissecting table to resined organs to acid vat. ‘I am not the only woman to assist the man in their life – through my brother, my discoveries could be shared, known, in a way that would never happen if I was on my own. You must know of Marie-Anne Lavoisier, working with her husband in chemistry, or Caroline Herschel in England discovering half the stars herself, though her brother is the one with the international reputation.’

  Ada was lost for words. She felt like she stood in shifting quicksand, sinking deeper into confusion every moment. ‘Yes. I suppose this is true.’

  Could they have misunderstood everything so greatly? Was the duc only their enemy as a Royalist? No – Ada had read his diaries. She knew what he thought about Olympe: that she wasn’t human. So why would Olympe’s mother want anything to do with him?

  The duc cleared his throat. ‘I know this must come as a shock. You will forgive me for not being completely transparent with you and your friends previously. As you know, trust was not something we shared. But now you are with us, Ada, and I have made myself responsible for your education, the realisation of your potential, I knew it would be important for you to meet Clémentine. To see a woman with the same inclinations as you, and understand that my words are not empty. I truly do wish to see you prosper.’

  ‘I see.’

  Ada considered the pair of them, trying not to let her lip curl in derision. Two rich, well-connected white aristocrats who thought themselves daring. How inspiring.

  But at the same time, she had never met a woman like Clémentine, who spoke off-hand about Lavoisier, who felt no need to apologise for herself.

  It was … interesting.

  ‘I am glad to see you freed, Madame,’ said Ada. ‘I confess I am a little confused. I understand that the Revolutionaries were interested in Olympe and her abilities, but why imprison you too?’

  Clémentine turned steely, and for a moment Ada could see the duc in her face entirely. ‘Because if they left me free I would not rest until I found her.’ Then she clapped her hands together, shifting back to the woman Ada had first met. ‘If we are to talk any longer, I insist we sit and do so in a civilised manner. Come into my salon.’

  She took Ada through the curtain and into a second, smaller cave room. Here, a camp bed had been pushed against one wall, a desk and chair against another, a wash jug and basin. Piles of books, paper, candles and other supplies littered every available surface.

  ‘A little joke. Much fallen from the salons of my youth, but it will do for now. Philippe, a pot of coffee is in order, and bring in the rest of the chestnut cake.’

  Clémentine might only have been out of prison for a matter of hours, but already she had asserted herself. Ada watched in faint amusement as the duc busied himself brewing coffee and bringing plates and cake at his sister’s beck and call. It was unsettlingly domestic. In this light, the duc seemed all too human.

  ‘It has been so long since I could live like a civilised person, I find myself overcome with need for simple pleasures, like taking tea and talking,’ said Clémentine, sitting on the bed as if it was the finest Louis X chaise longue.

  Ada made a noise of assent, hiding her face in her cup for a moment, choosing her next words.

  ‘Perhaps this is indelicate to ask, but if you are Olympe’s mother…’

  ‘Ah, you are wondering where my husband is? I will freely admit I did not take one. It is hardly unusual among the aristocratic circles of our youth for men and women to take lovers, to have affairs as suited them. You are an intelligent girl and I’m sure you understand most marriages are more about money and power than love.’

  Ada thought of her parents. How her father had danced with her mother on their porch as the sun set. How he’d cried when they buried her. How they buried the man he had been with her.

  ‘So you fell in love.’

  Clémentine laughed. ‘Hardly. I felt in lust. You understand me, I think? Philippe has told me about your flight from home for the sake of a pretty girl.’

  Ada blushed furiously.

  Clémentine carried on regardless. ‘I enjoyed myself – but suddenly found myself in a way I had not expected to be for many years. Marriage and children would interrupt what I truly wanted to do with my life – to pursue scientific discovery. I was lucky that my brother understood. Many women in my position would be forced to give up their child, but he agreed to provide for us in seclusion in the country. I could continue my work, and our reputation would be secured.’

  The question was on the tip of Ada’s tongue: had experimenting on Olympe been the price for keeping her? Could anyone do that to their own child? Ada thought about what she would be willing to do to have the life she wanted – what she had already done to escape the suffocating rules set out for her, the sneers and hatred of people who thought she shouldn’t be there at all.

  Perhaps Olympe’s mother was not quite the same as the duc. She hardly seemed beholden to him – if anything, her loyalty was to Olympe, and that could make a big difference to Ada, Guil and their plans. They had thought the duc was gaining an ally – but perhaps they could make her theirs.

  She needed to talk Guil.

  The duc returned with the coffee and cake. ‘I hope you aren’t sharing too many of our secrets, my dear.’

  Clémentine looked at him sharply. ‘Do not imagine you have any control over what I do or say, Philippe. You let those men take my girl, you left me in prison, and you didn’t get her back. You speak so grandly, but don’t forget I know you.’ A moment of tension passed between them and Ada held her breath. The duc broke first, wilting under his sister’s steely eye. ‘All I want is my girl safe from you petty men,’ said Clémentine. Then she turned with a flourish and pulled the chair out from under the desk. ‘Ada, you sit here. Philippe, we need more chairs.’

  The chairs were supplied and a crate was pulled in to use as a table. The
y settled around it, freshly poured coffee steaming in front of them.

  ‘Now.’ Clémentine leaned in conspiratorially. ‘I hear you are planning an experiment today. Tell me everything.’

  5

  Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

  The theatre foyer was packed, so it wasn’t hard for Camille and Al to slip away from the Harfords. Arm in arm, they drifted into the churn of London, turning down Russell Street, then past Bow Street with its magistrates’ court and the infamous Bow Street Runners, skirting the tumble of fruit and vegetable stalls packed into Covent Garden, all ringed by coffee houses, taverns and brothels.

  The Harfords had brought them to a matinee performance of some Restoration comedy or another. It was so hard to find a moment’s privacy to talk to Al, they’d had to manufacture one where they could; it would be plausible enough to claim Camille had had an attack of her chest complaint and Al had taken her for some air.

  Since their run-in with Wickham and Edward the night before, they had been plotting. Camille had sent Al to gather intelligence, and as they walked, he updated her on what he’d discovered. Wickham was holed up in his usually busy surgical theatre, which was now suddenly and suspiciously shut to visitors and students for undisclosed reasons. Quite how he’d found this out, Al refused to say, only giving her a meaningful look and mentioning something about the Marquis of Salisbury, three bottles of port, the rumoured execution outfit of King Charles the First, and a very, very heated game of Faro.

  Slipping down New Street, they crossed Saint Martin’s Lane and passed through Cecil Court towards their destination: 28 Leicester Square, home of the late Sir John Hunter and his surgical museum.

  They paid the entrance fee and walked through the house, half in dust sheets now the man himself was no longer here to use the study and parlour and day room. While living, Sir John had added and added to his collection until it was too big to contain in one building. He had bought the house that backed onto his and constructed a museum between the two, containing a picture and print gallery, rooms for teaching anatomy pupils, and even a fully working operating theatre. It was said that the corpses for dissection were delivered to him via the back door on Castle Street.