by Kat Dunn
Camille wondered if he and the duc had known each other.
They moved quickly past the gallery and the gravel garden, through the twelve-foot glass doors that opened onto the Conversation Room which housed shelves and cabinets of surgical instruments, pickled tumours and twisted bones, a lamb with two heads bobbing in camphorated spirits of wine, carefully positioned knots of tissue injected with oil of turpentine, then finally, into the operating theatre.
The space was cavern-like, ceiling as high as a church and atmosphere just as hushed. Rings of seating reached to the skylight above and at their centre was an oval slab of slate for the operating table. It had been scrubbed clean as it could be, but it was still stained dark with years of blood.
They couldn’t get close to Wickham’s theatre without risking being spotted, so this was the second best option for working through the next part of this job.
‘The English plays are so dull,’ said Al, dropping onto one of the benches and beginning to stuff a pipe with tobacco as Camille circled the space. He looked more pale and pinched than ever. She wondered if either of them slept. ‘Léon would have eaten that lead role for breakfast, but look who they had doing it. Some morose sack of bricks with all the artistic feeling of a lampshade.’
‘I thought it was all right.’
‘You would.’
The theatre was bigger than she had expected, and every inch – the surgical floor, the viewing benches – was exposed. They would never be able to sneak up on Wickham.
‘Why are you so grumpy today?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am a ray of sunshine in all situations.’
‘I think the theatre made you miss Léon. It’s okay, you can say it.’
‘You have no idea what I’m feeling.’ He tapped his foot. ‘You thought Léon was just a fling. You looked at me and made assumptions. It’s not. It matters.’
Camille pulled his feet off the bench and sat next to him. ‘I miss Ada.’
It was a relief to finally say it. It felt too stupidly obvious a thing to need to put into words, but in reality she knew she’d been hiding from herself, hiding from her feelings. Loving one person so much was terrifying, but it felt better to look it dead on, in all the fear and elation and joy.
Al looked down his nose at her. ‘As well you should.’
‘I miss Guil too. It didn’t realise how much I needed him until he wasn’t by my side any more. I miss all the clever things he said, the way he saw through me, always told the truth whether I wanted to hear or not – I miss all of us together.’
‘Not tempted to stay and live the easy life with the Harfords paying your way?’
‘You know I’m not.’
‘More’s the pity we can’t swap places. I quite like the idea of leeching off some dim, rich family. Such a shame my family didn’t let me do that.’ Al clamped the pipe between his lips and fumbled for a light. ‘Instead I watched their heads plop into a bucket like horse manure and I get to treasure that piece of trauma for ever.’
He lifted the flame to the pipe and a museum curator rushed over, wringing his hands. ‘Put that out at once, don’t you see the signs?’
Camille looked at the notices the man was pointing to. Caution. Highly flammable liquids and objects. Interesting.
‘Which bits in particular are dangerous?’ she asked, with as much innocence as she could muster.
‘Why, all of it! The preserving fluids you see. Alcohol, turpentine, all of it as good as gunpowder. We must be extremely careful to protect Sir John’s collection, so I request again that you put that out, or exit forthwith.’
Grumbling, Al dampened the flare and returned the pipe to his pocket. The curator left.
But Camille’s mind had latched on to something. An idea blossomed. ‘I know what we can do about Wickham, and I need your help.’
‘Please,’ said Al coldly. ‘Don’t pity me. You’ve never really needed my help, don’t pretend you do now just to make me feel better.’
‘I’m serious. You put yourself down, but the battalion couldn’t do what they do without you – you found out where Wickham was.’
‘I’m good for gathering gossip. That doesn’t make me like the rest of you.’
A small party filtered into the theatre, squealing at the blood caked into the operating table. Camille dropped her voice.
‘I know what you’re feeling. I know what you went through because it happened to me too, so don’t tell me I’m taking pity on you.’ She shut her eyes, letting the past come back to her. ‘It’s as if you’re standing on a cliff edge you were never aware existed, but now the mist has cleared and all you can see is this yawning void, above and below. There is no one older to tell you what to do, no path to follow for life – and worse, there’s nothing now between you and death—’
‘If you know,’ he hissed, ‘why won’t you leave me be? I don’t want to do this stupid job any more, I want to lie down in the street and never move again. I don’t care about this job. I don’t care about anything. Save Olympe, don’t save Olympe. Revolution, monarchy, I don’t give a single flying shit about any of it.’
She held his arms, turned him round to face her, and looked him in the eye. ‘I know, Al. I know. I’m going to say something and you’re not going to like it, but I think you need to hear it.’
He pulled away and folded his arms, waiting.
‘You want to lie down and die with them but you cannot. You family is dead. All of them.’
‘No shit.’
‘But you aren’t. At some point, this pain will ebb and when it does you’ll want your life there waiting for you. So I won’t let you throw it away, all right? You don’t like me, but you don’t have to because we’re family. That’s how it works. I don’t always like you, but I do always love you. And it’s because I love you that I’m telling you this. The only meaning I ever found in losing both my parents is this: they are dead, and I am not, and that’s that. I have a life to live and they don’t.’
‘What exactly is your point? Making me cry in public?’
‘The point is: what are you going to do with your life? Exile yourself to England and mope around until you end up in debtors’ prison or dead of drink? Or are you going to stay with the people who care about you, and do something goddamn worthwhile? Stop acting like you’re dead already, because you’re not, and we need you.’
Al blinked furiously, twisting away from her, taut as a bowstring.
‘I really hate you, you know that,’ he said.
‘I know.’ She rested her hand on his arm, the closest to affection she could muster.
‘You’re just the worst. Ada should leave you immediately.’
‘I know.’
‘And you should get boils. Big boils all over your face so you end up pickled as a medical specimen for everyone to stare at and be horrified by.’
‘Absolutely. The biggest boils.’
He turned abruptly, and squeezed her in a tight hug, mumbled, ‘Thank you,’ into her neck – then let go and smoothed his hair down, looking for all the world like he’d never experienced a negative emotion in his life.
Camille blinked back the tears that stung her own eyes – how often did she really let herself think about the death of her parents? What it had done to her? – and joined Al in the illusion that things were okay.
‘So. What is it you need from me? Other than fashion advice. That dress really is ghastly.’
Camille grinned and leaned forward, ushering him into the conspiracy.
‘I know how we get in – but how we get out, that’s where I need your expertise.’
She explained her plan and a grin spread slowly across his face.
‘Oh, I know exactly what we need.’
6
The Catacombs
The slab of raw and bloody muscle in front of Ada twitched once, twice – and then nothing.
The duc swore and stopped cranking the electrostatic generator.
/> In the cavernous main room of the duc’s underground laboratory, an experiment had been set up. Storm lamps were gathered in a cluster in the centre to illuminate the dissection table, which had been covered in a sheet. Across it had been placed a series of muscles taken from the cadaver Ada had seen when she first arrived.
There was a long, sinewy stretch of arm, shoulder, a hunk of thigh and even the heart, closest to the generator. They had wired them together in a circle, in a mirror of the experiment Ada had seen at the Théâtre Patriotique a month or more ago, where audience members had joined hands onstage and had an electric current passed through them.
The principle here was the same: what were the effects of running a current through flesh? They had begun with a single piece hooked up to the generator, then added more and more – and had seen the effect lessen the more they added. The muscle closest to the generator always pumped frantically, in slick squelching spasms, the muscle wired up after it flexing and rippling. But the further they were from the generation of electricity, the less they responded.
The duc strode the length of the room, rolling a glass paperweight in his hand. ‘The electricity is leaking somehow,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Through the material it lies on, perhaps? But when we insulate the surface, there is no electrical effect. They cannot all be receiving the same charge if the reaction of the deltoid is so much weaker than the heart.’ He stood at the far end of the table, observing his macabre display. ‘But how to get the same charge to pass through each piece simultaneously?’
Clémentine sat in a corner of the room, taking notes, an arm slung casually over the back of the chair. ‘Oh, Philippe. Always biting off more than you can chew.’
The duc gave her a cool look. ‘You are free to offer some input if my mistakes are so risible.’
Clémentine kept her amused gaze on him, then picked up her quill again and made a note. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m only the clerk today. Perhaps your charming assistant has a thought? You did ask her here for a reason.’
They both turned to Ada, who flushed at the attention.
‘Well?’ asked the duc. ‘Do you have something to add?’
Ada shifted her weight, eyes darting between the elements of the circuit, the glistening slabs of raw flesh. She had almost too much to say. ‘I burned myself on a soup ladle yesterday.’
‘Fascinating,’ said the duc dryly. ‘Let’s move on—’
‘Hear her out,’ said Clémentine. ‘You might be surprised.’
He sighed, then gestured for Ada to continue.
Ada worked a little spit into her dry mouth.
‘I was burned because the heat from the stew had travelled. Really, the heat from the fire had passed into the stew, then up the handle and finally into my hand. We’ve all encountered something similar. Perhaps the problem here is that we are trying to force the current to move in a way it doesn’t want to, when what we should do is let it move the way it does naturally, like heating up a ladle. Think of when you touch a metal handle in cold weather, and the electric charge jumps naturally from you to it. Think of lightning leaping to the ground.’
He frowned. ‘What are you suggesting?’ He was paying full attention now, and even Clémentine had stopped eating her apple.
‘What if instead of joining the … the pieces together, creating multiple points for electricity to leak, you make only two points – a conductor above that you run a current through, and a conductor below. A floor and a ceiling. Let the electricity complete the circuit itself. Let the spark jump to all of the objects at once.’
Ada finished speaking, realising she had run away with herself. The duc and Clémentine were both staring at her. A look of excitement spread across the duc’s face.
‘Of course, of course. Complete the circuit all at once.’ He crossed the gap between them and grabbed her shoulders. ‘Ada Rousset, you are brilliant.’
A warm flush of pleasure flooded Ada. The words might be coming from the duc, not her father, but oh, was that not the very thing she had longed for? To be recognised.
And was it really the wrong person, if he was the only one to say it?
L’Odéon
Guil was waiting for Ada at the rendez-vous they’d arranged the day before. While Ada was working with the duc, Guil would wait at the same time each day near the old Odéon Theatre that was halfway between Ada’s father’s house in the Marais and the duc’s on the outskirts of the city, only a few streets away from the battalion’s ex-headquarters above the café Au Petit Suisse.
When they broke for lunch, Ada invented an urgent errand and slipped away. An emergency cord of sorts; if things started to go south she had a reliable way to get back-up. A new sign had been raised above the entrance, naming the theatre now Théâtre de l’Égalité, recently reopened and performing ‘par et pour le peuple’.
This time, Ada lost no time running through everything that had happened since she arrived at the duc’s that morning. The secret laboratory in the catacombs, the twisted experiments and, most importantly, the appearance of the duc’s sister – Olympe’s mother.
Guil let out a low whistle. ‘Perhaps we should have guessed that the “important person” the duc wanted would be connected to Olympe.’
‘What should we do? All Olympe ever asked of us was to reunite her with her mother. She trusts her.’
‘But the duc’s sister—’
‘I know, it’s hard to understand. Maybe she didn’t know what was going on?’
‘Ada, you are not that stupid.’
She sagged. ‘I know, I know. Let a girl hope.’ From her reticule, she pulled a lace fan and wafted too-warm air over her face. ‘Perhaps if we’re her means to be reunited with her daughter, then she will side with us…’
In that moment, their choice felt impossibly daunting. Here they were again, trying to work out how to protect Olympe – and protect the city, France, the Revolution, even – and every path was murky. How easy it was to see the right thing to do from afar or with the distance of time. How much harder when you were pressed up close against it.
‘You’re the one who has met her,’ said Guil. Ada had never heard such a note of uncertainty in his voice. ‘Do you think that likely?’
Ada shook her head. ‘I am not quite sure what to make of her.’
A moment of silence yawned, both were frozen by the enormity of the decision that lay before them.
‘I should go back – before the duc gets suspicious.’ Ada chewed her lip. ‘We haven’t spoken about Robespierre’s trial.’
‘Indeed. I saw the crowd storm the Hôtel de Ville and drag him out. He looked in a bad way.’
‘What do you think is going to happen?’
‘I don’t know.’ Guil pulled a cheap sailor’s watch from his pocket. ‘The trial should almost be over now. I do not see how he could be acquitted, not after everyone he has sent to the guillotine.’
‘But then who takes his place?’
The answer hung in the air: no one.
And anyone who dared try.
‘A power vacuum is a dangerous thing,’ he said, that mask of stillness back again. She wanted to take his arms, shake him, tell him it was okay to feel whatever it was he was feeling, that she would listen. But she knew that couldn’t be forced.
He offered her his hand as she climbed the step up to the cab they had hailed and she paused, looking around at the people, the wilted swags of tricolore bunting. ‘I wonder how history will look back on this time? Will it all seem so obvious to them when it’s laid out in a line? Right now, it feels like mud; anything could happen, and barely any of it good.’
On the way back to the Faubourg Saint Jacques, Guil escorting her a while longer, they passed through familiar ground – and then there it was outside the window. The Au Petit Suisse, looking the same as the day she’d last set foot in it. On an impulse, Ada stopped the cab. Guil tried to speak to her but she waved him off. ‘I only need a minute.’
Pulling out the key to their
rooms, she ran her thumb over the shape that had meant home for months. She had kept paying the rent quietly from the allowance her father gave her, but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep it up. She always had the key in the pocket tied under her skirts. Whatever happened, she would carry this piece of home – of her other family – with her.
Discreetly, she let herself into the cramped courtyard, then wound up the stairs to the battalion’s rooms. The last time she’d been here was before they’d gone to the duc’s hideout in the abandoned abbey. So much had happened since then, and the Ada who had left this place was not the Ada who came back.
The wet, warm weather had swollen the door in its frame and Ada had to give a shove with her shoulder to push it open. Inside, the air was musty. Motes danced in the light, swirling around a knocked-over chair, a water jug evaporated dry. The detritus of their old life abandoned.
She tried not to look too closely.
In her and Camille’s bedroom, she kneeled by the bedside table and opened the drawer. Tucked in the back was a handkerchief knotted tightly and she could feel from the weight that there was something inside. She undid the knots and let the silk unfurl like a blossom. Nestled in the centre was a pair of emerald earrings: her mother’s. The last real thing she had of hers.
Clémentine was not an easy person to figure out, but Ada did understand what it was to be mother-and-daughter, separated. What she would have endured to get her mother back.
What Clémentine might have done to keep her daughter with her.
Ada re-tied the handkerchief and slipped it in her pocket. As she was about to leave, her eye was caught by something else, a glint in the drawer. She pushed aside a torn stocking, a candle stub, and pulled out a gold locket hanging on a chain.