by Kat Dunn
Standing a few paces away, James was like a distant moon. Alien and unknowable.
Or perhaps he was the Earth, and she was the cold dead thing, floating alone in the dark.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t give you better news,’ he said, turning his head away as he blinked back something in his eye.
‘Don’t—’
‘I can get you a second opinion. I’m sure you’ll want one.’
‘Do you think you’re wrong?’
He turned to face her and his eyes were ringed with red. ‘No. It is quite clear.’
‘Then I don’t need a second opinion.’
‘Cam—’
She stirred herself, enough to train her gaze on him. Let her tone become stern. ‘Nobody can know. Promise me you’ll tell no one.’
A look of pain crossed his face. Perhaps in another life, she would have comforted him, but that divide still lay between them, uncrossed. Maybe none of that mattered now. She had suspected for some time but until James had said the words there had been room for doubt, for hope. Her fear had come true: her battalion would fall away. But she wouldn’t be the one left alone to mourn.
The thought came like a blow strong enough to floor her: it would be Ada. For Camille, all this would end. For Ada, it was just beginning.
She shut her eyes and concentrated on the weight of her body in the chair, the feel of the wooden arms under her hands. It might be selfish and weak and dangerous but god all she wanted was Ada to come through the door, wrap her in her arms and tell her it was going to be okay.
But it was not going to be okay. Nothing would ever be okay again.
She didn’t fully remember how they got from St Paul’s to Bedford Square, just snatches of a bumpy carriage ride and hands lifting her. At the stable block in the mews, they had paused to hide Olympe, who couldn’t safely come into a house as crammed with people and servants as the Harfords’.
Olympe had lingered at Camille’s side. ‘I am loath to leave you again now I’ve found you, especially if you’re—’
‘I’m fine,’ Camille had croaked, and she had been surprised at the strangeness of her own voice. ‘It’s only my chest. It’s always been weak.’
She had been taken over by a coughing fit. A fresh handkerchief was pressed into her hands. When the cough had subsided, it was speckled red.
‘I have my medical bag upstairs,’ James had said. ‘I’ll give you an examination and see what’s— see if I can help.’
‘That’s not necessary.’
James had fixed her with a glance. ‘Camille. I insist.’
Climbing up to the open window they escaped from had been out of the question, so Al had pushed money into the hand of the servant who let them in through the back door, and then the two of them had half-carried her up to her room.
Al had left at her insistence, then James had retrieved his bag, listened to her symptoms, examined her bloodied handkerchief. Looked into her mouth, her eyes. Took her pulse.
Grown sombre as the situation became clear.
Now, he looked at her. ‘All I can say is that it will likely be slow. You will have time. We can arrange for you to stay in Italy or perhaps the Alps, for the air—’
‘No.’
‘It’s the recommended treatment.’
‘No. Thank you for your advice, but no.’
He watched her silently, frustration replacing distress on his face. Oh, her kind, useless James. She hated him, and she loved him. He had betrayed her, and she still wanted him to pay, to watch him squirm and beg her forgiveness, but right now all that felt so far away, peeled back like a thin layer of paint over the long, shared pattern of their lives that had been forever entwined.
Three broad sash windows broke up the wall opposite her. Outside, the rain had softened, tracing jagged patterns along the glass. Beyond, the sky was a pale grey with dawn. Featureless. Camille watched the trees shift and sway in the wind, let her mind drift back and forth with their movements. They were calm, deep roots and wide branches that stood firm, as if time and decay were just foolish human notions.
‘So you’re going to carry on with … this?’ he asked.
‘Why? Do you think it’s over?’
James hung his head, returned to packing his bag. ‘No. Wickham was more than clear he won’t be done until no one stands in his way.’
‘Then I will carry on with “this”, as you put it.’
‘You’re ridiculous, Camille,’ he said, but there was softness in his voice.
‘And you’re a hypocrite, James.’
He snapped his bag shut.
‘I suppose things are not over between us either.’
She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. ‘No. We will talk, not – not now.’
His lip curled. ‘Why do I suspect there will be less talking and more yelling?’
‘Because you’re not quite as stupid as you look.’
‘I will keep what I know to myself. And I won’t go easy on you when we have that – talk.’
She stared him down. ‘Good. Don’t.’
He smiled, but his eyes were still sorrowful. She couldn’t take it.
‘Go, get out. Let me sleep. Tell your family – oh, tell them whatever you want, I don’t care. Just let me sleep.’
Without another word, he left.
And she slept. A hectic, fevered sleep full of dreams of blood and monsters and in the middle of it all, Ada, faded and intangible, a wisp that dissolved every time Camille tried to touch her.
She woke, sweaty, covers flung off. A cadre of maids were stoking the fire and shutting the windows tight, a hot brick wrapped up at the foot of her bed to sweat out the fever.
James must have said something about her health, because the attention did not stop. A cup of posset was brought up, replaced an hour later by a restorative beef broth, then Hennie offering to read to her before being herded out by servants. And all of it punctuated by a cough that wouldn’t settle, a raw, bloody taste in her mouth, her stomach and sides sore, her chest squeezed tight.
Camille let it happen.
It was a role she knew how to play. In Paris when she was a child, her mother had swaddled her and hung her room with bundles of herbs, suggesting that perhaps it would be easier for her to breathe if the air smelled a little sweeter. The more Camille had complained about being stuck in bed, the more her mother fussed. Even Ada did it, pestering her about doctors and rest and tonics. She would suffer a hundred indignities if only Ada was here to see her through them.
But she wasn’t, and Camille felt more alone than ever.
She’d learned that all people really wanted of her was to let them try and help. It made them feel better, and who was she to take that away?
It seemed she did not have much else to give.
2
The National Convention
Ada travelled to her father’s house, still wreathed in the smell of burning flesh. No matter how hard she scrubbed her skin, or the clean clothes she’d put on, it wouldn’t go away.
She had kept her mind off the experiment while the duc had toasted Robespierre’s death the evening before, and while she had cried on Clémentine’s shoulder. But now it was all she could think of. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the sheet of brass. The rats’ claws clicking as they snuffled unsuspecting across its surface. Then the burst of electricity. The smell of death.
The carriage ground to a halt in the traffic where the Pont Notre-Dame met the right bank at the Quai de la Grève. Ada pulled at the neck of her gown. She couldn’t breathe. From the riverbanks came the scent of rotting fish, raw sewage, run off from butchers and breweries and tanneries, of the livestock driven through the streets and unwashed masses of people pressing through the gaps between the traffic and lurching buildings.
Ada tumbled out of the carriage door, gasping. She couldn’t bear to be enclosed another moment more. The city closed in on her, the crush of people, all strangers, all wrong. There was only one person
she wanted, and one person she couldn’t have: Camille.
But under the longing was fear: what if she had gone too far? What if Camille couldn’t forgive the lines she’d crossed? Ada thought of the rats in their cage, carried helpless to their death. Like the prisoners being transported to the guillotine, only this time she hadn’t saved them.
She’d killed them.
Would Camille still want her after that?
If she delivered Clémentine as an ally, maybe.
She started walking, making it to the Pont au Change before she realised what she was doing. The carriage was back down a busy street. If she returned to it, it would take her to the duc and she would have to pretend nothing was wrong. She would have to deny every thought in her head until she disappeared into a shadow. A negative. The shape of a person who didn’t exist.
She kept walking, along the Quai de la Mégisserie, past the end of the Île de la Cité, past the Louvre to the Jardin des Tuileries, where finally the cramped city opened into sky and green.
On the other side of the garden was the Salle du Manège, where the National Convention sat. Where Robespierre had given his last speech. Where the idea of a France that governed itself, without a king, had formed. And now, perhaps, died.
If Guil was anywhere, it would be here. Camille was on the other side of the channel. Guil was the only person she had left. The only person who could understand.
Ada joined the people hurrying into the galleries above the debating floor and spotted Guil leaning against the railings, watching the exchange below with intensity. She slid onto the bench beside him, caught his hand in hers.
‘Ada. What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you.’
His expression clouded over; she must look worse than she’d thought. ‘How did it go?’
She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. ‘I – can’t talk about it yet.’
Below, a man she didn’t recognise was giving a fiery speech, thumping his hand on the lectern. A sea of white men sat on the benches, differentiated only by their cravats. The fiery speaker left and was replaced by a dull man with a mousy face. Then a tall, ruddy farmer-turned-politician. Then a general. Then an old aristocrat.
An air of anxiety prickled like a storm brewing, a whole room braced and ready to move. A question, unspoken: what happens now? Time slipped by, and she tried to concentrate, to understand the implications of what they were saying.
But her mind was in the cage with the rats.
A man sat next to her and she was sucked back into the room in an instant.
The duc was in the same outfit he’d worn during their experiment, a rolled-up paper of the day’s convention business in his hand. Ada could hear her own heartbeat racing in her ears. Guil lurched to his feet.
‘Don’t run.’ The duc’s voice was soft and measured and terrifying. ‘Either of you. I have men stationed outside.’ Guil shakily took his seat again.
The noise of the room blurred into a blanket of sound. All she could concentrate on was her own harsh breath and the duc beside her. What did he know? Had Clémentine said something? Had he known about her talking to Guil before? Had his spies been following her from the start? A thousand things clamoured in her mind. She couldn’t speak until he did for risk of giving something away.
The duc studied her, his expression unreadable. ‘I am too kind for my own good, because even now, with so much proof of your untrustworthiness, I find myself tempted to allow you time to explain.’
‘Please—’
‘I said tempted – I did not say which way my thoughts had fallen. Allow me to lay out the situation as it appears to me. I learned that yesterday, you left my house to meet with a man. Not the errand I had assumed you meant when you left. When pressed, the carriage driver was able to give a clear description of the man who had hailed him and rode with you a way. So finding you in such company now is sadly no surprise.’
Ada felt light, dissolved by her fear.
Had the driver overheard their conversation about Olympe and trusting Clémentine?
The duc was no longer the man she’d worked side by side with. He was the man who had tried to kill them all only a month ago. He had given her a few kind words and she had forgotten who she was dealing with.
The duc continued. ‘Let’s skip the part where you try to convince me Guil has changed allegiances too; we both know that implausible. So, I thought to myself, what sort of rendez-vous could this have been? Surely it was no coincidence that you met shortly after I introduced you to Clémentine. Perhaps at that point you could have still fooled me, thrown me off the scent, but then I learnt you spoke with my sister and had a very interesting discussion.’
Ada clamped her hands together on her lap to stop them shaking. Oh god. He knew almost everything. ‘Can you blame me for keeping some things to myself?’
‘I understand your loyalties are torn. Accepting change is difficult. I take you in, offer you the run of my home, bring you into my most secret work – but still, you cannot trust me.’
‘It’s not like that…’
The cold press of a blade against her thigh silenced her at once.
‘It makes me think,’ the duc continued, as though they were nothing more than two acquaintances passing pleasantries, ‘what else have you said that I should not have believed? Perhaps a feigned interest in my work? A stubborn loyalty to the girl who abandoned you and ran away to England?’
Ada shook her head, unconsciously edging away.
‘Guil has nothing to do with this.’
‘Try again.’
‘I swear—’
He pressed the knife harder, her skirts splitting in its path. ‘I know you know anatomy. If I slit the artery here, you would die before I stood up.’
He was right.
And he would do it. What was one more death in Paris?
She took a steadying breath. Thought of Camille’s crooked smile, the way she had held her hands before leaving for England, stroked her thumb over the lifeline etched across Ada’s palm, and said, I trust you, Ada Rousset.
There was always a way out, a choice that could be made.
Play the player, not the game.
Keeping her hands neatly folded, and her chin raised high, she spoke with authority.
‘I swear I have told you no lies. I came to you of my own free will’ – true – ‘I wanted to work with you’ – also true. ‘You have to understand – after what I have been through it would be foolish of me not to exercise some caution when I speak with you. And I could not cut contact with Guil or he would be suspicious. But he has no plan – none of them do. They are children, and I am sick of playing games.’
The duc looked her in the eye, searching her face. Ada held his gaze. She would not blink, she would not falter. Breath held, neck outstretched, she waited for the blade to fall.
At last, he spoke. ‘I have made up my mind. You will accompany Clémentine and I to England to get Olympe back. Guil will also accompany us. This is not an invitation, it is an order. As you say, it would be foolish of me not to exercise some caution, so I take you both with me as insurance against any scheme you might be concocting.’
The knife withdrew and he stood, offering her his hand.
‘Very well. I am not sure I believe you, Ada Rousset, but I grant you a last chance to prove yourself to me. Spend it wisely.’
Heart in her throat, she reached and took the duc’s hand.
‘I will.’
3
The Garden at 6 Bedford Square
10 Thermidor
28 July
Camille watched Hennie and Phil bat a shuttlecock back and forth in the garden of the Harfords’ townhouse. The weather had eased overnight; the sky still a pale grey wash but it was warmer now, and dry. The long summer evenings left too much empty time before dinner, and so the girls had been thrown outside to work up an appetite and Camille had been settled into a chair on the patio, covered in blankets and told
to call the moment she felt a chill.
‘The patient lives.’ Al arrived and, hauling a chair over, he lowered himself down, looking the worse for wear.
Camille sniffed and frowned. ‘Are you hungover? When did you even find time?’
‘Does the sun rise in the east? Do the English have terrible fashion sense? Yes, I’m hungover.’
The shuttlecock went flying wide and Hennie dived for it, just catching it with her net as she skidded on the grass. Al clapped loudly. ‘Oh, terribly good show,’ he said in English.
Camille arched an eyebrow at him. ‘How?’
‘I went out to stretch my legs. A little hair of the dog, see what gossip I could forage, that sort of thing.’ He leaned over her and plucked a bunch of hothouse grapes off the little table of supplies that had been set up next to her.
‘Gossip – you mean the hospital fire?’
‘Not even a blip on the radar. Big news was a large sycamore tree fell into Lady Featherstonhaugh’s summer room and destroyed some extremely expensive and I expect extremely hideous Delftware vases.’
‘Al—’
‘You know the type, for tulips, look like a bagpipe gone wrong.’
‘You are utterly exhausting sometimes, you know that?’
‘Oh, lighten up, Cam. Have a grape. Have a drink. Have some fun.’
‘Why would I do that? We came here on a mission, and unless you missed it, we have yet to get Olympe and ourselves to safety. What purpose does fun serve?’
Al’s head swivelled round. ‘What purpose … my god, you’re worse than I thought. There is no purpose to fun. That’s the point. No, wait – the purpose is that you’re not actually dead yet, so why not try having a bit of a life? Weren’t you the one just telling me that? Christ.’
Camille flinched.
Al picked at the grapes, muttering to himself about what Ada and James could possibly see in her. On the lawn, Hennie belted the shuttlecock into an ornamental fishpond. The game was paused to send a footman to fish it back out.
The thought had hit her harder than she had expected. Al was right. She wasn’t actually dead. Yet. In that moment, swaddled and prone and helpless, it seemed so incredibly obvious. She wasn’t dead yet. She was alive.