by Kat Dunn
She finished her coffee and went back to sharpening her knives. ‘Ada, where’s your crossbow?’
‘Not here. Still stashed at the Saints-Innocents safe house after the Nemours job, I think.’
‘Fine. We’ll make do.’
She checked her store of powder and shot.
Their three days were down to two. The plan untested. The future unfolded in her mind like a map, all the landmarks in dark ink with passages and intersections drawn between them. She traced the paths to the same location, every wrong turn on the way. If she could just wrap herself around every possibility and plan for each, then maybe she could keep them safe.
James caught her in a moment of quiet as she went from the parlour to the bedroom. He was wearing a shirt borrowed from Guil, the sleeves rolled up and his waistcoat unbuttoned. He seemed to fit in so easily.
He laid a hand on her arm, thumb rubbing soft circles against her skin.
‘Are you sure I can’t help?’
‘I don’t need help.’
He smiled, a dimple showing in one cheek. ‘Oh, don’t try lying to me. I know that look too well. You’re worried.’
‘I’m not. I have everything under control. Just – stay here, okay?’
‘I’ll do whatever helps you. If you want me out of this I know you’ll have your reasons, but…’ He trailed off. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
She slipped her arm from his grip.
What could she say?
Yes, of course I do, you’re the only person I have left from my old life.
No, never, I don’t trust anyone.
He must have seen her hesitation, because he stepped closer and cupped her cheek in his hand, before lowering his lips to hers. With a jerk, she moved back so suddenly she nearly tripped into the void of the stairwell.
A blush of humiliation stained his cheeks.
‘James,’ she said quietly, ‘things have changed. It’s been months.’
Pushing his hair from his face, he leaned against the wall.
‘I know. I … didn’t realise that much had changed.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You know all I want is the best for you.’
The familiarity of his voice, the emotion in it was so tempting, so welcoming. But so alien at the same time. It was as though he’d stepped into her life from another world, offering her the chance to be someone else. As though her old life was there waiting for her, if only she took his hand. No. She might not know what else there was for her, but she knew her old life was gone. She’d watched it die at the guillotine months ago.
‘You don’t need to worry about me.’
‘I love you – I’m going to worry. God, when you got arrested I was distraught, we all were. You have no idea.’
She gave him a brittle smile. ‘Believe me, I do.’
He flushed again. ‘Of course. Stupid of me…’
‘It’s fine.’
Keeping his distance, he reached to stroke the hair from her face, gathering it behind her ear in a gesture so deeply etched into her heart it made her ache.
‘Just be safe, Cam.’
She moved away.
‘No promises.’ She smiled, then disappeared down the stairs and out into the city.
8
An Abbey in the Faubourg Saint Martin
The knife jimmied through the crack in the window frame, catching the latch and jerking it round until it popped free. A hand levered the blade, edging the sash up until there was a gap wide enough for fingers. In a flurry of dust and peeling paint, the window was yanked open and Ada toppled through.
‘Ow.’ She picked herself up off the floor where she’d barely avoided sticking herself with the knife and failed to miss landing on a broken chair. Leaning out of the window she called down to the rest of the battalion. ‘It’s clear.’
One by one, Camille, Guil and Olympe hauled themselves through the window into the attic room. Al was absent. He hadn’t been back by the time they needed to leave. Camille had frowned, tapping her forefinger against the barrel of her pistol, but ordered them to go on without him.
They’d followed Léon’s directions to an abandoned abbey outside the Porte Saint Martin. Only deserted a few years earlier when the Church had been stripped of its status, weeds were already proliferating, tiles were slipping off the roof and the ranks of empty windows were grimy. A handful of buildings lined the road out of Paris through the Faubourg Saint Martin, and opposite lay the empty market ground of the closed St Laurent Fair. Fields planted with stunted wheat and market gardens of cress and cabbage spread behind the abbey grounds. Not a soul was in sight, save the silhouette of a carriage retreating in the distance. A short but awkward climb had brought them to the eaves, where they found their way inside.
‘They cleaned this place out before they left,’ said Ada, stepping over the wrecked chair that was the only thing in the dusty room.
‘All church assets were sold to support the war,’ replied Guil. ‘Even the chamber pots.’
A door led to a landing and a flight of rickety stairs.
Silent, dim, musty.
‘What are you hoping to find?’ asked Olympe, bringing up the rear.
‘Leverage. Blackmail material. A weak spot. Anything that puts us in control. The duc is as vulnerable as us in this mess. He’s more frightened of the Revolutionaries than we are – how can he be sure we won’t betray him to the National Guard? He can’t. Maybe that’ll make him more willing to negotiate and sod off and leave us alone.’
‘Are you quite sure this is the correct place?’ Guil peered over the bannister.
Cam slid her pistol from her belt. ‘Let’s find out.’
The stairs led them down and down into a warren of empty rooms crawling with mould and rotten with damp. On the ground floor they found an entrance hall flagged in worn stone, and the entrance to a cloister, and on the far side, the abbey chapel. Other church buildings had been taken over as prisons, but it was clear that this abbey was too far gone for that. In one room, the ceiling had burst like a fat raindrop, splattering lathe and plaster across the floor. A pigeon swooped through the hollow space and into the dark room above.
‘I thought the church was supposed to be rich,’ said Ada, toeing the dried husk of a dead bird.
‘That does not mean they spend their money wisely,’ replied Guil.
On entering the cloister, they found the first signs that the place was occupied. Stacks of empty crates were lined against one wall, straw trailing onto the cobbles. Smashed glass was mixed among it, still bright and gleaming. Ada picked up a large fragment, the remains of a wide-neck opening, and sniffed it.
‘I know what this is. It’s turpentine. It’s used for preserving specimens. Getting a skeleton is easy, you just boil the body until the flesh falls off. Preserving specimens is harder.’
‘Specimens?’ asked Guil.
‘Organs. Dissected animals. Deceased things. They use them in the surgical schools. It’s hard to get fresh corpses, so preserves have to do.’
‘And yet our dear duc seems to have a ready supply coming to him here,’ said Camille.
She tried the door of the chapel, which opened with a shockingly loud squeal.
A bird launched from its perch, an explosion of feathers and noise.
They froze. Anxious sparks danced between Olympe’s fingers.
But no one came.
Silence claimed the cloisters again, and Camille eased the door further open.
Inside, the milky daylight filtered through stained glass windows, casting a mottled pattern over the flagstones. Dim as it was, it was clear that the chapel had been given over to a darker purpose. The pews had been removed, replaced by two long wooden benches, and makeshift shelves of planks balanced over lumps of scrap masonry. Each was filled with jars, some murky, some bright, all with yellowy-grey objects suspended in clear liquid. By the benches was a trestle table covered in oilcloth and spread with knives and hacksaws and all manner of blades an
d slicing implements. The floor was dull, much sluiced but still sticky with something dark that caught in the grouting.
On each bench lay a human body. Adult, limp, splayed open by a thousand pins. Skin peeled back like the rind of an orange, bone, vein and muscle bared. On the woman to the left, both legs had been unzipped from ankle to groin, butterflied and still grisly fresh. The second was in a worse state. Smelling strongly, the man’s belly had been scooped out like a melon, intestines coiled over his ribs.
Camille let out a low whistle. Beside her, Olympe was tense as a cat, arched and ready to hiss.
‘This is it. This must be him.’
Camille covered her mouth and pushed them back outside.
‘Ada, stay here with Olympe. See what you can find out about the duc’s … studies. Guil, you’re with me. I want to discover the man behind the mutilation.’
Ada closed the chapel door behind her, and she and Olympe were alone in the dissection room. The smell was atrocious. The sweetness of rotting flesh mingled with astringent turpentine, and damp that rose from the floor. Paris in summer was never a pleasant experience, and most dissecting schools closed when neither student nor teacher could face racing to study bodies that would liquefy as they worked. Either the duc had a strong stomach, or he was desperate to keep working, whatever the circumstances.
Living with her father, she’d had her own pomander, filled with nutmeg and orange peel and spices, to brave the streets when he let her out to the opera or other amusements.
Here, she had nothing.
Ada took a deep breath – regretted it – then crossed between the benches to begin searching the scattered books and drawers and papers that had been left in the room.
Olympe didn’t follow.
She stayed by the door, eyes fixed on the two bodies.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. No. I’m not sure.’
‘You don’t have to do this.’
Olympe shuddered, not taking her eyes from the bodies. ‘I keep thinking: if I had died, is this where I would have ended up? Would he slice me open to dissect my heart and liver and brain? Pickle me like a walnut for everyone to study?’
‘You’re free. That’s never going to happen now.’
She pulled her gaze from the corpses to look at Ada. ‘Just because the duc hasn’t done it yet, doesn’t mean this isn’t the fate waiting for me some day. I want to know why he did this to me.’
‘I understand, you know,’ said Ada after a long silence. ‘Not exactly, of course, but my father made choices for me that he had no right to. He didn’t like how close I was to Camille. He thought her family was dangerous, so when Camille and her father were on trial, he locked me in my room. I know it sounds silly when I put it like that – I’m hardly the first daughter to be locked in – but it was such a betrayal. I’d thought of us as inseparable after my mother died when I was ten. When he stopped me being with Camille when she needed me most, it was like meeting a new person who’d been hiding under his skin all along. He didn’t really care what I wanted. He only thought of me as another project to order and direct as he saw fit.’
She hesitated. Her father’s letter was still in her pocket, its blunt edge against her thigh. She should open it. But she couldn’t bear to. The longer she left it, the longer she could believe that maybe this time would be the time she said no. This time she would walk away from him as she’d promised Camille she had.
Until she opened it, there was hope.
‘After I left, the thing I couldn’t shake was the questions. Why had he done it? Why did he think it was okay? So I understand you wanting to know why people make the choices they make. After all, our choices are all we have.’
Olympe squeezed her hands into fists for a moment, a glimpse of grey skin peeking out between her gloves and her sleeve. ‘And is it better now? Being free? Making your own choices?’
Ada took a moment to reply.
‘Yes. I wouldn’t have stayed in the battalion if it wasn’t.’
Olympe pressed her fingers into her eyes, then straightened. ‘Okay. I’m okay. Let’s get on.’
Together they began to work through the scattered mess of papers, receipts from medical suppliers and spidery pencil drawings of blood vessels and letters stained with blood and candle wax.
Ada turned her back to Olympe, hiding her expression.
She wanted to believe she was telling the truth.
9
The Abbey Garden
They’d found the rest of the bodies.
Camille and Guil had only just begun their search of the rest of the abbey when they came across a large, deep pit among the remnants of a walled vegetable garden. The thick haze of black flies had led them to it, weaving in the air above the pit. Heaped inside were corpses, bloated, covered in dissection incisions, their faces rotted beyond recognition. An open grave, like the pits dug every time a bout of plague ravaged the city.
Camille covered her mouth with her sleeve and yanked Guil away.
‘We won’t learn anything here.’
Guil grimaced. ‘They deserve a proper burial.’
‘I know. But we can’t leave any sign that we were here.’
Reluctantly, he agreed and they returned to their methodical search of the abbey, room by room. In the old kitchens and storerooms and offices they’d found more medical supplies, oilcloths, crates holding fresh jars, stores of acid, sulphur, dyes and resins and other tools of the anatomist’s trade. And here and there, evidence of human life. Unwashed plates, half-read newspapers and discarded handkerchiefs. They traced the detritus from room to room, tracking their prey back to its den.
Camille found a chamber pot so freshly used that the tang of urine was pungent.
They weren’t alone.
‘One day I’d like to do a job that doesn’t end up involving sewage in some way.’ She spoke lightly to dispel the feeling of being watched.
‘So you’ll be looking for employment out of Paris, then?’
‘God, no. The countryside is wall-to-wall manure.’
The thought of the future had brought her conversation with Ada on the roof of the Au Petit Suisse abruptly back.
‘Would you?’ she asked, wrinkling her nose as she put the lid back on the pot.
‘Would I what?’
‘Look for a different job? I mean, when this is over and no one needs rescuing any more.’
‘Hmm. I think that somewhat depends.’
‘On what?’
‘Who wins this struggle in our nation.’
‘Well, yes, but. In a perfect world. A world where you can live whatever life would make you happy.’
‘Interesting.’ He folded his arms, tapping an elegant finger against his elbow. ‘I have always pictured myself retiring to a quiet town perhaps in the mountains. Somewhere sedate, with a garden I can tend all year round.’
Camille’s eyebrow arched. ‘Really?’
‘No. I kill plants. It would be ill-advised.’
She snorted and they moved to the next room, working down a long corridor trying each door in turn.
Too many were locked. Who needed to lock rooms in an abandoned abbey?
There were fresh footprints in the dust. Something rattled.
Camille flung out an arm, stopping Guil in his tracks. They froze as the noise came again. Exchanging a look, they drew their weapons noiselessly.
Then a rat scurried from under a broken table, sending the snapped wood clattering.
Camille slipped her pistol back into her belt.
‘The sooner we’re out of here, the better.’
They found another open door leading into a room with a desk and chair, an expensive, but mud-stained jacket slung over the back of it.
‘What do you think Al will do after this is all over? Professional layabout?’
Guil gave her a pointed look. ‘You invited him into this team the same as the rest of us. You didn’t have to.’
‘I know.’
She sighed. ‘I get you’re into the whole revolutionary “speak truth to power” thing but could you stop taking me apart so easily? I’m fragile.’
He laughed. ‘Camille Laroche, fragile is the last thing you are.’
‘You’ve still not told me what you’d really want for your future. What you would choose for yourself. You know, if not murdering shrubbery.’
‘Honestly? I think I would like to write – for a paper, pamphlets, I am not entirely sure. Even after the dust has settled on this revolution there will be many wrongs that need righting. I want to bring people’s attention to those problems that are all too easy to ignore.’
‘But what about your family? Out of all of us you have the most family left. Why stay here? Why not go back to Marseilles and be out of it.’
He looked away. ‘I don’t think I can go back yet. You know my father didn’t approve of my joining the army. If I go back in disgrace, a deserter … well. All I'll have done is prove him right.’
‘You don’t have to tell him.’
‘But I would know. I want – I want to do something he would be proud of.’
‘Was this the sort of thing you had in mind?’
‘I admit I had more pictured myself giving rousing revolutionary speeches from the tables of the Café Royal.’
‘Next job, I’ll see what I can do.’
‘And you? What will you do when this is over?’
‘Why is everyone asking me that?’ Camille grumbled, putting the collection of lint, odd cufflinks and twists of snuff back into the jacket. Nothing useful.
‘You did start the conversation.’
They moved on down the corridor.
‘Point taken. I don’t really know. I can’t really think about an “after”. I think about now, and what’s already happened. And the future as far I need to see past the end of the current job. I try to picture my perfect life and I see nothing. Maybe there’s something wrong with me.’
‘You see nothing? Not even a person?’
The next door was locked. Camille jerked the handle in frustration.