by Kat Dunn
‘That’s because he doesn’t scare me!’
Ada stared at her in shock. ‘I … scare you?’
‘It scares me how much I love you.’
‘You say that as if I’m supposed to think that’s a good thing. Jesus, Camille, are you serious? You think that’s a thing that would make me feel good to hear? I would never want you to be scared of me.’ For a moment, Ada thought she was going to burst into tears – but then anger won. ‘When your father was on trial – when I ran away from home for you – you said you’d told me everything. How your parents had been betrayed, falsely accused as traitors. That they were all you had.’
‘I didn’t lie to you. I didn’t mean to. It … felt like another lifetime, like none of it was real. His parents were friends with my parents and Georges Molyneux. We half-grew up together, before the Revolution… We weren’t going to get married until James came down from university.’ Camille licked her lips. ‘It might never have happened.’
Ada’s anger boiled over.
‘Do you love him?’
Camille’s expression didn’t falter.
‘I did. I thought I did.’
‘But do you still have feelings for him now?’
Ada asked the question even as she could feel her heart breaking.
Camille hesitated.
‘No.’
A silence, smooth and pearlescent, hung between them.
‘Too slow, Cam.’
Camille took a deep breath.
‘We don’t have time for this.’
‘I’m sorry my loving you is so inconvenient.’
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
‘No. You meant you wanted the fight to be over so you decided it was. Just like that.’
‘This isn’t about us right now. We need to figure out tomorrow. For Olympe’s sake.’
Ada bit her tongue, swallowing everything she wanted to say.
‘Fine. Go to this stupid dinner. The great Camille Laroche knows best.’
She watched Camille stalk back upstairs, the gap between them wide and deep and raw.
8
The Charnel House
Guil woke shortly before Camille was due to leave for dinner.
They clustered around the slab. He still looked exhausted, but a lot less close to death. James had him roll onto his side and pressed his fingers gently around his wounds.
‘It’s not feeling too hot, and I can’t see any signs of infection. I don’t think they were as deep as I’d first thought. How do you feel?’
‘I have had worse injuries,’ said Guil.
Camille snorted. ‘Yes, we know. How do these particular stab wounds feel?’
‘Painful, but my mind feels clear.’
‘Good.’ James was sorting through the medical supplies he’d run out to buy with the last of the money from Ada’s father. ‘You’ll have some impressive scars, but I think you’ll make a full recovery. As long as you stay in bed and eat a steak. If we can find a steak.’
‘I am well enough to sit,’ insisted Guil.
‘Then you’re more than well enough to lie down,’ said James, going back to the bandages.
Guil gave the ceiling a long-suffering look.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got nothing of any real use for the pain. Other than the rest of Al’s brandy.’
‘Hang on,’ said Ada, easing herself out of the knot of people around Guil. ‘Al might have something. It’s not a steak but I think it will help.’
She dashed down to the crypt and rummaged until she found a battered leather trunk. It was full of Al’s discarded waistcoats and pamphlets and empty twists that had contained snuff. At the bottom was a palm-sized leather pouch, soft with age and held shut with a button. Inside was a stoppered bottle. She hesitated, but then felt sure Al would understand.
She went back upstairs.
‘Laudanum.’
James frowned. ‘Is Al unwell?’
‘No.’
‘Ah. I see.’ He took the bottle and held it up to the dying light to judge how full it was. ‘Thank you, this will do well.’
‘What’s laudanum?’ asked Olympe.
‘A medicine for pain,’ explained Camille. ‘But some people take it when they’re not ill.’
Ada thought about Al’s pinched, exhausted expression, the scant possessions he’d been able to take with him when he’d been thrown out by his parents. ‘Perhaps there are different sorts of pain.’
There was just time to finalise their plan for the Festival of the Supreme Being before Camille left.
Ada watched her go. Camille was walking into the lion’s den, but she wasn’t wrong. Turning down the invitation would make them look as if they had something to hide.
For a brief moment, Ada had thought Camille might cross the room and kiss her goodbye. Instead, she’d checked on Guil and Olympe and James one more time, then let herself out with not much more than a curt nod.
Ada didn’t want her father to be right about her relationship with Camille. But she couldn’t see a way back either. Both of them had lied, cutting a deeper wound between them, and now she could feel it festering. Maybe they shouldn’t choose each other. Maybe choosing each other had made them weak.
They’d both been distracted at the theatre by the tension between them and look what had happened.
Al still hadn’t come back by the time Ada had finished reading and Olympe had come to sit on the floor again and pick through the stack of pamphlets that had accumulated among their things. The lamps were lit all down the Rue St Honoré, and a gentle mist of rain washed away any lingering warmth in the day. Ada’s mind kept straying to Camille and the dinner invitation, running through worse and worse possibilities. As seven bells rang out, she put on her cloak.
‘Where are you going?’ asked James. ‘We need to stick together – we’re already down Cam and Al, and Guil isn’t in great shape.’
‘I’m going to see if I can track down Al. You’ll be all right here for a few hours.’
James nodded. ‘Guil’s asleep now, the laudanum did the trick.’
Olympe looked up from the pamphlets. ‘You’ll be back soon?’
‘Yes.’ Ada gave a tight smile. ‘Before you know it.’
She slipped into the street. Paris was out in force. People were decorating buildings for the festival tomorrow, hanging banners and strings of lanterns. Crossing the Place de l’Égalité, taxis rattled past her and people streamed to the theatres and opera or back from the factories and mines. The grounds of the Palais de l’Égalité – formerly the Palais-Royal – glittered with lights and bright young people in their finery. Patrons spilled from cafés, playing cards and drinking and listening to musicians as she made her way around.
Two loops of his regular haunts and still no sign of Al. It was getting late, the bells peeling beyond count. Ada stood, hands tucked into her armpits, weighing her options. She’d left Olympe and James for a long time now. She really should go back. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that wherever Al was, he wasn’t okay. He’d been even more argumentative recently, too aloof, disappearing for longer than usual. And thinking about him stopped her thinking about Camille.
There was one last place to check. The place where she and Camille had met Al to discuss his joining the battalion, halfway into a bottle of gin, surrounded by chaos and colours and lights.
As the rain eased, she headed east past the ruins of the Bastille, towards the crooked lanes and alleys of the poor quarters of the Faubourg Saint Antoine. A knot of alternative theatres and drinking dens lurked on the other side of the city walls, hidden away where no one would look for them.
Light glowed in a doorway. Ada paid a sou to the girl on the door and, edging past two men kissing, she descended into the basement.
9
A Chateau in the Forêt de Saint Germain
The first thing Molyneux said to Camille when he opened the door was that she absolutely must change.
‘I have s
omething that I think will fit you. Come now, Camille, you’re a pretty girl. You’re doing yourself no favours with this silly get-up.’
Camille looked down at her Sans Culottes trousers and shirt with its floppy cockade pinned to the collar, and felt a blush tinge her cheeks despite herself. The carriage had swept up the drive through a row of rigid poplar trees to an imposing stone building with ranks of sightless windows and matching wings splaying out on either side of a grand portico. She’d walked up the sweeping stairs to the door, practising her opening sentence in her head – she was going to take control of the situation from the start. And yet somehow, she ended up doing exactly as she was told.
Molyneux ushered her in and she let herself be handed over to a maid who took her up to a first-floor bedroom and started picking at her clothes and hair. A dress had been laid out already, as though Molyneux had decided that whatever she turned up in wouldn’t be acceptable. It was a simple white thing with a high waist and a broad blue sash that tied tightly over the billowing folds in the modern style. Until Marie Antoinette had famously been painted wearing a flimsy Perdita dress, the style had been considered scandalously close to wearing nothing more than an underslip in public. Ironic that the dress had become part of the rejection of Ancien Régime excess, when it was the queen herself who had made it a fashion statement. The maid arranged Camille’s hair in a loose braid around her crown, then selected a few tasteful pieces of jewellery. Camille wondered whose it was. The dress was youthful, draping gauzy layers so she looked like a classical statue. Or the perfect daughter of the Revolution. As a last touch, Camille pinned her tricolore back onto her bosom.
Feeling distinctly out of sorts, she went back down the grand marble staircase to the entrance hall. A small party was waiting for her in a reception room, lost in the vast space which was bigger than the battalion’s whole apartment. It was stuffed with Louis XVI furniture, lacquered cabinets inlaid with walnut and gilded mirrors. Above, a single vast fresco covered the entire ceiling. Molyneux, ruminating over a glass of sherry through pince-nez, sat in an ornate armchair upholstered in green velvet. Docteur Comtois stood by the marble fireplace, reading a letter. There was no one else.
She introduced herself with a cough.
‘Ah, my dear Camille. Do join us.’ He gestured to the settee opposite. ‘I trust you find the dress to your liking.’
She sat, looping her fingers in her lap. ‘You know I am not much interested in fashions, Citoyen Molyneux.’
‘Uncle Georges, please. Whatever has passed, to me you’ll always be the baby girl I bounced on my knee.’ He smiled indulgently.
‘I think we are well beyond whatever family ties there might have been between us,’ she replied, without returning his smile.
She wished it wasn’t a lie. The nagging tug of their past connection was jumbling her thoughts. Part of her wanted to throw everything he’d done back in his face, to hurt him the way she’d been hurt. The other part felt lost in nostalgia for the man who’d taught her how to ride a fat pony through lavender fields.
But this couldn’t be about her. This was about Olympe. That was her focus.
A footman announced dinner. Camille followed Molyneux to the dining room, acutely aware of Comtois close behind. The dining room was as cold and imposing as the rest of the building, the walls hung floor to ceiling with paintings of sprawling battle scenes and landscapes, and parquet floors that echoed her footsteps. A long table was set for three. Outside the tall windows, the grounds of the chateau rolled away towards a lake, the grass and water cast in grey and blue as the light faded.
Molyneux ushered her into a chair on one side, with Comtois opposite, before taking his place at the head of the table.
Apart from the footman bringing in dishes, they were left to serve themselves in a display of egalitarian principles. A bouillie soup was presented and Camille pushed the tough salted pork around the bowl, debating her angle. The way Molyneux kept smiling fondly at her made her wonder if some part of it was genuine affection.
She shook the thought away.
‘I’m surprised you have time to have dinner with me,’ she said. ‘After the Royalist arson attack on the theatre I’d have thought your attention would be directed elsewhere. They are saying it’s arson, aren’t they? And with the Festival of the Supreme Being so soon…’
‘A dying creature will always convulse in its final moments,’ said Comtois. ‘These Royalist attacks are nothing more.’
Camille pursed her lips and turned to her uncle. ‘Will you be making a speech at the festival, Citoyen Molyneux?’
Molyneux’s face lit up.
‘I’m delighted you ask. The dear docteur here would be far better placed to speak about our research, but an event of this magnitude requires a statesman not a scientist, so it falls to me to press our case.’
‘Research?’ Camille brightened. ‘What research is this?’
She smiled so sweetly at him, he almost spoke. But a look from Comtois cut him off.
‘Never you mind your pretty little head about that. Suffice to say, the greatest minds in science are being put to work in aid of La France and to ensure her safety from foreign aggressors.’
Camille forced herself to pick up her fork and mechanically chew through a few bites of pork. Could this research involve Olympe? Surely it couldn’t be anything else? She didn’t understand what the defence of the Republic bit was all about, but she had to try to find out more.
‘I hope you will do your patriotic duty and attend,’ added Molyneux. ‘Once you have completed our job, of course.’
‘I’m not sure men congratulating themselves on their genius while standing on top of a giant papier-mâché mountain is quite my thing.’
Comtois was watching her as he delicately ate his own soup. She popped a cube of carrot in her mouth and stared back at him, waiting for him to look away first. He didn’t. ‘Although you won’t actually have a mountain to stand on – nice symbolism, by the way. I heard it burned down with the Théâtre Patriotique.’
‘The Patriotique? Oh, no, that was just a test model. The real one is far larger – couldn’t fit in a theatre! No, no, the mountain is ready to be unveiled,’ said Molyneux passing her a plate of white rolls. Not pain d’égalité, she noted.
Something took shape in Camille’s mind as she accepted a roll. She needed a stage for her sleight of hand, and the mountain would be perfect.
Before Camille could reply, the footman reappeared to take away their plates and lay a dish of stewed soles with a sauce of button onions and mushrooms, and a plate of pickled vegetables. Despite it being high summer, the harvest had been bad, as it had for years, and even the powerful found food at a premium.
‘I trust you are in a position to complete your job, as agreed?’ Molyneux served her a forkful of samphire.
‘Is that why you invited me here? Checking up on me?’
‘My dear, I am sorry that this distrust must exist between us. I invited you here in the hope it might remind you where you come from.’
‘Where I come from?’
‘I mean your parents, who for much of their lives dedicated themselves to the revolutionary cause.’
‘Until you all got too murder-happy.’
She held her anger in check, stabbing her food with her cutlery.
He put down his fork. ‘I regret that we used such aggressive methods when we recruited you. I know you still support us, when it comes down to it.’
‘Don’t coddle the girl,’ Comtois interrupted. ‘I’ll put it plainly, if you won’t. We have reason to believe you have the girl, and you are protecting her out of a misplaced sense of honour. I also believe that the duc hired you to take her. We have known of your antics releasing convicted prisoners, but we have tolerated it, as a horse does a fly. An irritation at best. You move grains of sand one by one, while we rout out treason and serve justice better than ever. You were beneath our notice. But now you hold something of national importance, perhaps we
will be less inclined to overlook irritations. I understand you are harbouring a fugitive aristocrat convicted of treason against France? And a deserter?’
Camille schooled her features into a bland smile.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Molyneux sighed, passing a hand over his tired eyes. ‘Perhaps if I’d come to you honestly, presented you with the truth of the matter, you would have agreed without the need for threats.’
Truth of the matter? Did he mean Olympe’s strange powers?
‘You made the choice to threaten my friends, not me. Don’t expect me to have any sympathy for you.’ She licked her lips, choosing her words. ‘Will you tell me this “truth” now?’
Molyneux and Comtois exchanged a glance.
‘Deny your involvement all you like, but I think you know me well enough to trust when I say the Royalists must not get hold of this girl. Or the fate of France will be at stake,’ said Molyneux carefully. ‘I do not speak lightly. I won’t deny your parents and I didn’t agree on the path the Revolution was taking, but on something this important I believe they would feel clear where their loyalties lay. They would have done the right thing.’
Camille hated how defenceless she felt when anyone brought up her parents. It had been months since they’d been executed, but the wound felt as fresh and raw as it had that awful day watching the guillotine blade fall. The worst part was, Molyneux was probably correct. If lines were being drawn, they would have picked the Revolution every time.
Perhaps the right thing was a matter of perspective.
‘And if you got hold of her, things would be all roses? Forgive my scepticism but your government tends to take new inventions like the guillotine and get a little out of control.’
‘This girl is so much more than that,’ said Comtois, leaning forwards, impassioned. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to begin to understand, but a power like hers – it could change the world. Can you imagine if a French republic became the first country in the world to truly harness the power of electricity? Factories and steam power would be nothing next to what we could create. And, yes, if war threatened us then why not use every resource at hand to defend ourselves? France must have her. She is our future, our safety, our deliverance.’