by Kat Dunn
The house was tall and thin and squeezed in between two grander residences off the Rue du Temple. It was furnished with a careless mix of old baroque pieces and cheaply bought workman’s stools and tables. Ada knew how much thought had gone into appearing so artfully uninterested in fashion and fripperies. It still smelled the same: ink and binding glue and her father’s pipe.
Only her room was different. The window had bars over it, and when she looked outside the trellis she’d climbed down to escape had been removed. The door locked from outside now too. Half her books and papers were gone; only old copies of L’Ami d’Égalité were left. Her scientific texts, her collection of geological samples and chemical experiments had been stripped out. Anything that could be a weapon – even her needlepoint – had been taken away. Her bindings were cut, and then she was left alone.
Feeling overwhelmed by everything that had happened, she gave in to the plaintive child inside and flung herself on the bed. They’d been so close to pulling it off, and then her father had to step in and try to decide her future for her. Camille would have no idea what had happened to her. She would have just disappeared like Al. It was all so unfair she wanted to scream.
As the sun made its descent, casting puddles of buttery light across the floorboards, her father appeared with dinner. Ada sat on the edge of the bed filled with a warring mix of resentment and exhaustion. He put the tray on her desk and pulled out her chair to sit down.
‘How are you feeling? The sedative should have worn off by now, I’d have thought.’
‘What did you do to me?’
‘A chemical preparation. Something I learned from your fascination with the subject, I own. I thought you might appreciate the judicial use of a scientific discovery eradicating the need for force.’
‘You drugged me.’
‘For your own—’
‘Good. Yes, I thought so.’
He smiled and held out the tray to her.
‘I know you don’t understand why I had to take such extreme measures, but when you have children of your own you’ll realise that there’s nothing you won’t do to protect them.’
A hundred questions crashed through her head but in that moment she hated him more than any words could possibly convey. Slowly, she picked up the bowl of soup.
‘Something to eat and a good sleep always sets the world to rights—’
The bowl missed his head by a sliver and smashed against the pale yellow wallpaper, sending soup blobbing onto her desk. Her father flinched, the smile on his face dying.
‘Why?’ she asked between gritted teeth.
‘I told you—’
‘Don’t tell me this is to protect me. I don’t care if that’s why you think you’re doing this. I want to know, why work with them?’
Her father’s face shuttered, and the silence yawned between them. ‘Needs must.’
‘They’re Royalists. They want the king back! They want us all as serfs to crush under their velvet heel.’
‘I am your father. I don’t have to explain myself to you.’
Talking to him was infuriating. It always was.
‘So you’re just going to keep me locked up in here for ever?’
‘I hope not for ever. I hope you will reconsider your need to rebel against me.’
‘I’ll go back to Camille the first chance I get.’
Her father didn’t reply but she saw the edge of his mouth twitch.
‘She’s not worth your time or thoughts, Adalaide. She uses people, just like her father did.’
‘I went with her of my own free will.’
‘You didn’t see what I did. The girl was manipulating you, twisting your good, kind soul out of shape.’
‘We fell in love, Papa. I know that sort of thing is hard for you to understand.’
He shook his head. ‘She’s dangerous. I want you away from this battalion, they’re trouble. In that, my interests align with the duc’s. He wants his research back, and he believes your absence will motivate Camille to acquiesce to his demands.’
‘I don’t understand… How can that be?’ The duc had seen Olympe fall – why did they think she was alive?
‘I’m sorry, my dear, but your trick on the mountain didn’t work. The duc’s men saw the girl being smuggled away, quite alive. He’d hoped you’d realise she was more trouble than she’s worth and would hand her over in good faith. Unfortunately, you pulled another silly stunt. Camille’s idea, no doubt, but you left him no choice.’
Ada’s heart stuttered. No – they couldn’t have failed. All that work for nothing. And – oh god – Camille didn’t know.
She schooled her features into an expression of calm; she wouldn’t let her father get the better of her.
‘If you think holding me hostage will get Camille to hand over Olympe, it won’t work. You said it yourself, Camille will never choose me.’
‘The duc believes otherwise. My duty is to keep you safe. You’re my daughter. I brought you from Martinique, offered you an education and a place in the world that not many girls like you get the chance of. You should learn to take some advice and give up this fruitless rebellion. Camille du Bugue is not half the strategist she thinks she is. Let her fail on her own. Without you to help, she’s nothing.’
Ada regarded him coolly, crushing the bread to crumbs between her fingers in barely suppressed anger. ‘You think that’s a compliment, don’t you?’
‘I always wanted a clever child, but I see now it has many challenges.’ He smoothed the greying hair from his temples. ‘When I realised what you’d got mixed up with in this game of cat and mouse with the Royalists, I had to act. They are not good men, I know that only too well. Which means the duc won’t hold back in trying to get what they want. I couldn’t risk you getting caught up in that.’
‘That’s not your choice to make!’
It was then that her father’s temper finally broke.
‘Will you stop being so thoroughly selfish! Give up this hopeless fight. Let me protect you. Please, Ada. You know you’ll always have a place with me, whatever you do.’
Ada forced herself not to flinch, to meet his yellow-flecked eyes. She remembered fighting with him as a little girl, knowing that the moment would come when his affable demeanour disintegrated, and she stared at the churning mass of emotions and impulses that lay inside him, as it lay inside all people. She wanted to demand to know what was so wrong with loving Camille. But she knew it was pointless. So she lifted her chin as she had then, defiant and desperate.
‘I think you were right about Camille, is that what you want to hear?’ she said. ‘I know she won’t pick me. But I’m okay with that. I can still choose to fight for what I believe in for my own reasons.’
‘For god’s sake, this isn’t a revolution any longer. It’s a dictatorship. The Revolution was poisoned and left for dead by Robespierre and these fanatics. Can’t you see that? They think they can name as traitor anyone their paranoid minds tell them has turned against them, and murder without consequence. They no more respect the rule of law than the Roman tyrants did when their empire fell. I will not let France be dragged down under the weight of preening, arrogant fools. The tide is turning, Adalaide. Soon the moderates and reasonable men will rise and restore order and civilisation and we can actually get something done. There is no need for so much hungry violence. Why can’t we be calm and civil and discuss our ideas with respect for one another? Your mother would have understood that.’
And that was where Ada’s self-control broke.
‘My mother would have been ashamed of you,’ she snarled, eyes flashing. ‘You’re calm and civil because this doesn’t affect you. You’re not trapped and starving. I’ll sit down and shut up the day we’re equal, the day we’re all free. You just want people to stop causing you problems.’
Her father had withdrawn completely, hiding his emotions behind the calm facade of the rational philosopher. ‘You are young, and a woman. You do not have the same grasp of such th
ings as those who have dedicated themselves to study and thought for decades. It is words like yours that damage the cause and set us far further back than if we had not started at all.’
‘I think you’re a coward.’ Her stomach was churning and she was glad she hadn’t eaten anything or she might have thrown up. ‘Mother would have thought so too.’
He rose, gathered up the tray and crossed to the door.
‘I knew you could be headstrong, but I never thought you would become cruel.’
She coiled back onto the bed, wrapping her arms around her legs, fighting the hot tears of injustice and loneliness that threatened to engulf her. The world was viciously, spitefully unfair and she hated it. She wasn’t going to let it drag her down, though. Camille might not choose her, but Ada was starting to understand why. There were bigger things than each other to choose. Olympe still needed them – and if they couldn’t put this right then the whole city, even France itself, could be in danger. The fight was more than just the two of them.
Her father would slip eventually, and she would be ready.
She’d escaped before, she could do it again.
4
Palais de Justice
21 Prairial Year II
Eight months ago, Camille had stood in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal in the grand Hall of Liberty and fumbled through her defence. Her father’s lawyer had fed lines to her, but she’d kept mixing up legal terms and names of different political factions and dates and places until the whole thing had become a blur. All she could remember was the way the jury watched her with accusatory looks, hunting for the lies in her testimony. But somehow she’d been acquitted as nothing but an easily led girl who didn’t understand anything her father had been doing. Camille had been furious, because it was the truth. She’d barely understood anything that had been going on.
Al gave no defence at all.
He stood in front of the Tribunal with a sneer and put up no argument against any charge they raised. Nor was he given a lawyer or the chance to call witnesses. It was a piece of theatre, from the baying audience, to the stage set for Revolutionary justice to prevail against aristocratic treachery. There were even girls wandering among the crowd selling oranges and herring. Al stood in his rumpled, stained britches and tailcoat, looking every bit the aristocrat dragged out of his mansion. He played his part too well. Camille wanted to shake him, make him try to fight, but there was nothing she could do. He was marching towards his own execution.
His chance to speak lasted no more than a few minutes. He was being tried with other traitors. Once his turn was over, he was pushed into a packed pen, and Camille struggled to keep track of him.
The sentence was handed out en masse: guillotine.
Trial over, the public poured into the narrow streets of the Île de la Cité. Camille left with them, almost too tired to feel anything. The verdict was no surprise. She’d known what to expect since she’d first seen his name in the papers. She’d thought watching the trial might have gone some way to taking her mind off Ada, but it only brought her closer to her crowding memories. Ada wrapping her arms around her and pulling her out of the courtroom as her mother was sentenced. Molyneux watching her give testimony, his familiar face blank and unsympathetic. And her father. Tall, stern, the god of her childhood reduced to a fumbling man in chains who couldn’t lay out the pieces of his life and make them add up to anything that would save him.
Before, the thought of him had broken her heart. Now, all she could remember was the look of confusion on her mother’s face when the soldiers had come for her. The way she’d looked at Camille’s father with desperate, questioning eyes. The moment too long he’d waited before protesting her innocence.
Camille had left his pistol at the Au Petit Suisse. Its weight at her waist no longer gave her comfort.
When the crowd had thinned, she made her way round to the iron gates of the Conciergerie. The same guard who’d let her and Guil in a few days ago was on duty. He didn’t recognise her, and a few coins in his hand had him opening the gate and having her escorted as a visitor to the dank pistole cells.
She found Al under an arch, his hand wrapped round the neck of a bottle of gin. He didn’t look up when she dragged over a stool to sit next to him.
‘This your charitable work for the year?’ he asked after taking a slug. ‘Tell yourself you’re a good person because you came to offer some comfort before they chop my head off.’
The impulse to snap at him brought words to her mouth. But she paused, remembering what Ada had said about the two of them. How similar they were. How her words hurt Al more than he ever let on.
‘I’m here to make sure you’re not going to be totally soaked through with gin when we need your help.’
‘My help? With what, the best recipes for rat on a stick? All the hot intelligence about the prison guards? I’ve got nothing you want any more.’
‘Don’t be dense, we need your help getting you out of here.’
He arched a brow. ‘And how, pray tell, are you going to do that?’
Camille hesitated. ‘The battalion can do a prison break in its sleep. Do you really think you’re such a special case?’
‘I think you’re two men down and have a patchy track record of actually stopping people getting executed.’ Three down, she thought, with Ada gone. ‘Ask your father – oh, wait.’ He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Forgive me if I put a bit more faith in the gin to make me feel better.’
‘What do you want, Al? An apology? Do you want me to say I’m sorry I didn’t know your family was on trial when you never bothered to tell us? That I’m sorry you’re so bad at managing your own feelings you drink and put the rest of us at risk? Because you’ll be waiting a long damn time.’
He knocked back another gulp of alcohol. ‘There’s my girl. Make sure you go for the killer blow, tell me you know how I’m feeling but you didn’t give up and drown yourself.’
She opened her mouth and shut it again. She had been about to tell him she knew exactly how he was feeling. He was angry, yes, but for the first time she understood that he was scared. Not of death – though of course that too – but that the battalion would leave him behind. He was so frightened that no one would think him worth saving that it felt safer for him to push them away first.
She wished Ada was here. Ada would know what to say.
‘You’re right, I didn’t behave like you. But that doesn’t mean I want to see you die, Al. I’m not a monster, whatever you think. I’m going to get you out of here.’
Bottle still in hand, he gave her a lazy salute. ‘Have fun with that.’
‘I haven’t got time for this. Just – hold yourself together. I’ll get you out of here. I promise.’
She left him in his corner and pressed more coins into the hand of the guard by the cell to ensure Al got fresh bedding and some hot food.
Her foul mood followed her all the way home through the tense and teeming streets of Paris. Whatever Al believed, she wasn’t going to let him die without a fight.
She looped past the Au Petit Suisse in vain hope of finding Ada. This time she pictured her muddy and tired after lying low, downing half a pot of coffee and demolishing a roll as she told Camille about her adventure.
Instead, Camille found an unsealed letter, held in place by a knife stabbed into the street door below their rooms.
She glanced in both directions along the street. It was busy, but the face she was expecting wasn’t there. She knew who had left the letter. Because she knew whose knife this was.
5
Rue Barbette
Morning was heartlessly crisp and bright outside Ada’s window. She stood in the warm rays, a fresh shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Once she’d felt held by the pale stone and busyness of her father’s home, given a place and identity. Now she felt smothered.
She’d spent half an hour checking the bars on the window and the lock on the door. There was no way out, and not a single thing she could pick the lock
with. After the alarm and frustration subsided, the worst thing was the boredom. There was nothing to read, nothing to write with, nothing to do. For a while she sat by the barred windows and watched the servants bustle with deliveries of the day’s papers, proofs from the printers and clerks delivering messages.
Eight months ago she had done the same thing. Sat by the window watching life pass her by, while Camille and her father stood trial. She’d been useless then, and she was useless now. No wonder Camille kept secrets from her. Guil was hurt, Al had lost his family, Olympe was still in danger despite their trick on the mountain, and Camille was facing the wrath of the Royalists and Revolutionaries combined, and she was – what? Squabbling with her father? Sulking because she was bored?
Maybe it had only ever been a fluke, her leaving home and being part of the battalion. She didn’t belong to that life, not like the others. Her father had tried to warn her she wasn’t made for it, that her place would always be with him. In the drawing rooms and parlours, not in the thick of the fight. She touched a finger to her bare earlobes. Her mother had tried to teach her how to protect herself, how to survive on her own. Ada had failed even at that. The earrings were back at the Au Petit Suisse, still folded in the silk handkerchief. She had nothing to her name and not even something sharp to pick a lock.
When she had exhausted all the possible interest in staring out of the window, Ada relinquished the last of her pride and sat on the rug with a stack of L’Ami d’Égalité. Her father’s paper. The publication her parents had dreamed of creating together. She flipped through the most recent copy, skimming the pompous essays and bombastic rhetoric. It had been so long since she’d last heard her mother’s voice, but she could hear her scornful laughter as clearly as if she was in the room with her. For the first time in a long time she let herself wish her mother was still alive. It was a dangerous thought, one which could pitch her into a dark cloud of depression. She avoided it as much as possible. But sometimes it was all there was left: missing her. Wondering who she would have become if she’d still had her mother with her. Someone braver, maybe. Someone more confident in their worth.