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.
