1
Headquarters of theBataillon des Morts
15 Prairial Year II
The first fingers of dusk had swallowed the higgledy roofline of the city in a thick swathe of grey and pink, and still Camille had not come home from the Conciergerie job. Ada was curled in a window seat in the parlour, resting her forehead against the grimy glass to watch each figure passing through the street below. Outside, lamps were being lit and the ornate facade of the Palais du Luxembourg was sketched as several monolithic, featureless shadows speckled with light from the windows.
The Bataillon des Morts occupied a set of rooms above the café Au Petit Suisse on the corner where the Rue de Vaugirard and the Rue Corneille met. They had once been grand, with high ceilings, elaborate cornices and modern porcelain stoves, that they couldn’t afford to light, hunkering in the corner of each bedroom. Ada had done her best to make it homely, picking up paintings and bits of old furniture abandoned by fleeing aristocratic families. There was a Louis XIV dresser in their bedroom, a couple of moth-eaten chaise longues in the parlour and a set of shelves that served for both their supplies and her scant collection of books. The hand-painted wallpaper was peeling, and the parquet floor scuffed, but when the sunlight came streaming through the tall windows, it looked almost like a real home.
Ada had thought Camille must have chosen the café as their base in some moment of bitter humour. The Luxembourg had been taken over as a prison nearly a year ago, and Camille’s mother had been one of the first inmates. The mother who had taken Camille with her to political salons and clubs, to the viewing benches of the National Assembly and to revolutionary festivals. Then she’d been arrested on trumped-up charges of treason and lost her head to the guillotine. Only a few months later, Camille herself and her father were arrested too. Ada had always found Camille’s father intimidating, a tall, strident man who had no time for fools. But Camille had worshipped him. Where Camille’s mother had welcomed Ada into all aspects of her life, her father had no patience for anyone who couldn’t prove their worth in his eyes. After losing her mother, Camille had become even more fixated on gaining his approval.
But only Camille had made it out of the Luxembourg alive. Alone in a dangerous world, searching for anything to restore meaning to her life. The battalion was what she had found – or rather, what she had created to take control again. Nothing could bring back the parents she had idolised and lost. But that didn’t stop her trying to put things to rights in their name.
Al was with Ada in the gloomy parlour, stacking cards then letting them cascade across the table. He split them in half, balancing them precariously against each other. Then he meticulously drew out a card at a time from the inside of the arch, until they collapsed and scattered across the table again.
‘Will you stop that!’ she snapped.
He pushed the cards away, raising his hands in apology. He tipped a healthy measure of brandy into a glass and held up the bottle to offer her one. She shook her head. She wasn’t one to start on the liquor as early as Al. None of them were.
Ada pressed her hand to the windowpane, feeling the fine cracks spider-webbing under her palm.
‘You know, I thought Camille would leave after her father died. I thought we might leave Paris together. I don’t know where we would have gone, but I remember thinking: what’s left for us here?’
‘Half-decent career as a prison escapologist?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Chin up.’ Al put his feet on the table, hitching up his silk stockings. Their soaked clothes were hanging in front of the fire to dry, steaming up the room and filling it with the scent of sewer water and sweat. Al had changed immediately into a delicate mint green embroidered waistcoat, striped breeches and starched cravat. ‘The pay’s bad but you do get to almost die every week, so there’s that.’
‘You talk us down all the time, Al, but I remember who was at the front of the line ready to sign up when Camille got us our first job. You could have walked away.’
He preened. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I quite liked the idea of it. Dashing young gentleman with an arrest warrant against his name, defying the odds to save innocent people, undeterred by the terrible death that awaits if he’s ever caught. I think they should write a book about me after the Revolution is over.’
Ada looked back out of the window. The street was quiet. Only a barefoot girl selling wilted flowers and a man digging a dray cart out of the mud.
‘I’ll buy it. If there is an after. If we’re still alive.’
Al picked up a stale heel of bread and lobbed it at her head.
‘Stop that. Your beloved is coming back. Cam’s like a cockroach, no matter how many times you crush her, she springs up again to bite you in the face.’
Ada ducked the bread, smiling despite herself.
‘You’re all too worried about failure,’ he continued. ‘A little failure never hurt anyone. No one’s perfect, not even your precious Camille.’
‘I know that. She knows that.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘The battalion has been a success, that’s for sure. How many people have we saved in the past eight months?’ Ada totted them up on her fingers. ‘Fifteen? Twenty? But she failed her parents, Al. Her parents. She wasn’t able to save them, and now she’s making up for it.’
He pretended to be violently sick into the fireplace. ‘Excuse me. That was just too clichéd, it upset my delicate constitution.’
‘Oh, sod off.’ She fished the heel of bread from where it had fallen on the floor and threw it back at him, making contact with his temple.
‘I mean it, though. Failure isn’t a bad thing. Look at the Nemours job—’
‘God, don’t bring up the Nemours job again—’
