Her bright grin was so wide it was as if all the candlelight and sharpened blades in the room had come together.
‘We’re in trouble, but it’s time to do what we do best. No fate. No destiny. Everything is a choice, and this time, we choose not to give up. We choose to fight.’
3
The Bedroom, Au Petit Suisse
By candlelight, Camille’s face was as flawless as the polished stone heads that had been lopped off the west facade of Notre Dame. She lay in bed beside Ada, eyes shining and unreadable in the dark. It was less than a year ago that Ada had watched men scale rickety ladders to destroy statues of saints with hammer and chisel, turning the cathedral into the Temple of Reason. The heads had plopped to the earth below like cannonballs, each a short sharp punctuation to the end of religion and the rise of the cult of the Supreme Being.
Ada liked the new statues of the Goddess of Liberty that had taken the Virgin Mary’s place on the altars inside. They were bright and powerful and young. She was hardly religious, and the vanishing of Mass on Sundays – and Sunday itself – hadn’t bothered her. But there was still something mournful and raw about the row of decapitated stone heads lined up on the grass, not so very far away from the human heads that were piling up in the Place de la Révolution. She ran her finger gently along the column of Camille’s throat. Smooth, and cold like stone.
‘Hey.’ Camille’s voice was soft and low, a brush of warm air against Ada’s lips.
‘Hi.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
Cautiously, she looped an arm around Ada’s waist. Ada wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
‘I didn’t go anywhere.’
‘I know. Sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.’
Ada wondered if Camille ever looked at her the way she looked at Camille. With Camille, it was impossible to tell. She was as likely thinking about some plan or calculating their next risk.
Watching Camille go off to talk to James in private, some part of her desperately wanted to know what had happened. The other part couldn’t bear knowing.
He was sleeping on the floor of Guil and Al’s room, while Olympe was on a settle in the front room, tucked under a blanket where she’d fallen asleep in front of the fire.
‘I’ve missed you too.’
Camille smiled, and kissed the corner of her mouth.
‘I—’ A wheezing cough stopped her before she could speak.
‘Are you okay? Your chest—’
‘I’m fine. It’s nothing.’ Ada knew Camille should never have gone in the river. She knew what shock and the wet and the cold could do to her. But she didn’t care about herself, Ada knew that. And she didn’t think about anyone else who might care about her.
‘I’m sorry I never told you about James. It was in the past and I thought that was gone for ever…’ Camille broke off coughing.
‘I thought you said you told me everything?’
‘I did tell you everything – everything important.’
‘And a fiancé isn’t important?’
‘Exactly – he isn’t important.’
Ada glanced away. Her father’s money was still waiting for her. Camille wasn’t the only one keeping secrets. But still, it hurt.
‘You wrote to him.’
‘Not for months, I swear. He knew my parents, I had to tell him what had happened.’
‘And what did you tell him about us?’
Camille was silent.
