Olympe looked down at her hands. The silk gloves smothered any charge so it couldn’t be conducted to anything else. Anyone else.
A hum grew, along with a prickling in Ada’s palms. She thought about what Camille had told her about Olympe stretching out her mottled hand and pressing it against the guard’s neck. She could feel her own hair begin to stand on end, lifting up against its pins.
More shrieks were coming from the act onstage. Arcing blue light leaped between people’s hands before they joined them. Then all at once, the woman at the end of the chain who’d yelped first jerked away, a streak of red coming from her nose. The rest of the chain shattered, and a thrum of concern rippled through the auditorium. Several participants were shaking uncontrollably. Some were crying.
A smattering of applause sent the jar and its scientist offstage.
Olympe watched, eyes wide and shoulders tense.
‘People let themselves get shocked on purpose?’
‘Yes … it’s entertainment,’ said Ada carefully. ‘It’s a popular scientific display.’
‘You mean other people study electricity too? Not just Comtois and the rest?’
‘Yes. All of Europe – all the world wants to know what it is.’
‘And do they know?’
Ada opened her mouth, then shut it again. None of the theories she’d read seemed worth talking about. Because whatever Olympe was, she wasn’t anything the world had seen before.
‘No. No one knows.’
Olympe looked down at her hands again, and Ada thought she saw a spark of excitement in Olympe’s fathomless eyes.
‘I am unique.’
‘Yes. You are.’
5
Backstage at the Théâtre Patriotique
It was a crush to get through the parterre standing area. The afternoon matinee performance was always the most rammed of the day. Camille squeezed between bodies, nose scrunching at their odours mixed with dirt and cheap beer. At the lip of the stage, a line of candles flickered dangerously close to the skirts of the women above. Al moved with an assured laziness, drifting through the crowds as if he was walking down the wide tree-lined boulevard outside. On the far side of the auditorium, he stepped through a door markedPrivée. Camille followed, trying to look as though she belonged.
Al took a right, ducking beneath a curtain into the maze-like backstage area. The space was sectioned by flimsy painted backboards and lengths of dusty curtain hanging from the gantries above. The dressing rooms were off to one side. Behind the backdrop partitioning the stage was a cavernous hinterland of abandoned props and crates, ladders, buckets and ropes – but what stopped Camille in her tracks was a strange, craggy shape that loomed over twice their height. For a moment, she thought stress and exhaustion must be getting to her because it looked as if there was an honest-to-god mountain backstage.
A man stepped into their path, his face shiny and red in the candlelight. His body looked stretched out in his pinstriped breeches and waistcoat. He regarded Al with distaste.
‘Alexander. How unsurprising to find you skulking round my theatre.’
Camille looked at Al, puzzled. Alexander?
‘Hallo, Citoyen Gerard. How pleasant to see you.’
‘How unfortunate that I cannot say the same.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Just come to give Léon letters from his fans.’ He pulled out a wedge of envelopes from his pocket and brandished them under Gerard’s nose.
‘Be that as it may, you can’t come wandering back here like you own the place, becauseIown the place.’
‘That you do. And a very fine place it is too,’ said Al, eyeing a sad stuffed lion that looked as if it had been badly startled. ‘The finest props in Paris.’
‘Well, hurry up. Hand over the letters and be out of here. Stop distracting Léon. He’s my star turn. If you break his heart, I’ll personally bill you for my losses.’
Al grinned. ‘Duly noted.’
Gerard was about to leave when Camille stopped him, pointing to the mountainous lumps.
