Ada didn’t want her father to be right about her relationship with Camille. But she couldn’t see a way back either. Both of them had lied, cutting a deeper wound between them, and now she could feel it festering. Maybe they shouldn’t choose each other. Maybe choosing each other had made them weak.
They’d both been distracted at the theatre by the tension between them and look what had happened.
Al still hadn’t come back by the time Ada had finished reading and Olympe had come to sit on the floor again and pick through the stack of pamphlets that had accumulated among their things. The lamps were lit all down the Rue St Honoré, and a gentle mist of rain washed away any lingering warmth in the day. Ada’s mind kept straying to Camille and the dinner invitation, running through worse and worse possibilities. As seven bells rang out, she put on her cloak.
‘Where are you going?’ asked James. ‘We need to stick together – we’re already down Cam and Al, and Guil isn’t in great shape.’
‘I’m going to see if I can track down Al. You’ll be all right here for a few hours.’
James nodded. ‘Guil’s asleep now, the laudanum did the trick.’
Olympe looked up from the pamphlets. ‘You’ll be back soon?’
‘Yes.’ Ada gave a tight smile. ‘Before you know it.’
She slipped into the street. Paris was out in force. People were decorating buildings for the festival tomorrow, hanging banners and strings of lanterns. Crossing the Place de l’Égalité, taxis rattled past her and people streamed to the theatres and opera or back from the factories and mines. The grounds of the Palais de l’Égalité – formerly the Palais-Royal – glittered with lights and bright young people in their finery. Patrons spilled from cafés, playing cards and drinking and listening to musicians as she made her way around.
Two loops of his regular haunts and still no sign of Al. It was getting late, the bells peeling beyond count. Ada stood, hands tucked into her armpits, weighing her options. She’d left Olympe and James for a long time now. She really should go back. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that wherever Al was, he wasn’t okay. He’d been even more argumentative recently, too aloof, disappearing for longer than usual. And thinking about him stopped her thinking about Camille.
There was one last place to check. The place where she and Camille had met Al to discuss his joining the battalion, halfway into a bottle of gin, surrounded by chaos and colours and lights.
As the rain eased, she headed east past the ruins of the Bastille, towards the crooked lanes and alleys of the poor quarters of the Faubourg Saint Antoine. A knot of alternative theatres and drinking dens lurked on the other side of the city walls, hidden away where no one would look for them.
Light glowed in a doorway. Ada paid a sou to the girl on the door and, edging past two men kissing, she descended into the basement.
9
A Chateau in the Forêt de Saint Germain
The first thing Molyneux said to Camille when he opened the door was that she absolutely must change.
‘I have something that I think will fit you. Come now, Camille, you’re a pretty girl. You’re doing yourself no favours with this silly get-up.’
Camille looked down at her Sans Culottes trousers and shirt with its floppy cockade pinned to the collar, and felt a blush tinge her cheeks despite herself. The carriage had swept up the drive through a row of rigid poplar trees to an imposing stone building with ranks of sightless windows and matching wings splaying out on either side of a grand portico. She’d walked up the sweeping stairs to the door, practising her opening sentence in her head – she was going to take control of the situation from the start. And yet somehow, she ended up doing exactly as she was told.
Molyneux ushered her in and she let herself be handed over to a maid who took her up to a first-floor bedroom and started picking at her clothes and hair. A dress had been laid out already, as though Molyneux had decided that whatever she turned up in wouldn’t be acceptable. It was a simple white thing with a high waist and a broad blue sash that tied tightly over the billowing folds in the modern style. Until Marie Antoinette had famously been painted wearing a flimsy Perdita dress, the style had been considered scandalously close to wearing nothing more than an underslip in public. Ironic that the dress had become part of the rejection of Ancien Régime excess, when it was the queen herself who had made it a fashion statement. The maid arranged Camille’s hair in a loose braid around her crown, then selected a few tasteful pieces of jewellery. Camille wondered whose it was. The dress was youthful, draping gauzy layers so she looked like a classical statue. Or the perfect daughter of the Revolution. As a last touch, Camille pinned her tricolore back onto her bosom.
Feeling distinctly out of sorts, she went back down the grand marble staircase to the entrance hall. A small party was waiting for her in a reception room, lost in the vast space which was bigger than the battalion’s whole apartment. It was stuffed with Louis XVI furniture, lacquered cabinets inlaid with walnut and gilded mirrors. Above, a single vast fresco covered the entire ceiling. Molyneux, ruminating over a glass of sherry through pince-nez, sat in an ornate armchair upholstered in green velvet. Docteur Comtois stood by the marble fireplace, reading a letter. There was no one else.
She introduced herself with a cough.
‘Ah, my dear Camille. Do join us.’ He gestured to the settee opposite. ‘I trust you find the dress to your liking.’
She sat, looping her fingers in her lap. ‘You know I am not much interested in fashions, Citoyen Molyneux.’
‘Uncle Georges, please. Whatever has passed, to me you’ll always be the baby girl I bounced on my knee.’ He smiled indulgently.
‘I think we are well beyond whatever family ties there might have been between us,’ she replied, without returning his smile.
She wished it wasn’t a lie. The nagging tug of their past connection was jumbling her thoughts. Part of her wanted to throw everything he’d done back in his face, to hurt him the way she’d been hurt. The other part felt lost in nostalgia for the man who’d taught her how to ride a fat pony through lavender fields.
But this couldn’t be about her. This was about Olympe. That was her focus.
A footman announced dinner. Camille followed Molyneux to the dining room, acutely aware of Comtois close behind. The dining room was as cold and imposing as the rest of the building, the walls hung floor to ceiling with paintings of sprawling battle scenes and landscapes, and parquet floors that echoed her footsteps. A long table was set for three. Outside the tall windows, the grounds of the chateau rolled away towards a lake, the grass and water cast in grey and blue as the light faded.
Molyneux ushered her into a chair on one side, with Comtois opposite, before taking his place at the head of the table.
Apart from the footman bringing in dishes, they were left to serve themselves in a display of egalitarian principles. A bouillie soup was presented and Camille pushed the tough salted pork around the bowl, debating her angle. The way Molyneux kept smiling fondly at her made her wonder if some part of it was genuine affection.
