Their eyes met, and she felt a flash of hope that even after everything that had happened the past few days, there might be something approaching normal waiting for her on the other side.
‘I will heal, Camille. Don’t fret.’
‘Thank god for James. We really should have had someone with medical knowledge on the team before.’
‘No, I meant this job. This is the point of the battalion. And we’ve got out of worse scrapes.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘If you mean the Nemours job, then I don’t really think that counts. Or don’t you remember setting my hair on fire?’
‘That was a wig.’ Guil grinned. ‘We left with all limbs and the money we’d been sent for. I think it was a complete success.’
Footsteps clattered up from the crypt and James and Olympe joined them, stretching from sleep.
‘How’s the patient this morning?’
Camille handed over responsibility for redressing Guil’s wounds to James, while she fished out the make-up to get Olympe ready.
Olympe sat opposite, looking at her with such hope, such faith. Such unwavering darkness.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked quietly enough for the boys not to hear.
Camille swiped the paint along Olympe’s throat, up to her jaw.
Knowing what she was about to do, she couldn’t look her in the eye.
‘Yes. I’m ready.’
3
On the Pont National
As the festival deputations were leaving their sections in the breezy early afternoon, Camille took up her observation point, perched on the stone balustrade of the bridge. Each troupe marched across in long crocodiles of children, young women and men all dressed in white with tricolore sashes. They made their way along the riverbanks, first to the ornate Jardin des Tuileries with its clipped hedges and neat flowerbeds, then on to the Champs de Mars and the mountain that lowered over the rooftops. On the Right Bank the vast, luxuriant sprawl of the Palais des Tuileries and the old Louvre palace loomed over the river.
James arrived with Olympe as the final procession set off, taking the bulk of the crowd with it. He wore Guil’s borrowed military uniform as planned, a little long at the wrist and ankle on him. With his shining hair and bright blue eyes, he looked a vision of martial strength. Olympe was dressed in the simplest, most childish dress of Ada’s they could find, a white calico with a pattern of tiny sprigs of flowers. They’d hastily taken in the waist and hem with a blue silk sash, then added a large hat that hid her face. Camille wanted everyone involved today to remember how young and vulnerable Olympe was. The crowd thinned further, but still Ada and Al didn’t show up. Finally, as anxiety was shredding her nerves, Ada appeared.
‘Where is he?’ asked Camille.
‘He’s – he’s not coming.’
‘What? Are you serious?’ She leaped down from her perch. ‘That’s unacceptable.’
‘Cam—’
‘No. We have a job to do and, what, he’s decided he’s not feeling like it? We’re a team – or we’re supposed to be. He can’t just pick and choose when he’s one of us.’
‘That’s not what he’s doing, listen—’
‘We all signed up for this. We said we wanted to make a difference, to do something good. To have some bloody sense of meaning, of control when the world is literally ending around us—’
‘Camille! Will you shut up and listen to me! Al lost his parents this morning. They were executed today.’
‘Oh my god.’ James covered his mouth with his hand.
‘What?’ Camille stared at her, stunned. The chatter of people on the bridge rose to a roar in her ears, the splash and slap of water against the boats below was deafening. She felt the void gape beneath her, horror rippling through her body. She wasn’t here. It wasn’t now. For a flash, she was eight months back. Alone in a crowd as the blade of the guillotine dropped with a whistle and thunk; she could smell the blood that had splattered her dress, feel her chest seize as she watched a head roll across the boards towards her.
‘How?’ Olympe asked, twisting the fingers of her gloves. ‘Why didn’t you know? Couldn’t you have rescued them?’
‘He kept it from us,’ replied Ada. ‘I wondered why he was always stealing the news-sheets… I don’t think he wanted us to know. Or wanted our help.’
