by Emma Carroll
Inside is a passage with lanterns hanging on the wall. Ginger Moustache takes one for extra light: I soon see why. Up ahead, the passage becomes steps that take us deeper and darker underground. I try not to think of all the earth and grass above our heads, or the doors or windows that aren’t here. And I definitely don’t think about the sky.
At the bottom of the steps, we turn right into another tunnel. My heart is knocking away in my chest, too fast for my liking. Another few yards and we reach a door, the top part of which is all bars. The key to unlock it is the size of a dagger.
‘In here.’ Ginger Moustache pushes me inside. The room smells of cold and earth.
‘You’ve got this all wrong,’ I tell him desperately. ‘I need to speak to Monsieur Joseph Montgolfier!’ He ignores me, but he does at least leave his light.
The door closes. I hear the awful sound of the key grinding in its lock. Even with the light I can’t see anyone else in here. So much for a friend: the cell looks empty but for me.
I wrap my arms around myself. I don’t know what else to do. I’m stuck.
At some point I notice something shuffling through the straw on the floor. Rats, most probably. There’s no obvious ways out for any living thing: no hatches, no secret doors, no loose stones in the wall. This cell is lock-tight. Frustrated, I kick the straw.
QUACK!
‘Oh!’ I leap back in surprise.
The quack comes again, a proper telling off that can only mean one thing. Swinging my light towards the noise, I’m suddenly all hope.
‘Voltaire? Is that you?’
Something larger than any rat waddles across my feet. I laugh out loud. ‘It is you!’
A stride away, I find Coco. He’s a sorry state, mind you, keeping his head tucked under his wing.
‘Coco,’ I plead. ‘Come on, it’s only me.’
As I pick him up, his little heart’s going boom boom boom.
‘Shh!’ I whisper, trying to calm him though I’m feeling savage because if that Englishman who took him has laid so much as a fingernail on my bird, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .
‘Watch where you’re walking, Magpie!’ The weary voice is Pierre’s. He’s just to the left of the door, slumped against the wall. The light’s enough for me to see his puffed up right eye, the split on his lip. It’s a shock – and a mighty relief – that he’s at least in one piece.
‘What happened?’ I cry, rushing over. ‘How come you’re here?’
‘Let’s just say I had a visitor.’ He tries to smile about it, but winces instead.
‘Back in Paris, you mean?’
He nods. ‘A man came – nasty type, he was, with a terrible French accent. He went for the box, but I wouldn’t let him have it.’
I think of the smashed-up door, the upturned bed. Poor Pierre. I should’ve been there with him.
‘But the man took what was inside the box?’ I ask.
‘He did, though he wasn’t very happy about it. Don’t think he expected to have to kidnap us, either. He kept complaining about it being all too much for one person.’
‘Did he bring you straight here?’
‘Yes.’ Pierre winces as he sits more upright. ‘He had to meet someone, apparently.’
I remember what Viscount Herges said about a pair of English spies at work together, and I’m back to thinking about Madame Delacroix again like I can’t shake her off. She’s in on this, I pretty certain.
‘We got stopped at the tradesman’s gate,’ Pierre tells me. ‘The man pretended to be a carpenter, until Voltaire quacked.’
‘Good old Voltaire.’
Pierre looks pleased. ‘He couldn’t speak much French, either. The guards didn’t trust him after that.’
‘Sounds like they caught one real Englishman at least,’ I remark. ‘And the notebooks? What happened to them?’
‘I don’t know. We got marched off so quickly my feet hardly touched the ground.’
I know what he means about that. I’d also be happier if we knew for certain where those notebooks are.
‘At least you’re alive, Magpie,’ Pierre says. ‘I had visions of you shot to pieces by that rake Sebastien.’
‘I shouldn’t have left you. It wasn’t a decent thing to do,’ I mutter, so awash with the guilts I can hardly meet his eye. Even fighting the duel doesn’t seem a fair excuse any more. It was stupid to leave him alone with the box.
‘How did you find us?’ Pierre asks.
‘I wasn’t exactly looking,’ I say truthfully. ‘We came to tell your father you’d been taken, and—’
‘We?’
‘Sebastien’s got a horse. We rode here from Paris and—’
‘Sebastien helped you?’ Pierre interrupts, astonished.
‘It’s all right. We’re friends now.’ For some reason, saying this makes me blush.
‘I’m so glad to see you, Magpie,’ Pierre says, and my guilts for leaving him get ten times worse until I see he’s pointing at his breeches. ‘I’ll have those back now, if you please. You can keep the shirt.’
Fair’s fair. I do as he asks, and as the shirt-tails hang down to my knees it’s almost as good as a dress.
After we’ve swapped clothes there’s little else to do but sit. And wait. My brain doesn’t get the message, though. It’s churning and whirring, cogs in a wheel. There’s lots of this that still doesn’t add up. Why was the man with Pierre coming to Versailles anyway? Why would an English spy bring the notebooks back to their owners? Surely he’d be desperate to smuggle them away to England as fast as he could?
And what of the Montgolfiers? If their notebooks don’t turn up in time, will they really remember enough of the process to make the balloon fly again?
I don’t know. And I’m not likely to find out, stuck in this prison cell. Even the birds can’t be bothered to squabble. We’re all as gloomy as each other.
‘How long d’you think they’ll keep us here?’ Pierre asks.
I shrug. ‘You have tried to tell them you’re a Montgolfier, I take it?’
‘I haven’t, no.’
‘What?’ I turn to face him. ‘Why the devil not?’
‘Think of our family name,’ Pierre tries to explain. ‘It’ll look terrible for Papa. At best they’ll think he’s a father who can’t control his son. At worst, they might think we’re all spying, Papa and Uncle Etienne included.’
‘So we just have to sit it out, do we?’ I protest. This is getting more bewildering by the second.
‘I was caught sneaking into the palace with an Englishman,’ Pierre reminds me. ‘It looks pretty suspicious.’
I slump back against the wall. So we’re definitely stuck then, aren’t we? I’ve got this dreadful feeling we’ll be here until the flight is over – at least.
‘It’s funny to think they’re convinced we’re spies though, isn’t it?’ Pierre ponders. ‘I can’t even speak English, for goodness sake!’
Funny isn’t a word I’d use right now.
‘They’re not taking any chances with anyone,’ I reply, and leave it at that.
There’s no point trying to explain Madame Delacroix. Or how this tangled-up mess started with five gold coins on a back street. The Magpie Pierre believes me to be – I like that girl. I don’t want it to change.
We fall quiet, then. I shut my eyes in the hope of catching some kip. Inside my shirt, Coco’s already snoring. At last, when I’m almost drifting off, voices start up outside our cell. It’s two men speaking. I prop myself up on an elbow to earwig.
‘The King wants to see which ones are the best weight,’ says First Voice.
‘Sounds like he wants to eat them,’ Second Voice replies.
They laugh. It’s not a nice sound.
‘He might as well eat ’em,’ says First Voice. ‘If the machine doesn’t finish them off the shock of it will.’
There’s a grunt of agreement from Second Voice. ‘’Tis playing God, making people face their deaths like that.’
I sit bolt upright
, pretty sure they’re talking about the Montgolfiers’ balloon.
A key scrabbles in the lock, the door opens. I’m on my feet in a flash, helping Pierre onto his.
‘Grab Voltaire,’ I tell him, holding Coco extra-tightly. If anyone tries to snatch our poultry again, I’ll bite and kick as good as a mule.
There’s more than two guards here. I don’t see exactly how many but the cell feels suddenly smaller. They have lamplight. Lots of it. The cell fills with it, too. Then sudden, confusing dark as the light moves around. I start backing away from people I can’t even see.
‘Listen,’ I say, hands spread in front of me. ‘You’ve got this wrong. Pierre’s a Montgolfier and he—’
‘Ssssh, Magpie! Remember what I said! Keep quiet!’ Pierre hisses in the darkness.
I hear feet – lots of them – swishing through the straw towards us. Then someone has hold of me.
‘Pierre?’ I call out. ‘Are you still there?’
‘Get walking, boy,’ says a man’s voice close to my shoulder. ‘This machine won’t wait for ever.’
The fear all coiled up inside of me is unravelling. I start to doubt what I’m hearing because that word – ‘machine’ – doesn’t fit right. What we made back in Annonay we called ‘le balloon’. Before I can stop myself, I’m suddenly picturing that other machine, the one invented by a doctor that’s in all the news-sheets with its big wedge of a blade, dripping with blood. The machine that cuts off people’s heads in one clean chop.
21
We’re marched out into daylight, then inside again and through the Palace. The guards surround us – five up front, five behind, two either side – like we’re dangerous criminals and they’re not taking any chances. Over shoulders, between knees, I glimpse gold ceilings, white marble floors, chandeliers the size of carriages. This place is so bright it’s like walking into the sun.
The guards are going too fast. But when I drag my feet to slow us up, all they do is lift me by the armpits and carry me. It’s agony. Soon I’m pleading to be put down again, but they don’t.
Pierre tries another tack. ‘Please, gentlemen,’ he says politely, though he’s as flustered as I am. ‘This has got rather out of hand.’
I wonder if he’s thinking of the head-chopping-off machine too. He certainly looks scared.
The guards aren’t listening. We keep moving. We take a left turn. A right turn, going so fast I lose track of which way we’re heading.
Soon the corridors start to look the same – gold and marble everywhere, paintings of ugly men and plump-faced women and fruit the size of cannonballs. I feel lost, as well as scared. Pierre’s wincing again, holding his side. I’m worried he won’t keep this pace up much longer.
Then the corridors turn darker and plainer, with stone floors and a smell that makes me think of chamber pots in need of emptying. We go through a huge scullery, past a row of sinks where maids, their backs to us, scrub away in silence. A door then takes us out into a cobbled yard. The Palace walls crowd in on all sides but at least the air’s fresher out here, and above us is a square of sky; instantly I feel better. It’s even more the case when, finally, the guards put me down.
The machine is here.
Not a head-chopping-off one, thank everything. But a weighing machine, over by the kitchen steps. It’s a big one – as tall as a man, I’d say, with a sticky-out brass arm where the weights are slid along. It’s just like the ones they use in Annonay marketplace to measure grain.
‘You weighing us or the birds?’ I ask.
No answer.
The guard in charge I recognize as Ginger Moustache. Earlier he’d given me his light, so I’m a tiny bit hopeful: he won’t let anything terrible happen to us. Will he?
‘Is this to do with the balloon?’ I want to know.
Ginger Moustache talks over the top of my head. ‘We’ll start with the taller boy. Bring him over to the scales.’
Still no one’s said why they’re weighing us, either. Just as he’s about to step onto the scales, Ginger Moustache demands Pierre hand over Voltaire.
‘Don’t you dare take his bird!’ I barge at the wall of men around me. It’s so solid I bounce off again and stumble back.
‘And while you’re at it, take that chicken off the darker boy,’ Ginger Moustache growls, pointing at me. ‘We want these weights to be accurate.’
‘He’s a rooster,’ I tell him. I don’t give in easily, either. Nor, I’m pleased to see, does Coco.
‘Arggghhh!’ one of the guards cries, ‘it’s bitten me!’
There’s a decent amount blood on his knuckles too. But then another guard seizes Coco from me, and despite my yelling and kicking, won’t give him back.
When Pierre’s finished on the scales it’s my turn. They make me stand very still, which is hard because my legs are shaking. It doesn’t help that the guards take ages, fiddling with the weights and looking thunder-faced like something isn’t right.
Finally, it’s done, the results are written down.
‘Right,’ Ginger Moustache barks. ‘Let’s get these John Bulls upstairs to the King.’
The guards close in around us again. I stuff my hands into my armpits, not wanting to be hauled along like last time. On tiptoes, I try to look for Coco but can’t see him, or Voltaire.
‘You haven’t given us back our birds,’ I tell Ginger Moustache.
‘Forget the birds. You’re the ones the King wants to make fly,’ he replies.
‘Us?’ I stare at him like I’ve not heard him right. Then at Pierre, who’s gone a grubby shade of white.
Ginger Moustache nods. ‘Criminals. English people. He won’t risk a French life but he’ll happily risk yours.’
I almost laugh. Us, go up with the balloon? Does he mean it? Could that really happen? Hadn’t Monsieur Etienne said that they’d not put people in the balloon? Hadn’t that been how he’d persuaded Monsieur Joseph to keep going? It’s a change of heart, all right. But I’m suddenly giddy because it makes perfect sense: this is why we’ve been weighed.
Before I can ask more questions, we’re hurried out of the yard as fast as we entered it, and back along the same stinky corridor. This time though I’m tingling with excitement.
‘Don’t you see?’ I hiss to Pierre, who looks like he’s just lost his last coin down a drain. ‘This could be incredible! We could be the first people in history to fly!’
Pierre gives me a withering stare. ‘We’re also prisoners, Magpie. There’s nothing “incredible” about that.’
I’m torn between thinking he’s just being a misery guts and thinking he might be right. Surely it’s worth pretending to be English – until the flight, anyway – if it means we get to go up in the balloon.
‘What about Coco and Voltaire?’ he whispers. ‘Don’t you care what’s happened to them?’
‘Of course I do!’ I’m annoyed he’s even asked, but I don’t know how we’re going to get them back.
We’re heading upstairs again, each step taking us further from our birds when, turning a sharp corner, we stop dead.
We’re facing a different set of stairs now. Coming down them is another group of people. They’re mostly men, a few women. There’s got to be twenty of them, all with that ragged-to-the-bone look I know too well. Like us, they’re surrounded by guards.
As we wait for them to pass, Ginger Moustache catches me staring.
‘They’re more of your lot – English spies,’ he tells me proudly. ‘Been rounding them up all morning, we have. The place is crawling with them.’
I tuck my chin in, scowling. He can’t mean it. They can’t all be English spies – that’s just stupid.
‘Then England must be half empty at this rate,’ I mutter to Pierre.
He’s not listening. Beside me he’s gone as tense as a cat.
‘That’s him,’ he says under his breath. He’s staring at one of the men on the stairs. A tall man, ratty-looking, with a long neck and hair that coils around it in a thin ponytail.
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‘Who?’ But from the knot in my gut, I guess: this is the man who kidnapped Pierre, who smashed up the box and took the papers and our birds.
He’s seen us now too – or rather, Pierre – and hesitates for a second on the stairs. I lick my lips. I’m ready for him.
Just as he approaches, Pierre steps in front of me. It’s as if I need protecting or something, which I don’t. The guards are milling about. There’s suddenly too many people, a muddle of red trousers, swords, thin bodies.
And Pierre, who I realize isn’t protecting me at all.
He’s trying to give me something, to push it into my hand. I don’t know what it is, but I snatch it from him quick, just as the long-necked man’s arm snakes through the crowd and grabs Pierre’s sleeve.
‘Give it to me!’ He snarls in his funny accent.
Pierre pulls back. The man makes a lunge for Pierre’s throat. He gets nowhere near it though. The guards push him down the corridor in the opposite direction from us. We’re taken on up the stairs.
‘Phew!’ Pierre says. ‘That was a bit close!’
Now I’m the one barely listening. I’m staring at what he’s just given me.
22
I don’t suppose for one second Pierre’s turned into a thief. Yet the object he’s stuffed into my hand – almond-shaped, with a swirly pattern on it – is heavy. Good metal. I bet it’s worth a fortune.
‘Move it you two!’ a guard orders.
In panic, Pierre gestures for me to hide it. I’d rather he took it back again, but I don’t have much choice. Pretending to itch my leg, I tie a knot in my shirt hem and hide the thing inside, where it’ll have to stay for now.
Up on the first floor, we’re taken into a room that’s so eye-poppingly huge it’s easily the size of the Montgolfiers’ orchard back home. At first I don’t see the people seated down the far end; the guards do though, because they stop to salute.
Pierre breathes in sharply. ‘Magpie! It’s King Louis and Marie Antoinette!’
I gulp. No sign of the Montgolfiers though. Perhaps we’re not going to be flying anywhere after all, except back to our prison cells. I try keep my cool. Easier said than done, mind you, when you’re being marched right up to the King and Queen of France.
