Free Illumination by Matthew Plampin

conclusion as me about that deuced letter – that it was nothing but a mean trick, a hoax. Han thinks that it was the work of her rivals, trying to embarrass her. She said that there were many possible suspects, and that—’
    Elizabeth was no longer interested in the letter. ‘You must tell me how you fared last night. Why, I hardly saw you after we arrived at Danton.’ There was a pointed pause. ‘You seemed to be getting on rather well with those people.’
    ‘Against all expectation, I have to say. It—’
    ‘I took the liberty of looking in your room before I left the Grand. The bed hadn’t been slept in.’
    Clem was growing uncomfortably warm, as if he sat before a roaring grate on a midsummer afternoon. ‘Yes, well, my attempts to converse with Han’s friends proved rather more—’
    ‘Then,’ Elizabeth went on mercilessly, ‘you meet me in the lobby, barely able to contain your glee. And I recall that in fact I did catch sight of you somewhere in the back of the café-concert, just as I was leaving with Mr Inglis. You were in the company of a flash young thing in the most revealing dress, who—’
    ‘We’re there.’ Clem ground out his cigarette and struggled to his feet. ‘Come on, we’ve no time to lose.’
    He hauled their bags down to the pavement, handed a coin to the driver and went on ahead. Elizabeth had seen through him at once, of course she had, and would now be making allusions to his Parisian adventure for months to come. It was hard to be annoyed by this; indeed, as Clem strode through the station doors a grin broke across his flushed face. A night with a Parisian cocotte was a seamy enough experience, he supposed, but he felt transformed by it – as if Mademoiselle Laure and her perfumed lair on the boulevard de Clichy had left a sizeable dent in his being.
    And a dent it most certainly was. Clem’s body was etched with fresh scratches; there was a bite-mark on his shoulder that he was pretty sure was bleeding beneath his shirt. His left elbow, too, was burning with the weight of Elizabeth’s bag. At one point Laure had rolled them over with such force that they’d tumbled off the side of her bed, wrapped up together in her fine cotton sheets. They’d landed heavily, bashing joints and bruising muscles, but her lips didn’t leave his for an instant. He’d never been kissed with such determined ferocity; it was almost like being attacked, but with an end so sweet it made him quite breathless to remember it.
    The concourse was deathly quiet. Clem’s grin disappeared. The only people to be seen were a scattering of worried-looking civilians and some army officers gathered around a map. Overhead was clean air, free from all trace of smoke and steam. Every rivet along the iron girders could be picked out; the morning sun laid a chain of bright rectangles across the limestone floor. The ticket-gates were locked, the booths closed up; and past them, at the platforms, was a long row of dormant locomotives. Clem heard a distant creak and some shouting. Teams of labourers were derailing carriages, turning them sideways to block the station’s mouth.
    Elizabeth had stopped by the entrance.
    ‘We’re too late,’ he said.
    ‘I can see that.’
    Perspiration prickled across Clem’s skin, stinging in his various Laure-inflicted lesions. He set down their bags. In no time at all they had gone from a position of reasonable hope and security to one of total, unsalvageable disaster. He was not going home to his attic study to hide himself away among his designs and models; he was staying in Paris to be shelled and shot at by the Prussian army. It was a bizarre sensation, something like the bottom falling from a pail.
    ‘So what the devil do we do now? There’s no other way out. We’re trapped, Elizabeth – we’re bloody well trapped .’
    Cool as a country church, Elizabeth Pardy swivelled on her heel and started back to the cab stand. ‘The Embassy,’ she said over her shoulder.