20

The moment the Palace of Versailles comes into sight, my feet slow down: it’s hard to walk and stare at the same time. To call it a house is like calling the Queen ‘Marie’ – the word’s too small to fit it. I thought the houses on the Montgolfiers’ street were fine, but this is something else. It’s completely and utterly jaw-dropping.

We approach from the front, up wide steps into a courtyard. The walls on every side are full of windows and gold-coloured balconies, all sparkling so much it makes me squint. I’m marched round the back to what I guess is the servants’ entrance. Somewhere inside are the Montgolfiers, I keep telling myself. All I have to do is find them. They’ll know what to do about Pierre. We’ll track down him and the birds, and everything will sort itself out. It’s hard to stay hopeful though with a guard hanging off each arm.

We don’t go inside, either. After walking the whole length of one side of the Palace, we’re now facing a steep grass bank. Set in it, small and rusty and out of keeping with how grand everything else looks, is a door. Or rather a hatch, bolted shut.

One guard opens it, the other holds onto me. We’re hit by a waft of damp, underground air. I panic.

‘I’m not English!’ I insist for the umpteenth time. ‘Just take me to the Montgolfiers, that’s all I ask!’

‘Save it, sonny.’ Ginger Moustache goes through the hatch, pulling me with him. It’s all I can do to stay on my feet.

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.