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.

‘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.