The Bastille Spy

Shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown 2020

C. S. Quinn

• Publisher: Corvus
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781786498441
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Historical Literature
• Index: Literature

Shortlisted for the HWA Gold Crown 2020
_________________________________ From the bestselling e-book sensation of The Thief Taker series comes a thrilling and sumptuous novel set during the early days of the French Revolution. 'A rip-roaring adventure.' Tessa Harris, author of the Dr Thomas Silkstone Mysteries _________________________________ 'He was alive when he went in the mortuary.' 1789. The Bastille is marked for destruction. Skirmishes in the city are rife and revolution is in the air. When a gruesomely murdered rebel is found in the prison morgue, a plot is suspected. English spy, Attica Morgan, is laying low after an abortive mission. So when she's given an assignment inside the Bastille, her instinct is to run. Instead, she's offered a pardon, in return for solving the mystery of the dead revolutionary; and exposing a plot that leads to Marie Antoinette. But as tensions rise to breaking point in the city, Attica quickly realises she's in a race against time. Soon there could be no Bastille to investigate. 'Incredible! It's the best action adventure novel I've ever read... A fantastic achievement that has blown me away with its ingenuity, scope and breathless pace.' Louise Voss, author of the Detective Lennon series

CHAPTER 1

St Petersburg, The Winter Palace, 1789

THE DAY I KILLED THE COSSACK WAS WHEN IT ALL BEGAN. If I think carefully, I can trace everything back to that slave market in St Petersburg – an illegal affair trafficking mostly Persians and Kurds foolish enough to cross the badlands of Khiva.

The dusty square bore a resemblance to other livestock markets in Russia. There were enclosures, merchants shouting their wares and buyers haggling, examining the goods. A good deal of vodka was being drunk and a few traders were filling their bowls from a cauldron of cabbage soup bubbling over a wood fire. Despite the sultry heat of the St Petersburg summer, most buyers wore thick fur-lined leather coats and boots.

In contrast, I was dressed in Turkoman rags that barely covered my body, with a metal cuff heavy around my neck and chains at my wrists and ankles.

The fellow slaves in my consignment were similarly clothed and bound, heads bowed low with the discomfort of their bonds, bodies wasted from their weeks dragged starving through the Russian countryside.

In the middle distance stood the fate of many people trafficked here. The magnificent Winter Palace was being extended for Catherine the Great; the boxy Hermitage annexe wrought brick by brick from the sliding marsh. Her Imperial Majesty had ended slavery. But she doesn’t involve herself in building works. This square palace, with its endless gold columns and bride-cake green-white façade, was built on the bones of spent slaves, flung carelessly into the foundations.

Even now if I close my eyes I can see and feel that fateful day as if it’s happening all over again. A bushy-bearded man steps forward and ushers our little group into a fenced enclosure. He wears a tricorn hat with red fur edging, jammed down low over his greasy dark hair. This is the man who bought us, the unseen buyer who paid the dead-eyed Khiva tribesman who herded us to the city gates. At his side stands a giant Cossack with a plumed turban, a studded-leather jerkin and a whip in his hand.

‘Let’s see what we have,’ says the fur-hatted merchant in heavy St Petersburg Russian, with a humourless grin, ‘in our Kurdish soup.’ This is a derogatory term for a job lot of slaves bought cut-price from Khiva – like the cheap stew made in Kurdistan, where each ladle holds differing amounts of miscellaneous meat.

The slave merchant shoots a dark smile at his Cossack henchman.

‘Those pig-ignorant slave-hunters wouldn’t know if they caught Empress Ekaterina herself,’ opines our owner with a sneer. ‘My last batch had two Russians, worth fifty roubles each.’ He eyes us greedily, assessing, whilst the Cossack stares stoically at the Winter Palace. ‘Mostly Kurds,’ he decides, disappointed. ‘Perhaps some Persians if we’re lucky.’ He points. ‘Separate those at the back.’

The Cossack moves among us, driving the slaves apart. He looks resigned and I wonder how he came to this position, hired muscle for a slave buyer.

Our owner’s eyes land on me.

‘Well, well,’ he says, licking his lips. ‘What have we here?’

I’ve tried my best to disguise myself, spreading mud over my skin, matting my long dark hair and arranging it over my face, but there’s no hiding my height.

The owner lifts a chunk of tangled hair and I blink, scowling.

‘Could be something,’ he decides, turning to his hired thug. ‘See the eyes? Blue-grey.’ He spits on his finger and rubs away a little of the dirt on my upper arm.

‘Dark, but not too dark,’ he says. ‘What think you? An African half-breed?’

‘Too light. Maybe Moorish,’ says the Cossack. ‘The eyes are too savage to be Russian.’

‘Maybe,’ decides the owner. He prods his sharp stick into my chest.

‘You,’ he barks. ‘Where from?’

I mutter a few words of frightened Kurdish. He shakes his head.

‘Kurdish,’ he says contemptuously. ‘Hardly worth the chains that hold her. She’s only good for the street brothels.’ He indicates towards the back of the market. ‘Put her in with the other whores.’

They drag me along, the chain weighing around my neck, my hands bound, to a stinking shack partially roofed with mouldering reeds. A door of sticks is dragged open and the stench of despair wafts out. A huddle of frightened girls look up as I’m pushed to the ground and fastened to a metal hoop on the floor.

The door shuts and I begin to free myself, working fast. I reach up, tugging a hidden lock-pick from my filthy hair. I unlock my chains and the manacle at my neck, rubbing my wrists in relief as the restraints fall.

The other slaves are watching me shed my bonds, their eyes like saucers. I scan the little hut and my eyes land on a single scrawny man, huddled in the corner. Without his rigid aristocratic clothing, he reminds me of a soft pink crab slipped from its shell. His head was once close-cropped for a wig, but now his hair grows out untidily in clumps of black and grey, to match his unshaven face. Bare knees are drawn up to his chin, the naked legs ageing and liver-spotted. There is a deep bruise on his cheek just below his haunted eyes. My heart aches for him.

I drop to the ground near where he sits.

‘You are Gaspard de Mayenne?’ I ask. He flinches, features twisted between confusion and fear.

‘Who are you?’ he whispers, his gaze trying to reconcile my light-coloured eyes to skin that isn’t white enough to fit, in that way Europeans do.

‘My name is Attica Morgan,’ I say, speaking in French. ‘I’m an English spy. I’m here to rescue you.’

CHAPTER 2

IN MY EXPERIENCE, MEN OFFERED RESCUE BY A WOMAN FALL in two camps: those who refuse the possibility and those who try to take command of the escape themselves. To my relief, Gaspard is in the first group; these are the ones who cause the least trouble.

He makes a little half-laugh, then stops when he sees my expression.

‘You have the wrong person,’ he says. ‘I was exiled here by King Louis XVI. I’m of no use to the English.’

‘Revolution is in England’s interest,’ I explain. ‘We like what you’re doing in France. Your pictures. We want you to keep doing it.’

Gaspard considers this. I wonder how much of his spirit has been broken in his hard months of slavery.

I move to unlock his chains but he pulls away, eyes furious.

‘No!’ he hisses. ‘I don’t need your kind of help. They will blind me and worse.’ My thoughts flick back to the mutilated people in the market. Slaves who tried to run. Gaspard’s eyes burn with boundless terror.

‘Even if I could return to Paris,’ says Gaspard, ‘the King would boil me alive as a warning to others who seek democracy.’

It’s then I notice a raised ring of branded flesh on his ribcage, ill concealed by tattered slave garments. The Bastille guards must have tortured him before sending him to Russia. He sees me looking and rearranges his rags.

I grip his thin wrists tightly and look straight in his eyes.

‘France is closer to change than its King wants you to think,’ I say steadily. ‘Your rescue will show the French people they needn’t be afraid. I give you my word as an Englishwoman. You will be free and you will be safe. I have done this many times.’

I’ve been unlocking his chains as I speak and they fall to the dusty ground. His mistrust fades and he starts shaking, tears running down his cheeks.

‘It’s true?’ he whispers. ‘The French people might have liberty?’

I nod.

‘What about the others?’ he manages, swallowing a sob. ‘The other slaves. The things they do to them ...’ He is trembling. I hold his shoulders.

‘Every last one of you,’ I promise, ‘will have your freedom today.’ Quickly I start unchaining the other girls, careful of their injured wrists and bruised necks. They are Kurdish and I speak to them softly in their own language. Without chains they seem even more vulnerable.

I snatch a glance at the low sunlight slicing through the rickety door. Our means of escape will come soon. I work faster. There are more slaves here than I thought possible. But at last each sits unbound on the dirt floor.

There’s a sudden flare in the far distance, visible even through the slats of our wooden door. Flames, the sound of gunfire. It’s time.

I throw open the door. The slave merchants have been thrown into panic, believing their illegal trade is being raided. We’ve worked to give the illusion our limited troops are from the Palace and large in number.

I kneel and move aside a little dirt on the ground. My knife is where I buried it last night, before I hid myself in the wagon of kidnapped Kurds disguised as a slave.

I grip the dark-wood handle and pull the curved blade free. This is a Mangbetu knife, smooth black and deadly, awarded only to the deadliest fighters of the African Congo. I feel its reassuring weight in my hand and slide it into the back of my rags.

The traders are wildly freeing their captives, anxious to avoid arrest. Chains and manacles fall to the ground with a heavy clanking. Ropes are cut, fences kicked down. Unshackled slaves are staring around themselves, unable to comprehend what’s happening.

Behind me the slave girls are watching the chaos.

‘This is your chance,’ I tell them, pointing to a building at the top of the hill. ‘Go. Any slave who gets inside that church is promised sanctuary. Her Imperial Majesty decreed an end to servitude. By tomorrow night I’ll get you on a fur-trade boat bound for Hamburg.’

There’s a fraction of a pause. Then Gaspard remembers something of his revolutionary self. He grabs hold of two girls by either hand.

‘Vite! Vite!’ he cries, dragging them forth. As soon as they exit the hut, something changes. Their faces become determined, their movements certain. They flee as a pack, heading for freedom. It’s like a dam breaking. Every slave is running hard, like a tidal wave moving uphill in the direction of the church.

I hear a cry. One of the girls has fallen, her leg caught tight in a slave-snare. It’s only a sim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Chapter 29
• Chapter 30
• Chapter 31
• Chapter 32
• Chapter 33
• Chapter 34
• Chapter 35
• Chapter 36
• Chapter 37
• Chapter 38
• Chapter 39
• Chapter 40
• Chapter 41
• Chapter 42
• Chapter 43
• Chapter 44
• Chapter 45
• Chapter 46
• Chapter 47
• Chapter 48
• Chapter 49
• Chapter 50
• Chapter 51
• Chapter 52
• Chapter 53
• Chapter 54
• Chapter 55
• Chapter 56
• Chapter 57
• Chapter 58
• Chapter 59
• Chapter 60
• Chapter 61
• Chapter 62
• Chapter 63
• Chapter 64
• Chapter 65
• Chapter 66
• Chapter 67
• Chapter 68
• Chapter 69
• Chapter 70
• Chapter 71
• Chapter 72
• Chapter 73
• Chapter 74
• Chapter 75
• Chapter 76
• Chapter 77
• Chapter 78
• Chapter 79
• Chapter 80
• Chapter 81
• Chapter 82
• Chapter 83
• Chapter 84
• Chapter 85
• Chapter 86
• Chapter 87
• Chapter 88
• Chapter 89
• Chapter 90
• Chapter 91
• Chapter 92
• Chapter 93
• Chapter 94
• Chapter 95
• Chapter 96
• Chapter 97
• Chapter 98
• Chapter 99
• Chapter 100
• Chapter 101
• Chapter 102
• Chapter 103
• Chapter 104
• Chapter 105
• Chapter 106
• Chapter 107
• Acknowledgements