Illumination. Matthew Plampin

and leader – roles he seemed to relish. Paris was glutted with paper tigers; its halls resounded with bold claims and pledges that were wholly without substance. Jean-Jacques Allix, however, had acted. He had struck at the invader and bore the scars of conflict. He knew of what he spoke. He would not disappoint them.

      ‘It is true,’ he began. ‘We have the evidence of our eyes, do we not? The Prussians are burning our ancient forests. Trees that have withstood the passage of many centuries – that are as much a part of our brave city as the buildings around us now – will tomorrow be but smouldering stumps. It is another shameful crime to add to the Kaiser’s tally.’

      ‘They mean to do the same to Paris!’ someone shouted. ‘Reduce her to ashes!’

      ‘A fiery death!’ wailed another. ‘Oh Lord, a fiery death!’

      ‘Do not be afraid, citizens,’ Jean-Jacques instructed. ‘Be angry. The reason for this burning, for this obscene devastation, is to deny us an escape route through the woods. They want to keep us here, every man, woman and child, to weather their assault. That is the nature of our enemy.’

      There was a surge of profanity, every conceivable curse crashing and foaming between the bar-fronts.

      Jean-Jacques raised his voice. ‘But what they do not understand – what they do not understand and what we will demonstrate to them very clearly in the days to come – is that we have no wish to escape them. That we welcome their arrival and the great chance it gives us for revenge. Our bloodthirsty foe is blundering into a trap. Kaiser Wilhelm and his soldiers have travelled hundreds of miles to be destroyed at the gates of Paris. They will face the wrath of the workers – a million French souls – a mighty citizen army hardened by labour and united by a single righteous purpose!’

      The crowd’s fearfulness had departed. ‘Vive la France!’ they cried, lifting their flags once again; and the Marseillaise, banned under the Empire, swelled up powerfully from the back of the square.

      Hannah, stuck on the fringes, was quite light-headed with pride and love; she struggled to keep Jean-Jacques in sight as he dropped from the merry-go-round into the throng. He was making for a nearby hut, built to stow Nadar’s spotting balloon – the contraption itself, a common spectacle during the last week, had been deflated and packed away at sunset. Before this crude, windowless cabin Hannah could see a group of Jean-Jacques’s political associates. Dressed largely in black, these ultras ranged in appearance from thuggish to almost professorial. Another orator, meanwhile, had taken to the merry-go-round, a National Guard captain who set about urging every able-bodied man who had not already done so to enlist for service in the militia. In seconds, an entire division’s worth of would-be recruits was pushing forward across the place Saint-Pierre, rendering it impassable.

      At the balloon hut, Jean-Jacques was shaking hands and sharing embraces. His comrades were proposing that they all leave the square, no doubt to attend some red club or debating hall. He looked around, running his gaze over the crowds. Hannah waved and he saw her at once. His eyes could have held yearning, an apology, a promise; she was too far from him to tell. The next moment he was gone.

      Hannah was not upset. Their partings were often like this. True ultras frowned upon romantic attachment; they were supposed to give themselves completely to the revolution. That Jean-Jacques chose to stay with her regardless, despite his deepest convictions, brought her a shiver of delight whenever she thought of it.

      The balmy late-summer afternoon had cooled to an autumnal night. Hannah hugged herself, wishing for the coat and cap she’d left behind in the Danton. She couldn’t think of returning for them now, though – not while her mother might still be inside. The despairing fatalism of earlier had passed. She was not going to surrender to Elizabeth. She would find a way to continue. Uprooting again, finding a room over in Les Batignolles perhaps, might be the answer.

      Lucien and Benoît were talking across Hannah with exaggerated nonchalance, as if unimpressed, knowing that they had been rendered yet more minuscule by Jean-Jacques’s address. She wouldn’t be any the worse, frankly, for leaving these fools behind. Both were members of the same radical naturalist school as Hannah – committed to an art founded entirely in their experience of the modern world. Benoît, however, was more notable for his May-queen prettiness and estranged millionaire father than any picture he’d produced; while the stooped, liquor-soaked Lucien, although possessing a touch more intelligence than his friend, was scarcely more capable with the brush. Octave had talent, at least, but the cost of stone had prevented him from ever properly expressing it. Of late, in fact, the taciturn sculptor had been reduced to making plaster angels to sell to tourists.

      Recalling Lucien’s claim to be able to speak English, which he’d definitely never mentioned before, Hannah wondered if he could be responsible for the letter Clem had shown her. Straightforward envy would be the motivation, complimented by a desire to punish her for neglecting them and becoming involved with Jean-Jacques. She quickly dismissed this theory. Lucien was not genuinely spiteful, for all his caustic posturing; and in any case, he had struggles enough of his own – high-minded ones against the artistic establishment, more basic ones with bodily need – to embark upon such a painstaking prank.

      Consideration of the letter led Hannah back guiltily to Clem. She asked the artists if they knew what had become of him. They looked at each other.

      ‘As we were stepping out of our booth,’ said Benoît, ‘Mademoiselle Laure was stepping in. Pretty smartly, I have to say.’

      ‘Heart the size of a houseboat, that girl,’ Lucien declared. ‘Handsome lad like your brother – he couldn’t be in better hands. I watched them, actually, for a short while. Neither has much knowledge of the other’s language, but some kind of communication was being achieved. If you catch my meaning.’

      Hannah swore. Laure Fleurot was a cocotte, a dancer and gentleman’s companion, exiled to Montmartre from the central boulevards – not a whore, not exactly, although she was said to have accepted money for her favours in certain situations. Hannah knew to her cost that she wasn’t to be trusted for an instant. What could such a woman possibly want with Clement?

      Interest in the Pardy family dwindled, thankfully, the well-oiled artists moving onto discussion of their own siblings. Benoît had four sisters, it emerged, who insisted that he dine with them every week; whereas Lucien had a brother in Lille who he had not seen for more than a decade. Octave declined to contribute.

      It proved a rather sobering topic. Lucien, seeking to reverse the tide, suggested another drink. Hannah glanced over at the mouth of the rue Saint-André, aware that she should extricate her brother from the Danton – and that she wasn’t going to. The risk of encountering Elizabeth was too great. It wasn’t as if Clement was actually in danger, after all; he was a grown man now, surely capable of fending off a hard-bitten Parisian tart. Like many ashamed by their selfishness, Hannah sought solace in swearing later action: I will write to him in London, she vowed, the letter I never wrote him when I first fled – a long letter that will explain everything. I will write to him as soon as this war is done with and our new lives have begun.

      ‘Somewhere downhill,’ she said, starting to walk. ‘On the boulevards.’

      The knocks shook the shed, rattling the paintbrushes in their jars and sending the Japanese screen toppling to the floorboards. Hannah woke; she was curled up on an old wicker chair, fully clothed, off in a shadowy corner. The morning was full-blown, lines of sunlight slicing between the slats of the warped window-shutter. Gingerly, she eased her stiff legs around and set about untangling her boots from the hem of her dress. Down in the city a bugle sounded, distant and mechanical, playing out its call and running through an immaculate repetition.

      The second round of knocks, even louder than the first, dragged Hannah from the chair into the middle of the room. Staring at the door, she imagined the person who was surely on the other side: head cocked, hair and hat just so, listening intently for any movement within. The moment had arrived. Elizabeth Pardy had come back to the rue Garreau.

      Returning home in the blue gloom of two o’clock, filled with cheap wine and belligerence, Hannah had actually