By the empty fireplace, a pair of musicians sawed at a fiddle and an accordion; a particularly drunk group of students were making up new words to the revolutionary anthem, ‘Ça Ira’. Half the café seemed to be discussing the forthcoming Festival of the Supreme Being, the grand parades planned throughout the city and the giant mountain being constructed on the Champs de Mars.

A simple dinner of roast guinea fowl, pottage, a dish of anchovies and a plate of pickled greens was presented along with several bottles of terrible wine and they set to.

‘Are you sure no one followed you back from the prison?’ Ada asked Guil.

‘I’m sure,’ he replied. ‘The soldiers should still be following two floating heads downriver.’

‘How—?’

‘There have been many beheadings recently. Many spare heads. Trust me when I tell you that you do not wish to know the rest of the story.’

‘Beheadings?’ asked Olympe, tensing.

‘One or two,’ snorted Al. ‘If you’d not noticed.’

At Olympe’s look of horror, Ada realised she really hadn’t known.

‘Because of the Revolution,’ she explained. ‘The government passed the Law of Suspects that makes it easier for them to sentence to death people they think are conspiring against them.’

‘I don’t understand – what revolution?’

Al paused, pouring coffee. ‘Are you serious?’

Olympe glanced between them and nodded.

Al flopped back into his chair. ‘Someone else has got to field that one, I’m out.’

Ada hesitated, then set down her fork.

‘Five years ago there was a crisis. The country was bankrupt and the old government wouldn’t work with the king any more. Things were … unfair.’ Ada hesitated again. ‘I’m not trying to patronise you, but I don’t know how to explain this simply.’

Guil gathered up some of the pamphlets that littered the tables in the café and handed them to Olympe. ‘Read these, it will go some way to explain things.’

Before she could take them, Al dived across the table and picked out the news-sheets. He looked up to find them all staring at him.

‘What? She can’t have these ones. I’m, uh, still reading them.’ He blushed beetroot red.

Guil put the remaining pamphlets in front of Olympe. ‘Before the Revolutionary government gained control, the aristocracy and the king had too much power, and everyone else had too little. The poorest people paid the most taxes and were starving. So the people abolished the Ancien Régime and a new government announced the Declaration of the Rights of Man – a document that said we were all equal.’