Vive la Révolution

3

"These clothes are stupid," complained Mattie, trailing after Jenny and fumbling with a ridiculous, 18th century dress she'd been kindly loaned by Madame Tussaud. Jenny, too, had found herself in period clothes, but didn't mind as much – she was used to disguises. She was also counting her blessings that she wasn't wearing anything anywhere near as gaudy as what her mother and Clara had ended up in; she and Mattie needed to blend in at a public execution, they needed to blend in at an aristocratic party in a palace. Crossing the Pont Notre-Dame for the second time that day, Clara and the Doctor lagged behind in their ridiculous period dresses.

"You have to look the part, Matts," said Jenny. It was dusk, but night would fall within the next half hour. She paused with Mattie to wait for the other two to catch up, but the Doctor was slowed down significantly by monumental spite for the existence of corsets. Jenny muttered, mostly to herself, "I don't mind the corset, I could have gone to the party…"

"Do you want to go to the party?" Mattie asked her.

"Not really. They're basically just orgies, aren't they? Ravenwood won't be happy if she hears I went to a French orgy without calling first. In fact, I'm not sure she'd be entirely happy about it even if I did. Besides, I don't blend into 'high society' very well. Would you two hurry up?"

"I can barely breathe," her mother protested.

"Stop whining," said Clara, "This is what you deserve."

"For what!?"

"For forcing all the women you've ever travelled with into corsets when they have to wear period clothing, too," Clara said. She was clearly enjoying this. "You know what they say, when in Rome…" They finally caught up and the group began moving again, albeit at a snail's pace. Mattie hoped they didn't miss the execution.

"I don't know why I can't just wear a suit. You know, when I was a guy, I could just wear a suit whenever and that was that," she bemoaned.

"Well, there are these things called sexism, misogyny, the patriarchy…" Clara began.

"Clara's right," said Jenny, "And you can't wear a suit if your aim is to blend in, women don't wear suits in this century. The only way you're going to get information out of any secret Royalists is to convince them you have similar interests – otherwise, they'll assume you're trying to trick them. Which, you are."

"Don't broadcast it," said the Doctor, glancing around as they passed around the edge of the crowd still gathered at the Hôtel de Ville.

"Where are we going?" Mattie asked.

"West, just follow the Seine until we get to the Tuileries, then we'll split off," she said. It wasn't long before they got stuck in a slow-moving crowd all heading in the same direction they were – to watch the Queen get her head cut off. "You two be careful at this thing. People get trampled and crushed in the crowds at executions. Pretty morbid stuff. And you're both short."

"We're all short," Jenny pointed out.

"I'm still growing," Mattie argued.

"I doubt that, sweetheart," said Clara, "You take after your mother."

"If worse comes to worst, we'll just keep out of the way and Mattie can stand on my shoulders," Jenny said.

"Stand on them!?" Mattie exclaimed.

"Yeah," she shrugged, "It'll be fine. I'm strong."

"I'm more worried about falling."

"Oh. Well, sit on them, then. You'd definitely be able to see over the crowds."

"You just need to make sure she actually gets the chop," the Doctor pointed out, "You don't need front row seats. Ah-ha!" she exclaimed, stopping dead amid a crowd to stare at a large building next to them.

"What?" Clara asked, confused.

"It's the Louvre!"

Clara squinted at it, "Oh. I didn't recognise it without the pyramid. Has it not always had the pyramid?"

"No! They won't put that thing there for another two-hundred years, I.M. Pei designed it. He designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, too, which is also a bunch of big, weird-looking pyramids. Y'know, it only opened two months ago, in August this year."

"The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" Clara asked.

"Are you being like this on purpose?" Clara just shrugged. "No, of course not the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Louvre. But they don't even have the Mona Lisa yet."

"Was it not always a museum?" Mattie asked as they began to walk again, apparently not deigning to visit and look at whatever small collection the building boasted after only being open for two months.

"No, it's a palace. In fact, it was originally a castle, they built the first bits of it in the 13th century," the Doctor explained, "But the revolutionaries decided that art should be for everyone and not just the rich people who hoard it, so they opened it to the public. Y'know, like Banksy."

"I heard a rumour," Jenny began, addressing the Doctor while they walked, "That you're Banksy."

"Jenny, you've met Banksy."

"What!? When? I'd remember."

"He was at our last wedding," said Clara, "He had the silver tooth."

"He… that was Banksy? That bloke?" Jenny was taken aback. They both nodded and Jenny sank into silence, crossing her arms and straining her memory to try and remember this encounter as best she could.

"What happens if someone does try to break out the Queen, though?" Mattie inquired when the noise of the baying crowds surrounding them started to get unbearable with no conversation to drown it out.

"The mob would take over, I expect. Just stay out of the way and keep an eye on things, don't intervene," the Doctor advised, "If, somehow, she does escape, try and get a look at where they head off to. But the whole place'll be swarming with Jacobin soldiers as well as the crowd."

"And what about afterwards?" Jenny continued; she had more of a mind for planning than her mum did. The Doctor could barely even plan what she was having for dinner.

"We'll meet back at Tussaud's. She's waiting there to receive the head. Maybe we'll get to talk to it before the soldiers have a chance," the Doctor lowered her voice.

"Right, but about what? What do they want to interrogate her head for? About her escape attempt that will obviously have failed if she's rendered a severed head?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"I don't know that part. I don't think an escape plan is what the main issue is. Like I said, with so many people all desperate for her to die, and she's only a stone's throw away at the Conciergerie – the most important prisoner in France – she doesn't have a chance, no matter how many Austrian princes may or may not be plotting to help her. No, I'm willing to bet there's something deeper going on, something to do with that Glove… why bring someone back to life just to ask if there might be a plan to break someone you already have in your custody out?" She had a point; it was quite an elaborate course of action. "Here's the palace."

"The Palais-Royal?" Clara asked.

"No, this is the Tuileries, I said," the Doctor indicated a vast and ornate building to their left; they were just at its corner. Stretched out ahead of it, between the road they were on and the Seine, was an enormous garden with rows upon rows of neatly-groomed hedges and other foliage. "Okay, we're going that way," she pointed in the complete opposite direction, to a road to their right which was comparably emptier than the one running alongside the grounds of the Tuileries, "You two just follow the crowds all the way down here, stick to the gardens, and then you'll get to the Place de la Révolution. Can't miss the guillotine. Keep your distance, but try to get eyes on it, alright?"

"Yes, alright, we heard," Jenny brushed her off, "Don't intervene with any potential escapes, just watch from afar."

"Don't get Mattie into trouble, either," the Doctor warned, "You'll look after her, won't you?

"Of course I will," said Jenny, as Mattie got a bit huffy by her side and mumbled something about being able to look after herself, "I'm trustworthy. I've babysat her loads of times."

"I'm not a baby," Mattie complained.

"If anything happens, ring me straight away," Clara implored Matilda directly, turning serious now, "Doesn't matter if anyone sees the phone, they don't have cameras. As long as you don't lose it, a few stray glimpses should be fine."

"Alright," said Mattie.

"Do you promise?"

"Yes," Mattie was increasingly annoyed with Clara trying to be a responsible adult.

"Also," Clara added as the Doctor tried to get her to leave, "This is the 1700s, so just… I mean, if anyone says anything, y'know, prejudiced, uh…"

"Don't worry," said Jenny, "I've got my pliers. I'm perfectly happy to pull out the teeth of some French racists."

"That's a last resort," the Doctor told her off.

"Obviously. You go for the fingernails first."

"You are…" she shook her head, then turned back to Clara, "C'mon, let's just go. I'm sure Jenny will handle anything that comes up." Clara was obviously not thrilled about leaving Matilda with only Jenny but was dragged away into the crowd before she could raise a final objection.

"Are you joking?" Mattie asked Jenny as Jenny began to walk again, staying at the edge of the palace garden like the Doctor advised.

"Sort of. I don't have my pliers. You can pull out teeth with your hands, though. It's all in the technique, you have to wiggle," Jenny explained, "I'm sure you'll learn about it when you become a surgeon."

"Well, you'd have to be a dentist for that, or dental surgeon, which isn't the same thing," said Mattie.

"No, you'll be pulling out much more interesting things than teeth – like organs. And you can sell those. Can't really sell teeth. Not that I, um, support organised crime. Don't do crime, Matilda," Jenny advised, "Don't sell organs on the black market."

"You could sell teeth to George Washington."

"That's some great historical retention. My mother would be proud." They walked down the long street, neatly-trimmed hedges bordering the grounds of Tuileries on the left and tall, square-cut trees down the middle of the road on the right. It certainly did look like a royal residence, but its effect was neutered by the crowds of angry sans-culottes brandishing tricolore flags, pikes and torches. The orange of the flames mingled with the dusky glow of the sky as night drew closer. "How's it been, then? Living with them?"

"Um… okay, I guess," said Mattie, "…It's fine. They're nice." But they weren't her parents.

"Are you doing okay? Coping alright with everything that keeps happening?"

"You sound like Clara."

"Clara just cares about you – and she's a good person to have care about you. The girl has more empathy than she knows what to do with." Mattie was reminded of Clara, just a few weeks ago, stepping in to defend a complete stranger against a violent and corrupt police officer. The small wound on her head had yet to heal fully.

"You're biased, though," said Mattie.

"Well, y'know, I… have my reasons for loving her," said Jenny, "That's a story you're too young to hear, though."

"But I'm not too young to hear about you pulling people's teeth, or to watch the Queen of France get her head cut off?"

"Do you really want to hear about Clara and me?"

"…No," Mattie admitted, "I just wish you wouldn't all say I'm 'too young' all the time. I'm fifty."

"D'you know what I was doing when I was your age?"

"What?"

"Working hard in school. I was at university – the University of Atelerix. Got my engineering and astrophysics degrees," Jenny said, "And one in history, but we never did the French Revolution, unfortunately. And I didn't even have a relationship with anybody until I was in my eighties. You are young, and that's a good thing. You should know that before it's too late, and it's over, and then you do have responsibilities."

"You're making me sound ungrateful."

"I don't mean to," Jenny apologised, "I just mean you're lucky to stay a kid for so long. I've never had that chance. There'll come a day where you won't be too young and people will stop trying to protect you from dark things, and then you'll have to face them head-on. Maybe even pull out a few teeth of your own." Jenny stopped walking and Mattie followed suit, not paying attention to their surroundings while she mulled over what Jenny had said. It took her a few moments to realise that they'd arrived at the bottom of the grounds of the Tuileries; ahead of them was a large square, larger than the one outside of the Hôtel de Ville, with another gruesome guillotine at its heart. The crowds were thick and swarmed at its base, shouting profanities and jeering. The Queen hadn't even been brought out yet.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for a vantage point," Jenny explained, "We ought to stay out of the crowds, get a good view from somewhere else… it's always bigger here than I expect. Then again, when I go to Paris I usually spend all my time in the Marais." She said this like it was a joke, but Mattie didn't understand what it meant. "What do you think about these statues?" She pointed one out on the corner of the square, a woman sitting in a throne with a sword resting on one shoulder on a large, white plinth. It also had quite a lot of children climbing on it, all also angling to get a good view of the execution.

"Covered in kids," said Mattie.

"What? You're scared of some Parisian children?"

"…No, I'm not scared of some children-" Mattie argued. Jenny interrupted her with a laugh.

"Don't worry. Wait right here, I'll get us something to help out with the frightening children."

"What? Where are you going?" Mattie asked, but Jenny ignored her. Lucky for Mattie, she wasn't left alone in revolutionary Paris for too long, and Jenny remained within her line of sight as she walked straight into a man. This man was initially irritated until Jenny gave him a very sympathetic and upset look and began to profusely apologise. Mattie being at the distance she was, however, was able to glimpse Jenny's hand snaking around and snatching a bag from his belt. He was completely unaware and overcome by her presence, but she bade him farewell as quickly as possible after stealing his money. He was left in the middle of the crowd, surprised by the encounter. Jenny practically vanished among the people, alarming Matilda who really, really didn't want to be left alone just then. It was only when Jenny's mark, confused but oblivious, began walking again towards the square that she reappeared from within a group of strangers and made Mattie jump.

"Come on, then," Jenny said, beckon for Mattie to follow her as she approached the statue.

"Why did you steal that money?" Mattie hissed.

"Bribe those children," said Jenny, "Get us some snacks, maybe. Do you think they sell snacks? Like… hot dogs?"

"Like at a baseball game, you mean?"

"Yeah!"

"Probably not. Aren't all the poor people starving at the moment? Isn't that why they're revolting?"

"That sounds correct…" Jenny nodded, walking around to the front of the statue so she could address the children who had climbed up onto it. Street urchins. "Salut! Is there any room up there for the two of us?" There were maybe ten of them who all glanced at each other, muttering, until one – who looked to be the oldest, maybe twelve – spoke.

"What are you going to do for us?"

"Make it worth our while," jeered a second even younger one. Then they made some rude gestures.

"Filthy children, great…" muttered Jenny, then she lifted the purse and began to search through it, "I can do you, uh… I don't know, what's this?" she held up a gold coin, and the boys stared.

"It's a Louis d'or," said the main boy, "Êtes-vous Français?"

"Sometimes," said Jenny, "Look, I'll be honest, I stole this money just now, and if you let us onto the statue you can have the whole purse. There are a lot of gold coins in here." She took out two more to prove this. The boys again conferred with one another.

"…The whole purse?" the lead boy questioned.

"Yep. Just to get good seats to watch the execution," said Jenny, "I'm thinking of getting into executions myself, see, so I need to be able to see. Then again, what would my career trajectory be? After the Queen of France gets the chop? There's no way I could ever beat that reputation…" she mused, then smiled at the kids and held up the purse. "Do you want the money or not?"

Like a swarm, they descended. As soon as they were off the statue Jenny tossed the purse in their general direction and they all began to fight over it like seagulls and a bit of sausage roll. Then again, they could probably get quite a lot of sausage rolls with the contents of the purse. Did they have sausage rolls in 18th century France?

With the statue freshly cleared of children, it didn't cause Jenny any difficulty to do quite an impressive wall-run to gain the height needed to grab onto the base and haul herself up. The benefits of being an alien super-soldier and a master thief, Mattie supposed, but she didn't think much of her own chances of doing that. The bottom of the actual statue, on top of its monolith, was over ten feet high – twice her height.

"Uh…" she faltered.

"Just jump, I'll grab you," Jenny said, crouching down and holding out her arm. Her arms weren't very long though, and the whole situation looked precarious. Mattie remained unconvinced.

"There must be, like, an easier way… how'd those kids get up here?"

"Probably by helping each other," said Jenny, "It's fine. You weigh basically nothing, and I used to do this sort of thing for a living."

"What sort of thing is that?"

"I'm an acrobat," she answered. Feeling like she was making more of a scene if she continued to stand there and argue while the crowd around them wanted their execution viewing to go undisturbed, Mattie gave up and was reduced to doing as Jenny bade, scrambling up the side of the monolith and jumping for Jenny's hand. True to her word, Jenny was able to lift her onto the base with ease. The hard part over, they climbed onto the slightly higher statue, Jenny on its knee and Mattie a little lower on the seat of the throne.

"You were an acrobat?"

"Yeah! I ran away and joined the circus."

"Ran away from what?"

"Earth," she said, "I was very young. Twenty."

"Did something happen?" Mattie pried, "Was it like, a girl?"

"Wow, you're all questions. Nosing about in my life."

"Your life sounds interesting."

"It's not all it's cracked up to be. I worked in a lot of Air Force bases during the war – World War II – travelling around, helping with this or that. Sometimes medicine and nursing, sometimes engineering, I even learnt how to fly a plane. I have a complicated relationship with warfare, me being an indoctrinated, cloned soldier, and I didn't think much of it. Plus, they were fighting the Nazis. And then the Americans dropped the atom bombs, and I got a bit disillusioned with humanity. Swore off them."

"But you must've come back to Earth," said Mattie.

"For all we know, I could be on Earth right now," she said sarcastically, "There's no way to tell." Mattie ignored this.

"You grew up on Earth, didn't you?"

"Sort of. I came back because over the course of my travels I found out that most species wage war, a lot of them much more tenaciously than humans, so my disavowing them was a bit… I don't know, dramatic? Naïve?"

"Where'd you go when you came back?"

"Ended up in East Berlin. And that time it was about a girl. But that's a story for another day. I've actually still got my gun from those days, a very old Mauser C96. It still had a Balkenkreuz on it, which I tried to scrape off. Someone stole it from a dead Luftwaffe officer."

"What's that?"

"Nazi Air Force," Jenny explained, "I'd show you it, but I think mum would kill me. And let me tell you, you don't want to go to a city partially under Soviet control with a Nazi gun, that won't do you any favours."

"I'll bear that in mind if I ever find myself in the Soviet Union…"

"In a way, I prefer East Berlin to revolutionary Paris. Hang on, look," Jenny pointed. The crowds were getting riled up about something, heads turning towards a large thoroughfare between a set of identical palaces. Mattie wished the Doctor was still with them to tell them what the streets and the buildings actually were since Jenny wasn't a Parisian history buff, but they were very large and very grand. She thought at least half the buildings in Paris must be palaces.

"I'm not sure we can see much more from over here," said Mattie.

"We'll be fine, I've got tools." She fished around underneath the dress she'd borrowed from Madame Tussaud and drew out a pair of round-lensed glasses. Mattie had been half-expecting her to pull out a knife, or her Nazi pistol.

"Do you need glasses?"

"No, but they've got a zoom feature. And night vision and thermal imaging. Oswin made them, a very long time ago now," Jenny said, sliding them on and squinting into the distance. Mattie bitterly wondered why Oswin had never made her fancy, futuristic glasses. "Do you think there's anywhere to get some macarons around here?"

"How should I know? What can you see?"

"Nothing yet. I'm gonna bake some macarons later. I don't think my meringue technique is up to scratch. Y'know, macarons were first baked in Venice, not in France at all. And that's where I learned to cook."

"Look!" Mattie hit her arm and then pointed. A cart was rolling slowly towards the Place de la Révolution, pulled by a singular horse and surrounded by an armed entourage of Jacobin soldiers. Jenny, with her modified eyewear, could see a lonely woman dressed in rags with her hands bound behind her sitting upright in the cart. A priest was by her side and stared dead-ahead. The crowd was too riled up for their words to be coherent, but the tone made it clear that they were hurling insults at her left, right and centre. This was Marie Antoinette, the Last Queen of France, on her way to the guillotine.

"You could get your phone out and try to zoom in?" Jenny suggested.

"No thanks… I think I'm alright not seeing it close-up."

"I don't blame you. She's running out of time for her escape attempt, though."

"Did they do executions in East Berlin?"

"Not public ones," she said, "Lots of Nazi war criminals, including one killed by guillotine, nonetheless. The Fallschwertmaschine."

"What does that mean?"

"Falling sword machine. It's a good language, very literal. Wonder if they'd've executed me… maybe. In fact, almost definitely, they could've got me on impersonating a Stasi officer."

"Why would they get you on that?"

"Because I used to impersonate a Stasi officer," she said, "That's the East German secret police. We used to smuggle underneath the Wall." The distant soldiers had to threaten the crowd with swords to keep them away from the cart, stop them from knocking it over and tearing her to pieces before she could even reach the guillotine.

"So… what's your opinion on capital punishment, then?"

"Eurgh, I hate it," said Jenny, "Mixing murder and bureaucracy, recipe for disaster. Nobody has that right, and certainly not whatever brutes have taken over France. Not that the monarchy was much better, I suppose."

"It doesn't look like a great way to die, going through all this…"

"At least it's quick. Hanging's worse, they flail," she said, "Chestburster is quite a bad way to die, I think…"

"Is that story true?" Mattie asked. The story about Jenny getting impregnated by a facehugger and then killed when the xenomorph burst out (she'd seen Alien many times.)

"Unfortunately, it is. But, funny titbit, Clara's – my Clara's – TARDIS got overrun by xenomorphs because of that, they made a nest, so they had to stay with us for a while. If it wasn't for that, we never would have been together. Not in a million years. So you know, silver linings. And your parents were both there that day. Your mother was all ready to go toe-to-toe with the thing, did they ever tell you that?"

"Not in so many words," said Mattie, smiling a little thinking about her mum trying to fight a xenomorph.

"I think it's showtime," Jenny nodded ahead. Far away, Marie Antoinette was being removed from the cart by armed soldiers at the foot of the guillotine. Slowly, Jenny saw her ascend the steps onto the platform to widespread cheering from the crowd. It was as loud as a football match, only celebrating someone's death rather than sports.

"Will this take a long time, do you think?"

"I doubt it. They've already got the formalities out of the way with the trial," said Jenny. Somebody on the wooden platform started to loudly address the crowd, but not loudly enough that either of them could hear him, and Jenny didn't have any gadgets to help her hear better over long distances. As she was led towards the guillotine, Antoinette accidentally stood on the foot of her executioner and Jenny saw her mumble something. Then she was forced to kneel and place her head in the wooden restraint as it was closed on top of her.

It certainly was swift. She didn't kneel for very long as the inaudible speech was given, and without so much as a chance to hear her last words, the lever was pulled and the deadly blade, still stained with blood, came slashing down. Mattie didn't look at this one, but Jenny paid close attention as the head flopped forwards into a bucket. The cheering from the crowd was deafening, as the head was lifted and brandished to the public. It was still dripping blood from its stump.

"She didn't escape, then?" asked Matilda.

"Apparently not…" Two soldiers on the platform lifted her body and threw it unceremoniously into a large cart on the ground, atop a pile of a dozen or so other headless corpses. The head was tossed down to the very same soldiers who had been marching with the carriage, now left with nothing to guard. "No pike for her, she's going straight to Tussaud, I suppose… can you see anything suspicious?"

"Apart from them?"

"Who?"

"Over there," Mattie pointed. A group of three or so men observed from far away, right at the edge of the pavilion and closer to Mattie and Jenny than to the guillotine. They were wearing black and observing with flat expressions. "What do you think? Her rescue party?"

"Three men against this crowd?" Jenny asked. By this point, night had very nearly fallen around them. The men slowly began to move, taking the long way to avoid the crowd rather than trying to cut through – which happened to bring them even closer to Jenny and Matilda, as they headed towards the Rue Royale. From the statue, Jenny could see the soldiers now with Antoinette's head forcing their way through the baying crowd, all trying to get their hands on the head of the queen to mutilate or damage it in some way. They looked to be on course to intersect, the Royalists and the Revolutionaries, and Jenny held her breath as they got closer and closer.

Ultimately though, this did not come to pass. The men in black kept their eyes to the ground, ignoring the soldiers as they passed by, and the soldiers turned the opposite direction to head back down towards Tuileries. She felt for sure they were going to try and swipe the head. Perhaps she had misread them? Maybe they were just frightened aristocrats worried about who was next in line to get the chop.

But then she realised they were doing something else entirely. While the head went one way, the body of Marie Antoinette was being pulled away on a cart, and that proved much less interesting to the mob. So uninteresting, in fact, that Jenny herself had forgotten to take note of it. There it lay atop the nobodies, she could see with her high-tech glasses, and the men in black fixed on it as soon as the soldiers with the head had passed them by.

"I've got a hunch," Jenny announced.

"What hunch? We should probably wait for the Doctor and Clara to finish with what they're doing."

"No, no. We need to follow them follow that body."

"The body?"

"Mm. See, we know where that Glove is; it's at the Palais-Royal. That's why mum's gone there. So they can't get that head to tell them anything until the soldier stops trying to get his leg over and takes the Glove where it's supposed to be. We know that head is going straight to Madame Tussaud, and nobody's gone to intercept it."

"Not yet, maybe they're waiting further away from this mob?" Mattie suggested.

"What could they want it for, though? The head? Ask it about its failed escape attempt? I think mum's right about there being something else going on, and I think we should see what that lot want with a headless body. They have to have some reason to go after it."

"Is going off-book such a good idea?"

"Matts, we're time travellers. There is no book." Jenny promptly descended the statue, climbing down from its knee and dropping lightly onto the ground. Mattie was much more intimidated by the long drop below. "Just jump, we're gonna lose them in the crowd at this rate."

"It's kind of high…"

"Just remember to bend your legs when you fall," said Jenny, "Absorb the impact."

"What if I break my legs?"

"You're not gonna break your legs."

"You don't know that."

"You'll be fine. Just lower yourself off the base and drop the rest of the way. It's, like, barely five feet if you do that."

"That's your whole height!"

"And I'm right here to help you! But hurry, I don't want to have to ask around for the location of mass graves," Jenny said. Feeling Jenny's frustration and seeing the shadowy Royalists threaten to disappear, Mattie threw caution to the wind and did as instructed. Suffice it to say, she'd never been particularly agile and felt a jolt of pain in both her legs when she came falling back to the ground. Thankfully, Jenny did step forward to help her and keep her from falling completely as she wobbled, but she didn't have too much time to get her bearings. "See? All fine. C'mon, they're going towards the Champs-Élysées."

"I thought you don't know Paris?"

"There's a difference between knowing your way around Paris and knowing the complete history of every single building we go past, like my mother," said Jenny, "I know where we are."

They managed to catch up to the Royalists just before the crowd at the guillotine began to disperse, meaning they were far enough ahead that they wouldn't lose sight of the people they were tailing.

"What do we do if they see us?" Mattie asked Jenny quietly.

"We'll be fine, stay in the shadows of the buildings," Jenny advised. They strayed further north from the Champs-Élysées, turning right as they approached the gardens down a much narrower street flanked on either side by the typically tall, Parisian terraces. Jenny made sure they kept their distance, lingering behind a carriage that had been overturned and left to rot. It had a bird's nest inside, so it must have been there in the street for a while. At the top of the road, where the Royalists were heading, she saw the remains of a bonfire.

"What are they burning out here?"

"Dunno. Rich people's possessions, maybe?" Jenny suggested. They ducked behind the carriage when one of the Royalists glanced back, presumably to check for any pesky sans-culottes brimming from the euphoria of watching the Queen die who fancied their chances with a few grieving aristocrats. Seeing nothing, they carried on walking – Jenny saw it reflected dully in the window of a house in front of them. Taking advantage of the window she decided not to move until she could no longer see their reflections. By now, night was well and truly upon them, the moon high in the sky.

When they were out of sight she crept, Mattie on her heels, out from behind the ruined carriage and crossed the street as quickly as she could. They came upon a larger thoroughfare, the Royalists already crossing over again, aiming for another street leading off to the north. Keeping a distance, Jenny crossed the road as well to stay on the same side as them as the cart with the bodies, much further ahead, rounded the corner onto the Rue d'Anjou.

"What if we go too far and Clara and the Doctor can't find us again?" Mattie whispered.

"It won't come to that," said Jenny, "They're taking the bodies to a cemetery, it won't be too far."

"Cemeteries aren't usually right in the middle of cities, though."

"They are in 18th century Paris," said Jenny, "It was when they started overflowing that they exhumed all the bodies and built the catacombs south of the Seine. Clara and I once came to Paris with Sally and Esther, on the Eurostar, and the two of them being vampires loved spending as much time as possible skulking around down there with the… skulls. Very morbid."

"Overflowing?"

"Yeah. Brace yourself for a bad smell."

The Rue d'Anjou was a very long, straight street, and they were able to keep an eye on both the royalists and the bodies. They hadn't been spotted so far, luckily.

"I don't get it, what could they want the body for?" Mattie asked, "If they've got the head they can get it to talk on its own, can't they?"

"I suppose we'll find out. Are you feeling passionate about France yet? You can tell your friends at school about the evening you spent following the decapitated corpse of Marie Antoinette to a mass grave in the 8th arrondissement."

"Why? So I can get sectioned?" Mattie challenged.

"Doesn't it make you want to conjugate some verbs?"

"Honestly, I sort of want to go home at this point. I'm really starting to understand why my parents wanted to keep me away from the TARDIS."

"We can't keep you in bubble wrap forever."

"But you could try to not take me to the French Revolution…"

"I'm sure it's safer here than in Brighton the other week, with those trees. You remind me of Martha when you go worrying about stuff like this. And Mickey, to be honest. The things she used to say to me whenever I ended up with a new injury… when she found out I got in that car accident with a Porsche stolen from the mafia." Jenny glanced over her shoulder every so often as she talked to Mattie, keeping most of her attention on the royalists.

"You stole a car from the mafia!?"

"No, someone I know did, a friend of mine. Happened to be the leader of the Irish mob. I was fine, I only got a little bit shot. God, but I remember when she heard about that other car crash I was in with a flying car I took to get away from the yakuza. Got in a swordfight that day, too."

"Oh my god. You're a lunatic. I need to find Clara."

"It's fine. That won't happen here. There aren't any cars."

"Because the cars are the problem…"

"You're so desensitised to this," Jenny joked a little, "Anybody else would be losing it, but you're like, 'hmm, maybe you should've taken me somewhere a bit less dangerous in your one-of-a-kind time-and-space machine.' The dangerous places have the most excitement. There, see?" She nodded ahead, "A church. Must be the destination."

Under cover of darkness, the cart with the bodies was dragged into the walled area behind a partially constructed church. The Royalists paused after the cart had vanished behind the wall, meaning Mattie and Jenny had to pause too, lurking in a small snicket between two terraces so they could remain out of sight.

"What do you think they're doing?"

"Waiting for the bodies to be dumped, I think," said Jenny. While they couldn't see what was happening, it didn't take long to throw a few corpses into the graves because the cart reappeared after only a few minutes, now emptied. The same men who had pulled it through the streets began to take it on a return journey, back to the guillotine to wait for the fruits of tomorrow's slew of executions. The cart came trundling past them and they had to hide from the Royalists waiting for it to vanish. When they peeked their heads around the corner again, the Royalists themselves were just about disappearing into the cemetery gates. Mattie wasn't happy about Jenny crossing the street yet again so that she could get a good view straight into the cemetery, thanks to the glasses, but followed nonetheless as they lurked at a safe distance.

There the dark shapes of the Royalists, and there was no doubt that that was who they were now, moved about within mounds of bodies. She saw a sign betraying it as the Cimetière de la Madeleine.

"It's basically the same as the catacombs you wanted to visit if you think about it," said Jenny.

"How do you work that out?"

"Well, it's the same bodies. Before they moved them. Just disorganised."

"What if they're just… moving it somewhere more private? She is the Queen, after all. It's not nice for anybody to be buried in a mass grave."

"I hope that's the case, but the existence of that Glove makes me think otherwise. Then again, if mum and Clara manage to get it away from here, it won't matter where the body or the head is. They can do what they like with them."

They hadn't even bothered to bury the bodies fully, just dumping them in there instead, so it didn't take long for the Royalists to find what they were looking for. Momentarily, Jenny and Mattie witnessed them carrying the corpse between them, now too preoccupied with that to notice the girls.

"Now this is interesting," said Jenny, "Anyone who was at that execution – which has to be about half of Paris – is going to recognise what that is."

"So?"

"So they can't be taking it too far until they get it out of the streets," Jenny deduced.

And she was right. It was a very short journey from Madeleine Cemetery to some sort of underground entrance, a stone staircase near the road they were on leading below street level. It had a wrought iron gate blocking it off at the bottom of the steps, but the Royalists had a key to open it. As they took the body of Marie Antoinette into the tunnel they were still oblivious to their stalkers.

"I thought you said there aren't any catacombs?" Mattie questioned.

"Not here. But there are sewers."

"If you tell me you want to go into the-"

"No. If something happens down there, they wouldn't find us in time," said Jenny ominously. Mattie wasn't remotely comforted by this statement. "But now we know where they've gone, and there are only so many ways in and out of those sewers. I'll bet my mother knows every last one of them.

"In the meantime, I kept some of the change from that purse, so we can find something to eat. Have you ever had snails?"

Matilda grimaced.