A thrown rock thumped against the door. "We’re waiting, Priest!" a girl’s voice taunted him.

The man looked round, still clutching the carved angel. The figure bore the gouge mark of the bullet that had wrenched it from its perch. Cradling it as gently as an infant’s blackened body, he picked his way along the littered nave. He hesitated briefly at the door, then opened it. The group in the churchyard smiled maliciously.

They wore the blue coats of the National Guard, but he saw at once that they weren’t soldiers. All of them were women, aged from teens to middle thirties, with the brazen, sluttish look of army whores. He guessed the coats were borrowed from the troops they battened on; there was a big encampment nearby. But they’d come with knives and hatchets too, and two of them had carbines. They had the look of cruel children, utterly devoid of moral sense.

The man in the stained cassock eyed them calmly. The long black gown was shabby, with the dustiness of long days on the road. His hair was iron grey, although he had a young man’s face. The sunlight caught his pale eyes and the wood-and-silver crucifix he wore.

One of the camp followers stepped forward. She wore a calico dress beneath her coat, and a scarlet kerchief covering her hair. A cleaver from the field kitchen dangled from her hand. She smiled at him and swiped the air with it.

"We thought we’d better finish what the soldier-boys began." She glanced up at the blackened walls. "No stone shall be left standing … isn’t that what’s written in that old book of yours?"

"So it is," the priest replied. "And what you throw down shall be raised again."

The girls around the lych-gate smirked unpleasantly at that. One of them cocked her carbine – not as smoothly as the soldiers she’d observed. The woman with the cleaver simply gestured. Someone else unslung the barrel that she’d carried like a brandy keg. Perhaps she was a canteen girl, but he guessed she wasn’t here to dole out drinks. She laid the barrel on its side, and he saw it was a stolen powderkeg.

"This is God’s house," the priest insisted. "Why destroy it, then?"

"We don’t need superstition now the Revolution’s come." The girl who spoke was sitting on the fence. "The Church supports the King against the people. You priests are only here to keep us poor." She wore a battered soldier’s hat, pushed back from her blonde fringe. He thought she looked too young to lift the heavy carbine resting on her thighs.

Another girl was leaning on a tombstone. She wore a peasant blouse beneath her coat. His eyes betrayed him, flicking to her cleavage. The girl craned forward, taunting him with it.

"You call us harlots – fallen women. But you like to look." She straightened up again contemptuously. "So where’s your congregation now? Has that schoolmistress led all of them astray?"

That barb went deeper than the rest. He managed not to flinch. One of the women giggled spitefully. The priest showed them his open hand. It was calloused by hard work. "Don’t judge me by the bishops. I’ve been sent to serve the poor."

"The poor can serve themselves," the woman in the kerchief said. "And now we’ll blow this relic open and let in some light."

"I’m sorry," said the priest, "but I forbid it."

The woman curled her lip. "We hoped you would."

The others started forward with the insolence of numbers. The girl on the fence brought up her heavy gun. And then a shot exploded, startling birds out of the trees. A bullet struck the lych-gate roof and split a tile, which spilled onto the path.

Everyone swung round towards the spreading gout of gunsmoke. The breeze dispersed it to reveal two girls on ponies by the churchyard fence. The one who’d fired was wearing a blue frock coat. A mane of chestnut curls spilled out from underneath her hat. Dark eyes lined with darker kohl still squinted down the barrel of the horse-pistol she’d braced across her arm.

The other girl was blonde, her hair drawn back in a thick braid. She wore an English soldier’s faded coat. A stumpy, seven-barrelled gun was levelled from her armpit, a sight that made the harlots hesitate.

There was a pause, then Martine lowered her pistol, her pretty features darkened by her frown. She’d been chewing on a shaft of straw like the country girl she was, but now she turned her head and spat it out.

"What’s happening, girls?" she asked them, with a wry note in her voice. "Have you come to help the Father clean his church?"

The woman in the scarlet kerchief bristled at her tone. "Mind your own business, bitch," she said. The girl on the fence had brought her carbine round. The priest was studying the pair of riders. Nell smiled at him politely, then returned her calm attention to the whores.

Martine slid her pistol back into its holster. A second gun was tucked into her belt. The rapier she had learned to use was slung behind her hip. Nell’s coat concealed a pistol and a wicked bayonet of English steel.

"The man’s unarmed," said Martine, "and he’s here defending someone else’s house. I guess you should respect that, girls. Not every priest supports the aristos."

"You should meet the village schoolmistress," another woman sneered. "She’ll teach you that there’s no such thing as God. But if you don’t ride on, right now, you’ll find that out yourself." She raised her butcher-knife emphatically.

"You don’t believe we’ll go to Heaven?" Nell asked with mock concern. She sensed one of the carbines being aimed.

"Sorry to spoil your dreams," said red kerchief disdainfully.

"Never mind," said Nell. "At least you lot won’t go to Hell."

She triggered her Nock’s volleygun before the levelled carbines could be fired. The clustered barrels belched together, spewing out a vicious squall of shot. The girl on the fence cried out as poppies sprouted through her dress, as scarlet as the facings of her coat. She fell back, but her lower legs got hooked around the fence rails and left her dangling like a slaughtered fowl.

The girl with the deep cleavage caught some grapeshot in the chest. The impact tumbled her among the tombs. The others scattered, cursing as the cloud rolled over them. Martine could hear them coughing in the smoke.

Turning her horse, she jumped down on the far side of the fence. The fog was as thick as spoiled milk. She drew her rapier and waded in. The sound of coughing led her to one of the stricken harlots. Her sword point pierced the girl’s firm breast, and the coughs became a croak as it dug in.

"This’ll ventilate your lung," said Martine helpfully, and drove the rapier out through the girl’s back. The skewered wench convulsed and flailed, blood gurgling in her windpipe. Martine withdrew the blade again, and her victim pitched face downward at her feet.

The stinking smoke began to lift. A woman blundered through it. As she passed one of the tombs, Nell swung into her path. The woman lashed out wildly with the hatchet that she held. The recoat ducked the blow and thrust her bayonet between the harlot’s breasts. The seventeen-inch blade was fitted with a makeshift handle. The grip gave Nell the leverage to jab the steel in deep, then twist it free. The blowzy girl squirmed wretchedly inside her borrowed coat. She slumped aside. The English girl moved on.

A harlot with a carbine was still searching for a target. She glimpsed the priest, still on the steps, and pulled her trigger out of sheer spite. The carbine thumped and added to the smutty pall of smoke. The bullet struck the wooden angel, splitting it and knocking the priest down.

The girl bared her teeth to see him fall – then clenched them as she felt a griping pain. A rapier’s blade emerged out of her stomach. "Wrong target," muttered Martine in her ear. She jerked the sword back out, causing a massive haemorrhage. The woman doubled forward with a groan.

The harlot in the red kerchief came lunging through the graves, her cleaver raised as Martine turned her sword. The rapier slashed at empty air and the woman skittered back – then made to hurl her blade at Martine’s face. Nell whistled sharply, like a boy, and the harlot turned her head. The redcoat’s pistol blasted and the bullet punched into the woman’s brow.

The surviving girls were crouched amid the tombstones. One of them had knocked the bung out of the powderkeg. She sent it rolling down the path, trailing black dust in its wake. Her companion fumbled with a flint and steel.

Nell had reached the church steps, where the priest was trying to rise. She heard a shout from Martine, turned and saw the barrel bearing down on them. Impulsively she darted forward as the trail was lit. The powder sizzled, churning smoke. Nell skidded down and kicked the barrel back. It rolled towards the lych-gate, met the flame and blew apart. The blast vibrated through the ground and threw a thundercloud into the sky.

The shock-wave left Nell feeling like she’d been run over by a heavy cart. She kept her head well down until the clods of earth stopped falling. Then she looked up cautiously. The dusty priest was lying next to her.

"Did no one ever tell you, my child?" he admonished mildly: "Killing people is wrong."

"You must confess me sometime, Father," she said dryly. Martine was climbing to her feet. Her hat was gone, her hair cascading free. Nudging back her own hat, Nell got up and looked around. The blast had killed the harlots and blown one of them into the nearest tree.

"My name is Father Anton," said the priest. He eyed them both. "The Lord is generous. I ask for a protecting angel, and He sends me two."

"No-one sends us," Martine said. "We travel where we please. And do we look like angels to you?" Her bosom was still heaving from exertion and excitement. But her tone was leavened with respect. She had a peasant’s awe for the Old Faith.

Father Anton shrugged. "They say we entertain them sometimes unawares." His gaze moved to the bodies strewn around them. "Poor, misguided children," he said softly. "They met with me on holy ground – it’s only right that they should rest in it."

Nell raised an eyebrow. "Does this place still have a sexton, then?"

He shook his head. "There’s nobody but me. But I’ve come to rebuild this house. To dig its garden seems a fitting start."

Martine and Nell exchanged a glance. "It’s our mess," said Martine. "We’ll see to it." She smiled to see the priest’s surprised expression. "Or don’t you think that angels can have dirty hands as well?"

* * *

Anyone who saw Nell dig would not have guessed she was a parson’s daughter. There were muscles in her bare arms that no lady would possess. She’d taken off her scarlet coat and worked in vest and breeches. Her hat was tipped back on her brow, and perspiration darkened her blonde fringe.

She tipped more spoil onto the heap and straightened for a breather. Such labour was a world away from the genteel world in which she’d been brought up. A world she’d run away from with the soldier who’d seduced her – only to be betrayed and forced to make her living as an army whore.

In that sense she had much in common with the dead girls lined up by the grave. She glanced at them, then looked round at Martine. Her friend was stripped down to her shirt, which was patched with perspiration. The linen clung to her rounded breasts. Nell blushed and gripped the shovel once again.

It was Father Anton’s presence that embarrassed her, of course. Nell loved Martine and trusted her, the way she’d never trust a man again. If the priest had sensed their closeness, he had not remarked on it. He was digging with a vigour that suggested he had country roots himself.

Then they heard a noise above the scraping of the shovels. A horse-and-trap was coming down the lane. It halted by the lych-gate, on the far side of the church. Laying aside her pickaxe, Martine picked her pistol up.

Nell had been working in her gloves. She exchanged her shovel for the volleygun. The weapon had belonged to an assassin called the Spectre but felt increasingly familiar to her grip.

"An officer, perhaps?" said Father Anton. They’d expected soldiers from the camp to investigate the sound of the explosion. But nobody seemed interested. Perhaps they were too drunk. There were muffled whispers in the lane. The three of them went round the church to look.

Another group of girls were by the lych-gate. But these looked very different from the sluttish band of whores. They were young – nineteen or twenty – with a fresh-scrubbed, fervent look. They all wore long white sleeveless gowns and crimson peasant caps.

Martine kept her pistol lowered, with her thumb around the hammer. She recognised the costume: it was how the artists painted Liberty. Some of the girls wore sashes too, and tricolour cockades. There were pistols tucked into the sashes. Others cradled carbines in their arms.

The woman in the trap stood up. She was older than the rest, but not by much. Her dress was more conventional: not showy, but well-made. Her golden hair was scraped back primly, and she wore a scholarly pince-nez.

Nell guessed this was the schoolmistress the whores had spoken of. She felt the woman’s disapproving gaze. Her gathered students watched with the disdain of the converted. They could have been well-bred girls like Nell, or peasants like Martine.

"Still clinging to the wreck, I see," she said to Father Anton. "And now you’ve got some comforters. But then your Preacher always favoured whores."

Martine smiled, as if she took that as a compliment, but her grip grew tighter round the pistol’s butt. Nell’s gloved finger flexed against her trigger. She glanced at Father Anton. There was something raw behind his deadpan face.

"Marianne," he said, "I’m not the people’s enemy. They need the comfort of a place like this."

The woman called Marianne curled her lip. "You want to keep them prisoner. My girls once lived in ignorance. The wisdom of the age has set them free." Her pupils pouted self-importantly and raised their guns. Natural philosophy was not the only subject they’d been taught.

Nell thumbed back the hammer of her levelled volleygun, and Martine trained her pistol on the trap. "If you’re wise," said Martine, "you’ll take your pupils back to school. It would be a shame to see such promise wasted."

The schoolmistress bristled at her tone. She clearly thought Martine deserved a whipping. But her girls looked more uncertain now. It seemed they were unused to being defied. One of them glanced back. "Do you want her punished, Miss?" she asked. Marianne paused, then shook her head. "Let’s leave them struggling in their pit," she said.

She gathered up the pony’s reins, still seething. Some of her girls got in with her. The others followed as the trap moved off. They cast resentful glances in Martine and Nell’s direction. Martine eased down her pistol’s flint. A pensive shadow seemed to cross her face.

"Snot-nosed bitches," she opined, then glanced at Nell. "I wish that I could read."

The English girl smiled amiably. "We might have time to work on that," she said.

* * *

"Au …commencement," said Nell. "Let’s start with those two words."

"There’s a thousand bloody pages!" said Martine.

In fact, the battered Bible had much fewer. The heart had been gouged out of it, and the covers barely kept it in one piece. The opening page of Genesis was singed but legible. The two girls sat against the wall with the heavy volume spread on Martine’s knees.

The French girl frowned and ran her finger underneath the words. It was getting hard to see as daylight waned. The sky above the roofless church was leaden: thick with clouds. Father Anton was lighting candles. "I think a storm is on the way," he said.

Nell glanced up, then round the ruined building. It was more than one man could repair. "Is this your penance, then?" she asked the priest.

He shrugged but didn’t meet her eye. "I go where I am called." He came and placed a candle in the niche above their heads. "So why are you protecting me? Is that a penance too?"

"We got bored with Hail Marys," said Martine, not looking up. Her lips curved and kept moving soundlessly.

There was a muffled rumbling in the distance. Nell sighed and clambered to her feet. "I’d best see that the horses are all right." Her fair hair was untied, and fell like corn around her shoulders. She didn’t bother with her hat, just shrugged into her coat and went outside.

The churchyard had turned gloomy and the air was very still. Her fine hairs prickled with the coming storm. Even the birds were silent, waiting, as the clouds loomed closer. She turned a corner of the building – and a ghostly figure blocked her way.

As the white gown registered, a gun butt struck her belly. The impact scalded through her midriff and she doubled forward with a sob. Someone seized her from behind and shoved her up against the stonework. The edge of a cutlass scraped her throat. "Don’t even breathe, you bitch," a girl’s voice said.

Nell couldn’t keep from panting as she slumped against the wall. It felt as if her stomach was on fire. Two of the white-gowned students glared at her contemptuously. Their large breasts and low necklines gave them a Bohemian look.

"You shouldn’t have stayed," said one of them. Her red cap framed a petulant young face. "These places are the enemies of Reason and the People. The Revolution shows no mercy to its enemies."

Nell was twenty-two and a vivacious girl herself, but this zealous teenager made her feel old. She stared into the student’s eyes. They were as bright as buttons. Nell’s own gaze was pitying. "Is that all she could teach you, then?" she said.

The girl didn’t bother answering. She nodded to her friend. They dragged Nell out into the uncut grass. A half-dug grave lay gaping underneath the rampant weeds, as if its occupant had crawled away.

"Here’s six feet of holy ground for you," the student taunted Nell.

"Enough for two," said Martine from behind them.

She swung the heavy pickaxe which she’d used that afternoon. It struck the girl between the shoulder blades. The impact was a meaty thud. The student threw her head back, a guttural sound of anguish in her throat. The cutlass fell aside as she began to topple forward. The other girl was stupefied by shock. Her grip on Nell’s coat loosened – then she turned her blunderbuss. Nell jabbed her elbow back into her belly. The student gasped and grimaced, and Nell seized her, swinging round. She hooked the girl’s legs out from under her. The student was too winded to cry out as she pitched forward. She landed on the pickaxe that was still protruding from her comrade’s back.

The point drove upward through her chest. She gurgled and convulsed, like a twitching butterfly pinned to a board. Skewered together, the pair of students slid into the grave and huddled there like lovers, cheek to cheek.

"There’s another lesson, girls," Nell muttered, staring down. "If you give no quarter, you receive none."

Then she heard a rustling in the grass and raised her eyes. There were other white-gowned figures round the church. They stood out in the half-light like a spectral congregation. The nearest raised a carbine and discharged it with a gust of dirty smoke.

Martine and Nell ducked low amid the tombstones. The student’s bullet ricocheted off one. Twisting where she lay, Nell drew her multi-barrelled pistol. She glanced across at Martine. "How did you know they were here?"

Martine grinned. "I didn’t. I just wanted time with you. The sort of time we can’t have in a church."

She dipped her head in reflex as another ball sped past, then reached for the dead student’s blunderbuss. Nell smiled back, aroused despite the danger. Or perhaps the danger whetted her desire.

One of the young fanatics dashed towards them. Her sabre gleamed in the metallic light. Martine tucked the blunderbuss against her shoulder. It was a short gun, only good for targets at close range. She swung around the gravestone she was sheltering behind, and blasted the young student in the breasts. The white gown sprouted bloody wounds like poppies sown in snow, and the girl spun off her feet like a shot hare.

Martine and Nell pulled back under the cover of the smoke. A ripple of shots came after them like hailstones piercing fog. As they came to the church door, another student fired and missed. Their teacher had taught them how to fire a gun, not how to shoot.

In contrast, Nell was skilled by constant practice. She triggered her Twigg pistol and it blew a hole between the student’s eyes. The red wound matched her crimson cap; a cock’s comb blurted backwards. The girl gaped at her, crestfallen, then slumped into the grass.

The firing petered out as they took shelter in the church, but the grumbling of the storm was getting louder. The scattered candles flickered, as if quailing at the prospect. A flash of lightning lit the sky above. The priest was on his knees before the desecrated altar. It seemed he was prepared for martyrdom.

Martine drew both her guns and took up position by the door. Nell crossed the nave to fetch her volleygun. A part of her resented Father Anton’s calm acceptance. She liked life and she loved Martine. She’d fight for them with all the strength she had.

"Father, listen … my father’s a clergyman," she said. "He fights against the slave trade. But you can’t fight on your knees."

He glanced at her but didn’t speak, a conflict of emotions on his face. As she hooked her long hair back, she felt a spot of rain against her cheek. "Shit," she muttered, peering up. Their guns gave them an advantage, but a firelock in wet weather was as much use as a club.

The thunder cracked above them like a cannon. The rain became a sprinkling, then a rush. It poured into the empty church, cascading over rubble, transforming dust and ashes into mud. It soaked Nell’s coat and made her blonde hair straggle down her back. She pressed herself against the wall, her coattail draped over the volleygun. She looked around for somewhere dry where she could put her pistol. Martine was sheltered by the porch, but she couldn’t hold the door with just two shots.

The rain went on, and still the students waited, although they must be getting soaked themselves. A white flash lit the building and the thunder boomed again. Nell glimpsed a fleeting movement in the glare. One of the girls was trying to clamber in through a smashed window: she had a kitchen knife between her teeth. Her gown clung to her breasts as she craned forward. Nell swung and fired the volleygun, her left hand cupped over the opening pan. The powder sizzled briefly and ignited: it scorched her palm and then the gun went off. The jolting recoil wrenched it from her single-handed grip, but the spread of grapeshot found its target, riddling the student’s tender flesh.

Grimacing, the girl collapsed and dangled there, head-down. The powder smoke churned thickly in the gloom. Nell massaged her aching wrist and wondered if she’d sprained it. Her left hand was raw with powder burns. She tugged her bayonet out of its sheath.

Marianne’s students rushed the porch. Martine shot the first one through her fervent heart. The others snarled and pushed into the doorway. Martine fell back and triggered her last round.

"To him who has no sword," called Father Anton from behind her, "the Lord said, sell your cloak and purchase one."

He raised her rapier in its sheath and threw it as she turned. She snatched it from the air and drew the blade. The students were still hampered by the damp smoke in the porch. There was no time left to think. She rushed at them.

The girls’ white gowns were sopping wet, revealing breasts and nipples. She thrust the slim blade into yielding flesh. Martine’s own shirt was drenched beneath her frock coat, the linen plastered to her shapely curves. Her wet hair trailed across her face as she stabbed and slashed and skewered. The students hacked at her in vain. And still the rain came down.

Nell came plunging in to join the melee. Her bayonet had less reach than the sword. She had to get in very close to girls who wielded sabres: but the students had begun to panic, trapped inside this dark and rainy shell. Their zeal was backed by little skill; they were peasants or young ladies. Nell pierced their breasts or gutted them and felt a guilty thrill with every thrust.

Martine was confronted by a girl who held a pitchfork. The tines jabbed viciously at her, and she backed away across the rain-lashed church. The lightning flared and showed a ruin strewn with nubile bodies, like fallen angels tumbled into Hell.

The student thrust, Martine recoiled and tripped over a rafter. She glimpsed the priest’s dark figure in the rain. The student pounced and raised the fork to stab her through the body. Then Father Anton blocked it with a heavy wooden cross.

The student hissed and turned on him. He raised the cross to fend the pitchfork off. The prongs wedged round the fire-blackened upright as they strove against each other in the rain. Martine scrambled up. There was no time for niceties. She drove her rapier through the student’s back. The point emerged between her breasts and spattered blood in Father Anton’s face.

"Sorry, Father," Martine said as he grimaced with distaste. "Just add it to the list for my confession."

She tried to drag the blade back out, but it was stuck fast in the body. Martine let the student slump aside and cast around for something else to use. The blades they’d taken from the whores were stacked up nearby. She retrieved the butcher’s cleaver as another student rushed her from behind. Martine whirled and hacked the blade into the girl’s wet cleavage. The student’s mouth became an O and she made a throaty sound as she collapsed.

There was silence then, apart from the flat hissing of the rain and a broken gutter gurgling somewhere. Nell leaned back against the wall and took a shaky breath. Her vest was splashed as crimson as her coat. Father Anton rubbed his cheek, though the blood had been washed off it. The students lay around them like drowned cats.

The thunder was receding in the distance, like a heavy millstone being rolled away. The downpour slackened as the storm passed over. A shaft of evening sunlight lit the church. Nell went outside cautiously, her bayonet half-raised. But the only students in the churchyard were the ones they had already killed.

She pushed back her bedraggled hair. Her coat was wringing wet. She stared towards the golden sky beyond the murky ceiling of the storm. As the last drops sprinkled down, Father Anton came to join her. She glanced at him and smiled wryly. "Maybe you should take that as a sign."

The priest just shrugged. His face was grave. Then a pony snorted and they both looked round. The schoolteacher’s trap was waiting by the lych-gate. The driving seat was empty. Marianne stood in the shadow of the roof.

She moved out of its shelter as more light broke through the clouds. It tinged her gilded pince-nez and her hair. She wore a bonnet and a cloak, and raised an army pistol. Her face was pale behind the gun. "You killed my girls," she said through gritted teeth.

Nell still held her bayonet, but that was little help. She squeezed the handle vainly as the schoolmistress came swishing through the grass. Marianne stopped well short of her. There was hatred in her eyes. They flicked from Nell to Father Anton, weighing up which one she should kill first.

Then Martine emerged to stand beside them. She was clutching the big Bible from the church. The rain had turned her thick hair into rat’s tails, and her eyeliner was running like black tears.

She stared at Marianne like a defiant, scruffy pupil. "Sorry, Miss. Your pets have been put down."

The teacher hissed and aimed at Martine’s breasts in their wet shirt. "You bitch," she said. "You need some discipline."

Martine seemed to lose her confidence. She raised the book before her like a shield. Marianne smiled bitterly. "That’s the only help you’ll get from one of those." She aimed at Martine’s face. The French girl shrank back in dismay. She fumbled with the cover. "Please … just let me read one verse."

"You’ll find no comfort there," the teacher mocked her.

"No, just fire and brimstone," said Martine.

She pulled Nell’s pistol from the gutted Bible, where the English girl had stashed it to keep dry. The powder sizzled as she pulled the trigger, and the gun erupted in a sulphurous cloud. The ball smacked hard into the teacher’s forehead with a force that jarred the pince-nez off her nose. Her head flipped back, her body arched and slumped like someone swooning, spilling blobs of blood like poppies in the grass.

"Here endeth the lesson," murmured Nell.

Martine lowered the smoking gun and glanced at Father Anton. The priest was staring at the teacher’s corpse. His face had set like stone: a mask of sadness. She looked away again and gave the pistol back to Nell.

"More gardening tomorrow," she said dryly.

"Yes," said Father Anton, "but I have to bury Marianne myself." He glanced at them and shrugged. "It’s only fitting. She used to be my lover, after all."

He turned and went inside. Martine and Nell exchanged a look. The slanting sunlight bathed them in warm gold. Then the French girl took Nell’s hand and placed it on her breast. "I guess he won’t be casting stones. So come on – let’s get out of these wet clothes."