Enchantée

by Gita Trelease

  She felt under her pillow for the two pieces of paper she’d hidden there. On one she’d inked the address of Lazare’s workshop and a day: Wednesday. Tomorrow. The promise of that day was like a louis d’or, gleaming in her hand.

  The other was Chandon’s pale pink card. A pass into fairyland.

  Camille jumped when the door swung open and Sophie came in, a fist-sized bag of coffee in the crook of her arm. “I must say, you look terrible.”

  “How kind of you to say that. I feel as if I’ve been run over by a dray wagon.”

  “Is it the glamoire?”

  “A little.” Camille dragged herself out of bed and dropped into the good chair. “It was a long night.”

  “I’ll boil the coffee,” Sophie said, “if you tell me what happened. Immédiatement.”

  When the coffee was ready, thick as tar and nearly as sticky, Camille gulped it from the chipped cup. She told Sophie about the gold that shone everywhere, so much of it she wished to pry it off and sell it. She described the lavish costumes of the courtiers and the plainer clothes of the visitors, the marble stairs that led to the abandoned picnic, the food that had been left behind, the snuffbox, and impulsive Chandon, dragging her into the game.

  “What was he like?”

  “I hardly knew what to think at first,” Camille mused. “He has a quick wit and pretends he doesn’t care about anything. But underneath, I think he does.” She thought of him pressing the gold louis into her palm so she could not refuse them, the way he’d persuaded her to come to the Petit Trianon, as if he knew she needed another chance. “And his lover the Baron de Foudriard is a cavalry officer. He certainly looks the part—tall and handsome, with a scar. You’d think he’d be formal and severe, but he’s soft-spoken and kind.”

  “His lover is a he?”

  “And what of it? The boys were more in love than the girl was with her husband.”

  “And who was that?”

  Camille relished Sophie’s surprise when she told her that the aristos from the carriage in the Place des Vosges had been there, too, and she related what she’d learned about Aurélie and her old husband and his chickens.

  “And the vicomte?”

  “The others don’t seem to like him very much.” She recalled Aurélie’s barely-there smile, Chandon’s jest about the Vicomte de Séguin’s wealth. “I was terrified he’d recognize me.”

  “That’s impossible. You were nothing like yourself—”

  “You’re full of compliments this morning,” she said, a little hurt. But wasn’t that what she’d intended, after all: to reinvent herself? On the floor by her feet, Fantôme’s paws twitched in a dream.

  “And the snuffbox?”

  “Gone,” said Camille miserably.

  Sophie slumped back in her chair. “What about the rent?”

  “As it happens, I came home with eight louis, which I gave to Madame Lamotte before I went to sleep.” She allowed herself a look of triumph.

  “That’s fantastic!”

  “We’ve still got nothing to eat.” If she’d only taken some of the forgotten picnic home with her. There was nothing for it—she would have to turn more coins. Camille cleared her throat. “I’m going back, you know.”

  “Alone?”

  “How else?”

  “You might take me,” Sophie said wistfully. “I might wish to go.”

  “Absolutely not.” She couldn’t keep Sophie safe on top of everything else.

  “Don’t tell me it’s because I’m ill. I’m getting better, little by little. I’m almost well again.”

  Sophie was still too pale for Camille’s liking. And only better food would help that. “It’s not that—”

  “I would be so good at it! How I would love to be there—”

  “It’s not a party!” Camille picked up her cup, irritated to find it empty.

  Sophie scowled. “It certainly sounds like it. It’s not fun to be the one who’s left behind, you know.”

  The hurt and the envy in Sophie’s voice tugged at Camille. This was, after all, the life Sophie had always imagined for herself. But what if something happened to her? On her deathbed, before fever rendered her senseless, Maman had entrusted Sophie to Camille’s care. Whatever you do, take care of your sister.

  She clasped Sophie’s hand. She didn’t wish to quarrel. “Forget Versailles. Everything will be so much more fun from now on. We’ll have new clothes and plenty of food. Once we have enough, I won’t have to work magic.” The thought was a profound relief. “Then we’ll go out in an open carriage at Longchamps, we’ll drink hot chocolate and wear furs and whatever else you want.”

  “Even in summer?” Sophie said archly.

  Camille kissed her sister’s hand. “As you wish. And we’ll move. To a nicer place, with bigger rooms.” A safe place with no forwarding address.

  “Without Alain?”

  It felt like a test. She steeled herself. “Without Alain.”

  Sophie sat still for a moment, her face keen with thought. It lasted only a moment before she nodded. “When will you go?”

  “The day after tomorrow. They play on Thursdays.”

  Sophie squeezed Camille’s hand. “And tomorrow’s the workshop.”

  21

  Camille hesitated, then rapped on the cobalt-blue door of the large building.

  No answer.

  She’d woken too early that morning, her head burdened with dreams. In the last one, Lazare’s balloon descended from a stormy sky, but the boy in the gondola wasn’t Lazare but the Vicomte de Séguin. As his spyglass swept a circle over the ground, she fled. She didn’t want to be seen. Clawing with her fingers in the black dirt, she dug a scrape to hide in, like a desperate rabbit. The balloon sailed right over her; but whether the vicomte saw her or not, she did not know.

  Next to her, Sophie slept on, Fantôme rounded against her stomach. Careful not to wake her sister, Camille wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and slipped out through the window to clear her head. From the tiny slant of roof, the streets of Paris mazed out around her. When she’d been up here last, she’d been looking for Lazare in the air, hoping for something to change. Now she knew he was somewhere in the streets below and change felt closer than before. The address he’d given her put the workshop not too far from the rue Charlot, though she couldn’t pick it out from the mass of tilting roofs and crowded houses.

  It was still early when she left. Sophie was fussing too much about Camille’s hair and wanting her to wear the mint-green dress she’d rescued from the girls at the Palais-Royal. The lace on the hem needed cleaning, but Sophie argued that it would have gotten dirty anyway, as Camille was not planning to take a carriage, was she? She wasn’t, of course. As she’d settled her wide-brimmed straw hat over her hair, she sighed at the bruise over her eye. It had faded to violet, tinged with yellow and green, but it was in no way gone. Camille stuck out her tongue at her reflection.

  Walking past the Bastille, the old prison, she made her way through morning crowds, keeping toward the river. She stopped to ask a grocer’s boy where she could find the rue de la Roquette. Following his directions to take a left at the next corner, she found herself suddenly in a familiar street. Straight in front of her was the building where Papa had housed his printing shop. It seemed forever since he’d sold off everything, including the press, but now, as if in an unsettling dream, the storefront was once again a printer’s shop.

  The sight of it was a physical hurt. It radiated through her, leaving her stunned. Lost. How could the shop still exist, without Papa? Without her?

  She crossed the street and pressed the tip of her nose against the window. The shop hadn’t yet opened but inside the printmaker and his apprentice were hard at work, the apprentice setting type by the light of several candles, the printmaker leaning on the press handle to print the sheets. Overhead, from the same hooks she and Papa had used, hung lines of printed sheets, drying. If not for the aristocrats who’d betrayed Papa as easily as they threw away
their gloves, she’d be in there, with him, printing. Maman would be alive.

  The apprentice saw her. He started to come to the door, wiping his hands on his apron, but Camille shook her head and moved down the street. The dream-spell shattered. That life was gone. But she hadn’t managed to snuff out her hope that she might somehow do it again. Every day, reasons to keep printing confronted her. The terrified running girl with her stolen bread, the skeletal paupers picking through horse dung for food, the pain that poverty scratched into all their faces. Those were the good reasons to have enough money to start a press: to tell their stories. Darker, much deeper than that was the righteous revenge she wished to wreak on the aristos Papa had been obliged to bow to. The ones that had ruined everything.

  Approaching the well where she was supposed to turn again, Camille imagined telling the aristos she’d met at Versailles that she hoped someday to become a printer. A printer of what? she could hear Chandon asking. People’s thoughts, she’d answer, the truths they want to tell the world. Chandon would wonder why she did not just do it, then, if she wished it—as a pastime. And she would answer, scornfully: Because of your people.

  Standing in front of the big blue door, biting the edge of her thumbnail, Camille wondered if she’d remembered the address correctly. She knocked again, louder this time. From deep inside the building, someone shouted. A clang of metal rang out. Another clang, and a thud. But no one came. Camille tilted her head to better see the faded letters painted across the building’s façade: L’École de Dressage. A horse-riding school? Glass ran across the top part of the door, but someone had rubbed hard yellow soap across the panes to make them opaque. She scratched at it with her fingernail. It didn’t budge.

  Just as she was wondering where the aeronauts might be, the door swung open and Camille fell forward, catching herself against the doorjamb.

  “Mademoiselle!” Charles Rosier beamed. His curly hair was covered by a strange hat, slouched like a nightcap, and in his hand he held a curved pipe, unlit. “You did in fact decide to come.”

  “Didn’t I say I would?” Now that the door had opened, now that she was actually going to go in, she felt a little sick. What if, when Lazare saw her, he realized he’d made a mistake?

  “Lazare wasn’t sure.” Rosier blinked at her. “You’re perfect.”

  “How?”

  “To be the heroine of this story, of course.”

  “I told you before—I’m no Jeanne d’Arc, monsieur.”

  “Bah! Does anyone know what their future may bring?”

  Camille crossed her arms. “I don’t believe in fate.”

  “Oh?” Rosier sucked thoughtfully on his pipe. “Who said anything about fate? We make our own futures, non?”

  “It’s true,” she said, relenting. “Monsieur Rosier, may I come in?”

  “As long as you don’t call me ‘monsieur.’” He stepped back as she entered. “Here I am, philosophizing and you’re on the doorstep. I’m rude, rude, rude—I know it. Lazare tells me all the time. It’s my English blood.” He waved his pipe in the air. “Mother’s side. Come along.” He led her into a tiny corridor with sawdust on the floor. A large barn door hung at its end. “This way.” In an undertone, he added: “Lazare’s been waiting for you. I swear, he’s checked the calendar every morning since he saw you. Counting the days. But don’t tell him I told you or he’ll finish me off.”

  “Pardon?” she asked, incredulous. He’d been thinking of her? All these days, just as she had?

  Rosier winked. “Don’t mind me. It’s my role in life to exaggerate.”

  The creaking door slid open to reveal a vast, high-ceilinged room. It was an old riding ring, with a viewing stand trimmed with faded bunting and full of something that looked like furniture. Where the ceiling met the wall ran a row of clerestory windows. They were dusty from years of neglect but let in enough light. Pigeons nested in the rafters, cooing and occasionally startling across the empty space. Tables of different sizes stood haphazardly on the dirt floor, paper littering their surfaces, as well as large felt-lined boxes of instruments, their lids splayed open. All of this Camille could have imagined, based on her father’s shop and his various inventions. But she hadn’t imagined a group of older women, mobcaps covering their hair, sitting at a huge table in the corner, sewing together long pieces of fabric. One of them tsked loudly at Camille.

  She flushed and pretended to be invisible. And in turning her back to the seamstresses, she saw Lazare.

  He was standing by one of the long tables. He wore no coat over his vest, only a white shirt underneath, open at the neck. He was not looking at the drawings scattered on the table beside him but up, through a spyglass, at pigeons resting in the rafters. With his left hand, he scribbled notes on a piece of paper, not taking his eyes from the birds. The rapt way he looked at the ordinary pigeons, as if there were nothing in the world that was beneath his notice, made her smile. It reminded her of the way he’d looked at her when they’d stood by the balloon’s chariot. As if she were the only still point in a spinning world, the only thing that mattered.

  Rosier cleared his throat. “Look who’s come to pay a visit.”

  Lazare lowered his glass.

  His face changed when saw her; she felt his recognition like a stab of joy.

  When she’d been up on the roof on the rue Charlot, hoping for a glimpse of his balloon, she’d never truly believed she would see him again. When once more he appeared out of thin air at the Place des Vosges and invited her to come here, she’d feared it was to be kind, because of her eye. She’d even worried she would come to the workshop and it would be closed. Or the address would be wrong. It was hard to hope when things hadn’t gone well for such a long time. And yet, here they were, she and Lazare, standing in this strange room, dust motes dancing overhead. It was suddenly beautiful to her.

  “Et voilà,” Lazare said, beaming. He grabbed his coat from a chair and shrugged it on, apologetic. “We’re a bit informal here, as you can see. The ladies don’t seem to mind.”

  Camille guessed that they didn’t mind at all.

  Lazare bowed low, adding an elegant flourish of the kind she’d seen the courtiers use at Versailles. “Would you like a tour, mademoiselle?” He stepped next to Camille and for a moment she thought he might take her hand. He didn’t—probably worried she’d hide her hands as she’d foolishly done before.

  Rosier trailed after them as they walked. “Wait until you see what we’ve been doing,” he said. “C’est magnifique! And why shouldn’t it be? Aren’t we living in a time when anyone might try his hand at anything?”

  Maybe we are, Camille thought as Lazare stood next to her, so close that his sleeve brushed hers as he pointed out how the seamstresses shaped the rubberized silk that made up the balloon’s membrane. The women beamed at him, called him their brave boy, but had only frowns for Camille. She could guess what they were thinking—a girl among all these boys—but she didn’t care. Not now, standing here with him.

  When she asked Lazare what was in the jumbled heap in the viewing stand, he sighed. “Do you truly wish to see? They’re the worst.”

  She did. The winglike oars poking out of the heap had been intended to help with steering, he told her, as had two rudders, one the size of a small boat’s, the other bigger than Camille.

  “What’s wrong with them?” she asked.

  Lazare squinted at the strange machines as if trying to see them better. “They’re all mistakes. I have a book by Leonardo da Vinci that shows how water is full of currents. We thought we could steer through the air the same way.” He shook his head regretfully. “Absolutely wrong.” He gestured at an object that resembled a miniature windmill. “And that one’s called a moulinet. It’s supposed to help with navigating the air currents. That didn’t work, either.” Lazare rubbed his forehead as if just thinking about them gave him a headache. “Failures, every last one. You must think me a fool, mademoiselle.”

  “Hardly.” She thought of all t
he botched prints she’d made when she first worked as her father’s apprentice, the ones that became fuel for the stove—or folded bagatelles—once she’d ruined both sides. “I did the same when I first learned to print—”

  “You print? Paper?”

  Camille bit her lip. Having just passed the shop, it was more in her mind than usual, but also more fraught, like a hole in the ice she didn’t want to go too close to. “I did, before. My first attempts were worse than any of those windmills. And I was just trying to do something that had already been done! I wasn’t inventing anything.” What she’d wanted to say was getting away from her, now that he was looking at her so intently.

  “Everything here was intended to make the balloon better, somehow?” she asked, hoping to turn the conversation.

  Lazare nodded at the pile of balloon parts. “Sometimes it seems rather hopeless.”

  It was a familiar thought. The constant effort, and then, when it was finished, the realization that she was no further along than she’d been before. “Why, then? I understand why you need to add a release valve and learn how to steer the balloon. But after that—what will you do with a better balloon?”

  “People asked the American, Benjamin Franklin, the same question,” he said, thoughtfully.

  Papa had told her about America’s former ambassador to France, who’d been a printer like they were. “And Monsieur Franklin said?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it’s used for. It can just exist. I like that, don’t you? Not having to be something?” A dreamy smile tugged at his lips. “I’d fly away, of course.”

  It was as though a hand squeezed her heart. “Where would you go?”

  “Over the Alps,” Lazare said, watching her expression. “Can you imagine? To fly above Mont Blanc? To be so high?”

  Camille thought of the view of Paris from the much lower roof of 11 rue Charlot, laid out below her like a map, like something that might finally be known. “How much you would see! Or perhaps,” she teased, “it would be only snow and ice.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. For me, at least, it’s about the flying.” He nodded at the pigeons roosting in the rafters. “As it is for my friends up there, who are born knowing what I’m desperate to learn.”