“They can fly,” Camille said, “and yet—”
Rosier cleared his throat. “They just sit here cooing and crapping.”
“But they could fly away, if they wished,” Camille said.
“Perhaps.” Lazare fiddled with a loose button on his coat.
“There’s one thing you’ve missed,” Rosier said, as the birds murmured above. “Pigeons don’t need money to fly. Aeronauts do.”
“But you have the balloon already,” Camille said. “What else do you need?”
“I’ll tell you.” From his pocket, Rosier produced a notebook and flipped through it until he found the page he wanted. “Et voilà! A new balloon means—everything new. A bigger balloon, sewn by the ladies. Bigger basket. Maybe even a new kind of air, Armand tells me, such as hydrogen? Who knows what it will take to Ascend the Immeasurable?” He snapped the notebook closed. “The point is, it is going to take a lot of louis and livres that we do not have.”
A familiar problem. “And how will you get them?”
Lazare looked sternly at Rosier.
“Sell tickets! Let the public watch!” Rosier jabbed the bowl of his pipe at Lazare, then waved it angrily in the direction of the table where Armand sat. “But no one listens.”
“Ah, poor Rosier,” Lazare said, gently. To Camille he said, “We can’t seem to agree on this—yet. But we’re not a circus, are we? Astley’s Marvelous Aeronauts? We’re natural philosophers. Explorers.”
Papa had believed in a kind of honor in only printing what he liked. “My papa was the same way.”
He would have loved to see the aeronauts’ workshop, she knew. The gleaming measuring instruments in their cases, the scribbled papers and plans, the failed experiments on their way to becoming successes, the oddities, the seamstresses’ hands like determined birds swooping over the silk.
With a sudden pang, she realized: she missed all this. Time working together in the print shop with her father. And at home: her father sitting by the fire in winter or by the open window in summer, after supper, folding the paper bagatelles. I am testing a thought, he’d say and invite her to come and watch, or to help him crease a fold with her little fingers. It was a kind of companionable work that was nothing like working la magie.
Camille saw from their somber faces they’d figured out that Papa was dead. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Not to worry, mademoiselle; fathers are always problematic. Lazare here, for example, wishes his father—”
“Enough, Rosier, or I’ll ban you from the premises.” Lazare gave Rosier’s shoulder a shove. “Come, I’ll show you what Armand’s doing.”
“Wait, I also have something I’d like Mademoiselle’s ideas on,” Rosier said, but he stayed where he was. Apparently his feud with Armand continued.
On the other side of the workshop, Armand sat at a long table. He half-lay across it as he scribbled rows of numbers next to a complicated diagram.
“What are you calculating?” Camille asked.
Armand didn’t look up, just crooked his shoulder so it hid the drawing from her. “A better balloon.”
“The Next Best Thing,” Rosier called from the other side of the room.
“I won’t steal your idea, you know.” Camille desperately wanted to see the drawing but there was no way she was going to give know-it-all Armand the satisfaction of asking.
“Show her,” Lazare said, tugging at the sheet of paper. Armand kept his elbow planted on it but let Camille see.
The paper was covered with numbers written so rapidly the ink had blurred as he had calculated the figures, changed a variable, and then recalculated, over and over again. Arrows pointed from the clusters of figures across the page to drawings of two balloons: one that, with its stripes, resembled the balloon Camille had seen; the other one was slightly smaller, with a more rounded top.
“You’re building a different kind of balloon?” Camille asked. “For the Alps?”
“We are,” Lazare said, slowly. “The first balloon—the one you rescued—is a hot-air balloon. This one,” he said, tapping the drawing of the smaller balloon, “is a hydrogen balloon.”
“Is it better?”
“Good question,” Armand said, reluctantly. “The balloon would be smaller, because the air—which we would make here, in the workshop, before bringing the filled balloon to the launch site—can get much hotter. And you don’t need to have a fire in the chariot, or fuel. You can’t, in fact. You’d explode. But it’s less easily controlled. I’m not sure it can sail the Alps, as Lazare wants to do.” Armand stared at her through his smudged glasses, as if daring her to ask another question.
“Imagine sailing over the snow-topped peaks, Armand! But as Rosier said, it takes money.” Lazare smiled ruefully.
“Speaking of money,” Rosier said, “I have been trying to convince Lazare that a poster will not ruin our honor nor create any difficulties. As a printer, I’d like your opinion.” From a table he grabbed a sheet of paper where he’d sketched the poster’s layout, with the words TRIP TO THE HEAVENS marching across the top, the balloon’s gondola at the bottom. “What do you think? Your professional opinion?”
Camille took a breath. It was awful.
“You don’t like it?” Lazare asked her, hanging on Rosier’s shoulder.
“It’s just—the way it’s arranged could be better. If you put the balloon at the top, there? That gives a feeling of space. If your printer could do it, the title could even curve around the balloon. But if not, you put the words here,” she said, pointing to the left side of the page. “That’s where the viewer’s eye will naturally go—after looking at the balloon, of course.”
Both boys were staring at her. “What?” she asked. “You don’t like the idea?”
“It’s not that at all,” Rosier said. “It’s perfect. I’ll take it to the printer’s now and get them started.”
The ladies looked up from their sewing. One of them tsked again at Camille.
“I suppose I should go, too,” Camille said, though she didn’t wish to.
“Au revoir,” Armand called from the desk. He didn’t want her here, either. And Lazare? The time had passed too quickly, but as he walked with her to the door, he said nothing about her staying longer.
“Au revoir, then,” Camille said.
Lazare leaned against the doorjamb, his face thoughtful. “Thank you for coming, mademoiselle. I hope you enjoyed the tour of our failures. Or our dreams, as Rosier would call them.”
“They are your dreams, and I love them. It felt like home here, a little. Which is nice, especially,” she added in a rush, “when one’s home doesn’t truly feel like home.” Instantly, her cheeks flamed hot: why on earth had she said that? She was making no sense.
His long, elegant fingers had found the loose button and this time, he snapped the thread and twisted the wooden button free. He spun it in his fingers, around and around. “That’s a kind thing to say about a bunch of failed experiments taking place in an old riding stable that still stinks of manure.”
Camille laughed. “You’re quite welcome. Adieu then, monsieur.” She put her hand on the doorknob. She didn’t want to go but she couldn’t think of anything else to keep her there.
Suddenly the button spun out of Lazare’s fingers, hit the floor, and rolled to a stop by her feet. Camille stooped to pick it up.
“I’ve got it,” said Lazare, dropping to his knees next to her.
So close.
Camille scooped the button off the floor and held it out. As he reached for it, the tips of their fingers touched. The shock of it was like grazing her fingers against a hot stove. He was so improbably close, all tawny skin and black lashes over his impossibly brown, gold-flecked eyes. For an unbearably long moment, they held hers, while she tried to remember to breathe, and then he was standing, his hand under her elbow, helping her up.
“I should be going.” Before she made an utter fool of herself.
“One moment—mademoiselle?”
Camille stopped. Waiting. “Yes?”
He lowered his voice. “Your bruise—you’ve had no trouble since? With the person, I mean?”
She pictured a drunk Alain, slumped over the dirty table at the Palais-Royal, her money gone and her dresses in the hands of those filthy girls. “Not at all.”
“Grâce à Dieu.” He sighed. He tapped his fingers distractedly on the doorjamb. “There’s something else. I’ve been thinking of a way to thank you for saving the balloon. And for saving me, and Armand, of course, though sometimes I wonder if he’s worth saving. In any case. There’s something I have in mind.”
“Oh?” Camille’s heart started thumping ridiculously again.
“It’s a surprise.”
Secrets were heavy, unruly things. But it was impossible to resist his smile, the way one corner of his mouth rose higher than the other. “I’m intrigued.”
“Where shall I find you, when it’s ready?”
She winced. Once again, the thought of Lazare Mellais coming to their bare apartment on the rue Charlot was unthinkable. That might very well undo this new thing, as if the shadow of her life were to spill into this sunlit space. “Might I come here at an appointed time, instead?” she asked. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“Absolutely not,” he said, as charming as ever. “I’ll come for you in a carriage. Tell me your address.” He looked at her, expectantly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.
She felt the precipice ahead of her, her toes on the edge. She could say it wasn’t possible. It would be easy to curtsey and smile and mumble something polite about having to go, or perhaps another time, and escape into the street. She’d be safe.
But that was the rub. The hesitant, shimmering feeling of what if. Like a playing card that hadn’t yet been flipped to reveal its face. A gift that hadn’t been opened. She wanted to reach out her hand and take it. But what if she missed?
Lazare’s smile faltered. “I promise I won’t lurk outside your door.” He seemed to be struggling with something and it made Camille feel better. Less alone in her fear. Less outside.
“Listen, mademoiselle,” he said, “despite the awkward thing of almost crashing the balloon, I am fairly reliable.” He put his hand on his heart. “I swear.”
He was so vulnerable in that moment her fear disappeared.
“The tall house with the gray door in the rue Charlot, number eleven.” And before he could say anything more, she opened the door and went out into the street.
22
When Camille stopped in at Madame Bénard’s to tell Sophie how the visit to the workshop had gone, she did not get a warm welcome. Ushering Camille away from her wealthy clients as if she might dirty them just by being in the room, Madame informed her Sophie had already gone home. Camille couldn’t believe it.
“Oh, but she has! She finished her work—What speed! What delicacy! What fantasy!—before leaving with a young man. Not a client, bien sûr, someone else.” Madame Bénard raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Or maybe a brother?”
Impossible, Camille thought as she let the door swing closed behind her. Sophie would have told her if she had seen Alain, or met someone. Wouldn’t she? A year ago, yes. Camille was certain of that. But now? She didn’t know. Not to a certainty. Two days ago, when they’d talked about Alain, Camille had the creeping sensation that Sophie didn’t look like her sister at all. In the way a mirror can be tilted to show another part of a room, Camille had looked at her sister and seen someone else. Someone different.
But when Camille ran up the stairs and through the door, Sophie was there, her golden hair spilling loose around her shoulders, her feet in their cotton stockings up on the chair, an enormous silk chapeau in her lap. “How was it? Tell me now!”
After Camille described what had happened and was crossed-examined about every detail of expression and conversation, Sophie shook her head wonderingly. “It’s like something from a fairy tale.”
“It is not,” Camille protested. As if good things happened only in stories. “Lazare is nothing like a prince and I am nothing like a princess.”
“True,” Sophie mused. “Maybe it’s a different type of tale. You’re more like the pathetic little sister, sorting flax seeds while blind or some other impossible task.”
“Lest you forget, I’m the older sister.”
“That doesn’t mean you know everything.” She set the hat aside and fixed her eyes sternly on Camille. “For example, how will you succeed tomorrow, at the Petit Trianon?”
“As I showed you. I’ll use la magie to turn the cards.”
“I meant in terms of the Rules of the Game.”
“I know the rules to every card game there is.”
“Not those. How to behave. Etiquette. Maman taught me and I can teach you. If you ask nicely.”
Though she didn’t want to admit it, she did need Sophie’s help. She winced when she thought of how she’d not only mistaken the Chevalier Foudriard for Aurélie’s husband, but actually said it out loud.
“There are so many things I don’t know. It feels hopeless. You’ll help?”
“Sit up straight, then,” Sophie said imperiously. “We begin immédiatement.”
For the rest of that day and into the next, Camille didn’t leave the apartment. She gnawed on day-old bread and nibbled bits of cheese, feeling like one of the gray mice in Perrault’s story before it was transformed into an elegant horse. There were so many things to learn it made her head ache. How to sit, how to stand, how to walk as if floating. How to address strangers, how to address the king and queen. How to speak to servants. How some of the people who behaved like servants were in fact aristocrats and had to be treated as such. Which doors to knock on with her knuckles and which doors she should only scratch on, with her fingernails.
“Really?” Camille asked.
“Some courtiers grow an especially long nail for it,” said Sophie.
Camille listened carefully to stories about the old king’s mistresses, the hierarchy of the court, Marie Antoinette’s favorites—everything Maman had told Sophie in their nightly tête-a-têtes, Sophie now told Camille, and pushed her to practice.
In its own way, etiquette was just as exhausting as magic.
* * *
Thursday afternoon, Sophie gave her approval. After Camille put on the cloth-of-gold dress, she took Chandon’s pink card from its hiding place.
On the front was printed: JEUX ET JOIES, and below it, At the Queen’s Pleasure. A pretty circlet of roses framed the words.
On the back, in turquoise ink, Chandon had scrawled:
Jean-Marc Étienne de Bellan, Marquis de Chandon
Thursdays after eight
Madame du Barry’s rooms
Please come was underlined twice.
With her finger she traced the words, GAMES AND PLEASURES, feeling where the type had bitten into the heavy paper. It was beautifully and expensively made. In her hand, the tiny square felt curiously alive, substantial but almost weightless. She lifted it to her nose.
It smelled of vetiver and, faintly, of blown-out candles.
She slipped it into her pocket. From the room under the eaves, she took the little painted nécessaire from its burned box and propped the foggy mirror on her bureau. The apartment was quiet; Sophie had left for Madame Bénard’s and though Camille couldn’t say why, exactly, it felt better that Sophie wasn’t here. Working the glamoire felt almost shamefully private.
When she heard the coachman shouting from the street, she took the brooch from its place on her bureau. Instead of worrying about how the dress appeared to relish her blood and seemed in fact to be lying in wait for it, she let her mind go to the pure heedless thrill of winning, the cool stacks of louis d’or piled on the gaming tables, and—though she’d intended for them to be her enemies—the young aristocrats she’d met last time. With that churn of conflict in her mind, she steadied the point against the skin on the inside of her elbow, hidden beneath her sleeve, and p
ushed it in.
23
She’d shown the pink card to a footman who told her the rooms in question were on the top floor, and directed her to go down one corridor and along another. Empty wine bottles, each with a sunny daisy in its mouth, had been left behind on a window ledge; by a closed door lay a pair of peacock-blue shoes, kicked onto their sides. In the wainscoting, mice scratched and squealed, the hallway’s floorboards creaked, and on the ceiling, paint was peeling, but she ignored it, focusing on the laughter and shouts of the gaming party drifting toward her.
In an instant, the hall’s dimness gave way to a series of cream-and-gold rooms, full of nobles in their fine clothes, trembling with feathers and ruffles, rich in lace and glinting with diamonds. The rooms buzzed with conversation and laughter; hundreds of pale pink candles—in the chandeliers, on the tables—burning as brightly as the animated faces. Camille suddenly wished she were outside in the garden, inhaling the cool evening alone, and not here in the crush. She did not belong here.
But the ancient magic in the dress refused to listen. It urged her on, its pleasure at being among the glittering crowd a steady thrum in her blood. It murmured to her of the seductive pressure of legs against petticoats, the rustle of hot breath across silk, and warned her of coming too close to the candles. Most of all, though, it showed her coins nestled in her lap, cool against its fabric. Camille touched a hand to the bodice and felt it tighten around her in response. She was here to win. All the rest meant nothing—or so she told herself as she wove her way into the first room.
Pausing on the threshold, she took in the unfamiliar, polished faces. There was only one she recognized at first glance: the queen’s, sitting at a far table, dressed in the deceptively simple white dresses she favored. A ribbon twined through her hair, her face was lightly powered; she wore jewels at her throat and on the fingers that held her cards. The king was not there; his lack of interest in gaming was well known. But there were plenty of handsome men at her table, and women, too, including the blond one with the nearly white hair and good marriage prospects. She’d left her lamb elsewhere tonight.
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