Enchantée

by Gita Trelease

  Camille shook her head.

  “Well done! As our alarmingly clever Aurélie said, a dead husband is the best kind a woman can have. You’ve chosen wisely.” Chandon crossed his arms. “But that’s neither here nor there. We must be quick—everyone who wishes to travel unseen uses this hallway, so we could have company at any minute. I want to warn you.”

  Another warning? “About what?”

  “The dangers of doing magic here, what else?”

  “I was so easy to see through?”

  He produced the snuffbox he’d won from her and flicked open the lid. “Snuff?”

  She shook her head. Chandon took a pinch and inhaled it. “One magician always recognizes another,” he said. “I could tell the first night we played together.”

  “But how?” She’d hardly known what she was doing. She had worked the glamoire, turned the cards, but with no understanding of how it worked, or why. It had been like grasping at something in a pitch-black room. And yet, he’d seen it?

  Chandon sneezed. “How you do tease, Baroness!”

  “I’m not teasing.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  She shook her head. There was so much she did not know.

  “There’s a certain fog around a magician, especially one that’s working a glamoire. Usually a sign of someone completely untrustworthy—or utterly desperate. Also, I count cards. I noticed there were suddenly twins of cards we’d already played.” He wagged a finger at her. “Cheater.”

  “I cheated less than you did!”

  “Ha! That’s why I like you. Still, it’s altogether too much magic.” He drew closer, as if the shadows were listening. “That’s why I tricked Willsingham into spilling wine on you. You must be more careful. Not everyone at court is as kind and charming as I.”

  “I will try, I promise.” She’d studied so hard to learn all of Sophie’s etiquette, and now there were more rules, magical ones she didn’t understand. “The only magician I knew was my mother. She told me almost nothing.”

  “Not proud of her heritage?”

  It was true. Maman had been happy to marry Papa and leave her noble life behind. Until she needed the magic again. “Why do you say that?”

  His mouth fell open in mock-horror. “How surprising you are! You really don’t know anything.”

  “Tell me, then, monsieur.” No matter how many doors she passed through, how many rooms she entered, how hard she worked, she was still outside.

  “Only if you call me Chandon, as everyone does.”

  “Chandon.”

  “That’s better.” Taking another pinch of snuff, Chandon slouched elegantly against the wall. “Shall I tell it as a fairy tale?”

  “If you wish.”

  “Once upon a time, two kings before our present king, there was a particularly greedy one named Louis XIV. He demanded to be the center of the universe, the Sun King.

  “Not everyone went along with this idea, however. First, he got rid of the treacherous nobles.” Chandon made a slicing motion across his throat. “After he tamed the defiant ones, he wanted the tricky magicians under his thumb. He invited them all—your ancestors and mine, for magic is in the blood—to come to the palace he’d thrown up at Versailles. A ramshackle place, really. He demanded the magicians weave webs of protection around the château, so none of his enemies could attack it, and to work glamoires to make it more beautiful than any other palace that had ever been.”

  Versailles was enchantingly beautiful. The way the gardens looked as the sun sank low and set the faces of the statues to flickering, as if they might speak. The way the Hall of Mirrors multiplied light to forever. The dancing fountains, the silver stretch of the Grand Canal and its black-prowed gondolas, the mournful hush of doves in the trees at dusk. It was all extraordinary, all magical.

  But under the surface of the glamoire there was rot. The mice in the wainscoting, the courtiers’ lapdogs who shat in the corners, the stink of urine and decay in the less-used hallways where drunk or lost visitors relieved themselves. Suddenly she understood: the magic of Versailles was like the magic of the turned coins in her purse.

  “It’s been more than sixty years since Louis XIV died, even longer since he built Versailles. The enchantments are fading, aren’t they?”

  “Bien sûr. It’s the royals’ own fault. Louis XIV wasn’t particularly protective of the magicians. Once they were here, all the nasty, greedy courtiers—desperate to rise, desperate to be in favor with the Sun King—wanted la magie.” Chandon’s voice rose to a pleading, nasal squeak: “‘Please, dashing magician, make my enemy sick and make my friend forget a debt’; ‘please, charming magician, make me beautiful forever and ever.’ ‘Magician, make this person fall in love with me and I will make sure you are handsomely rewarded.’ Can you imagine how tired those magicians were?”

  Somewhere, a door opened and closed. Chandon fell silent. He listened intently, his hazel eyes narrowed, then shook his head.

  “And that’s when it all went wrong. One of the king’s mistresses bought a love spell to use on the Sun King, and when he found out—mon Dieu!” Chandon pretend-glowered. “How dare anyone attempt magic on the person of the king! Inquisitions! Torture!” His voice dropped, a note of real fear in it. “Then came the burning of the witches, as he called them.”

  Why had Maman never told her this terrible history? As the skirts of her gown rustled uneasily, Camille shuddered to think what her ancestors had gone through. “But those magicians did nothing wrong! They only did what the king and the other nobles compelled them to do.”

  “That’s one way to think about it,” he said carefully. “But you can see why the magicians who escaped never renewed the glamoires or the protections at Versailles—and now the whole place is crumbling like old cake. After the love potion inquisition, magic fell out of favor at court. Though the nobles wanted our magic as desperately as ever, they were frightened of us. Not simply because of the magic we worked, the magic that seemed to make all their desires possible—the magic that made the hair stand up on their necks. But also because they saw what we did to achieve it. What we were prepared to do to ourselves.” A shadow fell across Chandon’s face. “I’m certain you understand.”

  She did. She had seen the blank revulsion in Sophie’s face when she realized the glamoire needed both blood and sorrow, and that Camille was willing to give it. She was no longer simply working la magie ordinaire, using her sorrow to turn coins or even cards. By working the glamoire and using the sinister, magic-threaded dress, Camille had stepped over some kind of dark and desperate threshold.

  Now she stood on the other side. It was a lonely place.

  There had been a time, before the smallpox crept into their house, when Camille had seen Maman standing at the mirror over the fireplace, her hands gripping the mantel’s fluted edge to stop herself from shaking. Not that she could. The fine trembling showed itself in the lace on her sleeves and the ends of her hair. In the mirror her face was wan and etched with fatigue, too old for her thirty-six years. Liver spots Camille had never seen clustered on the backs of her hands and tarnished her cheekbones. And Camille had been oblivious to anything but her own anger with Maman for favoring Sophie and forcing Camille to work la magie.

  Suddenly, Camille saw what she hadn’t seen then. Before, she’d thought the glamoire a frivolous thing, something for dressing up and being pretty. But Maman had been working a glamoire so she could use turned coins closer to home without being recognized. The fatigue and the wear of it finally made her so weak that she succumbed when the pox came.

  If you don’t like working la magie ordinaire, she had said, you will not like the glamoire at all.

  Maman had never intended to be cruel. She had only ever asked for Camille’s help, not demanded it. Perhaps she too had felt there was no other way.

  Camille’s voice was thread-thin when she said, “More and more, I think I do understand.”

  “And therefore I’d say, if I were to b
e blunt—which I hardly ever am—stay clear of anyone who asks about magic. Favors and other such things. As for the other magicians—”

  Her throat tightened. “There are others? Here?”

  With a creak, a door opened and Foudriard’s tall silhouette appeared at the end of the hall.

  “It’s time for me to go,” Chandon said, straightening his cravat.

  It was too soon. There was so much more she needed to know. “I’m frightened, Chandon. I’m not really an aristocrat, and I’m certainly not a courtier. I only came here to gamble at cards. I can’t be found out. I need to stay at least a little longer. Please help me—what should I do?”

  Chandon bent his head to hers, his words tumbling over themselves. “You must be the Baroness of Pretend. Give absolutely nothing away. Watch carefully how much you win. Remember to lose every once in a while. Stay clear of traps! Next we meet I’ll tell you more, I promise.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Fear not. We’ll stick together, we nice magicians.”

  When he reached them, Foudriard bowed and handed Camille her fan, which she’d left behind. His kind brown eyes were full of concern. “That Willsingham is fun to have around but sometimes he really is a fool,” Foudriard said. “You found someone to dry your dress, madame?”

  Camille nodded. “Merci.”

  Foudriard put a hand on Chandon’s shoulder. “Shall we go? I have to be up at dawn with the new recruits. They still haven’t understood that the horses are smarter than they are.”

  “Silly cavalry officers.” Chandon suddenly looked tired, shadowy, just as he had the last time she’d seen him, as if it cost him to play the games court life required. “Au revoir, ma petite,” he said to Camille, blowing her a kiss. “I hope to see you soon. If not here, then at the big palace. I am there most nights, like a ghost that can’t stay away.”

  “Like a gambler,” Foudriard said tenderly.

  Camille curtsied, her hand on her heart. “Thank you for everything, both of you. I’m in your debt.”

  “Hardly,” Chandon replied. “I’m not that kind of magician. I’d much rather be your friend.” Before he left, he said, a warning in his voice: “Remember—magic is a cheater’s game, and everyone who sees it wants to play.”

  25

  Camille pushed her needle through the silk and pulled so hard the thread broke. “Merde,” she swore, frowning at the court dress.

  “Manners, Camille.” Sophie was sitting with her by the window’s bright light. She had half the dress’s skirts in her lap, working to repair a tear that had proved too tricky for Camille.

  “Manners are for Versailles,” Camille said, impatient. “In Paris I’m allowed to be as crass as I please.” Several lengths of trim remained on the floor, waiting to be reattached to the skirt. The matching dancing shoes lay under the chair where she’d kicked them off this morning. Their curved heels were stained grass-green.

  Camille’s fingers trembled as she picked up the end of the thread. She tried three times before she was able to slip it through the needle’s tiny eye. Part of it was exhaustion from working the glamoire—that she knew from the smaller magic of turning metal scraps into coins. To turn herself and the dress was magic of a magnitude she’d never worked before. Since Chandon’s warning, she saw it was no longer an isolated thing, but part of magic’s twilight history.

  Realizing that this was her own history felt as if a shadow were burrowing under her skin and making itself at home. They were frightened of us then, Chandon had said. Because they saw what we did to achieve it. What we were prepared to do to ourselves.

  “When we’ve finished these repairs, we’ll pack,” Sophie said.

  “Why?”

  Sophie groaned. “Aren’t you finished with Versailles?”

  “Because of what the Marquis de Chandon told me?” Camille touched the seam she was working on. The stitches were crooked and would have to come out. “I just need to be careful, that’s all. The court both loves and fears magic. And I must guard myself against the unfriendly magicians, whoever they are.” In the moment, her conversation with Chandon in the dim hallway had seemed so necessary, everything he told her so dangerous. But in the end? He’d only meant she needed to be more circumspect. Less obvious. His warning wasn’t enough to keep her away when she’d come home with such a full purse and there was still more to be won.

  “Perhaps the marquis means that the magicians are unfriendly because they’re territorial.” Sophie took another stitch. “Like dogs?”

  In the wall behind Camille, something scratched. A crack snaked from the floor to the window where they were sitting. It had been there for months; Madame Lamotte never made repairs. Soon, the crack would widen and become a throughway for mice. Or worse. How big did a hole have to be before rats shouldered their way in?

  Camille wanted three months’ rent safe under the hearthstones before they searched for another apartment. She might ask Aurélie if she knew of one—Aurélie seemed to know everything. But what would that rent be, somewhere nicer? Twice as much, four hundred livres? She had twelve hundred now. Three times as much? Six hundred? Or even more, so much so that she could no longer count it in livres but would have to count in louis d’or?

  Irritated, she ripped out the stitches, rethreaded her needle. Once again, she dipped the tip of her needle in and out, catching the satin edge of a ribbon of roses and sewing it to the skirt while trying not to compare her long, impatient stitches to Sophie’s invisible ones. As she was pushing the needle in for another pass, Sophie pulled at the skirts and made Camille prick her finger.

  “Ouch!” She stuck her finger in her mouth to stop it from bleeding. The dress shifted uneasily in her lap—as if it wanted a taste—and a heave of repulsion turned Camille’s stomach. Sometimes she wished she could quit magic. And she would, as soon as they had enough. “Watch what you’re doing!”

  Sophie didn’t seem to hear. She was peering out the window. “There’s a carriage in the street.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve never seen it before.”

  Down below, a carriage, its brass fittings gleaming, had appeared. As Camille watched, its wheels rolled slowly through the mud.

  “Probably a new customer for Madame Bénard, no doubt come to buy one of your fantastic hats.”

  “Hush, someone’s getting out.”

  With a sigh, Camille pushed herself out of the chair and peered down, her stomach tightening at the drop. Someone had stepped out. A boy in a plain brown suit, a spyglass leaning precariously from his coat pocket. Tawny skin, dark hair tied back with a black ribbon. “Oh,” she breathed.

  “I told you. I bet he’s come with the surprise.”

  Camille gripped the windowsill as, down in the street, Lazare strolled to the next building to check its number. Even from this distance, his movements were lithe, confident. “Dieu,” she said. “He came.”

  “That’s usually how it works.” Sophie said, a twist of envy in her voice. “When a boy likes you.”

  “How would I know?” Camille said. The last three months had been a fog of hunger and death and dwindling in the slow, stifling grip of not having enough to eat. When she thought back to that time, and even before, when Papa lost the printing shop, she could not recall one promise kept, except the bad ones.

  But here Lazare was.

  She could watch him all day.

  In the street, he pivoted on his heel and walked back to number 11 rue Charlot. He rapped on the heavy courtyard door. And waited. He poked at something in the street with his shoe; he took a notebook from another pocket, hesitated, and put it back. He looked over his shoulder at the coach and shrugged.

  Then he tipped his head back and shouted, “Mademoiselle Durbonne! Does anyone know where I may find Mademoiselle Durbonne?”

  “Oh là là!” Sophie exclaimed, laughing. “He certainly is impatient.”

  “And loud.” Secretly, though, she didn’t mind. If anyone were to be calling her name, she was proud to have it
be this handsome boy.

  “Soon busybody Madame Lamotte will be down in the street, curtseying and squinting at him. Better hurry, Camille.”

  The less Madame knew of Camille’s affairs, the better. She unhooked the latch, felt the window frame tilt unsteadily around her, and leaned out. “Monsieur!”

  He looked up. “Mademoiselle Durbonne!” His voice bounced against the buildings on its way up to her. “I’ve come with a surprise!”

  Etiquette said she should ask why, delay, pretend that she was doing something he’d interrupted, but all she could think of was taking her cloak and hat and racing down the seven flights of stairs.

  Sophie gave her a little shove. “What’s wrong with you? Say something!”

  “Oh? What is it?” Camille called back, flinching at the foolish words as they came out of her mouth.

  “Bien sûr, to fly!”

  “Oh, Camille,” Sophie gasped, “he wants you to fly in his balloon!” She squeezed Camille’s hand. “Say yes!”

  Fly? Sweat pricked on Camille’s back. She could barely manage to go out on the roof. To fly in the sky? She thought of the way the ground had dropped away under her when she’d caught the balloon. That had been only a tiny distance off the ground and she’d thought she might die. “I can’t go up—in the balloon,” she said to Sophie. “I’ll fall out.”

  “Is the great magician, Camille Durbonne, afraid?” Sophie said gleefully. “Afraid to fly through the air? Afraid to say yes to a boy?”

  She was. And what if it was more than that? What if, when he got to know her better, she was nothing like what he imagined she might be, like a coin turning back to a nail? Or, what if she cared for him and he did not feel the same? What if she lost, again?

  Lazare stood, waiting. He was waiting for her.

  Sophie gave Camille a little shove. “You’ll never know unless you say yes.”

  “Monsieur, tell me this first,” Camille called. “Have you found a better kind of ballast?”

  Lazare looked puzzled, then threw his head back and laughed. “Of course! No problems with the landing this time. I promise.”