“And me?” said Armand, tossing Rosier a rope. “Don’t I warrant a mention?”
“Bah, you’re not in this story!” Rosier pulled back on the line, holding it tight. “My story is full of passion! Poetry! Danger and thrills! But, if I ever write something in praise of tiny little numbers in a row—then, Armand, you will be the hero.”
Lazare hopped over the edge of the basket and Rosier embraced him, kissing him on both cheeks. “Formidable, formidable! Get Mademoiselle out of that basket—not that she doesn’t look well there, not at all—and I’ll uncork the wine!”
Before she could step out, Lazare put his hands on Camille’s waist and swung her over the basket’s edge. She stumbled a little when she landed and fell forward into his arms. For a moment, he held her close to his chest. His heart against hers thudded once, twice, and then he said, softly: “You liked it?”
“I loved it,” she replied.
“Bravo!” cried Rosier, clapping his hands.
From his saddlebag Rosier produced a bottle of wine and Lazare poured quickly, sloshing the golden liquid into their outstretched glasses. As they stood around the basket, Rosier scribbling on a piece of paper, Lazare toasting Armand’s scientific prowess, everyone laughing, Camille sipped her wine and studied them. They were all so alive. She wanted to hold on to this—the boys’ laughing faces, the feeling that she might now be included in their group, what Lazare had said to her up in the air, the way she found him looking at her—all of it.
It was like trying to grasp sunlight itself.
28
Back at Versailles, she won.
As May spun into June, she returned again and again to the palace to play, and she won. At piquet, at lansquenet, at cavagnole. At roulette, its little ball rushing around the ring, she won by luck. At vingt-et-un no one could beat her; she could turn the cards without anyone noticing, raising and lowering the number of pips that graced their faces as required. Still, she needed a bit of luck not to turn a card into one already in someone else’s hand, but it hardly mattered. The tables were wild and raucous, the players giddy on wine and the pursuit of a win. Everyone wanted the same thing: luck and money, luck and money.
She sewed new pockets into her gowns so that she could slip her gold louis inside. People sometimes forgot who won and who lost at the tables, and she never wanted to leave with too obvious a purse in case they were reminded. And at the back of her mind, in a corner she didn’t think about when she was shaking the dice in her hand, a voice insisted, The court fears and worships magic. Be careful.
Working la magie ate away at her, little by little.
She would come home at dawn, and as the glamoire seeped out of her body and the shaking fatigue took hold, she would struggle up the stairs of the building, one hand after another on the wobbling wooden banister until she could open the door to her bedroom, strip off the dress, and fall as if slain onto her bed. Camille’s head ached and her limbs were as sore as if she’d hauled buckets of water all day.
She’d promised herself and Sophie that once they had three months’ rent for a new apartment, she would stop. But once she had that, she realized she needed even more: eighteen hundred livres. A staggering sum. Or perhaps they needed even more. Because if she were to stop working magic, once and for all, they had need of some other way to live. Perhaps Sophie should have a hat shop of her own. And Camille her own printing press …
Soon, she would stop. Soon.
Until then, she watched those at court who shone the brightest and did as they did. She never gloated, only celebrated; she was courteous to everyone she met, and everyone at court wanted to know her. When she walked down the long halls of Versailles, courtiers bowed. Her name was on their lips and in their ears: la belle veuve Fontaine, the lovely widow Fontaine. In her silk purse she carried Chandon’s pink card that gave her entrance into the queen’s sanctuary at the Petit Trianon, but she never showed it. The guards simply bowed and waved her through.
Camille had money for food now, but no matter how much she ate, she could not fill out her dresses. For what the glamoire gave her, it also took a little for itself.
When Camille first told Sophie about her trips to Versailles, she listened as if hearing a tale of wonder: face alight, hanging on every word. But later, as the stories piled up, Sophie crossed her arms, or didn’t ask, as if Camille had stolen something that rightfully belonged to her.
She hadn’t forgotten the balloon flight. How could she? Her fear, the exhilaration of being in the air, what she saw below—and the achy flame of happiness she felt each time she thought of Lazare next to her, his coat around her, his words in her ear: I’m here with you.
But Lazare did not come back to the rue Charlot.
It was easier, then, to be at Versailles.
Sometimes Camille strolled in the gardens with Aurélie and other young women at court, gossiping as they walked on lawns sheared by hand by an army of gardeners. The girls wore the pale-colored gowns and straw hats the queen preferred. With Chandon and Foudriard she drifted on the Grand Canal in a curved black gondola, one hand in the water, the other dropping cherries into her mouth. She tried to discover from Chandon more about the other magicians at court, but he seemed unwilling to speak about it when Foudriard was nearby, and they were inseparable. Still, she listened with interest as Chandon told her about all the improvements—a new system for growing grapes, better houses for his tenants—he was advising his father to make at their estate, where he would go when he was no longer wanted by the queen.
She didn’t know what to say: she didn’t hate Versailles as she’d thought she would. When she left the palace at night, walking on gravel paths in the moonlight, the linden trees fragrant with flowers, she wondered about Maman and how she’d felt about this place. Of course, she’d left it for Papa, but before? Perhaps she’d loved the grandeur and her pony and her little dog on its red ribbon but then, slowly, realized she didn’t want it. Camille wondered if she was taking the opposite journey: from disgust to something else—acceptance? Perhaps it was even a dark kind of love. But when, at dawn, the peacocks cried mournfully from the rooftops of the Trianon, she wondered how it might be if she were to stop all this, to stop the blood and the magic and the hollowing out of herself. When was enough going to be enough?
That was when she thought about Lazare, the balloon, and the person she was there. That was her true self, separate from all of this. Sometimes, though, she felt as if the magic now clung to her more tightly, as if the tiny threads of the dress were working their way into her skin. Being with Lazare—even thinking of Lazare—kept Versailles and magic at bay, but three long weeks had passed since the balloon flight and there had been not one word from him.
Yet at Versailles, with the familiar cards in her hands, and the louis d’or in her purse, she felt safe enough. Or that was what she told herself: that it was for the money, for the new apartment where they would forever escape Alain.
Back in Paris, her winnings paid for food and clothes. Now that they had a steady supply of food, Sophie gained back much of her strength. Her cough disappeared; the laudanum bottle no longer needed replacing. Developing ideas for hat designs from Camille’s dreamy descriptions of Versailles’s gardens, Sophie became an asked-for designer at Madame Bénard’s, and the prices she commanded rose.
Soon they’d have a maid to dress them, a cook to make their food, and scullery maids and housemaids. Now that they paid their rent on time, Madame Lamotte did all she could for the girls. As if she knew they had a foot out the door. When Camille stumbled home at dawn, weak and shaking as the glamoire leaked out, she sometimes found Madame Lamotte drowsing outside her apartment door, waiting.
“And where have you been tonight?” she’d say to Camille, her voice dim with sleep. Her great-grandfather had been a nobleman’s companion during the Years of Gold, in the second half of the seventeenth century when Louis XIV was the Sun King and Versailles the center of Europe. When she learned Camille was going
to court—Camille never told her how she went, not exactly—Madame told her stories her great-grandfather had told her, of when an elephant escaped the king’s menagerie, or when miniature armadas battled on the Grand Canal.
“How was the Life,” she asked, voice quavery, “the glory of it all?”
“Incroyable as always, madame.” Camille smiled wanly, pulling her cloak over her tattered dress. What should she tell Madame? Something pretty. “When I was leaving, the nightingales were singing in the linden walks. The queen had hung Chinese lanterns in all the trees around the Petit Trianon, as if fairies danced among us.”
“I hope you did not gamble too much, my dear. My great-grandfather didn’t like it. ‘Only death and duels will come of it,’ he would say. ‘Death and duels.’”
“No, not too much gambling,” she replied, bobbing a curtsey before she scooped up her skirts, heavy with hidden coins, and climbed the rest of the stairs.
She was rising, and it was glorious to rise.
29
Coming home late from the dressmaker’s and wearing a leaf-green silk dress she’d bought with her own earnings, Sophie flung herself into a chair and kicked off her shoes. Fantôme wound around her shins as she massaged her feet. “All that standing is making my feet grow.”
“Madame Bénard’s working you hard, now that you’ve been feeling better?”
“Pas de tout. She could hardly care less about my health. It’s the customers. The husbands want me to model the dresses so their wives can decide. They want me to walk back and forth in front of them.”
“And you think it’s so they can see the dresses?”
“Very funny.” Sophie frowned.
Camille remembered the time she’d stopped by Madame Bénard’s and Sophie had already left, with a man—or so Madame had said. “Do they ever want to walk you home?” Camille asked.
“The customers?” Sophie bent to pull off a stocking. “Never.” She flung it over the arm of her chair and started on the next one. “By the way, someone’s downstairs charming the wrinkles off Madame Lamotte.”
Camille looked up from the ledger in which she kept their accounts. Sophie’s gossip was usually about Madame Bénard’s and which dashing gentleman had paid Sophie blush-worthy compliments. “Someone you know?”
Sophie smiled as if she had a secret. “Shall I give you a hint?”
“Please,” Camille said, rubbing at her eyes. She’d returned to Paris in the small hours of the night, stumbling from the carriage and pulling the hood of her cape over her head to hide her red-rimmed eyes. It was always this way after the glamoire. A fatigue she felt deep in her bones, an ache at their very centers. And it only became worse, it seemed, the more she did it.
Only coffee ever helped.
Sophie cleared her throat. “The one downstairs. He’s very handsome.”
“And?” Camille placed her finger on a column of numbers. She wasn’t about to be goaded into curiosity by Sophie’s tales.
“He likes redheads. And balloons.”
Camille shot up from the chair. “He’s come for me?”
“And why not? You’ll only see him if he’s in a balloon?”
“What will I wear?”
“It’s nearly dark. He’ll hardly see you. Though you may wear my petal-of-rose cloak hanging by the door if you wish. What?” she said as Camille paced the room. “All he wants is a walk. He hasn’t asked you to marry him.”
As if marriage were the most important thing. On her way out of the apartment, Camille rubbed some color into her cheeks. Her skirts in her hands, she raced down the stairs. One flight from the bottom, he called up to her. “Mademoiselle Durbonne!”
He was waiting with a foot on the first broken step, his cocked hat tucked under his arm. His tawny skin was burnished, as if he’d been out in the sun. “You are something to behold,” he said.
Camille flushed.
“A new dress?” He hesitated. “I didn’t know if you’d come—it felt like centuries were passing, mademoiselle.”
For someone who’d grown up in the country, he had a pretty way with words. “It has been a long time, monsieur.”
“Regretfully, I’ve been away from Paris.” He smiled then, holding out his arm. “Take a stroll with me? I’ve something to show you. Tonight’s the perfect night.”
30
“Where are we going?” Camille asked. They had left rue Charlot and were heading toward the Seine. It was that time of night when the sky brightened into an impossible blue and the crowns and branches of the trees made dark, sumptuous shapes against it. It did not feel the way Paris normally did to Camille. It felt newly made and rather fascinating.
Ahead lay the Pont Notre-Dame. Only a few months ago the houses on the bridge had been torn down. Some rubble remained; here and there a bent nail lay embedded in the dirt. She didn’t give the nails—or the soldiers loitering in the streets—a second glance. She didn’t need any of them. Usually the city felt dangerous in the evening, set with threats and obstacles. A wilderness. But walking in the dusk with Lazare at her side as he told her about the history of all the ancient things they passed, Paris felt new.
“Isn’t the bridge lovely now, open and wide?” she said. “When I walk across it, I can almost imagine I’m—”
“Flying?”
“How did you guess?”
“Your face.” He walked backward in front of her, beckoning her on. “Come, mademoiselle. We’re nearly there.”
Once on the other side, they arrived quickly at the broad square in front of Notre-Dame. Above them, the old towers hulked against the dusky sky. “Et voilà,” he said.
“But the cathedral isn’t open at night.”
“Ah, but it is for us. I know the night watchman,” he said, mischief in his voice.
A quick knock on a side door let them into the church. Camille blushed when the watchman doffed his cap at her. He went ahead of them, holding his lantern high.
“Do you bring many girls here?” she said to Lazare, keeping her voice light.
Lazare seemed oblivious to her innuendo, focused as he was on finding his footing on the stairs. “You’re the first person I’ve thought might care to come with me.”
Camille was glad of the dark, cool as a hand over her hot cheeks.
They climbed a quick flight of stairs, coming out onto a narrow gallery overlooking the cathedral’s cavernous nave. Like tiny ghosts of flame, candles burned in the side altars, though where their light didn’t penetrate, the cathedral was grave-dark.
The watchman unlocked a stout wooden door. It creaked as he pulled it open. “Quick now, monsieur. Stay too long and people will notice.” He handed Lazare a lantern and descended into the dark, whistling.
Above her, in the tight coil of the tower, the stairs were pools of shadow, flowing up into an even denser darkness. Somewhere higher she heard a rat scrabbling against the wall. “On second thought, I’d rather not.” She tried to turn around and bumped into Lazare.
“It’s too beautiful to miss, really. I promise.” Lazare didn’t move, just gave her the lantern. “You hold the light and go first. It’ll be easier than following me.”
Again, going up—and first, this time. She heard Sophie laugh at her: Camille Durbonne, afraid?
Holding the lantern aloft, she placed her other hand on the wall to steady herself. As she went, the stairs flared into existence, each stone step hollowed in the center by hundreds of years of bell-ringers and night watchmen. Something flew toward her, squeaking. She ducked and covered her hair as the bat swooped past.
“Watch out, monsieur!” she laughed. Behind her, Lazare swore.
Now was her chance to get to the top before she thought too much about the steep stairs or what would happen if she fell. She grabbed her skirts and ran. Up. Up. Up.
“Wait!” Lazare cried.
“Catch me if you can,” she called over her shoulder. And kept going.
The lantern swung wildly in her hand, she stumbled onc
e or twice—feeling a lunge of fear when she nearly fell backward and could have killed them both—but then, suddenly, she reached the landing. Lazare was close behind and bumped into her when she slowed down.
“You’ll knock me back down!”
“It wouldn’t be my fault if I did,” he laughed, catching his breath. “The way you ran. Like when you caught the balloon. Did you forget you were holding the lantern?”
“I’m sorry!” But she wasn’t. She’d run and he’d been right behind. Maybe he’d only been trying to stay in the light of the lantern, but the feeling of him following her, of being the one to catch, was very pleasing. Now they stood close together in the darkness of the cramped landing, the flickering light catching in the hollows of his throat, his eyes.
“Is this all?”
“You think I’d bring you up here to stand in this stone box?” He reached around her and pushed open the door. “Walk out into the night.”
The door swung open into the stars.
The tower’s parapet surrounded them at waist-height. From its walls and from the bell tower, chimères loomed, horns curving from their beastly heads, their beaks and cackling mouths gaping. One of the creatures crouched nearby, its head in its hands. “How sad he seems!”
“I suppose he does,” Lazare said. “Why, do you think?”
Camille touched the statue’s melancholy wings. “His feathers are made of stone. He can’t fly, so he’s trapped, non?”
The lantern light flared as Lazare shifted behind her. “It’s not his fault.”
What did he mean? How could it be the fault of the chimère?
He cleared his throat. “Remember, in the balloon, how you said Paris looked so different from above?”
Camille nodded.
“Come see this Paris,” he said as he set the lantern down and moved toward the parapet.
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