What had she said that was so wrong? She had stepped over some line she hadn’t seen, and now he was retreating. “You’re not going, are you?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said, letting himself out of the gondola.
“Your timing is perfect, Lazare,” exclaimed Rosier, leaping out of his seat to show them his drawing. “See? All finished. I’ve captured you with the dreamiest expression, mademoiselle. It’ll be perfection on the poster. Girl Ascends the Heavens!”
“You’ve made me more mysterious than I am,” she said, but she was secretly pleased. He had given her big, visionary eyes and not emphasized her childish nose.
“And I?” Lazare asked. “How is your drawing of me?”
“Less successful,” Rosier said.
Rosier tore out one of the pages from his notebook and folding it, gave it to Camille. “Off to the printers,” he said, and with a quick bow, he left, the street door banging shut behind him.
She expected Lazare to make some excuse to go with him, but he did not. Nor did he put on his coat, retie his cravat. His river-brown eyes were shadowed with worry. It hurt her to see it. “I’m sorry if I said something wrong.”
He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“Will you come see us,” she persisted, unwilling to let this be the end, “in our new place at the Hôtel Théron?”
Lazare nodded. He paused, as if calculating risk. “Before I go, there was something I meant to ask you. Why did you move?”
Did no one in your family ever wish you to do something you didn’t want to do?
She remembered how Lazare had stared at her bruise in the Place des Vosges, how broken she’d felt knowing he’d seen it, what he must have been guessing. She hadn’t wished to be seen that way. So exposed. She’d tilted her hat, turned away.
But now it felt as though there were too many secrets, too much hiding. And if she wanted him to tell her what she wished to know, how could she defend a decision not to tell him? She exhaled, tried to keep her voice from shaking. “My brother—I didn’t feel safe with him any longer.”
Lazare’s face hardened. “He wasn’t the one who—hit you?”
Camille bit her lip to stop it trembling. Somehow the furious shock in Lazare’s face was almost too much to take.
He took a step back and his right hand went, in a ghostly gesture, to his left hip, where his sword would, at Versailles, have hung. “I should have done something earlier,” he fumed. “Why did you not tell me?”
“I didn’t wish you to know.” She blinked to keep back the tears. “I was so ashamed.”
Slowly, tenderly, he straightened a wayward ruffle on her cloak. “You saved me, once. Or have you forgotten? Might I not have a chance to save you?”
Camille smiled as best she could. “I’ll endeavor to do something dangerous. Soon.”
“Come up again in the balloon, then. Though it’s only somewhat risky.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Together they ambled down the dark hall and out into the street, the liquid June sunshine thick as honey, and said their adieux.
He hadn’t recognized her at Versailles, she was sure of it. And the rest? This secrecy had something to do with his family, but she still did not understand why. Did he not trust her? What had she said that had been so wrong?
It didn’t matter, she told herself. She’d gone too far. They had parted as friends, but it did not feel as easy as it had before. There was now a crack in it.
One winter it had been very cold in Paris. Winds blew in from the north with ice in their mouths. Weeks and weeks passed huddling by the fire, her hands too stiff to help Papa sort type into boxes. When the Seine froze, she and Alain walked out onto the ice. They shuffled their feet at first, then took bigger steps, running a little before sliding to a stop. Daring each other, they did it over and over until she went too close to the river’s center. Her foot punched a hole in the ice’s skin and disappeared. She remembered her fear, the numb shock, how her stockinged leg shot down into the black water as if it had been pulled.
Sometimes the fragile places were impossible to see.
She came to a church and paused in its cool, deep shadow. In her hand she still had the drawing Rosier had given her. Unfolding it, she took care not to smudge the network of charcoal lines.
In the drawing, Lazare was not looking straight ahead, at Rosier.
He was looking at her.
38
Despite her best intentions, Camille could not give up Versailles. For it turned out that even when she had shelter and food and money, those things were not enough.
There were other kinds of hunger.
Weeks and weeks ago she’d told herself that as soon as she could, she would stop working magic. Stop wearing herself thin, stop coming to Versailles. But, as Chandon had foretold, the palace’s magic had fastened its hooks in her and she could not stay away. Versailles was the only thing that eased the gnawing emptiness she was desperate to fill.
In Paris the news was of the National Assembly, which was meeting at Versailles to write a constitution, and of the angry riots that raged as bread prices soared. At Versailles, the talk was of the queen’s lover and the Turkish fashion in hats. She knew it was trivial, fluff and glitter, and she was glad she didn’t have to explain her feelings to Papa. She couldn’t quite explain them to herself, but it was somehow a relief to escape the struggle and striving of Paris for the palace’s glint and flash.
When she entered the lavish rooms set up for gambling, she wanted nothing more than to pack her purse with coins, like sand piled behind a defensive wall. She was remorseless in her card-turning, but not foolish. Changing tables often, she made sure to lose every once in a while, and kept up a constant flow of banter and eyelash-fluttering while remembering to call for plenty of wine for the others to drink. She hadn’t played this hard or ruthlessly in a long time, and as she excused herself from the table, a fig tarte in her hand and the sum she needed—plus more—safely stowed in the seam of her dress, she stumbled, a wave of la magie-weariness swelling over her. A courtier caught her by the elbow. “Are you well, madame? Shall I escort you?”
“Quite well, thank you,” she said, and made her way out of the room. They all probably thought her a terrible drunk. Well, let them. Better that than knowing what she’d really been doing. Savoring the sweet tarte, she went through the glass doors and out to the parterre. It had been a beautiful day when she started gambling but now rain clouds crowded the lapis sky. A summer storm was blowing in.
“Cécile! Over here!” Aurélie stood at the top of the stairs that led to the orangerie, wind tousling the skirts of her pale blue dress. She wore an enormous straw hat that curved around her head like a snail’s shell. Two puffs of white ostrich feathers perched on its crown; between them, a long iridescent feather swooped down to curve along her cheek. From behind the hat, Chandon emerged and waved.
“You’ve had quite a morning,” he noted when Camille reached them.
“How did you know?”
“You seem tired, ma belle,” he said, kindly, but there was a warning in his eyes. What he really meant was that she hadn’t been careful with her magic. Somehow, he could tell.
“As do you, mon cher.” Chandon’s appearance was worse each time she saw him. His cheeks were even more flushed, yet all the time his skin grew paler. More translucent, as if made of glass.
“Bah, I’m fine. We’d been planning to walk out to the Temple of Love—that little folly in the middle of the stream, near the Petit Trianon?” Past the Grand Canal, the clouds had darkened ominously; Chandon frowned at them with the same vexed look he gave to people he found unbearably dull. “But the sky is being troublesome.”
“Are you worried about your hat, Aurélie?” Camille asked.
“Don’t you adore it?” She tipped her head to show off the back. “There’s a girl at Madame Bénard’s who designs the most divine chapeaux. I wonder if I should become her patroness. What if her
hats become le dernier cri and it’s like the chandler and I have to wait in line?”
Camille smiled to herself. She could not wait to tell Sophie.
“It’ll be fine,” Chandon said. “The others have gone to find umbrellas.”
No sooner had he said this than Foudriard—and right behind him, Lazare in his fir-green silk coat, with his night-dark hair—appeared at the edge of the lawn, having come from the palace’s east wing. In each hand they carried an umbrella.
Lazare waved, the flash of his smile against the amber of his skin dazzling.
Him.
Everything to do with Lazare was a tangled skein of questions she could not answer, full of her own tightly knotted doubts. But amid that confusion there were also things that had happened, things she told herself were real: the music box, the kiss at Notre-Dame, the balloon. How angry he’d been about Alain. And how strange he’d been when she’d asked about Versailles.
Yet, the truth of her heart, despite all of this confusion? That gnawing emptiness lessened when she saw him.
“Something’s happening!” Lazare shouted as he ran toward them. “Hurry!”
“What?” Aurélie said peevishly. “I had my heart set on visiting the Temple of Love.”
Foudriard pulled up, breathing hard. “But this is important! France is changing.”
“Not for the better, I’ll hazard.” Aurélie smirked. “Please? I just wish to stay here.”
“Tomorrow,” Lazare said. “Today the National Assembly has been locked out of its meeting place, perhaps by the king himself, and they’re convening at an old tennis court in the village.” His easy grace was gone; he burned with eagerness. “Baroness, you’ll come, won’t you?”
If things were truly changing in France, she wanted to see it happening. She held out her hand to Aurélie. “Come, mon amie. We’ll be safe, won’t we, dressed like this?” she asked the boys.
“No one will touch either of you,” Lazare said. “But come—time is running out!”
Once Aurélie was persuaded, they left the palace, hurrying through the gold-tipped gates and into the town of Versailles. Soon they found themselves behind an enormous crowd chanting “Vive l’Assemblée!” as it passed down the rue du Vieux Versailles to an indoor tennis court where the National Assembly, the people’s representatives, were holding a meeting.
“History is being made, Baroness,” Lazare said into her ear as they came to a stop outside the weathered building. “Can you not feel it?”
She could. The crowd of people radiated purpose and hope. And Lazare, she was beginning to suspect, was not wholly on the side of the aristocrats.
Slipping through the mass of cheering people, Camille, Lazare, Chandon, Aurélie, and Foudriard found a spot by the windows overlooking the scene. The huge room, with its coffered ceiling painted blue and adorned with gold fleur-de-lis, was crowded with men. The roar of their conversation filled every corner.
Aurélie tapped an older man on the shoulder. “What’s happening, monsieur?”
The man gave their clothes a hard look before answering. “The assembly was locked out of their meeting rooms by the king and his sycophants.” Another severe look. “Undaunted, one of them—I heard it was Dr. Guillotin—led the rest here. They have been discussing their demands and how best to have them met. The king is reluctant. Someone proposed the National Assembly withdraw to Paris.”
Lazare took in the crush below. “What have they demanded of the king?”
“That there be no taxation without representation,” said the man proudly. “To get rid of those damned lettres de cachet that, with a scribble of the king’s signature, can throw a man into prison—without trial or appeal. And of course, freedom of the press.”
A thrill ran through Camille. If Papa could have stood here beside her, how righteously happy he would have been! He’d abhorred those restrictions. When a writer—a printer!—can be imprisoned for libel, he’d said, pacing the room in frustration, for upsetting the peace, criticizing the church, or besmirching someone’s honor, what else is left? There will always be something that offends someone. Bah! One day I will print what I like.
He had, but the cost had been great.
All Papa’s clients had considered him a great printer, but in the end it had become too dangerous to associate with him. Imagine if they were accused of also being against the monarchy? Or for a constitution, like the Americans? His clients had dropped him like a fruit that they’d bitten into only to discover it was rotten. After that, he never printed one of his own pamphlets again, because—Camille realized now—he was afraid. All sorts of inflammatory pamphlets and posters were printed and circulated in Paris, but each printer did so knowing he might find himself manacled in a dank prison. Papa had been afraid not for himself, but for his family.
If these demands for freedom of the press had come only five years earlier, Papa might still be alive. Still printing.
But change was coming. All the people in this room, all of them wanting the same thing—they were part of an enormous wave that could alter the world. She could feel it racing through her, rushing to sweep away injustice.
“And will they get these concessions?” Lazare asked.
“Doubtful. The king will do what he can, as long as he can, to hold onto his power. Et bien! We must persevere.”
“Who’s that speaking now?” Aurélie asked. “He’s terribly handsome,” she added as Camille tried to shush her.
The young man called out: “Even if the king makes things difficult for us, we must not return to Paris. We must stay together. Let him not part us from one another! We must not disperse until the new constitution is drawn up. We owe it to the people of France!”
To cheers and applause, another man, tall and thin, was helped up onto a table made of a door recently ripped from its hinges.
“That’s the astronomer and president of the assembly, Jean-Sylvain Bailly, who’s been in charge of the debates,” the older man said. “They’ve given him hell these past weeks, shouting and arguing and getting nothing done.”
As Bailly stood up straight, the representatives fell silent. Outside, thunder rumbled.
Slowly, Bailly held out his right arm in a salute. In his left, he held a piece of paper from which he read a formal oath. Before he had even finished reading, the arms of the men in the room rose, one after another, all of them pledging not to disband the assembly, to keep working for the rights of the people.
With a mounting sense of excitement, she knew she too would be part of this wave. She had to be. Not just because Papa surely would have, but because she wanted to be part of this—this surge. She needed to do something that mattered.
Slowly, Camille raised her arm.
One of the representatives on the floor saw her and pointed, and those around him applauded. Lazare nodded at Camille, and his hand went up, then Foudriard joined them. And then, a bit shamefacedly, Aurélie and Chandon raised theirs, too.
Lazare hadn’t sided with the aristocrats at all. He was with her, with the people.
“Et tu, Brute?” Chandon frowned at Foudriard. “Supporting the rebellion only means a mob will come, divide my father’s estate—which will be mine someday—into tiny pieces, and give it away to the farmers. I will inherit nothing, we will be ruined.”
Foudriard clapped a hand on Chandon’s shoulder. “You and your father treat your farmers so well they’d have nothing to gain by it. But for the others? The ones who demand so many taxes—the cens, the champart, the banalités—even in years of drought and killing frosts?” Foudriard’s voice was raw, angry. “The people who speculate in grain and hoard it? They deserve what they get.”
“That’s what I tell my father—treat everyone well and you won’t have any problems.” Lazare shook his head. “Not that he listens to me.”
She didn’t wonder at that. It had been Lazare’s father who’d docked his tutor’s pay for daring to think differently. The father who thought money could control everythi
ng. The father Lazare was always trying to please, who wanted him to be more French, whatever that was.
Camille said to Foudriard, “But you’re in the king’s cavalry. Don’t you support the monarch?”
“Bien sûr, if he serves the people. If he’s only out for himself? Never.”
Next to her, Lazare leaned over the balcony. “See, Baroness, the people getting what they want? It’s possible all of us will be thrown from our gilded perches.”
Thunder rolled outside; the long curtains in the windows billowed. A cool wind swept into the room, catching at the lace on her dress, lifting a few strands of Lazare’s glossy dark hair. When he turned to her there was a question in his eyes. “Will it be a struggle, do you think?”
“I wouldn’t mind if it were,” she said.
His eyes gleamed. “To tell the truth, neither would I.”
In that moment, everything seemed possible.
Down on the floor below, the representatives lined up to put their names to the document. There were nearly six hundred of them; it would take time. Outside, the crowd cheered as the rain poured down. As she filed out with her friends and the boisterous crowd of onlookers, Camille felt something had changed. Shifted. Without bloodshed, the people had spoken back to their king, a king so worried about losing his absolute power he’d filled the streets of Paris with foreign mercenaries. If the National Assembly could make sure the people’s demands were met, so much would be possible.
If things in France were going to change, it would happen like this. People talking to one another. People arguing with one another, convincing one another. Camille had seen it at the Palais-Royal, men and women, up on tables, giving the royals hell. And if the press were free?
Paris would need all the printers it could get. Printers who would tell the truth, reveal the injustices, so the king and the nobles and all those in power could no longer ignore it. Printers who could change France for the good.
Camille planned to be one of them.
39
The warm air in the small rose-and-cream-striped shop tasted like sweets.
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