Enchantée

by Gita Trelease

  Camille had said everything in a rush, and when she stopped she noticed how still the salon had become. Expectant faces turned toward her. Did they wish to hear more?

  “And you don’t smell the streets,” she added, and several people laughed. “The air is fresh; you pass through mists and vapor. In the distance I saw rain fall from a cloud.”

  “Oh, how lovely!” the man with the lily said.

  “There is a lesson in being so high up, isn’t there?” Rosier prompted.

  She nodded. “I saw the neighborhoods of our city are not as separate as they might seem. From the air, there’s not much distinction between a grand hôtel particulier and a common house divided into many apartments. I saw the edge of the world—I saw possibility.”

  A few people applauded. The sea of faces waited. It was so quiet she could hear the candles in the chandelier burning.

  “And, mademoiselle?” asked the man with the lily.

  And?

  And what?

  Instead of a shuttered printer’s shop, instead of a knife at her throat, instead of having to mine sorrow to make coins or a dress, instead of everything that hurt or took away from her, the balloon had given her something. She hadn’t known it then. But she did now.

  “It gave me hope,” she said. “Because what seems fixed—as if it will always be one particular way—if seen differently, may in fact be something that can be changed. A new world, don’t you see?”

  In the back of the room, someone coughed. The faces of the salon goers, pale as petals, fixed on her. They were, she realized, waiting. Waiting for something more, something shocking. Something surprising.

  But she had nothing more.

  She’d opened her heart and confessed that before she went up into the balloon, her view of Paris had been small, provincial. A mouse’s view. These people, whose money could bring them anything—food, shelter, libraries of books, travel, education—took it all for granted. They found nothing in her story to celebrate because—she saw it in the furrowed brows and pleated mouths and folded hands—they could already imagine it.

  Or thought they could, which was just as bad.

  “It seems a noble venture, monsieur,” said the man standing by the mantel, next to Aurélie. He wore a blue uniform with gold fringe on his epaulets. Camille recognized his face from the newspapers—he was the popular commander from the American wars, the Marquis de Lafayette. “But before we empty our pockets, tell me, what is the purpose of a balloon? Could it perhaps function as a kind of spy machine? Say, on the battlefield?”

  “A brilliant idea, Monsieur le Marquis!” Rosier interjected. “Imagine, hundreds of sneaky balloons spying on the English—”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Lafayette said, approvingly.

  Lazare stepped forward, his arms rigid by his side. His voice was clipped as he said, “A war machine?”

  “Why not?” Rosier said, encouragingly. Camille saw he was frustrated and was trying to make the balloon seem useful, but this was all wrong. A balloon was not intended to be a machine of war.

  Lafayette nodded. “We are of one mind, then.”

  Lazare’s jaw clenched. Camille remembered when they’d been in the balloon and he’d spoken of his tutor, the one who’d been mistreated, the one who’d taught him to ask why. There had been happiness in his face then, but also something infinitely sad. A loss. Lazare, too, had taken a path other than the one he wanted to take, just as she had. The balloon was his salvation, his way out.

  But what she saw now was that it wasn’t only Lazare’s hope, Rosier’s, or Armand’s. It had also become her own. Being with Lazare today—she as herself, he as himself—she saw it so clearly. This was their hope, all of them together. And she refused to let their balloon become a war machine, something to help generals with their killing.

  “Monsieur,” she began again, “we aeronauts believe that a balloon can be anything. Not simply a war machine, or a spyglass. Or,” she added with a warning look at Rosier, “an amusement for the people.”

  Lafayette responded so politely he sounded bored, “And what should it be, mademoiselle?”

  She felt Lazare’s gaze on the side of her face, intense as summer’s light. Like possibility. She knew what the balloon could be. “It can be a way out. A hope.”

  “Monsieur le Marquis,” Lazare said brusquely, “you have commanded armies. An army needs shoes and muskets, bayonets and cannon. But is not hope just as important?”

  Lafayette crossed his arms. “France’s armies are already stretched thin. There’s unrest in the countryside over the lack of bread, and these troubles will multiply in Paris. How can I ask for money for hope?”

  Lazare shook his head, as if he could not find the right words. As if the salon had turned out to be what he’d thought it would be: a way to make money, no better than selling tickets to the public.

  Anger thrummed through Camille. Hadn’t she lived on hope when there was nothing in the pantry? It was all she had when her parents died, her brother became a monster, when there was nothing but the pain of turning coins and swindling shopkeepers in order to survive. Hope was the thing she’d made from her sorrow, and she would not let it be tossed aside.

  She blazed out at the commander and the room of placid, watching faces. “What else is there but hope?”

  Again, someone coughed. No one agreed, no one applauded. No one fetched his purse and opened it, counting out the coins.

  Only silence.

  “Come, come, monsieur,” Lafayette said then, making his way to Lazare and throwing an arm over his shoulder. “I’m certain there is some angle we can take on this.” As Lazare followed Lafayette to a corner of the room, he glanced once at her, his river-brown eyes regretful.

  Rosier appeared at her elbow with lemonade in a crystal glass. “Now it’s up to Lazare to rope them in. It’s one thing to say you don’t care about money; it’s another not to take it when someone dangles it in your face.”

  “And if we don’t get the money?”

  Rosier snatched a tiny sandwich off a passing tray and tossed it into his mouth. “We recalibrate,” he said between chews. “Pardon, I see an open pocket.”

  Rosier strode to the doorway to greet a lavishly dressed man and a woman who had just arrived. His clever black eyes laughing, persuading, cajoling, he made his way from that couple to others in the room. Selling the balloon as best as he could.

  On the other side of the room, Lazare stood in a group of salon goers that included Aurélie, laughing at something she had said. The light from the open window fell on him, illuminating his lively face. Perhaps he would accomplish what she could not.

  There was no point in her staying.

  She left the crowded room that had already forgotten her, out through the grand foyer, pushing wide the heavy front door before the footman could open it for her. Into the bustling street and then north to the river, where she crossed the dark water clotted with boats, and then finally to the pale stone courtyard that now was home.

  These many weeks at Versailles, she thought she’d become something. Someone. A person of abilities, a person with her own power.

  But she hadn’t. Alain had been right all along.

  It was nothing more than illusion.

  49

  In the mirror, Camille tucked an oak sprig into her hat.

  Her hands trembled from too much magic, and she wanted nothing more than to go out and lose herself in the maze of streets that was Paris. To not have to think. Question. Decide.

  But before she could slip past the doorman and out onto the street, Madame de Théron called from her sitting room, where she was fanning herself against the creeping heat. “You’re wearing leaves in your hat.”

  For Madame, the leaves were the sign that she was a traitor. Disloyal to the king. “It’s not safe without them,” Camille said, keeping back a smile. “Not since Desmoulins said green was the color of freedom and the people’s cause. If you were to go out, madame, people
would demand it of you.”

  “Never! Desmoulins wants the people to take arms against our king.” Madame de Théron’s lower lip quivered with indignation. “Because of him, the rabble have been threatening to burn our noble houses!”

  She was not wrong. Desmoulins had said just that when he climbed onto a table outside the Palais-Royal and in front of an enormous crowd, raised his pistols in the air. People listening had torn off the leaves of nearby chestnut trees to wear green in their hats like their new hero. And then they had broken into sword-cutlers’ and gunsmiths’ shops. On the streets of Paris the mood was that of a dangerous dance: one false step and it would slide into chaos.

  “What of the damned duc d’Orléans?” Madame de Théron asked.

  “The king’s cousin? He and some other nobles have joined the people’s side. The duc does whatever he thinks will profit him.”

  “The duc is a scoundrel!” Madame de Théron snapped her fan on the arm of her chair. “We must obey the king, not argue with him.”

  “Even if he is wrong? What about the American War?” Papa had written a pamphlet about it; she remembered how the sums had astonished her. “More than one billion livres to help the colonists push England out when we could have used the money here? The price of bread just goes up and up.”

  Madame considered. “Peut-être. But the king is the father of France, don’t forget.”

  “A father can be a tyrant. And if he is”—Alain’s forbidding face swam before her—“then we must find another way.”

  “Hmph.” Madame fanned herself. “The young think they know everything. They should be docile and obedient, but they never are.”

  Her mind on the news in the street, the anticipation of change, Camille turned to go and nearly collided with one of the maids holding a silver platter. On it lay three letters no bigger than her hand.

  As Camille took them, she asked, “Has my sister returned home?”

  She had not.

  Where had Sophie gone? She’d left before Camille had set out, and had not yet returned. It wasn’t like her. Or, Camille corrected herself, it wasn’t like the old Sophie. The new Sophie was much—sharper. More to herself, working longer hours at Madame Bénard’s before going to the new place to “measure” it, as she said. Always returning late, her cheeks pinked, a secret in her face. But there was no saying anything about it to her. When Camille tried to broach the subject, Sophie covered her ears or left the room.

  She put two of the letters in her purse and opened the other.

  Dear Mademoiselle—

  I hesitate to call again at the Hôtel Théron for Fear of Offending your Landlady, but I have something I must ask you. Will you come to the Workshop? This matter is—regrettably!—Unfortunate.

  Your servant,

  Charles Rosier

  Unfortunate?

  She recalled Rosier’s unease when he had last been here. It must have something to do with the balloon, but what exactly, she could not tell. She had been wondering if they had raised enough money at the salon—perhaps it had to do with that?

  And perhaps Lazare would be there.

  Perhaps she might have the courage to tell him the truth.

  50

  When she banged on the bright blue door, it was Rosier, not Lazare, who came to open it. He blinked at her as if he hadn’t seen sunshine in days. Pale, worried, his hair frizzed.

  “Mademoiselle Camille,” he said. “Come in.”

  She stepped into the hall that led back to the riding ring. “Rosier, what’s wrong?”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Lazare?” she asked. “I have no idea.”

  “Merde!” Rosier tugged at his hair. “Pardon! My mouth is not connected to my brain. Lazare is missing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He is not here. Tickets have been sold for the public launch—”

  “Already? What about the salon?”

  “They didn’t give enough, those stingy bastards. And that Lafayette!” He gripped his pipe so hard she thought he might break it. “So I prepared for the public launch. Bien. It was the best idea all along, non? I printed the posters. I printed the tickets and started to sell them. Très bien! Everyone wants to see the girl balloonist!” A wan smile brightened his face, but only for a moment. “And now Armand says there is a problem with the release valve again and a new one must be constructed. But tickets have been sold for the twenty-eighth of July! And Lazare vanished three days ago.”

  “Vanished? But that’s not surprising. Isn’t he always going from place to place?” It certainly seemed that way to her.

  “Not this time.” Rosier took a drag on his unlit pipe. “Something happened.”

  “What?”

  “He came to the workshop—three days ago—upset. Distressed. He told me he had an idea of how to get what he hadn’t been able to raise from subscriptions at the salon.”

  “But that wasn’t his fault!”

  “So I told him. Then he said he’d refused to take any more money from his parents. As if I’d asked him to!”

  “Was that where the money came from before, do you think?” Camille asked.

  “Apparently.”

  This. This was the thing that he had been hiding—she was certain of it. “What changed?”

  Slowly, Rosier shook his head. “Who knows? Something they did? Some condition they placed on him? Whatever it was, it made him furious. Desperate. Distraught. And then—gone.”

  “He must be somewhere,” Camille said, fretfully. “I suppose he’s not at his parents’ house?”

  “No reply.” Rosier stared blankly out at the quiet street. “Where could he possibly be?”

  Slowly, it came to her. He could be anywhere—it was true. But there was at least one other place where he was likely to be.

  “I think I know.”

  Rosier reached for his coat, hanging on a peg near the door. “Show me the way.”

  She hesitated. Rosier might not be shocked about her use of magic, or what she did at Versailles—he’d probably applaud it—but if Lazare was there for some hidden purpose, if he had told no one, it was not her secret to reveal. “I cannot, Rosier. But I will do my best to find him.”

  * * *

  Heading home toward Hôtel Théron, Camille was soon back in the streets of their quarter. In their wealthy neighborhood, where the king’s soldiers marched their patrols, no shop windows had been broken or their shelves emptied. Here hung rosy hams and robust sausages. Costly bread lay piled in baskets, carved with the baker’s initials. And everywhere, it seemed, candies and chocolate and sweets were arranged like jewels.

  Stepping into a bakery, she paid for a sticky bun. She took it out to the street to eat it, as she and Sophie used to do when they had a few extra sous. People had stared at them, eating on the street, but she and Sophie hadn’t cared. How could they when they were so hungry and eating a bun was like devouring sunshine?

  Camille took a bite. The bun was buttery, sweet with apricot and honey—but it didn’t taste the same without Sophie, the two of them against the world.

  “M’selle?”

  A barefoot street urchin, his gaunt face sepia with dirt, appeared out of the crowds. He held out an empty hand; with the other, he mimed putting food in his mouth. His fingernails were black, his eyes filmed dull. Hopeless, even as he begged.

  Her throat constricted.

  What if she told him her fingernails used to be like his? Her belly, nearly as empty? Would he believe her, in her silk dress and cartwheel hat, her new shoes and her clean hands? She thought again of the red-haired running girl, her tiny stolen roll of bread, and where she might be now. It seemed another life. Despite everything she and Sophie had, she could not shake the feeling that something was still slipping through her fingers.

  “M’selle? S’il vous plaît?”

  The hair prickled on the back of her neck. She had to go back and talk to Sophie. She had to tell her she missed her, that she’d
said and done the wrong things. Somehow their paths had diverged. Camille wanted to go back and start again.

  “Take this,” Camille said, handing the boy the bun. He turned to run away but she caught his arm. From her purse she took all the livres she had with her—ten, fifteen, twenty-two—and pressed them carefully into his hand, folding his fingers over the bright coins. “Keep them safe, d’accord?” she told him. “Only show someone you trust. Be careful!”

  He nodded, once, then vanished into the crowds.

  When Camille burst into the Hôtel Théron, there was still no sign of her sister, but Madame de Théron reassured her Sophie had merely gone for a ride in the park with her friends from the shop.

  Upstairs, Camille dropped her purse on the writing desk by the window. Fantôme emerged and twined insistently around her ankles.

  The purse had a strange shape to it, stretched out. The other letters! She’d completely forgotten.

  She tore the violet one open.

  Inside lay a tiny card. An invitation.

  In honor of Aurélie de Valledoré on her birthday

  Jean-Baptiste de Vaux, Vicomte de Séguin, invites you

  to an evening of games and gaiety

  The fourteenth of July 1789

  Tonight.

  Across the bottom, in a beautiful hand, Séguin had written:

  All our friends will be there.

  All our friends.

  She hadn’t seen Chandon since the opera, when he’d looked so desperately ill. She’d sent letters to him at the palace but had heard nothing in return. Nothing from Aurélie, either, nor Foudriard.

  And if they were there, then perhaps—as she’d told Rosier—Lazare would be, too.

  Her mind jumped from one idea about him to another, but it was always the same: what did he know? What did he think? But like the spotted dogs in Astley’s circus, leaping from chair to chair, she never got anywhere. She just went around and around and around.