Everything That Burns

by Gita Trelease

  “Camille?” Lazare slipped the glass from her hands. “What is it?”

  “A little boy,” she choked. A boy like the ones who had stabled her horses when she’d come to Versailles, running up alongside the carriage and opening the gates. Boys sent on errands, boys called to help with anything in a pinch. Always underfoot, ready to do something for a few coins. Quick, clever, brimming with laughter. Always running.

  Long glass to his eye, Lazare looked out at the court, as if he might see something to redeem this terrible loss. “They have lost their minds.”

  Then the air boomed.

  A sudden whistle—Camille and Lazare stumbled backward as a cannonball shot past the balloon’s gondola. It passed so close that the basket shook. Camille gripped Lazare’s arm, trying to steady herself. The ball that had almost destroyed the basket plunged to earth. It was large and lethal—the hole it could make in the basket would destroy it. If it didn’t kill them first.

  Camille leaned over the gondola’s edge. Below, a plume of smoke drifted from a cannon mired in the mud. Shaking their fists at the balloon, the women surrounding the cannon loaded it again.

  “They mean to shoot us down,” Camille screamed. “We must rise!”

  Lazare was already kneeling by the brazier, stuffing it with straw to raise the temperature of the air in the balloon. “More fuel!” he shouted. Scrambling on her knees, Camille gathered as much as she could from where it was stacked around the edges of the gondola and pushed it into Lazare’s hands. More more more: the fire roared.

  “Higher!” she shouted.

  Another cracking boom echoed below them, followed by the scream of the cannonball. The gondola shuddered as the ball passed beneath it. Shouts erupted as steadily, the balloon rose.

  The noise of the crowd grew dim. The smoke of the cannon faded. But her fear did not.

  Camille sank to floor. She thought she might be sick. Had they been hit and plummeted to the earth, that alone would have ended their lives. But if by some miracle they’d survived the fall, they’d have their heads hacked off. Paraded around on pikes.

  For a long time, neither of them spoke. Over Versailles, storm clouds gathered, and the wind that accompanied them blew the balloon east, toward Paris. Camille felt as if she were a dead leaf, a nothing, floating over the countryside. Her thoughts eddied and swirled. How could the people do this? Of course, they were hungry, their rights trampled underfoot for centuries, but to kill children? Shove heads on pikes? Is this what the revolution had become, a lust for blood?

  Revolution had always meant change. But did it have to mean death?

  She saw his legs again, bent as if running. “That little boy.”

  “I know, mon âme.” Lazare pulled her close and she tucked her face against his chest. Under his coat, his heart beat slow and steady. “It is a terrible tragedy. I wish I could undo it. When I think of what he must have felt—” Gently, he ran his hand over her hair, tucking the loose strands back. “But you are safe now.”

  It did not feel that way.

  * * *

  It was past midnight when they returned to Paris.

  When they’d run out of fuel, they’d made a soft landing on the rain-slicked lawns of the palace of Saint-Cloud, on the Seine’s western banks. A gardener had found them a driver and a wagon to take them into the city.

  When the cart rolled to a stop in front of the Hôtel Séguin, she said to Lazare, “I cannot say how sorry I am. I wish we had never gone.”

  “Sorry for what? That we saw the truth of what’s happening?”

  “If the truth is that people are being killed—the boy and the guards and perhaps others—I suppose I am glad I saw it. If that is what the revolution has become.”

  “It is the old question,” Lazare mused. “Do the ends justify the means?”

  Nothing could justify their deaths. “There can be no number of lives lost that is acceptable—can there?” Or was there some kind of dismal calculation that made that make sense?

  He shook his head. “It would seem a hollow victory.”

  “Am I doing enough?” she wondered aloud. “What should I do?”

  “You’ll do what’s right,” he said as he helped her down from the wagon. In the midnight city’s gloom, the only light the lamp at the side of the gate, he turned to her. “Shall I stay with you?”

  Everything in her wanted to say yes.

  She imagined lying next to him in her bed, the curtains closed around them, shutting out the world. Listening to the even rise and fall of his breath until it lulled her to sleep where she would be safe from her thoughts. But she saw how exhaustion pulled at him and she remembered, with a stab of guilt, that he hadn’t been home since he’d returned from Lille. “I fear your parents will be worried.”

  He frowned, as if he’d forgotten them, too. “I’ll come soon. Send a note, and I’ll come before that.”

  It felt like hope, and she reached for it. “Come as soon as you can.”

  He stooped and kissed her tenderly. “Until then.”

  * * *

  In the red salon, Sophie was pacing, anxiously waiting for her. After hearing Camille’s account—Sophie gripping the arm of the sofa so hard her knuckles went white—she told Camille the news that had come back to Paris ahead of them. The queen had been chased from her chambers by women and men intent on killing her, but had found the king in time. Lafayette, trying to control his National Guard that had insisted on marching in solidarity with the women, had cleverly saved the day by convincing the king and queen to speak to the crowd. And then, the king seeing no other way to save his life and that of his family, gave in to their demands and returned to Paris. Accompanying the king, the throng—sixty thousand strong—sang songs and drank wine, riding home on cannons or sitting in front of the guardsmen on their horses: victors at last.

  Numbly, Camille stared as Sophie finished telling what she’d heard from her customers at the shop. “The crowd forced the royal family to come to Paris?”

  “A customer had it from one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. They saw no way out. Once the king had agreed in principle to sign the constitution, it was either return to Paris, or die.”

  “And where are they now?”

  “In the old palace, the Tuileries. Under the watchful eye of the people of Paris.”

  Agitated, Camille stood. Her mind was a storm of thoughts.

  Sophie regarded her carefully. “Are you going to bed?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going to print.”

  “Shouldn’t you rest? You look awful, Camille.”

  “I cannot,” she said, deathly quiet. “If I let my eyes close for a moment, I see that little boy. Murdered! His body broken. Legs bent as if he were trying to run, trampled upon as if he were grass!” She exhaled. “Tomorrow there will be a deluge of writing about this march and soon after, one story will come to dominate. And what if it doesn’t mention that boy?”

  With a weary nod, Sophie gave up trying to convince her. After she went upstairs, Camille made her way to the printing room. As she opened its doors, she inhaled the sharp bite of ink and the soft, warm scent of paper that lingered in the air. Comforting and familiar. She lit another candelabra and the room flickered into being: an antidote to darkness.

  But when she stood in front of the press, she hesitated. Her fingers hovered over the cases of type. Before her she saw again the swaying pike, the gruesome head, its long hair clotted with blood. And worse—if anything could be worse—the cheering, baying crowd. Thrilled. Ecstatic.

  She’d loved their righteous anger. But she did not love the violence, nor the way it spread, like a wave, crushing everything in its path. She was a writer, a pamphleteer for the revolution. And yet she didn’t know what to do. How to write about what she’d seen.

  Thousands of women had marched six hours or more in the rain, all the way from Paris to Versailles, to demand bread from their sovereign. Women and girls who had taken life in their fists and shaken it,
who’d said, “I will not lie down and die. I will fight! I will make change happen, no matter what it takes!”

  All of that was what she’d hoped.

  But not the deaths.

  What mattered, and how? How would she put what she’d seen into words? She could describe it—this happened, and then this—but it wouldn’t be what she had felt. In her ear, she heard Papa’s ghost whisper:

  Be clear and simple with the words you use. The goal of any pamphlet is to persuade.

  But what simple words could convey what she had seen?

  And persuade her readers of what? That had never been a question before. The girls’ lives had been riddled with pain, sorrow, crime, and abuse, but she’d known it was right to tell their stories. To tell them true. But this?

  What was this truth?

  She gripped the wooden beams of the press. The smooth oak was warm under her touch. It steadied her. The fever—the magic—ran along her skin like its own fire. Feeding her, strengthening her. And as she set the letters for the first sentence, her magic rose.

  VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION

  Papa had lived—and died—for this idea. Freedom and justice, equality between men. He’d given up their family’s livelihood because of his beliefs.

  She gritted her teeth. That little boy.

  Angry tears scorched in the corners of her eyes. Picking up a tiny piece of type, she held it up to the light.

  It was a question mark.

  In the wavering candlelight, it curved like a snake. A river. A scythe.

  Magic, hot and wild, slithered along the back of her neck, igniting her mind and racing down her arms into her fingers as the words gathered in her. Sentences unspooling, words laid out in rows like marching soldiers.

  She had to tell the truth. Messy, disordered, and not easy. She would show the right and the wrong, and try not to flinch.

  And if she had to use magic to do it justice, she would.

  WOMEN MARCH ON VERSAILLES

  TO DEMAND BREAD FROM THE KING

  WHAT

  ONE

  WITNESS

  SAW

  Six thousand women marched from Paris.

  They marched with sickles and pikes, swords and crowbars, scythes and pitchforks,

  HOPE and RIGHTEOUS ANGER

  that they could not feed their families

  They were joined by twenty thousand members of the National Guard, accompanied by Lafayette—threatened by hanging à la lanterne—who demanded the King approve the decrees of the National Assembly and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and return to Paris.

  The King agreed.

  IN THE MIDST OF OUR VICTORY

  WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

  Fear

  Murder

  Terror

  Children killed

  Guards slain

  Heads paraded on pikes

  Demonstrators bathing in the blood of those murdered

  WHO ARE WE

  WHEN WE MURDER

  OUR OWN?

  WHEN WE LET HATE

  NOT REASON

  FUEL

  OUR ACTIONS?

  There has been much rejoicing

  But consider, PATRIOTS, the cost!

  VIVE LA RÉVOLUTION

  ?

  29

  When Camille came downstairs to check on the pamphlets she had printed last night, she wasn’t sure what she’d find hanging from the lines. She half expected them all to have changed in the early dawn hours, like turned coins losing their magic, becoming the ravings of a girl who’d seen terrible things.

  Outside the printing room doors waited the footman Daumier in his dark blue livery coat and white wig, his massive arms crossed over his chest. He smiled impassively when he saw her.

  “Bonjour, Daumier.”

  “Bonjour, Madame,” he replied. “Mademoiselle Adèle told me you were printing last night. Do you need anything taken to the bookseller?”

  “I do have something to go to the printer’s—I need more copies than I can make myself. Would you ask them to set it just as I did and print three hundred copies?”

  He bowed. “I’ll wait until it’s ready.”

  She went in, pulled back the curtains, and threw open one of the windows. Cold air and the soft patter of rain blew into the room. Was it raining too at Versailles, washing the cobbles clean of blood? The thought unnerved her. Taking down one of the pamphlets, which, despite her fears, was just as it should be, she passed by the open window.

  Hunched against one of the courtyard’s yews was a small, dark shape.

  In the rain it was hard to tell, but it could be an animal. Or a wet, bedraggled child. The hair on the back of her neck rose as she thought of the little boy.

  “Daumier,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, “before you go, look out this window, won’t you? What do you see?”

  Obligingly, Daumier did as she asked. “A child, or a small woman about your height, madame.”

  Relief washed over her. Not a ghost. “But that’s hardly the place—”

  “It is not.” Daumier headed toward the entry, the pamphlet in his hand. “I’ll speak to her. Tell her to move on.”

  “Wait! She can shelter here until the rain is over, in the—”

  “In the stables?” Daumier suggested.

  “That’s perfect, thank you.”

  She had just finished taking down the rest of the pamphlets when Daumier appeared in the doorway.

  “Madame, the person in the courtyard says she knows you.”

  Who could it be? “Then why did she not come to the house?”

  “Ashamed, I should say, madame. She is waiting in the foyer if you have time to speak to her.”

  * * *

  Standing by the door, dripping rain onto the marble tiles, was Odette. She still wore the black clothes Camille had seen her in yesterday at Versailles, but they were now so full of rain and mud that they sagged shapelessly to the floor. Mud coated her shoes, and when she raised her head, a trickle of water poured off the back of her hat. Its dancing plume was crushed.

  “Odette!” she said, astonished.

  “I am sorry to trouble you—”

  “What’s happened? I saw you at Versailles. On the black horse, giving a speech. Everyone was enraptured and then—”

  Odette pushed her lank hair from her face. “The horse tried to bolt, but I got him out of the crowd. I’d only borrowed him, of course, but his master made a fuss. He accused me of stealing the horse and pulled me off into the mud.” She showed the side of her face to Camille. An angry red welt, surrounded by an indigo bruise, spread across her cheekbone.

  “They hurt you? How dare they—”

  “It’s nothing.” Odette looked down, her voice getting smaller. “Worse is that they said they would come after me and I didn’t want to lead them to Flotsam House. Who knows what they would have done to the girls. I wandered until I knew they were not following me and then came here.”

  Giselle must have told her where she lived. “You walked all the way from Versailles?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did right. Borrow some of my clothes while these are cleaned, and whatever else you need. A bandage—”

  Odette continued to stare at her shoes. “Might I stay a few nights? Until it’s safe?”

  “Of course!” Hot shame seared through her. Here was a girl who had nothing, who needed shelter just as she once had. Anyone else would have offered her help immediately. What was wrong with her? “I should have offered—”

  “Madame?” Adèle stood at the back of the entry, near the tapestry. Beside her was Sophie, an unconvincing smile pasted on her face.

  “Sophie, Adèle—this is our guest, Mademoiselle Odette Leblanc.”

  Adèle revealed nothing of what she felt, and the discreet nod she gave in Odette’s direction was very correct, but Camille could tell she wasn’t pleased. “You may of course call on any of the maids,” Adèle sai
d, “but if there is anything I may help you with, don’t hesitate.”

  “Merci, Adèle,” Odette said with a winning smile. “I’m sure everything will be wonderful.” Her sharp gaze ranged over all the things in the entry, the staircase, the rooms and rooms beyond this one. “Such a grand house, and so very ancient.” She inhaled deeply, and sighed. “It smells like home.”

  Upstairs, a window rattled in its frame.

  “You must have lived in an old house, then,” Sophie observed. “You’re not afraid of ghosts?”

  Odette flinched. “Why? Are there any?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” Camille cut in. She glared at Sophie, who finally came forward.

  “Welcome, Odette,” she said. “I’m Sophie, Camille’s sister. I’ve heard so much about you and the girls at Flotsam House.”

  How insincere Sophie sounded! “Why doesn’t Adèle show you your room, Odette? I’ll be up to see you have everything you need.”

  Closely following Adèle, Odette climbed the stairs to the second floor. Her head swiveled from side to side, as eager as a bird’s, as she took in the paintings, the rich tapestries, the velvety curtains, the Chinese vases, much as Camille had on her first visit to Versailles. When Adèle reached the landing, she waited for Odette to stop staring at the furniture and catch up. Then, side by side, they disappeared down the hallway.

  “Camille!” Sophie grasped Camille’s arm, and pinched. Hard.

  “That hurts!” Camille rubbed at her arm. “Why—”

  “Good,” Sophie snapped. “How could you have invited her in without asking me? I live here, too.”

  “She was hiding in the courtyard, wet, hurt, frightened—”

  “I doubt she is ever frightened.” Sophie cheeks blazed with angry color, grimly determined. “Did you see how she coveted everything? She cannot stay here.”

  Camille lowered her voice. “She ran into trouble at Versailles and didn’t wish to bring it with her to Flotsam House. Where else is she to go?”

  “Rent rooms somewhere for her.”

  Camille remembered how solid and impenetrable she had thought the iron gates at Madame Théron’s, how the gate and the gatekeeper would keep her and Sophie safe. But trouble had come to them anyway. “Don’t you think whoever did this to her won’t come after her?”