Where had she seen one just like it?
The scrap of paper caught in the gates of the Hôtel Séguin. The anti-magician pamphlets she and Chandon had talked about, the writer’s mark a little black bird. A flock of them, descending on Paris. “You?” she choked. “You wrote those pamphlets?”
Odette’s mouth twitched into a gratified smile. As if she had been waiting only for this: for Camille to truly see her.
All this time, Odette had been working against magicians? But why? What had brought them together? How tangled it had become. She thought of the lines on her palm Séguin had read, the branches of the pear tree, the net of ropes across the printing room’s ceiling: Was it fate or chance that made Odette cross Camille’s path?
She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Odette had no evidence. Only another magician could look at the objects at the Hôtel Séguin and say they were magical. And as long as no one broke the warding as she herself had done by inviting Odette in, the house and its people would be safe from the Comité.
Odette could play her games, but as long as they were safe that was all that mattered.
Stumbling to the pallet in the corner, Camille dropped wearily down on it. “Go away, Odette. I don’t care what you have to say.”
“You will when I see you in court. I imagine you’ll be quite attentive then. And don’t think the crowd has any allegiance to you. They will believe what they are told. You know that to be true, don’t you?”
She did. And it filled her with dread. Rumor and gossip and lies—the fearful would believe anything that made them feel safe.
In the half-light, Odette’s gray eyes had gone to iron. “My suffering will have been worth it when I watch you die. I wonder if they have figured out a special execution for magicians? An aristocratic death by sword is too good for you.” Wistfully she said, “Whatever they come up with, I hope it is not quick.”
50
From a window two floors up, the courtyard of La Petite Force looked like what it was: a prison. Walkers had trod paths in what was left of the insubstantial grass and only the topiary bushes, shaggy and unpruned, seemed solid and real. Back when it had been a rich man’s house, it must have been beautiful. But now it was worn thin, ghostly.
Camille’s fingers clenched the iron bars. Would Sophie come? Rosier? Soon they would find out what had happened. She imagined the street criers would be grimly satisfied to shout out the news of a magician—an aristocrat magician, no less—trapped by the Comité. What a prize!
And then the other, spiraling fear: What had happened to the boys? Foudriard and Chandon she felt certain had fled, warned by the ringing bell she’d heard; Roland, too. Perhaps all of them had escaped to the sanctuary of Bellefleur.
She tried not to think of what happened last night, but it came anyway: the choking smoke, the fire, the shadow that had loomed behind Lazare. Had he had time to run? Use his sword? And if he wounded or killed a Comité guard, what then?
Even if he’d escaped, nowhere would be safe.
She forced herself to take in the blighted courtyard below, the chill of the floor beneath her feet. There was no security. Not anymore. As she sat down on the pallet—to wait, because what else was there to do?—in the secret pocket of her dress, she sensed the weight of the bundled box Lazare had given her. She ran her thumb across the top of it … was there a stone set into the lid? It was tempting to open it, but not here. Next to the box were two tiny vials, both almost empty of tears: hers, made by Séguin through a process she would never know; and Blaise’s. The torment he’d lived through when that woman threatened to cut the magic from him! She closed her eyes against the horror of what he’d wanted her to know.
You cannot cut it from you.
A sharp rap on the door interrupted her thoughts. “Visitors,” the guard said. “A girl and a boy.”
The door swung open and Rosier and Sophie rushed in, bundled against the sudden cold snap that had engulfed Paris. Sophie looked as if she had been up all night. The three of them embraced at once, hugging each other close.
“You smell like smoke!” Sophie coughed.
“Are you not sleeping?” Camille countered. There were so many things she wished to ask, and to tell them, but she was aware of the guard, listening outside the open door.
She shrugged. “I’m fine. It’s you we’ve come to see.”
Camille looked searchingly into Rosier’s face. “Do you know what happened?”
He nodded.
“And?”
“It was such a silly mishap with the pigeons!” he said, exasperated.
What?
“I did not know you kept pigeons, Rosier,” Camille said carefully.
“Oh, it is a new fad with him,” Sophie replied. “There are four he particularly cares for.”
Is it a code? “Which are those?” she wondered.
“I call them my oldest friends,” Rosier said fondly. “They were all frightened by a fox last night! The excitable, toffee-headed one simply took off! And the other one who resembles a soldier with his blue feathers, he vanished too, in some other direction!” He stared at her, willing her to understand. “Both escaped the fox. As did the one who shrieked out the alarm. No doubt they’re safe in a tree somewhere, surrounded by pretty flowers.”
Beautiful flower: Bellefleur. And the pigeons: Chandon, with his hazelnut-colored hair, had taken off. Though Camille had thought Foudriard in his blue coat had escaped with Chandon, it seemed he’d fled separately. Roland had sounded the alarm. But why had Rosier not mentioned Lazare? She willed her voice not to break. “There was a black-headed pigeon that you loved well, wasn’t there?”
His face crumpled. “We do not know what happened to him. Not yet.”
“But you believe he will come home?”
“Of course.”
“And I? I am not one of your pigeons, but I seem to have found myself in a very solid cage.”
“First thing of sense you’ve said,” laughed the guard, his face visible through the window in the door.
“You must be brave.” Sophie took her hand.
“Why?” Their faces were very grave. “Tell me, what is it?”
“First, this new law is ridiculous. Who can show that a magician has ever hurt them?” Rosier said angrily. “The lawyer I spoke to assured me that he could get the charge dismissed. But it seems that we cannot avoid a trial.”
He said more, explaining what had gone wrong, but there was a ringing in her ears over which she couldn’t hear any other word but trial. Jurors, a solemn judge. Odette, eager to provide whatever evidence she could: her thumb on the scale, as she’d said. The prosecutor who’d use everything to argue for her death.
“Rosier, when will it be? I should like some time to prepare—”
“Camille, please sit.” Sophie tried to bring her to a chair. “It’s so sudden, I know—”
I am being brave, she wanted to scream. She was being as brave as she could. “When?”
“Tomorrow.”
Too soon. “And if I am convicted,” she said, dully. “When will I die?”
“That will not happen!” Sophie said fiercely.
Rosier took a hard drag on his pipe. “I trust you will not be convicted. Still, I plan for all eventualities. I will take good care of the pigeons. But to transport them, I’ll need breeding certificates with their parents’ names and—”
“Shut it—no one cares about your stupid pigeons!” the guard muttered.
Passports. Rosier meant to get them out of France. Somehow. “Henriette—the little one, with the fair nest of hair—is very skilled with those kinds of things. Writes a beautiful script.”
Sophie squeezed his hand. “I’ll tell you more afterward, Charles.”
“I’ll go today. And you, our dearest one, must speak with your lawyer, Dufresne, who is waiting in the hall.”
“Try not to worry,” Sophie said as she embraced Camille once more. Her chin trembled, but she managed to whisper, “You are in g
ood hands.”
* * *
After they left—Sophie wiping away tears, Rosier clutching his pipe in his fist—the lawyer came in. He was short, with busy eyebrows and a large mouth. His clothes were all black, and on his head he wore a gray wig.
He bowed. “Vicomtesse de Séguin.”
“Monsieur Dufresne. Please sit.” Restless, Camille went again to the window. Over the rooftops, heavy clouds threatened rain. “Where would you like to begin?”
He frowned, not unkindly. “I did not realize what a child you are. Very young to be charged.”
I have been working magic since I was ten. “I’m charged just the same.”
“Your youth will be a point in your favor, I am certain of it.” He laid out papers on the table, sifting through them. “You are accused of using magic to undermine the cause of the people. For being a magician and ipso facto, a traitor to France.”
“What does ‘ipso facto’ mean?”
“That simply by being a magician, you are a traitor.” He cleared his throat. “Any truth to this charge? You may tell me anything in confidence.”
Agitated, Camille left the window. “I never hurt the people of Paris. I tried to help them. You’ve heard of the Lost Girls who lived under the bridge and nearly lost their home?”
He beamed. “There was a public outcry over their treatment, and they were saved!”
“I wrote the pamphlets that rallied the people of Paris on their behalf,” she said. “I never hurt them, with magic or anything else!”
Outside, rain tapped against the panes.
“But you do not deny you are a magician. Which, ipso facto…”
“What if I am?” She was gratified to see him flinch. “How can the prosecutor prove it? What evidence do they have that I am a magician?”
With the end of his quill, the lawyer scratched under his wig. “Because of the charge of magic, I went this morning to search the Comité records. In the last week, they were given something magical from your house.”
“But they have never been inside!”
He consulted his notes. “A small valise, with glass vials in it.”
Odette must have taken it. But how would she even know they were magical and not, say, bottles of perfume? “They are nothing that anyone but a magician would recognize.”
He sighed. “Nevertheless, they have them.”
“And they hate magic, that we know.”
“It is not simply a matter of hate, madame. That has gone on for centuries. These days it is a matter of law. No hatred is required.”
She spun to face him. “Did you know that Louis XIV executed the magicians who helped build Versailles because they threatened his power? This king is just the same—blaming magicians, good and bad—while he destroys the revolution!”
“Madame! I recognize that you are a pamphleteer, but you will not make these kinds of outbursts in court! They will not make a good impression on the jury.”
“But they are the truth!” She wanted to pull the whole place down around her. “How can they judge me if they don’t know the truth?”
He held up a patient hand. “You must leave that to me. And you must be as plain and silent as the grave. Answer only the questions that are put to you as briefly as possible. No pamphleteering—vous comprenez?”
She understood all too well. “I promise.”
51
“Stand and state your name.” A hush descended over the room as the prosecutor spoke.
Camille rose from the hard wooden chair. The air in the courtroom was stifling. In the gallery, Sophie and Rosier sat close together. Sophie wore a wide-brimmed hat to hide her face, but Camille could still see the frightened crimp of her mouth. Rosier caught Camille’s eye and smiled, his hand clenched tight around his pipe. Both of them seemed prepared for the worst.
Behind them clustered the Lost Girls—the forger Henriette, glaring furiously at the judge; Giselle, nervously plucking at a tricolor corsage on her wrist; the always serious lock picker, Claudine. Otherwise there were not many she knew among the spectators. Two journalists crouched at the end of a row, quills in hand, already writing. An illustrator, his tablet against his knee, studying her and then his drawing paper.
Soon her face would be everywhere. On every street corner of Paris, the criers who’d once shouted the girls’ stories would now shout hers. Wherever Lazare was hiding, was this how he would hear what happened to her?
But she was determined not think of that now. Instead, she would do what her lawyer had advised: speak as little as possible, and let him do the work so she would walk free.
“Camille Durbonne,” she said, clearly.
“Are you not a widow? With a title?”
It was nothing, a title, a name. But the jurors sat forward, waiting. “I am also the Vicomtesse de Séguin.”
“Aha,” someone noted, as if she’d been caught in a lie.
“Madame la Vicomtesse, then.” The prosecutor, a tall man in a white wig, approached. “Let us do this quickly, non? The good people of the jury and the observers in the gallery shall not be kept waiting to see justice done.” With a flourish, he shook out his cuffs, as if to say: Let’s get to work. “To the charge of being a magician, that is, practicing magic and hurting the people of France?”
“What of it?”
“Did you?”
“Did I hurt the people? No.”
One of the jurors swore. Mutterings from the gallery.
“And of magic?” The prosecutor rubbed his hands together. “Be careful as you answer, Madame la Vicomtesse. Consider if you have ever consorted with magicians or owned prohibited magic objects. If you have, in any way, been helped by magic.”
Helped by magic? She wanted to laugh. What did she have but her own magic?
Her lawyer, Dufresne, gave a tiny shake of his head. She knew what she must say, but the wrongness of it grated at her. A few short weeks ago she could have said no. But after Blaise’s murder, how could she? After she had found her voice through magic and used it to advance the cause of the Lost Girls? Magic was not the enemy. She remembered the horror she’d felt in the blur when Blaise’s aunt had threatened to cut the magic from him, as if removing a cancer. But to deny magic would be to deny herself.
Calmly, as if it cost her nothing, she said, “I have not been helped by magic.”
A snicker ran through the gallery. The prosecutor shifted lightly on his feet, as pleased as a street conjuror about to make a final reveal. “I call a witness.”
Like everyone else in the courtroom, Camille’s head swiveled toward the door. Odette strode in, dressed in her usual black riding clothes, her pistols tucked into a belt. Over her coiled red hair, she wore the black hat she’d worn at the march on Versailles. As she took her place at a witness stand, the brim cast her face into shadow.
“Please state your name, mademoiselle.”
“Odette Leblanc.”
“Occupation?”
She squared her shoulders. “Revolutionary. Pamphleteer.”
The gallery gave her a round of applause; the judge called hoarsely at them to refrain.
“Do you know the accused?” said the prosecutor.
Odette nodded demurely. “I have lived in her house.”
Gasps from the jury.
“Why?”
She wheeled toward Camille then. Her face was hard, as if she might grind her to dust with her stare. “Working for the Comité, I infiltrated her house in order to gather evidence about the activities of a club of antirevolutionary magicians.”
Camille gripped the back of her chair, willing her face blank. It had not been just a personal grievance. For many long weeks, she had been working with the Comité to bring Camille down. She did not wear their red cloak, but she might as well have one slung over her shoulders.
“In your role as an investigator, did you find anything of note?”
“I did,” she said. “I gave those items to the Comité.”
“What were they?
”
“A small valise, full of poison.”
Not poison. But how had she found it?
“Anything else?”
Gleefully, Odette said: “A book.”
“Ah. What kind of a book?”
“A magic one. I found it in a bookstore owned by a magician who was arrested by the Comité.”
“And murdered before he could stand trial!” Camille burst out.
“Silence,” the prosecutor hissed. From his desk, he picked up a small, rectangular package, wrapped in brown paper. Holding it gingerly by one corner, he brought it to Odette. “Was it this book?”
She picked it up as an eager hush ran through the gallery, everyone eager to see a piece of magic firsthand. “Yes. I found it when we raided the magician’s bookshop. Her name is on it.”
Hatred snaked through her. Had they raided the shop the night that Blaise was murdered? Had Odette been there when Blaise was accused? Perhaps she had done the accusing herself. Sneered as he was dragged into the snowy street, laughing as the horn blew to rally the mob, as if setting hounds on the scent of his fear. Imagine if he had put a stop to his magic. He would still be alive. She gripped the railing in front of her as the room swayed unsteadily …
“Attention!” Rosier shouted. “Madame is about to faint!”
There was a hard hand under her elbow, the sharp whiff of sal volatile. As the smelling salts revived her, the crowded room swelled into too sharp clarity once more.
Wasting no time, the prosecutor held the package high before handing it to Odette. Camille Durbonne was written on it in ink. It must be The Silver Leaf, which Blaise hadn’t dared to send for fear of someone intercepting it. Despite everything, she longed for it.
“Will you open it and show the jury?”
Odette unwrapped the package. Inside was a book, which she held up so the jury could see. The cover was not green with silver stamps, as Camille had thought it would be, but black. The writing was not French, or any language that Camille recognized. Instead the pages were faintly covered with a series of tiny black marks, more like the scratchings of a knife. Her skin prickled. Why would Blaise have wanted her to have this?
Everything That Burns Page 29