“What language is that, mademoiselle?”
For a moment, Odette seemed chagrined. “Not good, honest French, that’s for certain. It’s a foul book of magic.”
As she spoke, a slight breeze caught in the pages, rustling. The courtroom held its breath as one after another they turned, until eventually the book stood open to the very last page. On it was the sharp, red outline of a hand. Blood-warded. She knew instantly what that outline was for, and what it did.
“And what does the magician, the Vicomtesse de Séguin, have to say about that?”
Camille’s lawyer spoke up. “She will speak after you have finished with your witness.”
“You may sit down, Mademoiselle Leblanc,” the prosecutor said.
“Before she does, I have one question for Mademoiselle Leblanc,” said Monsieur Dufresne.
Odette looked as if she might laugh.
“The writing on that book—do you know for certain that it was the writing of the bookseller? The one who was hanged by a mob the same night the Comité raided the shop?”
She shrugged. “It was his shop. His package, ready to send out.”
“Perhaps this one had been prepared, by him or someone else … and then Madame Durbonne’s name found its way on it? Do you have a sample of the bookseller’s handwriting, mademoiselle, so that we may make a match?”
“His shop burned to the ground,” she said, dismissively. “I cannot help you.”
Camille glared at Dufresne. Why hadn’t he asked her? She could have given him Blaise’s letter and it would have been proved that Blaise had not set it aside for her. For all she knew, Odette had taken the most frightening-looking book of magic in the shop and wrapped it up herself to discredit Camille. Her faith in this lawyer was steadily eroding.
“That will be all,” Dufresne said, and Odette stepped down.
The prosecutor then wheeled toward Camille. “Tell me what you know of that valise that was taken from your house. Or tell me first, perhaps, about this clearly dangerous book.”
Stay quiet. “Which will it be, monsieur?”
“Do you know what this book is? And why it has your name on it?”
She remembered Blaise’s warm, cluttered shop. Books and teacups on every surface. The rolls of maps jostling in a cream-colored urn. His white cat curled up, pressed against the window. Blaise, working late. Determined, despite the risk, to save the books, and the knowledge they contained. That night, another collection was coming into his hands. And so he’d set a lantern on his desk and pried open crates and paged through volume after dusty volume, forgetting to be careful.
“I know nothing of it. Mademoiselle Leblanc was in the shop that night—perhaps she wrote my name on it?”
“Madame,” warned Dufresne.
“Too bad she killed the bookseller, or you could ask him! He feared for his life, monsieur. People had come into his shop—we know who they are now—with the intention of murdering him. What was his great crime? Collecting books!”
“You stand accused of magic, madame,” the prosecutor said. “Are you saying you consorted with a known magician?”
She gestured at her lawyer to say something. But he did not.
“Consorted? If you mean visiting his bookshop, then yes, I did. Have bookshops now been banned? Or must we stop reading, unless it is certain approved pamphlets and certain newspapers? And let me correct you, monsieur,” she said savagely, “he was not a known magician—he was murdered before he could stand trial on that charge. It was rumor and the mob that convicted him.”
“Counselor,” the judge warned. “Your client must answer the question—”
“Quiet now, madame,” Dufresne said. “I will ask the questions later.”
Would he? He’d shown no signs of defending her and she feared he never would. Fury rose in her, rushing her forward. She faced the jury. “Do you not see what our King Louis has done? He’s made an enemy for you to hate of the magicians. A dog to kick, someone to blame your troubles on.” Camille’s heart was in her throat, but she pressed on. “Has Louis signed the Constitution?” A rustle in the gallery: everyone knew he had not yet signed it. “He pretends to stand with the people, but he doesn’t! While you blame magicians for your suffering, you let the king avoid any responsibility!”
“Counselor! Control your client!”
Dufresne made a frantic wave, but Camille ignored him. “I will not be silenced.” Her voice was low, dangerous. “I will not sit quiet while this court—this revolution—pretends it is just, when it is not.”
Odette began to laugh. “What a trial! What order we have in this courtroom! Why did I have to come here to testify against her, when she’s practically admitted she’s a magician?” Odette gripped the edge of the railing behind which she stood. “I know what they are. My own father was an aristocrat magician.”
Shocked voices erupted from the gallery. “A great man, so they said. With his charm and his magic, he seduced my mother and set her up in her own little house where I was born.” She was nearly wistful when she added, “We were happy then. My mother loved him, and he would arrive every week with armfuls of presents. But he tired soon of me. He fled, and my mother ran after him. Abandoned, I tried to sell the things he gave us. Only when they turned back to rubbish did I discover he’d enchanted them.”
“Monsieur,” Dufresne said to the judge, “please tell Mademoiselle Leblanc to stand down. It is not her turn! This has no relevance to this case!”
“Yes, it does,” Odette sneered. “Wait and you will see what evidence I have gathered. You know what they were, once the magic wore off? Broken scraps of tin and paper and wood. Rien!” Her face grew keen as she remembered. “Everything he ever gave us was changed back to dust. The only things he could have given me that I truly wanted—his name and his love—were too precious to part with. He’d insisted I learn to read and write, and what good did it do me? It only taught me how little I was worth.”
Despite herself, Camille’s heart ached for Odette. To be abandoned like that!
“So how do I know, beyond a doubt, that this book is magic?” Hard pride gleamed in Odette’s face. “Magic has a smell, did you know? I grew up thinking it was the scent of love, because I connected it with my father. Oh, how wrong I was! It is the scent of destruction and corruption! And unless we root it out wherever it may be, it will ruin us.”
The gallery applauded, stamped their feet. Taking a shaking breath, Odette glared triumphantly at Camille.
“You are out of order!” shouted Dufresne. But the judge said nothing. He let it go on. It was no longer a true trial, if it ever had been one. It was a performance, and Camille feared how it would end.
Odette jabbed a finger at Camille. “Her whole house stinks of magic! The attics are full of it! I have gone over half of Paris, sniffing out magic with the Comité, and there was never such a foul nest of it as her house.”
A hush fell over the room. In the emptiness, there was only the scrape of a shoe, the scratch of dead leaves against the windows.
Camille’s eyes blazed. “I am truly sorry, Odette, that you had a father who did not love you. But bad people are not always magicians. They’re everywhere, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Enough, madame!” insisted the prosecutor. “Answer the question. Are you a magician and therefore a traitor to France?”
She was the bonfire, burning in the streets. She was fever and flame. And if she did not speak, it would consume her. “I am a pamphleteer for the revolution,” she said, fierce and defiant. “I have used the magic of words to help the poorest among us, and if Odette Leblanc were honest, she would admit that.”
“The magic of words!” she jeered. “It was more than that! Your spying, your vanishing, your magic-infested house—”
“How narrow your mind is, Odette, that you think no one else can do good but you. Has hatred made it so small?” She paused, and looked out over the gallery. The reporters scribbled furiously, and even from here, she cou
ld see the sketch on the cartoonist’s paper: two red-haired girls facing each other. Behind the scribblers sat the Lost Girls, frozen, except for Giselle, red-eyed, rocking back and forth in her seat. Sophie’s face was pressed against Rosier’s shoulder. More people had come in to line the back of the courtroom. Hundreds of eyes and ears and hearts. Soon the papers and pamphlets describing the sensational trial would be printed and circulating all over Paris.
The only sound in the courtroom was the scraping of the quills. She would not let them tell her story—not that way.
“Magic,” she said, “is not evil. That is like saying a hammer is evil. Or a scythe, because it can be used to kill as well as to bring in the harvest.” As she spoke, Camille felt the fever-magic rise in her. Sympathy for the girls, the deaths of her parents, magicians hunted, Lazare gone—and whatever pain still awaited. “My magic helped print pamphlets that saved the lost girls from cruel eviction. It brought money to feed them and warm clothes. Magic,” she insisted, her voice rising, “helped them see themselves as important.”
“Quiet, madame, or we will have to remove you—”
She would not be quiet. She might never have an audience as large as this, and she would say what she must to convince them. Otherwise, what meaning did her life have?
“I am proud to be a magician!” she blazed. “Do you know where magic comes from? Not from evil, but from understanding. From great sorrow, great feeling at injustice and suffering. How can it be wrong? Sympathy is the fuel that changes the world, is it not? Magic is revolution!”
Someone in the gallery stood up, face crimson: “Magic is unnatural! The accused is outside the law, and therefore has no rights! Take her away!”
Had no one had heard her? Had her words had meant nothing?
The courtroom dissolved into chaos. After that there was nothing more to be said for the shouting down of the gallery, and the prosecution rested. Dufresne shuffled away, head down. The jury deliberated for ten fretful minutes while Camille sat in a room no larger than a closet. A fly buzzed against the glass of the barred window. Beyond it echoed the chants: Magician! Magician!
Dufresne stood behind her, and she listened to him wheeze. “You spoke too much,” he said finally. “There was no order. You should have let me—”
“I did, monsieur. I waited, and you did not defend me.”
* * *
When she returned to the courtroom, the jury had already been seated. Odette raised an eyebrow at Camille and dragged a finger across her throat.
Odette’s gesture filled Camille with foreboding. The future of magic in France would be determined now. If Camille did not win this, more magicians would follow in her footsteps. They would sit in courtrooms just like this, be convicted on made-up charges, executed. The revolution she’d believed in would lose its credibility, and then the losses to the people would be even greater.
The judge cleared his throat. “Camille de Veaux, also called Camille Durbonne, Vicomtesse de Séguin, you have been found guilty of the charges levied against you. You will be hanged by the neck until you are dead.” The gallery roared, and the judge banged his gavel for quiet. “Tomorrow at four at the Place de Grève.”
She would be hanged like any commoner, a rope around her neck. The room swayed again, and she clung so hard to the railing her arms shook. She must stay standing. She must not faint, not now.
Dufresne slouched away, shaking his head. In the commotion, Camille saw Rosier stand, the Lost Girls behind him. Their faces were fierce, unflinching, their hands on their hearts. You are one of us. Rosier’s face was blank with worry, but he mouthed at her: Soon. Raucous, the spectators pushed out of the courtroom, making plans to meet at the square tomorrow where the execution would take place. Once I might have been among them, she thought, applauding the death of the ancien régime, content never to consider the situation more deeply. Even Roland had been changed—for a moment—when he drank the unknown girl’s tears and felt her pain. But to have sympathy you must let yourself feel vulnerable, and she did not think a crowd ever did.
A guard dragged her toward a side exit. Odette and the prosecutor made their way to the larger double doors, where a crowd of supporters waited for them. One girl stepped forward from the jostling group. It was Giselle. In her hand, she still held the tricolor corsage. Who was it for? For the briefest of moments, her eyes met Camille’s. They brimmed with heartbreak.
Giselle waved and called out to Odette, “Mon amie! You did it!” She held up the corsage.
Giselle was now on Odette’s side? Camille felt her betrayal like a kick in the gut.
Arms out, Odette skipped toward Giselle, her face lit with happiness. “It is over!” she crowed as the two girls embraced. “I made certain of the evidence, just as I told you I would, n’est-ce pas? Now she’ll never trouble us again! We can go back to the way things were. All of us together again.”
“Never again,” Giselle said as she squeezed Odette tight. One of Giselle’s hands was tangled in the sweep of Odette’s red hair, the other close around her friend’s waist. The crowd in the courtroom cheered to see the girls reunited. Camille ached to see Giselle overwhelmed by emotion—were those tears on her cheeks?
No, Camille thought. Something is wrong—
Suddenly Giselle smiled, wild and lost and grim, like a fox in a trap, ready to bite off its own foot. Her hand darted out—and wrenched a pistol from Odette’s belt.
“Vive la révolution!” she cried.
“No!” Camille tried to wrench free of her guard. “Stop, Giselle!”
She hesitated. For one long moment, she and Camille looked at each other. In Giselle’s hand, the black nose of the pistol shook. Then she closed her eyes and fired.
The gunshot shattered the world.
Women screamed. Men shouted for a surgeon. The crowd surged toward the girls. A dozen hands grasped Giselle and dragged her away. She did not resist, only crossed her arms over her chest and let them take her.
Odette lay motionless on the floor, a lake of blood widening around her.
Amid shouts for help, men in the courtroom gathered her in their arms. Her head tipped lifelessly back, red hair spilling free of her hat. The men carrying her slid in her blood. Under the light of the courtroom’s many candles her dress gleamed, as slick as if she’d been dragged from the river.
Numbly, Camille said, “Is the surgeon not coming?”
“No surgeon can help her,” muttered the guard.
“And the girl? Giselle?”
“They’ll try her, and I warrant she’ll hang—right alongside you.” The guard grasped Camille’s arm and yanked her toward the side door. “One more death on your conscience, magician.”
52
The guard shoved hard between Camille’s shoulder blades, and she stumbled into her cell. The door banged shut with a dismal clang. There followed the now-familiar jangle of iron keys before her jailer moved away. Did he stand outside, now that she was condemned? Or was a chair down the hall still acceptable for the guard of the first magician to be executed in Paris in more than two hundred years?
The view from the barred window had not changed. Prisoners still strolled their well-worn routes through the familiar garden. She envied them those tiny paths of freedom. For them this might be their home for the next few months … not, as it was for her, merely a rest stop on the way to the gallows. Damp radiated up from the floor; in her flimsy shoes her toes ached with the cold. At least she could still feel something.
At least she was still alive.
Returning to La Petite Force she had been heckled, taunted, ridiculed. The people of Paris had thronged the doorway of the court, jubilating in the promise of her hanging. “À la lanterne les magiciens!” they chanted. She couldn’t shield herself from the rotten food they slung at her, and she tripped on the cobbles. The soldiers who marched alongside her took their time, trading knowing smiles.
No sympathy for the magician. She could hardly remember what she’d said in co
urt when she’d tried to speak her truth. But what did it matter? Nothing had changed. Maman had told her only a few would ever understand magic. But did that mean she would have to go to the gallows?
She forced herself to consider it. The great square would become a sea, a heaving mass of spectators. Jostling, mingling, they would be out for the spectacle, there to enjoy themselves. She thought of the parties at Versailles, glittering and decadent. They were another kind of revel, but they too had been an upside-down world where different rules might apply. Even more so at a masquerade—
Her mind wrenched painfully back to the courtroom. To Giselle. Why had she done it? She struggled to think of Odette dead, to understand what had happened, and why. But there was only the slick of red on the floor, the corsage crushed into it, the acrid haze of gunpowder and distant screams. Giselle was here, somewhere in the prison. Was she cold, like Camille? Frightened? Or was she serene in knowing she’d accomplished what she’d set out to do?
Disguised as Odette’s friend, Giselle had struck a blow for the revolution. It made Camille wonder if she might—
A sharp knock. The guard eyed her through the open door. “Visitors.”
Sophie and Rosier came in, Sophie’s face puffy from crying. Behind them marched the guard who sat heavily on a chair in the corner. “Five minutes.”
“Camille!” Sophie cried.
“You mustn’t cry, ma chérie.” Camille pulled her close. Sophie’s heart beat fast and hard and regular, and it gave Camille courage. She thought back to Les Merveilleux, the puppets flying away. She remembered all the different versions of the play Sophie and Rosier had devised. Could there not be one final retelling of that story?
She took a steadying breath and hoped that she could make them understand the plot unfolding in her mind. It would take skill and perception and much planning. The burden on them would be great to make it happen—and quickly. “All will be well. I only wish I didn’t have to miss the spectacle.”
Everything That Burns Page 30