Everything That Burns

  She walked on, buffeted by winds but grateful for them. One more day, and then England. One more day for Lazare and Foudriard to arrive. What kept them? Perhaps they hadn’t gotten away. Perhaps he’d had to fight and was now injured, dying. The wind snatched at her hair and she brushed it back. She refused to think those thoughts. He would come. If not today, then tomorrow. And if not then, he would find them in Dover.

  Sleek black birds, their necks curved like snakes, drifted on the water until, as one, they dove, disappearing under the waves.

  But if he didn’t?

  She vowed to return to France. Rosier could stay with Sophie. Perhaps she’d set up another shop, making whatever she wanted. They would be happy together, she knew.

  And Camille? She would use her dress and her magic to disguise herself once more. She’d scour the streets of Paris, the prisons, all the hiding places she could uncover. She would be a thousand different people, each one a stranger, inquiring about a tall, brown-skinned boy with hair like a blackbird’s wing. An inventor, she might say to encourage them, miming pockets full of things he’d gathered to fuel his dreams. A cloud-watcher. Elegant, clever hands, and a lazy, swoon-inducing smile. Maybe they’d have seen him, and she would go in the direction they told her. Sorrow would be a lonely companion, but it would fuel her search.

  Below the cliffs, waves rolled in. In the moment before they crashed and dissolved on the sand, they became like molten glass, an unearthly blue. One after another, never ceasing.

  She too would be relentless. She would not give up.

  Even if it took her whole life, she would never stop searching.

  58

  They left in a skiff at dawn, the tide running out.

  Duprès had told them they’d be less conspicuous leaving from the beach below the inn, rather than the harbor at Wissant. From the beach, a smaller skiff would take them to a fishing boat in which they’d cross the Channel. Melancholy and dispirited, they’d followed him down a narrow path that wound through waving grass and rippled sand to the water. Off the beach waited the flat-bottomed skiff, a lone figure at her oars. Duprès had sent their trunks to the dock in town, from which, if all went as planned, the fishing vessel would depart and wait for its secret passengers.

  At Duprès’s insistence, they removed their shoes and stockings. Camille and Sophie carried their skirts over their arms, the icy water numbing their feet as they waded to the skiff. They climbed in awkwardly, pants and skirts now soaking wet. As if he’d done it all his life, Rosier walked the boat out until it cleared the sand before he jumped in.

  As the sailor put his back into the rowing, and Chandon and Rosier each took an oar and began to pull, Camille waved at Duprès, who stood on the far dunes, solemnly watching them depart. On the strand, the footprints they’d left were already erased.

  At anchor, a good way from shore, lay the fishing boat. Her two masts poked like fingers into the brightening sky. On her hull was painted her name: Estelle. As soon as the fishermen spotted the little skiff, they lifted the anchor and began to raise the sails. Camille looked back toward Wissant, the forest of masts in the harbor.

  The boys had not come.

  With an aching heart, Camille clambered up a rope ladder to the deck of the Estelle. The captain said gruffly that she might find the passage less troublesome belowdecks, for the sea was still rough. It was dark in the belly of the boat, and it smelled of rotten fish. She found a narrow cabin where a lantern swayed on a hook and sat down on a bench. She didn’t want to watch France recede behind her.

  Paris would still be the place where good and terrible things had happened, all the pieces of her life. The glorious balloon flights with Lazare, the stars seen from the tower at Notre-Dame, the terrible oak tree like a gallows, cozy Flotsam House under the bridge and the muttering Hôtel Séguin protective behind its gate, her printing press and her memories of her family, the silver-black river always running away. Paris was where she’d become who she was. It was inside of her, forever.

  And England?

  She couldn’t grasp it. Lazare had told her about the cliffs of Dover, but seeing them without him—she shook her head. She knew already she would not stay there very long. Once Sophie and the others were settled, she’d return to search for him.

  At first the crossing was rough, the stout vessel rolling as it raced ahead of the wind, but it didn’t take long for the sea to change. Through the porthole she watched the waves shrink until only small puffs roughed the water’s surface and the sailing became smooth.

  Suddenly Sophie appeared in the doorway of the little cabin, her eyes sparkling. “You’re not feeling seasick, are you?”

  Camille shook her head.

  “Then you must come up on the deck! Quickly! The sun is breaking through the clouds and dancing on the water. You must not miss it! I promise you’ll find it quite extraordinary.”

  Reluctantly, Camille took her sister’s hand. Together, kicking their skirts out of the way, they climbed the ladder to the deck. Around her, the sea spread out in storm-gray hues. She’d seen it on the map, and knew that compared to the great oceans of the world this was only a narrow strait, but nevertheless it felt enormous and endless. The air was alive as it rushed cold over her skin, full of tiny water droplets. She inhaled the fresh, briny scent, and it felt as though it cleared something in her.

  “See? Isn’t it wonderful?” Sophie squeezed her hand. “Take it all in.”

  “Very well,” she said, smiling at Sophie’s enthusiasm. “It is magnificent to be at sea.” Ahead fog still hung over the water, but now that the sun was shining, she hoped it would burn off, revealing the English side. “Do you think the cliffs will be as lovely as they say?”

  “I cannot wait to see them! Though there are many beautiful things in the world.”

  “Oh? You seem quite captivated by the sea journey,” Camille observed.

  “Perhaps I am. It is full of surprises, don’t you think?” Sophie shaded her eyes and looked back toward Wissant. “I never imagined there would be so many ships. Though ours is a paltry enough thing. Don’t scold me! It reeks of fish guts and is slippery with scales, while others are dashing and sleek. There,” she said, pointing, “the one with the yellow hull—see how fast it comes!”

  Following Sophie’s finger, Camille spotted a small sloop cutting across the water, its sails so full of wind that the vessel heeled low over the waves. Three people moved back and forth on deck. “It’s nearly in the water!”

  “How fearless they are!” Sophie winked at Camille. “What if they are pirates?”

  “I’ll fetch my cutlass!” Camille laughed, despite her sadness trying to play along. “I left it belowdecks.”

  “Not yet,” Sophie said, catching ahold of Camille’s sleeve as if she actually would go. “I wish to see what happens next.”

  For several long minutes they watched the vessel cut through the water. Spray leaped from its bow, frothing into the air and hiding its crew from view. With its large triangular sail and two smaller, narrower ones in front, it looked like a flock of flying white birds. Now and again Camille glimpsed the quickly moving figures on deck. When it seemed it might pass beyond them, the nimble sloop tacked, changing course as swift as thought. It had been going fast before, but now it ate up the distance like it was nothing.

  “They are coming toward us!” Camille gasped. Were there really pirates in the Channel? She thought of their belongings in the hold, the sack of jewelry. “Does the captain know?”

  “I suspect he does—they’re pulling up beside us! The fishermen are throwing them lines!”

  The little sloop had let out its sails and was gliding along the Estelle. The sun off the water made it hard to see—but one of the young men on board, clearly the captain, wore a naval uniform. With a practiced motion, he grabbed a line as it sailed through the air and, hand over hand, pulled them closer. One of the others was tall, and lean, and something about his easy movements reminded her of Lazare. The memory
of him hurt, like a hand crushing her heart.

  “Camille, do you see?”

  She held her hand up against the glare as another line was thrown to the yellow-hulled sloop. The tall one caught it effortlessly, as if ropes were everyday things to him.

  “Sophie? That boy—he is so familiar to me.” She felt faint, and the cries of seagulls and the plash of waves seemed very far away. “Do not tease me anymore. Tell me true—is it him?”

  Sophie’s eyes shone with happy tears. “That’s why I fetched you from the cabin! The captain had just got the signal from a navy officer—a Baron de Guilleux?—that they were coming.”

  It was Lazare, and she thought she would splinter to pieces as he pulled in the line, drawing the sloop closer. In that unguarded moment, she saw how his ragged clothes, the same ones he’d been wearing the night they’d gone to Les Mots Volants, hung from his shoulders. How dirty and raw-boned his face was. The yellowing bruise on his temple. “Lazare!”

  He spun toward the deck of the Estelle. The fatigue vanished from his face as joy overtook it. As if they’d only just parted, he shouted, “Did you see how fast we were?”

  When she nodded, hardly able to speak, he gazed at her with such intensity she felt she might burn to ash in the heat of it. Taking the line in his hands, he leaped.

  She held out her arms. He slipped as he scrabbled for a foothold, but then he caught himself and slid across the deck into her embrace. The fisherman whooped. She ran her hands down his damp cheeks, his neck, his shoulders. Solid and warm and real.

  “Where have you been?” Relief made her voice shake. “I wanted to believe you were safe, but it was so hard—”

  “Mon âme.” He held her close, his arm cradling her. “Shall I tell it all to you now?”

  She nodded gravely.

  “We came as soon as we could. That night, at Les Mots Volants, when you were taken by the Comité, I fought with the guards to free you. But it was impossible. Foudriard and I were nearly caught ourselves. I didn’t dare return to my parents’ house. My tutor once had taken me into the sewers the Romans built under Paris, and there we hid. Under Paris, in the filth, cut off from the world above. I didn’t know what had happened to you until I crept out at night to speak to your gatekeeper, who gave me a message Rosier had left with him. But by then we had already missed the performance of Les Merveilleux, and your escape.” He didn’t look away from her, not for a moment. “My parents were willing to loan us horses, and on them we fled to Wissant, only to arrive at the empty inn this morning.” He shook his head, though if it was in despair or wonder at their luck, she didn’t know. “I vowed I would not rest until I had found you.”

  “I vowed the same, you know. Walking above the shore of Wissant.”

  “You didn’t doubt?”

  “I didn’t doubt you. I doubted the world, Lazare. I thought it would tangle you in its web and keep you away.” She didn’t care if he saw her tears as they spilled hot over her wind-cold cheeks. She’d been brave long enough.

  Slowly, lovingly, he kissed away her tears. “The old world is flawed. But the one we make will be different. Better.”

  “Do you promise?”

  He pressed her to him, close to his heart. “I promise.”

  Then Foudriard climbed aboard to be warmly embraced and kissed by everyone, while Chandon laughed through his tears. Then the fishermen were pulling up anchor and trimming the sails as the Estelle sailed onward to England.

  They were approaching the far shore when Lazare took her hand. “Régardes! Do you see them?” he pointed excitedly off the stern of the boat, where the waves curled and frothed.

  There was something in the water. Something alive, something moving. A gleam of silver, tiny bubbles—and then a silver-gray creature leaped clear of the foam. It cast itself into the air, its short narrow snout playfully raised, before diving back under the water. Another one followed behind, swimming sideways beneath the waves, its sweet black eye facing them.

  “She sees us!”

  Lazare slipped an arm around her waist. “Adventurers, she’s thinking.”

  Entranced, Camille watched as the sleek creature kept easy pace with the boat. “She’s going as fast as we are! She must be a dolphin, non?”

  “Just like the ones I saw from the balloon when we sailed along the coast from Lille.”

  He had kept his promise.

  Behind them, the sky was storm and rain. But across the narrow sleeve of water, the light transformed. The clouds had been torn apart by the wind and now the afternoon sun gilded the high chalk cliffs. Rosier was laughing, pulling heavy nets with the fishermen, while Chandon and Foudriard had disappeared to stand at the stern, Chandon’s hands warming inside Foudriard’s coat. It was as if nothing else in the world existed. They seemed hardly to speak, but both were smiling—one grave, one teasing—as the Estelle drew closer to its destination.

  “You don’t happen to have that package I gave you?” Lazare asked.

  “Of course.” She reached in her pocket and handed it to him. “I carried it with me always … I felt I couldn’t set it aside.”

  His inquiring gaze met hers. “You never opened it?”

  “It’s yours, n’est-ce pas? I also had the strangest feeling, that if I did as you asked, you’d return to me.”

  “And so it came to pass.” His voice was rough, unsteady. “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Pulling at the knots, he unwrapped the fabric layer by layer, the ragged ends of it flicking in the wind, until the box was laid bare. It was a tiny silver snuffbox. It would have fit in a circle made by her thumb and forefinger with room to spare. On its blue-enameled lid winked a constellation, each star a tiny, glittering diamond.

  Seeing it in Lazare’s hand, his long brown fingers cradling the vulnerable and valuable object, the memory of another snuffbox came to her. The one she’d found on the stairs at Versailles in the spring and lost to Chandon in a gamble she’d hoped would change her life. And it had. She hadn’t known at the time what would happen when she slipped it into her dress’s secret pocket. It had been a golden key that had unlocked everything that came after. Such a small thing, to set her on this path.

  Lazare polished the top of the snuffbox against his coat. As he did so, the wind caught in the edge of the fabric and tore it out of his grasp.

  “Oh no!” Camille cried.

  But the wrapping was gone; they both watched the fabric sail away, winking red, before it disappeared over the water.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Lazare said. “What’s important is what’s inside.” He flicked the lid open.

  Camille stood on her toes but couldn’t see. “Snuff?” she teased. “Is that what I’ve been carrying all this time?”

  He plucked something out of the box and showed her. Between his fingers gleamed a ring of yellow gold, set with a scarlet stone as big as her thumbnail. In the watery light, it flickered like slow fire.

  She’d never seen anything like it, not at Versailles or anywhere else. “How beautiful it is!”

  “It’s the only one of its kind. It was commissioned by my Indian grandfather, a gift to his daughter on her wedding day. After she died, it was one of the few things that traveled with my father on that long voyage from Pondichéry to Paris.”

  “You’re not thinking of selling it, are you?” she demanded. “We don’t need to do that. Not yet.”

  “I’ve got another plan for it.” He took her hand, brought it to his lips. “Camille?”

  Her heart startled like a bird in her chest.

  “There is nothing I love more than you in this world. While we were hiding under Paris, it was so dark, but still we knew the day was over, when night came, for there was a grate through which we could see the first star rise. It told me one more day had passed and that we’d heard nothing, knew nothing, had done nothing … do you know what haunted me then?”

  She shook her head only the slightest bit, afraid to break the spell.

  “That I w
ould die in that wretched gloom without ever seeing you again.” His breath was ragged and raw. “I could not endure knowing that this revolution—this fight for the things we both believed in—had taken you from me. You had feared the revolution had failed us, and in those tunnels, I believed it had. I believed it had destroyed all the happiness in the world, all the magic. All that I loved.”

  She turned his hand over and kissed his palm, heard his breath catch. “But it hasn’t, has it?”

  He shook his head. “Still, I wanted to tell you,” he said softly, “in case it mattered to you.”

  “Nothing matters more.” Once she had feared they were growing apart, like the branches of the pear tree at the Hôtel Séguin. How wrong she had been. And now that they were together, she did not ever want to be away from him again. Could she say to him, Shall we marry? Did she dare ask: Would you walk this new path with me, wherever it takes us?

  She steadied herself. To be true to yourself is to be brave. “Lazare, I wish to ask—would you—”

  “Camille,” he said, searching her face. “Will you—”

  “—marry me?” she said.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “You run fast, Camille Durbonne! Yes, a thousand times, if you will have me.”

  An inarticulate moan escaped her as he drew her close. Her tears were falling fast, and she felt them dampen the warm skin of his neck, his cravat, his hair. “Yes,” she whispered in his ear, her lips on the tender place where his pulse beat. “Yes, I will.”

  He slipped the ring on her finger, where its ruby shone like a heart of flame, and then he bent to kiss her. His mouth tasted of salt and fire and yearning. She kissed him back, aching and desperate, as if this kiss could undo the loss and pain they had suffered. As if a kiss could unwind the past and make a new world. As his hands slid around her shoulders, she twined her fingers into his hair, and there was only this moment, the two of them together.