Enchantée(13)

By the fireplace, two figures struggled. Alain, she realized dimly. And Sophie. His broad back was to Camille, one fist wrapped in Sophie’s hair. The other he shook at her white face. Something dangled from it. The calico purse.

“Is this all you have?” he shouted.

Camille tried to get up. The room spun and she lurched onto her side. Everything blurred. He had gone too far. Her true brother was never coming back. She’d get the candlestick from the table and crack this one’s head open.

Camille grabbed at the floorboards with her fingernails, dragging herself forward.

“This is your last chance, ma soeur,” Alain slurred. “I know you and your lying sister have more hidden away somewhere.” He raked at Sophie’s hair and she whimpered. “If our parents were alive, they would never say no to me.”

Yes, they would. You’re no longer their son. You’ve become someone else.

Camille slid a little closer to the table.

In that moment, Sophie’s eyes met Camille’s. They were enormous in her face, their pupils black. Behind Alain’s back, Sophie motioned urgently toward the floor. She wanted Camille to lie down.

The floor tilted. Camille met it with a thud.

All she could see were his boots, filthy from the street. Straw crushed into the mud on their heels. Under his rumpled coat, the thready gleam of his watch chain—the watch itself pawned long ago—was strangely bare. It was missing its last remaining fob: a miniature portrait of Sophie and Camille.

Sophie pointed wildly. “See what you’ve done to our sister! You’ve killed her!”

Ah. Camille closed her eyes, held her breath. My sister the actress.

“Don’t be a fool. She’s not dead,” he faltered.

Sophie dropped to the floor next to Camille. “Open the window and call the constable!”

Alain stooped to peer at her. “She’s not moving.”

Sophie pressed gently on Camille’s throat. “Her heart’s still beating.”

“God in heaven!” he exclaimed. “Let her live! I never intended it. Never.” He picked up her hand, held it to his cheek. “You must believe me.”

“This time, she’s breathing. But Alain, think! What were you doing?”

Alain flinched. “You don’t understand. He’s not like other people.” He started to cry, abjectly. “If he doesn’t get the money, he’ll kill me. Or worse.”

“But you hurt your sister!”

“To protect her!” He wept. “To protect all of us!”

Sophie pried his hands loose from Camille’s; Camille saw a flash of silver as Sophie pressed some livres—how many, oh, how many?—into their brother’s hand. “Take this and go before I call for the police. You can never come back if you’re drunk.”

At the door Alain hung on Sophie like a too-large child. He had always been the biggest, the oldest, the most daring—the one who carried both girls on his shoulders. Now he avoided Camille where she lay on the floor. “I promise. I will change. I will get rid of my tormentor and then, you’ll see, we’ll be free,” he said.

She didn’t believe in his promises. She wished he would go away forever.

He was still moaning as Sophie pushed him into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

Sophie waited, still as a watched mouse, as his footsteps faded. Then she wrenched the key over in the lock and dragged the table, its candlesticks wobbling and legs screeching, against the door. Her chest was heaving when she crouched down next to Camille.

“Does it hurt?”

Oh no, not at all. Camille’s ears were ringing, her thoughts banging around in her head like a door in the wind. He had hurt her. Badly. What about her made him so angry? Her mind reeled back: the snap of her neck when he hit her. The slow drop to the floor. Alain’s wet, crying mouth.

“Can you get up?” Sophie wriggled her arm under Camille’s shoulder and helped her sit.

The ceiling loomed too close. “Everything’s wobbly. Lean me against the wall. Is it bad?”

“Awful,” Sophie said quietly. “His ring cut you above the eyebrow. That’s why there’s so much blood.”

“Merde.” Camille reached up to touch her brow. The raw pain made her wince.

With water warmed on the stove and a soft rag in her hand, Sophie worked away at the blood. She wiped it out of Camille’s ears, off her neck where it had dried and cracked, soaked it out of her clotted hairline. When she was finished, Sophie looked grimly pleased. “It’s just a small cut. I won’t have to sew it.”

Camille’s stomach lurched when she thought of Sophie’s tiny, even stitches in her skin. “Alain took it all, didn’t he?”

Nothing stayed. No matter what Camille did. She gathered scraps of metal and dredged up sorrow to make them into coins, but they didn’t stay. Maman and Papa, the printing press, her dreams, her family the way they’d once been. Though she’d tried so hard to hold it all, in the end it ran away like water through her fingers.

Nothing stayed.

“What do you mean, ‘all’?” Sophie wrung out the bloody cloth and dropped it in the basin of pink water.

“Didn’t he get into the strongbox?”

“Oh, no. He took only what was in my purse.”