Enchantée(14)
“But that was your wages!”
“Not all of it.” Sophie smiled. “In fact, not very much of it at all.”
“What did you do with the rest?” Camille asked, wonder in her voice.
“I threw it into the ashes when he had me by the hair.”
Camille laughed, though it made her ribs ache. “Well done, my courageous sister.”
“Bah, it’s still not much. A few livres.” Sophie’s lower lip trembled. “I’m frightened, Camille.”
Camille smiled wanly, as if she weren’t at all afraid. “We’ll get away, ma chèrie. I promise.”
La magie was the only trick she knew. It could get them some of the way there, but not all. Because it wouldn’t take long before working too much magic made her weak, liable to fall ill. Maman’s death had taught her that. And she could not leave Sophie alone.
She needed a better way.
9
Camille woke too early the next morning. Her neck ached, her ribs, too, and under her heavy hair, at the back of her skull, she could feel a hard bump. Next her fingers went to her eye. The flesh around it was puffed up and soft, like a rotten apple. She could only imagine the color.
Rubbing her forehead, she wandered out into the main room. The basin of water still sat on the floor, its bottom rusty red with her blood. Just to be certain, she knelt by the door to the eaves and checked under the floorboard. The key was there, safe. As she replaced the board, she thought she heard a whispering coming from the little room behind the door. The tiny hairs on her arms stood up. There were no words, just a hush like wind across a silk skirt; the feeling it gave her was like the one she had whenever she went near the burned box. As if someone were there.
“What a nervous fool you are,” Camille told herself as she stood up. She needed some air.
From their attic apartment, a narrow window opened onto the slant of the building’s roof. Camille often scrambled out there in her bare feet to sit next to one of the mansard’s dormers. A metal railing ran along the edge; if it hadn’t been there, she would never have gone out.
Sometimes she had the feeling that if she went too close to the edge, she wouldn’t be able to control her body and that it would fling itself out and over, into the air—and smash on the street below. Being this high up made her stomach churn, the muscles in her neck contract.
But she was drawn to what the roof gave her, a moment of solitude and a way to see beyond what she normally could—away to the Seine and beyond. So she stayed away from the drop. If she tucked her feet in close, she could settle back against the corner where the roof met the stone wall. Pigeons were her companions up there, and black-clad chimney sweeps. When they spotted her, they doffed their cloth caps and made extravagant bows, their teeth flashing white against their sooty faces. They never seemed surprised to see her.
Beneath her perch ran the rue Charlot, and out from it, other streets, like arteries in the huge body of Paris. Near to the Durbonnes’ neighborhood sprawled the grand h?tels built by noblemen in the last century, each iron-gated mansion so large it occupied an entire block. Between where she sat and the watery curve of the Seine glowed a patch of emerald grass, embroidered with paths—the still somewhat-fashionable Place des Vosges. Elegant phaetons and carriages circled the square. Not far off, on an island in the middle of the river, rose the gray towers of the cathédrale of Notre-Dame and the single iron spike of Sainte-Chapelle, and beyond them, the rest of Paris, a haze of places she’d never been.
What if she dared to go farther? Higher? She wondered what it would be like to venture beyond what she knew. What would she see?
Somewhere there had to be a place for herself and Sophie. In that maze of streets, there had to be an apartment where they would be safe. Was it too much to ask, when all the nobles had their elegant, well-guarded fortresses? It was not. There would be a window—several windows, as long as she was dreaming—tall and full of golden light, rooms peacefully papered in pale pinks and blues, fireplaces in all of them, soft sofas and featherbeds and warm rugs on the polished floors, a maid to clean and scrub and carry water. It would be a secret place, a space without drunken brothers, fists, or knives.
Over the river, a flock of birds lifted and curved into the pale dawn sky. That balloonist—Lazare Mellais—he didn’t think about things like this. He and his badger-looking friend were probably pondering release valves and fuel and ballast, not wondering if their brothers would hit them and take their money. Not wondering how they might be safe.
Her fingers ached with frustration and sorrow. She’d go make something of it, use her sadness to turn coins to buy ointment for her eye. Camille stood up, stretching her neck. A warm breeze playing in her hair, she stood—a fierce silhouette—on the roof for a moment longer, wishing.
* * *
After she’d turned the coins, Camille woke Sophie and they dressed to go out. Standing in front of the old mirror on the mantelpiece and settling her broad-brimmed straw hat on her hair, Camille tilted her face to the side and inspected her reflection. The crazed glass made the bruise around her eye even darker and angrier. “It looks like I’ve been beaten.”
“I’m sorry, ma belle, but you were beaten.” Sophie fiddled with the wide, yellow ribbons on her much prettier hat, a loan from Madame Bénard. She’d styled her hair so that it swooped across her forehead, hiding the pockmarks she didn’t like. “The ointment will help your eye. And laudanum, for your headache. Plus the apothecary is right by the park. The queen believes fresh air solves a multitude of problems.”