Enchantée(19)

“Sophie.” The door to their apartment stood open a hand’s-width. “You didn’t lock the door.”

“I did.” Sophie frowned. “Is it Alain? Maybe he’s come to apologize.” She pushed past Camille into the apartment.

The little salon was empty.

“Where is he, then?” The apartment was deathly quiet, as if the garret rooms were holding their breath. Even the light felt wrong. “Alain?”

On the table, crumbs lay scattered. Hadn’t she cleaned up the night before? Ashes were heaped in the hearth, a dirty pot of washing water left to cool next to it. Surely she’d thrown theirs out. The air seemed to vibrate around her and from somewhere came that strange, insistent hissing. Perhaps she was losing her mind.

The cupboard yawned empty. “Did you eat the cheese this morning?”

“Of course not!” Sophie pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Camille to peer at the bare shelves. “Not only the cheese, but the rest of the bread is gone, too.”

The room tightened around her. “Alain came back.”

“Alain might drink too much,” Sophie said, “but he wouldn’t have taken our last bit of food.”

There was something worse he could have taken. Much worse.

Camille raced to the bedroom. There the wardrobe door sagged open. It was empty, their best dresses snatched off their pegs. The bed had been made when they left—now the bedclothes lay rumpled, straw loose on the floor. The mattress had a gash in it, like a terrible smile. On the floor in front of the little door that led to the eaves, the loose floorboard lay upturned. The key hung drunkenly in the lock.

Camille clasped her shaking hands. There was no need to fear. Not yet. Alain opening the door to the room under the eaves didn’t mean anything. He still needed the key that opened the strongbox. “Bring a candle, Sophie!”

“Maman said we were never to go in there.”

Camille nearly spit with frustration. “There are many things Maman told us not to do. But we’ve had to do them anyway. Going into this room won’t be the drop of water that makes the vase overflow.” Her hand trembled as she held it out. “The candlestick.”

Once she had it, she stooped and went inside, holding the light up.

The lid of the strongbox was cracked open. Alain hadn’t even bothered to find the key she’d hidden in a notch in the roof beams. She sank to her knees, laying her palm flat against the dusty floor to steady herself.

No money for rent.

No money for food.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

“You’re white as a ghost, Camille—tell me!”

“The money I’d been saving for the rent?” Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “It’s all gone.”

“How did he know where it was?”

Camille looked around the little room as if it might tell her. “He must have guessed, after he was here yesterday. Seen me glance in that direction—”

“Alain knew we weren’t allowed!”

“That wasn’t because of the strongbox. It was because of something she kept in there, to work la magie.” The burnt trunk.

“But what will we—”

“Ne t’inquiète pas.” She didn’t want Sophie to worry. “I’ll get the dresses back. They’re worth too much to let him keep them.”

Camille stood up, brushed the dust from her skirts. She couldn’t bear to stay in the apartment any longer, where every empty space mocked her. She needed to go out. If she were lucky, she’d find Alain at the Palais-Royal.

If she were luckier, he’d have the money. He’d still have their best dresses, heaped on a chair next to him.

And if she were even luckier than that, she’d get it all back.

Tonight, she needed a gambler’s luck.





12


Taking a deep breath, Camille joined the evening crowds thronging the arcaded walk of the duc d’Orléans’ home, the Palais-Royal. She had no powder for her hair, nor her pale green dress, so she made do with her second-best, the chocolate-striped one that she could no longer fill out. Not that anyone here would notice. This was a place where anything went. Like his guests, the king’s cousin loved a good entertainment. And like his guests, he needed money—so he’d opened the arcades and invited everyone in. Here there was no etiquette nor police constables, only the duc’s own men and their own kind of laws.

It was a hectic carnival, a glittering city within a city. Everything was for sale, but none of it was for her. She passed jewelers’ shops glimmering with diamonds and watches, wig shops and hat shops, a puppet theater, a troupe of ballet dancers, a lace maker whose fine work hung like webs in the window. It was said that anything could be bought or sold at the Palais-Royal: political pamphlets, pornography, pretty women. In the arcades and in the garden, aristocrats in costly silks mingled with women who wore the same clothes, only with false diamonds around their necks. In the crowd, no one could tell the difference. Gamblers and cheaters, drunks and magicians. Champagne or opium, girls or boys, cards or dice, dreams or nightmares: at the Palais-Royal, you picked your own delight—or poison.

Camille passed a darkened room where people sat transfixed for a magic lantern show. The heated lamp projected an image onto a screen: Trappers of New France. It showed a scene by a river. Two figures, their black hair in braids down their backs, stood solemnly on the grassy bank. The woman held a swaddling child, the man a quiver of arrows and a bow. In the placid water at their feet floated a strange boat, long and narrow, curved at bow and stern. It was piled high with furs. Enormous trees, taller than any Camille had ever seen, arched their branches protectively over the little family. They were going somewhere far away on that wide river, she was sure of it. Camille waited in the doorway for the next picture, until the barker snapped at her to pay her fee or move on. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She had somewhere else to be.