Enchantée(20)

Camille cut across the gardens, narrowly avoiding a man standing on a table. With his crushed right hand, he waved a political pamphlet above his head. The ink had run, it was barely dry. “Listen, my brothers, my sisters! See my maimed hand!” he shouted. “See how the masters broke it! While we die in the gutters like rats, what do the king, the queen, the nobles do? Nothing! Five hundred louis for a hat with a feather in it? Ten thousand trees planted at Versailles? And for us? Rien!” The clutch of men and women standing nearby roared and hissed. “Only when we are all dead will they care—because there will be no one left to farm their land, to clean up their shit, or to pay their taxes!”

Her father would have applauded. She could hear his ghost whisper in her ear: See? When the taxes go up, when the harvest fails, the bread prices rise: see what happens. If we work together, things will change.

But they hadn’t, had they?

Camille knew she wasn’t the only one struggling to survive. There were countless girls just like her. Girls who were caught, unfairly ensnared by husbands or fathers or brothers; girls who had no voice nor even a free moment to think what it was they might want to say or what to do. It was wrong, and unjust.

In her other ear, Maman whispered: But you, mon trèsor—you have your magic.

What had Maman been thinking? No magic could change anything, not for long. And for the things that mattered—food in their stomachs, a place of safety—magic was as useless as a sieve to carry water.

At the far corner of the building’s vaulted arcade, laughter and accordion music spilled out onto the walk. Two drunk men, their arms around each other’s shoulders, stumbled down the stairs. Behind them came two of the duc’s men, their hands on the pommels of their swords. They were escorting the men out. One of the drunkards was laughing so hard tears traced skin-colored rivulets down his powdered cheeks. Pushed along by the guards behind him, the other man stopped long enough to eye Camille as she tried to slip past. “Attendez, mademoiselle! Wait for us outside the gates!”

As long as she kept to herself and committed no crime, Camille had nothing to fear from them. Or so she told herself. Determined, she continued into a marbled entrance hall and ran up the staircase, her hand barely touching the banister.

If he was here, she knew where to find him.

She passed a room with blue walls where men played checkers and drank wine. Then a candlelit ballroom, where people danced: whether the girls were countesses or courtesans she couldn’t tell. She wandered along a corridor full of landscape paintings hung floor to ceiling, a girl selling roses from a basket, a row of closed doors, one after another.

She heard the room before she reached it.

From it came shouts, groans, and the relentless clickety-clickety-clickety of the spinning roulette wheel. She went in, scanned the crowd for her brother’s amber hair. A few people glanced idly at her, their fans flicking; none of them were Alain. A smaller room was lit by candelabras stuffed with wax candles, the floor soft with Turkish carpets. Here men in silk suits played faro, a card game so dangerously seductive it was banned by the king. It took no skill to play and each round promised a fresh chance to win. But one mistake and all could be lost. Applause erupted and someone exclaimed, Bravo, bravo! but Camille slipped by without looking too closely: the stakes here were too rich for Alain.

She found him in a dingy back room where tallow candles jammed into wine bottles cast a dim light over a few bare tables and wooden chairs, two of them lying toppled and broken on the floor. In the corners, uncomfortable shadows lingered along with the sickening scent of cheap wine. Her brother lay slumped across a table covered in a confetti of playing cards, as if he’d dropped dead in the middle of a game.

“Alain!” Camille shook his shoulder. “Wake up!” When he didn’t stir, she shook him harder, so that his head wobbled on his arm. Damp hair stuck to his forehead, his eyes were shut tight; from his open mouth a line of spit ran to the sleeve of his coat.

“You are a pathetic excuse for a brother,” she hissed at him. No response. As furious as it made her, if she couldn’t wake him, she would have to go home empty-handed. As Camille prodded him again, a slight figure with ostrich plumes in her yellow hair and a sallow complexion stepped out of the far doorway. “Does he owe you, too, mademoiselle?” she taunted.

Who was this person? There was a hunger in her eyes that made Camille nervous. “What is it to you?”

“Oh, I’m no one important, bien s?r,” she said, swaying closer. She wore two dresses, one on top of the other: a pale mint-green one underneath a rose-colored one. “Someone hit you?”

Camille stiffened. “Where did you get those dresses?”

The girl nodded at Alain. “He couldn’t wait to wager them.”

“They weren’t his to wager! That’s my sister’s dress, the rose one. And mine is the mint green.”

“I won them fairly.” The girl gave a twirl, making the dresses dance. “He can play again to win them back, if he likes.”

Alain snored on. This was a terrible place he had found himself in, and she was sorry he was a fool for drinking and gaming, especially when he had debts, but she was not going to leave empty-handed. Whatever Alain might have won by wagering the dresses was rightfully hers. Holding her breath, Camille stooped over him and slipped her hands into the nearest pocket of his coat. When her fingers touched metal, she scooped the coins out: ten livres, a few tiny sous. It was so little.