Enchantée(27)

“I suppose,” Camille said, slowly. Her idea of what she’d once thought la magie to be was changing. When she was little, she’d thought it was just something her mother did and something she’d learn from her, the way that Sophie learned needlepoint and singing. But it turned out to be worse than needlework, and much harder. There was so much about it she had never been taught. She imagined the world of magic stretching away from her, far into the distance, like a long shadow just before dusk.

“How beautiful it all is!” Sophie said as she peered into the box. “Can you imagine how our ancestresses lived, with all of these lovely things?”

They lived by magic, Camille thought as she removed a silver-edged mirror and a folded fan trimmed with feathers. Its plumes waved lazily, as if in a breeze. She took out a pair of curved-heel silk shoes, embroidered to match the dress. And at the bottom of the box, cushioned by a woolen cloak, lay a brooch and small makeup box, a nécessaire. Darkened by age and smoke, its lid was decorated with shepherds and shepherdesses dancing around a fountain. In the clouds was painted a Latin phrase: Tempus Fugit. Time flies.

Her hands clumsy, Camille fitted her tiny key into the nécessaire’s lock. When it opened, it made a noise like a chime. Where fingers had brushed against it, the soft nap of the lining was worn thin. The compartments held tiny crystal jars, an ebony comb, and several brushes, including one made from a white rabbit’s foot. As she touched each of the objects, warmth surged against her skin, as if she were putting her hand to a flame. With this makeup—she was certain of it—she was supposed to paint her face. To turn it.

The mirror had lost most of its silvering; she saw herself in it as if underwater. Or only half-there. Her startled gray eyes, the pale brows above them, the mouth her mother called stubborn, her constellations of freckles, the fox-red of her hair. She took a deep breath and watched her collarbones rise like wings, and settle. Shadows collected in the hollows of her neck and under her cheeks.

“How thin I am,” she murmured. Sophie squeezed her shoulder in sympathy. “Do you remember how Maman used to tease me, saying I couldn’t leave the house because my curves would make the boys follow me home?” Not anymore. Her thinness said hunger. Hunger, and sorrow. Waves of sadness lapped at her.

Bien, she told herself, let it come. There was no room for fear.

“What are you going to do?”

“Paint myself.” Camille picked up the rabbit’s foot, and, opening one of the containers, dipped it into the white face powder. As she stroked it across her skin, her freckles faded—and then vanished. Her skin became luminous, snow-white. She ran the brush along her forehead and her cheeks; her purple bruise dimmed, then disappeared. If only she’d known how to do this before she’d gone to the Place des Vosges, Lazare would never have seen her eye. Camille allowed herself a wicked smile. What if he could see her now?

Sophie gasped. “Mon Dieu.”

With a thrill, Camille ran the brush along the tops of her hands, and there, too, the skin whitened, its redness fading, her cracked fingernails growing whole and smooth and clean.

“Incroyable,” she said, examining her hands in the candlelight. “It’s as if I’ve never washed dishes or scrubbed the floor.” As if the lean years after Papa lost his business were themselves disappearing. She touched her palms together: her skin was so soft, like a small child’s. With a narrow sable brush, she darkened her eyebrows; from a pot she rubbed on rouge.

“Not too much,” Sophie warned. “Only the old court ladies still wear those big red circles on their faces.”

“You know better than I do.” Camille couldn’t tear herself away from her reflection. “Ma chèrie, would you put up my hair?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Sophie said as she set down the candle. Deftly she gathered Camille’s chestnut hair into a subtle pouf like the marquise had been wearing at the Place des Vosges. She coiled a few curls at the nape of Camille’s neck. “And now for hair powder.”

Sophie opened the box; a cloud of powder danced in the air. “But where’s the little bellows for blowing it on? And the cone?”

Then Camille remembered: the ebony comb. In her hand, its fine black teeth were smooth and warm. As she’d done with the rabbit’s foot, she dipped the tips of the comb’s teeth into the powder and touched them to her hair. Instantly, her unfashionably red hair whitened to frost.

“Dieu, that’s even better than powder,” Sophie said, pinning a jeweled ostrich feather so it curved across the crown of Camille’s head.

The cloth-of-gold dress still lay draped over the trunk’s lid. Again she had the distinct impression that the whispering was coming from the dress. “I suppose I should put it on.”

“Don’t ask me—you’re the magician.”

Camille stripped down to her chemise and pulled the skirts of the cloth-of-gold dress over her hips. The whispering stopped, as if it were waiting for something else to happen.

Sophie shook her head. “Even if it weren’t falling apart, you could never wear that to Versailles.”

Camille spun; the skirts clutched at her feet. “I can’t even walk in it! And it smells like I’ve been sleeping in a fireplace.”

“Try these.” Reverently, Sophie set the embroidered shoes in front of Camille and held out a glass bottle filled with amber liquid. Once the shoes were on her feet—only a little too small—Camille touched the perfume’s stopper to her throat, then to the dress, the scent of orange flowers blooming to mask the stench of smoke.