Enchantée(29)

16


Camille was determined to hate it.

The gold, the glass, the impossibly high and lavishly painted ceilings. The carpets, the chandeliers, the mirrors, the windows upon windows upon windows, each one costing a fortune, gleaming spotless in the sun. The posing statues, the miles of parquet, the dancing water in the fountains. The whole gaudy place, crawling with aristocrats who’d willingly step on her if it was to their advantage.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Despite her best intentions, it dazzled and seduced her.

She felt its pull as soon as her hired coach rolled to a stop at the edge of the enormous cobbled forecourt of Versailles, the Cour d’Honneur. All around her, coachmen jostled for position in the flood of horses, riders, and people, on foot and in palanquins, streaming through the gilded gates and into the palace. Nobles in their finery as well as commoners in their drab, rented swords at their sides, ambled toward the palace, its every surface beckoning with gold. It was a small, shining, mazy city, where thousands of the grandest nobles lived in imposing apartments or cramped closets, all so they might be near to the king. Louis XVI was an actor upon a stage, and he and Marie Antoinette played their parts for both the aristocrats and the commoners, who could enter the palace’s public rooms at will and watch the king and queen eat or take their exercise in the gardens.

Part of Camille wanted to sneak in, grab something—a costly knickknack, a watch, a necklace—stuff it in her skirt’s hidden pocket, turn the coach around, and return to Paris. The longer she stayed, the greater the danger of being found out. Who knew what they did to thieves caught in the king’s own palace?

But perched at the very edge of the carriage’s seat, the crowded courtyard ahead, her humming dress in her hands, her fear disappeared. This was it.

The carriage door swung open and a coachman extended a gloved hand to her. She pressed her fingers lightly against his and stepped out, her skirt following behind her like a mermaid’s tail. And as she smoothed the silk of her gown, she felt it crackle against her hands. The wrinkles fell out of the skirts and the bodice snugged closer. The dress offered her its protection, but in exchange, it wanted to go in.

The coachman cleared his throat. “When shall I return, madame?”

A clock above the courtyard pointed its sun-ray hands to three o’clock.

“Eight.” That should be enough time.

The man bowed. “Oui, madame.”

Camille pressed two real livres into his hand. “Don’t be late.”

Leaving the carriage, she joined the crowds funneling toward the entrance. A guard dressed in the white and blue livery of the Bourbon kings ushered the commoners inside, and she would have followed them had it not been for a footman who bowed and opened another, grander door. Instinctively, she swung around to see the fancy aristocrat he was admitting to the palace before she realized: he was opening the door for her.

With a rush of pleasure, she realized she’d done it. She was in.

Smiling to herself, she was ushered by another footman into the Hall of Mirrors. Before her lay an expanse of honey-colored parquet floor so long she couldn’t see the end of it. Gold-framed mirrors on the interior wall spangled the room with light; sun through the windows set the crystals in the chandeliers aflame. Among the gilt busts or by the windows, courtiers stood gossiping in groups of two or three. In their silks of lavender and rose and cream, subtly whitened faces and powdered hair, the aristocrats were another exquisite decoration. The mirrors multiplied their jewels, their clothes, the men’s red-heeled shoes, their swords, and the three-cornered hats crowning their watchful faces until they seemed to number in the thousands.

As the hall pulsed with flirtation and braggadocio, talk of debt and power, hairdressers and lovers and parties, the dress came to life. It trembled against Camille’s skin, as if it yearned for the press of other bodies, for the click of heels on the parquet floors, for the extravagant everything that made Camille’s pulse race. She steeled herself against trusting any of it. She could not let herself forget that under the glamoire, her hands were chafed red and dirt lingered under her fingernails. She could not let herself forget where she had come from just this afternoon: the scraped-bare pantry, the dizzying hunger, and only a few steps away, the running girl on the street a warning of what could come.

Taking a deep breath, she entered the Galerie des Glaces, mingling with the crowd as the courtiers contemplated her, nonchalant. No surprise, no recognition. Doing her best to imitate their disdain and the ladies’ gliding walk, she passed a delegation of copper-skinned men in turbans and long white robes, a gaudily dressed French courtier prancing alongside them. As she made her way down the long room, she looked for a staircase to take her away from the crowds.

“Madame!”

Camille froze. Already? She’d been found out before she’d gotten inside, before she’d had a chance to find a card game?

An older woman approached, a bird’s nest Sophie would have laughed at perched in her powdered hair. “Tell me, how long has it been?”

It’s now or never, Camille told herself, as she faced her.

“Oh,” said the woman, her face quickly brightening from disappointment into politeness, “I thought you were someone else!”

And she was. In the wall of mirrors, Camille spotted her own reflection among the crowd of courtiers. No wonder the noblewoman had been mistaken. In the glass, the bruised, freckled, red-haired girl was gone. In her place stood a lovely and haughty aristocrat, her skin creamy pale, her storm-blue silk dress magnificent, her ruby lips curved just as they should be. Footmen bowed as she passed, men nodding as if they knew her, until she reached the end of the room, where she found an empty staircase and began to climb, not rushing, as if she did it every day.