Enchantée(39)

Next to her, Sophie slept on, Fant?me rounded against her stomach. Careful not to wake her sister, Camille wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and slipped out through the window to clear her head. From the tiny slant of roof, the streets of Paris mazed out around her. When she’d been up here last, she’d been looking for Lazare in the air, hoping for something to change. Now she knew he was somewhere in the streets below and change felt closer than before. The address he’d given her put the workshop not too far from the rue Charlot, though she couldn’t pick it out from the mass of tilting roofs and crowded houses.

It was still early when she left. Sophie was fussing too much about Camille’s hair and wanting her to wear the mint-green dress she’d rescued from the girls at the Palais-Royal. The lace on the hem needed cleaning, but Sophie argued that it would have gotten dirty anyway, as Camille was not planning to take a carriage, was she? She wasn’t, of course. As she’d settled her wide-brimmed straw hat over her hair, she sighed at the bruise over her eye. It had faded to violet, tinged with yellow and green, but it was in no way gone. Camille stuck out her tongue at her reflection.

Walking past the Bastille, the old prison, she made her way through morning crowds, keeping toward the river. She stopped to ask a grocer’s boy where she could find the rue de la Roquette. Following his directions to take a left at the next corner, she found herself suddenly in a familiar street. Straight in front of her was the building where Papa had housed his printing shop. It seemed forever since he’d sold off everything, including the press, but now, as if in an unsettling dream, the storefront was once again a printer’s shop.

The sight of it was a physical hurt. It radiated through her, leaving her stunned. Lost. How could the shop still exist, without Papa? Without her?

She crossed the street and pressed the tip of her nose against the window. The shop hadn’t yet opened but inside the printmaker and his apprentice were hard at work, the apprentice setting type by the light of several candles, the printmaker leaning on the press handle to print the sheets. Overhead, from the same hooks she and Papa had used, hung lines of printed sheets, drying. If not for the aristocrats who’d betrayed Papa as easily as they threw away their gloves, she’d be in there, with him, printing. Maman would be alive.

The apprentice saw her. He started to come to the door, wiping his hands on his apron, but Camille shook her head and moved down the street. The dream-spell shattered. That life was gone. But she hadn’t managed to snuff out her hope that she might somehow do it again. Every day, reasons to keep printing confronted her. The terrified running girl with her stolen bread, the skeletal paupers picking through horse dung for food, the pain that poverty scratched into all their faces. Those were the good reasons to have enough money to start a press: to tell their stories. Darker, much deeper than that was the righteous revenge she wished to wreak on the aristos Papa had been obliged to bow to. The ones that had ruined everything.

Approaching the well where she was supposed to turn again, Camille imagined telling the aristos she’d met at Versailles that she hoped someday to become a printer. A printer of what? she could hear Chandon asking. People’s thoughts, she’d answer, the truths they want to tell the world. Chandon would wonder why she did not just do it, then, if she wished it—as a pastime. And she would answer, scornfully: Because of your people.

Standing in front of the big blue door, biting the edge of her thumbnail, Camille wondered if she’d remembered the address correctly. She knocked again, louder this time. From deep inside the building, someone shouted. A clang of metal rang out. Another clang, and a thud. But no one came. Camille tilted her head to better see the faded letters painted across the building’s fa?ade: L’école de Dressage. A horse-riding school? Glass ran across the top part of the door, but someone had rubbed hard yellow soap across the panes to make them opaque. She scratched at it with her fingernail. It didn’t budge.

Just as she was wondering where the aeronauts might be, the door swung open and Camille fell forward, catching herself against the doorjamb.

“Mademoiselle!” Charles Rosier beamed. His curly hair was covered by a strange hat, slouched like a nightcap, and in his hand he held a curved pipe, unlit. “You did in fact decide to come.”

“Didn’t I say I would?” Now that the door had opened, now that she was actually going to go in, she felt a little sick. What if, when Lazare saw her, he realized he’d made a mistake?

“Lazare wasn’t sure.” Rosier blinked at her. “You’re perfect.”

“How?”

“To be the heroine of this story, of course.”

“I told you before—I’m no Jeanne d’Arc, monsieur.”

“Bah! Does anyone know what their future may bring?”

Camille crossed her arms. “I don’t believe in fate.”

“Oh?” Rosier sucked thoughtfully on his pipe. “Who said anything about fate? We make our own futures, non?”

“It’s true,” she said, relenting. “Monsieur Rosier, may I come in?”

“As long as you don’t call me ‘monsieur.’” He stepped back as she entered. “Here I am, philosophizing and you’re on the doorstep. I’m rude, rude, rude—I know it. Lazare tells me all the time. It’s my English blood.” He waved his pipe in the air. “Mother’s side. Come along.” He led her into a tiny corridor with sawdust on the floor. A large barn door hung at its end. “This way.” In an undertone, he added: “Lazare’s been waiting for you. I swear, he’s checked the calendar every morning since he saw you. Counting the days. But don’t tell him I told you or he’ll finish me off.”