Enchantée(48)

Camille shook her head.

“Well done! As our alarmingly clever Aurélie said, a dead husband is the best kind a woman can have. You’ve chosen wisely.” Chandon crossed his arms. “But that’s neither here nor there. We must be quick—everyone who wishes to travel unseen uses this hallway, so we could have company at any minute. I want to warn you.”

Another warning? “About what?”

“The dangers of doing magic here, what else?”

“I was so easy to see through?”

He produced the snuffbox he’d won from her and flicked open the lid. “Snuff?”

She shook her head. Chandon took a pinch and inhaled it. “One magician always recognizes another,” he said. “I could tell the first night we played together.”

“But how?” She’d hardly known what she was doing. She had worked the glamoire, turned the cards, but with no understanding of how it worked, or why. It had been like grasping at something in a pitch-black room. And yet, he’d seen it?

Chandon sneezed. “How you do tease, Baroness!”

“I’m not teasing.”

“You really don’t know?”

She shook her head. There was so much she did not know.

“There’s a certain fog around a magician, especially one that’s working a glamoire. Usually a sign of someone completely untrustworthy—or utterly desperate. Also, I count cards. I noticed there were suddenly twins of cards we’d already played.” He wagged a finger at her. “Cheater.”

“I cheated less than you did!”

“Ha! That’s why I like you. Still, it’s altogether too much magic.” He drew closer, as if the shadows were listening. “That’s why I tricked Willsingham into spilling wine on you. You must be more careful. Not everyone at court is as kind and charming as I.”

“I will try, I promise.” She’d studied so hard to learn all of Sophie’s etiquette, and now there were more rules, magical ones she didn’t understand. “The only magician I knew was my mother. She told me almost nothing.”

“Not proud of her heritage?”

It was true. Maman had been happy to marry Papa and leave her noble life behind. Until she needed the magic again. “Why do you say that?”

His mouth fell open in mock-horror. “How surprising you are! You really don’t know anything.”

“Tell me, then, monsieur.” No matter how many doors she passed through, how many rooms she entered, how hard she worked, she was still outside.

“Only if you call me Chandon, as everyone does.”

“Chandon.”

“That’s better.” Taking another pinch of snuff, Chandon slouched elegantly against the wall. “Shall I tell it as a fairy tale?”

“If you wish.”

“Once upon a time, two kings before our present king, there was a particularly greedy one named Louis XIV. He demanded to be the center of the universe, the Sun King.

“Not everyone went along with this idea, however. First, he got rid of the treacherous nobles.” Chandon made a slicing motion across his throat. “After he tamed the defiant ones, he wanted the tricky magicians under his thumb. He invited them all—your ancestors and mine, for magic is in the blood—to come to the palace he’d thrown up at Versailles. A ramshackle place, really. He demanded the magicians weave webs of protection around the chateau, so none of his enemies could attack it, and to work glamoires to make it more beautiful than any other palace that had ever been.”

Versailles was enchantingly beautiful. The way the gardens looked as the sun sank low and set the faces of the statues to flickering, as if they might speak. The way the Hall of Mirrors multiplied light to forever. The dancing fountains, the silver stretch of the Grand Canal and its black-prowed gondolas, the mournful hush of doves in the trees at dusk. It was all extraordinary, all magical.

But under the surface of the glamoire there was rot. The mice in the wainscoting, the courtiers’ lapdogs who shat in the corners, the stink of urine and decay in the less-used hallways where drunk or lost visitors relieved themselves. Suddenly she understood: the magic of Versailles was like the magic of the turned coins in her purse.

“It’s been more than sixty years since Louis XIV died, even longer since he built Versailles. The enchantments are fading, aren’t they?”

“Bien s?r. It’s the royals’ own fault. Louis XIV wasn’t particularly protective of the magicians. Once they were here, all the nasty, greedy courtiers—desperate to rise, desperate to be in favor with the Sun King—wanted la magie.” Chandon’s voice rose to a pleading, nasal squeak: “‘Please, dashing magician, make my enemy sick and make my friend forget a debt’; ‘please, charming magician, make me beautiful forever and ever.’ ‘Magician, make this person fall in love with me and I will make sure you are handsomely rewarded.’ Can you imagine how tired those magicians were?”

Somewhere, a door opened and closed. Chandon fell silent. He listened intently, his hazel eyes narrowed, then shook his head.

“And that’s when it all went wrong. One of the king’s mistresses bought a love spell to use on the Sun King, and when he found out—mon Dieu!” Chandon pretend-glowered. “How dare anyone attempt magic on the person of the king! Inquisitions! Torture!” His voice dropped, a note of real fear in it. “Then came the burning of the witches, as he called them.”