Enchantée(55)
It was like trying to grasp sunlight itself.
28
Back at Versailles, she won.
As May spun into June, she returned again and again to the palace to play, and she won. At piquet, at lansquenet, at cavagnole. At roulette, its little ball rushing around the ring, she won by luck. At vingt-et-un no one could beat her; she could turn the cards without anyone noticing, raising and lowering the number of pips that graced their faces as required. Still, she needed a bit of luck not to turn a card into one already in someone else’s hand, but it hardly mattered. The tables were wild and raucous, the players giddy on wine and the pursuit of a win. Everyone wanted the same thing: luck and money, luck and money.
She sewed new pockets into her gowns so that she could slip her gold louis inside. People sometimes forgot who won and who lost at the tables, and she never wanted to leave with too obvious a purse in case they were reminded. And at the back of her mind, in a corner she didn’t think about when she was shaking the dice in her hand, a voice insisted, The court fears and worships magic. Be careful.
Working la magie ate away at her, little by little.
She would come home at dawn, and as the glamoire seeped out of her body and the shaking fatigue took hold, she would struggle up the stairs of the building, one hand after another on the wobbling wooden banister until she could open the door to her bedroom, strip off the dress, and fall as if slain onto her bed. Camille’s head ached and her limbs were as sore as if she’d hauled buckets of water all day.
She’d promised herself and Sophie that once they had three months’ rent for a new apartment, she would stop. But once she had that, she realized she needed even more: eighteen hundred livres. A staggering sum. Or perhaps they needed even more. Because if she were to stop working magic, once and for all, they had need of some other way to live. Perhaps Sophie should have a hat shop of her own. And Camille her own printing press …
Soon, she would stop. Soon.
Until then, she watched those at court who shone the brightest and did as they did. She never gloated, only celebrated; she was courteous to everyone she met, and everyone at court wanted to know her. When she walked down the long halls of Versailles, courtiers bowed. Her name was on their lips and in their ears: la belle veuve Fontaine, the lovely widow Fontaine. In her silk purse she carried Chandon’s pink card that gave her entrance into the queen’s sanctuary at the Petit Trianon, but she never showed it. The guards simply bowed and waved her through.
Camille had money for food now, but no matter how much she ate, she could not fill out her dresses. For what the glamoire gave her, it also took a little for itself.
When Camille first told Sophie about her trips to Versailles, she listened as if hearing a tale of wonder: face alight, hanging on every word. But later, as the stories piled up, Sophie crossed her arms, or didn’t ask, as if Camille had stolen something that rightfully belonged to her.
She hadn’t forgotten the balloon flight. How could she? Her fear, the exhilaration of being in the air, what she saw below—and the achy flame of happiness she felt each time she thought of Lazare next to her, his coat around her, his words in her ear: I’m here with you.
But Lazare did not come back to the rue Charlot.
It was easier, then, to be at Versailles.
Sometimes Camille strolled in the gardens with Aurélie and other young women at court, gossiping as they walked on lawns sheared by hand by an army of gardeners. The girls wore the pale-colored gowns and straw hats the queen preferred. With Chandon and Foudriard she drifted on the Grand Canal in a curved black gondola, one hand in the water, the other dropping cherries into her mouth. She tried to discover from Chandon more about the other magicians at court, but he seemed unwilling to speak about it when Foudriard was nearby, and they were inseparable. Still, she listened with interest as Chandon told her about all the improvements—a new system for growing grapes, better houses for his tenants—he was advising his father to make at their estate, where he would go when he was no longer wanted by the queen.
She didn’t know what to say: she didn’t hate Versailles as she’d thought she would. When she left the palace at night, walking on gravel paths in the moonlight, the linden trees fragrant with flowers, she wondered about Maman and how she’d felt about this place. Of course, she’d left it for Papa, but before? Perhaps she’d loved the grandeur and her pony and her little dog on its red ribbon but then, slowly, realized she didn’t want it. Camille wondered if she was taking the opposite journey: from disgust to something else—acceptance? Perhaps it was even a dark kind of love. But when, at dawn, the peacocks cried mournfully from the rooftops of the Trianon, she wondered how it might be if she were to stop all this, to stop the blood and the magic and the hollowing out of herself. When was enough going to be enough?
That was when she thought about Lazare, the balloon, and the person she was there. That was her true self, separate from all of this. Sometimes, though, she felt as if the magic now clung to her more tightly, as if the tiny threads of the dress were working their way into her skin. Being with Lazare—even thinking of Lazare—kept Versailles and magic at bay, but three long weeks had passed since the balloon flight and there had been not one word from him.
Yet at Versailles, with the familiar cards in her hands, and the louis d’or in her purse, she felt safe enough. Or that was what she told herself: that it was for the money, for the new apartment where they would forever escape Alain.