Everything That Burns Read online

  Over dessert, surrounded by the wealthy of Paris in their costly silks, both of them had wondered how the diners could live as if nothing had changed. They wore fur stoles and ate the choicest meat, their wineglasses never empty, gossiping about parties and card games and masquerades—in sharp contrast, Camille said, to the girls’ plight. For while Lasalle was selling subscriptions, and the people of Paris were voicing their support, the mayor’s office had not yet revoked the eviction. Yesterday Camille had gone back to Flotsam House to show the girls the latest pamphlets.

  As she’d written and printed them, she’d had the blur’s dangerous magic at the back of her mind and she had wondered: What would happen if, instead of holding back, she let the magic race through her? An experiment, she’d told herself. Giving in had felt dangerously good, though, the fever running hot and wild along her skin.

  But here on the Champ de Mars, the early morning wind was cool on her cheeks.

  Each balloon was tied to the ground with stakes, ropes radiating star-like from them. Inside the wicker gondolas, fires burned in braziers and looped along the edges of each basket was tricolor bunting, tied at the corners into rosettes. In contrast to the tricolor’s bright hues, the silk of the balloons paled: dull blue, stippled with flecks of gray. Not balloons embroidered with romantic names, but balloons designed for stealth. For disappearing. Lazare had told her and Rosier that for this first balloon trial, there was no room for error—not if the corps were to continue.

  “Do you see him?” Camille stood on her toes, searching over the heads of the people waiting, a mix of military men and all sorts of Parisians, including a small group of boys who peered awestruck at the swirl of activity ahead of the launch.

  Rosier pointed. “There!”

  Lazare was kneeling by the far balloon, testing the knot around the stake. He wore a vivid azure-blue suit she had not seen before. A gentle wind played with the end of his cravat, disheveling his hair. But he did not notice; all his concentration was on the rope.

  Could her heart leap such a distance? She willed him to turn and see them.

  “Lazare Mellais!” Rosier called out, waving.

  Lazare stood, his face lit with a broad smile. He came toward them, almost running. On his coat was pinned a sky-blue badge with a red balloon embroidered on it, golden rays behind it. “Well? What do you think?”

  “It’s impressive to see them all like this,” Camille said. “You’re ready?”

  “Another minute or so and we’ll let them all go at once.” He saw the question in Camille’s face and said, “You’re right, it’s risky, but Lafayette … he is as fond of the grand gesture as you are, Rosier.”

  “I assume the bunting and the fantastic badges are one of your touches, Mellais?” Rosier said innocently.

  “Me? I had no control over those things. It was … almost as if someone else had suggested it.”

  “A genius hat designer, no doubt,” Rosier replied.

  “Bunting or not, the balloons are beautiful, Lazare,” Camille said. “Like rain.”

  “Or clouds,” he said. “Best of all they are fully kitted out with barometers and altimeters and every measuring device I could think of. I was allowed to assign two cadets to watch each balloon as it takes off. Not only to assess the aeronauts’ flying skills, but they will record a flight path for each one, for me to read against the five separate sets of measurements I’ll have at the end.” He narrowed his eyes at the row of waiting balloons. “Assuming nothing goes wrong.”

  “Not on a day like today!” Rosier exclaimed. “So many people have come to watch! Really, Lazare, we might have had a very small military band to play a jaunty tune.”

  “The size of the crowd—should I thank you for that, too?”

  “Naturellement.”

  “Soon,” he said, “you’ll even take credit for my parents.”

  His parents?

  “They’re here?” Camille regretted not choosing something more expensive to wear. That they had tried to arrange a marriage for Lazare to a ludicrously wealthy girl still rankled.

  Lazare gestured toward the last balloon, where he’d been standing when they arrived. His parents waited at the very front, his father serious, his proud stepmother’s diamonds washed out in the sunlight. They were speaking animatedly with the Marquis de Lafayette, elegant in his blue-and-white uniform. Though handsome, with a long straight nose and bright color in his cheeks, there was also a kind of severity to his face, as if he were assessing something in the distance and finding it lacking.

  They were a tightly knit group, and she understood now the pressure Lazare had been under. “I’m sure they’ll be proud to see your project take its first flight into the world.”

  Lazare tugged at his perfectly tied cravat. “As long as everything goes well. Lafayette has made it clear that if the balloons can’t do the surveillance he wants, he will put money into something more reliable.”

  There was a weighted silence, into which no one said anything until Rosier observed, “Still, it’s good of your parents to come—they haven’t always been enthusiastic about balloons.”

  “An understatement if there ever was one, Rosier. But they changed their minds,” Lazare replied carefully, “once Lafayette was involved.”

  Rosier’s head snapped up. “Speak of the devil—here comes the man himself.”

  As Lafayette approached, everything about Lazare seemed to tighten. He crossed his arms over his chest, then uncrossed them and set his shoulders back. In the line of balloons, the pilots were making final adjustments to their loads. A few cast glances in his direction.

  “Which balloon is yours?” she asked.

  “None. I’m not going up.”

  “What?” she gasped. “I thought you were going to lead them in the air!”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression—”

  Camille turned to Rosier for confirmation and saw that Lafayette now stood beside them. The marquis clamped a hand on Lazare’s shoulder. “Sablebois is too valuable to send up into the air. Not simply because of his expertise, but because he is the future of France.”

  Rosier blinked. “Is he?”

  Lafayette’s voice was smooth and rich. “He is a young man of science. He is a nobleman but also of the people’s cause, as am I. A foot in both worlds, one might say. Revolution is a delicate balance, especially if we wish to avoid war.” Lafayette released Lazare from his grip. “Your friend was born for this great task. He is, as you said at Madame de Staël’s salon, our hope. And you two are patriotic in your support of him.” He bowed slightly to Camille. “As his commander, I appreciate your understanding.”

  Lafayette wished them to say nothing. He had wrapped it in tricolor ribbons, but his demand was clear: be silent and complicit and keep Lazare doing what Lafayette wished, not what Lazare wanted to do. It made her furious. “But can’t Lazare also—”

  Lazare didn’t look at her. “Is it not time for launch, monsieur?”

  “Indeed,” Lafayette said. And with a curt nod to Camille and Rosier, he steered Lazare toward the small stage that had been erected in front of the line of balloons.

  Camille’s heart sank. “Rosier, what’s happening?”

  “I hardly know. Whatever it is, our friend is not happy about it.”

  A bright bugle rang out, and the crowd swayed forward. Anticipating.

  With Lazare beside him, Lafayette addressed the crowd. His voice carried easily over the parade grounds. “Mesdames, messieurs—welcome to the inaugural launch of the National Aeronautical Corps! You will now witness an expression of France’s unsurpassed military strength and innovation.” Indicating that Lazare should stand by the balloons, he said: “Monsieur Mellais, our head aeronaut and leader of this unit, has helped make this possible. Please, a round of applause.”

  Lazare made a modest bow.

  “Now, messieurs,” Lafayette cried to the aeronauts, “prepare for departure!”

  A
gun fired a shot, and the cadets released the first balloon. It rose smoothly into the air, one aeronaut at attention, the other filling the brazier with fuel. Another shot rang out and the second balloon took flight. The balloons rose gracefully into the air, one after another, without any difficulties, until the last one was released. As the crowd gasped, the balloons sailed higher and higher, until they were no bigger than birds in the sky. The pilots would be cold now, she remembered from her time in the air, putting on extra coats and dampening the fires once they reached the correct altitude.

  And Lazare?

  While she’d been watching the balloons rise, he’d rejoined his parents. As he listened to something his father was saying, his face was a careful blank.

  “Grace à Dieu, it went so well,” Rosier muttered. “He would have been devastated had anything gone wrong. This is rather more of a high-stakes game than I had thought.”

  She thought of Lafayette’s hand on Lazare’s shoulder. “Because Lafayette is calling the shots?”

  “That,” he mused, “and his parents. It didn’t strike you as strange that Lafayette showed up at the Sablebois estate, balloon proposal in hand? Why not wait until Lazare returned to Paris?” He took a thoughtful drag on his unlit pipe. “Though, as Lazare said, perhaps he was in a rush, worrying about Austria at the borders.”

  Camille watched as Lafayette pointed to the balloons, explaining something to Lazare’s parents. His father, who had seemed so stiff and formal when Camille had last seen him, had become jubilant, his gaze never leaving Lazare. “Do you trust Lafayette?”

  “He has the face of a good gambler. Working all the odds. Though what he believes in, I can’t say.”

  It was true—no great emotion altered his features, only small ones: a smile, a circumspect frown, a careful nod. Instead, he seemed to be thinking several moves ahead, as in a game of chess.

  “I’d guess he believes in France, the way my papa believed in the People and the journalist Marat believes in Change. But because of that,” she said, as the memory of her parents’ argument about magic and revolution came back to her, “they forget the big ideas are actually made up of people.”

  Rosier raised an impressed eyebrow. “Well said, pamphleteer.”

  She gave Rosier a sidelong glance. “Do you think Lazare always knew he wasn’t going up?”

  He shook his head. “I’d wager it was a new development. Why not tell us, otherwise?”

  Why not indeed?

  They both turned to watch him.

  By the launch line, Lazare was greeting the spectators, one after another. In return he was clapped on the shoulder. Commended. Saluted. Each time someone congratulated him, he seemed almost to flinch. Anyone who didn’t know him would have said he was smiling. But Lazare’s smiles were nothing like those narrow grins. Anyone who did know him could see Lazare longed to be away from the crowd and whatever burden Lafayette had placed on him, and instead, up in the air.

  Overhead, the gray balloons had almost disappeared. Only the bunting on their baskets blazed against the sky. Soon that too would be invisible.

  Next time, she wished. Next time, he would be in the air. For surely Lafayette couldn’t keep him grounded forever?

  THE LOST GIRLS SPEAK

  THE PICK POCKET

  I HAVE BEEN PICKING POCKETS AT THE PALAIS - ROYAL SINCE

  I WAS FIFTEEN

  AND NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN ME

  My eldest sister was beautiful. My mother married her off first, to a butcher in St Germain. Once our favorite sister was gone, Maman got busy with the rest of us. One fine gown for the bigger girls, one fine gown for the smaller ones. False diamonds and wigs, satin slippers and tight corsets were what we wore when men came to call. All of us upstairs, a nest of waiting mice, listening for what the man would say.

  Sometimes he would ask for a song on the piano, or something to be sung. Or a dance. And if the dance was not to his liking, another sister would go down to try, but only after the first one had come up and, full of joy from having freed herself, thrown off the gown for the another sister to put on.

  For the moment

  SAFE

  We could all dance and play the fortepiano and smile as if we meant it. We could talk and flatter and blush.

  I believed marriage would free me from this never-ending show and so I went with the first man who brought me flowers and a ring. Yet there was no grand carriage waiting outside as I had supposed. Instead we walked to his house. It was far, and the buildings were no nicer than ours. It was not what had been promised.

  I might have endured it, though, and continued to pretend at Happiness for at least I was rid of Maman, but for one thing he did, which I took as a Sign.

  He did not offer me his arm, as I had been taught a rich gentleman should. Instead he held me by the wrist, his hand hard as a manacle. I was not free, but chained. As luck would have it, a carriage nearly ran into us, and when he fled the horses’ hooves, I fled him.

  I could do my pretending elsewhere and make my own living by it.

  I never steal from the poor.

  Because the

  POCKETS OF THE RICH

  are

  FULL

  21

  Tonight, she decided, was only for marvels.

  Though she hadn’t been there in months, the Palais-Royal remained the dizzying carnival it had always been. Under lanterns in the gardens, people were dancing; beneath the arcades, shoppers peered through gleaming windows at fine books and lace and jewels. From political cafés erupted shouts and loud conversation, and sometimes, fistfights. There were flower sellers and fruit sellers, and Camille wondered if Margot in her bright clothes were there tonight, her oranges kept cool with ice. Or Héloïse, dancing in one of the rooms in the palace, her dangerous smile on her partner while her hands relieved him of his purse. Though she searched the crowd, none of the girls she spotted at the Palais-Royal were ones she knew. She refused the leaflets handed out all over, even when they were pressed into her hands. She smiled and continued on, her hand tucked instead around Lazare’s arm.

  If he didn’t wish to speak about Lafayette and what had happened at the launch, she would not pry. Perhaps she’d misread him, for there was nothing about the way he was behaving now that suggested he’d been angry or disappointed. Perhaps he had accepted his position and what it entailed.

  She decided to believe it. Tonight nothing would get in their way.

  “Can you see where Les Merveilleux will perform?” she asked.

  “Not yet.” Lazare wore a new suit, beautifully cut to flatter, over an elegant waistcoat embroidered with tiny hot-air balloons, a gift from his stepmother. The unsettled, evasive mood of the balloon launch had vanished, replaced by a kind of electricity that made it hard for Camille to look anywhere else but at him.

  “Will they be under the trees, do you think, or in the arcade?”

  Lazare craned his neck to see over the crowd. “Toward the back of this courtyard, I’m sure of it.”

  By the time they found the painted sign proclaiming LES MERVEILLEUX, TONIGHT!, an eager audience was already gathering, drawn in by a violinist playing a sweetly melancholy tune. Between two chestnut trees red curtains hung like twinned waterfalls. On either side of them, torches illuminated the waiting stage.

  “It seems so much more real, somehow, than before,” Camille observed.

  “Rosier promised we would be amazed at the transformation.”

  The curtains rippled as Sophie stepped out from behind them and came to stand alongside Camille. Her pleased smile gleamed in the dark. “Just you wait.”

  In the evening air, the lilting music floated into the trees. As Camille listened, the buzz and chaos of the Palais-Royal, the criers and the pamphleteers, the arguing café patrons and the intoxicated gamblers faded, until the noise was no louder than wind rustling through dry leaves and all that existed was this glowing space of dreams.

  The curtains drew apart. Beside her, Sophie tensed.
r />   On the stage were two puppets—tall as humans, but otherworldly. Long-limbed and elegant, they wore flowing white costumes, touched here and there with golden stars. Behind them stood two puppeteers dressed in black, holding the sticks that made the puppets move.

  “Well?” Sophie asked confidentially. “Do you like the new puppets?”

  “They are so large, Sophie! Almost like people … or beautiful spirits. Or is that wrong to say?”

  “Not at all.” Sophie’s face shone as if Camille had given her a gift. “That is perfect.”

  One of the puppets was a princess, wearing a gold crown. She surveyed the skies, her arms outstretched like wings, then she bent low, nearly gliding along the ground.

  “A snake!” someone called out.

  Sophie frowned. “That is not perfect.”

  As the princess searched, the young man watched from the eaves of a forest. He wore a beard, a tall hat, and a gold earring that glinted in the torchlight. A pirate? As the princess ran through the dark forest of firs behind them, one of his feet tapped impatiently on the stage.

  “How lifelike it is!” Lazare said in her ear. “Their movements are so human—”

  They did seem human, and yet they were not. There was something about them that was like magic—enchanted objects brought to life? But there was no sorrow in it that she could see. Watching Sophie gazing eagerly at the stage, Camille knew it was mostly love.