Everything That Burns Page 6

  9

  Evicted. Camille stormed along the shore, kicking at stones. The city had no right to throw them out of their home! Had the person who’d made this decision even given a thought to what would happen to the girls? Where they would live instead?

  Without realizing it, Camille had reached up to trace the scar above her collarbone. She hadn’t forgotten the shock of it, the hot spill of blood when Alain—her own brother—had cut her. She still remembered the snap of her head when he’d hit her, the endless drop of her fall. She’d had no choice but to use magic to save herself and Sophie: first la magie domestique, and then the more dangerous glamoire. These girls could steal and cheat to try to stay alive. But it wouldn’t be enough.

  Her jaw clenched. What was it Papa had always said? Words are their own magic. Words make thoughts visible. She thought of the press waiting in the dark—what if?—and then, like a punch, the bookseller’s disdain and dismissal.

  “Mademoiselle?” said a little girl’s voice.

  Camille stopped.

  Holding out a hair ribbon to her was a little girl, her clothes neat but pretty, her toffee-colored hair carefully braided. “Did you drop this?”

  “I did.” Camille stooped until she was eye level with the girl. “But you may keep it, Céline.”

  “I didn’t think you needed it, being as you look like a princess with your dress anyway,” the girl confided. She spun it over her head so it fluttered in the wind. “I’m pretending it’s a dragon that will set the Seine on fire.”

  “It must be a very powerful dragon!”

  “A mademoiselle dragon,” Céline said sagely.

  “Of course it is.” She couldn’t walk away, not now. “Céline, I must speak to—”

  “My sisters?” She held out her hand to Camille. As they walked, Céline described how the fire would be—très belle, but no one would be hurt, because it would only be the river that was aflame and not the people nor the dragon—until they reached Flotsam House and Giselle stepped out, a narrow silhouette in the lamp light. “Camille? Is something wrong with Céline?”

  She had to try one last time. “I have an idea.”

  “Tiens, they don’t want more ideas. We’ve decided to fight the eviction and if necessary, be taken away by force.”

  They would lose that fight. “Let me try, Giselle.”

  She sighed and opened the door. “You are persistent.”

  Back in the tiny cottage, the girls falling once more into mistrustful silence, Camille knew what she must do, even if in the end they rejected her. “Does anyone have a piece of paper? A pencil?”

  “Why?” Margot asked.

  “Just give it to her,” Giselle said, irritated.

  Margot reached up under her skirts and pulled out several sheets of paper. “What?” she said as the other girls laughed. “I get cold, standing in the arcade with my iced fruits!” The sheets were posters—one shouted WHO STEALS OUR GRAIN? while the other complained THE KING DOES NOTHING. Their backs were blank. She handed them to Camille. “Because you’re Giselle’s friend.”

  Henriette said, “I’ve got something to write with, if that’s what you need.” In her ink-splotched fingers, the forger reluctantly held out a quill. “But ink’s precious to me. Tell us what it’s for.”

  Camille knew she couldn’t get their trust for free. Coins couldn’t be transformed from scraps of metal to heavy gold louis just by wishing. To work magic, one needed the power of sorrow.

  “I wasn’t always as you see me now. A princess, like Céline called me.” Some of them smirked. Others frowned, suspicious. “Once, I was almost where you are.” It was a part of her life she wished to put in a box and never open again. But she remembered Papa’s words—to try is to be brave—and pressed on.

  “My parents died of smallpox, and my little sister almost did, too. After that, my older brother couldn’t stop drinking. He started gambling, and then he couldn’t stop that, either.” One of the girls swore under her breath. “Whatever my sister and I managed to save, he’d take. I wasn’t afraid of him. Like you, I was afraid of losing our home and living on the streets. But it didn’t matter how hard I worked, the cards stayed stacked against me.”

  She had felt so alone, working small magic and needing everything to change. Into that life had stepped Lazare—and also, a much more dangerous magic.

  A few girls turned her way, listening.

  Encouraged, Camille pressed on. “I was afraid of having to get money in ways I didn’t like. I was afraid that if I died, my sister would be defenseless against him. To my brother we’d become things, something to trade away. He tried to erase me,” she said bitterly. “He wanted me to stay silent. But you don’t have to.”

  Odette picked up the newspaper and stabbed the air with it. “We don’t want to talk to reporters.”

  “I could write your stories myself. I can’t print eighty thousand copies. But I would do my best. Together we might change Parisians’ minds.” Ignoring Odette’s wary scowl, she promised, “It would be done only with your consent. I’d write the first one and print it. After we saw how people reacted to it, if you didn’t like it or felt it made things worse, that would be the end of it.”

  The room was still, the only sounds the snap of the fire and the idle lap of the river beyond the walls. The minutes dragged by and no one spoke. It was another resounding no. Behind her back, Camille clasped her empty hands to keep them from shaking.

  “Giselle, you know where I live, if you change your minds.” Heavy-hearted, she squared her shoulders and once more turned to leave.

  “Wait.” Giselle stepped forward. “I believe in you. You saw me. Everyone else at Sainte-Chapelle looked through me as if I was invisible. But you spoke up.”

  “And now you trust her with your life?” Margot asked, hurt coloring her voice.

  Angrily Giselle said, “Camille stood up for me the way that you stand up for me. We’re out of options, and I’m betting she can help us keep the house. Let me go first.”

  “Giselle,” Odette warned. “You’re not thinking this through—”

  “I already have.” She faced Camille then, full of fire and certainty. “I’ll tell you what happened.”

  10

  It was late by the time Camille returned to the forbidding Hôtel Séguin. As the door closed behind her, the housemaid Adèle came into the entry hall. Her eyes were saucer-sized. “Your shoes, Madame!”

  What had once been a pretty pair of boots were now unrecognizable lumps thick with mud. Above them, Camille’s stockings and petticoats were stained a vile, creeping brown, as if she’d been wading through a sewer.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Camille said quickly. “Please don’t go to any trouble.” She hated the thought of someone cleaning them for her. And worse, with each moment that passed, Giselle’s words threatened to slip away.

  “Your sister has been worried—she wanted to send the young men to search for you through all of Paris!”

  Guilt pricked at her. “But they didn’t, did they?”

  “Monsieur Mellais convinced her to let you go.” Adèle flushed. “He said it was very important to you.”

  My heart. “He’s right. And my sister—will you tell her I’m home?” Camille would have to apologize later. Wrenching off her shoes, she headed for the elegant doors that led to the dining room, where the printing press waited.

  Adèle followed. “Madame, do you not wish to bathe? It’s late to be working now, and in such a condition. You will most certainly become ill!”

  Camille bit her lip. “There are girls living under the Pont Neuf who will be evicted if we do not help them.”

  “Under the Pont Neuf?” Adèle recoiled. “You will have contracted a terrible disease—”

  “Adele, if you’d spoken with them, you’d say the same as I do, I am certain of it.”

  Mollified, Adèle curtsied. “If it’s important to Madame, it is important to all of us at the Hôtel Séguin.”

  “
I’m grateful for your support.” Camille spun on her heel and set out once more to the printing room.

  “Madame?” Adèle asked, trailing after her. “Is there anything I can do to help those girls?”

  “May I have some coffee, please?” Camille opened the dining room doors and inhaled the dry scent of paper, the exhilarating wet bite of ink. How could she have thought she would give this up? Already her mind was shaping the words she would use to tell Giselle’s story. “It would be a great help, for I have much work to do.”

  * * *

  Pacing the length of the printing room, she reread the notes she’d taken when Giselle had told her story. A few of the girls had refused to listen. Others had crowded close, intrigued by the spectacle of Camille scribbling on a poster’s back as Giselle’s story unspooled to the tune of the wind humming along the seams of the patched-together house.

  She’d felt so much while she’d listened to her story, but the notes turned out to be only the vaguest outline of what had happened. Journalistic facts she’d thought she needed to record. They didn’t do justice to Giselle’s pain and defiance and strength. But she didn’t want to be sensational. Reality was bad enough. She would tell the truth, nothing more—but nothing less.

  Leaning over the table, she scribbled a description of the house under the bridge, how it felt to be there, the city close yet a world away. But as she looked over what she’d written, she realized it was what she had seen. What she had thought. If their plan to convince readers that the girls deserved to live in Flotsam House was going to work, the pamphlet couldn’t be made up of Camille’s thoughts. Giselle herself had to speak.

  Reaching into the upper case, she took out the type for the words that marched through her mind. Deftly, she set them into the tray, beginning at the upper right and facing them backward, working toward the left.

  THE LOST GIRLS SPEAK

  THE FLOWER SELLER

  The skin on the back of her neck prickled and once again she had the disquieting feeling that the house was shifting itself to peer at what she did. She didn’t know if metal type and ink and paper could convey the heartbreak of Giselle’s words. But she would try.

  YOU MIGHT THINK

  I was forced to make my living under the bridge.

  I was not. I CHOSE this place.

  Camille stood back, surveyed the bold capitals. The short lines and the simple words felt right. They felt the way Giselle had spoken: not pitying or sentimental. None of the philosophical phrases Papa had woven through his writings, no references to long-dead authors or revolutionaries. Instead, it was simply true.

  Now that she’d begun, her fingers couldn’t set the words fast enough to keep pace with the stream of words she knew she needed to print.

  My mother could not feed us all so handed us away to those who could. My sister and I were given as servants to the woman who ran the gambling den nearby. We were but ten and eleven, what did we know? We had no rights. No protection. Maman thought she did well. But though we worked, we never got paid. We were always hungry.

  Camille wanted to leave a space there, for the long, angry pause Giselle had taken before continuing.

  It would be an extravagant use of paper, but what else was it good for? She skipped three rows, enough to let her readers reflect—on Giselle, on how they were lucky they were to live as they did—and began again.

  The neighbor locked us in our rooms at night, made us slaves in all but name. Anything we needed, like a new chemise or hairpins, she sold it to us, against the money we earned by selling flowers and fruits to the patrons who came to gamble. We saw quick enough we might die having never walked outside again.

  My sister and I promised each other we would flee if we saw the chance. We vowed that if the chance came, we wouldn’t wait to tell the other one, but to run and know we would be reunited on the outside. Our meeting place would be the steps of Sainte-Chapelle.

  One morning I woke up and she was gone.

  Giselle had been so strong, restrained, even, but when she’d told this part of her story, she’d pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, her mouth a twist of pain. Then she’d set her narrow shoulders back and started again.

  Dieu, how happy I was to know she had fled! Two days later I too escaped, and the Lost Girls took me in. We have our own home and the money I get is mine to keep. Bien sûr, there are men who don’t understand a flower seller sells flowers, not herself, but most days I manage.

  For a long time I waited for my sister to find me.

  Each day I walk around the high walls of Sainte-Chapelle, searching for her, but she’s never come.

  I used to fear she died in that house, her body taken out on a board in the night when I couldn’t have seen it. For how else would I not know my sister had gone?

  But now I believe she did escape and she found a better place. Even if it means she cannot come to me, I’m happy as long as

  SHE LIVES FREE

  The tiny hairs on Camille’s arms rose as she reread the last line. Any other time, she would wait until morning to check the type, and then print under natural light to make sure it was right. For candle glow could play tricks on the eye.

  But the eviction notice was a relentless clock, and the story was a fever, burning in her hands. She couldn’t wait. She blackened the type until it gleamed and carefully set a sheet of paper down over Giselle’s words.

  “Please be right,” she said out loud to the empty room. “Be perfect. Persuasive.” Pulling hard, she brought the lever down to press the paper into the inked type—and winced. The edge of the metal plate had caught her hand. It was hardly worth noting, more of a pinch than anything. There was only a thin red line of blood.

  But in the room, something shifted. The way a cat’s ears prick at a scratch in the wall. The way someone bends close to listen. In the tray, the blackened letters glistened as if alive. As if they might peel off the press and wing away.

  She was getting tired, she knew. Should she leave it for tomorrow? Sophie would say to rest. But Lazare had stood up for her. She wanted to prove he’d been right.

  Besides, she didn’t know if she could stop. She felt compelled.

  She stepped back and held up the sheet. Even in the weak light she could see there was blood on it. Her cut had started bleeding again. Merde! Binding her hand with a clean rag, she was about to toss the bloodied page on the fire when, out of the corner of her eye, the words on the paper wavered.

  Shadows slid like spilled ink across the page.

  The letters swam, gleaming like fish surfacing in the Seine. And as the shadows ran, she saw in them images, like oil on water. Now the old Pont Neuf, now the running-away river, the carved-out hollows in all the girls’ cheeks. But also glimmers of hope: the gold light of the stove the girls gathered around, little Céline with her ribbon at the water’s edge, Giselle’s trust in Camille. They were so real she reached out to touch them—before they vanished as if they’d never been.

  The room flared back into being. There was the fire, throwing off smoke, making the room smell of ash and cinder. She’d only imagined the pictures, she told herself. It had only felt like magic.

  She hung the wet sheet on a line. It swayed there for a moment, and though she was her harshest critic Camille could see it was perfect. Beautiful, clear, and compelling. But would it be enough to be noticed in the deluge of pamphlets and newspapers flooding Paris? Enough to persuade the public to help the girls stay?

  It must be.

  It was past midnight now, and she still had so much to do.

  All night Camille worked by candlelight. When she finally left the dining room, the tapers had dwindled to stumps and only a few hours remained before dawn. Unsteady with fatigue, she paused in the gloomy hall and rested her forehead against the doorway. The cat Fantôme appeared in the gloom and pressed against her skirts. Around her the house settled and creaked and whispered its ancient magic, and it bothered her less than it had before. She imagined there was somethin
g approving in it, the way it seemed to amplify what she was doing. For it was almost as if she could hear the ink drying, the sheets of paper rustling in their impatience to make their way into the streets.

  At her escritoire, Camille scribbled a note to Adèle, asking her to make certain the pamphlets were taken to the bookseller Lasalle in the morning. It was a risk. He hadn’t exactly asked for more pamphlets, but he was the only one who’d offered anything like encouragement. And then she stumbled up to her room, tore off her filthy dress, and collapsed into sleep, more tired than if she’d been gambling through the night at Versailles.

  11

  Begrudgingly, Lasalle promised to try selling the pamphlets. But the note he’d sent to Camille had been curt, offering no guarantees.

  It was so hard to wait. It made no sense to print more, since she didn’t know if they would sell, and when, later that morning, Adèle announced that Monsieur Mellais was in the hall, she rushed down the grand staircase to greet him. As it happened, he was on his way to meet with Lafayette and had only stopped in to make certain she was well after her adventures last night. She told him what had happened and asked if he hadn’t been worried.

  “I, worried?” he replied nonchalantly, though Camille thought she detected a shadow of concern in his face. “You are a wonder, mon âme. This pamphlet will be the one that does it,” he said before he kissed her hand good-bye. “I know it.”

  But as she watched him go, his long strides eating up the distance to the street, she wasn’t at all certain.

  The next day delivered no note from Lasalle. To stay busy, she went with Sophie to Le Sucre. Sitting in the pink-and-white room that had once been a sweet shop, she listened to gossip while she pleated blue, white, and red ribbons for the revolutionary corsages that were so in demand that Sophie and her seamstresses could hardly keep up. In the afternoon, when Sophie went to the workshop to help Rosier with the puppet costumes, a secret smile on her lips, Camille hurried home to rifle through the letters in the silver salver.