“But if they recognize me—” Camille tried to push back the terror that rose in her as the carriage trundled closer to the gate. Guards dragging her away. And what would happen to Sophie, Chandon, and Rosier for traveling with an accused magician? In that moment she was glad that Lazare, at least, was somewhere else.
“They won’t.” Chandon rummaged beneath the seats and uncovered a bottle of wine. Sloshing it about the carriage, he drenched her and Sophie’s dresses as well as the fur of his white wolf costume. “Addendum to the plan: we are to be drunk, and foolish, though respectful, and they will be so annoyed with us that they will leave in disgust—”
The door was wrenched wide by a policeman. Behind him, their hats shadowing their faces, loomed two Comité guards. One of their monstrous dogs pushed his head into the carriage and, as his black lips pulled away from his yellow teeth, inhaled. His nose twitched, as if scenting for magic.
The wine. Fervently she hoped it would be enough to cover the bitter ash scent of the magic she had worked.
“Passports, s’il vous plaît.”
In his hands, the papers dwindled, insignificant and powerless. Cursorily, he paged through them. “You are all performers?”
As one, they inclined their heads. Chandon burped. “Pardon!”
“Drunk and debauched,” one of the Comité guards said as the dog growled. “And what is your play?”
What could they possibly say? Well, monsieur, it is a fantasy, a fairy tale. A story of love and wishes and a longing for beauty—a play about hope and possibility. She knew they would consider it antirevolutionary in the extreme. Hadn’t Sophie and Rosier already been warned?
She remembered how in the Tennis Court at Versailles the members of the Assembly had raised their arms in a Roman salute. That was the kind of thing they valued. Virtue. Reason.
Before she lost her nerve, she said, “It is an ancient play, messieurs. Popular in the time of Caesar, it’s a story of a transformation and hope, a virtuous parable for our time.”
The Comité guard shoved the policeman out of the way and leaned into the carriage. “Those costumes are an insult to progress. Fantastical. Magical.” He spat the word out as if it would kill him. Beside him, eager saliva dripped from the dog’s mouth.
Steady, she told herself, but she could not stop her frenzied, galloping heart.
“But, monsieur!” Sophie gave him her most winning smile. “The only magic in the play is true love. In my role as the princess, I give up my crown to marry a reformed highwayman. He is taught a lesson about being honest and hardworking, and I am humbled to see the wrong in my royal life.”
The guard grunted. Camille clenched her hand in her skirts to keep herself from screaming. They were so close. To go back to the terror of the jail, or worse than that, back to the black shape of the gallows—
“Here,” Chandon slurred, taking a huge gulp of wine and holding the bottle out to the guard. “Want a sip?”
The guard’s lips thinned in disgust. “And France is to be transformed for the benefit of you costumed fools? Take your play out of Paris. It is not wanted here.” He threw their passports at them and, yanking his dog away, closed the door.
Chandon put a finger to his lips and they sat in silence as, on the box, Rosier clucked at the horses. The carriage jerked forward. As the ancient walls of Paris rose up around them, the crowd parted, the gate creaked open, someone shouted, “Look! A circus!” But no one stopped them. It felt like years that they sat in the hot carriage, not daring to move, as the wheels rolled on. When they finally were out of sight of the gate, Rosier cracked the whip and sent the horses into a gallop, racing west.
For six hours, they traveled toward the coast. The landscape was flat, autumn fields shorn to stubble, grapes ripening on rows of leafy vines. Clusters of broad oaks and chestnut and hazelnut, woolly sheep on a hill facing in the same direction. A wide-open sky such as she’d never seen before, only now and then pierced by a church steeple. Every hour, Camille peered through the back window, each time certain she would see the black horses of the Comité storming after them. But for now their luck held.
Only once did they stop. At the inn where they’d waited for