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 something 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