time? Or the way they were when the balloon plummeted to the ground, only to be saved at the last minute by a brave and lovely girl?”
“Storm clouds,” she answered. She would never forget their speed, nor the drenching rain that fell.
“They intrigue me because they’re always changing. One day, who knows? We might have the ability to predict the weather. Imagine how it would help the farmers and sailors—all of us. My theory is that clouds are like the play of emotions across a face”—his gaze went to her cheeks, then dropped to her mouth—“and can tell us what forces are behind changes in the sky.”
Camille flushed. “Are you saying I am easy to read?”
“Not at all.” Some shadowy emotion moved over Lazare’s face and was gone.
She smiled up at him, though her thoughts circled back to Lafayette’s plans. “But if the balloons were used for spying at the border, where there was unrest, you would not have to go, would you?”
“I’m pleased to see that doesn’t make you happy.” He tucked her hand tighter around his arm. “I will stay in Paris. Firmly on the ground.”
It made her glad, though a knowing voice inside whispered: feet on the ground does not sound at all like Lazare.
“A few more training sessions and then Lafayette hopes to demonstrate the balloons on the Champ de Mars. He wants it to be a success. Rosier will be pleased. We’ll finally have the big balloon spectacle he’s always wished for.”
“But that’s wonderful—”
“It is.” But he did not look at her.
“I was wondering,” she said lightly, “your father’s friendship with Lafayette—”
“Camille!” Sophie was racing toward them, her hand clamped to her hat to keep it from blowing off. Behind her loomed the open space of the Place de Grève, half-full with a jostling crowd. “It’s the king!” she shouted. “Hurry, you two! They are saying he will make a speech!”
14
“Vive le Roi!” someone shouted.
Louis XVI, king of France, shuffled toward the front of the stage. At Versailles, courtiers snidely said that when he wasn’t wearing court finery, Louis could be mistaken for a gardener. But today he had dressed the part. Across his creamy gray suit was wrapped a wide blue sash, the Cordon Bleu. Lace fluttered at his thick throat and pinned to his coat, next to a silver star, was a tricolor cockade just like the ones sold at Le Sucre. His hair was tied with a plain black ribbon, as if he were a man of the people. But everyone knew he ate two chickens for breakfast and gorged on delicacies starving Parisians could only dream of.
Shouts rippled through the crowd as Marie Antoinette appeared behind him. She wore a saffron silk gown à la française, embroidered with sprays of tiny white flowers. Simple, but costly. Her hair was gray, but not from powder, and the radiance of her skin, which had been the envy of the court when she was a girl, had faded. Séguin had kept her looking young with his magic, but now that he was dead, it was as if all of the sorcery he’d lavished on her had vanished. She now seemed no different than anyone else.
“The queen is much changed,” Camille remarked. “I can’t understand why she would have come.”
Lazare wondered, “And of all the squares in Paris to choose the Place de Grève, with its terrible history?”
“I can’t think it an accident,” Rosier remarked as someone onstage called for the people’s attention. “In any case, we are about to find out.”
From the stage, the king blinked at the crowd. A tall, pale-faced man, dressed in black and wearing a red cloak that billowed behind him, handed the king a piece of paper. The wind snatched at it, threatening to tear it away.
“Our people!” he read. “How happy we are to be in Paris with you! We have been too long separated.”
Applause and jeers jangled in the square. “Send your wife back where she came from, the Austrian whore!” someone yelled.
“As the National Assembly does its crucial work,” the king intoned, “we have come to Paris, in our duty as the father of our people, to warn you of a great danger.” Camille could feel the crowd’s attention sharpen. The king must have felt it too, for as if overcome with emotion, he pressed a heavy hand covered with rings against the rich fabric of his coat. “My people, listen! There are dangerous, traitorous magicians who dwell in our midst.”