king’s words echoed in her ears. What could he mean?
“For centuries France has lived with this plague of magicians. Our great-grandfather, Louis XIV, was the first of our family to fight them.” The king puffed out his chest. “He could not bear that they preyed on the blood of honest and hardworking French people, worse than any feudal lord or aristocrat.”
A wave of revulsion rolled over Camille. Chandon had told her that magicians—perhaps even her own ancestors—had tortured the poor to gain their sorrow. Just like Séguin, they’d done it to lessen magic’s toll on themselves while maintaining their well-being and power through others’ suffering. It horrified her.
But Louis XIV was no crusader. He had brought the magicians to Versailles to ward his palace with spells that would entice the nobility, and so keep them under his thumb. But when the magicians’ status at court had begun to rival his own, he’d turned on them, executing those who didn’t flee in time. In killing them, Louis XIV hadn’t wanted to help the people. He’d only helped himself hold on to power.
In the face of revolution, his great-grandson was doing the same thing.
“Down with the magicians!” someone shouted. “Bloodsuckers!”
“Regardez!” The king gestured theatrically to Marie Antoinette, who stood behind him. “Even her majesty the queen was a victim of an unscrupulous magician!”
The queen—a victim? It was for the queen’s sake Séguin had tried to enslave both her and Chandon by making them his sorrow-wells!
Around her, people grew restless. It was just the same as it’d been with the flower seller: one word could ignite them. The people were hungry for something more. Someone else to blame. Something worse.
“Magic,” Louis continued, “is against our new Republic. It makes a mockery of freedom, of brotherhood, of the happiness of the French people.” A crooked, big-lipped smile. “Our great-grandfather made the magicians stand trial, even though many were his noble courtiers. He did not flinch when the guilty were executed. The first step toward freedom from magic is putting our intentions into law. Therefore we, in our sacred duty to protect the people of France, do hereby decree: magic is henceforth outlawed.” He raised the paper in his hand to peer at it, his diamonds glittering. “On pain of death.”
Silence, a held breath. Beneath the shadow of her hat, Marie Antoinette smiled.
The people roared. As the crowd shoved forward, Camille lost her footing. She thought for a moment she would be crushed and then she felt Lazare’s strong arm under her elbow, keeping her standing. “Are you all right?”
“Lost my balance, that’s all.”
“I see his game now,” Rosier said grimly. “A masterful—terrible!—stroke of genius to lay everything at the feet of magicians.”
“How dare he tell that false story!” Camille exclaimed. “Especially when his own wife was complicit—”
“Hush!” Sophie glanced at the people around them. “You mustn’t—”
But she could not stop. “He blames magicians when he and the queen are the ones who have caused all this suffering!”
The crimson-cloaked man who’d given the king the paper came forward. His face was stern, his bearing that of a military man who would ride for weeks to hunt a criminal and bring him to justice. An executioner. On his cloak was embroidered a hand surrounded by yellow flames, in its center a black C and M intertwined. He raised his arm for silence, and waited until it came.
“His Royal Majesty Louis XVI does hereby proclaim that anyone possessing magical objects or practicing magic will be arrested by the newly formed Comité des Récherches Magiques. He will be charged as a traitor to France. He will be tried as any other traitor and given no special privileges, no matter his class or rank.”
Camille curled her hand tighter around Lazare’s arm. No one must see my fear, she thought. No one can know.
At that the crowd erupted into applause, chanting “Mort aux magiciens! Death to magicians!” Then one lone voice rose above the others: “À la lanterne, les magiciens!” and the crowd roared even louder in response.
“Magicians don’t exist!” a burly man growled. He stood only an arm’s length from Camille, wearing a workman’s trousers and clogs, his fair hair gritty with stone dust. Shaking his fists at the king, he cried, “It is the king who is at fault!”
“Liar! Shut up!” A man in a dingy butcher’s apron shoved him so hard the workman stumbled back. His coarse mouth twisted with fury. “It’s the magicians that bewitch our wives and lay curses on our children!”