“Daumier,” she said, “are you familiar with weapons in the armory?”
He inclined his head.
“Please outfit yourself, Timbault, and everyone in the house who wants one with a weapon. What would you give Timbault? A musket?”
“Consider it done.” With a bow, Daumier disappeared down the hall toward the room where the ancient weapons could sometimes be heard, muttering like knives being sharpened.
That night she wrote an urgent letter.
There was no time to waste, now that she’d learned the Hôtel Séguin—and possibly she herself—were in the Comité’s sights.
As she waited for the ink to dry, she listened to the house rattle and clink. It sounded as if it were being fitted with armor, metal scales creeping over its windows and doors. But there would always be a chink in it.
If she knew anything, it was that there was always a way in.
24
A worried response to her letter arrived from Chandon early the next the day, informing Camille that he and Blaise would arrive by noon. Now that the house’s clocks were striking twelve, she felt the ancient house waiting. Biding its time. If she were forced to say what it was waiting for, she would say: more magicians. More magic.
As if there wasn’t already enough.
In the front salon, she pulled aside the curtain. The street was empty but for a few pigeons pecking at manure. No sign of the Comité. Or the boys. She was so intent on watching that she startled when Adèle came up behind her to say a gardener had come to the stable door, inquiring about a position.
“But we already have a gardener.”
Adèle faltered. “He says you have been expecting him?”
“I’ll come and speak to him.” Adèle led her to the kitchen entrance at the back of the house. Camille stepped down into the kitchen, where a scullery maid scrubbing carrots was glancing nervously at the gardener. Obscuring his face was a felt toque covered with bits of straw and mud, as if it had been dropped in a particularly dirty street.
Chandon.
And behind him, so pale he could only ever belong indoors, was Blaise, looking uncomfortable and furtive in a straw hat.
“I know them,” she said to the startled staff. “If you’ll come with me, mes amis?”
Once they were out of the kitchen, Chandon grasped her arm. “Why the urgent letter—has something happened to the books? You haven’t found something about tempus fugit, have you?”
She shook her head. “The Comité was here last night.”
“Merde!” Chandon swore. As the boys huddled close, she told them what had happened. When she’d finished her story, their faces were drawn and white with shock.
“And you, outside, unprotected by the wards!” Blaise muttered. “I do not envy you that.”
“But how did the Comité know to come here?”
“That pale branch you saw them carrying—during the Affair of the Poisons, it was believed to be useful in locating magicians, like a dowsing rod finds water. Or the dogs smell something. But really, I wonder if they have maps,” Blaise said thoughtfully, “of magic houses in Paris.”
Such things existed? “Is Bellefleur on it, too?”
“Hence the bone entrance,” Chandon replied.
How could they both be so calm—as if this was nothing? “Won’t they keep coming back until they get in?”
“Unless you let them in, the house’s magic will keep them out,” Blaise said. “It would take a siege engine to break its walls, and by then, I assume, you would have escaped.”
It was hardly reassuring.
He peered down the hall. “Is the library that way?”
As they walked, Chandon asked, apprehensively, “Have you seen the latest anti-magician pamphlets? The worst ones—cowardly anonymous ones—have a bird for a printer’s mark. All over Paris they are calling for our deaths. Or at the very least, demanding that people turn us in.” That night at Bellefleur, he’d put on a good show for them all—courageous, determined. But it was even getting to him.
“It’s already happening,” Camille said. “They dragged a jeweler from his shop at the Palais-Royal. A woman had accused him of using magic to cheat customers. She was so pleased to see him brought low.”
“The Comité,” Chandon fumed, “has no scruples. And they give those who hate an excuse. The guards carry signed warrants with a blank space to fill in whatever name is needed on the spot—they have carte blanche. Truly we have no time to waste.”
“Blaise,” Camille asked, “you haven’t come across any leads in your shop?”
“Yes and no. I’ve bought crates and crates of books these past weeks. It takes time to go