the girls and these women, France’s downtrodden. It was about change for the people who most needed it.
And then, she wondered, the hope as thin as a wisp of smoke, once the king did the right thing for his people and they were well fed and had the freedoms they deserved, might not they forget about their hatred of magicians? Might she not have to choose which version of herself to be? Women were marching on Versailles and suddenly anything—anything at all—seemed possible. And she could not let Lazare turn away from it.
“You believe in it?” he asked.
“I do. This will be the moment when the revolution becomes what it is destined to be, when everything changes.”
His face softened. “Do you remember what I said, when we went up in the balloon the last time?”
She would never forget it. “Tell me again?”
“I said that I didn’t know what was going to happen, but whatever it was, I wanted to go through it with you.”
Her pulse quickened. “Then you’ll come?”
His broad smile was a yes, and she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, emphatically. “You won’t regret it.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “A bold claim.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” On a nearby table sat a little silver bell. She was about to set it ringing when his hand closed over hers. Playfully, his long fingers eased the bell’s handle from her grip.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Stopping you from ringing it.” He brought her hand to his lips.
Desire threaded through her, rich and compelling. “Lazare—”
“Let me take you by balloon.”
Bewildered, she asked, “But how? Isn’t your balloon still at the border?”
“A benefit of Lafayette’s scheme is that we now have access to a whole fleet of them. One could be ready in an hour. It won’t be the trip over the Alps I promised you.” He raised a dark eyebrow, the one with the scar in it. “But I will try to make it as thrilling as I can.”
Camille flushed. “I have no doubt you will make it quite thrilling indeed.”
28
As they approached Versailles, Camille looked out over the palace and gardens and for a dizzy, unsettling moment, she thought: home. Below lay the familiar road she’d traveled so many times: going to court with the glamoire glittering under her skin or trundling back to Paris at dawn, her pockets heavy, her body aching as the magic left it, her mind spinning over what she’d seen and done.
The great palace’s pale stone shone in the vague, rainy light. There lay the court where she’d first arrived, unsure but determined, stepping down from her hired carriage in her glamoired dress and her dreams. Behind lay the unending gardens, their gravel paths radiating from the long mirror of the Grand Canal. There she had played late-night games in the dark and fragrant greenery. There she’d heard nightingales sing in the towering yews and peacocks scream from the roofs.
“Do you think we can drop a little lower?”
Lazare nodded. “I’ll release some air.”
Slowly, the balloon lost altitude.
Below, crowds swarmed into the courtyard. Guards from the palace were moving among the people, who were carrying—weapons? Uneasy, she took the long glass from Lazare’s pocket and held it to her eye.
As if he sensed her worry, he came to stand beside her. “What do you see?”
She spun the rings to focus. “Women. Hundreds of them. They have shovels in their hands, rakes.” The weak sunlight glinted on a curve of metal, and her stomach lurched. “And scythes! Oh, Lazare, I fear they have come to fight.”
Someone, somewhere, was beating a drum. Its rhythm was a wild heartbeat. The night the Bastille fell, the people of Paris had beat drums like that too, and she’d run stumbling through the city’s dark alleys to the safety—or so she’d thought—of the Hôtel Théron. She reached out to Lazare, who took her hand in his.
“There are thousands of people here,” he observed. “If they want to go into the palace, nothing will stop them. They are armed to the teeth.”
“Lasalle said they were protesting for bread.” Camille moved her glass to the line that snaked away, dark as a river, from the palace. A group of women had taken a cannon—from where?—and were hauling it along the road. There were wagons used as roadblocks. A forest of blades held high. And members of Lafayette’s National Guard, so many of them in their blue uniforms. Had they come to put a stop to it—or to join the women?