We must launch immediately,” Celeste announced when she walked into the school the next morning. Marcel looked up from working on her velocipede, fingers thick with tallow.
Amélie frowned. “We cannot launch right now. It will take at least six hours to fill the envelope.”
“Which is fini,” Josie said, snipping off her thread.
“Why the hurry?” Marcel asked, reaching for a rag.
She was breathing as heavily as if she had run all the way from her mother’s house instead of giving his velocipede an occasional push. “The Emperor doubts my mother so much that he commanded her to marry me to an old comte to prove her loyalty.”
Josie surged to her feet, spilling fabric on to the floor. “Amélie, weather report. Marcel, inventory—gas, ropes, supplies. Celeste and I will position the envelope. Vite!”
As her friends burst into action, Celeste’s breath came easier. Amélie lifted her muslin skirts to climb the school’s observation tower, where instruments would give them an indication of changing conditions. Celeste and Marcel had scaled those steps countless times—first at a plod and then at a run—as they exercised their legs to be able to work the pedals of the steering apparatus.
Now Marcel headed for the storage racks for the supplies they’d need to fill the envelope and secure the basket. Celeste helped Josie gather the yards and yards of colored silk and trundle it out into the inner courtyard of the building.
Three stories of balconies looked down on the flagstone-floored space. Once they would have been lined with students, jostling one another for a prime position to view the coming ascension. The more the Emperor had railed at her mother, the fewer the number of students who had come, until Marcel, Amélie, and Josie were all that remained. And her mother no longer had the heart to teach them.
But this—this balloon, this grand adventure—would restore the school’s honor, and that of her family.
“Spread it over the frames,” Josie instructed. She took one side and Celeste the other to drape the long, heavy panels over the polished trestles lined up to the north. How many times had she watched other students stretch out their envelopes while her mother looked for any imperfection?
“Reinforce that seam,” she’d say. Or worse, “Non, take it down. You are not ready to fly.”
Celeste was ready. She could feel it.
Josie stepped back to eye her work. “Parfait. It looks like a rainbow decided to visit.”
“I don’t care what color it is,” Celeste said, joining her at the top of the envelope to gaze down the rippling lines of color. “So long as it carries me to England.”
With a rumble of steel on stone, Marcel rolled out one of the gas tanks and positioned it next to the steam pump in the middle of the eastern side of the square. “We have enough gas to launch, but La Blanchard is going to notice.”
“Only after I have set out and returned,” Celeste promised as he began connecting the spigot at the top of the tank with the copper piping of the low-pressure pump. “Do we have sufficient coal and water to keep the pump working for six hours?”
Marcel glanced up. “Barely. But it has been warm. We can contribute the coal for the fires.”
Josie nodded. “I will gather it. Celeste, you will want to collect what you need for the trip.”
“You are an angel.” Celeste gave her a peck on the cheek, then headed for her workspace.
A laboratory, her father had called it, as if she mixed chemicals like Monsieur Lavoisier or conducted experiments with plants like Monsieur Thouin at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle. An imaginarium, her mother had once said, awe tinging her voice. Ballooning had captivated them all.
Before Papa’s fall. Before the Emperor’s disappointment.
“We will rise,” she murmured, fingers grazing the leather of her father’s journals where they lay stacked on one end of her worktable. “You will see, Papa. I will make you proud.”
She had thought long and hard on what to take with her on this historic journey. Most of her journals must remain here, lest she lose them at sea, so she had started a special journal for the trip. She couldn’t help opening it and gazing at the proud words.
We hypothesize that it is possible to fly from France to England, using the proper application of balloon dimensions, equipment, and training. I intend to prove it by ascending from the school and descending safely in the marshes of Kent.
She’d already noted the size of the balloon and estimated the weight of it, her equipment, and her supplies for the journey. Now she noted each piece.
A portable writing desk with pencils, along with a knife to sharpen them and trim the lines if needed. Maps of England and France. Her father’s brass compass for direction. A sextant to calculate elevation from known points of reference. A thermometer to tell how the temperature changed at altitude. An anemometer to determine wind speed and direction.
Celeste paused as she glanced at the explosives.
Her mother had begun crafting the deadly little balls a year ago, as a way to add more excitement to her ascensions. She would light them and toss them out at a height to brighten the night skies with bangs and booms. The dangerous practice merely showed how desperate she was to remain in the Emperor’s good graces, for loud noises had always terrified her mother. Sometimes Celeste thought one of the reasons La Blanchard was so enamored of the sky was that she escaped the noisy world below.
Two of the charges remained from her mother’s last ascension, but Celeste knew the secret of making more. Her mother might have refused to allow her to handle the various ingredients, but she’d been willing for Celeste to keep her company while she worked. Now she readily rolled the specially made gunpowder and other ingredients into the paper casings with the wick so she could add two more to the stash.
Next came the spiderweb, her own invention. Her mother might shake her head over some of Celeste’s ideas, but she had nodded grimly at this one. Neither of them wanted to see another fall from the sky. Josie had helped Celeste procure the spun silk to craft the bubble that would allow her to escape should the balloon become unstable. She’d only tested it once, by jumping off the top floor of the tower into the courtyard, and she’d smacked against the first-floor balcony instead of floating to the ground as she’d expected.
A chill went through her as she placed it with the rest of her equipment. She would only have to use it in an emergency.
By afternoon, she had everything ready. They all met in the courtyard, where the steadily chugging steam pump had inflated the envelope until it crouched like a rainbow-colored cloud on the trestles.
“We should reach maximum inflation in the next few hours,” Marcel reported from where he perched on the end of a trestle, leg swinging in time to the engine’s puff.
“No sign of leakage,” Josie added as she circled the silk. “I’ve been watching and listening.”
Amélie, hands clasped as she stood by the stairway to the tower, sighed. “I wish I had good news to share. The wind is against us. Even with your steering paddles, Celeste, it would take too long to reach the Channel. You would not have started your crossing before you began to descend.”
The problem was as intractable as this war. For much of France, the prevailing winds moved from west to east. To cross the Channel, the Emperor’s forces must travel in the opposite direction. So far, no one had managed it. Even her brilliant father, who had been the first to cross the Channel by balloon, had done so from England to France, and not the other way around.
“And that will never be enough for the Emperor, my little star,” Papa had told her. “To serve him, we must do more.”
The Emperor would never understand how hard they were trying.
“Do you see any reason to hope for a change?” Celeste pressed.
Amélie’s sad face provided the answer. “I will watch.”
Josie completed her circle and came to put her hand on Celeste’s arm. “How late can you stay? I’m sure we can find you a bed.”
Amélie blinked, hands falling. “But of course we could. You and I only take up two of the dozen beds in the girls’ dormitory.”
Her two friends had been enrolled in the school when they were thirteen and fourteen. Since then, they’d lost mother and father to the war. A small bequest paid for their room and board. Marcel’s father was still alive, but served with the northern guard. Money for his upkeep came in fits and starts.
“Maman will expect me home,” Celeste said. “We have the opera tonight.”
Marcel shook his head. “You cannot keep pretending you care.”
“I don’t mind the opera,” Celeste hedged. “Or the theatre.”
“Admit it,” he challenged. “You spend all intermission planning better ways to raise the curtains, dim the lights.”
“And change the scenery.” She shared a grin with him.
“You two are hopeless,” Josie said. “I wouldn’t mind attending balls, or going to the opera.” She twirled around the envelope until she reached Marcel’s side, then spread her skirts in a curtsey. “Please, sir, will you honor me with a dance?”
Marcel rose and looked down his nose at her, dark eyes hooded like a hawk’s. “Girls who request dances are forward.” His haughty visage cracked in another grin. “Just the way I like them.”
Josie giggled.
From the tower came a clang, then a series of bonks and pings, as if something had fallen down the stairs. A ball bearing rolled out of the stairwell. Celeste and Josie frowned, but Amélie clapped her hands.
“That’s it!”
“What?” Marcel asked, frowning as well.
Celeste had never seen her friend so giddy.
“I rigged a piece of tin beside the weathervane,” Amélie gushed. “When the vane turned, it would knock over the tin, which would then hit a basket of bearings and send them tumbling down the stairs.”
As if to prove it, a dozen more began rolling out onto the courtyard floor.
“Ingenious,” Josie acknowledged. “But what exactly does it mean?”
Amélie’s eyes were huge. “The wind’s changed. As soon as the envelope rises, so does Celeste.”
Two hours later, Celeste was standing beside the basket, the envelope towering above her. She had changed into her flight suit. Her mother might go up in filmy muslin, but Celeste preferred something more practical. The men of the Balloon Corps wore silk trousers that fastened at the ankles. She saw no reason why she shouldn’t mimic them. Josie had made hers from sea-green watered silk, and Celeste had put her serpentine redingote over the top. As she came out of her workshop, buttoning the last button over her chest, Marcel had raised a brow.
“Now I look as much like a pirate as you do,” she told him.
He laughed. “So long as you fight as well as a pirate.”
Celeste sobered. “I hope not to fight at all. The idea is to stay above the front.”
He had nodded to the basket. “Well, you have a good chance.”
She’d tried to give them every advantage. She’d borrowed not only from her father’s designs, but from those of the Royal Society, whose Philosophical Transactions were smuggled across the Channel to France and devoured by every scientist and engineer. From them, she’d learned that England’s Lord and Lady Worthington had proven the efficacy of steering paddles, made from cedar to minimize the weight. Accordingly, she’d crafted four, one for each side of the basket, and she could work one or more through levers and pedals on the floor. Bellows affixed to each corner could also help propel her in a particular direction.
It made for a rather bristling gunwale, and an even more crowded floor, with all the instruments, writing desk, her journal, food, water, ballast bags, and the explosives.
“Remember to light the fuses before you touch down in England,” Josie admonished, moving around the balloon again, her critical gaze on the envelope. “That way, the smugglers will know where to retrieve you.”
“I will send word to my brother, Etienne, in Calais,” Marcel confirmed. “He and his ship will set out to meet you. You shouldn’t have to stay in hiding more than a day or two.”
That was the trickiest part of the plan. She had enough food and water to lie low a few days once she reached England. For their landing, they had chosen an area on the Kentish coastline favored by smugglers, with warrens of marshland, but she must avoid notice from the garrisons in the Martello towers at either end.
“I understand,” Celeste assured her friends. “But we’ve planned well, prepared brilliantly. We will be victorious.”
In answer, Josie saluted her.
Marcel patted the basket, as if bidding it farewell too, then stepped back. “Bon voyage, Celeste.”
She grasped the ropes securing the basket to the balloon and swung herself inside, then took up her position among the levers and pedals. “Au revoir, mes amis!”
Josie waved, hand trembling in her excitement. Amélie untied the ropes on one side as Marcel did the same on the other. The balloon jolted, as it usually did—a colt free of the barn and yearning for the open fields. Then she was rising, passing the second story, the third. The doves fluttered off on the wind as if in celebration.
Her father had ascended before admiring throngs, her mother before royalty. The cheers of her friends were sweeter.
She was on her way to England and victory.