Author's Note: I do not own The Hunchback of Notre Dame or anything like that. I make no profit from this story. Victor Hugo was a brilliant man. Yadda yadda yadda, none of you read this part...
I wrote this on a challenge to gender swap a character from a fairy tale and I chose Claude Frollo. I know The Hunchback of Notre Dame is not a fairy tale, but it is a Disney movie, so that is close enough, right?
That being said, this story is based on the novel, which I have never read. I only know the outline of the story from Wikipedia. Hopefully everyone is sort of in character.
As a young girl, Claudette's father had taught her that women were inherently evil creatures. While men were created in God's image, women were perverse duplicates that only served to tempt man and cause him to stray from God. "I am not telling you these things to make you feel bad," he would tell her, "Just because you are inherently evil does not mean you have to be."
Claudette loved her father. He had taught her everything. Her mother hadn't cared about her and her father said she ran off with some gypsy soon after she was born. She knew she could not let her father down like her mother had. She had to be better than women. She would be perfect, like men, and never tempt or be tempted.
When Claudette's father brought her to Notre Dame, she knew she would live her life there. It was what her father wanted, a pure perfect woman of God. She would dedicate herself to His work and cleanse the world of evil. It was her duty as a Christian. It was her duty as a daughter.
Her father was dead within a month of her leaving. The convent was isolated and protected, but her father was out in the open, where the plague was spreading like wildfire. During the initial spread of the plague, her father thought they had been spared. This time, he was not so lucky. A letter arrived from him weeks later. She was not sure she could open it.
She discovered the baby sitting on the front steps of the cathedral after a night of prayer with a few troubled people. She doesn't know how they could have missed the small infant wailing for comfort. She gave it sanctuary within the church. It was an ugly thing, but she did not care. She was pretty sure she might be ugly too. She only feared that all the time she dedicated to trying to not be a woman would make her a poor mother.
The boy grew fast. Everyone knew she was keeping a child up in the bell tower, hiding him from the world. She knew they whispered and judged her silently, but no one dared act on the accusations. She was the most powerful woman in the church and she kept things running better than anyone could. They valued her more than their gossip about her supposed breaking of her vows. She hated them. Under all their vows and pious, they were still ugly, sinful women. She kept her letter from her father, unopened, in the pocket of her dress as a reminder of her goals.
He only grew uglier with age. She had hoped his deformed face and oddly shaped back were just childhood deformities that would lessen as he grew into his body, but he was no less deformed now then he had been when she found him on that Quasimodo Sunday. She knew, with a face like his, that he could hold no position in the church that the public could behold like she had hoped for him. So she taught him how to ring the bells between her lessons on the scripture and Latin. She showed him how to grab the rope and pull with all your might until the bells rang for the Lord. She said this is how he could serve the Him, and though he was not then strong enough to make the bells ring, this made him smile.
She knew that she could not ever be archdeacon, even though she knew she was more than qualified. She had taught herself every piece of information that she could and that knowledge only increased as she taught her ward as much as she could. She was a wonderful speaker, she knew the Bible better than the back of her hand, and she was completely devoted to the Lord. However, life had taught her better than to resent her lack of advancement. Rules kept women down because they needed to be kept down. Who knows what another woman might do with the power of the higher chairs of the church. No, Claudette did not resent the rules, just the women who made them necessary.
The first day she heard the bells of Notre Dame chime was the happiest day of her life. After 15 years of silence, the whole city of Paris seemed to stop and listen in wonder, some young ears hearing the bells for the first time. It wasn't ringing on the hour or announcing mass, just five rings of the small bell 20 minutes after noon. Claudette had dropped her work on the second toll of the bell and ran to the church, up the stair and to the tower as fast as her legs could take her. On Quasimodo's face was a mixture of pride and joy she had never seen before and she took him into her arm to celebrate with him before she would scold him for taking pride in himself instead of God.
Her work had made her old. She was 36 years old and her hair was gray and her skin wrinkled. She didn't like catching her reflection in windows and calm pools. She knew beauty was a vain desire only wanted by temptress and witches. She didn't want to tempt men into evil, but part of her wished she could if she were so inclined.
Quasimodo was restless. Claudette could tell he longed for company besides her own. He longed for the brotherhood of friendship, for the touch of a lover, for something besides the bells and her. He didn't complain, but his eyes always drifted to the open arches of the tower during lessons. She could not let him, as much as she hated his suffering. She could not expose him to the wicked world that would shun him and the evil temptress that would corrupt him. She just couldn't.
She doesn't really know how she first saw her. The walk between the convent and the church was short and she made sure not to linger. She didn't go into town for any reason other than getting some supplies at the market. Still, somehow, that girl caught her eye. Twirling and swaying and winking at every man that passed, she was everything that Claudette hated about women. With her tan skin and her dark hair and her curvy figure, this girl was a demon. And she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
She is distracted at Quasimodo's lesson. She is distracted at mass. She is distracted at evening pray. All she can think about is that witch with the dark hair and the way her hips moved. She doesn't know what is happening. She has never felt like this. She has never felt tempted, sexual, like a woman. She hates it.
Claudette sees her on the way to see Quasimodo. She is not dancing this time, just walking alongside a man of high stature. She follows them, trying to stay in the shadows and sneak around corners. She follows them all the way to a private corridor she sees them duck into where she sees them share a passionate kiss before turning to run. She cries for the rest of the night in her room, and she doesn't know why. She tells Quasimodo she had felt sick the next day when she visits him. He doesn't say anything, but she doesn't think he believes her.
This isn't supposed to happen. She has trained herself all of her life to resist desire, to block herself off from the world of man and not tempt or be tempted, Still, here she is. Every moment of her day is occupied by the thoughts of that dark girl. Esmeralda, she heard she was called. Just her name sends a shiver down her spine. That is not okay. It is not natural. It shouldn't be happening. But it is.
It is the moment that blood touches her hands that she knows she must be possessed. That demon is making her do these things, that witch casting her spells. That can be the only explanation for the captain's blood on her hands. She runs for the bell tower, knowing that it is sanctuary for those touched by the devil's curses.
She hears the news the next day. They are going to hang the witch. She knows they are burning her for the death of the captain, but her real sin is so much worse, that she banishes guilt from her mind. She tries to ignore how her lips remember every detail about what the witch's lips felt like against hers with the smell of blood of the freshly dead captain still in the air.
The pyre is built and Claudette lingers outside the witches holding cell. She thinks, for a split second, of storming in and proclaiming her love for the witch, but she forces the urge aside. It was just more temptation from the devil. She does not love apart from God, her father, and Quasimodo. This witch has not earned such a confession. She stands in the doorway for a moment before fleeing as Esmeralda's eyes catch hers.
She is alive. She is alive. She storms up the stairs, each step making her crazier with rage. How could Quasimodo betray her? How could he disobey her orders? How could he let that witch corrupt him when she had tried so hard to keep him untainted by the world? When she reaches the top, her ward is not there, but the witch stares her right in the face. Claudette doesn't know what she plans to do to her, but Quasimodo pulling her off the girl is that last thing she feels before a fist connects with her face.
It is a sinister plot, she knows, to disguise herself as the girl's kin to drag her out of the churches sanctuary, but it has to be done. She cannot allow a demon to pollute the churches purity. Not like it corrupt Quasimodo. Not like it corrupted herself.
It is too late for her, she decides. That is why she offers herself up to the gypsy. She has already been corrupted, strayed, damned. There is nothing left for her to lose. She is wrong, of course, because at the gypsy's rejection, she also loses her pride. She has become nothing but a common scoundrel, a sexual deviant, a liar, and a fraud. She has become a woman.
From the top of the church, she can see the gallows. It has always sickened her that you could see death from sanctuary, but for now she is grateful. She watches the whole time as the witch is lead to her doom. The rope is placed around her neck and Claudette looks down, contemplating the jump she climbed up here for. As the girl falls, twitches, and finally dies, laughter bubbles up inside her. Her father's note is open in her hands.
I know I have been a poor father. It was unfair for me to force you into this life, to fill your head with such lies about women. Your mother turned me into a hateful man and I hope you can forgive me as I hope that God does. I will love you always, my dearest Claudette. Do not live your life in fear.
Her laughter is not loud, but it is loud enough for her not to notice Quasimodo approaching before she finds herself falling, falling, falling, until...