Chapter 1
Paris, 1863
"Turn here," the girl said breathlessly as she tugged me around a corner and into a darkened alley.
She pressed her back to the brick wall and I did the same. Wide eyed, I attempted to steady my breath, but the race out of the gypsy tents and into the streets of Paris left me gasping for air and sick to my stomach.
In the back of my mind I could still see Garouche on his knees, the life in his eyes fading as he slumped forward. The welts to my shoulders and back still stung, my scalp still throbbing where he had grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched me back and forth before a paying crowd of onlookers. The pain and humiliation were equal, both vying for my full attention.
My knees began to give out, my vision tunneling as consciousness wavered. I swallowed hard and tilted my head back. He could not beat me again, not ever. I had strangled him. Alone in the tent, I had finally sought my revenge.
"What's wrong?" she asked, jarring me from my thoughts.
I shook my head, wondering why she asked. No one had cared for me. No one had reason for concern. I was a faceless monster on display, a hideous beast. The devil's son.
And I was about to vomit. Or I was going to fall to my knees and pass out.
"I need to remove the hood," I whispered. "For a moment."
She released her vice like grip on my clammy hand and I turned away, yanking the hood off. The cool air against my face was a welcomed change and I took a deep breath. Before I could return the covering over my head, the girl placed her palm against my damp forehead, then shook her hand out and placed the backs of her fingers to my good cheek. My eyes widened and I sucked in a breath.
"Don't," I said sharply. "Please."
She frowned, her eyes filled with remorse as I quickly covered myself. "You look like you're about to be sick."
"What does it matter to you?" I said under my breath.
"I...I only wish to help."
Ashamed of my outburst, I bowed my head and felt gooseflesh rise along my arms. "I apologize."
"There's a doorway up ahead," she said quietly. "The carriage drivers and stable boys use it as a shortcut to the kitchen mostly, but never this late."
I nodded and she took my hand again, pulling me down the alley. My toes curled as I stepped barefoot into a puddle, the cool water sloshing against my ankles.
"Where are we?" I questioned.
"The Opera House," she answered as though it were obvious. I heard the jingle of metal clattering together as she fumbled with keys.
With a slight push of her hand, the door before us opened with a groan. We walked inside, the cold, uneven alleyway replaced by smooth stone flooring and then a wool rug. A flicker of light down the hall revealed numerous sacks of grain piled nearly to the ceiling.
"Down the hall," she said, nodding to our left.
I froze, suddenly alarmed I had walked blindly into a trap.
"Are the gendarmes waiting there?" I asked.
Her brow furrowed. "I don't understand."
"Why did you bring me here?" I asked. "Do you intend to turn me in for a reward?"
To my own ears it sounded like madness, yet I made no apologies. For the better part of a year I had been tormented day in and day out by gypsies. Garouche's children stole from him and pinned the blame on me, knowing the punishment would be swift and severe. They stood in the shadows like blood-thirsty vultures, their expressions blank and eyes lacking remorse each time their father beat me. I swore he knew I had not taken coins from him, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered.
Prior to being their captive, my own father had used me as a release for his anger. I had little reason to believe a lifetime of suffering would end on this night. Quite frankly I wasn't sure what I would do without fighting to survive.
The young woman stood before me and shrugged. "I honestly have no idea why I brought you here, but it was not to turn you in for a reward." She stepped closer to me and wrung her hands. I could smell her perfume, like sugar and vanilla. "You were suffering. I didn't want to see you remain in that cage."
The cage. Her words made me shiver as I thought of the iron bars that had housed me for ten months-and how she had changed my fate by extending her hand to me.
The night had gone as all others before it, and I had numbly awaited the humiliation. As soon as Garouche had led the small crowd into the last tent, I spotted her bright, curious eyes and oval face. She stood at the rear of the group, her hands on the shoulders of two smaller girls. From a distance our eyes met. I saw her grip tighten on both of the children in front of her and she leaned forward, whispering to them. A warning, I suspected. Do not touch him. He is diseased. At least once a night parents warned their children to stay at a distance from me, from the devil's child.
My mind seemed to shut down the moment the crowd entered. Garouche rambled through the same lines each night, encouraging the onlookers to purchase a piece of rotting produce from a wooden box he kept near the cage.
Throw it at the devil! Tell him what you think of his wickedness!
Sometimes, when the crowd was more than a dozen, I felt safer within the cage than out of it as grown men stalked past, their eyes cold and hardened. The larger the crowd, the more belligerent they became.
Garouche would rattle the bars and use his wooden club to rile the onlookers until men surrounded my small cell, their knuckles white as they gripped the bars, lips turned into vicious snarls. For the most part I sat motionless in my confines, eyes cast down, the burlap sack covering my listless expression. I shriveled in their presence; hoped to disappear from their view.
But this night I had not stared at the straw covering the dirt and grass beneath the tent. The young woman who loomed cautiously in the distance had piqued my interest and I watched as she examined her surroundings, her lips pursed and eyes filled with concern. Every few seconds she would look me in the eye, her frown deepening.
Tell him what you think of his wickedness!
I flinched, not realizing Garouche had already opened the cage door. He stomped inside and yanked the hood from my head as he always did, though this time I had not been prepared. I sucked in a breath, my head shooting up as I cowered beneath him.
The young woman gasped and covered her mouth. Tears filled her eyes as the other onlookers stared and pointed.
A boy no older than four followed Garouche and tossed a small stone, which struck me in the temple. I blinked, turning away as the crowd laughed and cheered on the child, telling him to throw something else.
Again I looked at the young woman, the only face in the crowd not cackling with amusement. She looked from me to Garouche and shouted, "Leave him be."
Garouche ignored her words and grabbed a fistful of my unwashed hair, pulling my head back. "Take a good look at this. You will never in your life see another one like it. Raised from the dead, reanimated by Lucifer himself. I am told this is the devil's favorite son."
Dozens of eyes stared back at me in horror and amusement. None of them saw me as a person, but as a beast deserving no mercy. They could not see their own wicked actions in the heat of the moment, how the devil possessed them more than me.
"I'll beat Lucifer out of him, yes I will!" Garouche shouted.
And just as he did every show, often four times a night, he clubbed me six times in the back and along my ribs. Why he had decided on six strikes I never knew, but I always counted each one.
This night, however, he surprised even me when he threw down the club after six thrashings and shoved me to the ground. He placed his boot in the middle of my back and stomped the air out of my lungs.
My chest stung, my lungs feeling as though they were leaden. I bawled my hands into fists and gasped, almost certain my back was broken.
"You there!" he called.
Eyes closed, I knew he spoke to the young woman. I had come to know Garouche's belligerence all too well over the last ten months and feared for her. I struggled to sit upright, but my head swam and eyes watered.
"You sympathize with this wretched creature?"
"You should be ashamed of yourself," she shouted back, her voice trembling. "Every single one of you. He is a child, not an animal."
I attempted to lift my head and find her one last time, but Garouche made certain I stayed put and placed his boot on the side of my face. I knew if I dared to move, he would break my jaw with one stomp of his boot. In defeat I closed my eyes and lay still, afraid to even groan in agony.
"Young lady, I beg to differ. You are all fortunate this abomination has been caged and beaten down. He is truly a treacherous bastard and the world would not be safe with such a creature walking free."
With his dominance firmly asserted and the crowd satisfied, Garouche flung out his arms and gave an exaggerated bow as people threw down a small amount of coins at his feet and shuffled toward the waiting slit in the tent. They had been dazzled by acrobats, strong men, exotic animals, and at last the most vile of animals confined to a cage.
I was certain the girl was gone and I had no way of thanking her for her words. From the corner of my watering eye I saw Garouche crouch down to collect the coins left behind by the onlookers. He whistled to himself, completely unaware of the rope inches from my grasp.
"Barely enough here for supper," he muttered. "You become more and more of a burden to me."
Somehow I managed to sit upright. With trembling hands, I decided I would no longer be his burden.
"Why did you turn around?" I questioned the young woman who had freed me.
She reached into her cloak pocket and held out several small candies. "I wanted to offer you a small gift. Something to perhaps relieve a bit of your suffering."
My breath caught in my throat. I stared at her open palm for a long moment, unsure of whether I should take the candies.
"Here." She grabbed my hand and pushed three small treats into my fist. The warmth of her touch made me shiver and I stared in disbelief at her soft, clean fingers touching my filthy, bruised hand. Her kind gesture was foreign to me and I worked my jaw but could not find the proper words.
With a nervous smile, she met my eye. "My name is Anne, but everyone calls me Madeline because there are six other girls named Anne." She shifted her weight. "Well, most of the girls in the ballet call me Mother."
I unwrapped a piece of candy and stuffed it into my salivating mouth.
"What is your name?" she asked.
I shoved the piece of candy against the inside of my cheek. "Erik," I answered. "But no one has called me by my name in a long time."
"Erik," Madeline repeated thoughtfully. "Hardly the name I would have expected to hear from someone in the company of gypsies. Are you Norwegian? Danish, perhaps?"
I shrugged. Garouche had billed me as emerging from the fiery depths of hell. "I don't know."
"It is a strong name." She nodded in approval. "I suppose it does suit you."
Her words made me blush, even though I felt she was incorrect in her assumption. "Why do they call you Mother?"
Madeline rolled her eyes. "Because I am the oldest dancer in the ballet and I make certain the younger girls do not lose their shoes and ribbons. Without me, there would be no ballet in the Opera House." She smiled again, this time with ease. "I do not mind being called Mother. I like caring for all of the other dancers."
She could not have been more than five or six years older than me, but there was something quite matronly about Madeline. I wondered if my own mother had ever been a kind, youthful woman who cared for others. My only memory of her was rage and incoherent babbling.
"How did you come to live with the gypsies?" she asked, motioning me to follow her down the hall.
I very much wanted to tell her everything that had happened to me and yet I thought it best to keep my story to myself. I feared talking too much would frighten her and emotionally I could not handle being rejected again.
"I was found and taken," I said vaguely.
"Stolen?" she asked, her eyes wide.
"In a way, yes."
"Is someone looking for you?"
I shook my head. "I have no family left."
Already I had said far too much, but my words garnered a sympathetic look from Madeline as we entered a large pantry. She gathered several items into her cloak before we turned and entered a hallway. Without prompting I followed at her heels like a duckling trailing a mother duck, afraid I would become lost in the dark labyrinth she had apparently memorized.
"You are an orphan then?"
I didn't answer.
"When did your parents pass?" she questioned.
"They are still alive as far as I know," I answered quietly. "I would rather not speak of them."
"You stayed with other family members then?"
"For a brief time," I answered.
Madeline turned slowly and looked me up and down. Her gaze settled at my feet. "You have no shoes. My goodness, how did you run through the streets barefoot?"
Ashamed, I stared at my filthy feet. Desperation, I wanted to say. Instead I settled on a shrug.
"We will find you some shoes," Madeline promised. She placed her hand on my shoulder. "And some clothes in better repair. Come with me."
In silence Madeline picked up a large burlap sack and deposited the food she had gathered in her cloak into the sack, which she then handed to me before proceeding through a maze of hallways that all looked the same.
"The hood, were you forced to wear it?"
"I prefer it," I replied.
"Why?"
"Because when the hood is off I am displayed as a monster. I am not a monster," I said through my teeth.
She looked over her shoulder. "What happened that you have those scars?"
I shrugged. "I have had them for as long as I can remember."
"Your parents never told you if you were born with them or injured?"
I shook my head. "My mother would not look at me and my father…" I looked away from Madeline, ashamed of admitting my own parents had hated me, loathed me as though I had chosen to burden them. Absently I ran my left hand along my right forearm and felt goose flesh rise against my skin. "He made certain I knew he did not care for me."
"He was cruel," Madeline said.
He was a violent drunk, a belligerent, intolerant brute of a man with a short temper. He was more than cruel. He was the devil. Garouche had been correct in one aspect; I was the devil's child.
"I was a terrible child," I muttered. "Always running away."
"Did he beat you?" she asked.
Her question angered me, not so much because she asked me but because of the memories conjured up. Often I fought sleep as I knew when I closed my eyes my father would stalk me in my nightmares. Heavy footsteps, the smell of alcohol, and broomsticks reminded me of his hatred.
"He did not stop," I said at last.
"I am truly sorry."
Frustrated, I reached up with both hands and grabbed two fistfuls of the hood. "Why do you care?"
"The old ballet Mistress used to hit us with her fan when we missed a step in practice," Madeline said. "She would want perfection on the first try, and whether it was me or the dancer two girls to the right, she would yank on our hair and slap us with the fan. Not one of us ever complained or uttered a word. We feared her, but we did not challenge the Mistress."
Madeline came to an abrupt stop in front of a rack of clothing and rifled through several shirts, trousers and other various items. She pulled down a shirt and held it up against my chest. "Hold out your arms," she instructed.
I did as told immediately and watched as she checked the length to my wrists and nodded in approval. Slinging it over her shoulder, she proceeded to remove a pair of trousers from the same rack and held it up to my waist.
"These will need taken in," she said. Her eyes flashed up and met mine. "You are far too thin, skeletal, almost."
I nodded, unsure of how to respond to her observation.
"How old are you?"
"Thirteen, I think."
"Yes, you need more meat on your bones. Most definitely." She smiled. "Now try on these boots and see if they fit.
I became quite obedient to her every request and slid my bare feet into a pair of boots that were much too small. With a frown she dropped another pair in front of me. "What about these?" she asked.
"They are fine," I answered as I wiggled my toes and found they fit.
She seemed satisfied with my answer and looked me over again with a warm smile. "Now take off the hood. It is quite dark in the stairwell."
"Where are we going?"
"Some place where you can eat and rest in peace."