Author's Note: This story uses broadly the same setting as my fic Deva Victrix - in that it's a fantasy setting inspired by both the Roman Empire and 19th century Europe - but it's not related to the storyline of that fic, and the background and position of the characters in this are very different. Some of them extremely so.
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The lively crowds that had thronged the Place du Tertre all through the day and long into the evening are thinning now as night falls, dispersing into cafes, bars and cabarets to shelter from the chill wind blowing in from the Sequana and warm themselves with wine, song and philosophy.
Francis would like nothing better than to do the same, but his day's takings wouldn't buy him much beyond a heel of mouldy bread and cup of water. Although many passers-by had paused for a moment to cast their eye over his wares, and praised his use of light and colour, the fluidity of his lines and acuity of his eye, he had made only one sale: a small sketch of a bug-eyed lapdog that the buyer had laughingly exclaimed looked the spit of his older brother.
Despite his obvious delight, he had still baulked at the silver Francis had asked for it, haggling him down to five coppers, scarcely more than the paper alone was worth.
Examining them now, under the weak, jaundiced glow of the street lamps, Francis can't even be sure that the coins aren't counterfeit ones. They're worn almost smooth and so darkened by verdigris and the accreted grime from the many hands they've passed through that the words embossed on their reverse side are illegible, and the head on the obverse could just as well be Francis' own as the Emperor's.
Yet another day wasted.
He packs up his easel, paintings and sketches, and heads away from the light and laughter of the Place, heading down the already sleeping back streets of Montmartre towards home: a large, six storey sandstone house built in the ubiquitous Lutetian style, identical in every particular to its neighbour and countless others across the full sprawling spread of the city, on both sides of the river.
The ground floor houses the office of a lawyer, the floor above, the man himself, his pretty young wife and their three stout children. They keep early hours, and their apartment stands dark, but a few of the windows of the floors above are illuminated still by oil lamps or flickering candlelight.
Nevertheless, it is past midnight, and the building's outer door is locked tight. Francis raps upon it, and after a few minutes – and a great deal of muffled cursing – the latch lifts and it swings open to reveal the porter, clad in his nightshirt and a pair of hastily-donned trousers, which he appears to have grown tired of buttoning halfway through the enterprise.
"M. Bisset," Francis says, bowing deep. "My apologies for the late hour, and for rousing you from your bed."
M. Bisset's bloodshot eyes narrow, and he holds out a hand, expectantly open-palmed.
Francis sighs, and drops two of his hard-earned coppers into it, which, though sufficient to earn him entry, is not enough to earn him either a smile or a word of thanks, seemingly. M. Bisset relocks the door and then returns to his own quarters, all in the same, sullen silence.
The stairs that lead to Maître Lambert's apartment are plushly carpeted, their banisters buffed to a gleaming polish, but those that lead to the upper floors are dark, narrow, and perilously steep. By the time Francis reaches his attic room, he's lightheaded, short of breath, and his hands are shaking so violently that it takes him three attempts before he's able to successfully align his key with the keyhole and turn it.
The small room itself is black as pitch and bitterly cold, as Francis hasn't been able to afford fuel for his portable stove for almost a fortnight now. He has had to do without lamp oil for even longer, but he still has the stub of one candle, left over from the box he had bought during the brief period of plenty he had experienced after Me. Lambert took pity on him and purchased a painting to hang in his office downstairs.
He lights it, sets it atop the chest of drawers that serves as his dressing table, dining table, and on those occasions that he is fortunate enough to afford coal, a kitchen counter, and inspects his meagre food stores.
Francis had once prided himself on his ability to prepare a feast from even the humblest of ingredients, but, even if he did have access to a kitchen fully-stocked with the finest herbs and spices on offer from all four corners of the Empire, he very much doubts that a lump of elderly cheese and some slivers of ham could ever inspire him towards greatness.
Despite the yawning emptiness of his stomach, neither of them looks particularly appetising, but as the ham has taken on an oily, iridescent sheen since he breakfasted on it that morning, the cheese seems the wiser choice.
After he has carefully carved the worst of the mould off it with his penknife, the lump is little better than a morsel: gone in two bites, and Francis' hunger is all the more acute afterwards for having had that tantalising taste but nothing more.
He sits down on the edge of his bed, and concentrates on the sound of the wind whistling beneath the eaves of the roof in a bid to ignore the incessant demands of his body. A book would serve as a far better distraction, he knows from experience, but the weak light of the guttering candle is far too faint to read by. For a brief moment, he allows himself to admit that he may well have made a mistake.
He's roused from his reverie a few moments later by a determined hammering on his door and Gilbert's voice, shouting out, "You still up?"
Though Francis knows he's unlikely to be decent company himself in his current state, there are few people of his acquaintance more distracting than Gilbert. Selfishly, he calls back, "Let yourself in."
The door flies open with great force, presumably kicked open as both of Gilbert's hands are full: the left clutching an oil lamp and bottle, the right, a covered plate.
"Luise saved you a little something from our dinner," he says, thrusting the plate and a fork in Francis' general direction as he passes by en route to the chest of drawers to set down his lamp. Francis grabs hold of them with a greedy fervour that, in better times, would have shamed him to the core. "It'll be stone cold by now."
Francis doesn't care, no more than he cares that the meal is stolidly Germanian fare – fried potatoes, pickled cabbage, and a thick sausage of highly dubious origins – that he would have turned up his nose at in disgust less than a year ago.
Gilbert sits down on Francis' one, rickety chair and watches him eat, looking impressed by the speed with which he is able to shovel food into his mouth. Even his amused fascination fails to shame Francis, and he applies himself with same, industrious determination until the plate is entirely wiped clean.
"You're not usually back this late," Gilbert then observes. "I take it you had a bad day?"
"No worse than yours, I imagine," Francis says, capable of magnanimity now that his belly is full.
Though the apartment Gilbert shares with his brother and sister on the floor below Francis' is larger and better appointed – boasting carpeting and a fireplace, if not running water – and his work as Me. Lambert's clerk commands a steady wage, he had once expected far greater things.
He had studied law at the Sorbonne, but that had been in more peaceful times. Tensions have been rising along the border with Germania these past five years, and Germanics – even those who, like Gilbert, have lived in Gallia since their infancy – are treated with deep suspicion once more. Certainly, no Lutetian would dare risk employing a Germanic as their lawyer, so Gilbert has to waste his talents as a clerk, even though he finds the work tedious and Me. Lambert's constant demands on his time insufferable.
"I'll drink to that," Gilbert says, moving to fill Francis' two remaining uncracked glasses from the bottle he had brought with him.
The clear liquid looks innocuous, but Francis has sampled enough of the Schnapps Gilbert prefers by now to know that it will be powerful enough to knock him flat on his back in short order, despite its deceptively delicate, fruity flavour. He takes a sip from his glass; Gilbert throws back his own measure in one swallow and then pours another.
"I sold only one piece today," Francis says. "The little sketch of Mme. Bernard's Papillon."
"Someone actually wanted that?" Gilbert screws his nose up in disgust. "It was fucking ugly."
"Ah, but that was the fault of the subject matter, not my pen." Or, at least, Francis would very much like to believe. The fear that he is deceiving himself is a tenacious one, though, clinging on even after he's thrown caution to the wind and downed the rest of his Schnapps in the hopes of dislodging it. There is bravado at the bottom of the glass, if nothing else; sufficient that Francis can claim: "I'm certain all would be well if I could just make a name for myself."
"You've already got one," Gilbert says. "If you used your real name, then people would be lining the streets to buy your paintings."
Francis often rues confessing his true origins to Gilbert on another Schnapps-fuelled night much like this one, as his friend throws them back in his face whenever he complains about his lot now, denying him the succour of self-pity.
"But only for the novelty of it," he says. "I want people to fall so deeply in love with my paintings that they can't bear not to buy them. I want to make more than a few coppers a day. I want to eat decent food again, and—"
"You don't have to starve yourself, though, or live in this shithole," Gilbert says. "You could go back to your fancy estate in Augustodunum tomorrow if you wanted to. Or write a letter to your mother and get her to send you a… a whole chest full of gold coins."
"True," Francis says; Maman would have him set up in a mansion in St Germain between one breath and the next if he were to even hint that he desired such a thing, but: "I wouldn't have earnt it, though. I want to prove to her that I'm worth more than the life she'd planned out for me."
"Right. You can't bring yourself to suffer the terrible hardships of practising the harpsichord and looking pretty. So you've told me. Hundreds of times." Gilbert rolls his eyes, evidently frustrated, then refills both Francis' glass and his own. "Come on, let's talk about something else. Something that doesn't make me want to kick your arse until you see sense."
Whilst that oft-made threat has thus far never been actualised, Gilbert is liable to storm off back to his apartment and take his Schnapps along with him if Francis doesn't comply. Contrite, he changes the subject.
They talk of the law, of novels and music, until Gilbert's bottle is empty and the sound of birdsong seeps down through the roof.
"Fuck," Gilbert spits when he hears it. "I'm due to start work in a couple of hours. I should go back downstairs and try and get some sleep."
He launches himself up from his chair and manages a couple of wobbly steps before he loses his footing and has to grab hold of the headboard of Francis' bed to steady himself.
"Fuck," he says again. "I don't think I'm going to make it."
"You could always stay here," Francis says, patting the mattress beside him. "The extra body heat would be very welcome, believe me."
Gilbert eyes his hand warily. "I don't think Matthieu would like that," he says, clearly reading something far more salacious into Francis' suggestion than he'd intended. Even if he did desire Gilbert in that way, he would have neither the will nor the spirit to perform at this hour and after that much Schnapps. "No, I'll go."
This time, he gets one step further before pitching forward, hands grasping at France's shoulders to check his descent. Their eyes meet, and for a moment, everything is silent and still. Gilbert's gaze grows so intent that Francis starts to suspect that his thoughts have taken a libidinous turn, after all.
When Gilbert leans closer, he's sure of it, but Gilbert's lips do not meet his as he'd expected, but instead move close to his ear.
"Knowing who your father is, I shouldn't be suggesting this," he whispers, "but I trust you. Have you ever been to the market in Montmartre?"
"The one on the Rue des Martyrs?" Francis says. "Yes, of course. Many times."
"No, not on the street," Gilbert says. "Below it. In the cellars and sewers underneath, there's another market. It sells… different things than the one on top. There's an entrance in the outhouse behind the butcher's shop. If you mention my name, they should let you in.
"They're bound to sell something there that'll help you with your art."