March 1831
"I told my mother I would bring home lavender; I brought home you. Sailor boy, sailor boy. What did you do to me? I told my mother I would bring home lemons; I brought home you. Sailor boy, sailor boy. What did you do to me?"
Javert stared at the bowl of beef stew on the table before him and swallowed hard. He knew this song. He came to this tavern for the songs. Marceline, the blonde-haired woman in her forties, sang songs from the South of France in this tavern.
The stew was for the dogs.
He forced down four or five bites as Marceline sang along to the accordion, and then he plunked down a few sous and rose. People went quiet at the sight of the inspector, imposing as a bear, rising from his chair and filling half the tavern with his body. He ignored them all and put his hat on his head as he went out into the street. He was about to begin a shift, and he always liked to begin a patrol shift on a full belly. Tonight was meant to be foggy, they were saying. Fog was rolling into the city. That would make for a hell of a night. It always did.
People hid in fog, using it like a cloak for all sorts of unsavoury activities. Javert braced himself against the chilly evening and made his way toward Saint-Michel. As he crossed the Pont au Double, he evaded a large pile of horse manure only to step in another one, and he growled in frustration as he paused to swipe it off of his boot bottom.
"Get back here!" yelled a voice, and Javert immediately looked up to see what the trouble was. But it was only two children, two boys chasing one another, and they were laughing. Javert was so on guard tonight that the slightest little provocation, the littlest jape was wont to send him reeling, and his heart thumped as the children pattered over the bridge into the fog.
Javert sighed and headed into the streets, into the alleys, shoving customers off of prostitutes with harsh warnings and barking at beggars to find some imaginary other place to spend the night. But then he heard a ruckus, a real something up ahead, and he frowned as he stared down an alley. He scowled and began to run. He thought of yelling, but that would only make criminals scatter, and there was only one of him. He needed a good look at faces.
"Get off of me!"
"Éponine, if you and 'Parnasse had stayed out of the last -"
"Your father's going to -"
"This is going to be delicious. Mmmm… 'Ponine, you smell like summer, love."
"Get off me!"
"POLICE!" Javert finally yelled, nearing the cluster of four or five men gathered around one fighting woman. His baton felt heavy in his hand, but the second he raised it to swing it, the men disappeared like rats. He tried to follow them, but night was falling at the lamps didn't give enough light to see where they were going.
"Stop!" Javert cried, reaching for his whistle. "Police!"
"It's all right!" panted the woman from behind him. "It's all right; you made them leave. That's what matters."
"Begging your pardon, mademoiselle, but that is not all that matters," Javert snapped, whirling around to see a young woman in rags leaning against the exterior wall of the building where the men had trapped her. He scowled at her in the lamplight and then growled,
"Éponine… Jondrette, is it? Your father and I know one another a bit too well at this point. Who were those men?"
"The Tappapieds," said Éponine simply. "A rival gang. Rivals of my fathers'. They wanted to teach him a lesson. Send him an example of what they'd do if he kept sniffing on their territory."
"By… doing what, exactly?" Javert asked, tipping his head, and Éponine looked at him like he was stupid. Her wide brown eyes glimmered, and she scoffed a laugh.
"By raping me," she told him. "And they'll do it, too. They'll get me, eventually. They've made their promise. They'll make good on it."
"Then you must be brought into protective custody," Javert insisted simply, feeling sick, and Éponine shook her head madly.
"I'm not going to jail, Inspector!"
"I did not say jail. I said protective custody. As it happens, I am in dire need of a house maid. My own house maid quit last week. I can keep you in custody on behalf of the state in exchange for qualified housekeeping services."
"What is going on?" Éponine cried, stepping away from the building. She looked around the foggy alley and hissed, "I'm not going to come be your maid just to avoid getting raped by the Tappapieds! How do I know you won't do the same to me?"
Javert staggered backward, deeply offended. "Because I am a man of the law, and of justice, mademoiselle," he said simply. "Your life and welfare are under grave threat. I insist that you accept this offer. If you do not, the government's solution will be a protective jail cell for you, yes. It is not optional that I am aware of this threat and leave you on the street."
"I shouldn't have told you." Éponine touched at her forehead and huffed a sigh. She growled and stomped her bare foot on the ground in frustration. Javert cleared his throat gently and said,
"I mean no offense by this, mademoiselle, but I will have to insist that, upon taking you into protective custody, you wear a clean dress and shoes."
"Well, I haven't got those, Inspector," Éponine snapped, and Javert said patiently,
"The government will provide them for you, mademoiselle."
"Oh." Éponine seemed as though this deal was seeming more appealing by the minute, and she pursed her lips. She looked to her left, to where the Tappapieds had run off, and she shivered visibly as she seemed to remember what had happened to her. What had almost happened to her. She turned her face to Javert and asked him,
"Protective custody, then? When do we begin, Inspector?"
"May I enter?"
"Erm… one moment, please!" Éponine had taken too long in her bath, but it had been so long since she'd bathed that she had savoured it. She'd gone for the water herself and had heated it herself and had done all the work herself, for she was to be a house maid for this inspector, but she didn't mind one bit. She didn't mind lugging hot water if she got to use it with castile soap for washing. She had braided her clean hair and had put on the simple white nightgown that the government had provided. She pulled on the dark green cotton dressing-gown that had been provided and opened the door to her small, simple bedroom to see Inspector Javert standing there in his own dressing gown, holding a candle in a brass handler.
"I am ready for you to come warm my bed now," he said simply, and Éponine nodded frantically.
"Yes, monsieur." She dashed down the corridor of his modest two-bedroom home and into his bedroom, and she took the bed warmer from the hook beside the fireplace. She shoveled some coals into the warmer and stood, and then suddenly the coals flew out of the warmer, flying all over the floor. Éponine screamed and reached for one, burning her hand, and then she scampered back as she worried the floor would catch fire.
But the inspector was calmly shoveling the coals back into the fireplace, and he hung the warmer back up beside the fireplace as he walked to his wash basin and wet a rag. He approached Éponine and murmured,
"You've not done much housekeeping, have you? You have to latch shut the bed warmer."
"I've never used a bed warmer. I'm sorry," Éponine whispered, and Javert smirked a little at her. He shrugged.
"How could I expect a girl from abject poverty to know anything about proper housekeeping?"
"What do you know about poverty?" she grumbled, snatching the wet rag from him. His eyes darkened, and he glanced away as he said quietly,
"More than you do."
She thought that was odd, and she thought it was odd that he helped her up off the floor and said quietly,
"Go to bed. We'll discuss your tasks in the morning."
"I'm sorry, Inspector," Éponine said seriously, holding the cloth to her stinging hand. He just shook his head and said in a low voice that left precisely no room for argument,
"Goodnight, Éponine. And do remember that your presence here is not optional."
He shut the door to his room, leaving Éponine stumbling back to her own little bedroom. She lay in her own bed - her own bed - and stared at the ceiling, shocked by how warm and comfortable she was here. She slept like the dead, and when she woke in the morning, it was already sunny outside.