Venice – 18th century

The celebrations for the coronation of the first Doge of the century were well under way. The inns were packed with tourists, the ale and gin was flowing more quickly than the river water itself. Not a canal was left in shadows.

On every island, people were preparing for the parade, sewing the finishing touches on to beautiful dresses and polishing brass army medals.

But in one house, there was no celebration. A little girl was wrapping her fathers body in layer after layer of blankets in order to keep him warm, to try and prevent the shivers that wracked his body with cold.

"Pleas papa, you have to stay awake," her own face was streaked with silent tears that bit her ivory skin to an ugly scarlet. "Listen, Papa, I'll ask you questions and you answer them ok?" The old man managed to nod his head slightly before he was overcome by shaking again.

Christine wrapped cloth around his feet, bandaging the sores that covered the toes, fastening the make shift bandages with some hat pins she had found at the back of the medicine cabinet.

"W-where did you and mother meet?" she spoke, her voice maintaining a steady, soft hum that didn't quite fit in the room with the two Daae's. When her father was well, he often spoke of her mother, it always seemed to make them feel better if it felt that some part of her was there with them.

The room was silent, except for the shutters banging against the brick of the house in the wind, rattling the glass panes. The drunks in the street below sang and screamed foul jokes and crude jokes that sent beer bottles crashing to the floor.

"It was – it was-" his breathing was laboured, the sweat on his forehead thick and his shirt stuck to him as though he'd been running for a long time.

"England," she finished for him, using her elbow to hold down a section of cloth whilst she cut the rest of in a hurried line that left it uneven, but it didn't matter so long as it kept out the infection. "You met in London remember? At the party, your friends party, do you – can you remember your friends name?"

Her only reply was a groan as one of the pins pricked his flesh. It wouldn't usually hurt, but he was so weak, so sensitive, every thing seemed to inflict pain. Even the sheets felt like sandpaper to the welts on his skin and the ever growing fever was torture enough, so that at intervals, his arms and legs would swing out to kick the blankets off, but she would hastily tuck them back in.

If he became to cold, the fever would only worsen and make his condition progress the stages beyond what she could fix, he was all that she had left.

"Come Papa, you must keep remembering, I'll give you a clue," her hand brushed her throat, where a sob was stuck, the one which she suppressed and refused to let go. "It began with, a-" she gulped in the sticky summer air trapped in the house, "a C"

He writhed in the bed, groaning and trying to curse, his mouth couldn't form the words. It had been bad before, but never this bad. With shaking hands, Christine reached out to him, moving the hair out of his face. He screamed.

Starting, she rushed to his side, "Where Papa, where does it hurt?" His answer was to cough up blood. It spilled on to the sheets, the colour of death. "Daddy, don't go to sleep, you have to stay awake, you have to!" She was crying now, her fingers frantically stroking his face, trying to cool his fever.

"Léon, Léon!" she cried, her eyes wide and helpless, her hands moving around her father, as though she could heal him simply by tending to the air around him. "You must call for help, father is in worse condition than ever before, I fear for the worst! We must get him help!"

Léon, the Butler, rushed in to the room, reeling in shock before continuing to his mistress and master, as they both lay broken before him. "Look at him, he needs help, go and fetch Doctor Alewood from the inn at once!" Léon simply looked at her for a moment, the shock settling over him like the warmth from a glass of brandy.

"Don't just stand there, run!" she screamed. He snapped out of his still state, rushing out of the room, down the stairs and to the canal, where he threw a bag of coins to the gondolier before jumping inside and shouting the address. The boat set off, drifting away from the cobbled street where the small house stood, pale in the moonlight.

Still by her fathers side, Christine stroked his face, her other hand in his. His screams had quieted and he lay quite still, breathing shallow and his eyes open but unfocused, looking straight past her though she was right in front of him.

"We haven't finished our story yet," she whispered, "the one about how you met mother, but don't worry, I'll finish it for you" her own trembling was growing worse, as though she was drawing out her fathers illness as her own suffering, though it was suffering enough to see him this way, she thought with shame,

"You met her at your friends party, they were celebrating their engagement. It was the middle of spring, the blossoms were blooming on the trees and down the path that led in to the fields was Aurelie Roberts, who had crept away from the party and was reading beneath the biggest tree you'd ever seen." She sniffled and wiped a few of her tears on the back of her sleeve.

"You two talked for hours then, when the night began to dawn, the music from the party flowed out across the garden and you asked her to dance. So enchanted were you with her, that you cancelled returning home for two months, just to court her. Then you proposed, she said yes, you moved back here and bought this house together straightaway. You married before you left, beneath the tree you met and I was born the following year" Towards the end of her speech, her sobs had muffled her speech and left her breathless.

The evening drew on, the parties below only grew louder with the wind which roared, beating its angry fists against the windows, demanding to be let in or it would break its way.

"Papa? Can you hear me you must stay awake! Daddy!" Christine watched her father, who was still now. But she couldn't let him fall asleep, as much as it pained her to wake him up again. But he wasn't responding, and she was shaking his shoulders now. His head slumped to one side.

"Daddy, please wake up! The doctor will be here soon and every thing will be alright!" His eyes opened scarcely and her heart beat fluttered nervously in her chest. With his last strength, he spoke to her, "When I am in heaven child, I will send you the angel of music, the angel – an angel of mus…" his voice trailed off, his eyes remained half opened with heavy purple lids, and his breath ceased. She felt the heart beat stop beneath her hand. "Daddy?" she whispered. The seconds ticked past. She screamed, she screamed for the 48 years that her father had lived, she screamed for her broken heart which was left behind. She screamed for all that was lost.

The kitchen maid hurried in to the room and pulled her away from the body whilst the ladies maid covered the body with a sheet, so that his face could no longer be seen. "He won't be able to breathe! His eyes are open, he's awake!" she was screaming and sobbing like a raving lunatic, she knew he was gone, but he couldn't be, he just couldn't!

"I'm sorry miss," the servants mumbled with hushed tones and lowered gazes, as they locked the door to his room, as they began to cover every thing in the house with sheets and pack her things in to the travelling trunks. She sat there in the parlour, in front of her fathers beloved piano that he had carved beautiful patterns in to. Her fingers stroked the angel carved beneath the music stand; An angel of music.

Her eyes could no longer allow her to weep, over the past month, she had cried away all of her pain. Her final tear was lost as her father lay dying. She grieved him with the best way she could now; with silence.

Charles Daae, the famous violinist, husband of Aurelie Roberts, died age 48 at 10:16pm on the evening of Tuesday 21st of May, 1709. He left behind a violin, his house, a piano and his small fortune, ever thing he owned, to his only daughter Christine Daae. She would come in to possession of every thing when she became the legal age of adulthood; 18. Until then, Charles stated in his will, she was to live with her Aunt Antoinette Giry and her daughter Meg, in their home of Marble Hill, a prosperous estate which resides in South London overlooking the river Thames.

That's why the servants were packing her trunks, after the celebration of the election of the Doge, she would be sent away to England, to live with an aunt she had never ever heard of in a country where she could not speak the language very well and would be entirely alone.

Even the servants were packing their things, ready to look for new work and looking at her with a mix of pity and annoyance at the fact that they would not be paid for the past months work. But the majority of the staff, including Laurelie the ladies maid, grieved for her father as much as she, He had been a kind and generous master, with a general compassion for his staff. He treated them as family.

By the time Léon returned to the house with the doctor, it was too late. Charles Daae was dead before he had even set foot in to the inn.