Disclaimer: The characters ofLesMiserables belong to Victor Hugo. Paris and the history of Paris are a few more things to add to the list of Things I Do Not Own. I couldn't make money off this, and I don't intend to try. The various snatches of songs are also not mine. Any feedback you might have is very much appreciated.
Her mama read novels. Romances they were, big long flowery things full of gallant young knights, their noble steeds and impossibly lovely girls in beautiful trailing dresses. Eponine had learnt to read from the novels, her and Azelma had both gotten their names from novels (it was all very exciting when their names turned up in print, even if it was all blotchy), and the two or three scabby little bundles were the only printed things in their apartment. Papa had tried to burn them one winter – he'd torn great wads of paper out of one to feed the fire and light his pipe – but mama had cracked the poker down hard across his shoulders and snatched her books back without a word. He'd screamed like a girl, high and outraged, and mama hadn't spoken to him or even looked at him for a week. She'd also thrown his bag of tobacco clean through the window.
The fire had gone out. They'd been cold. Hungry too, but then they often were. Papa had sent her out in his place for a good three or four days; he'd sat by the empty fireplace in the only decent chair, rubbing his shoulder and griping about his lost tobacco.
Since then, no one had touched the books. Papa didn't have the nerve to go near them. They sat there in the corner, and Eponine had nearly forgotten what was in them. Mama read them sometimes, in summer or when they had a bit of candle to spare, but Eponine hadn't looked at them for years. Good thing too, now she thought about it – there weren't many noble steeds in the Paris she knew, and any knights who came here would have their armour nicked before the end of five minutes, and they'd buy it back for three times the price five minutes after that. The average knight wasn't very clever.
She wouldn't have minded meeting one though. They'd be gentler than anyone in Patron-Minette; they'd have softer hands and kinder voices than anyone except maybe Montparnasse. He had lovely hands, the hands of a real gentleman. Except for the blood under his nails after a job, he might almost have been one. He fancied himself a little, the dandy! Got dressed up in his fancy clobber, in his hat and his coat and the cravat that didn't look too bad if he tied it just right, and passed himself off as a gentleman thief. He wasn't and he never would be, but 'Parnasse could pretend just as easily as she could.
She didn't mind 'Parnasse at all. Claquesous, Babet, Brujon, her papa…they didn't have much to do with her unless they needed her to run errands or keep watch, but 'Parnasse was younger, only nineteen; he was charming and even a little handsome in his way. He had black hair – he slicked it back and down with some greasy muck that only he knew how to get – but he had thick, dark curls that she might have liked to play with if she'd been just a little taller and could have reached them. Nasty smile or not – and he could be very nasty when he put his mind to it, she knew, him with his clasp knife tucked away in a sleeve and those delicate fingers dipping quietly into another man's pocket unseen – he wasn't too bad. He was the only one who didn't leave too many bruises when he was finished, the only one who didn't dig his fingers in until it hurt, and the closest to a knight she was likely to get. He didn't have armour, and he didn't have a horse, but at least he knew how to look after himself.
She caught the shoulder of her chemise – for all that mama promised green velvet slippers, they still couldn't afford the real pretty dresses from the novels, or even the ones in the windows of grand shops – and gave it a tug back up her shoulder. If it fell off or tore, she wouldn't be getting another one. Besides, she had a letter to deliver…ooh yes, papa would be furious if his letters didn't get there. He'd kick up a right fuss, he would. Best to hurry then.
She hated the boots. Big, heavy men's working boots, slapping against the cobblestones and nearly falling off her feet. There was no way they were ever going to fit, not even if she stuffed them with rags or old newspapers. The printers wouldn't let her have the old sheets very often; she had to steal them out from the ragwoman's basket when the mad old thing turned her back. They filled with mud sometimes, and the mud would rise with a wet squelch between her toes. She could deal with dirt, she could deal with whatever it was that made her itch all over when she went to bed at night, but the mud, all slimy and squelchy and slow…that was something different.
She didn't need boots anyway. They only slowed her down, and the soles of her feet were tough as old leather. She'd only use the boots to keep warm, and everybody knew you stopped feeling the cold if you stood in it for long enough. Everybody knew that.
She dropped to her knees on the paving stones and fumbled with the knots, her fingers stiff and clumsy from the chill in the air. The laces snapped damply in her hand. She swore, dropped the useless broken ends in the gutter. Try again. Scrabbling awkwardly under the laces…and there they went. She kicked the shoes off and tipped them upside down to get the mud out. Bundle of letters in her right hand, boots dangling by the laces from her left, and she was ready to go. She pushed upwards on her hands, barely noticing the grazes on her knuckles.
"How d'you like it down there, chouchou?"
She paused.
The gamins could race along the roofs and gutters of Paris like sparrows, clinging to the stonework with bare and dirty toes. From their perch on the roof of the Opera, riding the back of some fine carriage and dodging the blows of whichever footman they'd shoved out of the way to get there, hanging off the sides of that rotting old plaster elephant, they shouted snatches of songs and a steady flow of cheerful abuse down on the world. Sometimes, Eponine was almost certain she could hear her brother up there. She almost never saw him, and he only came home at about half-past never, but she heard him well enough.
"Is there anything good hiding in the gutter?"
This wasn't him, though. This was someone else, and she would have thrown something at him if she could have seen where he was.
"What've you found, little mousie?"
He called her tu. Everyone called her tu.
"Nothing! Garn, piss off and find your own, y' little bastard!"
He probably was, she thought for a moment. No one seemed to want the street boys. They dressed in old shawls that hadn't come from their mama, tattered cotton trousers that didn't belong to their papa, and grubby caps that didn't belong to anyone. Bit like her, really.
"Oooh!" Eponine's fingers closed around a loose stone as she began to close in on where the voice was coming from. Up the top of a drainpipe, just a bit to her left, hidden away where he couldn't be reached. "Such language, and from a girl like you! Never would've thought it! I'll call the bobbies and they'll take you off to prison, and a respect'ble man like me can walk the streets again." The voice trailed off in a high-pitched giggle.
"I said, bugger OFF!" The stone rattled off slates as she hurled it. Gritting her teeth (and trying to ignore how much one of them wobbled), she bent down and peered closer at the ground.
There weren't many flowers in her Paris. No roses or lilies or pretty wildflowers to pick. Nothing delicate. Just straggly herbs in an old man's garden and whatever weeds could grow through cobblestones. This one…it was tiny and knobbly and the same sort of clean, washed blue that the sky always was in her daydreams where that handsome young fellow next door – the student with the gentle face and the coal-black curl that fell in his eyes – would smile at her.
He was so beautiful when he smiled. So handsome. She could have stared at him for days. Weeks. Forever, if he'd only be hers.
With that thought, she smiled. She pulled the flower up. She tied it in a knot around her index finger, and admired the colour against her skin.
She stood up as straight as she could. She waved cheerily at the gamin on the drainpipe, knowing he would see the flash of blue on her right hand. Walking with a spring in her step (despite the boots) she began to sing in her usual cracked voice. One of her brother's songs maybe, heard somewhere on the rooftops and rubbish heaps, even though it seemed too sentimental for him. Or else one of the songs from the theatre. Something like that.
"Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose…"
A good love song was a beautiful thing, and this one…oh, it belonged in a novel.