Book I: Pax
Chapter 1: Beaucathrine
The scarf hanging limp around Christine's throat served as her own personal noose. Morning winds in an undignified hurry wrenched it tighter with every step, stunting her breath along with the brisk chill and the soot they carried. She didn't even want to begin to think of what her hair looked like, nor how bloodshot her eyes were from traveling windward. Her only thought was to keep up to pace with the awkward-looking woman before her.
"Miss Daaé! If you can't hurry along we shall be late! Gracious, child, if I were in your place I would sprout a pair of wings before I was to be tardy for any of his invitations. And today of all days!" huffed the stout old British woman leading her recklessly through the crowded walkway.
Struggling to lift her skirts higher, the dainty blonde retorted, "He's my fiancé and I will arrive when I please. After all, it certainly wasn't my idea to give our only hired driver food poisoning. The wretch. This wind is dreadful! And what makes 'today of all days' so bloody important anyway?"
"Careful that mouth of yours, pigeon," the madame reprimanded, grasping Christine's wrist momentarily to pull her back up to stride. "And you know as well as I do how anxious he's been lately. You can tell it in a man's eyes, you can. I just don't believe it proper that you should den- ohhh, out of the streets, savages!"
A trio of musky urchin boys scattered from her path where they had been rolling around in the middle of the snow covered walk. The dowdy thing took a moment to smack one of them in the back of his head with her muff, then pressed on again in a ruffled tither. Before scrambling off into the shelter of a back alley, all three turned briefly to gawk, foolish young hearts pounding, at the young diva's well-endowed figure. The satin ringlets of yellow hair spilling down onto her shoulders and the creamy porcelain tint to her cheek were alone enough to send a grown man into a daze—much less ridiculous, staring gamin. The momentarily smitten boys were lucky enough not to have caught sight of her blue eyes before darting off, for there is no escaping certain fixations.
"A bold thing of you to say, Mrs. Boston. I've always known you to be keeping notions of us," Christine sneered lightly.
"Everyone has notions dear. Whether you like it or not assumptions will be made of a young woman who puts herself in a position to, well... be assumed of."
The snow beneath their feet thinned a bit, allowing for faster passage. Mrs. Boston returned her bony old hands to her muff as she scurried along. Flyaway hairs wisped out from her loosened bun as another flurry passed over and a pucker of distaste fell across her lips.
"Pish! I hear enough of this nonsense form those wicked old hens I'm made to associate with and I certainly don't need to hear it from you. Don't you even consider how I feel when you rag on about weddings and engagements and stupid, stupid parties?"
Much too focused on her destination to sense the almost tearful waiver in Christine's words, Mrs. Boston answered briskly, "One day you'll thank me for my ragging! Until then you'll humor me by picking up those feet of yours. I'll not be running ragged through the filthy streets chasing down a husband for you when I've one foot in my own coffin."
There wasn't a word to be said to that and so Christine bit her lip. Nothing could make the morning any more unpleasant quite the way arguing with the stubborn old broad she had the pleasure of calling caretaker could. As if, like a child, she needed caring for. But he had insisted Mrs. Boston's services for her nevertheless and perhaps he was the wiser for it.
'Still,' she thought with a course sniff of her nose, 'she was hired to be a caretaker, not a matchmaker.'
The two pressed on, side by side, expelling the smoke of warm breaths from beneath their swaddling layers. A chill wrapped itself around Christine's stockinged ankles. She gave a shiver at the cold permeating to the flesh underneath the dainty white gloves adorning her hands. It was then that she felt just a flicker of regret for disregarding Mrs. Boston's stern warning to wear her thicker, warmer, considerably uglier gloves out in the biting weather. In short, they were far from the most attractive pair she owned. She had fought tooth and claw to retain one scrap of her dignity on this excursion: decent looking gloves. To be seen in public with those soot grey beauties, all sprinkled with incalculable balls of lint was unthinkable. She could have worn them out the same as a cat could lay eggs. The Brit was out of her mind. Hadn't she been instructed to dress her most lavish for this particular little rendezvous anyway? Whatever the case may have been, Christine had ages before promised herself to never again dress like a beggar—the way she had so often done in and out of the Opera house—for the rest of her natural life. She had already caught enough smoldering glances from the ladies who scoured the usual stuffy social gatherings for less than "acceptable" attire. They had already plenty of license to scoff behind her back, and she was wary of their words, even when she knew this one was to be a private brunch. It was a constant compulsion, now that she found herself in the limelight more often than ever before, to fuss over her looks and composure. Christine delved her frozen pair of hands into the inviting confines of her coat pockets. Mrs. Boston caught a side-glance of her shivering and immediately began a tirade of 'you'll catch your death of cold's along with an odd assortment of other 'I told you so's. Paris in winter was never forgiving.
With the generously proportioned caretaker out in front of their harried procession of two, the crowds parted easily. In the late morning the local cafés and markets along their route bustled with the vivace intermingling of human forms in close contact. Warmth came from every direction and yet from nothing in particular so as to melt the snow in different spots on the cobblestone. The scene was crisp as they neared one of the more popular corner bread shops. Stoic bourgeois carried on grim social philosophies, whetted by their café au laits and fellows' droll musings, among the even lower class men who only came to smell the air and poke fun at each other before the work day began its rigors. The air did smell of bread which could attract any soul, rich or poor notwithstanding. Housekeepers, sent out to market by their wealthy mistresses, with the quick-drawn tempers of wild boar bickered viciously throughout the cluttered stands. An apple here. A sack flour there. They would dispute, curse and haggle in the most impolite fashion that could be mustered, though there was no real need to. One was prone to think they fought for sport.
This discombobulated heart of Paris existed with its belly buried in the dirty snow, nose upturned and proud of it. It prided itself in its own admittedly tasteful grunge with a pretty sort of charming vanity. Here the wily stray mongrel could be found lounging about a flower shop, just as welcome as any paying customer. And what of the homeless man? Why there was no better place to scrounge up bread enough to make a sufficient breakfast among these shops and still not be spat upon if he was brazen enough(which most of them were). The people—though not dirt poor, still so resilient—were kinder here.
Christine, however, was not in the business of looking for hospitality. She only wanted a way through. When the crowd began to thicken again she shoved in closer to Mrs. Boston, gritting her teeth in frustration. They jostled through the tight congregation that stood gathered around a portion of the open square in front of the bread shop. It wasn't long before the pair realized that something was going on over the heads of the bystanders in front of them that the ones beside them were shoving and straining to see. Mrs. Boston stopped to try to see between the many jumbled bodies blocking her line of sight to the middle of what now looked to be a circle within which they were trapped. A sustained mumble reverberated through the crowd, interrupted by bursts of yells and zealous whoops and calls; the mumble soon turned to nothing but.
"What on earth do you suppose this mess is, love?" the old woman wondered aloud.
Christine, too preoccupied with evading the strange looking man who inched closer and closer to her by the second to shout an answer over the growing throng of noise, ignored her. Disgusted with this awkwardly close contact with awkward looking strangers who didn't look as if they would be above rape, she grappled for her oblivious caretaker's hand to duck them rapidly through the excited but idol bystanders that thinned out in front of them. Mrs. Boston protested from her back pain but the now fearful young woman would heed none of it. She had to get out of there.
Unfortunately, with a final shove the last row of spectators gave way easily. They were both thrust into the center of what now appeared to be a ring where a violent fight had broken out between two now well-battered, ragged street waifs, still carrying on their fierce squabble. The two men moved and shot about with blows too fast to be registered in the heat of the moment so that they seemed a blur of twisting, grappling anguish. At the sight of spilled blood, which did not make itself sparse, staining nearly every square inch of the snow in the middle of the ring, Mrs. Boston gave a loud rasp of horror and scrambled in the other direction, backing hastily for the safe confines of the crowd. Christine, however, jarred to a frozen halt in her steps like a lifeless marble goddess, was confronted with a sight that would have sent any other woman into screaming hysterics.
His face already torn into by countless other blows and pouring from cheek to cheek with the grotesque red fluid, the man before her stumbled forward, falling blindly, hopelessly into her arms after a final descending shot to the jaw from his opponent. This other ruffian, considerably taller, better muscled and pale with arms and legs like the appendages of a predator, was not in as near fatal condition as his now helpless prey. His fists bore the blood of the man half his stature who rasped from want of breath, buried in the shaking arms of a defenseless young woman at his feet.
Christine had fallen to the ground upon having so much force fall into her at once, but she did not throw him off of herself in terror. Quite the contrary. Within moments almost every inch of her dark winter coat was invisibly stained. Still, she clung only tighter. Her pulse beat like the feeling of cannon-fire in her throat as she moved herself over him to serve as a foolish shield should his deathly-looking opponent come for him another time. She did not think of the consequences—something greater than thought guided her actions. Something that subdued the instinct to run.
The wounded gamin stilled as the trembling weight of her bosom rose and fell against his own chest. It was as if he had found enough peace to satiate himself with unconsciousness in the flicker of a moment—which was exactly how much time had passed. Christine's fearful eyes had no time to look down at him. No time to see if he was all right, no time to see who he was through that mask of blood. Her gaze was locked on the figure that glared at her with spiteful, snarling visage aflame—hating every inch of her for the crime she was in the middle of committing against him. Denying him his victory.
The shadow fell over her with disturbing perfection as the fierce man in the tattered beggar's vest stepped forth. He snorted out frost and blood and cracked his enormous knuckles into his palms. The crowd from every direction hissed and seethed, screaming wildly for the idiot girl to move aside and let them at it again. The creases of this barbaric creature's face tightened and when every functioning muscle in Christine's body became completely immobilized he sensed it. But the dark man was no fool. In the blink of an eye he snatched up the two sacks—one being his own, the other belonging to his victim—and turned tail to run for a gap in the crowd that so easily parted to let him through.
Christine's eyes were still affixed to where the frightening stranger had stood moments before when the man in her arms, sensing the crowd's agitated departure, shook with the last effort of his strength. A choking cry escaped his battered throat, "Get back here, you thieving bastard! Get back here and finish the job!"
Laughs emitted from what was left of the departing crowd. Christine was certain she heard Mrs. Boston calling out her name, fighting against the current of filthy men who were returning to their worthless livelihoods as one of their fellows lay half dead in the street. But of course he was not a fellow to them.
"Saint Mademoiselle!" a man in a mauve derby yelled mockingly from the street corner, "Do you know who it is you're holding there?"
The stranger's infuriating voice died away as Christine's gaze fell down to the broken body she cradled. The blood that still leaked from him created a halo around them both in the snow. The poor man wheezed violently, a rasping sound that came from the pit of injured lungs. Filth mingled with mud and snow accumulated in his short, dirty blonde locks. She pushed back her own mussed hair from her face and tensed her skin against the cold and wet soaking into her clothes from the melting slush she knelt in. When she was finally able to escape the paralysis of fear, she wiped away the blood caked across his eyes, then began working to tear off what was left of his threadbare cloak and shirt. Christine gasped at what she found beneath it. Across his naked heaving chest, bruises black as ebony covered lacerations, lacerations covered scars, scars covered inflammation (from living in the repulsive street filth she doubted not), and inflammation hid every visible trace of virgin flesh. The rest was skin and bones. A carriage rushed by carelessly behind her, throwing all matter of snow and gutter remnants against her back. She did not flinch. She did not fuss. She felt for a pulse.
All the while tears welled in her eyes but she knew could not dwell on it. She made them submit and pressed on with her frantic work, tearing fabric from her skirts to try to stop his bleeding.
Suddenly she heard the familiar, tired voice of the old British woman standing over her utter words that set her blood to boil: "Disgusting creature isn't he? My God, I've never seen anything so thin and ugly. A pity he's had to suffer, not being lucky enough to die and all that sort of thing. A pity indeed, dear. Paris could always use a little less scum on her streets."