Chapter 10:
By his every estimation, Phoebus had never selected a rundown inn as a possible place to meet with Frollo. It was simply not in the man's nature to indulge in the simple frivolities of merrymaking and drink. Yet still, it was to such a humble establishment that the bewildered captain was led.
The messenger accompanied him inside before whirling on him with an outstretched palm, and giving him an expectant look.
Phoebus had no sooner paid the man than a hand was clapping against his back, or at least the armored shell he inhabited.
"The sun god has returned to illuminate the mortals of the earth!" a jovial voice announced, and with a cry of astonishment, Phoebus turned his head so that he could gaze not upon Claude but Jehan Frollo.
"Mon Dieu! I had thought you'd be unreachable, university man!" Phoebus exclaimed, staring at the tall but otherwise narrowly built Jehan.
Though he had the same nose as his brother, Jehan wore it better. Possibly that was due to the spot of red on the tip, which accompanied a nearly constant grin and made him look rather like a harlequin about to break into pantomime at any moment. Or perhaps it was because his eyes were alight with the joy of life, and not shadowed by years of brooding on the misdeeds of all Paris.
"Oh, fie on the university! I saw you at the Festival today," Jehan said.
"Then why didn't you come and say hello?" Phoebus asked.
"Because then my brother would have seen me! I can't stand to be seen out in public with my brother, he always tells me how to act!"
Phoebus tried to justify that in some manner by saying, "He is a public official, you know, he has appearances to maintain."
"And I don't? I have one thing my brother does not!"
"A tab?" Phoebus suggested as he noticed Jehan had seated himself beside a row of empty tankards.
"Besides that," Jehan waved him off with a knowing smirk. "Friends! And none of them want to be around me when they see Claude! Do you know what he did to my friend Gaspard last month? Hm?"
Phoebus stared at the counter, the way the wood was damaged in places that looked suspiciously akin to the way armor would after its wearer had been on the front lines a bit too long, and tried to find an answer for him.
Jehan snapped his fingers. "He was fined! Fined out his ears! Because you know, it's illegal to have too much fun in front of my brother!"
Phoebus raised a brow at Jehan. "But what kind of fun—?"
"Ah, that doesn't matter! It was all a jest!"
Phoebus rolled his eyes, it was impossible to explain to Jehan that order was important to some people, and he didn't feel like ruining an encounter with his one friend in the entire capitol.
"So how has it been to hog all the glory the French army has to offer?" Jehan asked. "I hear you annoy everyone else on the battlefront by mopping the floor with the enemy too quickly for any other soldiers to earn their honor."
Phoebus ruminated silently over the time he had spent fighting for his life by the edge of his blade and the points of his men's arrows. "I wouldn't say I earned my accolades because I prevented anyone else from accumulating honors," he said solemnly. "I believe I earned respect among the ranks because I fought hardest out of most officers to bring my men back to their tents at night, breathing rather than bleeding." Absently, he asked for some of the house wine, without looking up from the grain of the counter before him.
It was vaguely the same shade as the vellum on which the officers kept the war maps, on which men's lives were moved forward as pins to be measured by the hundred, not the individual. The lines swam before him like the expressions of archers he had seen cut down by the same insidious weapon they wielded, while he himself remained untouched by some dint of fate.
"You need a drink, sun god," Jehan slurred from somewhere far away, and Phoebus realized that his wine had arrived. "You're starting to look like Claude," Jehan added with a blunt sneer.
Instantly, Phoebus downed the wine, as if in doing so he could drown whatever part of him had begun to resemble Frollo. The warmth of the wine embraced him from within, spreading to his uttermost and drawing him into the buzzing environment he truly inhabited, rather than his battle scars.
"I have to ask," Phoebus said at last, "what happened to old Claude? I remember once upon a time, he was the best older brother someone could ask for—well, except for Achille."
"Oh, hang Claude!" Jehan took another swig. "Hang him a thousand times over! He won't give me nearly as much money as he used to!"
Phoebus raised his brow and was about to probe the issue before he realized that Jehan had already cracked the shell of the topic and the guts were spewing out.
"Once I went to university he started telling me how to live my life! If I want to drink with my mates instead of spending all my time reading, then how is it his business? He would see me turned out on the street!"
Phoebus kept his smart mouth firmly in his tankard, refusing to remark on how if Jehan would only focus on his studies and not drink away his money, there would be no such weighty premonition. He began to feel just a mite guilty for spending his time drinking beside Jehan when clearly he had a problem.
"He spends more and more of his time studying alchemy in the Palace of Justice and chasing down street performers!" Jehan exclaimed, waving his tankard about so that the contents began to slosh impotently free. "And does he have time for my problems? No! All he does is scold!"
"How did that happen?" Phoebus asked. "I thought the two of you were the best of friends… or was I wrong?"
"Oh, when I was younger, Claude was a parent like no other! I was made accustomed to the ways of Aristotle and Plato, sure, but at least he would let me muck about as well! Ah, but now he goes and visits Quasimodo every day! And he taught that hobgoblin to read, can you believe it?"
Phoebus had to admit, he was finding it less and less a simple matter to think fondly of his old friend. He recalled playing tennis with Jehan while Claude kept score, sitting in the shadows, and was always fair. There was never a jot of favoritism.
That was what Phoebus had always thought made him a good judge… but perhaps there was something else there… officiousness that demanded no compromises be made, coldness that would show no mercy. That was what he had seen in the judge's eyes that morning, and when he had ordered Phoebus to arrest the innocent Egyptian for daring to show kindness to the bell ringer.
"I don't even know how Quasimodo hears those lessons, he's probably at least half deaf by now!" Jehan was ranting.
Phoebus drank more of his wine. If only he could drink away the memories… drink away the nightmares… men screaming as their lives spurted out of them like the fountains which fed an infernal garden… He drank again. Why was he seeing them still more clearly? Why did the images swim closer to his heart the more he tried to wash them away?
"Nowadays my brother is always ranting about how some newfangled contraption, or this discovery or that, will destroy the world. Yesterday it was about some printing press he says is going to forever destroy architecture…" Jehan massaged his temple. "God help me forget… ah, look! Bacchus came to my aid!" he gulped down more wine.
Envy stabbed Phoebus to the quick. Did he have to drink as much as Jehan had in order to quell the tempest?
"What's the matter?" Jehan asked, setting a hand on Phoebus's pauldron.
Phoebus finally realized how out of place he must look, among the common peasants, and yet nobody had come to make something of it. That was fortunate, at least… he didn't need another scene like there'd been that morning…
Suddenly more recent memories began to sweep their way to the front lines of his mind. The Egyptian, caught behind a detail of guards instructed to arrest her on sight… He had helped her to claim Sanctuary, but he was no closer to seeing her again, nor had he prevented Frollo's skeletal hands from reaching out to ensnare her.
Except that now, he sat shoulder to shoulder with Judge Claude Frollo's brother, and perhaps, he also sat beside her salvation.
"You know what I think I need?" he whispered conspiratorially to Jehan. "I think I need to pray at Notre Dame."
"But my brother has the Cathedral locked down," Jehan slurred, just a little perplexed.
"That's what makes it fun."