AN: Hello, all you people! So...another long wait...I'm sorry...blame summer homework...and procrastination….
First of all, I'd like to thank Jacfbutterfly and Sherlockenkopf for their awesome reviews. Special thanks to Sherlockenkopf for help with my German!
Next, I'd like to make an announcement: I am now on Archive of our Own! My screen name is Masked_Man_2, and you can find all of my stories (this one included) on there.
Disclaimer: Geez, people, we've been over this. I don't own Les Miserables.
The docks were exactly as Tamar had imagined them: noisy, crowded, and reeking of sweat and fish. Just like home, she thought wryly. She certainly felt at home, had long since removed her jacket, unbuttoned her waistcoat, and rolled her shirtsleeves to the elbows. She looked like she belonged here, just one more poor young laborer.
Marius was another story. He truly had made a noble effort to dress plainly, but his clothes were too fine; he looked like a rich man in disguise. Everyone they passed gave him strange, almost hostile looks, while the stares they directed at Tamar were nothing short of incredulous. What's that young lad doing with a bourgeois fellow like that? they seemed to ask.
"I feel remarkably out of place," Marius confided to her. "I hope we haven't made a mistake in coming here."
"Nonsense," Tamar replied, taking care to speak in her man's voice. "You'll be fine, so long as you stay by me. Mind your pockets, too," she added quietly. "Thieves feed on rich men."
Luckily, Marius didn't seem offended by that. Still, he gave her a long, hard look, and eventually, Tamar began to squirm under the weight of his gaze.
"What is it?" she asked. "What's the matter? Is there something on my face?"
The young man ducked his head in embarrassment. "Ah, no," he mumbled, smiling sheepishly. "I just...can't get used to the sight of you with short hair."
Tamar cocked a skeptical eyebrow. "Really. That's the pressing matter that's occupying your mind so?"
Marius wouldn't meet her eyes. "Well…."
"Look," she sighed. "we'll be fine. I won't let anything happen to you. Worst comes to worst-"
"If the police catch us, you mean."
She smirked grimly. "Yes. If the police catch us, we'll throw a few dead fish at their heads and escape into the river. they won't know what hit them."
Marius stared back into her eyes, his expression almost pained in its solemnity. "Is this a joke to you?" he asked quietly. "Are you not worried at all?"
Tamar sighed again. "I am," she admitted, "but that doesn't mean that I can't stave off the worry of someone else...namely you."
"Well," the Bonapartist said dryly. "Your way of doing so isn't exactly reassuring."
"I've been told that I'm rubbish at reassurances," she shot back, a quirky smile on her lips. "Well...we have to do this sooner or later. And sooner is sounding pretty good to me."
X X X
Tamar and Marius walked on for quite a while, looking for an ideal spot at which to speak. They were in luck, Tamar reflected, eyeing a promising stack of crates. The merchant ships and fishing vessels from the South and the West wouldn't come to dock until the afternoon. Consequently, the workers who unloaded the boats were almost just passing the time, busying themselves as they could. Even at this early hour, prostitutes smirked and sidled their way into the laps of the men, and drunk sailors reeled and caroused out of the lively pubs.
This was motley crowd, to be sure. Still, Tamar could glimpse incongruous sparks in the dull, weary eyes: sparks of anger and indignation, of injustice. Sparks of rebellion. Perfect, she thought. All she had to do was reach out, touch and stir those sparks. Ignite them. Set them alight in a glorious blaze of passion. But speak, and light the soul of the world on fire. Simple.
Jaw set, the girl made her dogged way to the crates. Marius, startled by her sudden change of direction, hurried to her side, jogging slightly to keep up with her ruthless strides.
"Where are you going?" he exclaimed. Then, mindful of the myriad prying eyes and ears about them, he lowered his voice. "Are you going to speak now? Tamar, you don't even have anything prepared! How do you expect to-"
"Relax, Marius. I told you, I know what I'm doing," she replied firmly.
If she was honest with herself, she would have balked. She had absolutely no idea what she was doing, and she was scared stiff. For God's sake, she hated speaking in front of any crowd, size be damned! Why in Hell had she agreed to do this?!... Bu she was rarely honest with herself, and she quickly cast that thought from her mind.
X X X
With two quick bounds, Tamar leaped to the top of the stack of crates, only to stumble clumsily as it lurched. Marius moved to try and steady the teetering boxes, but his pushing only made the rocking movement worse. Drawing in a sharp breath, Tamar tried valiantly to center her weight and steady herself; a large crowd had gathered before the unexpected spectacle, and she would not make a fool of herself by falling in front of them!
However, it seemed that Lady Luck had deserted her, for the entire stack came crashing down. The CRACK of splintered wood echoed around the pier, and the onlookers laughed and jeered. Awkwardly, Tamar stood, wincing slightly from the stiff, bruised feeling that had spread through her body. Trying to appear unruffled, she brushed the splinters from her clothes, picked up Enjolras's slightly crushed hat, placed it back on her head, and faced the disported crowd.
"Well!" she exclaimed in her man's voice. "What a way to make an entrance."
Laughter rippled through the mob, growing more boisterous as Marius picked his way gingerly over the broken planks. "Are you alright?" he asked anxiously. "you're not hurt, are you?"
"No," she replied. "I'm fine, honestly."
"Took quite a tumble there, laddie!" a man with a grizzled beard called out. "Damn lucky you weren't crushed!"
"Damn right," she muttered. Then, getting an inkling of ridiculous inspiration, she raised her voice and asked, "Who commissioned those crates, do you think?"
The other man spat onto the ground. "His Majesty the King, of course!" he leered.
Tamar raised her eyebrows. "I see," she drawled. "No wonder they were faulty."
The gathered men roared appreciatively. A few paces from her side, Marius shot her an incredulous glance, as if asking, What do you think you're doing? Tamar met his stare briefly, offering a crooked half-smile. Trust me, her eyes said.
"Faulty?" someone shouted suddenly. A hundred faces turned to the speaker, an enormous, bull-necked man who wore the white, bloodstained apron of a butcher. His own face was bright red, and his veins bulged from the strength of his apparent rage. "You insult the good carpenters, boy!"
"I protest," she retorted calmly. "the carpenters cannot be blamed. They, after all, are expected, like the rest of us, to follow the orders of a milksop with his head in the clouds and a stick up his ass."
X X X
A pregnant silence fell over the assembled men as they contemplated her words with shock. For someone to have the audacity to speak so boldly against the king in public like this...it was almost unheard of. As miserable as the lives of these people might have been, they weren't particularly willing to risk being charged and executed for high treason. No one liked to learn that their lives were worth less than nothing in the eyes of their motherland.
The hush, however, was broken by the butcher, who stalked angrily through the mass of people until he was standing directly above Tamar. She swallowed convulsively. The man was even more colossal at close range: at least a foot and a half taller than she, and almost thrice her weight.
"Well," he growled, looking down at her. "You're a short little bugger, aren't ya?"
She shrugged, trying not to betray her unease. "I daresay I'm taller than that bastard Bonaparte," she quipped smartly.
"Bastard is right!" someone shouted, sparking a chorus of taunts and insults directed at the banished tyrant.
"Aye, a child towers above that man, he's so low!" a man with a tarred ponytail suddenly snarled.
Tamar went still at that. The man's words struck a chord in her heart...and if the increased noise of the others was anything to go by, they clearly felt the same way. Sensing a momentous opportunity, she drew herself up to her full height and stepped around the butcher, facing her audience once more.
"A child towers above him, you say?" she called out. "Why?" An uneasy silence met her words. "Tell me why!"
"Because Bonaparte was a murderer," the butcher muttered grimly, "and murderers deserve to burn in Hell."
"Because murderers deserve to burn in Hell," she agreed solemnly.
X X X
Tamar didn't give anyone time to respond; she was too fired up. Instead, she stalked, cat-like, to the front ranks of the crowd, meeting their eyes with a blazing defiance.
"And wouldn't you agree," she shouted, "that abandoning thousands to lives of misery could be considered murder? Don't you think that leaving innocent men, women, and children starving and homeless is a mortal sin?
"That is what is happening today!" she roared. "All over France, the masses live in squalor!"
"Damn straight!" the man with the tarred ponytail hissed. Indignant howls erupted through the gathered mob.
"Where is your voice?" Tamar cried once the noise had died a bit. "Where are your benefits, your rights? Do you see them? Where are they, when you are the ones that need them most?"
"In the bellies of the bourgeoisie," the butcher proclaimed. "They live like kings, with more than they know what to do with, getting fat off their corruption, while honest men like you or I can barely keep the clothes on our backs."
"Not even that!" a young man exclaimed. He was a tall, husky fellow with light brown hair and skin the color of creamed coffee. He spoke with a thick Hungarian accent, and he was, to Tamar's surprise, completely naked. "I was robbed last night," he said, not self-conscious in the least. "Some man who was wearing nothing but half a lady's skirt around his csúzli snuck up behind me and knocked me out. When I woke up, I was as naked as the day I was born."
A few of the men began to laugh. "Shoulda watched yer back, étranger!" a crusty old seaman said, chortling.
"Did you go after the bloke that took the things?" someone else asked.
The Hungarian shrugged. "Nem," he sighed. "He probably needed them a bit more than I did."
"But-but that isn't fair!" Marius burst out. "He shouldn't have...felt the need to just...steal another man's clothes...off his back!"
"If he had none of his own, then he'd have no qualms about doing things like that," Tamar pointed out.
"Lad's right," the old seaman conceded. "'Twas me, I'd do th'same."
Marius shook his head in astonishment. "That...that isn't right," he whispered.
X X X
Tamar began speaking again, but Marius didn't hear a word she said. Her words, and those of the Slav, and the seaman, were circling through his head like angry vultures. How could these people live like this? In danger of being robbed, being injured, being killed, every day? Worse, how could they possibly accept this as their fate?
Marius had always lived a sheltered life. His wealthy grandfather had taught him to view the destitute as filthy, despicable. Bothersome. Not worth his time. Even when he had met Courfeyrac at university and had begun attending in the Musain, he hadn't managed to comprehend the scope of the poverty, of the suffering.
Now, watching Tamar and the crowd in their passionate discourse, he saw just how...human the 'scum of the Earth' were. He understood it all: the hopes of Les Amis, the misery and fury of the people. He understood the pain and rage that he saw in Enjolras's eyes every day. He understood Tamar's uncanny strength, a strength that was mirrored by all the men standing before him now. It was a strength wrought by injustice, mistreatment. Sin, as Tamar had said.
Tamar…. At that moment, she was the embodiment of righteous anger. The peoples' voice. Her conviction rang out in every word she spoke, and Marius could feel her passion as if it were his own. the crowd, too, was moved by this spectacle, and they roared and cheered alongside her stirring words.
"Three months ago you let your voices be heard," she was saying. "You tired of all the oppression, all the pain and all the grief. You tired of being treated like base garbage!"
"Hear!" the Hungarian shouted.
"Hear!" came the resounding echo.
"The only garbage in France is created by the gluttony of the rich!" she yelled. "The rich and the king himself! He is the one that leaves you with nothing, leaves you for dead! His rule is a noose around the neck of the country!"
"And the innocent refuse to be hanged," the butcher rumbled.
"But a hangman can be so hanged," Tamar continued more softly. "Three months ago, the noose was cast aside, the barricades went up, and your hangman was thrown into his own bloody gallows-pit. For a brief time, you had a republic. You had a freedom that had been denied to you for years.
"And now we have another king, who's no better than the last!" She had raised her voice once more. "What will you do? I ask you, WHAT WILL YOU DO?!"
"Fight, Dieu zut!" the man with the tarred ponytail bit out. "We give him what he damn well deserves!"
This time, the roars the crowd broke into were deafening, and Tamar made no move to silence them. She had said her piece, and now she looked stunned, as though she hadn't been expecting such a reaction. Perhaps she hadn't. The men could have refused to listen. Instead, they had gotten caught up in her enthusiasm, and she had sparked not a fire, but a blazing inferno in their hearts. There would be no quenching this flame. It would burn to its glorious or bloody end.
Marius closed his suddenly stinging eyes. This was what he had needed to see. This was living proof of the peoples' heart. This was the soul of France: not fine food, or beautiful architecture, or gaudy, costumed dandies, but this, this rough, raw passion. This insatiable hunger for liberty. This fire.
Without realizing fully what he was doing, he stepped up beside Tamar, opened his eyes, watched the storming mob.
"Vive la France," he whispered.
The butcher, standing on Tamar's other side, echoed his words in a thundering, booming shout. "Vive la France!"
"Vive la France! Vive l'avenir! Vive la révolution!" The voices of the crowd rose louder and louder, until the heavens could surely hear their impassioned cries.
AN: Well, that's Chapter 14 for you. Hope you liked it!
Translation time!
Csúzli: Hungarian for 'crotch'
Nem: Hungarian for 'no'
étranger: French for 'foreigner'
Dieu zut: Roughly French for 'God hang it all'
Vive la France: French for 'long live France'
Vive l'avenir: French for 'long live the future'
Vive la révolution: French for 'long live the Revolution'
Tamar's saying 'three months ago' was a reference to the 1830 July Revolution, which began in the end of May. As I've said before, this revolution forced the reactionary Charles X out of office, marking the end of Bourbon rule in France (this was the dynasty that was ousted during the 1789-92 Revolution with the execution of Louis XVI, and reinstated after the banishment of Napoleon with Louis XVII). The Duc d'Orleans, crowned as Louis-Philippe, was made king after Charles X was forced to abdicate and exiled.
Well, that was a nice little history lesson for everyone. Please remember to read and PLEASE REVIEW! Auf Wiedersehen! Au revoir! ¡Adiós!