Enjoy!
Christine
Chapter 61
The Drawing
It was a depiction of an anonymous nobleman.
Not, actually, anonymous. He had a name. Above the image was a single sentence: Earl Delaney ascends his throne.
Below it was the drawing of a well-dressed man, nose turned up, using much more poorly dressed, rail-thin, baggy-eyed men and women as steps to get to a raised chair, the chair being entirely made of street urchin, little waif-like children. The background, I'd shaded in swirls of gray, depicting smoke. The man held a handkerchief near his mouth - he, clearly, had the luxury to, while many of the people he stepped on appeared half-dead.
Leroux and I sat in two armchairs in his office, just a few streets west of my apartment. He looked over the drawing, as I waited with my hands in my lap. The longer he looked, the more a smile grew over his face.
"Earl Delaney," he said, and looked up. "That's a British name. Or Irish, perhaps."
"Yes, M. Leroux."
"But this is not a real British earl."
"No, M. Leroux."
He nodded, glanced down, and asked, "Did you know that 'earl' is English for 'comte'."
"I did, yes. I read that in a book once."
"And I also find it quite amusing that 'Delaney' is only a couple of sounds away from 'de Chagny'. Did you notice that?"
A short stretch of silence. Two days since Meg came to visit me, and half that time had been me staring at the picture, wondering if I should be outright with who, precisely, I was depicting. I didn't show or tell anyone, not even Erik. Not to be secretive, per se, but because I didn't want to be persuaded against making the art. I'd ultimately settled on this.
"Mme. Perrault?"
"Yes, M. Leroux. I am aware they sound similar."
"Did you mean for that to happen?"
I clenched my jaw.
"Mme. Perrault."
"Yes. I did." A shaky breath. "If you don't want the picture, I can draw another."
"Hm." He scratched at his nose. "You know, I once wrote an exposé piece on Philippe de Chagny. He acts like some Christian saint, speaking out against...ladies of the night. I was tipped off that he regularly visits the places these ladies work - and not, mind you, to help them see the errors of their ways or find Christ. Oh, no. He was a regular there."
I knew this. Ibrahim told us, when he found out from Raoul. I didn't bother acting surprised.
He noticed. "I take it that we share the same negative opinion of him."
"I think that he could go about helping society in a better way." I was careful with my words. Though, really, what was the point of that? This whole thing was like playing with very influential and wealthy fire. Erik had let me know that we were invited to yet another party. I knew that putting this drawing out into the world was likely to make him uninvite us to that affair. But he reminded me far too much of the men who frequented the Garden, using people for his own desires, while not caring about them at all. Oh, he cared about those he deemed up to snuff for his social circle - Erik, my father, and I just barely made it, clearly. But God forbid someone was beneath him and dared do something to help themselves out of the mud, something he found uncomfortable to his own sensibilities and goals.
The poor were plenty in Paris. Keeping them in poverty took away any power they might attain. Prostitutes were women that found financial independence by manipulating the wants of men. Criminalize that profession, and their power was taken away as well.
Thus, the order of things would be maintained. The correct order. Anything else would be chaos.
This top-down, power-hungry, fearful sort of thinking was what ensured Erik was kept on the fringes of society for the way he looked - it made it impossible for Vincenzo to find work for a similar reason. It had let me become a Flower and forced Ibrahim and Prince Izad to go their separate ways. If I could say something, anything, against that - I would.
"I'd like to publish this," said Leroux. "But my question for you is - do you want your name on it, Mme. Perrault?"
"Yes," I responded. No waver in my voice. No hesitation. I held his gaze and didn't back down. "I do."