TITLE: Nota Bene (4/7) Dulce et Decorum Est ... (It is sweet and seemly ...)
AUTHOR: Blue Fenix
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: the_blue_fenix@yahoo.com
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: AuroraVernealis, Aurora Journals, and Fanfiction.net only
CATEGORY: Het; adventure
SPOILERS: Cardinal's Design, Cardinal's Revenge
RATINGS/WARNINGS: R for consensual heterosexual activity
MAIN CHARACTER(S): Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, Rebecca Fogg, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas pere
SUMMARY: Fogg and friends are misplaced in time, broke in Paris, and pursued by the implacable Cavois.
DISCLAIMERS: the usual. Borrowed characters, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I've got no money to sue for.
They fled like hunted animals. They walked several blocks in the darkened streets, Rebecca growing more footsore from lack of shoes on the filthy paving stones with every yard. After many turns and doublings back, even Phileas was willing to concede that they must have lost any possible shadow. He'd salvaged only one weapon from the fire, a two-shot derringer which he usually carried up one sleeve. Fogg kept the little gun in hand, finger on the trigger, throughout their wanderings. It would have gone hard with any milkman or homeward-bound drunk who crossed their path too closely. At various times in their history as a team, Rebecca and Jules and even Passepartout had exerted restraining influences on Phileas Fogg when one or all of them felt that he was leading the group in unwise directions. No one tried to do so now. Fogg's paranoia was their best chance of survival. Even Dumas, who knew least about the situation and had the greatest history of personal recklessness, was taking orders like a soldier.
It took a silent, painstaking examination of more than one darkened street of seedy tenements before they found what Fogg was looking for. An empty suite of rooms -- the bedraggled exterior and the fine layer of dust on stairs and doorknob made that clear -- with direct access from the ground floor. Phileas had helped himself to two or three pieces of stiff wire from various trash heaps they'd passed along the way. The lock in the door was large and crude; he was able to force the latch with his improvised lock picks without doing any damage visible from the outside. "Hurry," he whispered as soon as the door swung inward.
Rebecca had taken advantage of trash heaps as well. She now carried a two-foot chunk of steel rod as an improvised weapon. When the group crowded past Fogg through the open door she took the lead. A narrow flight of stairs led upward, and a door at the head of those stairs stood half open. "Wait..." Phileas whispered desperately.
Rebecca was already through the upstairs door. She swept quickly through the three nearly empty rooms, her metal bar held like a cavalry sabre. "Clear," she reported. "Nothing worse than dust, as far as I can see. Just keep quiet; no telling who lives downstairs."
Everyone shuffled upstairs, Fogg last. "I've gotten the door locked again," he whispered. The windows of the flat were uncurtained. Enough light seeped in to see by. Rebecca caught his sharp look of disapproval that she'd taken the task of searching unsecured territory. She stared impassively back; apart from Phileas she was the most combat-effective of them all. "If we keep our voices down, we should be safe enough here at least until dawn."
The rooms were at least dry, which was by no means guaranteed in a Paris winter, but they'd been unheated long enough to be nearly as chilly as the streets outside. Rebecca wrapped the fireman's blanket around herself again. The whole group crowded together for warmth.
"We can't just hide in here," Jules said. "You said, six days until you can call for help from your Secret Service."
"Everyone getting a little hungry by and by," Passepartout agreed.
"We aren't going to wait for help," Fogg said. "I should very much like a private word with Monsieur Cavois. But I'm not going to flail around in the dark looking for him while we all get shorter on sleep." He glanced across at the older novelist. "I'm sorry you've been involved in this, Dumas. I'd send you somewhere else if I thought we could get you there safely."
The big man bowed his head with the grace of one of his own musketeers. "These things will occur from time to time; there's no point in worrying overmuch about it. Frankly this is the kind of night's sleep I expected to have, if neither you nor your enemy had intervened." He patted his coat pocket, indicating an empty wallet inside.
"I don't understand why Cavois would seek out a quarrel now in particular," Rebecca said. "It's been six months or more since we crossed swords. Has it taken him this long to clear his social calendar? For that matter, why should he pursue a grudge at all? We can't be the only ones who ever thwarted one of his plans."
"Taking things very personally, yes." Passepartout's mode of expression in English was never subtle; now every syllable was heavy with conscious irony. The manservant was staring hard at Phileas Fogg. "Master ..."
Jules, who was less than favorably disposed toward his English friend at the moment, sprang on the half-formed clue. "Fogg, is there something you aren't telling us?"
Phileas looked embarrassed, but there was nothing humorous in the situation. His nerves were stretched dangerously tight. Rebecca raised an inquiring eyebrow but otherwise did nothing to increase the pressure on her cousin. "Very well." Fogg made a visible effort to keep control of his temper. "I suppose it is relevant. At the conclusion of our previous encounter, and at his instigation, Cavois and I fought a duel."
Rebecca's own inner tension increased a notch. She'd been aware that Phileas' insistence on "handling" the problem of Cavois could encompass such an outcome. What she couldn't imagine was a duel taking place, under the circumstances, that left both men alive. "Go on," she said in as neutral a voice as she could manage.
"A duel of Russian roulette." Phileas was not looking at her.
"That's insane!" Jules burst out. "Fighting like animals is bad enough, but playing at suicide ..."
Fogg's eyes came up, ice cold. The glitter of fear-fed anger stopped Jules' oration in its tracks. "No one asked your advice."
Rebecca's own discretion was at an end. She'd seen Phileas at the gaming table more times than she could count. She could visualize exactly how he'd look gambling with his life. His long fingers rock-steady on the gun, his eyes never blinking as he pressed the muzzle to the side of his head. "When I agreed to let you deal with Cavois, I expected you to do something marginally sensible," she snarled. A breath of difference, a roll of fate's dice, and he could have been gone. Phileas would have left her like that, left her alone to pick up the pieces without knowing where or why he'd died. Without seeing him even to say goodbye, unless she found his broken body... "How could you?" Her voice was less steady than Rebecca would have liked.
Phileas' eyes were dark, in tune with her pain, but he met hers firmly now. "I did it..."
She reared back with the iron bar. "Say for you and I'll bash your head in."
"Please, is not to be fighting each other!" Passepartout flung himself between them, waving his hands in wild conciliatory gestures. "However bad could might be ... point is no one dying at all. Passepartout saw it, heard it. Monsieur Cavois being too afraid to go on. Dropping the gun when it came to his turn ... but master let him live, shot into the wall. Thinking fight is not about British codes or Prussian spies any more."
"That would be a reason to hate." Dumas nodded soberly. "Shown up as a coward in his own eyes, and then compelled to accept the sparing of his life as a gesture of contempt. I can see it's a kind of mercy, not to take the advantage, but I think a very dangerous kind."
"You could have a point." Fogg's voice had quieted, anger replaced by a deep weariness. He seemed diminished, shrunken in on himself in the aftermath of Rebecca's wrath. "Unfortunately it's a bit after the fact. If our friend had it in mind to change history, perhaps he should have gone back and started then. Now ... I suggest we leave matters where they are for the moment. It's getting too damned late at night to scream at each other."
There was a general murmur of agreement. Too many raw edges had been exposed; there seemed no safe way for anyone to speak to one another. They milled around and tried to make the best of their Spartan refuge without actually addressing one another in complete sentences. The smallest room seemed marginally less cold than the other two. Rebecca refused to let it be designated 'her' room for the splendor of ladylike solitude. The only piece of furniture of any size in the place was a wooden bench; to win on having the others in the room with her, she had to give in gracefully about having the bench as her bed. She was grateful to be up out of the dust, and to keep the only blanket, although she suspected the four men huddling together like puppies in a basket would actually sleep warmer.
The wooden bench was about as yielding as granite. Rebecca reminded herself firmly that she was one of Her Majesty's finest, able to face any adversity with flair. It was hard to convince herself at the moment. The life Rebecca had forged for herself gave her indispensable freedom, but at a cost. Grief and rage and frustration boiled in her stomach now. A man in the same emotional state could drink and curse and hit things for relief. A woman -- an ordinary woman -- could weep aloud on the shoulder of a friend or lover. Rebecca, with a foot in each world, could do neither without compromising herself. In the near-privacy of the darkened room, she let her guard down a little. Her eyes filled with tears, her fists clenched and drove the nails painfully into her palms.
Damn her flinch reaction. If she'd let go just a little more she could have been drowsing in Phileas' arms right now, hearing his heartbeat and knowing even in sleep that he was contented and safe. They'd have been warmer, too. Much too warm; making love wouldn't have stopped Cavois setting the house on fire. The cynical, agent side of her was right, but that didn't mean she couldn't have done the same thing another night. Any night, or every night. No. She'd been right all those years to keep him at a distance, if she truly intended to retain her freedom of action. Even with the risks, even with her fears of losing her independence, it was going to be very hard to keep her hands off Phileas after those initial caresses. I can still have him.
She could have him, yes. The handsome face and form, the devoted heart ... and the shadowed soul. Rebecca could secure his affections past any interference by other women, she thought, but Death was a mistress she couldn't compete with. His willingness to die for her, or for lack of her, lost much of its value when he was equally willing to die for a fit of pique or for nothing at all. She could imagine him casting it in Shakespearean terms: who steals my life, steals trash.
Phileas thought she could save him. As flattering as the idea was, it was also terrifying. Because he was wrong. Rebecca's own strength or courage or willpower, though she put a due value on them, were irrelevant. No one could drag another person into the light against his will. Rebecca could wish him happy and secure and at peace with her whole heart, but there was no way she could feel those feelings for him. The burden he meant to lay on her shoulders was past any human being's ability to bear. That didn't stop her wanting to try, both out of love and out of her own inability to resist a challenge. If she did try -- and she probably would -- if she did fail -- and she certainly would -- it wouldn't stop her blaming herself for her failure.
Whether he would blame her, or would insist on pretending she'd succeeded, was impossible to tell until the actual event. Rebecca only knew that it was impossible to leave him, whether they became lovers or not. She couldn't remember ever making that decision consciously. It was simply something that had grown inside her a day at a time. The older boy home from boarding school who'd held her hand at her mother's funeral, the young agent who'd trained her when no one else would, the shattered man whose cold, unmoving hand she'd held in turn when they buried his brother ... Phileas was hers, like the breath in her lungs. No failure or fit of bad temper or even betrayal could change that. Separating herself from him would be as maiming as hacking off her own arm. If remaining near him carried its burden of pain ... she hadn't had any other plans, anyway.
-----
Rebecca was asleep enough to be completely, bonelessly relaxed and awake enough to enjoy the experience. It was like swimming underwater. Wakefulness was out there, above the surface, but she didn't have to return to it unless she chose. She knew where she was, and why, but it didn't seem to need worrying about. Time had passed. Something had half-wakened her out of true sleep; slow introspection developed into the conclusion that the something was a sound. She listened to it for a while before her dozing brain processed the sound into a voice, then two voices. They were whispering, trying not to disturb anyone, but the tone was acid. Rebecca let herself float a little closer to the surface to hear better.
"I'm just saying that what's best for her is what counts." A young, self-righteous voice, strained with the effort of holding to a whisper. Jules.
"Agreed. A matter which Rebecca is superbly qualified to decide on and act on for herself." Phileas was holding his voice down better. Rebecca could hear the weary, frayed edges but she doubted anyone else would have. "I suggest respecting that."
"I ..." The sentence started too loud; Jules stopped and went back to the faintest whisper. "I do respect her."
"Very wise." Phileas' voice changed, control abandoned for the candor of complete exhaustion. "Verne, do you have any illusions that you can make Rebecca do something she doesn't want to do? Or refrain from something she does? I assure you I haven't, and I've known her all her life. It's no good complaining to me about this."
A snort of disbelief. "I'm sure you're so helpless."
"Yes."
Rebecca had never heard such a complete abandonment of pretense from Phileas, not in the depths of grief or anger or alcohol. She wanted to reach out to him, to comfort him, but she had no right. He hadn't intended her to hear. Phileas was going on, the raw resignation a little masked now. "At any rate, I think you're overestimating the significance of what you saw."
Jules, stung in his pride, misunderstood words and tone alike. "You mean I never had a chance with her no matter what, because I'm younger?"
"Call it that, if you like." Phileas' words were coated again in protective ice. He shifted on the floor. Rebecca risked half-opening an eye; he'd turned his back on Jules, ending the conversation. The younger man, his face set in a snarl, turned away as well. Rebecca let her eyes fall closed. It was a long time before she returned to sleep.
-----
Rebecca woke again to sunlight in her eyes and a stiff, sore back. She was alone in the small room. She sat up on the wooden bench. Quiet voices beyond the door, familiar ones, told her she was neither abandoned nor, probably, in danger. She took her metal bar along in any case when she followed the sound. Jules and Dumas were near the windows in the front room, looking down on the street and conversing softly in French.
"Bonjour," Rebecca put in.
"Good morning." Jules looked positively guilty. He'd flinched a bit at the sight of her. Rebecca didn't think he knew she'd overheard his jealous outburst in the night; this looked like something different. Rebecca suddenly knew what. She turned around, a full circle, in an elaborate show of looking into every corner of the empty room. "Where is Phileas?" Her mild tone had razor-edged steel just below the surface.
Jules looked panicky. "He ..."
"Mr. Fogg and his manservant went out at dawn," Dumas put in with more composure. "There's neither food nor water here, still less information about what's going on in the outside world. Someone had to go."
Rebecca fought down a twinge of panic of her own. At least Passepartout is sensible. He can keep him out of trouble. But Passepartout had been with Phileas the night he faced Cavois and put a gun to his own head. "Whose idea was it for my cousin to take his valet with him?"
Jules knew the Englishman well enough to understand the intent of Rebecca's question. "It was Passepartout's. Fogg was planning to go alone until he insisted."
And he didn't have the nerve to face me. Rebecca shivered.
"Surely he won't seek out trouble," Dumas reassured her. "He's not armed, for a start. He left this for you." Dumas held out the two-shot derringer. The gun looked like a toy in his big hand.
From the age of seven, Rebecca had trained herself and been trained by her guardian to respond coolly to fear or danger. Nothing less, she thought, could have kept her hand steady now as she took the gun from the novelist.
She felt a wild impulse to empty it into the ceiling, or even toward her own head. One suicidal Fogg is quite enough. It was harder still holding back the urge to turn and flay Jules alive. By his eyes, the young man seemed to know that. You KNOW him, damn you. You should have known better. "A bit of a misinterpretation, I fear." Rebecca kept her voice as impersonal as she could. "With us out of danger, he can take whatever steps he considers necessary to win. If Cavois kills him, and then loses interest in attacking the rest of us ... Phileas would call that winning."
"God." Jules understood now, yes. "Rebecca, I'm sorry. He was so calm, and he made the whole idea sound so sensible. It just never occurred to me."
Didn't it? I can think of one reason you'd want Phileas out of your path. But that was too cruel to say even if Rebecca had believed it. "Where would he go, Jules? Think. Where could he find Cavois?"
"I don't know. He never said anything at all about it." Jules looked thoughtful. "Wherever they fought the duel?"
The sensible remark made Rebecca feel a little steadier. Verne's brains could be a tremendous asset in times of trouble, though his impulsive immaturity sometimes made it hard to remember that. "I believe that did happen here in Paris," Rebecca said. "Somewhere. I should have gotten the information out of Passepartout while I had the chance." Rebecca pocketed the small pistol and moved toward the door.
"Mam'selle." Dumas moved to intercept her, softening the interference with hands spread in a gesture of harmlessness. "It's futile to search at random in an entire city. Besides ... your safety is of the greatest importance. Mr. Fogg surely left us behind so that we could protect you."
A small, slightly evil smile crossed Rebecca's face. "Two gentlemen to guard a helpless lady, you mean?" she said softly. Nothing too rough. Rebecca took the older man's hand, patting it in gratitude for his chivalry. Then her grip turned suddenly steely. A pull, a shift of weight and Dumas' arm was twisted behind him to the breaking point. Rebecca showed him the derringer, abruptly back in her other hand with its muzzle pointed safely at the ceiling. "Or one operational field agent to guard two civilians. I'm quite fond of you, Alexandre, but some situations call for a clear chain of command."
Jules seemed torn between shock and laughter; he knew her. "Rebecca, please."
"My lady, I need that arm to write with," Dumas said, a little pained. "Or to drink with at the very least. I yield."
"I knew we could work together." Rebecca let go; the gun quietly disappeared. "Where were we, Jules? The dueling ground, if we knew where it was. What about the boarding house? Cavois was there last night. He might visit it again. Though he couldn't hope to pick up our trail there, not after this many hours."
"But it's a reasonable place to find Fogg -- if he knows Fogg's willing to be found. There, or the tavern." Verne looked worried.
Rebecca thought of a duel with one gun and one bullet being coldly passed back and forth. "I suspect they understand each other very well. That's it, then. When did Phileas leave?"
Jules had saved his watch from last night's fire. "Less than an hour ago."
"I'd say we still have a chance." An infinitely better chance than waiting here until Passepartout came back alone -- or until it became clear that no one would ever come back. Rebecca looked around the room for loose belongings and found very few. "If we leave now."