Chapter Four
A Jolting Current of Understanding
Light hit Éponine's eyes, and she opened them to reveal Erik peering down at her, holding a lamp.
"Good. You're awake."
"What time is it? What day is it?"
He looked at his watch. "10 o'clock in the morning. I should get you a clock for this room. It can be disorienting at first, trying to keep track of time underground, with no sunlight or stars. As for the date, it's the seventh of June."
What day had it been when she was shot? The fifth, right? Was the fighting still happening? Was Marius okay? Was Gavroche okay? She'd heard his voice as she lay dying in Marius' arms. He was singing. He was always singing. Always making jokes. He shouldn't have been there, he was just a kid. Granted, a kid who always took care of himself, raised himself, really. Still, just in case, she had asked Marius to look after him.
Erik set the lamp on the nightstand, and sat in a chair which had been pulled close to the bed. "Can you come more toward the edge? So that I can reach you better?"
Éponine tried. Without thinking, she tried to push against the bed with her left hand, which was the one she had used to cover the musket barrel, and the pain that resulted was excruciating. At the same time, she had slightly shifted the weight of her torso, and that sent an agonizing wave of pain tearing through her body from the wounds on her chest and her back. She bit her tongue to keep from screaming, and her breathing was ragged.
"It's okay to scream, if you need to. You're safe down here, and no one can hear you. We're far, far, down in the ground, and these walls are very thick. I designed them myself." Erik's tone was meant to be comforting, but the implication that no one could hear her screams—even if she needed them to—was definitely not the most reassuring.
Something about his voice had made her feel safe and trust him from the moment he had first walked into the room and told her not to be frightened, but every fibre of her being reminded her to never let her guard down. Especially if she was trapped so far beneath the ground with this man, and no one could hear her if she screamed.
Very slowly and gently, Erik slid his arms beneath her and pulled her toward the edge of the bed. She could feel that his arms were incredibly strong. Then, just as gently, he laid her down. He was being so careful that she hardly felt any extra pain from being moved.
She had a better view of him now, with the lamp right next to them on the table. He had dark hair, and behind his mask were a pair of eyes of piercing amber swirled together with green. His jaw was square and strong, and she thought he was probably quite good-looking under the mask.
While she was unashamedly staring up at what she could see of his face, she didn't notice what his hands were doing until she felt him tug down the neck of her nightgown, and she stiffened and tried to pull away. He responded by falling back in his chair as though he had been burned, holding his hands up. "I apologise, Mademoiselle. You have nothing to fear from Erik. I—I need to change your bandages, and make sure there is no infection. I apologise. I...I didn't think to explain. I don't often find myself...in the company of women...or people, really."
Éponine could feel her face burning red, but she nodded. She wondered if he was blushing too, underneath that mask. He had been so calm and matter-of-fact a moment ago, but her reaction seemed to have rattled him, and his hands now shook slightly as he pushed the nightgown down her tiny shoulders to give himself access to the bandages, which he carefully cut away with scissors. She continued to look at him boldly, even though her face was on fire and she would rather just close her eyes. She couldn't see what he was doing, but she could feel that he had left her covered up as much as possible, which made her relax a little.
His fingers gently traced where the bullet had passed through, just above her breast, beside her shoulder. She winced. The flesh there was so tender—she hadn't seen it, but she could tell there must be a massive bruise all around the wound.
"Who did this to you?"
She tried to shrug her shoulders and attempted a flippant smile. "Some soldier. Didn't catch his name."
"How came you to be shot by a soldier?"
"I was in the Rue Chanvrerie. There was a barricade. I don't know—something about liberty and equality. We were all supposed to die there, I thought."
He scoffed. "You don't know. Then why were you there getting shot?"
She gave him a wry smile, but said nothing.
Seeming to catch her desire to leave that unanswered, he instead asked, "The Rue de la Chanvrerie, did you say?"
"Yes, that's right. At the Corinth."
"How did you manage to move yourself here all the way from the Rue de la Chanvrerie, in this state?"
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I found you outside, slumped against the wall. It was only by chance—I seldom go out anymore. I almost left you there. I thought you were just intoxicated. But then I smelled blood."
"I didn't move myself anywhere! That's..." She did a quick examination of her mental picture of the city's streets. She had them all in her head. She was good at finding her way around. "That's half an hour of walking, at least. I couldn't have done that. I died—or, I thought I died. And then I woke up here."
"Then how did you come to be outside of my Opera House?"
"I was hoping you could tell me how I got here."
They looked at each other a moment, realising that neither had the information to illuminate this mystery, and shrugged it off for the time being.
He gently cleaned the wound with warm water, and the gentle pressure of the cloth made her grit her teeth.
"After I brought you here, I cleaned your wound as best I could, and closed it up with thread," he explained. "I think the—was it a musket ball? It may have just missed anything important, before coming out your back. It did shatter your top rib. But time will tell. As for your hand...I don't think that will ever be of much use to you again."
She tried to lift it to see what it looked like, but her arm felt so heavy. "I put it over the barrel. I stopped the musket ball with my hand. Or, I tried to."
He shuddered. "Why would you do a thing like that?"
She couldn't expect anyone else to understand. But then she remembered what he had said, about dying of love. Perhaps this melodramatic masked man who played the organ in such a mournful way could understand. So she said, "When you're a little bit in love, I guess you do things like that."
He looked down into her eyes, his piercing eyes which almost seemed to glow in the lamplight boring into her very soul. There was a tangible current of understanding that flew between them in that moment, like a jolt that she could actually feel. She could almost hear that painful music which had cut her deep to the heart the night before.
And then, abruptly—almost roughly—he turned her onto her side so that he could tend to the wound on her back. She was glad that he was on the left side of the bed, and so turned her onto her right side, because if he had put her entire weight on her injured side so suddenly, she felt sure she would have fainted from the pain. It was bad enough as it was. She opened her mouth and all that came out was a stifled gasp. He didn't even say anything or apologise, and she couldn't see him now. he pulled the nightgown down her back. She bit down on her tongue as he began to clean the wound. "This one is larger, where it came out. It must have been flat by then—the musket ball. It tore the flesh quite badly." His voice was different now, much flatter and more guarded than before. No emotion or concern. "A lot of bruising."
She nodded. She could feel it. Her eyes were tearing up from the cloth making contact with the tender flesh.
He tugged on the old bandages which he had cut, sliding them out from underneath her. Then he lifted her slightly and wrapped new bandages around her. When he was done, he laid her back down. More gently again. Whatever dark mood had overtaken him seemed to have passed.
"Are you hungry?" He asked, standing up from his chair.
"I'm always hungry."
"Yes. You're quite skinny," he said bluntly.
She flushed again, feeling defensive as she always did when her poverty became the topic of conversation. She didn't want pity. "I—It wasn't always like this. We used to have plenty of food and—I can read and write. My sister and I had an education. We weren't meant to..." She trailed off. It didn't matter anymore.
She couldn't tell what Erik was thinking behind his mask, or even if he was really listening. He was gathering up his supplies that he had used to tend to her, and she felt silly, the way she had when she had come into Marius's room and just started blabbering on and on, because he wasn't telling her to stop. But then she felt so foolish afterward, especially when it turned out he was trying to avoid her, clearly embarrassed to speak to her in the street after he left that old Gorbeau dump. He was a baron, after all. Even if he didn't look it. She'd found that out when she was looking for him after getting out of jail. God, she was pitiful.
But Erik interrupted her racing, humiliated thoughts. He rested a hand very gently on her arm, and simply looked down at her, those fiercely burning eyes quieting to a gentle flame. She felt, again, an understanding pass between them. "I will bring you some breakfast, and coffee. Wait here."
"Don't really see myself going anywhere," she said wryly.
The next thing she knew, she was jolting awake upon hearing the door click open again. She must have dozed off the minute he was gone. Just having her wounds cleaned and being moved slightly in the bed had been exhausting. She was so weak, and she hated that. She needed to be able to look after herself, like she always had done.
He set the tray down and helped prop her up on the pillows. It hurt so much, but she had to bear it, because she wouldn't be able to eat lying flat, and she so needed to eat. He brought bread and cheese and fruit, and it was so strange to be in such a comfortable bed in a well-furnished room eating glorious food, all while apparently being so deep underground.
"Coffee?" He asked. She nodded, and he poured dark black liquid into a very small cup, out of a thin copper pot with a spout almost like a curving bird's beak. She had never smelled anything so wonderful, and she accepted the delicate, tiny cup eagerly into her hands. But when that black liquid touched her tongue, it was terribly bitter, like burnt bread. She sputtered and looked at him in horror.
"You don't like it?" He asked, with a bemused tilt of his head.
She took another sip.
"You'll acquire a taste for it. One can get used to anything."
She quirked her mouth in a cynical smile. "That's true enough."
"I spent time in Persia, and then Constantinople. I travelled many places you probably haven't heard of. I have many talents. I am the first ventriloquist in the world, and an illusionist, and an architect, and a musician. I grew tired of all of that. I only wanted to live an ordinary life, like anybody else. And now, I am dying."
She wondered for a moment what this latest turn into the boastful, the melodramatic, and the depressing had to do with coffee, then surmised that this style of coffee must have been something he picked up on his travels. While she didn't doubt he was everything he said he was, she couldn't help but recognise his defensive tone, like looking into a mirror.
She finished eating, and told him that she needed to sleep. She hated how little energy she had. He helped her to lie flat again, hovered uncertainly for a moment, then turned out the lamp and left her in darkness.
