- VOLTAIRE
It had been unseasonably wet for June. The past month or so had been marked with storms which, in their passing, made the redolent summer heat all the more unsettling. There had been heavy showers of rain early this morning, which had cleared up by midday and left the city momentarily refreshed; every surface in Paris seeming to gleam with water and the promise of new and better things to come. The rain brought out the scent of the rich French earth; grass seemed greener and the sky even more vivid. The clouds had not yet parted, casting a blanket of pearly grey above the city, constantly shifting and changing.
In the great Sainte-Marguerite Cemetery, one of the seven oldest graveyards built within Paris' walls, one could stand amongst the stone markers and the monoliths, drink in the cool damp air, listen to the wind rustle through the branches of the apple trees and feel temporarily at peace. The church that guarded the cemetery's entrance was relatively small and select - priests had been known to grow up and grow old within this single city parish. The current curé, Father Dominic, had been in residency for thirty-six years and had seen more evidence of Paris' tempestuous and spirited nature than he cared to remember.
It was Father Dominic and his host of volunteers who kept the cemetery as beautiful as it was. Weeds were painstakingly separated from the long clean grass, the gravel paths down aisles and aisles of graves were kept neat and smooth, the flowering hedges were trimmed every three months, and the apple trees near the back wall of the cemetery were carefully tended. Towards the back of the cemetery the gravestones and angels and acroterions petered out, leaving vast expanses of grass and simple stones, uncarved and unmarked. In thinking that these spaces indicated the patches of earth yet to serve a slumbering man, woman or child as their final pillow, one would be wrong.
Those who lay here deserved no markers or final blessings.
All communal graves have one thing in common: their tenants are victims. Sometimes they are victims of natural catastrophe, or of war, or famine or disease . . . or of their own simple folly. It is the latter group who provoke the greatest hatred amongst society. People who choose to throw their lives away for no obvious reason pose two problems: why did they do what they did, and what is to be done with the corpses left behind. The first problem is one which society as a whole tries to duck. The second is always solved in the same manner.
Those whose business it is to know such things swear on their souls that there is one such unmarked mass grave in the far right corner of the Sainte-Marguerite Cemetery: a pit dug at the foot of a dead apple tree. Popular superstition had it that many of those who threw their lives away in the rue de la Chanvrerie, during two days of June 1832 lay in this cemetery, sharing the same grave as they had shared the same ideals. No stone marked the expanse of earth - how could it? None knew for sure who lay beneath.
Marius Pontmercy, however, felt that he could hazard a fairly accurate guess.
He stood before this seemingly tranquil stretch of grass as he had stood here many times before. Sometimes he brought flowers, or candles to light and leave behind, but today he brought nothing. On this, the day that marked the fifth anniversary of so many of his friends' untimely deaths, he felt that any gift no matter how significant would be trite and petty, and for his own peace of mind rather than theirs.
But always he talked. Although he knew that those below were too far away to hear, it comforted him to keep that link between them. In a way, this nameless grave had come to represent his friends as a whole. It didn't matter if none of them had found their way into this pit of bones - it was an idea, a dream, a vision that had been slaughtered that day. A vision they had all shared.
And what did he talk about? Anything they would have found of interest during their lives. Sometimes if he discovered a particularly beautiful poem in a newly published volume, he would bring it to the cemetery, read it aloud and ask Jehan what he thought of it. He would describe new political theories or doings in government, wondering if any of them still heard or cared. Every now and then he purchased medical journals and scanned them for new and interesting articles that Joly or Combeferre might possibly be interested in. A couple of times he had even brought bottles of expensive Bordeaux wine, and let the rich red liquid pour over the soil so that the dead might drink.
More often, he just told them about his growing family, and his hopes and dreams for them and for the future. Simple talk, the kind they had all enjoyed most back in the Cafe Musain when tomorrow was just around the corner, the world was full of light and death was an abstract thought.
Today his first words were for Enjolras.
"My son grows strong. The fever is receding, it turned out not to be anything serious. He had Cosette and I worried for a while. I see that in giving him your name, I gave him your strength."
Jean Justin Pontmercy. There had been no argument about the name.
Marius heaved a deep sigh. Although that terrible, aching, raging grief was a thing of the past, there was no denying that this was a sad place. Sometimes he still had nightmares, agonised by the fact that he didn't even know for sure who lay here and who did not. The rational part of his mind told him that it hardly mattered - no matter where their souls were, their bodies would be nothing but bones by now. That thought only made things worse. It made his friends seem more far away than ever.
He could imagine Courfeyrac's or Grantaire's response to that. "So don't come here, you stupid boy. Don't come back until France is a republic, and when that happens you can forget Bordeaux and break out the champagne, thank you very kindly!"
On second thought, Grantaire would have skipped the France becoming a republic part, and just demanded the champagne. He smiled at that.
Suddenly, his thoughts were interrupted by a clatter wings and a sharp cry. He sensed something swoop overhead, and instinctively looked up.
A large crow had flown from across the cemetery, and now perched on one of the branches of the dead apple tree. It snapped its curved beak and cocked its sleek head, seeming to look straight at the man standing on the ground. A black bird. Black as Marius' hair, black as the night, black as sadness and loss, black as the darkness that he was so afraid had engulfed his friends.
As a Catholic, he knew he should believe that his friends were in Heaven, or if not that, then at least some place of consciousness where their suffering was over and they were at peace. He knew Cosette believed in such a place where her lost mother walked in white, along with the man she had called "Father" and had given their son his first name. Marius wanted to believe in that place too, but he had his doubts. He had held a young girl as she breathed her last, frantically wanting to believe that everything would be all right because she was finally in the arms of the man she loved. Marius had seen the look in her eyes as she died, and he knew that if anybody deserved Heaven, then she did. But something stopped him from believing completely. If there was a heaven and a God who ruled it, then how could He have let this happen to so many precious people? What had they done wrong?
The best of a generation . . .
Enjolras had promised them the future - no doubt a future his shining vision of whatever it was had promised to him. But into that future had come a whirlwind of violence and darkness and horror that shattered dreams and destroyed lives. For nothing. Their dream was not remembered, let alone fulfilled. The world had not mourned their passing. The world did not seem to care.
Marius realised that he had stopped looking at the crow, and was now looking back at the grassy ground at his feet. Five years! Such a long time. Long enough to usher in a new little life that had changed his and Cosette's world, yet not long enough for his pain to have abated. Perhaps it never would.
He shivered slightly, and plunged his hands deep into his coat pockets. "Five years ago to this day I lost you," he said, seeming to address the earth itself. "And five years ago I lost something of myself. I know you may not believe me, but part of me stayed with you at the barricade, and died with you."
Marius knelt down and touched the damp grass with the tips of his fingers.
They could be right here . . .
They could be so close . . .
The crow regarded him with its black bead of an eye. Marius was not made uneasy by the intensity of the bird's stare. On the contrary, he felt a little more tranquil, if no less melancholy. There it sat on the branch overlooking the communal grave, as if a sentry outside the Palace of Versailles itself.
People once believed that when a person dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead . . .
He cut that thought off, slightly amused at himself. Where had THAT come from? Perhaps he had read it once somewhere, in a book of pagan beliefs his grandfather kept in his childhood home. For a moment, he tried to remember the rest of the fragment, but it eluded him. All that he remembered was that many superstitions regard the crow and the raven as the keepers of the dead. Which wasn't all that surprising, when one remembered that these were carrion birds.
The church bell tower tolled the hour of six.
He wondered how long he had been standing here. Probably long enough to make Cosette worry. Rising, he shivered once more, and looked back up at the crow. It hadn't moved. "Guard them well, my friend," he said to the great black bird. With that, he turned and slowly walked towards the gates of the cemetery. Outside the gates, Cosette sat in the Pontmercy's one carriage, waiting for her beloved to finish what he had to do. He walked towards her, towards his life.
Once the sad young man dressed in black was safely away from this site and back amongst the marked graves and weeping marble angels, the crow left its branch and fluttered to the ground. It scratched about at the earth for a few moments, then rustled its wings again and cawed nervously. There are some things that, no matter how many times you do them, simply do not get any easier.
Guard them well, the sad young man had said.
Ha! If only the task at hand was that simple!
sorry boy but that is not what i was told to do
With that, it cawed once again, for reassurance, and pecked three times at the ground. Then it spread its wings to the cool pearly sky and the dark magic began.