Disclaimer: Yes, I want to get this published. Keep in mind that this is
a first draft. I do not own the rights to "All I Ask Of You," that would
be Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the RUG, and I neither know nor care how many
others. The words are the ones that the Phantom sings at the end of his
"Don Juan," but meant to be sung here the way that Raoul sings it on the
rooftop.
Also, I mean no offense to practitioners of Santeria or Voudoun: I am only trying to capture a sense of historical and cultural accuracy here. This is a first draft! Tell me precisely what you think!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"After the Opera" by AngelCeleste85
Ch.1 - Phantom
New Orleans, Louisiana: December 17th, 1908 - 11:26 PM
Celeste de Chagny wandered downstairs slowly and made her way to the kitchen in the servants' quarters, knowing from long habit that she would find grey-haired Jeanette in there, no doubt making certain everyone was well-fed.
She arrived on cats' feet as always. "That smells good, Jeanette."
Jeanette, their long-time cook and one of the family's few remaining servants from France, turned around and jumped with a hand to her ample bosom.
"Oh, Lord ha' mercy, Mademoiselle, you have the most uncommon knack of scaring the living daylights from a soul! What do you mean, sneaking up on a poor old lady like this, you about scared me half to death!"
For the first time that day, Celeste smiled a little bit. Jeanette, a portly woman nearing sixty now, always mothered everyone but had always paid special attention to the Vicomtess during the long years when she had been so sickly and frail, confined to her bed almost as often as she was out of it. For that matter, she had taken care of the Countess as well, while Christine gave all she had to her daughter's recovery. The woman was always a breath of fresh air and for a moment, Celeste could forget about the sadness that waited upstairs.
"I apologize, you know I'd not want to put you in an early grave. If only because you'd haunt my steps trying to mother me from the other side, as well, when you should be resting and I couldn't interfere!"
"Ah, it'd be more than just the chance to mother you without a hindrance," Jeanette smiled, her kindly gray eyes matching the steely bun at the back of her head in color only. "You know the Angel of Music's touched you long ago, and I'd like to see him just one more time!"
That brought a marginally broader smile to Celeste's lips. It was their private joke. There were a lot of casual things that bothered Raoul and Christine de Chagny, little things. Any mention of ghosts was one. Any references to the angels that Jeanette so fervently believed in was another, most especially to the Angel of Music that Jeanette claimed she'd seen - and heard - one night in Celeste's nursery when the Vicomtess was still a baby.
"Are you 'bout ready to eat something, Mademoiselle?" the portly cook asked. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled a white glazed pottery bowl from a shelf and began filling it with a thick red sauce that seemed to be fully half peppers.
On inspection, it turned out that the aging cook had made a little bit of a local Cajun dish for Celeste tonight - it had always been a source of amusement within the family that the young Vicomtess enjoyed the spicy Cajun food that blended so many cultures together as much as she did Creole food, or cuisine from her native France. Though she pretended a preference for French and Creole foods outside of the household: it would not do to have society spreading odd rumors. God only knew what some of those women would make of a mere food preference!
Still, even the hot and spicy seafood gumbo, made with cayenne peppers in the way she liked best could not quite cheer her mood and ever-cheerful Jeanette, bustling quietly in her usual way, was subdued as well as she picked up on the mood of her employers' daughter.
It was to be expected that the servants would all be speaking softly and treading lightly around the Comte now, whose wife lay dying upstairs. Somehow it felt strange, though, that she would soon be accorded the same level of respect that had once been due her mother.
"Mademoiselle, is the food not up to your liking?" Jeanette asked after a time. For all that she had been born and bred in Provence, her accent bore traces of the Cajun culture in the country around New Orleans. As well it might: for nearly eight years now she had been married to a Cajun rugweaver. She was one of the few members of the original French household that immigrated with the family who had naturalized to America: the Comte and Comtess de Chagny had not, and neither had their daughter: thus they had retained their titles.
Celeste forced a smile, realizing that for the last ten minutes she had only picked listlessly at the food before her.
"It's good, Jeanette, as always, and I thank you for your concern... I guess I just am not very hungry tonight," she replied. "I am sorry."
"Understandable, Mademoiselle, quite understandable. I thought that might be the case so I did not make a great deal. Come, come, finish the bowl at least. You cannot expect to nurse Madame if you are falling over from hunger yourself. And there's a lemon tart and a spot of tea to warm Monsieur and yourself later, if you'd like to take that up to him with Madame's broth." Jeanette, and indeed most of the staff, had been scandalized that Mademoiselle la Vicomtess, Celeste de Chagny, had condescended to take that task from the physician and the servants alike, but unlike the rest, Jeanette seemed to hold onto that shock. She made up for it by fussing even more than before over her favorite charge, though Celeste had long since outgrown a nanny or even a governess. Right now, the young lady welcomed it.
"Is Maman's soup ready?" she asked.
"It will be just as soon's you've finished that bowl o' your own, Mademoiselle," came Jeanette's rejoinder from the next room.
Really, it was amazing how such a large woman could move so quickly and quietly: Celeste had never heard her leave the room.
It was force of will alone that allowed Celeste to finish the bowl of gumbo. True to her word, Jeanette had finished making the chicken broth that was all Christine could keep down these days by the time Celeste could see white through the red tomato-pepper sauce at the bottom. Celeste handed her bowl off to Jeanette and loaded a tray with a bowl of that chicken broth, two ceramic tumblers, two lemon tarts still piping from the oven and a singing teapot, and set off for her mother's sickroom again.
Far off, down one of the main passages, not one of these servants' corridors, she could hear the sound of the antique "grandfather clock," as Americans termed it, softly chiming the start of another new day in the middle of the night. The whole idea had always struck the Vicomtess as more than slightly ironic and a bit ridiculous, but it certainly hadn't been her idea...
"Say you'll share with me..."
As she made her way back to the hallway that led to her parents' master suite, she shivered: the air in this narrow back hallway had grown unaccountably icy, and yet carried the scent of roses. It was not a scent that she had smelled often, for some reason it was another thing that bothered both her parents deeply though they would not say why. And nobody in the house, not even Papa, had the unearthly sweet yet mournful tenor that drifted to her ears from nowhere!
"One love, one lifetime..."
Then the young woman paused in alarm and consternation as the singer came into view from the turn into the corridor that led to the stairs into the upper part of the house. Ahead of her in the dimly-lit corridor and apparently heading in the same direction towards the disused servants' quarters at the end of the hall was a man she could have sworn she had never seen before, and yet seemed oddly familiar.
"Lead me, save me from my solitude..."
By his dress and bearing it was clear that he was no servant, and Celeste frowned, trying to recall if she had every seen anyone who looked even remotely like this. A few hazy fever-dreams from long ago came to mind, a tall man in a white half-mask who always sang and always wore black... He had sung this song for her, hadn't he? Once, maybe? And he always came at night... but always when she was alone.
Jeanette had always claimed - secretly, of course - that her young charge had been touched by the Angel of Music.
Could it be that he had returned again, after fifteen years of silence?
But those were only fever-dreams, not reality. This man was clearly no angel and just as clearly did not belong here in the de Chagny household.
"Say you want me with you..."
He had dark brown hair, nearly black, that was slicked back but slightly shaggy. The back edge of a gleaming white porcelain mask just peeked out from around the right side of his face, secured by a narrow band of black ribbon that creased the man's richly colored hair where it passed. A heavy black opera cape flowed down over his shoulders, obscuring everything from the shoulders down but the heels of his polished black boots and one immaculate glove that held a black fedora by the crown at his right side. But the feline sort of grace that he moved with was as clear as the determination in his silent step.
To the eyes of his human spectator, for a moment the cape seemed to shimmer and divide, rippling in an unseen and unfelt breeze, and for the briefest half a second it appeared to take on the form of wings covered in glossy, almost opalescent black feathers. The boots she thought she'd seen were revealed to be about knee-length, polished to a deep shine all the way up to the black trousers with a dress jacket over that. Gold cufflinks gleamed on the wrist that held the low black hat. The other white-gloved hand, swinging just a little bit in time with his stride, was revealed around the edge of the phantom wing to hold a single deep red rose in full bloom.
But then the young woman blinked involuntarily and the cloak was merely a cloak once more, if it had ever been anything else on this mysterious stranger, and once more his clothing and accessories were hidden..
"...here, beside you..."
Celeste realized with a shock that she could not hear the man's footsteps at all. The sound of those glossy black riding boots that should have been audible on the hard wooden planks that formed the floor here was missing from those firm strides: the only sound this stranger made was his angelic singing.
"Anywhere you go, let me go too..."
"Monsieur, who are you and what are you doing in my house?" she asked. She got no answer. Celeste tried again, setting the tray down to run after him with the intent of catching his arm. "Monsieur?" In English, then. "Sir, I must insist - "
"Christine, that's all I ask of - "
She stopped cold, her words dying on her tongue, as she watched this apparently solid man reach the end of the hall... and vanish through an apparently solid wall. The hauntingly sweet singing cut off with his disappearance, and the strong scent of that rose vanished as well, leaving only faint, lingering traces as the hall began to warm again.
What had just happened?
"Ma'am'selle? Ma'am'selle, you bees a'right, non?"
The sound of the deep, slurred, French-speaking voice behind her brought her out of her stunned reverie and she shivered, clutching her robe more tightly around her. Big François, coming out of the side corridor she had meant to turn down, laid a gentle brown hand on her arm. His eyes were full of concern and the corners of his mouth were tight and pale. He had seen, as well. "Ma'am'selle, what was that you was just shoutin' at a minute ago?"
Celeste spared one more glance at the wall that had just played a witness to such a strange occurrence. She was well aware of the cultural fear here of Voudoun and Santeria, and rumors of ghosts would only scare the staff. Most of them had been hired here, within her lifetime, and believed in the powers of spirits quite strongly. It would not do to scare off half the household with a wild tale of a cloaked and masked man who walked through walls spreading among them, and the half that remained would be constantly looking over their shoulders in terror. No, she could not admit to having seen what she had undeniably seen, not even to her old friend François.
"It was nothing, Francois," she murmured to the black man and touched his hand in reassurance. "Really, I am fine," she added as he raised an eyebrow at her, and had to smile. François had been with the family almost since they had come here and had always been protective of her. Not to mention she had never been able to lie to him effectively. Born in Haiti, the stocky forty-year-old Negro was generally very calm and levelheaded, but talk of spirits or ghosts was perhaps one of two things that could scare the daylights out of him. The other thing, of course, was seeing them, which he had most certainly had if his pallor beneath the dark brown skin was any guide. "I saw someone who went into one of the girls' rooms, I shall have to reprimand her, but I saw nothing else.
"Beggin' your pardon, Ma'am'selle, if it was nothin' you would na' be looking like you just saw a ghost," he returned, growing just a trifle paler.
Celeste gave him a stern look, which rarely worked because they both knew that François was as gentle as a mouse and three times her size, not to mention old enough to be her uncle. This time, she forced back the laugh that always came when she tried doing anything so absurd, picturing herself as her mother catching one of the women red-handed practicing Voudoun. Christine had always stomped on any such rumor quite hard, and Raoul came down harder. Anyone actually caught practicing was given five minutes to collect everything they needed and turned out. In Celeste's memory it had happened four times in the last thirteen years. Celeste herself refused to tolerate such "phantom fears," as she called them in the privacy of her own mind - for some reason her mother and father had never been even as amused by that play on words as the servants were.
"I saw nothing, François, and neither did you. Only a man paying a visit to one of the girls where he shouldn't have been. I will tell Father about it, you do not need to worry. I will not have groundless phantom fears floating here, now or ever, is this understood?" She didn't realize she'd used her private joke until she saw the flicker of fear in his carefully masked eyes.
But François nodded slowly. "If you say so, Ma'am'selle."
She forced her voice to be firmer, steadier, as she checked up and down both corridors. "I do say so, François, and if I find any suspicious rumors I will track them down to the source, whoever it may be, and consider that person to be practicing that Voodoo nonsense."
"Yes, Ma'am'selle," he said with his heavily accented French, and picked up the tray. "If you don't be minding, Ma'am'selle, I'll just carry this in to Madame and Monsieur for you."
Bless your soul, François my old friend, she thought to herself, thanking him silently for his courage. Maybe the manservant just didn't want to be alone right now either, but it still took courage for him to act like nothing had happened at all. They both knew that the servants' quarters off of the corridor down which the strange man had vanished hadn't been used in years and were always kept locked now, and the corridor itself dead- ended into that wall in plain sight. They also both knew that the stranger hadn't deviated at all from his course with that purposeful stride down the center of the hall, and that left him with nowhere to go but into the wall. If he had turned off, if it truly had been a man who had turned into one of the locked rooms, both Celeste and François knew that the young Vicomtess would have never allowed such a rendezvous to happen.
It was a laughable excuse at rationalizing what neither could explain, and yet the young lady sensed that her old friend would not betray this secret to anyone.
So where had the stranger gone? Who was he?
And why did Celeste have the strangest feeling that she ought to know him - did know him! - from somewhere?
"Make certain all the doors are locked tonight to the outside and in the disused halls, and inform me of anyone allowed in for any reason whatsoever, or seen walking the halls after the lights go out tonight. If you must give an excuse, don't say anything outright but leave hints that we are looking for a thief."
"As you wish, Mademoiselle." It was almost the same response he gave to Christine de Chagny's orders, the only difference being that Celeste had not yet married. He had never before used it to Christine's daughter. It seemed a mantle of responsibility that had fallen with leaden certainty around free-spirited Celeste's shoulders and for a few brief moments, she bitterly resented her mother for having to die now.
As they came to the door, Celeste re-composed herself and knocked softly, then entered without a noise. François followed almost as quietly.
Also, I mean no offense to practitioners of Santeria or Voudoun: I am only trying to capture a sense of historical and cultural accuracy here. This is a first draft! Tell me precisely what you think!
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"After the Opera" by AngelCeleste85
Ch.1 - Phantom
New Orleans, Louisiana: December 17th, 1908 - 11:26 PM
Celeste de Chagny wandered downstairs slowly and made her way to the kitchen in the servants' quarters, knowing from long habit that she would find grey-haired Jeanette in there, no doubt making certain everyone was well-fed.
She arrived on cats' feet as always. "That smells good, Jeanette."
Jeanette, their long-time cook and one of the family's few remaining servants from France, turned around and jumped with a hand to her ample bosom.
"Oh, Lord ha' mercy, Mademoiselle, you have the most uncommon knack of scaring the living daylights from a soul! What do you mean, sneaking up on a poor old lady like this, you about scared me half to death!"
For the first time that day, Celeste smiled a little bit. Jeanette, a portly woman nearing sixty now, always mothered everyone but had always paid special attention to the Vicomtess during the long years when she had been so sickly and frail, confined to her bed almost as often as she was out of it. For that matter, she had taken care of the Countess as well, while Christine gave all she had to her daughter's recovery. The woman was always a breath of fresh air and for a moment, Celeste could forget about the sadness that waited upstairs.
"I apologize, you know I'd not want to put you in an early grave. If only because you'd haunt my steps trying to mother me from the other side, as well, when you should be resting and I couldn't interfere!"
"Ah, it'd be more than just the chance to mother you without a hindrance," Jeanette smiled, her kindly gray eyes matching the steely bun at the back of her head in color only. "You know the Angel of Music's touched you long ago, and I'd like to see him just one more time!"
That brought a marginally broader smile to Celeste's lips. It was their private joke. There were a lot of casual things that bothered Raoul and Christine de Chagny, little things. Any mention of ghosts was one. Any references to the angels that Jeanette so fervently believed in was another, most especially to the Angel of Music that Jeanette claimed she'd seen - and heard - one night in Celeste's nursery when the Vicomtess was still a baby.
"Are you 'bout ready to eat something, Mademoiselle?" the portly cook asked. Without waiting for an answer, she pulled a white glazed pottery bowl from a shelf and began filling it with a thick red sauce that seemed to be fully half peppers.
On inspection, it turned out that the aging cook had made a little bit of a local Cajun dish for Celeste tonight - it had always been a source of amusement within the family that the young Vicomtess enjoyed the spicy Cajun food that blended so many cultures together as much as she did Creole food, or cuisine from her native France. Though she pretended a preference for French and Creole foods outside of the household: it would not do to have society spreading odd rumors. God only knew what some of those women would make of a mere food preference!
Still, even the hot and spicy seafood gumbo, made with cayenne peppers in the way she liked best could not quite cheer her mood and ever-cheerful Jeanette, bustling quietly in her usual way, was subdued as well as she picked up on the mood of her employers' daughter.
It was to be expected that the servants would all be speaking softly and treading lightly around the Comte now, whose wife lay dying upstairs. Somehow it felt strange, though, that she would soon be accorded the same level of respect that had once been due her mother.
"Mademoiselle, is the food not up to your liking?" Jeanette asked after a time. For all that she had been born and bred in Provence, her accent bore traces of the Cajun culture in the country around New Orleans. As well it might: for nearly eight years now she had been married to a Cajun rugweaver. She was one of the few members of the original French household that immigrated with the family who had naturalized to America: the Comte and Comtess de Chagny had not, and neither had their daughter: thus they had retained their titles.
Celeste forced a smile, realizing that for the last ten minutes she had only picked listlessly at the food before her.
"It's good, Jeanette, as always, and I thank you for your concern... I guess I just am not very hungry tonight," she replied. "I am sorry."
"Understandable, Mademoiselle, quite understandable. I thought that might be the case so I did not make a great deal. Come, come, finish the bowl at least. You cannot expect to nurse Madame if you are falling over from hunger yourself. And there's a lemon tart and a spot of tea to warm Monsieur and yourself later, if you'd like to take that up to him with Madame's broth." Jeanette, and indeed most of the staff, had been scandalized that Mademoiselle la Vicomtess, Celeste de Chagny, had condescended to take that task from the physician and the servants alike, but unlike the rest, Jeanette seemed to hold onto that shock. She made up for it by fussing even more than before over her favorite charge, though Celeste had long since outgrown a nanny or even a governess. Right now, the young lady welcomed it.
"Is Maman's soup ready?" she asked.
"It will be just as soon's you've finished that bowl o' your own, Mademoiselle," came Jeanette's rejoinder from the next room.
Really, it was amazing how such a large woman could move so quickly and quietly: Celeste had never heard her leave the room.
It was force of will alone that allowed Celeste to finish the bowl of gumbo. True to her word, Jeanette had finished making the chicken broth that was all Christine could keep down these days by the time Celeste could see white through the red tomato-pepper sauce at the bottom. Celeste handed her bowl off to Jeanette and loaded a tray with a bowl of that chicken broth, two ceramic tumblers, two lemon tarts still piping from the oven and a singing teapot, and set off for her mother's sickroom again.
Far off, down one of the main passages, not one of these servants' corridors, she could hear the sound of the antique "grandfather clock," as Americans termed it, softly chiming the start of another new day in the middle of the night. The whole idea had always struck the Vicomtess as more than slightly ironic and a bit ridiculous, but it certainly hadn't been her idea...
"Say you'll share with me..."
As she made her way back to the hallway that led to her parents' master suite, she shivered: the air in this narrow back hallway had grown unaccountably icy, and yet carried the scent of roses. It was not a scent that she had smelled often, for some reason it was another thing that bothered both her parents deeply though they would not say why. And nobody in the house, not even Papa, had the unearthly sweet yet mournful tenor that drifted to her ears from nowhere!
"One love, one lifetime..."
Then the young woman paused in alarm and consternation as the singer came into view from the turn into the corridor that led to the stairs into the upper part of the house. Ahead of her in the dimly-lit corridor and apparently heading in the same direction towards the disused servants' quarters at the end of the hall was a man she could have sworn she had never seen before, and yet seemed oddly familiar.
"Lead me, save me from my solitude..."
By his dress and bearing it was clear that he was no servant, and Celeste frowned, trying to recall if she had every seen anyone who looked even remotely like this. A few hazy fever-dreams from long ago came to mind, a tall man in a white half-mask who always sang and always wore black... He had sung this song for her, hadn't he? Once, maybe? And he always came at night... but always when she was alone.
Jeanette had always claimed - secretly, of course - that her young charge had been touched by the Angel of Music.
Could it be that he had returned again, after fifteen years of silence?
But those were only fever-dreams, not reality. This man was clearly no angel and just as clearly did not belong here in the de Chagny household.
"Say you want me with you..."
He had dark brown hair, nearly black, that was slicked back but slightly shaggy. The back edge of a gleaming white porcelain mask just peeked out from around the right side of his face, secured by a narrow band of black ribbon that creased the man's richly colored hair where it passed. A heavy black opera cape flowed down over his shoulders, obscuring everything from the shoulders down but the heels of his polished black boots and one immaculate glove that held a black fedora by the crown at his right side. But the feline sort of grace that he moved with was as clear as the determination in his silent step.
To the eyes of his human spectator, for a moment the cape seemed to shimmer and divide, rippling in an unseen and unfelt breeze, and for the briefest half a second it appeared to take on the form of wings covered in glossy, almost opalescent black feathers. The boots she thought she'd seen were revealed to be about knee-length, polished to a deep shine all the way up to the black trousers with a dress jacket over that. Gold cufflinks gleamed on the wrist that held the low black hat. The other white-gloved hand, swinging just a little bit in time with his stride, was revealed around the edge of the phantom wing to hold a single deep red rose in full bloom.
But then the young woman blinked involuntarily and the cloak was merely a cloak once more, if it had ever been anything else on this mysterious stranger, and once more his clothing and accessories were hidden..
"...here, beside you..."
Celeste realized with a shock that she could not hear the man's footsteps at all. The sound of those glossy black riding boots that should have been audible on the hard wooden planks that formed the floor here was missing from those firm strides: the only sound this stranger made was his angelic singing.
"Anywhere you go, let me go too..."
"Monsieur, who are you and what are you doing in my house?" she asked. She got no answer. Celeste tried again, setting the tray down to run after him with the intent of catching his arm. "Monsieur?" In English, then. "Sir, I must insist - "
"Christine, that's all I ask of - "
She stopped cold, her words dying on her tongue, as she watched this apparently solid man reach the end of the hall... and vanish through an apparently solid wall. The hauntingly sweet singing cut off with his disappearance, and the strong scent of that rose vanished as well, leaving only faint, lingering traces as the hall began to warm again.
What had just happened?
"Ma'am'selle? Ma'am'selle, you bees a'right, non?"
The sound of the deep, slurred, French-speaking voice behind her brought her out of her stunned reverie and she shivered, clutching her robe more tightly around her. Big François, coming out of the side corridor she had meant to turn down, laid a gentle brown hand on her arm. His eyes were full of concern and the corners of his mouth were tight and pale. He had seen, as well. "Ma'am'selle, what was that you was just shoutin' at a minute ago?"
Celeste spared one more glance at the wall that had just played a witness to such a strange occurrence. She was well aware of the cultural fear here of Voudoun and Santeria, and rumors of ghosts would only scare the staff. Most of them had been hired here, within her lifetime, and believed in the powers of spirits quite strongly. It would not do to scare off half the household with a wild tale of a cloaked and masked man who walked through walls spreading among them, and the half that remained would be constantly looking over their shoulders in terror. No, she could not admit to having seen what she had undeniably seen, not even to her old friend François.
"It was nothing, Francois," she murmured to the black man and touched his hand in reassurance. "Really, I am fine," she added as he raised an eyebrow at her, and had to smile. François had been with the family almost since they had come here and had always been protective of her. Not to mention she had never been able to lie to him effectively. Born in Haiti, the stocky forty-year-old Negro was generally very calm and levelheaded, but talk of spirits or ghosts was perhaps one of two things that could scare the daylights out of him. The other thing, of course, was seeing them, which he had most certainly had if his pallor beneath the dark brown skin was any guide. "I saw someone who went into one of the girls' rooms, I shall have to reprimand her, but I saw nothing else.
"Beggin' your pardon, Ma'am'selle, if it was nothin' you would na' be looking like you just saw a ghost," he returned, growing just a trifle paler.
Celeste gave him a stern look, which rarely worked because they both knew that François was as gentle as a mouse and three times her size, not to mention old enough to be her uncle. This time, she forced back the laugh that always came when she tried doing anything so absurd, picturing herself as her mother catching one of the women red-handed practicing Voudoun. Christine had always stomped on any such rumor quite hard, and Raoul came down harder. Anyone actually caught practicing was given five minutes to collect everything they needed and turned out. In Celeste's memory it had happened four times in the last thirteen years. Celeste herself refused to tolerate such "phantom fears," as she called them in the privacy of her own mind - for some reason her mother and father had never been even as amused by that play on words as the servants were.
"I saw nothing, François, and neither did you. Only a man paying a visit to one of the girls where he shouldn't have been. I will tell Father about it, you do not need to worry. I will not have groundless phantom fears floating here, now or ever, is this understood?" She didn't realize she'd used her private joke until she saw the flicker of fear in his carefully masked eyes.
But François nodded slowly. "If you say so, Ma'am'selle."
She forced her voice to be firmer, steadier, as she checked up and down both corridors. "I do say so, François, and if I find any suspicious rumors I will track them down to the source, whoever it may be, and consider that person to be practicing that Voodoo nonsense."
"Yes, Ma'am'selle," he said with his heavily accented French, and picked up the tray. "If you don't be minding, Ma'am'selle, I'll just carry this in to Madame and Monsieur for you."
Bless your soul, François my old friend, she thought to herself, thanking him silently for his courage. Maybe the manservant just didn't want to be alone right now either, but it still took courage for him to act like nothing had happened at all. They both knew that the servants' quarters off of the corridor down which the strange man had vanished hadn't been used in years and were always kept locked now, and the corridor itself dead- ended into that wall in plain sight. They also both knew that the stranger hadn't deviated at all from his course with that purposeful stride down the center of the hall, and that left him with nowhere to go but into the wall. If he had turned off, if it truly had been a man who had turned into one of the locked rooms, both Celeste and François knew that the young Vicomtess would have never allowed such a rendezvous to happen.
It was a laughable excuse at rationalizing what neither could explain, and yet the young lady sensed that her old friend would not betray this secret to anyone.
So where had the stranger gone? Who was he?
And why did Celeste have the strangest feeling that she ought to know him - did know him! - from somewhere?
"Make certain all the doors are locked tonight to the outside and in the disused halls, and inform me of anyone allowed in for any reason whatsoever, or seen walking the halls after the lights go out tonight. If you must give an excuse, don't say anything outright but leave hints that we are looking for a thief."
"As you wish, Mademoiselle." It was almost the same response he gave to Christine de Chagny's orders, the only difference being that Celeste had not yet married. He had never before used it to Christine's daughter. It seemed a mantle of responsibility that had fallen with leaden certainty around free-spirited Celeste's shoulders and for a few brief moments, she bitterly resented her mother for having to die now.
As they came to the door, Celeste re-composed herself and knocked softly, then entered without a noise. François followed almost as quietly.