CHAPTER FOUR

(in which our heroine steps through the looking-glass and sees a ghost)

I returned to Paris the following day, with my mind in a worse state than when I had left. I came down from my room, the morning after that night of heaven's own music, to find Raoul collapsed into a chair in the common room of the inn. With no more prompting than an inquiring look, he confessed he had followed me to the graveyard the previous night. He would not say why he had done so, however, or why the excursion had left him pale and wan, while I was the picture of health. He only shook his head, and frowned like a graybeard, and muttered something about death's-heads that made no sense to me.

So I returned to Paris, alone, and wrote him a note bidding him to leave me and never see me again, which I sent off to await him at his lodgings. I hoped, rather than believed, that Raoul would obey my wishes -- if I had learnt nothing else at Perros, I had learnt that the power of an Opera chorine over the Vicomte de Chagny extended only so far as the Vicomte chose to extend it, no matter how long the acquaintance between the chorine and the Vicomte.

Paris, at least, offered me, not solution, but distraction. A production of Faust was to go up in a week's time, and the new managers proved they had not, after all, forgotten me by offering me the role of Siebel. Alas, La Carlotta, long since recovered from her cold was to sing the role of Marguerite -- and she had not forgotten me either.

"So our so-innocent ingénue has resorted to anonymous notes to achieve her aim." Carlotta's voice, startlingly loud in the hush of pre-performance backstage.

Christine took a deep breath, then let it out and leaned in toward the mirror propped up in an out-of-the-way corner of the flies, for chorines and dancers to look themselves over one last time before stepping out onto stage. "Anonymous notes, Madame?"

"With handwriting a child could see was falsified," Carlotta confirmed, voice vibrant with scorn and contempt, then switched to a sing-song tone: "'If you sing tonight, you will endure a fate worse than death. You should develop a cold, or lose your reputation.' Did you think to frighten me, Mademoiselle Christine Daae? 'A fate worse than death' -- there is nothing such as you could do to me!"

"I wrote no notes, Madame," Christine said, smoothing out a smudge of kohl next to her eye with a careful finger. Anonymous notes? Why would Carlotta have received anonymous notes -- and why would she accuse Christine? Christine's triumph had hardly been so great that men had fallen in love with her on sight. Except Raoul. Yes, but Raoul would hardly resort to anonymous notes: he would speak to the managers directly.

My Angel?

Ha. As if the Angel of Music must resort to writing notes. More likely that the Phantom had done it; hadn't he dropped a curtain on Carlotta a few months ago?

"Deny it as you will," Carlotta said, her voice dropping to a furious hiss. "I shall sing tonight, no matter what. Your plot shall not succeed -- I have seen to that!" She turned on her heel and stalked away.

Christine watched her go in the mirror, frowning. She could hear the orchestra tuning up for the overture. 'I have seen to that' -- what had Carlotta done? What good would it do to commit herself to the music if Carlotta was bent on destroying her career before it had hardly begun? The Angel could give her a voice from Heaven itself, but it would accomplish nothing if she were never given the chance to use it. Perhaps she should go to Box Five instead, and ask the Phantom's help, Christine thought with a half-hysterical giggle. The ballet girls said he'd murdered Joseph Buquet for nothing worse than talking about him; what more terrible things could he devise for an arrogant diva whom he already delighted in tormenting!

No. Not even to Carlotta could she do that. She might wish, in the privacy of her own thoughts, that Carlotta would strangle on her own conceit, but she would not go to the Phantom and ask him to do it for her. He might not like her voice any better. She would trust in her Angel, and pray all would be well. It was better thus.

Christine checked her costume once more in the mirror, and went off to the wings to await her cue.

Trust in my Angel -- ha. I had not, despite my best attempts, succeeded in driving away the doubts that had arisen in Perros. A thousand things distracted me from the concentration needed: Carlotta's spiteful glowers from the wings, Raoul's mournful looks from his brother's box, and the sight of the new managers seated in Box Five. The corps de ballet hissed and fluttered amongst themselves, swearing that M. Moncharmin and M. Richard had put the house under a curse by sitting in the Phantom's private box, and we should all be ruined. Certainly we singers could hardly hear our cues over the whispers. Worse, Meg clung to me every moment we were both off-stage: her mother had been fired from her position, what were they to do, they could not live on her salary as a ballet rat. I did not sing like a rusty hinge that night, but I cannot, in good conscience, dispute the loud comment from the audience that I was 'bleating'.

All chatter silenced when the 'toad' struck. For a moment I thought my heartless wish had come true, and Carlotta was strangling on her own pride, and I pressed forward through the throng of gaping dancers and stagehands to see, hardly daring to breathe. Carlotta had the extensive, powerful vocal range of which she had boasted to me all those months ago: there was no reasonable explantion why her voice should give out so. Then I remembered the note for which she had demanded an apology. 'A fate worse than death!' I leaned forward, as nervous as Carlotta, as she attempted the fatal phrase again.

I confess, I felt a moment of vicious satisfaction when her voice failed her again. But then I heard the mocking laughter, and the cry, "Behold! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!" I ran out on stage just in time to see the enormous, glittering thing fall headlong onto the stalls.

The entire theater panicked. The audience fled for their lives, as if a second chandelier would fall should they not escape, and we, up on stage, ran too. I remember being illogically terrified. Not for Raoul: I had seen him, after all, safe in his brother's box, if a little wan still from his adventures in Perros. Nor even, precisely, for myself. I only knew that I must see my Angel, I must speak with my Angel and be certain He was safe in the midst of all this disaster.

So to my dressing room I ran. I retained just enough prudence to close the door behind me, then fell to my knees before the mirror and begged my Angel to speak to me, to say anything, only assure me that He yet lived.

For a short eternity, there was only silence, her own breathing loud and shaky in her ears. No, no, impossible, no…please, Angel, if ever You have heard my prayers, please… The words would not come, only that dreadful silence.

Then she heard His voice, a fragile thread of melody that knotted itself reassuringly in her mind. He lived. He lived, and the music shifted even as she opened her eyes and raised her tear-stained face to the mirror, to something more than comfort, to -- to -- why could not she name the song her Angel sang? She knew this music. It lived in her heart.

Christine.

Nothing so overt as words, only the music, beckoning her towards her tall mirror. Come to me. Only believe, only be true, and you may come to me at last. Down, down, dropping into a minor key. A palace is worth nothing, in solitude. Come to me, my own, my Christine --

Her dressing room seemed to have bent and shifted, somehow. She had been no more than two steps away from her mirror, surely, yet her image wavered in front of her, then receded rapidly to vanish into darkness. She hurried her step, one hand out to catch herself --

-- and between one step and the next found herself in utter darkness, unbroken except for a faint red glow. After the bright lamps in her dressing room, she might as well have put on a blindfold. She turned to go back, but only darkness lay behind her as well. Where was her Angel? She couldn't see anyone else at all, even if someone else waited here.

As if the thought had been a cue, something encircled her left wrist with a firm, but gentle grasp -- something that common sense said must be a hand, but surely no human hand, nor angelic hand neither, was that cold and thin. Christine tugged at the grasp, but instead of letting go, an arm came around her waist, drawing her toward the source of the red glow.

This couldn't be. Where in the name of pity was her Angel? But she dared not struggle, not until she at least knew the identity of this mysterious person. She nearly tripped over her own shoes at least twice before they reached the glow's source, a torch set into a recess at the crossing between two corridors, like something out of one of Mrs. Radcliffe's novels. Christine's captor let go of her at last, and Christine turned to look up at him, mouth open to speak.

Nothing came out but an airless gasp. A tall man stood next to her, face turned away as if he watched for something down the corridor; he was dressed in evening clothes complete to black cloak, and even with his face turned away, she could see the edges of a black mask covering his face. Mary the mother of saints protect her: this was not her Angel, this was -- Joseph Buquet had described the Phantom of the Opera looking much like this, but why would the Opera Ghost kidnap her away from her Angel? What did he want with her?

The Ghost turned back to her, frowning (though she could not have said how she guessed it, not with the mask). He raised one hand and laid his fingers against her lips. So cold, that hand -- where was her Angel? -- so cold, so cold, breath strangled on a scream within her throat --

Christine fainted.

I woke to the sensation of cool, damp fabric on my forehead, and opened my eyes to discover this man -- this Phantom, as I had identified him -- bent over me, watching me intently. I sat up, dislodging the fabric: the Phantom caught it easily, wrung it out quickly on the floor, then folded it again as if it were his pocket handkerchief and tucked it into his pocket without apparent care for what it might do to his clothing.

I watched this, mouth agape, still dizzy from my fainting spell and the more terrible disorientation of finding my Angel snatched away and replaced by the Opera Ghost. Then I seized his sleeve -- I could not touch his flesh and feel that dreadful chill again -- and demanded to know who he was, what he'd done with my Angel.

He looked down at me, head atilt, but did not answer me. Instead, he rose to his feet and beckoned to someone or something. I looked in that direction just in time to see Cesar clip-clop forward. I pushed myself to my feet as well, far less awkwardly than I expected -- I still wore Siebel's costume, and there are little-realized advantages to masculine trousers -- and tentatively reached out to pat Cesar on the nose. He had vanished from the Opera stables, perhaps a week previously. It seemed that the whispers had been correct when they claimed the Phantom had stolen him. He seemed like a breath of reality in the chill dream-land where I found myself. When the Phantom took me by the waist and tossed me up onto Cesar's back, I did not protest.

I remember that first journey down to the house beyond the lake with the same preternaturally clarity as I might an extraordinarily vivid dream: the luminous whiteness of Cesar's coat; the distant hellish glow from the furnaces that heated the Opera House, down at the far ends of the labyrinth of corridors we traversed; the ache in thighs and back from riding bareback and astride; the occasional glint of eyes whenever the Phantom looked back from where he led Cesar along. He let go of Cesar's reins, sometimes, and came to walk alongside us and pat my hand in still-silent reassurance. The chill of his touch seemed all the more marked as we descended into ever-greater heat.

Yet it no longer frightened me. I had stepped into a world beyond even the familiar backstage of the Opera, called by the Angel of Music who had vanished before me and left, as if in His stead, the terrible Phantom of the Opera, who was even now kidnapping me off I knew not where. But my terror had crested, and now receded like a wave back to the ocean. The Phantom did me no harm. He did not even presume to touch me beyond what a gentleman would do. He had bathed my temples with his own handkerchief when I fainted. And his eyes on me felt like a reassurance rather than an invasion, as if he said aloud Nothing can harm you while I am here, not even I myself.

So I lapsed into a trusting, dazed half-trance, watching the cellars pass by as we descended deeper and deeper, watching without seeing until we reached the lake of which I had heard tell, far beneath the Opera. The Phantom came around and reached up to help me down. I permitted this, too, without protest. He set me on the ground and hesitated there a long moment, looking down at me from behind that inscrutable mask, then stepped back and turned to guide Cesar to wherever he must go. I stood there and bit my tongue on an illogical feeling of abandonment. He was not my Angel, I told myself in an attempt to find my spirit again. He had stolen me away from under my Angel's very hands (a weak theory, but I could invent no better explanation as of yet). I should not, must not, give in so easily.

Before I could resurrect either my anger or my terror, however, the Phantom returned and offered me his hand again. I followed to a boat, previously unnoticed, moored by the edge of the lake. He helped me in, then stepped in himself, nimble despite the inevitable rocking, and poled us across. I thought of the travellers' tales I'd heard of the gondolas of Venice, and stifled an inappropriate laugh. This was not that sort of story. I had somehow found myself in a darker myth, and it only remained to determine where this modern-day Charon was taking me.

The boat bumped into…something. A dock of some sort, Christine assumed, dredging up what few memories she had of visiting the seaside when a child. She folded her hands in her lap and tried to stay still while the boat skewed sideways, then rocked side to side. What was the Phantom doing? Tying up the boat, perhaps. How dreadfully prosaic.

Within moments, however, he appeared before her, hardly visible in the darkness except as a glimmer of pale shirt in the thin light. She offered him her hands without waiting to be asked, self-consciously aware that she was far from certain how to get out of the boat without falling into the water, and felt her wrists grasped -- apparently he could see better in this light than she. A gentle tug, a few careful steps out of the boat, which rocked alarmingly under her feet, and she stood upon solid ground once more.

The Phantom let go of one hand, but kept hold of the other, leading her along, once more, she knew not where. At last he paused, and as if obedient to some unspoken command, a door swung open before them, and the Phantom drew her forward again, into a…drawing room.

Christine stared around her. No, it really was a drawing room, such as you might see in any house in Paris. Dozens of candles lit the space, nearly blinding her after the darkness of the cellars and the lake -- but such brilliance surprised her not half so much as the flowers. The room seemed filled with flowers. Not darkly exotic flowers, either, such as she would have expected from a sinister Phantom: there was hardly a scarlet rose or white lily to be seen. These were commonplace flowers such as anyone could buy in bunches from a shop, complete with silk ribbons and ridiculous baskets.

"Very well, monsieur," she said at last, breaking the silence. "You have stolen me from the Angel and kidnapped me down to the depths of the Opera House to give me flowers?"

"No, Chr -- Mademoiselle Daae. I am not so mad, no matter how it may seem." A moment's hesitation, then, rapidly, "I swear to you, you are in no danger here."

Christine hardly heard the last sentence. She knew that voice, her Angel's voice that had sounded in her ears and in her dreams for months now. She whirled to face the speaker, heart in her mouth, but she saw only her kidnapper, the Opera Ghost in his black and white, standing with his hands folded in front of him. Had the Angel spoken through him? No. Impossible. A fool's grasping at straws. "What sort of trickery is this?" Her voice came out quiet, hardly more than a whisper, when she wanted to scream. "You are no Angel. He would not --" She reached out to snatch away the mask, for a moment fearfully certain that this was not the Phantom either, but some prankster from the Opera subscription list who fancied a prank.

Her wrist was caught in an iron cold grip. No, not some prankster from the subscription list. That detail could not be falsified. The Phantom pushed her back, gently, until her knees came up against a chair and she had to sit down or fall. "I should correct myself," he said, still in that glorious voice she had thought an Angel's. "You are in no danger, as long as you do not touch my mask." He knelt down before her, free hand resting lightly on the arm of the chair, while the other still clasped her wrist in a more gentle hold. "I swear to you, it conceals nothing you want to see. For the rest, I would rather die than hurt you."

Christine could not meet his eyes. All a lie -- it had all been a lie. There was no Angel of Music; there never had been an Angel of Music, only this ghost, this man who spoke with heaven's own voice but wasn't her Angel. The tears welled up, and she did not try to blink them back. What was the use of control now?

"I am not an angel, no. But neither am I a ghost." His hand on her wrist tightened for a moment, then vanished. "I am only Erik."

Of course I did not want to believe it. Who wants to be told that she has put herself so far into the power of a perfect stranger? In pursuit, worse, of a dream that never existed except in the idle fancy of a storyteller -- hardly strong enough stuff on which to base a life, as I had based mine. I attempted to rise and leave, though I have no notion where I thought I could go; someplace where I could pretend I had never come and learned there was no Angel of Music. But Erik caught my hands again, and forced me to listen…and as I listened, my heart softened despite myself. There he knelt before me like a suppliant, cursing himself for the long masquerade, begging me to forgive him even if he did not deserve forgiveness -- he did not confess to being the unseen watcher who had observed me for months before the Angel spoke, but neither did I press him when he looked away and broke off awkwardly in the midst of confession.

He did it for love of me, he said. I did not know what to say, I admit. I had sung of such a love on the stage before this, but never seen it, certainly never felt it. My affection for Raoul was a sweet, childish, timid thing, next to this overmastering obsession. He had abducted me out of love, he said, and wept before me.

I stood up at last and demanded my freedom. I could only despise him if he kept me prisoner, I told him proudly. And he agreed, he offered me my freedom instantly. I could go whenever I pleased; if I chose, he would show me the path now. But he rose to his feet as he said this, and began to sing.

He was not the Angel of Music my father had promised. But he still possessed the voice of the Angel, the voice I had once thought could sing my soul out of my breast.

We spoke no more that night. He sang me to sleep.