CHAPTER NINE

(in which our heroine forgets with what the road to hell is paved)

Unromantic though it is to admit, I slept quite soundly that night. It would have been more suitable to have lain awake, or paced the floor, in anguish over my Angel and my vicomte. But I had had my belly full of lying awake and chasing myself in circles: I had done little else for the past two days. In any case, the events of the evening had left me spent. I do not recall so much as dreaming.

The problem did not, alas, conveniently go away whilst I slept. It did not even shrink to a manageable size. I believed Raoul when he promised to go on his expedition, just as I believed Erik when he swore he would not harm me or mine so long as I wore his ring. But where once I had believed I could keep them apart for a month, now three weeks stretched before me as an impossible eternity.

It was no very flattering realization. A man may act as he pleases, but when he has sworn his heart and his hand to a lady, that lady likes to feel that he is truly hers, not merely hers until he sets his mind to some other accomplishment. Raoul worried me, and Erik terrified me -- Erik, who came and went so erratically: Erik, who might or might not know much that I did not want him to know. And so I went to the Opera, to pace, to practice, and to clear my head. Naturally, I accomplished only one of these.

"Mademoiselle Daae! Christine!"

Christine blinked and sat up quickly -- she'd been half-lying on a divan tucked into a corner of one of the Opera's hallways, wrapped in the same gloomy thoughts as always. "Meg! Good heavens, you startled me."

Meg blushed and folded her hands together, glancing around at the other ballet girls with her as if to gather courage. "We didn't mean to -- but we saw you here, and we wanted to congratulate the new diva."

A murmur of agreement came from the other girls, and Christine felt the pressure of a dozen anxious, hopeful stares. She couldn't help but chuckle. "Thank you. But I don't require grand congratulations. Are you on your way somewhere? Please, sit down."

A rustle from the group of rats, and someone near the back murmured, "La Carlotta would've--"

"She's not Carlotta," Sorelli said firmly, stepping out from behind Meg to seat herself on the couch next to Christine.

"No, she isn't," another of the girls agreed, perching on the arm of the divan-- the girls were finding seats, either on the divan somewhere or on the floor, like a collection of birds. "Did you see her in the audience last night?"

Christine frowned to herself. She could not recall that she had, ironically. She had had other things to preoccupy her mind while on stage.

"Did you see that diamond necklace she was wearing?" Sorelli said, apparently not noticing Christine's frown, or ignoring it. "Splendid as our new chandelier. I had not expected her to find a new protector already, nor one so generous."

"No, it's her old one, Maman says," Meg volunteered from where she sat by Christine's feet. "The necklace is to 'console' her for the frog."

"Or perhaps he's congratulating her for not trying to sing any more!"

"Cecile." Sorelli frowned at the girl in question, who subsided. Then she looked back at Christine. "I understand Carlotta is not the only one who may claim a generous protector…or perhaps, more than a protector?"

Raoul de Chagny is not my lover -- dear heaven, how often had she said that? But these were Opera girls, with every reason to believe…pah. She'd spent an entire week guarding herself as sternly as a priest, and thrown it all away for five minutes in her dressing room that had resolved nothing. Christine looked down at her hands, realized she was twisting at Erik's ring again, and made herself stop.

"Would your Phillipe allow it?" Meg asked uneasily, looking up at Sorelli.

Sorrelli didn't answer, only laid one hand over Christine's, as if to conceal the gold ring. "Has the Vicomte proposed?"

Promise to wait for me-- But no. He hadn't said the words. She hadn't permitted it. A secret engagement you won't let become anything else! "Does it matter?" Christine said, startled at the resignation quiet in her own voice. "A singer at the Opera, even the diva, cannot marry a nobleman."

"I'd marry a nobleman if he asked me --"

"Nobody has asked you, so be quiet!"

"Maman says I'm going to marry the Emperor himself."

"And you believed her, Meg?"

Sorelli looked down at Christine's hands, half-hidden under hers, and nodded once. "Good," she said, with a gentle squeeze of her hand, while the ballet girls chattered around them. "The Opera needs a proper diva. If you ran away with young de Chagny--"

"I should lose my position, and he would be disowned. I know." She had seen it in Phillipe de Chagny's face the night before. Even if she had not, she could see the knowledge, cold and cruel, narrowing Sorelli's lips and darkening her eyes. Sorelli, the mistress of Phillipe de Chagny. Who better would know what the Comte thought of the matter? 'Phillipe doesn't know', oh, Raoul…

Sorelli looked away in her turn, withdrawing her hand from Christine's. "I understand how it can be to love a nobleman," she said, without any of the archness or coy sophistication she usually affected. "But for us, this is only a way to earn our bread. You love singing; we can all hear it. It would be a crime to Heaven for you to give it up."

"I will not," Christine said. Even if she did wed Raoul, surely she could still sing. Didn't the nobility hold musicales and other such small exhibitions of talent?

Erik would not hold you to half-measures thus. Erik would encourage you -- he wants your success, Christine Daae, and will barter his own power against it. Think on that before you make any grand plans.

The conversation had turned to lighter things -- gossip about Carlotta, about Sorelli (who defended herself, laughing), about the various suitors of the 'rats' themselves, who traded themselves about quite faithlessly. Christine excused herself as soon as she dared, and walked down the hall as if she had an appointment elsewhere to keep. There might be safety in numbers, but she was in no mood for safety this morning.

She wondered if she could find tea, somewhere in the Opera.

The Opera -- oh, how could I ever describe the Opera Garnier? Not as it may be seen from the outside (which possesses little beauty to recommend itself to a passerby), nor even as an Opera subscriber might still see it for a few francs per month (though at least he will have been inside, and seen the glory of the staircase, the many-pillared hallways and Apollo with his lyre above the proscenium), but as it may only be known by someone who lives there. I turned my mind from the darker secrets that might lie behind the pillars and beneath the trapdoors, the secrets which only Erik might know, and reveled instead in the slighter secrets to be found, the stables and costumes and ridiculous props not used since a single production twenty years ago.

I had not, precisely, thought of a way to thread my self-built maze of promises. But for a few brief hours, alone in the Opera House, I was entirely happy in a way that could not be matched by the entire week I had spent with Raoul, put together.

"Christine -- there you are! I've searched everywhere for you!"

"Raoul?" Christine jumped, and looked uncertainly back at the fresco she'd been admiring. She had not thought herself close enough to the Opera stage for anyone to find her at all.

"We were to meet at your dressing room this morning," Raoul said, taking her hand and bowing over it. "I waited for some time, and when you didn't come, I went looking for you." He took her arm, as if he had every right to do so, and began walking down the corridor in the same direction from which he'd come. "I hadn't realized how large the Opera House is, to be honest. I'd only been to the auditorium for a performance before. Well, and backstage to the dressing rooms."

"Garnier never intended it to be a performance stage only," Christine agreed absently, with a glance back over her shoulder. They were entirely alone, as near as she might determine. What was Raoul thinking? She'd agreed to see him tomorrow, or today rather, not meet him at her dressing room at an appointed time. Did he believe they would take up again as if nothing had happened? "All sorts of people live here -- actually live on the premises, to do caretaking, I suppose."

"Is that what your 'Angel' does?"

Christine looked up sharply at him, but he wasn't looking at her. Did he think to interrogate her? "You must not have wandered very far if you didn't see them," she said, forcing a smile onto her face and into her voice. "Sweet old couples with only a room or two to themselves -- like those people we used to visit when we were children, and beg for fairy tales -- only these aren't farmers, they sew costumes or make certain the ballrooms stay clean year-round." The words came glibly off her tongue, as if she were reciting a set speech.

"Do they live down below?" Raoul paused beside a flight of stairs that led down to another cross-hallway, a few feet down which Christine could just make out an open trapdoor.

Down trapdoors? Did Raoul think she was speaking of spiders? "No. No, of course not." Christine pulled her arm free of Raoul's grasp and descended the staircase to look down into the trapdoor. It led only into darkness, without any sign of the stagehand who must have opened it for whatever purpose. If it was a stagehand, and not someone else --

"Who lives down below?" Raoul said from behind her. "Is that where you go when you pass through your mirror?"

He had given up any pretense of subtlety. It was almost a relief -- or would have been so, had the consequences of answering him not been so great. "Oh, Raoul." It came out as a sigh. She turned to look up at him -- he stood half-way down the stairs, hands half-clenched at his sides. "You should go, go away to the North Pole and forget me."

"I cannot." He took a deep breath, then ventured a step down. "Christine, you must understand--"

"No. Raoul -- Raoul, come with me." It was he who didn't understand, he who must understand. Here was a way out of the labyrinth. She gathered her skirts and climbed the stairs once more, passing Raoul with only a glance.

"Christine? Where are you going?"

To someplace where she might think, naturally. To a place without any associations of Erik, or else her courage would run out through her fingers like hot sand. "To the rooftop," she said, turning at the top of the stairs to look at him. "I'll explain, I promise. I'll tell you all. Come with me."

After a moment, Raoul nodded once and climbed the stairs after her.

I do not want to remember.

But I must.

I remember standing near the edge of the roof, looking out over the streets of Paris, with Raoul just behind me ready to catch me if I seemed likely to fall, the wind on my face and the sun on my hair…and feeling, not free, but exposed.

I remember how much I told Raoul: of the voice that at first I had taken for an angel's, of the ordinary parlor with ordinary furniture in the house across the lake, of the man who lived there, neither angel nor ghost. All that he had not known for certain of the events of the night of the chandelier disaster, I described to him in the minutest detail.

I remember how much was not said, as well. I could not admit, even to Raoul -- especially to Raoul -- how deeply I had loved my unseen Angel. Certainly I did not confess to my tentative, ignorant attempts at seduction. I remember the long pauses as I struggled to find words, and the ache in my middle when I looked into Raoul's blank, intent face. All the sweet words and courtly manners in the world could not fill these silences between us, not when he did not understand this darkness at my core where Erik stood.

I remember finishing my story, and tasting peace for the first time in too many days. I had told Raoul all. Now, surely --

I cannot remember what I thought would happen next, only that I expected my words to unlock the door to some simpler world. I was a fool. Happily ever after does not come so cheaply -- and I was not, after all, alone on the rooftop.

"We must -- Christine, I can have my horses ready in twenty minutes, can you have your things packed by then?"

Christine stared up at Raoul. "What are you talking about?"

"This is no time for niceties. We must leave at once, you said so yourself."

"No! No, I -- I can't." Sweet Mary mother of saints, what had she said to make him believe this? She remembered nothing. "I must sing for him tonight," she said abruptly, grasping the first thing that sprang to mind. "I promised."

"Break it."

If she had not already realized she could not, must not marry Raoul, that would have sealed the question. "I shall not break my word, monsieur," she said coldly, turning away from him to pace along the rooftop. "Would you truly have me that cruel? He deserves that much -- to hear, for one last time," and many times thereafter, since she would not run away so, where had Raoul gotten such a notion? "the voice he taught?"

Raoul grimaced down at the statues at the edge of the roof, as if he would have her that cruel, at least to Erik. But he said only, "And after the performance, you'll come?"

"I can't. I don't know. I don't know." She should say no. Why couldn't she simply say no?

"You don't know," Raoul mimicked, voice taking on an exasperated edge. "Good God, Christine, the man is a magician after all. You act like a woman bespelled! If he looked like me, would you care two straws for me?"

"Raoul…" She could almost laugh. "You ask too many questions, my dearest sir." Let him think what he would. He would leave soon, in a matter of a few days. She could be generous in her goodbye. She stepped forward, taking both his hands in hers. "Kiss me."

Raoul's eyes went very wide, and his mouth open and shut before he managed, "Christine?"

"Kiss me, my betrothed of a day -- for the first time and the last."

A very good line, I thought, suitably operatic for the occasion. It sounded more impressive than the kiss deserved: a brush of my lips against his, of which I principally remember that his were softer and cooler than I expected. No passion woke between us, no fire, nothing at all to make me reconsider his plea. As he stepped back again, however, a moving shadow caught my eye.

It was nothing, I told myself, even as a premonitory chill swept through me. A bird returning to its nest, or a piece of cloth caught in the wind. But still I looked up…and saw him leaning against Apollo's Lyre, looking down at us with eyes like fire.

Perhaps I said his name. I know I reached up as if I could stop him from vanishing, stop him from believing I had broken my promise beyond repair. But the shadow vanished before I could do more than cry out, and I felt Raoul's hand on my arm.

I guided Raoul to the door back below, and listened in silence to his angry protests that if not for my hand on his arm he would go back and confront the Phantom, that he should take me away right now despite any promises I had made to that thing. I was full of half-formed plans to escape Raoul's company and fly below, to explain to Erik…

Then, and only then, I looked down at my hands, and noticed that at some point, Erik's ring had slipped off my finger and vanished.