Note: Erik is in this chapter twice, though not directly. Can you spot him? (Heh, kinda like those Where's Waldo? books, isn't it?)
Chapter 5: Daylight Dissolves into Darkness
My father was right about Aunt Isabelle taking good care of me in Paris. At first she brought me with her everywhere, even when she went calling on her fashionable friends, but she let me stay home when I told her that the crowded streets made me nervous because I always felt like someone was watching me. She had fitted up one of the guest rooms for me and filled it with as many toys and games as possible. I was never allowed to eat only one helping at meals and she constantly asked me if there was anything I wanted or needed.
In fact, she fussed a little too much for my taste, but at least she was better than my Uncle Alexis who never spoke to me at all. He spent all day at the salons or the races and all night…well I did not really know where he went at night, although I doubted it was anywhere pleasant since he always had terrible headaches in the morning.
"I'm sure your father would feel better if he didn't keep such odd hours," I said to my cousins one day when we were all shut away in the nursery. My aunt had told us that we must be very quiet for fear of making Uncle Alexis' headache worse.
"I worry for Papa's soul," said Claude. "He hardly ever goes to church."
"Claude wants to be a priest someday," Henri explained.
"Actually, a bishop," Claude corrected him.
"But then you won't ever get married," I said.
"I think wives and children are an awful lot of trouble," said Claude. "You have to pay for their food and clothes and all sorts of things. I wonder if your father will get a new wife while he's in Marseilles."
These last words, spoken so casually, filled me with a sudden dread and I quickly changed the subject by telling them about the break-in at the château. Henri was very sorry to learn that he had missed seeing a burglar, though Claude was quite relieved.
"I shouldn't like to meet a robber," he said.
"I did meet him actually," I admitted. "He came into my room. Only I didn't know he was a robber then."
"Really? What was he like?" asked Henri, obviously fascinated.
"Quite rude," I said. "But he was a splendid climber."
They made me tell the story of the burglar over and over until their friend Victoir came over for the day and then I had to tell it again for him. Apparently Victoir's family spent much of the year in Paris, which explained why I had never met him before Maman's funeral, though his father's estate lay not ten miles from the Château de Chagny.
"You're quite plucky not to have run away from a masked criminal," Victoir told me. "I say," he exclaimed. "Why don't we play at robbers right now?"
"Yes, let's," agreed Henri.
"I don't want to," I said, even though I did. I thought it might be wrong to play and have fun when my mother had been dead scarcely a month. It might even be a sin.
So they left me in the nursery and ran around the house pretending to be burglars, all concern for my uncle's headache forgotten. As I gazed out the window onto the cobblestone street, I told myself that Papa could not possibly get a new wife in Marseilles, since he would be far too busy with other matters. This thought did not comfort me much, however, and I couldn't help crying a little, though I made myself stop when Victoir slipped in to give me a book he had taken from the upstairs library. It was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas.
"It's one of my favorites. I thought it might cheer you up," he said.
"Thank you," I replied, taking the thick volume from his hand.
So it was in my cousins' cluttered nursery that I discovered the magic way books have of making one's sorrows feel not so big. For I did not read only The Three Musketeers, but also The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and best of all Les Misérables. Victoir was eleven already, so I let myself be guided by his literary taste and he did not disappoint me with his choices. At first I struggled with some of the bigger words, but it got easier and easier the more I read.
I spent most of the next three weeks shut away with these wonderful tales of heartbreak and adventure and at the end of that time I did not feel as wretched as I had before. After all, what was losing a mother compared to the suffering of the falsely imprisoned Dantès, the hideously deformed Quasimodo, and the poor abandoned Fantine? I thought that if they could survive their hardships, then I could do the same with mine.
"How you do pour over those books!" Aunt Isabelle would laugh whenever she saw me sprawled across the couch with a novel in hand.
Finally I felt fit to join my cousins in their games with Victoir, who visited nearly every day. At this point they were rather sick of playing robbers all the time and had started to squabble about what to do next.
"I know!" I said. "Let us be the Three Musketeers."
"But there are four of us," Claude pointed out.
"There are four musketeers in the book, too," I said. "You must be Aramis, Claude, since you want to be a priest. And Victoir you should be Athos, as you are the eldest."
"And you shall be d'Artagnan because it was your idea," said Victoir.
I was very pleased when he said this for I secretly longed to be the brave d'Artagnan. "That means Henri can be Porthos," I finished.
"How do we begin?" asked Henri.
"We must have swords," I replied, so we trooped up to the attic and found old coal pokers that would serve as rapiers, just as the old drapes made splendid uniforms. We plotted our plan of attack against the evil Cardinal Richelieu and one glorious afternoon even convinced Aunt Isabelle to be the treacherous Lady de Winter, though she refused to let us draw the secret brand on her shoulder.
"I will die for you, Milady," I said in a deep voice, kneeling in front of her with my hand over my heart.
"Oh, you look so funny…in…that moustache!" gasped Aunt Isabelle in a fit of giggles, for Victoir had drawn facial hair on us all with a quill and some ink. "I shall break a stay, I swear I shall!"
"Maman, you're supposed to be a hardened criminal. You must stop laughing," said Claude seriously, but this only made her guffaw even louder.
All in all, I scarcely realized that I'd been gone a month when Papa and Grandmère sent me letters wishing me a happy birthday, along with far more presents than I needed or deserved. I had been so preoccupied with reading books and playing musketeers that I had forgotten I turned nine on May 25!
I grew dismal when I realized that this would be the first of many birthdays without Maman, but everyone did their best to distract me. Aunt Isabelle flurried around the house to get together a special supper for me, lighting gold candles and hanging white streamers from the ceiling. We ate all my favorite dishes, roast lamb and bouillabaisse and strawberries and cream puffs. Aunt Isabelle and Uncle Alexis gave me a pretty new frock and Henri, Claude, and Victoir had all pooled their pocket money to get me a secret gift.
"It was Claude that spotted it in the shop window," said Henri, hiding something behind his back. Then with a flourish he brought out a wide brimmed blue hat with a large white feather sticking out of it.
"Oh, it is just like the ones the musketeers wear!" I said delightedly. "Thank you, boys." Then we all shook hands and I let them each try on the hat in turn.
"I have something else for you," said Victoir, handing me a small package that I quickly unwrapped.
"The Man in the Iron Mask!" I said, gazing happily at the red leather cover. "Thank you so much, Victoir. I've been dying to know what happens to d'Artagnan and Queen Anne and all the rest."
"Here's another package for you that just came this evening," said Aunt Isabelle, as she brought out a large box.
It had no postmark or note or marking of any kind to indicate the sender. Inside I found a music box in the shape of a gold birdcage with a little nightingale perched in the middle. When I wound up the key, the nightingale began to sing a sad, yet lovely song I did not recognize. We all agreed that it was the finest music box we had ever seen.
"My brother must have had someone deliver it," said Aunt Isabelle, wiping the tears from her eyes when the song had finished.
Three days after my birthday I received an invitation to dine at the home of the Baron de Castelot-Barbezac. I felt quite grown up as I put on my best black dress to go visit Aunt Meg and her family. She welcomed me with open arms and when I hugged her I could feel the bulge in her stomach that meant her baby was growing fast. After we had finished eating, she said that her mother, Mme Giry, had asked to see me. I looked forward to finally talking to the woman I had heard so much about from Maman.
"You mustn't mind anything odd she says," warned Aunt Meg. "It's hard for her to have to stay cooped up in here all day, with her illness."
I nodded, thinking that I knew far too much about the difficulty of dealing with illnesses. I followed Aunt Meg upstairs into to a comfortable little room with cheerful pink wallpaper and plush carpets. On a cream colored divan lay a thin, gray-haired woman with traces of great beauty still in her face.
"Mother, I have brought Lynette de Chagny to see you," said Aunt Meg.
"Pleased to meet you," I said, curtsying. Then Aunt Meg had to leave us to go see some duchess or other who had just called downstairs.
"So you are Christine Daae's daughter?" Mme Giry said when we were alone.
"Christine de Chagny, yes," I corrected her.
"I haven't seen you since you were a baby. You look very much like your mother, but I suppose everyone tells you that don't they?"
"Yes," I said.
"I was very sorry I could not come to her funeral, but my health would not allow it," she said. "Did you get my flowers?"
"Yes, Papa told me to thank you for them."
"Your father is a very polite man," she said. "Do you love to sing as your mother did?"
"I like singing well enough, but I'm not nearly as good as she was," I replied
"That's to be expected," said Mme Giry. "She had the greatest musician in the world to coach her to greatness."
"I didn't know that," I said. "Who was he?"
"Did you never hear her speak of the Angel of Music?" asked Mme Giry.
I shook my head and Mme Giry lifted her eyebrows and said, "No doubt she had her reasons. Sometimes not speaking of a thing is the easiest way to forget, but other times…" She paused.
"What?" I said.
"Other times not speaking about something makes it even more painful, more terrible, until at last we can think of nothing else."
"What are you talking about Mme Giry?" I asked.
"Me? I'm talking about everything and nothing. Those are the only topics of conversation I can be bothered with at my age."
"I see," I said.
"No you don't," she said. "But you are very polite to say so, just like your father would. He never understood your mother, you know, though that didn't stop him from loving her."
"What do you mean, he never understood her?" I asked.
"I mean that your father is generally a sensible man, just as you seem to be a sensible girl. Your mother, one the other hand, was never sensible; no true artist is, I suppose. So of course your father couldn't understand all her strange fears and irrational beliefs."
"I don't think it's very nice of you to say things like that," I said.
"The truth isn't always nice," said Mme Giry. "Your mother found that out almost ten years ago in this very city."
"She didn't like Paris," I said, wanting to show that I knew just as much about Maman as this old woman did.
"Oh, it wasn't Paris she didn't like," grumbled Mme Giry. "It was what Paris reminded her of, that's what she wanted to avoid. But in the end she couldn't stay away, could she? She came back; even though any fool could tell that she'd been deathly ill and had no business being out of bed. "
"Did you see her when she visited Paris?" I asked, leaning forward in my seat. I still wondered about my mother's mysterious trip to Paris sometimes, the trip that had propelled her into her final sickness.
Mme Giry spoke thoughtfully, "Yes, I saw her. It made me feel quite old, to see how thin and frail she looked."
"Did she say why she came here?" I asked.
"No, she spoke very little. We recalled the old days at the opera house and then she said she had to leave."
"But didn't she spend the night here at Aunt Meg's?" I asked.
"No, she didn't stay here," said Mme Giry. "Is that what she told you?"
"She told us she checked into a hotel," I said, crossing my fingers, so that it wouldn't count as a false hood. For some reason, I did not want her to know that Maman had lied about her whereabouts in Paris.
After that I couldn't pay attention to anything else Mme Giry said and soon it was time for me to go.
"I hope Mother didn't bother you. She can be intimidating for an invalid," said Aunt Meg, as she led me to the carriage.
"I found her very interesting," I said truthfully.
I returned to my aunt and uncle's that night, still confused over what I had learned. Who was the Angel of Music? Where had Maman stayed on her visit to Paris? Why had she come here in the first place?
One of the servants had left a glass of hot chocolate in my room, as the night was quite chilly for the end of May. I sipped the drink and wrote a note to Papa, until my eyes began to grow heavy. I did not know why I was so tired all of a sudden, but I fell into bed before I could even undress. Then there came the sensation of someone carrying me a long way and when I opened my eyes I was not in any part of my aunt and uncle's house that I had ever seen before.
Instead I was in what appeared to be a dark cave, lit only by candles. I sat up on the cushion I found myself lying on and looked around, amazed at what I saw. I was on the shore of a body of water, but when I glanced up I saw stone instead of sky. Behind me was a large pipe organ, encrusted with gold.
And sitting in front of the organ, with a serene smile on her face, was my mother.
So the plot thickens…please read and review.
