A/N Thanks again to my reviewers...you inspire me onward!
All
I need is a little love now and then, but some chocolate will do for
now.
Lucy Van Pelt
Chapter Six: Dutiful soldiers
She waited a moment and then walked away, heading up the street towards her hotel. She heard someone behind her. Javier was walking quickly to catch up to her and slowed as he came abreast of her. "Ah, you have questions, yes?"
"No, actually I don't. I'm going to my room and in the morning I'll be leaving the hotel."
"Emily, there's no need for that." He stopped as she rounded on him, hands on hips.
"Well lets see," she began counting off on her fingers. "Sinking boats, a man who I am not supposed meet, you dredge up my machine without planning on telling me about it, a little early evening sneaking around on people." She quieted her voice, "And now we have two Monsieurs not one and . . . well, I'm sure I'll think of something else while I pack." She turned and continued walking.
He watched her walk away. "Well, good night." She said something that must have been in English, because it sounded a lot like 'jussgottahell vothayu'. He doubted it was anything he'd want to hear repeated in French.
Emily checked for messages at the hotel's desk and ran up the stairs quickly to her room. Tomorrow was Friday and she was to go see Françoise Desloges in the afternoon. On Saturday she had planned on meeting up with Sophie Robillard to go shopping. She hoped Sophie wouldn't mind helping her find a more permanent place to stay.
Before she went to bed, she wrote one last message. Sliding on her robe and taking down her hair, she propped her pillow against the headboard and tried to read her current book. After reading the same page at least four times, she gave up and tossed it aside.
She kept seeing the man standing at the mouth of the alley in the last light of the evening. She had caught the voice. As she had stepped closer, he had turned his face down and away, there was something to that movement and his eye. It reminded her of approaching a stray animal, the hope mixed with fear that was in their sad eyes. A creature used to being whipped and abused, awaiting the next blow, but silently pleading for love instead. It had made her loose her resolve to confront him, and just leave after asking, "Why won't you just talk to me?"
This whole trip was getting stranger. It should have been some kind of omen when the canal boat started leaking, then Georges Dugast warning her not to meet with Monsieur that evening. And how did he always know how to find her? And now, she found he was traveling in a disguise of sorts.
She had just started to settle in and meet some friends. Were they all just little birds flying back to De la Shaumette, parroting what he wanted to hear? She rubbed her forehead which was now starting to pound. She wished she had stashed some chocolate in the room. It would have been small comfort, but at least it would have been something.
Erik had waited for Javier to return and told him he would see him tomorrow. Winding down the alleys, he went to the back stairs of his house. Climbing them quickly, he stripped off his disguise. He pulled on his robe and went downstairs to the parlor to a cabinet to retrieve a bottle of Brandy. Taking it back to the study with him he sat down in his chair next to the fire and started going through the day's paper.
After the fire started to die down, he went to the piano and began to play. His hands seemed to find the keys, but in his head he didn't hear the music. Finally he started to play the song he had written, it seemed like a lifetime ago. The song he had sung to Christine, The Music of The Night. At some point he began to sing the words as well, his voice sounding strangely rough in his ears.
His voice. His hands slowed on the keys. He saw Emily sitting across the desk from him, 'I keep your voice,' she was saying. God in heaven, she didn't understand what she was saying. He turned down the lamps and walked through the dark quiet of his home and found his bed. Laying down he surrendered to the peaceful arms of sleep.
He was lying in the swan bed. He heard something, someone, and got up. Pulling on his robe, he went out to the large grotto and saw Christine sitting at the organ. He approached her slowly, he could see her hair tumbling down her back, her willowy figure bent forward, she was writing something down on one of his pieces of sheet music. "Christine," he whispered reverently. She looked up and turned to him, opening her mouth as if to speak she made no sound. "Christine, my love, what is it?" She gestured towards the paper, and turned back to her writing. He stepped closer, his hands hovering in the air just above her shoulders, he could feel the warmth of her body. He stopped his hands; he ached to touch her, but feared that if he did she would disappear as she had so many times before in his dreams. "This is another dream isn't it?" he asked, dropping his hands. "You will never return to me, will you?" She turned and smiled sadly at him. "I know. You have a love of your own now, you have children now." He felt a tear running down his face. "You know I will always love you, angel. But I understood that I had to let you go. You would have withered and died here in my darkness."
He stopped as she pointed towards the water; she got up and took the paper with her, gesturing toward the gondola. As he approached the boat, she reached out grasping his hand tugging him towards it. She seemed agitated now, her gestures growing wilder. He finally turned to gaze at the boat and saw it was growing larger, the water around it starting to churn, it began to reach the size and shape of a canal boat. Christine tossed the paper from her hand. Landing on the deck it expanded, folded, shifted, colors running across it where the ink was getting wet. It grew larger and began to take a form. Water running over the deck, the boat groaned in a noise like the voice of something tortured, there was a loud splashing sound and the form on the deck moved. It was a body, and its head had rolled to one side. He did not see the face, he did not have to. The hair so like his own was spread across the face like filthy tendrils crawling across her features. It was Emily. He tried to step forward. Horrified that he could not move, looking down he felt the world tilt and darkness swallow him.
He awoke with one hand twisted in the sheets, his pillow on the floor. He sat up on the side of the bed, retrieving the pillow. "What is it, Christine," he asked the darkness. "Is it the future or the past?"
"Enter," Erik said to the knock at the study door.
"Good Morning, Monsieur. I have brought you the morning paper." Etienne opened it and offered it to his employer. "And look, it is our Madame."
Erik took the offered page and saw the society column penned by Madame Pinson had an article about meeting Emily Griggs. At the side of the article was a picture of a small girl in an overly large hat and a dark long-sleeved dress standing on what looked to be a porch beside a ramshackle house. The child had a rifle next to her which was nearly as tall as she; her right hand clenched around it, her tiny left hand was perched gently on the shoulder of a toy bear that was sitting on a footstool. Bringing the page closer, he looked at the child's downcast eyes, gazing at the bear. He cherubic face a study in concern as if she intended to protect her toy.
The girl in the picture could be any child, but something in the way she held her head as she looked down was definitely Emily. He noticed her ears were sticking out below the hat's brim, and she had little wisps of hair across her forehead. He wondered if Emily had a daughter, would she look like this. He scanned the article again finding no reference to her age in the picture, only that it was taken at her grandfather's house.
He refolded it and laid it down on the corner of his desk. He went back to the contracts he had been going over when the though struck him; Etienne had referred to her as 'our Madame'. When exactly had that started?
Shortly before noon, Phillipe and Javier converged at the house. Checking with Etienne, they continued up the stairs to the study and knocked on the door. They swept into the room after they heard Erik give his permission.
Neither man commented on the fact that the day was overcast from the drizzling rain outside, but the curtains were closed. Phillipe wondered if he were a bit ill, perhaps a headache. Javier knew it was the disturbing evening with Emily. He seemed overly concerned last night that she was traveling about alone and had been clearly displeased that previously he had believed that she was traveling with a man. To Javier, this could be one of the few times he had seen that infernal mask slip to reveal what was beneath. He didn't mean the leather one, but the one Erik perpetually wore before him.
Fulfilling this position, Javier realized he was a part of Erik's personally as much as Phillipe. He wondered if Phillipe had made this discovery as well. The calm, cultured and ever so polite Phillipe was the kind of public face De La Shaumette would wear. Javier was the scoundrel like Charles Martin. The difference was they were free to change back to who they were. Javier wondered if Erik really was this man he saw before him, or if this was only a single image like a reflection in a cracked mirror. How many Eriks were there and did he even know himself?
"It appears we have solved the question of who M. Colt is," Erik began, directing his attention to Phillipe. "Madame was referring to her Colt pistol."
Philippe's brows went up. "God lord, you mean she carries around one of her guns?"
"It appears at times she does. I received a message from Georges Dugast this morning, apparently the town of Jumieges where Madame's sinking canal boat put in to off load what cargo they could, has invited her back to town this Sunday afternoon for a celebration."
Phillipe grinned. "Any excuse for a celebration…"
Javier added, "Is a good excuse."
Erik sat back in his desk chair. "I want Madame Griggs to be accompanied by someone other than her Colt friend.
Javier and Phillipe both began at once. "Of course,…,"stopped to point at themselves. "Well I should…" Switching, they pointed fingers at the other. "I don't think you should…".
"Gentlemen, I want you both to go. I sent a request this morning to her room at the hotel. She should be joining us shortly. Until then, I suggest we go over the information we have so far on what caused us to almost lose our typewriters on that boat."
Emily had fully intended on moving out that morning, as she opened her door to go take her bath, a young man was perched in the hallway. He approached and offered her a note. Returning after her bath she read:
Madame,
It appears that an invitation to attend a social event
has been delivered to M. Dugast, who has passed
it on to me. If it would not interfere with your schedule
would you be so kind as to retrieve it today around
one in the afternoon.
Your Obedient Servant
DLS
Obedient Servant, she thought. You weren't very obedient last night when I asked you to talk to me. My, my, how convenient, it gets sent to His home, not to me. No wonder he knows my every move." She tossed the note on the dresser. She was to be at Françoise Desloges at one o'clock. Feeling a little wicked; she got her pen and wrote a note back to Monsieur.
Erik received the note at about the time he had been expecting Emily to arrive. The instant Etienne walked in bearing a piece of paper, he knew that she had refused. He knew she was upset last night. He had made sure there was a very large tip for the hotel staff if they could get her the note first thing in the morning, hoping to forestall her threat to leave the hotel. Opening the note he read:
I regret to say that I have an appointment
at one this afternoon. I am not sure how
long this meeting will last.
If you would be so kind, can you have the
message sent to the hotel where I can
retrieve it this evening.
E.G.
Pursing his lips, he dropped the note on the desk. "It appears that Madame has to be at a previous engagement at one o'clock. We will have to meet this evening."
He picked up his pen and another piece of note paper. Javier and Phillipe watched with great interest as Erik wrote out the note with quick sharp movements. As they watched, he finished and folded the note. His assistants both found something else on his desk extremely interesting to look at as he brought his attention back to them.
Erik concluded their meeting for the day, following the two men down the stairs. He handed the note to Etienne and told him to send it to Madame at the hotel.
"I cannot, Monsieur. Madame came by and dropped this off for you."
Erik took the note from Etienne and quickly ripped it open. His face hardened and he glanced up at the men. "It appears that Madame is resigning." He dropped his hand, but not before the other men noticed how white his knuckles were turning as he crushed the note in his fist.
Before he could say another word, his two assistants and his servant turned to each other, then back to him. "Chocolate, Monsieur."
Eyes narrowing, he ground out, "What?"
"Larmes de Jeanne d'Arc". Erik looked toward the kitchen door. Agnes stood wiping a dish with a towel. "The tears of Joan of Arc," she repeated.
"Oh yes, my sister Sophie loves those," Phillipe said.
Javier just stood with a grin on his face that Erik would have loved to wipe off.
"Auzon, the chocolatier in the old town," Etienne added. "They have made chocolates since 1634."
Erik treated them to something they had never seen before, a moment of indecision on his face. Following that he did something else, he smiled. Javier didn't know which was more disconcerting. The only time he had ever really seen the man smile was seconds before he exploded into a level of violence that sent many a man running in any direction they could from him.
Erik lifted a hand in a careless gesture as he turned to go up the stairs. "Taking under advisement what my staff has suggested, perhaps we should secure a sample of these "tears" as you refer to them."
By later that afternoon there were no less than three boxes of chocolates neatly wrapped with elegant bows sitting like dutiful soldiers ready for battle upon the kitchen table.
