I once again disclaim ownership of anything from Leroux, or Susan Kay, whose Phantom I am referencing heavily in this chapter.

Warning: Some bad language in this one—but British slang, not American four-letter words.

"Mother is the name for God in the lips and the hearts of all children."—Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackary.

"Do you understand? Do you understand?" Added by James O'Barr, in the comic book and movie, The Crow,

Anne:

Truffle sniffed around the roots of an oak, then looked at me, pawed the ground, and gave a little whine.

"There's a good girl," I told her. "Not the right time of year, but happen as we'll come back when it is. Mark that tree in your memory, love." I said to my son. "She's found us some living gold."

The Boulangers were living on a gold mine, and never did they know a thing about it. No more did I, until I lived here, but up in these woods, there's truffles aplenty, and as good as any from the Perigourd. I've dug up all colors—the white sort, which is the most plentiful and least prized—the black kind, which is uncommon, expensive, and supposed to inflame the passions—and rarest of all, the red-grained black, which is not so well thought of. You'd think being rare would make it more valued, but no.

So when a Beauceron pup came our way as was what they call a 'harlequin', black, red, and white, it was only natural to name her Truffle, and, having named her Truffle, only right as she should be trained up to sniff them out.

"After the first frost, and until the snows start coming serious, right, Mam? That's when we go hunting truffles. And we don't tell nobody about it, never."

"That's right, and that's why you're going to go to any school as you want to, when you're growed up, dearheart." I squeezed his hand. "All cause of what grows out here. We don't have to spend a sou on what other inns and restaurants pay hundreds and hundreds of francs to buy. All we need is two afternoons a week."

"And Truffle's nose! Mam, don't forget her nose. She finds them. We just dig them up."

"We had to train her up, first, though." It wasn't so hard to teach her to do it.

When she was six months old, I started by giving her bits of sausage with truffle in, for a treat when she was good, so's she learn the smell of truffle and know it meant a tasty bite was coming. Then we brought her out here, and Erik put bits of truffle sausage all around tree roots, so she learned where to smell for it. Then we just put bits of truffle about, and gave her the sausage when she found them, until she was rooting them out like she'd been born to.

There's those as say pigs is better truffle hunters than dogs. That's as may be, but a pig will eat the truffle where a dog will want the sausage more. And a dog don't weigh five hundred pound, like a pig might, and dogs is more biddable.

"Will her puppies be good trufflers, too?" he asked me.

"Like as not, if they're taught. Now, you know as we can't keep them all, dearheart? Most of them we'll sell. But we'll keep one, and you'll have first choice of them."

"Yes, Mam. Are they inside her now?"

"Happen as they are, most like. We won't know for a while, yet. But they've got a lot of growing to do before they're ready to be born. Weeks and weeks. Beginning of August, that's when they're like to come."

"And then they'll be like Miaou's kits, with eyes as isn't ready yet to see."

"That's right. All they'll do is eat and sleep and cry. Just like any babies. Just like you did—only you could see."

"Look!" he pointed, and I was right glad he was distracted, as his questions would take a turn toward something else. I don't think he's ready to hear about how babies is made, whatsoever kind they are. "The brambleberries is blooming." And so they was, all pinky-white against the green of their leaves, like a bridal garland for the forest.

"They is. It looks grand out here, don't it? The sunlight looks like silk ribbons streaming through the trees."

He laughed. "It's a beautiful day!" he cried out. "Mam, can I run? Can me and Truffle run?"

"Long as you don't go getting too far ahead." I told him. They took off. It was a beautiful day, after all. The birds was singing, and the sugary scent off the ferns hung in the air. I can be glad of a moment alone, much as I love my son.

The woods was like a cathedral decked out for something solemn but joyful, with flowers and banners and music in the air. In a way, it was, too, being spring.

Up ahead, I heard Truffle's happy bark, and a peal of laughter from my boy, to answer her.

I don't worry too much when Truffle's here by him—she'd take a chunk out of anyone as tried to lay a hand on him. I know, cause that was part of what I got her for. I wanted a big dog as could help protect us, and one of a breed as had the repute of being tough, so folk'd think twice before meddling. Then I trained her to the limits of what she could understand—and she's a smart dog. She knows as what her jobs be—and she knows she don't take food from any hands but mine. Or my boy's. Excepting old Jacques, who bred her, of course. I won't have no one poisoning her nor drugging her so as to steal her.

That's the dog as bit two fingers off a man who went and tried to jump me after dark in the yard, last autumn as was. We don't talk about that, though.

She may look as she's ready to rear up and tear out anybody's throat, but with family, she's gentler than a lamb. She'll even pick up a kitten or duckling in her mouth and carry it home to its mother, alive and without a tooth mark.

I can never think of dogs what has got the name for being vicious without remembering Doctor Bayre, and that day on the train…

I paid for a first class compartment, and by all rights I should had it to myself, that is, myself and the baby. I could afford it, now, and clothes as made me fit in among the others in first-class. Erik was one month and four days old, and he and I had left the convent hospital only hours before. I had a new gold ring on my left hand, but I was traveling alone, with a new baby. I had no nurse, no maid, no husband, nobody at all along of me, so in that way I wasn't like the other women in the private compartments. I wasn't quite respectable, and I knew it, but what could I do?

It wouldn't have mattered, except that it was high July and the weather was awful. Storm after storm came down, with thunder and lightning like it was the end of the world.

When the conductor came, touched his hat and said, "Madame, forgive me for disturbing you. Ordinarily, your privacy would be regarded as sacrosanct," which was a word as I'd never heard before, "but the extremity of the weather is such that we must call on a right reserved by the railway for times such as these. We must prevail upon you to share your compartment. The passenger who will be joining you is a prominent physician, a gentleman advanced in years, and a man of eminent respectability. You may be assured he will conduct himself with the utmost propriety. Of course, should you or your infant become indisposed as a result of the fatigues of travel, he would be honored to attend upon you."

If that happened today, I'd pull out my handbag, take out some franc notes, and say, "Have you looked everywhere, as yet, for a place for the doctor, M'sieu?" and count my francs until his eyes told me I'd found his price.

Then I'd put the money in my pocket, tell the conductor, "Please come back and tell me when you've found the gentleman a place," and give my pocket a pat, just once.

But back then—and it isn't even as I'm so much older now nor I was then, cause I'm not. It wasn't four years ago, when that was—I put on a posh voice, like the Countess's, and said, "While I feel for the gentleman's plight, my child is quite small and I'm afraid he will disturb the doctor. He will also require such care and attentions that delicacy forbids me to mention. Perhaps the doctor would be more comfortable elsewhere?"

I can talk like a fine lady when I've a need to, but it was all for naught. The conductor said, "Ah, Madame, but the gentleman is a doctor! He wants only a place on the train. He is familiar with all stages of the human condition, and as he is a physician, you need not fear for your modesty."

So Doctor Bayre came to join us in my compartment. He wasn't a problem at first—after he begged my pardon for being there, he sat and read, and I sat and did crochet. I could buy whatever baby clothes as Erik would need, but I'd done so much crochet for others' babes— in my family, somebody was always having a baby—that it didn't seem right as my own son shouldn't have something from my hands. Besides, I'd got good at crochet, and knitting too.

And having work in my hands gave me space to think. There was reasons enough to fill a bushel basket as why I wasn't going home to my Mam and Da. Some of the reasons was new-minted, and some went back years gone by. I was going to Madame Julie, as was the head cook in the Comte de la Fere's kitchen, and the woman who taught me all I know about cooking, but we couldn't stay there forever.

I was no closer to an answer as to where we should go, when Erik woke up hungry and fussing about it. It was then as the trouble began.

"M'sieu?" I gave him a glance as said I'd be grateful if he'd turn his head, and he did. With a shawl to cover me as the baby nursed away, the doctor had never a look at either of us. But once he was fed, of course he had to be changed, so I got out a towel to lay him on, and everything else needful. When I laid my son down, I heard the doctor whisper, "Mon Dieu…"

"I know," I said, and I think that may have been when I began to change into the woman I've become, since, "You've never seen anything so hideous in all your life." I was still keeping up the act of being a lady.

"Erik…" he said.

"How did you know his name was Erik?" I asked. It come as a shock to me. I knew as I hadn't said his name.

"I believe, Madame—it is Madame?" Asking, was I married?

"Yes?" I pleaded. I should've snapped.

"Forgive me, Madame, but—you are married to the father of this child?"

"Oh, yes," I lied. Today I'd have the…face to carry it off, but that day was the first as I'd tried to pass myself off as married and a mother both, and I couldn't look him in the eye. I was scared, too. I'd been told as fewer nor a handful of folk knew about him.

"I thought not." he said. "Madame—I will continue to call you so—I beg that you will regard me as you would a priest—a priest of the mind and body. I will treat any secret you confide as if it were made in confession. Are you well-acquainted with this child's father?"

"Hardly at all." I said, no louder than a sigh.

"Ah…"he hummed. "Did you even see his face?"

"No." He had to read it on my lips, for no sound came when I said it.

"Oh. You poor child. You poor child. Tell me—did it come about from an act of violation? Were you forced, or deceived? Neither would surprise me."

"No!" I cried. "Nothing of the kind!"

"Was it poverty that forced you to it? Forgive me, but I have noticed that although you are well-dressed, every article is new — very new. Your prosperity is of recent date, is it not?" His eyes were kind and warm. Yet I didn't care for them at all.

"Yes." I could not deny it.

"You would not be the first young woman who has had to do what she otherwise would not—for money. It must have been a great deal of money."

"It—it" I didn't know what was safe to own up to. More secrets than my own was at stake, and this man seemed able to see through near every lie I could spin up. "It was enough to keep me—and him—in comfort." I told him, at last. "But please, M'sieu how is it you come to know so much? If there's anyone in the world as has the right to know, surely I've that right?"

"Yes—I suppose you have." He shook himself. "It was almost twenty-five years ago, when I lived in a town called St.-Martin-de-Boscherville. Her name was Madeleine Touchet. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen—and the only woman I have ever loved. She was a young widow, and she had a child…"

I listened. For miles, and miles, as the train jostled its way toward Lyons, he told me the story of that little boy, as he knew it.

Only thing is, I don't think I was hearing the story he thought he was telling.

I heard about a child as was kept shut in, with bars and boards across his windows. I heard how he never got to play in the sun.

I heard about his unnatural fast growing, mind and body. I heard about how he was talented beyond the gifts as is ordinarily given to men. I heard about the beauty of his voice. I heard about how the priest thought he was possessed.

I heard how his mother was forced to beat him for being bad all the time. I heard how he tormented her. I heard about how he was made to wear a mask all the time. I heard about how the doctor met the mother, and what the boy did then, to try to keep her to himself. How he was driving her mad, with a web of illusion and delusion

I heard about the villager folk. I heard about the dog as was the only creature that loved him. I heard about how she died…and what he did then, how he rushed out with the thought of killing her killers, and nearly died, being stabbed in the midst of it all.

And then he disappeared.

Doctor Bayre finished it all up by saying—"And so, Madame, what I suggest to you now is—that you should step out for a moment at the next station. There will be a pause of a quarter of an hour—you might wish to refresh yourself. When you return—it will all be over."

I thought a moment. "You mean as I should leave him here along of you?" I couldn't be bothered to keep up the voice of a lady—not after what I'd heard.

He blinked. "Yes. That is what I mean."

"And while I'm out, you'll put your hand, or a cushion, or somewhat else over his nose and mouth."

"I would be releasing you—and releasing him as well. It will be a mercy."

"You think that's for the best?" I asked.

"I know it."

"Doctor, I've listened to you all this time, and never did I interrupt you nor question you. Now it's my turn, and I'm in hopes as you'll give me that same courtesy, and hear me out."

"As you wish, Madame."

"First thing I got to say is, that Madeleine of yours was a stupid little slag." I didn't raise my voice, I kept it soft and low, cause Erik was sleeping, but I put feeling into it.

He gasped. Well, he'd set up a shrine to her in his heart, I could tell that from listening to him talk about her. Don't suppose as anybody used language like that to him real often, neither.

"And I'm going to tell you why. You talked about what he did with mirrors. Don't you know as the first mirror you sees yourself in, is your mother's face? You learn all about what you be from her. What did she show him he was, every day he lived along of her? Oh, I don't wonder she had to beat him. If you never show a child you're ever happy with him, that you're pleased by what he does, if you start off by being hateful to him, of course you got to be hideous to him when he's bad, just to show that there's a difference. And once she started beating his body, she was also beating in that doing violence on somebody is how you show them. Didn't none of you ever raise a dog? A vicious master means a vicious dog!"

"But—" he began.

"I could go on and on. I could tell you as why she couldn't have done worse if she'd gone and studied to. I could answer you back for every thing you told me about how she raised him. Like how he tried to keep you away from her. You know buggar all about human nature, no more nor she did. Of course he wanted her all to himself. I'm the twelfth of seventeen living children—there was twenty-three of us born living—and every new baby meant there was less for the rest of us. Less love—less food—less room—less of everything. Nobody wants to lose even a drop of what we've got."

"Madame—" he tried.

"Maybe you'd have seen better if you wasn't wanting to get your leg over her. But she was beautiful. If she'd had a face like an old boot, you'd have thought more of what she was doing to the child. I thank you for telling me all of this, Doctor Bayre. You've gone and told me all of what not to do."

I pulled the cord for the conductor, and when he came, I said, "Sir, I ask you to remove this man. He made an improper suggestion to me—You're not going to claim as what you suggested you should do at the next station wasn't improper, are you, Doctor?"

"I—" he stuttered. "I only thought—.Perhaps it would be for the best if I left Madame" and he let that hang.

I finished it for him. "Madame Touchet."

"If Madame Touchet were left to pass the rest of her trip in solitude."

I've never forgotten a word of that. You don't forget things like that.

The conductor was right puzzled as he led the doctor away. I couldn't help that, though.

I could help how I raised up my son. Everyday, I do the best I can. What eats my peace is the thought of what's to come, when he finds out his world isn't built on the rock of truth, but on the shifting sand of lies.

At least the love is real.

May I be forgiven, oh, may I be forgiven…

A/N:

There is no recipe in this chapter, because, (uncharacteristically) nobody eats anything. The recipes will return!

To my reviewers: A brief shout out to most—all are highly appreciated, however!

Lostschizophrenic—hope the sibs aren't getting you too down—just think, you could be Anne and have 16 of them!

Sue Raven: Keep guessing!

An Anti-Sheep Cheese Muffin: Er—okay!

Lexi: Well, Erik Sr. has issues. Erik Sr. has the entire run of National Geographic Magazine in terms of issues. From day one. In mint condition. Kept in chronological order in clear plastic bags.

Thornwitch: I love Robin Mckinley! Haven't read Sunshine yet, though—but I'm getting it from the library. Beauty is one of my all time favorites. The sad fact is, I reported a girl for abuse, because she was copying long sections of it into her Phanphic, word-for-word, without credit or disclaimer—and R. Mckinley is one of the authors ff has forbidden fics of, at her request. I don't know what happened, but all her stories disappeared.

Lucia: Thank you! Are you an international reader? I don't recognize the country code of br.

Erik's Girlfriend: Oh, a death threat. By Punjab lasso, no less! In no other realm of life or fic is that an honor…

Awoman: In order to answer your lovely review properly, clearly I must write you another email! You may expect it soon.