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Chapter 4 – The Tale of the Marsh King's Daughter

"A ball, Raoul!"

Raoul picked her up by the waist and spun her around, laughing. "Yes, a ball! A glittering ball at the Tuileries, two weeks from now, with the Emperor and Empress and all the nobles and ladies and I swear, not one of them will look half as stunning as you."

He set her down in the middle of the cramped parlour.

"Please say you will come."

"Of course I will," Christine smiled up at him. "I would be delighted. And," she looked mischievous, "I will even let you buy me a dress for the occasion."

She gave a startled cry and laughed as he spun her around again, faster and faster. "One dress! One! Put me down, put–"

"Oomph."

The both found themselves on the floor, in the middle of Madame Giry's rug.

Christine reached up to kiss the tip of nose. "You're going to be late for your father."

"I don't care." Raoul cupped her face in his hands and sought her lips instead. "You're much better company."

Christine hesitated a moment, then responded to the familiar, comfortable warmth of his kiss, the way she always had. He was gentle, and wonderful, and all their kisses were what she had always known a kiss should be: a soothing, caring promise...

All except that one time, after they had gone to see the burnt shell of the opera house and he had kissed her with such frightening, desperate passion that it burnt her to her heart; a kiss almost like– but she did not dare indulge those thoughts. It was a hidden flaw in her, something wrong with her very soul, that she found herself returning again and again to that other kiss, that other man, lost in his darkness. No angel, she had thought when her lips had brushed his; no demon, as he gasped and some impulse drove her to taste him with her tongue, oh God, inside him; no ghost, with her hand pressed to the hot ruin of his cheek and the tears on her palm. Only a man.

"No," she whispered, pulling suddenly back, "Oh Raoul... I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"What's wrong?"

He held her gently, looking into her eyes, worried and she knew, a little scared. And God help her, she knew what his fear was.

She could not let it destroy her life, and his. She would not.

She tried a smile. It came out a bit crooked, so she tried again and got it right. "Look at us, we're like a couple of children. You're probably horribly late already; your father is going to hate me."

Raoul looked visibly relieved, accepting this reprieve she offered. He helped her up courteously, and they both brushed themselves off, avoiding each other's eyes.

"I shall call on you tomorrow, then. About the dress."

"Yes, please."

She took his hand for a moment. "Have a good day."

"And you."

And he was gone, with a click of the lock shutting on the front door. A porcelain figurine of a dancer on the mantlepiece trembled slightly, and was still.

"You are a strange girl, Christine Daaé."

"Meg!" Christine whirled around. "You startled me. I thought you were asleep."

Meg walked in, still wearing her dressing gown and only one stocking, but with her hair already done up. She grinned at Christine's flustered expression.

"I came out here to ask if I can borrow a pair of your red barrettes. I didn't know you were, um – entertaining."

She gave Christine a knowing look that made her blush spread all the way to her ears.

"We didn't, I mean, I didn't ... Raoul was just here to give me this." She held out the envelope with its golden seal. "It's for a ball at the Palace. To celebrate the, uh, the plebiscite results. Or something of the kind."

"The Palace?" Meg turned the envelope in her hands before handing it back. "Well, I can see why you wanted to thank Monsieur le Vicomte properly. On the floor."

"Arhh!" Christine waved the invitation in Meg's laughing face, "That's not funny!"

"It is, you know." Meg ducked Christine's ineffectual swatting and dropped down onto the armrest of a chair. She shook out the second silk stocking she was holding and began to put it on.

"Or maybe you're right." She shrugged a shoulder. "It's not funny. Just strange."

Christine looked at her, the smile slipping from her face.

"What do you mean?"

Meg fastened the garter and looked up.

"Just that I had thought you would be married by now. Oh, I know what maman says about no decent girl marrying so young – but Christine, you were so happy together! I saw you the night of the masquerade and I thought, you would be married within the month, even before I saw that ring. You practically glowed."

"Yes," Christine whispered. "I suppose we were happy."

"And then afterwards, when you two came out of the cellars together... It looked just like a fairy tale."

"Yes... It probably did."

"So why then are you here, kissing him on the floor as though both your lives depended on it and then pushing him away?"

"Because it didn't feel like a fairy tale, Meg!"

Meg looked at her in surprise.

Christine paced around the small parlour, her fists clenched, glancing up as though it could stop the tears. Then she dropped down again in front of where Meg sat. Her hands opened nervelessly.

"I was so tired. Exhausted. And wet, and cold. Raoul could barely stand. There was smoke everywhere, and people... It was hard to think, so many things had happened."

Meg nodded slowly.

"I gave away his ring."

"You – what?" Meg stared at Christine's deathly pale face; even her lips had gone bloodlessly white.

"The ring, the engagement ring Raoul gave me, the one – don't, Meg, please..."

Meg's hand stopped before she could touch Christine's arm.

"But I thought, the Phantom, at the masquerade..."

"No, he gave it back but then, then I, Meg, I..." She spoke very fast, her voice cracking dangerously, on the edge of hysteria: "I don't know why I did it. Or maybe I do, I don't know, he was down there with the boat, Raoul was, and I went up, I..."

"Take a breath. It's all right, it's over. Whatever happened, it's over. It doesn't matter now, it's over. It's all right."

"No it's not."

Christine took a deep, shuddering breath; absently, she rubbed her bare finger, as though the memory was alive in her mind.

"I took if off, and I put it in his hand. The Phantom's. And then I – I closed his fingers over it because he was crying and, and I didn't – I thought it might drop! And I wanted to be sure he'd keep it. It seemed important somehow, God – I don't know why. Then I went back and Raoul didn't ask, maybe he never even saw that I'd got it back, he must think it's still stolen but I gave it away myself, what bride does that! What's wrong with me, Meg, I'm not well, I'm crazy..."

"Shh, Christine... It's all right."

She let Meg embrace her, squeezing her eyes shut against the wracking sobs that suffocated her with self-hatred.

"You said yourself you were exhausted, and after everything that happened with Don Juan, you were distressed, not thinking clearly. You're not crazy, Christine. Please don't cry. It is only a ring. You will have another, when you're married, and you'll be ever so happy! Really, this will all be forgotten, you'll see. Please don't cry."

"You're right. I was just distressed, you're right."

Christine found the sobs had stopped, and everything she had so foolishly babbled was slowly returning to its place inside her heart, making it heavy once again. How could Meg understand it when she herself didn't? She had been wrong to worry her needlessly and make herself a mess before their first rehearsal at the Variétés.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what came over me."

Meg stood up lightly, bouncing on her stockinged toes. "It's probably nerves. Are you hungry? We should go soon, we had better not be late for warm-up, on the first day."

"I'm fine. Let me fetch those barrettes for you now."

She picked up the invitation and hurried back through the dining room to her bedroom, eager to put an end to the whole embarrassing episode and trying to think only of the upcoming rehearsal. They would catch the omnibus to the Variétés, and then there were warm-ups, and barre, and two hours of trying to force her muscles to remember her training from before the days when she was a singer. She hoped she was not as out of shape as she felt, because then there would be costume fittings, and two more hours of precision torture, and then she would be home with Meg, soaking the agony from her blistered feet with hot water and soda. Then Madame Giry would be back from her new job at the Théâtre Français and they would have supper, and she would drink scalding black coffee and try to forget that tomorrow, she would have to do it all over again.

And then at night, she would fall asleep to the silence in her head, where once there had been joy and her angel of music, then fear and the murdering demon, and now... Now both the angel and the murderer were gone, and instead something incomprehensible was growing inside her, a wild yearning that spread like ink through her soul, turning it black and tainting everyone she touched.

And Raoul... Christine looked at the invitation in her hand. She remembered the old Scandinavian tale her father had told her, of a demon-girl who seemed human but did not know how to love. She was afraid that she was becoming that girl.

o o o

"Gentlemen! If I may have your attention, please. One moment of your time."

The two young men occupying the large, airy office looked up from their drawing boards to the door, which Monsieur Duchamp had just shut behind himself and another man.

Monsieur Duchamp, a stately, elderly gentleman who still favoured the old-fashioned tall top-hats and greased moustaches, stood aside politely to indicate the new arrival.

"Gentlemen, this is Monsieur Erik Andersson, a sketch artist and master draughtsman. He also makes some very fine scale models, if the selection I examined this morning is any indication. He will be joining us on the Sedan project. Monsieur, my staff."

He led the way to the drawing boards.

"This skinny lad here is Monsieur Vincent Fiaux, an engineer who saw the light several years ago thanks to Baron Haussmann's grand projects, and turned architect. A real prodigy when it comes to calculating even the most fiendishly complex stresses."

"Pleased to meet you, sir," Vincent Fiaux said, rising in his chair to shake Erik's hand.

Erik saw his startled look when the young man noticed the bandages covering the right side of his head, but somehow it did not alter his friendly manner. He had to concede that Louise Gandon had been right in her advice the morning after he had moved in, when she had turned up at his door with a roll of linen: outside the theatre, a mask invited questions; a bandage discouraged them.

"And this fashionable chap is Monsieur Jacques Choury, the best designer and draughtsman I have ever had the honour to work with. Don't let the neat haircut fool you. Even the ossified old dogmatists at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts could not manage to train all the originality out of him; he won every prize there was."

"Bonjour, monsieur," came the second handshake.

The institution name meant nothing to Erik, but only a deaf man could have missed the air of pride with which Monsieur Duchamp pronounced it. Therefore, he adopted an expression of the deepest admiration:

"I am honoured, monsieur."

That seemed sufficient to induce a friendly grin from Jacques Choury, who even had the good manners to pretend he had not seen the bandages.

"Now." Monsieur Duchamp clasped his hands together. "Perhaps I could leave you two gentlemen to familiarise Monsieur Andersson with our most recent projects. I should like us to meet later this afternoon to discuss the commission for the new de Chagny residence at Saint-Cloud, perhaps over some wine, hmm?"

"Certainly," they said, "gladly."

The de Chagny residence.

Erik felt ill. Black and red stains danced in front of his eyes, as after a blow to the back of his ugly, malformed skull. It was a verdict.

Of course Christine and her husband would be building a new house. And his own private fire, his hell of atonement, was to create a house for a life he could never have, for a wife who was not his, for a love that would last another man's lifetime. A drawing room for her friends. A bedroom for her beautiful daughter, a study for her eldest son and a nursery for the youngest. A ballroom, a guest wing, four entrances for the staff, and a grand stables for every one of their accursed, thrice-damned fine thoroughbred horses! Oh yes, and a master bedroom with a four-poster bed, surmounted by an enamelled crest of the de Chagny family.

"That sounds fascinating," he said amiably. "I should love to hear more about this project; I don't believe I have ever been to Saint-Cloud. As a small point of curiosity, Monsieur Duchamp..."

"Yes?"

"I wonder whether our mutual friend, a certain Madame Giry, may have recommended this firm to the de Chagnys?"

Monsieur Duchamp looked surprised. "I really haven't the least idea, monsieur. We have had numerous private clients over the years, I daresay any one of them could have put in a good word. But say, what a marvellous thought!"

He seemed to light up from within, taken with a new notion. "We really ought to compile some information on where the best recommendations are coming from; it would be most instructive. Yes, a marvellous idea, Monsieur Andersson, I shall keep it in mind!"

And with that he walked off towards his private office at the end of the larger room, purposeful and quite at ease.

Yes, Erik thought; it was certainly instructive to know where this particular recommendation had come from. How fortunate, in fact, that he had kept the slip of paper he had found fallen by accident to the bottom of the bag Madame Giry had left him, presumably one of those she had been handing out to let former acquaintances know of her new address. Yes. Very fortunate indeed.

"So, Monsieur Andersson," said Jacques Choury, "shall we go over those sketches?"

Vincent Fiaux hooked a skinny ankle around the leg of a nearby chair and pulled it up.

"Make yourself at home, sir, we don't stand on ceremony while we're working. I say, I should like to hear more about those scale models of yours: old Duchamp isn't easily impressed."

Erik sat down, nodding in thanks. "I should be pleased to show them to you when we have a moment. But perhaps the sketches first?"

"Yes of course," Fiaux said. "Choury, may I have that folder?"

And the workday continued.

At night, Erik opened the strongbox where he kept some of the money.

He sat at his worktable, looking at it for a while, motionless. Then he removed a few bills, considered the rise in prices since had done this last, and took out a few more. He set the money in a neat pile, next to the slip of paper bearing an address written in Madame Giry's graceful, precise hand.

It was not far.

He took down the little velvet pouch with Christine's ring from its spot on the bookshelf above his table. Without opening it, he stuffed it quickly inside the strongbox and turned the lock. Then he threw the key in the drawer, slammed the drawer shut, and stood up.

With an easy, elegant motion, his arm moving like the wing of a falling angel, he reached for the folder he had borrowed from the architect's office. He leafed through it slowly, almost indifferently. The de Chagny residence at Saint-Cloud: Elevation of the façade... Gardens... Cutaway view... Floor plan... Master suite.

He put the folder away, took the money from the table and placed it into his waistcoat pocket. Then he unwound the bandage from his face and replaced it with his linen mask, knotting the fabric tightly at the nape of his neck. He strode over to the window beside the iron bed and held open the curtains, framing an imperfect mirror.

Out of the depth of night, the mask stared back at him: a featureless white half-moon with a hollow cavern for an eye.

It would take a few days to prepare. He could wait.