Thank you, guys, for the reviews for the previous chapter – I was thrilled by how many different takes there were on the questions it poses!

Emotionally, this chapter continues from the previous, so it's probably best to read the end of Chapter 18 before you start this one.

Trivia for this chapter: Carlotta's cameo here is based on a real incident involving Marie Sass, a prima donna at the Opéra.

Chapter 19 – All the Little Lies

Erik raised the ring to the sunlight from the office window and tilted it, scattering fractured rainbows across the sketch of the courthouse façade. The drawing of a stained-glass window on the table before him blazed bright red. Such a deceptive colour. Christine had worn a red dress to supper: a muted, smiling red, with a high collar buttoned tight around her white neck. So respectable. Such a perfect match to his top-hat and suit. Only the red lace trim at her throat had foamed like spit around the mouth of a dying creature.

The page swam with colours, and for a moment Erik was again in that tiny yellow-lit room: inside it, not outside in the night. How bold of them, he thought viciously – to invite him in! As if they had nothing to fear from him. As if it was enough to have ground him into the shape of a gentleman and now their job was done. They just expected him to go on as if he had a soul like all men, as if he could simply shrug off his entire life like a bad dream. Christine would have him believe that his lair had been nothing but a large room at the Opéra. Perhaps he should also believe that his murders were accidents with a piece of string, and that the Angel of Music had been a charming little game they had played together!

Christine had laughed, and talked, and finally asked him to play something, as if she could no longer see through his mask, or did not want to. In place of the wounded girl who had plagued his dreams he found a respectable young woman. Christine had moved on. She had discarded her singing and even her precious Vicomte, as though the boy, too, was a figment of her past and she had no more need of protection. She could sit back in perfect comfort, a mere table-width away – and talk about art. She could listen to the music pouring from his bloodstained hands and pretend that she did not know what he meant. And Madame Giry could watch all this with benevolent approval.

They had abandoned him. Abandoned the gentleman more completely than they had ever abandoned the monster.

Erik rolled the ring between his charcoal-stained fingers, smearing soot over the crystal he had kept pristine for so long, and remembered the rain outside the burnt-out Opéra. He had wanted Christine to be happy... It was so easy to worship an angel. But when he thought of Christine standing over the piano in her polite, dull-red dress – he wanted to rip the choking collar from her throat and terrify her. Anything to break this second, final abandonment. Anything to have her hate him, fear him, tear the mask off his face – anything was better than this!

He threw the ring into a desk drawer, out of sight, and slammed it shut – just in time to avoid the eyes of the young man who now approached him, weaving between draughting tables.

Vincent Fiaux took in at a glance Erik's ashen face and bloodshot eyes, and leaned back against a chair with a cheerful, knowing grin.

"Rough night?"

"You could say that." Erik gave a sour smirk, more for himself than for Fiaux.

"Absinthe? Theatre? Girls?"

"Nothing so amusing, I assure you. A number of my sketches were damaged in transit. Restoring them took longer than I had anticipated."

Fiaux laughed as if Erik had made a fine jest. "Girls," he diagnosed, adding in a tone of mingled envy and admiration: "The Montmartre ladies must have welcomed you back in style, Andersson! You look like you haven't slept in days."

"I suppose one might call it a welcome," Erik said acerbically. "It certainly kept me from sleep."

"Must've been some beauty."

Erik hesitated only a moment. "Nothing special. A dancer."

He knew a moment's keen satisfaction – and then a sudden, ugly flush of anger. He scowled at the young man. "Have you anything of importance to say, Fiaux, or is it your intention to keep me from my work all morning?"

Fiaux shrugged, unoffended. "Duchamp wants to see you when you have a minute. I thought I'd give you fair warning – he'll likely be looking to dump my projects on you."

"You have resigned?" Erik frowned in surprise.

"In a sense. I'm only here on special leave, two days – it's back to Châlons for me tomorrow."

Before Erik could react to this news, Fiaux had jumped off the chair back and strolled back to his desk, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. Erik stared after him. He wondered what possible use this scrawny boy could be to any army. He shrugged the problem away, wiped the charcoal from his hands and went to Monsieur Duchamp's office.

"Ah! Come in, Andersson, come in." Monsieur Duchamp half-stood at his table to grip Erik's hand in a solid handshake. "Take a seat."

Erik drew a chair up to the table. "I understand Fiaux has been called up to the army."

"Yes. A real misfortune, that." Monsieur Duchamp tugged at his moustache miserably. "I tried to arrange a replacement of course, the office would have paid – but they wouldn't hear of it, not for an engineer with a military college degree. Politics, always politics! I do hope you have no inclination to join the Garde Mobile or some such nonsense yourself?"

"None whatsoever," Erik assured him.

"Excellent, excellent. In that case, I trust we can rely on you to continue the Sedan project? Pending the mayor's approval, naturally."

"Certainly. I'm keen to begin construction as soon as the funds have been approved. I trust I shall not be kept waiting long."

Monsieur Duchamp gave a small grunt of approval. "This is what I like about you, Andersson: your single-mindedness! A most commendable trait in this profession. I appreciate that you chafe at the delay, but do understand that we are on shaky ground here. I foresee no trouble with the approval, but we may well be forced to wait for funds and labour." He sighed in frustration. "It is, I fear, a difficult time to be in business."

"The process would be speeded up considerably were I to return to Sedan and deal with the mayor's office in person."

Monsieur Duchamp gave him a look that was shrewd but not unfriendly. "You liked the place that much, did you?"

Erik leaned back in his chair indifferently. "It is a pleasant enough town, monsieur, but my concern is solely for my project."

"I don't doubt it, Andersson, but for the moment we have need of your skills here in Paris. Fiaux's departure has left us with a number of impatient clients. Naturally I sympathise with your concerns about Sedan, and you may have my word that the moment we have the papers you will be back on it. But in the meantime, I would ask you to cast an eye over Fiaux's current files and assess the outstanding commissions. You may find several of them to your liking."

"May I," Erik said, barely concealing his derision at being so presumptuously ordered about. "I have no interest, monsieur, in working on other men's hand-me-downs."

Monsieur Duchamp considered him for a second as one might consider a flawed sketch, apparently unperturbed by the coldness of his response. Then he turned around, indicating Oppenord's exquisite Opéra of Mount Olympus on the wall behind him.

"You admire this drawing, I believe?"

"Some aspects of it. Perhaps."

"Its author designed this building for his patron, and was paid a significant sum for the work." Monsieur Duchamp turned back with a patient, quizzical expression that somehow made Erik both angrier and more uncertain.

"What do you imply?"

"Only that there is no shame in directing your talents to the benefit of another party beside yourself, my boy. We are artists, but we have also a duty to the client, and to our fellows here at the office. Allow me to be frank: I ask you to take on these projects because you are, quite simply, the best man for the job. It would be a pity if you turned them down because you perceived it to be an order. A great pity."

Erik felt the prickle of sweat beneath his bandage. The words pierced right to the cause of his anger, in unexpected understanding. He had been caught off-guard, still raw from the sleepless night and the evening before it. Monsieur Duchamp watched him expectantly, waiting for his decision as if it mattered to him. As if the fate of Erik Andersson mattered to him.

"Take the files, Andersson. I need your help."

The dry lump in his throat took Erik by surprise. "Very well," he said harshly. "I agree."

"Well, well," Monsieur Duchamp rumbled, turning gruff. "Off with you, then. There is work to be done."

Erik went. He felt he had lost a duel, but somehow, he did not seem to mind it. He returned to the office and sought out Fiaux to retrieve the files. The young man tried a few good-natured jokes about Erik's apparent inability to say 'no' – whether to his boss or to the ladies of Montmartre – but gave it up in the face of Erik's equanimity, and wished him luck.

Erik took the files back to his table, leafing through the unfinished plans and papers outlining the work to be done, and sat down to examine them thoroughly. He had decided on two projects that appealed to him – a private residence in the second arrondissement and some restoration work on the Ménilmontant church – and was considering the wisdom of taking on a third, when he looked at what he was doing, and stopped.

You are an architect, Christine had said at supper. I am, he had thrown back at her, thinking it a lie. But he saw now that it was true. This mask had grown to his face, to his very skin.

He reached for the drawer where he had thrown Christine's ring, but did not dare open it. This was his life now. This was all there would ever be.

And he wished with a crushing, desperate yearning for the feel of Christine's hands on the scar that was his real face. He slid his fingers under the edge of the bandage and felt the familiar deformity, the ruined skin slick and damp and hot from the layers of linen. He had a violent urge to be free of it, to take it off. The Moonlight Sonata weaved again through his mind and he did not know whether it was shame he felt, or hatred, or a haunting, unbearable love.

He wanted to be free. He wanted to be free.

He did not. He wanted Christine. But all he had left was freedom.

Erik forced himself to turn the page and return to work.

o o o

Christine lowered the latch on the washroom door and turned to the mirror. It was just a little round mirror above the basin, with stains of silver peppering its edges and absolutely nothing behind it except solid, tiled wall. She reminded herself that she was home. That nobody was watching. That nobody would care. That there was nothing to fear.

The girl in the mirror opened her dry, cracked lips, as she had all the previous times. She stared back at Christine, this paper-thin girl, and waited.

And waited.

Christine felt her lungs take in air, the way a sinking ship takes in water, and knew she would not sing. She tensed herself anyway, doing everything exactly as she knew was right, preparing to produce the opening notes of the Marseillaise even as her mind splintered in two and one part laughed at the other's pathetic exertions.

I can't, she thought at the mute creature staring back at her from the mirror. I can't, I can't, I can't.

In her head, the infernal Moonlight Sonata started again. Three rising notes, suffocating the Marseillaise. Every night since the supper she had gone to sleep hearing it and woke up with the melody still there, burning with Erik's unanswered question. The cruelty of it was that she caught herself forgetting the music sometimes, and then she would hum it quietly, until it returned. She had thought it a curse to feel him always with her, to fear that he could find her again – but knowing that he would not, that he had moved on, was a curse worse than the old one.

And she still could not sing.

"I can," Christine told herself firmly. Meg was right. She had to audition, they needed the money and this was no time to play games. It would be nothing like her aria in Hannibal and certainly nothing like Don Juan Triumphant. It was just a gala, a stupid concert with an easy song that she could have sung in her sleep two years ago.

And therein was the problem, Christine thought. One way or another, she had always sung in her sleep: in the halfway world of illusion, supported by the spirit of her father, guarded by the invisible angel he had sent. Now she was wide awake, every illusion turned to grisly reality, with nobody to support the notes or coax her voice from within her. It had happened before, after her father was gone – yet Christine knew this time it was worse.

This time, no angel's voice would whisper to her in the chapel as she came to light her candle. There would be no angel's song for her to hear. She recalled the day when she had first heard the strange sound in the chapel – a voice that burned through walls right to her skin, bitter and hot like tears. An angel weeps, she had thought then. A child she had been, an innocent little fool.

"Why are you crying, Angel?"

And the voice had stopped. He had heard her.

"Do not cry. My father said he is gone to Heaven, and that it is a good place. You come from Heaven, don't you?"

"No," he had said. Petulant, like a child. "From Hell."

"That isn't true," she objected, "for then you would be a demon, and demons don't cry."

"Perhaps I am a demon."

"You aren't a very clever angel," she said patiently. "I know you were crying. I heard you. Angels cry, and demons don't. Why do you cry, Angel?"

"I do not cry."

"I heard you," she insisted. "You are sad, and so you cry. It is all right to cry. My father said so, and Madame Giry says so."

"That is very clever of them."

"Well," she confided, "my father does not say it anymore, or if he does I cannot hear, because he is in Heaven. But he told me that when he went to Heaven he would send to me the Angel of Music. That is you, isn't it?"

Silence. But an alive kind of silence.

"Why are you sad, Angel of Music?"

"I am not."

That had been the moment, Christine thought. I am not. Not sad? Or – not the Angel of Music? A cruel thing, to give a child such a choice: to believe or to disbelieve. To permit herself to be deceived or to back away and run, run like all the others.

Had she known even then that by her words she would create the Angel of Music? She had. She had understood all along, a tiny spark of knowledge in the back of her mind. Yet her father had promised to send her the Angel of Music, and so there had to be an Angel. And so there was.

"If you are not sad, Angel, then why do you cry?"

A long time passed, until she thought he was gone. Then the voice returned, more resonant, lighter – an angel's voice in truth:

"Because you are sad, child, and you do not."

"I will sing for you, so you don't cry anymore. Will you sing with me, Angel?"

And so they had sung then, and later, and later. He listened, and perhaps because she knew he listened, she had found the right song. The song that had shrivelled away while her father lay dying came alight again inside her, like a guttering candle cupped between two hands, protected from the wind. Her angel told her to sing, and so she sang.

There had only ever been a voice, no body, no face, no fear except that old, sneaking spark of knowledge in the back of her mind that it was all a lie, ticking away like a clock set to strike at midnight. And she had known, God help her, she had known all along that midnight would come, the clock would strike, and the illusion would end. It had frightened her, so much that she did not want to think of it ending, would not think of it. It frightened her and it fascinated her, and it sent her straight to the mirror on that awful, wonderful night, to the place where illusions ended. The same place where, a few months or many centuries ago, she had taken a man's scarred face in her hands, and opened him to her.

She had created the Angel of Music. It was her own innocent, stupid fault. She had longed so deeply for the angel that she had taken a piece of herself, and out of it had fashioned his wings. Now she had no angel, and the man who had been him was gone. She had only herself – and it was not enough.

"Sing, you stupid girl," she snapped at the washroom mirror, and the reflection threw back her grimace, mindlessly.

"Christine!" Meg was hammering on the door. "Are you ready? We'll be late for rehearsal!"

Hastily, Christine turned the tap and splashed cold water on her face. "I'll be right there!" She could not do it. She could not face a theatre of people and be mute.

She unlatched the door and came out of the washroom.

Meg was standing there with both their ballet satchels at the ready, looking anxious. "We'll miss the omnibus."

"I... won't be able to audition." Christine hated saying those words; it was humiliating. "I can't do it."

"Never mind," Meg said as if it meant nothing. "Here, take your things, and hurry!" When Christine still hesitated, Meg gave her an impatient look uncannily like Madame Giry's: "Look, if you get there and don't want to do it, I'll just tell them you have laryngitis! Now come on!"

Christine gaped for a moment – then laughed, momentarily feeling better. She grabbed the bag with her gear and rushed out with Meg, leaping the stairs two at a time so that both of them all but tumbled past the concierge's lodge and out onto the street.

"Run run run!" Meg chanted, while they sprinted across the footpath and, surprisingly enough, managed to catch the omnibus after all.

They plopped themselves onto one of the two facing benches, ignoring the disapproving frowns turned on them by the sedate ladies in the remaining seats. The day was hot and the carriage was sweltering; Christine vainly wished that she and Meg could go upstairs to the open deck, but women were banned from riding there for fear of falls. She tried not to think about the audition.

The omnibus was still less than halfway to the Variétés when there was a loud commotion outside. Christine and Meg made for the window, squeezing themselves between the other passengers, as everyone attempted to see what was going on.

"Where are they all running?" asked the woman next to Christine, and they heard a man on the top deck shout down to the street:

"What's going on?"

"A telegram!" someone shouted back, jubilantly. "There's a telegram outside the Bourse!"

Christine saw new crowds join the existing ones, blocking off the traffic on the boulevard as their omnibus ground to a halt. Everyone seemed to be running in the same direction, towards the Stock Exchange where news of the war were always posted.

"Twenty-five thousand Prussians taken prisoner, and the Crown Prince among them!" someone hollered the contents of the telegram. Men cheered, throwing their hats high in the air.

"Victory! Victory! It's the end of the war! Vive la France!"

Christine sank down onto the bench. Her heart was thundering in her head, and she realised, shamefully, that her immense relief at this news was entirely selfish. There was no need for the audition now. She wouldn't have to try to sing after all.

As if her thought had been the cue for some unseen orchestra, the riotous crowd outside seemed to have fallen quiet.

"Christine, look!" Meg tugged at her elbow frantically, making space at the window. "It's Carlotta!"

And it was. Her open carriage had been stopped, marooned in the crowd some distance from their omnibus, and as Christine watched, Carlotta climbed up to stand high over the crowd, with the air of one who had done this many times before.

"What is she..." Christine began, and then heard the all-too-familiar strains of the song she had not been able to sing:

"Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons, marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!"

To arms, oh citizens!
Form up in battle ranks!
March on, march on!
And drench our fields
With their tainted blood!

Carlotta's ear-splitting soprano was not nearly so shrill when heard above the noise of the crowd, and the chorus blazed clearly through the summer air. Christine listened to this stirring call to death and blood and violence, and felt profoundly glad that the madness of the war was over.

The world would return to normal now, and she, too, would find some peace.

Yet when she and Meg finally made it to the Variétés, there was no peace there. People were whispering that the news was false and the telegram announcing the victory had been nothing but a rumour. Helena Weiss said that she had gone to the Bourse herself and had seen nothing posted there, a blank wall, but others shouted her down, swearing that they had seen it themselves and calling her a Prussian.

Helena turned out to be right. The next morning, Christine came outside with Meg to find an ominous silence in the street. The celebrations were over. Instead, the news-stands were surrounded by groups of grey-faced people, who did not speak to one another but only stood staring at the headlines, as if a terrible spell of illusion had shattered and they found themselves unable to comprehend the truth.

The army had been defeated at Wissembourg, at Spicheren, at Fröschwiller. The Prussians had entered France. The more optimistic papers suggested that this had been the plan all along, that General MacMahon intended to lead his troops north to the Belgian border, to catch the invading Prussians in a trap...

The Belgian border, Christine read, and felt a hard jolt. Erik had worked in a town on the Belgian border.

And he had been planning to go back.