Thanks again for supporting this fic, guys – your reviews and comments mean the world to me. Those who complained about the lack of Erik in the last chapter: take heart. All Erik, all the time, coming right up!
Chapter 28 – To The Death
The day had been unseasonably warm, and the construction site stank of a hundred unwashed provincials sweating into their work-blouses. Still, Erik acknowledged, they did well enough. The structure was mostly scaffold and heavy beams, but already the stonemasons had started to flesh out its skeleton, and Erik's sharp eyes could now discern, in the twisting galleries of stone, the ground floor layout from his own plans. There would be the doorways, the lobby, the mandsarded roof that was at once modern and perfectly in tune with the Louis XV façades around it. His courthouse was beginning to take shape. Silhouettes of builders moved noisily between the beams in billows of white dust, shouting to one another, and the construction site resounded with the combined din of their voices, hammering, sawing, chiselling, all merging into a continuous ear-splitting crash like the percussion section of an orchestra being struck by a falling piano.
If they had thought his opera loud, they should have heard his architecture.
Peeling the edge of the bandage from his scars, Erik rubbed at the corner of his lip. The chalky dust got into his mouth, squeaked on his teeth and caked onto the exposed skin of his face, where it mingled with perspiration, so that by the end of each day he and all the builders had enough plaster on their faces to pass for the chorus in Il Muto. He was torn between a distaste for the dirt, and the thrill of seeing so many faces unintentionally masked. In the noise and the dust, they were working. Working for him.
He was not unaware of the war. Every day brought news of the Prussians skulking around the countryside, of ambushes, minor skirmishes, even a battle rumoured to have wiped out the entire French 5th Corps at the nearby town of Beaumont. None of it concerned him, however. He had a courthouse to build.
Stepping between some scaffolding, Erik raised a hand to attract the attention of an engineer working above. "Up there! What's keeping you?"
"All done, sir. Looks good!"
The youth swung himself off the beam, gripping a rope as nimbly as a monkey. The sight annoyed Erik; he did not want to feel he was running a circus here. The engineer thumped on the ground, throwing the rope aside, and wiped the sweat from his face with the crook of his elbow.
"The lads did good work, Monsieur Andersson, the beams are sound. We can start laying the pipes here."
"And on the rue Saint-Michel side?"
"There too."
Erik dismissed him with a nod and headed around to the rue Saint-Michel, where the façade of the courthouse would eventually rise.
Half a dozen men in caps and blue work-blouses were unloading sections of lead pipe from a wagon harnessed to a team of horses, while a group of ladies watched them curiously from the pavement. Erik resolutely ignored them. Bored by their small-town amusements, the good people of Sedan made it their business to stroll into the rue Saint-Michel at least once a day, there to position themselves in the path of the builders and exclaim over the speed of construction. The men predicted with assumed authority that the building would be finished in record time; the women chattered and pointed from behind the dainty handkerchiefs they held to their mouths to block out the dust. Extraordinary, he heard them say, how fast it was happening. Supernatural.
Supernatural, Erik thought sardonically. Certainly; whenever someone got things done, it was always first impossible, then supernatural. Three weeks ago, this same crowd had declared that it was preposterous to begin construction at such a dangerous, uncertain time, and that Monsieur the Parisian Architect was a fool to think he would get so much as a single stonemason for his work. They had been silenced quickly enough. Egrot, with all the smiling persistence of a short and fat battering ram, had secured workers for Erik within a day of his arrival in Bazeilles, recruiting from surrounding villages men who had lost their jobs to the general apprehension about the war. Erik paid well and they worked willingly, with all the zeal of men with nowhere else to go. Having had the foresight to incorporate into his design the existing foundation laid by his predecessor, Erik cut the time-consuming task of ripping out the stone and laying it anew. Day by day, the courthouse rose.
"Good day, Monsieur Andersson!" trilled one of the women who were watching the pipes being unloaded, giving a little wave at Erik's approach. She was young, plump, and wore a gigantic yellow hat with a brim that would not have fit through an omnibus door. Still, this was his audience, such as it was, and Erik supposed a bit of gratitude was in order.
He spared her the sight of him smiling through the cracked layer of dust, and instead opted for a stiff bow. "Good day, madame. If you wouldn't mind moving – these men are working."
She gave a musical laugh. "It's mademoiselle, actually. Mademoiselle Birkon, my father runs the café near the mill."
"Delighted. Do step back from the horses, mademoiselle, unless you mean to supplement their diet with your hat."
Mademoiselle-Not-Madame Birkon sprang back with a cry of dismay, just in time to keep the horse's soft lips from reaching her hat-brim. Her friends pulled her further away from the workmen and from Erik, giggling behind their handkerchiefs and eyeing his bandaged face with open curiosity, as though he was a part of the building.
Erik passed them without comment. The ability to ignore their bothersome staring was perhaps not the most noticeable of his recent accomplishments, but he felt particularly satisfied by it. He still did not like crowds, nor did he feel any obligation to like them; but thus far, their hats and handkerchiefs had shown no sign of turning into muskets and pitchforks. Gone were the days when he would turn away from every oversized hat and its wearer. If they were awed by his efficiency, he could do little to dissuade them.
The women's chatter behind him was soon drowned out by the construction noise, and Erik continued inspecting the site in relative peace. Past the end of the street, the late sunlight was turning fortress walls into liquid bronze, the exact colour of Christine's eyes in the gaslight—
No. Not that.
He twitched his bandage into place, swallowing dust. Bad enough that he had sent her music, that first evening in Bazeilles. Bad enough that every night seethed with dark, secret memories of Christine trapped in his room. He would not stand for being pursued by day as well, he refused to be. Tell me, her voice brushed his mind, a lover's voice, hot in his ear. What was your mother's name? Tell me about the gypsies, about the Phantom... Give me all your secrets.
He was not listening.
The devil take it all, he wanted to see her again.
"Monsieur Andersson!" called the foreman, a hulking fellow with rolled-up sleeves and a nasal accent that marked him a Breton.
"Verdier," Erik acknowledged. Grateful to be pulled back to himself, he listened closely to Verdier's concerns about obtaining the right sort of glass for the rose window and about getting the bricks locally, in case train lines should be interrupted.
"Minor hold-ups aside, we're well on track," the foreman finished, scratching his bristly moustache. "Unless the Prussians get in the way of the supplies, I'd say we should have the structural work done in four months."
"Four months," Erik repeated, neutrally.
"Yes sir, we're working fast. I better call a halt here; the sun is going down."
Erik let Verdier release the workers and see to securing the site for the night. Four months, he thought later, trundling in a squeaky carriage towards the flickering distant lights of Bazeilles. Four months for the major work, and at least as long again for the rest: for decoration, sculptures, paving and design of the interior spaces. None of that would absolutely require his continued presence in Sedan, but all of it loomed heavy between him and Paris – and even the faintest possibility of seeing Christine.
The courthouse was a test, he knew. He knew. It was the condition he had set himself for his return from exile; its completion would confirm him an architect in deed rather than in word. Then, and only then, could he come back to Paris, triumphant and with every right to a little thing like inviting Mademoiselle Daaé to supper. Christine Daaé would have nothing to fear from Monsieur Erik Andersson, Architect.
In Bazeilles, Madame Egrot and her husband welcomed him in their cosy, old-fashioned dining-room, with the same warmth as they did every night. After all, he was their friend, the man who would wield their son's hunting gun to protect their wine and potatoes from would-be looters. Erik let them believe it. With the dust washed from his face and hands, he felt even more the architect here than at the construction site. He slipped easily into his chair, politely fielding the usual enquiries about his progress, playing his part in their conversation. "I trust you have had a pleasant day, Madame... No, I haven't read it yet... The Prussians in Raucourt, indeed? Yes, quite worrying. The turbot is delicious, Madame Egrot, more than the equal of any I've had in Paris." He was pleased with himself, almost at peace.
Madame Egrot, with her pale features and the quick movements of a small animal, served him herself, studying his bandaged face with a vague hope in her eyes, as though his supposed survival after being shot was a talisman for the return of her son. Her husband meanwhile drew Erik into the usual discussions of the war, which continued over coffee in the parlour. Just when Erik felt he had humoured the man long enough, Egrot set his cup aside:
"But, my friend, there is one bit of good news in all this. Our cellar is all finished; the workers left this afternoon."
"I'm aware of that," Erik said. "They are, after all, my workers." To allay Egrot's fears about looters, Erik had condescended to design a concealed cellar for the couple's more valuable possessions. He had intended it merely as incentive for Egrot to find the construction workers quickly, but the couple's delight at the idea knew no bounds. Imagine, they said, an architect from Paris designing their cellar!
"Come; take a look." Egrot said, beaming. "I must have the architect's opinion!"
"A secret shared is a secret lost, Egrot. I have no need to see it. Believe me when I say that I've seen more than enough cellars in my line of work."
"What secret? It was you that designed it. Besides which, I dare say I trust you a great deal more than those workers who built it. Pauline!" Egrot called. He knocked on the kitchen door, where Madame Egrot was talking with the cook. "We're invading Rachel's kitchen for a minute!"
Erik stood aside, half-amused and half-uncomfortable as the women stepped out. "Take a candle," Madame Egrot advised, in the thin-lipped way that suggested she disapproved of her husband dragging this big-city gentleman around kitchens and cellars. "Forgive him, Monsieur Erik; he is like a child with a new playpen."
The entrance to the cellar was in a corner of the kitchen. Erik took a lit candle from the counter and followed Egrot down into what appeared at first a regular store-room filled with wine bottles and sacks of potatoes – until one located the niche in the wall that hid a trapdoor, designed to be all but invisible to anyone who was not expecting it there. This opened into a short corridor and then, Erik knew, into a second, smaller cellar. That was all.
"Fascinating. Four walls and a door." He tried not to breathe too deeply. The raw smell of earth and the burning candle wax were bringing back memories; he struggled against them.
"But what an ingenious design," Egrot enthused. "Look, you cannot see it at all except if you are standing right over here."
"I know," Erik said tightly. "I designed it. Excuse me, I am going upstairs."
He felt better upstairs. Madame Egrot served more coffee and they sat in the little parlour, with the steady monotony of the Egrots' conversation chasing away the ghosts. Erik gulped the scalding coffee and let it burn a trail to his stomach. The past was in the past; it was done with; he had made himself an architect. He was Erik Andersson, the architect of Sedan's courthouse, people knew his name and he tipped his hat to them in the street. He would finish the courthouse. He would be able to see Christine again.
The ghosts returned at night. Then, in the stuffy dark room with the window shut against even the faintest sliver of light, the musty smell of the cellar filled Erik's mouth and nostrils. He was small again, half boy and half man, alone in the underground grotto near the lake, while above him the Opéra pulsed with light and music, a frenetic paradise of laughing people.
The grotto was gradually changing. He was furnishing it with beautiful things, scraps of props and scenery he pilfered from the storage cellars above, occasionally from under the very noses of the stagehands. He was so good at it that he knew he had never needed help, least of all from the ballerina who had showed him this place, only to leave him here alone. She had kept trying to talk to him after she rejected his invitation, but he never answered, and after a while she stopped. He had not seen her for a long time, not since she had become fat with child and disappeared. It made no difference. He had learned to read and figure just fine by himself, words and music both, listening and watching obsessively from spaces in the rafters or behind walls. There was nobody in the vast paradise of the Opéra whose knowledge of it could compare with that acquired by the Devil's Child. Regretfully, he recalled that the ballerina had used to call him Erik.
The footsteps appeared one night after he returned from a trip upstairs for provisions. Dark stains on the shore. Whoever it was must have waded across the canals. The prints were wide and sparse, a man's tread. Much bigger than him, Erik judged, just from the pattern of those boots. He knew, because Paolo the gypsy had worn boots that left imprints in the sawdust, and they were exactly the same size. The prints peppered his house, stamping on things that belonged to him alone. Grabbing a coil of rope, he followed them upstairs.
He could not remember the way the stagehand had looked or what words he had screamed – only the low, bubbling F sharp that distorted his whole face with its bulging eyes. Being dragged down twelve sharp-edged steps on the end of a rope shut him up. Erik shoved the corpse into the lake; it scraped on the cement and made a gentle splash, and clouds of blood pinkened the water around the split scalp. He stared at them, calmly, until all of a sudden his stomach lurched and he gagged – because he was pitiful, weak, he deserved to be found. The corpse stared at him in mute horror; it knew too much; he had to get rid of it.
In one of the many canals in the labyrinth of flooded corridors, they found a dead man. Some said it was suicide. Others said it had been a ghost.
The stairs could not be scrubbed clean, and so the Opera Ghost had been forced to obtain a carpet to cover them. It was a rich red weave, perfect for one who was the soul of the Opéra, but it demanded things to go with it. A polished leather mask instead of sack-cloth, a black wig to cover the rest; costumes, gloves and mirrors. Mirrors most of all, because mirrors never lied. The Phantom had looked into a mirror and believed his eyes.
When the ballerina returned to the Opéra with her child, he forgave her. She understood about masks, having exchanged Mademoiselle for Madame, and so the Phantom found her useful. Only sometimes, the smell of raw earth and blood returned to claim him, and he fled up to his hiding space behind the wall of the chapel, where he had first entered the Opéra. At one of those times, he had found Christine.
The night was peaceful in Bazeilles, in the shuttered bedchamber where Erik lay prone on his back, stretched thin, hardly breathing.
He exhaled and closed his eyes, and there again was Christine, but not the child, not the angel. She was a woman, beautiful, naked as the statues in the Opéra, her eyes burning amber and bronze in the gaslight and her cool fingertips insistent on the awful contours of his face, eroding it like rain, like the splash of water in a lake. Give me all your secrets, and her voice was impatient and so full of desire that, God help him, he did. He told her of murder and she kissed his mouth, hard, demanding more; he told her of the gypsies, of his sack-cloth mask, of pain, humiliation, hunger, woe, and of the night he had first heard her voice and knew that this, at last, was his reward. He held her delicate face, gripped the back of her neck, the round of her shoulder, claiming her body, her voice, all of her for himself. She was his, she belonged to him, he had wrought that voice from her and she would never be free, never. But she was not listening, she thrust him down and raised her face to the light, the angle of her jaw exposing her throat, and then there was only her unbearable beauty and the heat and the pressure and the fire of release that tore from him the last of his pathetic defences.
My God, Erik thought, subsiding. The demons leached slowly from his body, laughing at the tangled sheets in his clenched hands.
He groped blindly for the candle, lit it. The room floated in shades of gold. He went shakily to the table, sat down. There was writing paper there, and ink. Egrot had given him plenty for his letter to Christine, but Erik had sent her only music, goddamned music, always music for her voice. The paper had been sitting on his desk ever since, untouched.
Dipping a pen in ink, he tore a sheet of paper free and scrawled: "Christine, tell me about Sweden. Tell me about your father." Give me all your secrets.
He fetched the candle and held the paper to the flame, afraid that in the morning he might have sent it. There was a low rumble outside, like distant thunder. Perhaps it would rain. Then tomorrow, he would return to the construction site and there would be no dust, and everyone would work unmasked. Erik leaned across the table to open the shutters, letting in a gust of cool air that extinguished the candle and scattered the letter's ashes. He sat back, completely worn out, and breathed the smells of the leaves from the night-time garden, waiting for the rain.
What roused him was a vague unease, a sort of sixth sense he had long ago learned to trust. He listened. The thunder was still there, closer now. And sure enough, somebody was coming upstairs.
He swung the door open before Egrot could knock.
The man jumped back so fast he nearly hit the opposite wall. He clapped one chubby hand to his heart, the lamp in the other throwing startled shadows on his face and dressing-robe.
"Good God, Andersson! You could give a man a heart attack, leaping out of the dark like that."
"With pleasure," Erik agreed. His eyes darted to the sash across Egrot's shoulder. "Ah. But there are more certain means of murder, are there not? For example – with a rifle?"
He advanced light as a cat and caught the sash of Egrot's hunting gun, nearly jerking the man off his feet. "You had better be suicidal."
Egrot's usually ruddy face turned the same colour as the plaster behind him. Erik ripped the rifle from him like a toy. He flicked the strap in his hand, forming a noose.
"Bah-bah-but," Egrot babbled, "But you said – Andersson, you promised..."
"How much! The reward, how much is it?"
Egrot blinked at him rapidly, pink-eyed as a rabbit. "Re-reward?"
He had trusted this man. A frightful roar was building in Erik's ears, growing to a crescendo; he tried to curse, but it came out as a sob.
"I was an architect, damn you!"
He raised the noose, hearing nothing now but the roar of blood in his head, knowing in this split second that he had never been anything but himself, that he was born a freak and would die a freak. His breath hitched in his throat. The roar became a rapid barrage of sharp sounds, like running feet.
"There it is again, they must have entered the town!" Egrot exclaimed suddenly, as though he was no longer aware of the noose. He weaselled out from Erik's surprised grasp. "That noise, that's soldiers. You were awake – you must have heard it too... Andersson, what's the matter with you? Give me back my gun."
Erik felt the rifle taken from his yielding hands. His mind flailed for purchase, trying to reconcile Egrot's words with his purpose. Then, like an illusion of a blank wall snapping into sudden focus, he understood.
"The Prussians are here."
"Yes, man, yes!" Egrot's nervous excitement made his voice shrill as a woman's. "Whatever is the matter with you that you go taking my gun and talking gibberish at me?"
"With me?" Now his surprise had worn off, Erik was incensed. "Need I remind you that it was you who turned up at my door at three in the morning with a loaded firearm!"
"Need I remind you," Egrot retorted, rabbit eyes flashing, "That you swore, Andersson, solemnly swore, to help me protect my home? You cannot mean to have another of your fishing incidents at a time like this!"
"You know nothing about it!"
"Monsieur Erik?"
Erik raised his eyes to see Madame Egrot at the top of the stairs, hastily throwing a wrap over her dressing-grown. She looked between the men, puffy-eyed and blinking behind the lamp. "What is it? What about the Prussians?"
"Nothing, Pauline, go back to bed." Egrot's voice trembled far too much to be soothing. "I'll just go up to the attic and have a look. Likely it is our own men moving through."
Madame Egrot hugged her wrap closer, crossing her arms. "Even if that's true," she said after a moment's pause, "the Prussians can't be far behind."
Egrot gave up on his attempt to be a dutiful husband and resumed panicking. "They must have turned north from Raucourt. They couldn't have marched this fast, it's impossible. Impossible!"
Just then, there was the sound of someone yelling outside, and a shouted order.
"Oh, my God... There is going to be a battle, isn't there." Madame Egrot's voice seemed to be begging someone to contradict her.
Her husband clutched at his rifle, and said nothing. The two of them turned to Erik, like twin statues of Panic and Terror in some forgotten temple. They seemed to be waiting for him to say something.
Erik's mouth twisted, and he laughed. "It seems the mob has arrived."