I'm back! A big thank-you to everyone for your patience and your encouragement over the last few months.

A recap: we left Raoul witness to the battle of Beaumont, and Erik at the Egrots' house in Bazeilles just as the war arrives on the doorstep. Back in Paris, Mme Giry has discovered that Meg has been posing for Degas.

Chapter 29 – No Man's Land

It took hours for what was left of the 5th to trickle in from Beaumont. The 12th's first division had been sent to disengage it from the ambush and allow a retreat, but Raoul was not among them. Marshal MacMahon and General Douay required him at headquarters with the maps, arguing over river crossings – while a few short kilometres away men were being slaughtered by the thousand. The officers had to raise their voices over the constant boom of Prussian artillery. Raoul calculated the necessary routes, accounting for the lay of the land, forced to swallow his resentment and shame at thus being placed out of reach of danger. There were Prussians out there. The enemy had eluded them for weeks, and he was here, without a shot fired from his rifle. What was the use of the maps? It was obvious there was only one way out: through the fortified town of Sedan and towards Mézières, where they could regroup and face the Prussians.

When the final shells died away, the room resounded with oppressive silence. Nobody said that the 5th was no more; nobody spoke a word about the Prussians, still alive, still out there, invisible. After a while, they returned to the maps. Raoul excused himself; the Marshal dismissed him.

Outside the house, Raoul rolled a cigarette with shaking fingers and lit up. He joined a group of other officers, who were grimly watching the escaped soldiers already appearing on the Carignan road. They climbed the vineyard slopes of the camp in twos and threes: shaken, wild-eyed men, their uniforms turned to rags encrusted in blood and mud, moving in a stupor of horror. A man who must have been his company's bugler still carried his instrument, the polished brass spattered all over with red. He averted his eyes. Raoul would have liked to do the same. Instead, he was compelled to stare into the closed faces of the survivors as though he knew them, as though each one was walking out from the cellars of the Opéra. They had been men. Now they were slaves, ambushed and useless, freed from certain death by the intervention of others.

Raoul wished he was anywhere but here; anywhere but safe. The bitter smoke he dragged into his lungs burned its way down. It didn't matter. As soon as the 5th was in, they would be marching to Sedan and the northern fortresses, marching fast enough to outrun the Prussians. They would regroup and fight back. They would win.

The 12th broke camp within the hour and marched at the double throughout the rest of the day, without stopping for food. The nearness of the enemy was now a palpable pressure, a heaviness in the air, and the remnants of the 5th among them only added to the sense of urgency. The Prussians harassed their rearguard constantly, scattered gunfire following like laughter in their wake. The march became a stampede, a race to be the first to claim some defensible position, somewhere they could fight. They kept their heads down and marched.

When they finally crossed the river at Douzy that evening, Raoul was too exhausted to be relieved. Yet they had done it. They had made it here before the Prussians; there was no more gunfire, no enemy in sight. Every man Raoul could see, Cloutier, the other officers, were filthy with streaked dust and sweat. When they grinned at one another, their teeth were blinding in their grimy faces. The valley of Givonne lay wide open before them, peaceful and untouched. Ahead, patches of dark forest alternated with clusters of houses marking villages Raoul had last seen riding with his father as a boy. He could just make out the spire of a village church, and beyond that, the longed-for fortifications of Sedan. They had done it.

Cloutier nodded at the village ahead of them. "What's that one, Chagny?"

Raoul felt the dust crack around his mouth as he spoke.

"Bazeilles."

o o o

Another order rang out from the street, making Egrot and his wife jump identically, like spectators at the circus. Erik glanced over his shoulder, listening until the sound of running grew quiet.

"The attic," said Egrot, but Erik was a step ahead. He sprang up the narrow stairwell without bothering to wait for the huffing man and pulled himself through the trapdoor into the dusty space above.

The attic window opened onto part of the road to Sedan. Erik unlatched it, carefully in case the creaking shutters should attract the attention of some marksman below. The night revealed a crude barricade across the unpaved street. The soldiers around it were not wearing the red and navy of the French army, but Erik did not recognise the uniforms. Through the rustling treetops, he saw two other barricades under construction at either end of the street. He cursed inwardly. Getting out of here would be complicated, and it appeared he did not have much time. He looked again at the strange uniforms.

"It's pitch black out there, I can't see a thing!" hissed Egrot behind him, in a stage whisper that would have been heard across the street.

Erik turned sharply and clapped one hand to the man's mouth. Egrot held on to his rifle, as though seriously determined to protect his house. Instead of whispering, Erik pitched his own voice deep enough that it was near-inaudible:

"Be silent. There are sixteen men below, all in blue, more down the street. They are not Prussians."

Egrot blinked his rabbity eyes over the gag of Erik's hand. Erik released him, almost gagging himself at the contact with the man's slimy, sweaty skin. Egrot wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Marines," he mouthed, not quite a whisper. "Ours."

As though to confirm this, a string of curses in pure French came from below. Erik did not relax. If they were building barricades, they were not merely passing through; they were expecting Prussians. The war was here. Egrot seemed to have come to the same conclusion, because he moved away – but then instead of running downstairs, he went to the trunk. With ceremony, he lifted the second rifle out of the nest of household oddments and his son's boyhood toys, and offered it to Erik.

Erik watched Egrot hold the gun out to him: a sombre little king in dressing-robe and slippers, knighting his champion. Right. Ten minutes ago this man had been terrified of looters; now he would join the battle.

"Go back," Erik said, not cruelly. "Hide in the cellar with your wife."

Egrot chose to ignore him. His shining round face seemed to say, This is our moment, our fight. Time to protect our own.

Erik could not have agreed more. He took the gun, found his grip, and slammed it sideways.

When Egrot crumpled to the floor, Erik was almost certain he was merely unconscious, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to check. The Prussians might already be marching through Sedan.

He considered taking Egrot's other gun, but decided its weight did not justify its necessity. A quick search of the trunk revealed several magazines of cartridges; he took these along with a length of cord that could be of use. Shadow-quiet, he slipped out of the house, through the back door Egrot had used to leave open when they went fishing. The road to Sedan was barricaded, but there were small streets he knew by now, back alleys and gardens he could take. For someone accustomed to the blind tunnels of the Opéra, these were hardly an obstacle.

When he was some distance from the house, he glanced back, and saw a white oval in the kitchen window. Madame Egrot's face, watching him.

o o o

Madame Giry crossed one illuminated street after another, through clouds of twinkling laughter around the cafés, through flocks of glittering couples hurrying to the theatres. She did not dwell on the image of her daughter clutching her ballet things, her clothes still giving off the sharp smell of the artist's oils and turpentine. She did not ask herself how many other times Meg had told her she was visiting Helena Weiss, how long this has been going on. She thought of the day she had learned she was with child, of the oil paints and turpentine and of Jules dropping the posters he had been working on. A whole sheaf of ballerinas had slipped from his hands onto the backstage floor, ruined.

Twelve francs an hour, her daughter had said. That's what it was worth.

She might have understood it had it been about love. Had it been a young girl's foolish infatuation with art, a bohemian romance, she might have forgiven Meg for not knowing better – but it was nothing of the sort. Meg had taken things that were not hers, things that belonged to the world of the stage behind the footlights: the pain, the music, the endless training, the magic of it. She had sold ballet to pay the bills as another girl might have sold her mother's jewellery.

Madame Giry turned into the rue le Peletier. The boarded-up bulk of the Opéra rose like a spectre out of the morass of smaller buildings, more grey than black after months of decay. The doorways and colonnade were blocked, yesterday's auction banner drooping limply above the locked and barred main entrance. Dark shadows licked the masonry over the upper storey windows; above, pigeons flapped and cooed on the high ledges. The walls were plastered with newspapers and flyers of every kind, their proclamations obscenely loud in the theatre's graveyard:

"Nine Prussian Spies Arrested Today! Plot to betray Metz foiled!" read one beneath the circular windows of the old dormitories. And beside that: "Massacre at Beaumont, 5th corps destroyed! Paris, to arms!" Madame Giry tore both down as she passed, tossing the wads in the gutter.

Around the side of the building little had changed, save the boarded-up windows and the pile of rotting props behind the stairs where months ago she had come upon the former Opera Ghost. Even the walls were almost unscarred. The cobbled lane was dark and empty, just as though the night's performance was underway within. There was no sign of people – or, indeed, ghosts. This much was a relief. She could not be confronted with any more surprises this evening.

Stepping over the running gutter, she found the loose grille. It had not been boarded up. Madame Giry bent down and removed her gloves, tucking them carefully away, gripped the damp iron bars and pulled. The rusted hinges screeched in protest, then abruptly gave way. The Opéra lay ahead.

The passage was barely wide enough to accommodate an adult, but Madame Giry was in no mood to concern herself with the comfort of this egress. She had not so completely neglected her body that she could not drop from the stone sill down onto the dark wet floor below, nor had she forgotten her way around. The drop jolted her spine, but the pain was momentary. Water splashed under her shoes. In the space between the grille and the ruined stained glass window of the chapel, the lone gas-jet was dead, fringed with cobwebs, and the darkness smelled only of stray cats and mould. Madame Giry reached out and touched the wall. That was all. It was rough and chilly, and she stood like that for some time, running ungloved fingers over the old cement.

She did not open what remained of the stained glass window into the chapel. Beyond it would be stairs, then the side-corridor leading to her former apartment. She had seen them all after the fire, when they had come here to assess the damage. It was not a journey to be made twice. By touch, she located the ladder beside the stained glass window, and descended into the Phantom's passages.

Her footsteps echoed all the way down the damp corridor of the first cellar, quick and heedless of the noise. There were fewer rats than she had expected, perhaps because this place no longer held anything for them to eat. No doubt the former Opera Ghost would claim to have scared them all away personally.

Directly above her were the ballet practice rooms, with their austere tall windows, mirrors. She remembered her daughter, aged three, struggling to reach for the barre. Her daughter, aged seven, turning perfect fouettés one after another, four, five, six, until her intense concentration turned to disbelief, then to such shining joy it had taken Madame Giry's breath away. She had overheard Christine asking Meg afterwards, quiet and shy, "Teach me to do that." Twelve francs an hour. A bargain.

The door to the storage room where the old ballet posters were kept was open. Madame Giry paused outside, in case some squatters had made this unlikely place their home, but there were no sounds save the occasional creaking of the wrecked building. In the mouldy darkness, she examined the boxes that lined the wall, throwing each lid open and searching inside. To her disappointment, the older ones at the back were empty, presumably sold at the auction. The more recent ones were untouched.

Without a candle, Madame Giry could not tell what posters remained, but she trusted whatever she found would be enough to keep Meg's interest: a whole sheaf of ballerinas, not constructed in a studio but alive, onstage. Jules Robuchon had never sketched in a studio, had never needed to pay a ballerina to pretend to be what she was. He could find the true line of a movement, catch the fleeting pain behind a girl's smile. And she had loved him for it, for a time. When other girls had searched for wealthy patrons, she had danced, and Jules had painted her dancing. She had never taken a sou from him. But Meg was not her. Her daughter had made her own choice.

Collecting several posters at random, Madame Giry rolled them up tightly and retraced her steps back to the surface. She did not bother closing the boxes behind her. Let the past rot with the building.

In the street, two working-class men with buckets of glue were pasting new placards over the old, the text blaring something or other about the war. One cracked a joke; they both laughed. Madame Giry swept past them, carrying her own posters.

o o o

Erik was nearly outside Bazeilles when he heard the first gunshots. He had taken winding paths behind houses and gardens to avoid the barricades, and although he doubted that he was much closer to Sedan now than he had been before, he was at least out of the worst of the barricaded area. From his place in the lee of a hedge he could not see the men who had fired, but it sounded close. The shots woke the dogs in the entire town; their frenzied barking filled the range of Erik's hearing, every octave. The next volley of bullets found its mark and then even the dogs could not disguise the shrill cry of a man struck down. The sound kept echoing in Erik's head, finding a harmony. There were other men running now, more shots.

The sun had not yet risen and the night had barely thinned, yet the firing continued. Erik kept moving. He was no part of this. His courthouse in Sedan was what mattered, without it he was nothing but a freak, an escaped murderer, not an architect at all. He had to make sure it was untouched. He had built his new world so carefully from the ground up; he was not about to let it go, not for anything. The Prussians were in Bazeilles; very well, that was fine with him. He did not intend to stay here and wait to lose his courthouse. Two rifles against an army were odds no fool would take.

Slipping along the hedge, then along the whitewashed wall of the adjacent house, Erik peered into the street. A barricade bristled with blue-uniformed soldiers aiming their rifles, in the distance were others in plumed helmets. Those helmets marked them as Bavarians rather than Prussians, but they were the same mob. Even with his sharp eyes, Erik could not make out much of what was going on; a haze of foul-smelling smoke concealed much of the barricade. He surmised the Marines had orders to occupy the village and hold it against the enemy, but as he could not tell where the Bavarians were coming from, this was little use in helping him get out. Possibly he should have paid more attention to Egrot's newspapers.

Something whizzed past, like a beetle. Erik had ducked back behind the wall before he was consciously aware it had been a bullet. It glanced off a tree, splintering bark. More bullets followed, then a wave of screams from the barricade, an order to "Hold!", then nothing. He crossed the street in a half-crouch, a hunchbacked spider, and continued past the next house while the quiet spell held. The bullets were left behind.

In stops and starts, he made his way to the fields west of the village, keeping back from the Sedan road. The dew-covered greenery – beets, radishes, whatever the hell it was – was planted in neat rows; his shoes sank half to the ankle between them. He was running without moving, getting nowhere. At this rate it would take another two hours to get to Sedan. By now the sun was rising and a bright line had edged over the mass of cloud behind Bazeilles, silhouetting the village. White puffs of smoke rose over the rooftops where the barricades were.

Erik wiped the sweat that poured into his eyes, nearly dislodging his bandage in the process. The village was waking up. He had passed people coming out into the streets in their nightclothes to offer cups of water and wine to the soldiers; others dragging stones, filling sacks with dirt, anything to add to the barricades. The more sensible ones shut their windows, barricading themselves indoors.

He could not see the Egrots' house. There were too many roofs and trees in the way, and in any case, Egrot and his wife were no doubt holed up in their cellar by now, just as he had advised.

On the road below him there was a constant rattling noise, the sound of many booted feet hitting packed dirt. Leaving the field, Erik crouched down in the tall grass and looked down to the base of the slope, towards the valley. The troops on the Sedan road were French. They poured into the valley in an endless river, a thousand, fifty thousand, he had no way to judge the numbers from where he hid. Thick dust hung over them. The column snaked into the shadowy distance, its head vanishing into the retreating night in the direction of Sedan. He had imagined soldiers marching in step, but these ones staggered and lurched and swayed like no men he had ever seen, barely lifting their feet. As Erik watched, a man tripped over a stone and sprawled face-down in the dirt by the side of the road, asleep. His cap rolled away.

Erik shadowed the column as far as Balan, the next village between Bazeilles and Sedan, careful to remain concealed by the grass and trees that lined the road. Getting into Sedan itself would present no real difficulty. There were other civilians among the soldiers, villagers seeking the relative safety of Sedan's fortified walls, townspeople hurrying home. Erik did not join them. The morning light made him aware of his state of undress: all he had on were the rumpled shirt and trousers he had fallen asleep in, now caked in dust and dirt from the streets and fields. He imagined this to be the reason for his growing discomfort, the sensation that he was walking naked out into the light. It was not the real reason.

The truth was, he had reached a no man's land. Ahead lay Sedan and his courthouse, a hollow structure of beams and stone that was no more defensible than Egrot's pathetically exposed house back in Bazeilles. Just what was it he intended to do, truly? Would he stand atop the construction site with a rifle, like Egrot in his attic? Or would he rather scramble about the scaffolding like a rat in a maze, waiting for a Prussian shell to send the whole thing to bury him alive?

He turned around. There was Bazeilles in the distance, its church spire dark-grey under the overcast sky, veiled in smoke. The silence of it was unnerving: he could not hear the battle, only the birds in the tree above him, the wind flapping the back of his shirt, the soldiers trudging along the road below.

Erik's throat closed up, making it hard to breathe. He had made a mistake somewhere. He had walked right out of the architect's skin, and now he was here between Sedan and Bazeilles, in the middle of nowhere, a ghost. He did not know what he was supposed to do.