Thanks for your support, guys. I hope you're still enjoying the story! Much thanks to LadyKate (and her violinist father) for help with music theory.
Chapter 33 – Being Yourself
The polished wood of the rifle stock buzzed in Erik's tired hands, as though he was holding some peculiar musical instrument after a long recital. He tried to believe it, and could not. His shoulder was bruised from the gun's recoil. His clothes reeked of gunpowder. He needed a bath. The Egrots were asking questions, moving things about, creaking up and down the floor. The maid set to changing the wounded Vicomte's bandages while he moaned through his teeth and beat his hands against the bare wooden floor. It was all so ugly. Evening advanced, draping its black crepe of smoke and shadows. Kill them now, Erik thought. He dangled the idea before himself like a rope, testing whether it held any appeal. Kill them and escape. What difference would four more bodies make?
He did not want to kill them. He did not want to have killed anyone at all, not Bavarians, not Prussians, not even drunken old Buquet. He wanted a bed, a room, an architect's sketchbook covered in green velvet, Christine's shoes by the foot of their bed, the smell of her hair, her sleepy voice calling his name. He wanted these things so much they stuck in his throat. But damn it, what he was going to get was more death, death without count, distant, ugly, faceless murder. Perhaps it was not murder for the Vicomte. Perhaps if you were born into silken sheets with a family crest, killing was the work of a hero, and women adored the sight of a bloodied uniform. Perhaps the Vicomte would return to Paris and Christine would love him again, love him all the more for his bravery.
In two long strides Erik crossed the attic to where the Vicomte lay stretched out on the mattress Egrot had vacated. Having proclaimed himself sufficiently recovered to leave his bed, the master of the house was helping his wife to drag the trunk in the centre of the room to make a table for their supper. Erik glanced in their direction, but they paid him no mind. He squatted beside the Vicomte. He did not bother with preliminaries.
"What are you doing in Bazeilles?"
The Vicomte rolled his eyes up to try to see Erik. The whites glinted like bone in the dark. "Fighting," he said tersely.
Erik wondered that he did not ask the maid for more wine to dull the pain. "Men of your class are not conscripted."
"I am... an officer. Commissioned." He spoke in short gasps, swallowing half his words.
"Ah. You father bought a place."
"I have... own... money. It's... of no concern... to you."
Madame Egrot had thrown a starched white tablecloth over the old trunk, a ridiculous little scrap of domestic comfort. Egrot was helping her tuck the corners under. Glancing down, Erik saw the Vicomte was watching them too.
"You think your uniform will impress her, Vicomte? You'll come home covered in glory and bandages and Christine will fling herself into your arms?"
"No," the Vicomte replied quietly and, Erik could not help hearing, sadly. "She will not. Let me be, Anders... Andersson. Please."
"Admit you're a murderer," Erik said. "Say it."
"It isn't... murder. They're... soldiers. Like... me."
"It's death."
"Yes," the Vicomte said. He raised his eyes again to where Erik sat. "That night... at the café. Were you... following us? Her?"
Slowly, Erik shook his head. After a moment, the Vicomte returned to watching the Egrots set up the table. He had accepted the answer. His face was pasty and his hair lank and stringy with sweat; were it not for the officer's uniform, he would have appeared every bit the drowned rat arriving at the portcullis in the cellars of the Opéra. Erik would never have believed he had this much fight left in him. Remembering that portcullis, he supposed he should have expected it.
"You asked why I'm here," the Vicomte said. Erik had to strain to make out the words. "It's... my duty."
Erik knew he should laugh, but he did not feel like it.
"Why... are you here?" the Vicomte went on.
Erik was saved from having to answer by Madame Egrot announcing supper. He rose smoothly to his feet and helped Egrot to turn the Vicomte's mattress around so he could sit up against the wall. It must have jolted his side, but the Vicomte made no sound of protest.
They made a peculiar dinner party. With no lamps lit for fear of alerting snipers or looters, they sat around the old trunk in the dark, like gypsies clustered in a tent, yet the crisp linen of the tablecloth and the bright silverware upon it gave them the dignity of kings. The maid brought the same cold meat, bread and butter they had had earlier that day, but she had also found some cheese and apples and even chocolate, and had managed to make coffee. Erik could smell it brewing in the pot and the aroma was almost enough to drive the smell of death from the attic. Almost.
"Our last supper," said Egrot, raising his wineglass.
Erik looked up from his own glass, surprised at his gallows humour, but Egrot was apparently in earnest. "You are certain they will be back, Andersson."
"Quite." 'Andersson', Erik noted, not 'my friend'. He was annoyed that it should matter.
"And there are snipers outside."
"Most probably."
"Then the women will hide in the cellar, and we'll pile more furniture against the doors and windows," Egrot decided. "I'll keep those savages from my house as long as I can, Andersson. I will not sit in my corner and have them just walk in. I will not."
It was dawning on Erik what he was suggesting. "And then? You cannot be serious, Egrot. You have twenty rounds. Your heroic stand would not last five minutes."
"And then... what comes will come." Egrot downed the rest of his wine in a single, terrified gulp. Erik felt ill. He could not be proposing this.
"And you agree to this?" he demanded of Madame Egrot.
"Perhaps they will not return," she said, but it was a feeble lie that even she did not believe. "We are holding the town. There must be reinforcements coming."
Erik stared at her, then at her stubborn husband with his injured head, then at the Vicomte, who was clutching a piece of bread without eating it, and seemed scarcely to hear them. He could not believe it. They were all mad. If possible, the Vicomte seemed even paler now, and his fresh bandage had grown a dark stain in the centre.
"For God's sake, give him some water." Erik's mouth refused to move. The mask was pressing on his jaw, making it difficult to speak. "He has lost a lot of blood."
The Vicomte winced to hear his weakness exposed, but he clutched at the offered glass and drank like a tippler kept for days without his wine. His dirty throat opened and closed around the water. Madame Egrot poured some more.
"If you wish to leave now," Egrot said to Erik, "if you know a way, that is... I shall not stop you."
"If I wished to leave, Egrot, you couldn't stop me. Pass me that gun. I am going out."
"What? Where?"
"To rob the dead, just as the Vicomte suggested." He rose to his feet. After a moment, Madame Egrot reached for the rifle; he took it from her pale, reluctant hands.
The Vicomte spoke up. "I did not suggest... you do it. I will go."
"Oh, be quiet!" Erik snapped, shouldering the rifle. "Don't pretend to fear my death, Vicomte. It is laughable."
"I do not fear... your death! I fear..." He hesitated, and Erik knew he loathed being forced to say it. "My own."
For a poisonous moment, Erik allowed himself to feel the full blast of triumph. He understood what the Vicomte feared. The Phantom would abandon him here to his fate with the Egrots, with no ammunition, with nothing but the slim hope of being passed over when the battle resumed. The Vicomte would rather face the dangers outside or bleed to death in the effort, than wait for death to come and claim him. He was actually begging him to come back. It felt so right, so – perfect, to have his former enemy in his power...
But it was not right at all. It was ugly and pathetic to be begged for anything by a man who had crawled from the cellar to the attic with a chunk of flesh torn from his hip, and who even now refused to faint.
"You underestimate me, Vicomte," Erik said. "I will return."
He left them staring after him as he descended into the depths of the house. On the stairs, the maid fluttered to the banister and clung there like a grey moth, watching him pass. Erik doubted the girl could see anything but a thicker darkness where he moved and the sharp contour of his rifle, but she stayed on the stairs all the same, watching, as if she too thought he was running away.
Dread trailed after him with the weight of her stare. She had no idea what he was capable of, Erik thought. None of them had the slightest idea what they were making him do.
The kitchen window was barricaded with boxes stacked high against it, and a cupboard blocked the door. Erik put his shoulder to it and shoved it aside. It scraped hard on the floorboards and threatened to collapse on top of him, but gave way with relative ease. Had the Bavarians tried coming through here, this sorry barricade might have held them off for all of half a minute.
Here was the door. Erik closed his eyes for a moment and took a long breath. He could do what they all expected and run. Run to Paris, to Christine. It was more a wisp of instinct than a plan. His fingers itched with the desire to remove the dirty, useless mask, but that would be mere theatre. Could he have ripped the very face from his skull, it would have changed nothing. He was what he had always been. No man could run from that.
The door was noisier in opening than he would have believed possible. Erik waited, counting to fifty, to a hundred. Nothing stirred. Silently, he rigged the door to remain ajar and edged into the night-time garden. He worked the rope from the pocket where he had secreted it when he had first taken Egrot's gun. His hands remembered the knot. The wind must have changed; he could no longer smell the burning houses, and the wild fragrances of night flowers enveloped him completely. He flowed down the stairs into the garden. Not far from the porch, two guns lay in the wet grass where they had been abandoned; one a gleaming chassepôt, the other an older German needle gun. The bodies that should have held them were gone, taken away to be either healed or buried. A shoulder pack lay open nearby with its contents spilling out. A grey half-eaten biscuit, swollen with damp. A messtin.
Erik reached down for the strap of the nearest rifle. He would need ammunition to fit. A slick misshapen lump slid over the barrel and into the grass, swarming with black ants. Erik caught sight of a fingernail and a partly-severed tendon, and tugged the strap towards him sharply, dislodging the rest.
The tiny click of a rifle being cocked nearby was all he had needed to hear. The sniper never had time to move his hand on the trigger; in an instant Erik was upon him, a white ghost in his shirt and bandage flying through the night; and then there was a soundless death like the others before him. The Bavarian was a well-built man with hard shoulders and a stiff neck, but he fell as easily as any child. He was only one more.
Erik held the body close as he slipped the rope off, in a macabre embrace. This, too, his hands remembered. It was all curiously anticlimactic, almost mundane. The wool of the Bavarian's jacket was coarse and scratchy, there was a cigarette burn in the collar. Erik rolled up the rope. He had thought his hands might seize, that the same fingers that had caressed Christine's living body would refuse to work for this, that the rope might break and he would die pierced by a bullet like some miserable hero, like the Vicomte with his notions of honour. But nothing happened.
The night still smelled like flowers, the air moved past the open half of his face with gentle indifference. The Bavarian had carried ninety rounds. It was not enough.
o o o
Music poured forth from the instrument under her hands. It had a tone richer, lighter, purer than anything she could have accomplished with her own voice, but Christine did not begrudge it this clarity, nor was she jealous. It was only an instrument, a tool in her hands, mute without her. It was she who made it sing.
She searched for a conclusion to the first movement, one that would both speak of the past and whisper into the pause, making wordless, tender promises. There was some music that could soar in darkness and some that could draw the living soul from one's body, but the music she sought now would only hush and murmur like waves on the shore. The chords she tried were all too heavy and plain, too dismal; they conveyed the longings in her heart with the officious, formal certainty of doctors or priests. She tried again.
Something touched the back of her neck. She smiled slightly but continued playing, the notes flickering ever so little, like candlelight. She felt Erik draw aside the curtain of her hair. His fingers on her scalp were cool but his palms were very warm; Christine could picture the dark lines where his hands had lifted ink from his sketches. He traced the edge of her high collar, seeking to distract her. She hid her smile, and did not turn around.
"It will never work this way," he murmured, and Christine felt his breath in her ear. He brought her gathered curls a little way towards him, coaxing her back from the piano, creating a silence. "You need a modulation if you want that ending. C minor."
She leaned back into his hand. "Too melodramatic."
"It was good enough for Beethoven."
"Don't be annoyed. I am no Beethoven."
He took one of her hands and set it lightly to the piano, just touching the keys, showing her what he wanted. "No. You are Christine Daaé. One day they'll breathe your name as reverently as they now do Beethoven's."
Christine turned her hand palm up and Erik interlocked his fingers with hers. There was red chalk from the drawings under his short nails, and the line of his cuff fell back from his wrist, revealing the fine marbling of veins. Christine pulled him down to sit behind her, feeling his chest move against her back as she turned around.
"I don't need their admiration." She revelled in the way he tensed between reluctance and desire as she touched his bare forehead, his scars, his mouth. "I would hear you breathe my name, Erik. That's enough."
"Christine..."
He closed his eyes, as if in shame. And with that one gesture Christine suddenly knew – she screamed as she saw the hanged corpse drop behind him, its swollen tongue and black neck and hands raised in a hideous plea, and Erik was gone and she thought she was still screaming when she jolted awake.
She sat up in her own bed, gasping. A dream.
It was morning. Her heart slowed reluctantly in the face of the familiar, quiet room and the rays of light from between the curtains. Shivering, Christine slipped from her bed and opened the window, checking outside with what had become a habit. Nobody on the balcony, nobody in the courtyard below. Strings of sunlight danced on the windowpane as she shut it. A dream, nothing more.
She clenched her hands on her night-dress, crushing fabric. Desire still trembled inside her, making her legs weak, making her relive every note and every caress even as she felt each one become tainted with the terror that had ended them. To want to touch him again was disgusting. To accept music from him, to long for his return, was worse – and that was no dream, that was only the truth. Should she tell herself again that it was the Angel who composed with her, the Phantom she feared, yet only Erik in her bed? Even the Devil of her childhood fears did not have so many names. She let go of the folds of her night-dress and saw red.
Blood. Swift fear brought dream to clash with reality, Christine whipped about to look at the bed, convinced the dream's shadow was real. She flung the covers aside.
"Oh," she said softly. She did not know what she had expected. Perhaps a corpse. She felt like an idiot. A female idiot who could not count.
She sighed and set to cleaning up. This was all she needed to make the morning complete. Next she would no doubt have to suffer through breakfast, with Meg and Madame Giry still barely on speaking terms, and then find that some new efforts at city fortifications would keep her omnibus route from taking her on her usual visit to her father's grave. With her luck they had probably closed off the cemetery altogether and she'd have to walk from where she usually left Meg at the artist's studio.
Her mood lifted a little when she finally made it to the dining-room and saw that Meg was alone, reading some booklet over her breakfast, and that Madame Giry was not yet there. It gave her a chance to eat and make herself scarce before she could be caught between them. She had slid into her chair before she noticed the basket of sweet almond rolls on the table.
"Good morning," Meg said, stifling a yawn. She put her reading aside and grinned. Christine had not expected to find her so cheerful. "You'll never guess what maman did."
"Bought us treats?" Christine gestured at the pastries in astonishment. Madame Giry took a dim view of sweet sugary things, especially for breakfast.
"Actually, that was me," Meg confessed. "I thought as long as I'm in trouble, I may as well make the most of it. Help yourself."
"Meg! You'll get us both chained the barre for the next week at least."
Christine took a roll and flaked off a few almonds to let them dissolve in her mouth. "These are delicious; I'll have to go to the cemetery early, before your mother sees this outrage." More seriously, she added, "I really don't think you ought to provoke her. She has a right to be hurt by... what happened."
Meg wiped her hands clean, then stood to pick up a long paper tube that had been leaning against her chair. She held it by the edge to let it unroll.
"Take a look."
Christine studied the poster. It was old, but the colours were still vibrant and the ballet gala it advertised seemed to spring to life before her eyes. She recognised the signature in the corner: Jules Robuchon.
"There's twenty-six more."
Christine looked at her in disbelief. "You mother gave you these? This morning?"
Meg rolled up the poster slowly, with infinite gentleness. "I came back from the patisserie and there was a whole pile of these on my dresser. Don't look at me like that, nobody else comes into my room."
She caught herself almost before Christine could register what she had said – "Christine! Sorry, you know I didn't mean it badly."
Christine winced. "And then?"
"And then maman came in and we talked for a while. About my father, and about art."
"She has forgiven you?"
Meg put the poster aside and took her seat again. "I don't know. I don't think she really likes it, anyway. She isn't like you and me, for her ballet is... Well, it just is. Like God. My father worshipped it, but with Monsieur de Gas, it is the other way around. It's his art, not maman's. But she knows that. At least we aren't fighting anymore."
Christine gave a slow nod. "I'm glad."
There didn't seem to be much else she could say. They ate their breakfast slowly, waiting for Madame Giry to join them. Looking at Meg's neatly rolled poster, Christine wondered if her own father would have done this, should she have rejected the music he so cherished and taken up another path. Thinking of him made her remember her music, and that brought her back to the idea she had almost forgotten.
"I'll be right back," she told Meg, "I'm just going to my room for a while."
She found her scribbles where she had stashed them the night before, leafed through them until she came to the very end. Here was the conclusion she had struggled with. She looked at it for a while, sighed, then pencilled in the transient key change, resolving into C minor. All right, she conceded. It did sound better.