A/N: Apologies; I've had a rough few weeks, with a lot of hard work and a lot of disappointed hopes, and it hasn't been easy to write. However, here is a long chapter to make up for it. Huge thanks to all the lovely dedicated readers for your encouragement and, as ever, your thoughts. And welcome to the new readers who are just discovering the story – great to have you onboard!
Historical trivia: this chapter has rather a lot of it, due to the nature of events. The ambulance was run by the pioneering bone specialist Dr John Swinburne (who merits a short wiki page, if you're interested), and the cat and coffee cart are drawn from life, as are many of the other details. The incident described here (avoiding spoilers!) took place on 7 October, and if you're so inclined, you can find paintings of it online.
Chapter 42 — Take Flight
At the ambulance the following morning all was quiet. To Christine's relief, she saw no sign of new arrivals as she made her way along the tree-lined paths: no stretchers, no hurrying surgeons, only a well-fed, glossy tortoiseshell cat washing its whiskery face in the sunshine at the entrance to Raoul's tent, with every sign of feline contentment. Within, the curtains were drawn around several cots where the more seriously wounded were asleep; Raoul's bed was unmade, but he was not there, nor were the crutches he had started to use to move around. It was a good sign, Christine hoped.
A pair of middle-aged officers sat at a small table at the far wall, half-heartedly playing at cards: one with his arm in a sling, the other with no obvious injuries, but with the bored, restless look common to all wounded men Christine had encountered. Both had been there as long as Raoul, and were by now accustomed to her visits.
"Good morning, gentlemen. May I intrude?" She let the tent flap drop shut behind her.
The officer with the bandaged arm half-rose on his stool politely. "Ah, good morning, mademoiselle. Chagny will be back shortly, I expect. Do come and sit."
"There he is now," said the other, gesturing at the entrance with the fan of playing cards in his hand.
Christine turned; to her surprise, Raoul came in not with a medic, but with another officer about his own age, who held open the canvas while Raoul negotiated the entrance awkwardly on his crutches. It hurt to see the effort this simple action cost him, yet it was more than Christine had seen him attempt since his return.
"...He is determined he can rouse the provinces to action," the newcomer insisted, evidently in response to something Raoul had said. "And perhaps he-"
"Christine!" Raoul spotted her as soon as he raised his eyes from the crutches. Beneath his tied-back hair, his forehead was beaded with perspiration from the effort of the walk. He caught himself on the rail at the foot of the nearest bed before he could fall, breathing hard. Christine's heart went out to him.
"Good morning. I'm glad to see you up."
"Mademoiselle Daaé!"
Surprised, Christine looked over at Raoul's companion. She thought she might have seen him before; and after a moment's confusion, she was certain of it. He had been one of the young men of Raoul's circle; she vaguely remembered seeing him at parties they had attended before the war, always with a different woman on his arm, though she could not recall having ever been introduced. He was a well built man, with sharp, elegant features, who wore his lieutenant's uniform with the easy assurance of one used to a measure of authority. He bowed to her slightly, and cast Raoul a sidelong glance that bore the familiar mix of envy and amusement Christine recalled only too well from that world of gossipping salons. He somehow managed to make her name sound like an echo of newspaper scandals. Christine sighed inwardly.
"I do not believe I have had the honour, Monsieur…?"
"Permit me," Raoul interceded, "I did not introduce you. Guyon, you remember Mademoiselle Daaé, my dearest friend. Christine, this is Henri Guyon; his uncle was in the Assembly with my father, for a time."
"A pleasure to see you again, mademoiselle, though under these regrettable circumstances." The man's urbane tone might have been better suited to a soirée, and it was evident from his trim appearance and cheerful demeanour that he was not at the ambulance as a patient. Christine arched her brows in pointed inquiry:
"You are not wounded, Monsieur Guyon?"
"Not in the least. I heard Chagny was cooling his heels here and thought he could do with seeing a friendly face. Of course I had no idea he was already so well attended – and a man could not wish for a more charming nurse."
"You are certainly charming, monsieur, but it may be a stretch to call yourself Raoul's nurse." Christine gave him her best social smile, refusing to be baited by any hint of impropriety. She had a right to be there. And if she was a singer, a dancer, a musician, there was no shame in that. Henri Guyon laughed, and Raoul, who had been instantly on guard against the barbed humour, relaxed enough to lean back on the bedstead, sending the crutches clattering to the floor.
Christine went to his side to pick up the crutches, and put her own cheek against Raoul's damp one, in a belated greeting. "Ignore it," she whispered, as he had so often done to her when they had borne society's amusement together. Raoul squeezed her hand minutely in agreement.
"Guyon brings news from the defence," he told her.
"It is little enough, and half of it rumour," Henri Guyon said, and for the first time Christine detected a note of genuine concern and frustration behind his devil-may-care attitude. "My bastion is to the east, mademoiselle, where all the defence allowed us is to parade up and down the wall and check and re-check the gun emplacements. We haven't seen so much as the shadow of a Prussian except through a spy-glass." He glanced at Raoul's crutches, then sighed. "I suppose it is fortunate at least that the Third corps managed to fall back on Paris in time for us to avoid the … engagement at Sedan."
"That is one word for it," chuckled one of the card players, darkly. He threw down a card, drawing an irritated huff from his partner, and a flurry of folded cards. "But now you are shut up here together with the rest of us. Lord only knows when we'll see some action."
"There are worse fates," Guyon said, unruffled once more. "These poor devils," – he nodded vaguely at the cots of the seriously wounded – "had the dubious pleasure of testing the Prussian lines at L'Hay and Chevilly. Better to stay shut up and wait until we are ready to launch a full sortie, I say, than to waste good men and arms on such excursions. If we could only join up with an army from the provinces... I beg your pardon, Mademoiselle Daaé, this can hardly be an appropriate subject."
"On the contrary," Christine assured him, "it should be more objectionable by far were you to hold back on my account. I am shut up in this city too."
"Christine saw these men brought in, screaming." Raoul winced, and Christine knew he hated being the reason she must see such things, and yet he spoke with admiration: "She has more courage than half the blockheads in Vinoy's staff. Sending men against heavily fortified positions, without support, without cover! It is barbaric."
"Worse, pointless. If they're trying to stretch the perimeter of the encirclement, it's a waste of time, we cannot hold anything beyond the reach of the forts. Here, you better sit."
Henri Guyon offered his shoulder and Raoul braced himself against it as he hobbled to a folding chair beside the bed and sank onto it gratefully, with his bad leg stretched out. There was another chair, which Guyon offered her in turn, but Christine preferred to remain standing. She laid her hand on Raoul's shoulder, over muscle that trembled after he had been so long on his feet. She wished she could lend him strength. Raoul reached up to cover her hand gratefully for a moment.
Their card game finished, the others pulled out their tobacco and excused themselves, disappearing into the white triangle of sunshine as the door flaps opened and shut. Christine and Raoul watched them go.
"You may be right," Raoul said to Henri Guyon, returning to their previous conversation. "If the provinces could be made to raise another army, and march here to meet us as we break through… But is it possible?"
Guyon shrugged. "If anyone can talk them into it, it must be Gambetta. I'm inclined to believe the rumours, Chagny. He means to get out."
"How?" Christine wondered.
"I would give much to know the answer to that myself, mademoiselle. Surely he does not mean to sneak out dressed as a peasant like one of those newspaper couriers. He is much too recognisable. He would not get past the first outpost."
"What about the sewers?" Raoul suggested.
"It was tried, two weeks ago now. Two young boys attempted it."
The heavy silence that followed left no doubt in Christine's mind of the outcome of that escape attempt.
Raoul exhaled impatiently. "What then? Balloons? Flying machines? Underwater contraptions crawling along the bottom of the Seine, like in the absurd letter in yesterday's Le Gaulois? There cannot be any means that have not already been tried and failed."
"There are other tunnels," Christine said unexpectedly. "Those beneath the Opéra. The catacombs."
In the silence that fell, both men stared at her: Henri Guyon avidly curious, Raoul as appalled as if she had broken a taboo that grown between them. They had spoken of many things these past weeks, from the long summers of their childhood to the brief months of their engagement, but never dared approach the terrible night of Don Juan Triumphant, the dark lake in the Opéra cellars... Raoul looked up at her from the chair, deep creases between his brows, marks of pain that had nothing to do with his wound. Christine tightened her hand on his shoulder apologetically, and plunged on before she could lose her nerve:
"I do not know how far the tunnels extend, but there is a lake in the depths of the building, fed by an underground stream. The tunnels through which it flows…"
"Are of no use in quitting the city," came another voice from the doorway, unmistakeable.
With a startled thrill, Christine looked up. Erik came in, snapping the doorflap out of the way. His entrance was so sudden that she had the mad notion that she had called him somehow, by her thoughts. Erik's dark eyes found her unerringly, and Christine saw a reflection of that same betrayal, of secrets unburied. Her hand slipped off Raoul's shoulder. Erik looked away.
"Andersson." Raoul reached for a crutch and struggled to his feet again, supporting his other hand against the back of the chair. "You received my message then."
"As you see. Mademoiselle Daaé - good morning." Erik tipped his hat to her with a cool courtesy, as if her presence was of no more consequence than that of a socialite volunteering her time to nurse the wounded. He measured Henri Guyon's aristocratic profile with a sharp glance.
"This is a regular salon, Chagny."
"Henri Guyon," the man introduced himself, unfazed by the inspection. He studied Erik's bandaged face with interest. "Another from Sedan, I take it?"
"Erik Andersson – Henri Guyon," Raoul said. "Andersson and I were in Bazeilles together."
Guyon brightened. "So you are the man who brought Chagny back! Well done, monsieur, very well done. You know then, how it may be possible for a man to bypass the Prussian lines?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," Erik said flatly. He held a folded letter between two fingers, with the writing on the front clearly Raoul's. His tension, his fear of the past, was so painfully obvious to Christine that she wondered the others did not note it.
"Chagny, you brought me here with the promise of news. What is this talk of tunnels and leaving the city?"
Raoul took up the letter and opened it, as though he too was not certain what it contained. Christine watched uneasily, half expecting a quarrel to break out at any moment. Raoul had written to Erik? The mere fact of the two of them standing in the same tent, conversing, was fantastical enough without the addition of correspondence.
"It is as I said. There is news to be learned." Raoul returned the letter. "Do you know Léon Gambetta?"
"It has been some time since I lived under a rock, Vicomte. What does he have to do with this?"
"Guyon tells me Gambetta means to leave Paris to join the government delegation in Tours, to try to rouse the provinces from there. But the Prussians would never grant him passage, least of all to raise new armies."
"And you think I would know the way? You give me too much credit."
Henri Guyon gave a satisfied laugh. "There! You see, Chagny, it is just as they all say, impossible. And yet I believe he means to do it."
Raoul did not look as easily convinced, but he did not press the matter. "All right," he said, still looking at Erik. "Perhaps this is indeed beyond your talents."
Christine could not restrain a tiny smile at the predictable effect this piece of audacity had on Erik. He glared at Raoul, well aware of the challenge, but remained resolutely silent.
"I must be going," Henri Guyon declared, ignoring the standoff. "In any case, we shall know the truth of it in a day or two, one way or another. Take good care of him, mademoiselle." And with a round of handshakes and a faultlessly restrained bow to Christine, he left.
"Christine spoke of the Opéra tunnels," Erik said very quietly, when they were alone. "She told you of the stream that feeds the lake."
"I have taken a swim there myself," Raoul retorted acidly. "The lake is hardly a secret, nor the stream that feeds it."
Misliking the direction of the questions, Christine broke in. "Erik, where does that stream come from? Could the tunnels truly lead out of the city?"
She saw Erik resist delivering a sarcastic response, saw the hurt still there in his stiff, wary posture. The lake had been his home, his only home.
"No," he said at last, without the bitter humour she had feared. "The tunnels encase only a small part of it. The rest is merely an underground river that originates, I believe, around the heights of Montmartre. If is no use at all in trying to find a way through; the encirclement is a great deal too wide."
"The heights of Montmartre?.." Raoul looked thoughtful. "Have they not tried to launch balloons from there, these past weeks?"
"Tried and succeeded, in fact, although the devil only knows what kind of man would entrust his life to a basket lifted into the sky by a scrap of canvas, with an entire army beneath to shoot at it."
His vehemence surprised Christine; for her part, she thought she would have loved to see the balloons fly up, soaring into the sky. Even if they were shot down, or crashed… They would have flown first.
Raoul considered it. "Then you agree with Guyon. It appears impossible."
"It is not impossible," Erik said indifferently. "At least, it is not impossible to leave. Arrival is another matter. It would be unfortunate to end one's life as a pheasant for the Prussians' rifle practice."
"Do you seriously think Gambetta is intending to take a balloon?" Christine asked. "I thought only an aeronaut could do it, even in peacetime."
"There is one way to find out." Erik gave Raoul a nod, "There is a launch today from the Place Saint Pierre. I accept your challenge."
"Monsieur le Vicomte?" A medical orderly with a Red Cross armband looked into the tent, then turned back to address somebody behind him, "He's awake, doctor."
Christine watched as the white-coated surgeon, Doctor Swinburne, and his usual posse of attendants crowded into the tent with all their notebooks and toolbags, at once making it seem small and busy as a market stall before the siege. Raoul barely had time to apologise before he was directed back to bed and Christine and Erik found themselves peremptorily ushered outside.
"I should not have brought up the tunnels," Christine said when they stood in the glare of late morning. She shivered in the sudden chill after the warmth of the tent. Not far away, a horse-drawn cart had been set up with a curious array of copper jugs and boilers, and a cheerfully fat man was pouring measures of steaming black coffee from this contraption into mugs held out to him from the queue of waiting medics and patients alike. The air teased her nostrils with the smell of hot coffee.
Erik's gaze was fixed on the cart, but Christine did not think he saw it. "You had every right to speak of them. And besides - the Vicomte is correct, the tunnels are no secret: the police spent a good week down there after…"
"Erik." Christine touched his elbow.
"Yes?"
Christine moved her head a little to indicate someone coming out of the tent behind them. Erik turned. It was Doctor Swinburne, discussing something in a mixture of Latin and English with one of his assistants who scribbled rapid notes with the stub of a pencil. He was a distinguished-looking man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and a military bearing; Christine heard he had treated the wounded in the war back in America, and had seen such butchery that nothing could now surprise him. She could well believe it, having seen him examine the wounded, moving from bed to bed in the same unhurried, competent way.
"Ah, you are still here," he remarked when he saw her. His French was excellent, with hardly a trace of accent. "Your friend is making a very satisfactory recovery, mademoiselle, but you must caution him most severely not to put too much strain upon his injuries so early, unless he enjoys the prospect of being confined to a wheelchair. I can issue what orders I may, but in this you must be my accomplice."
Christine assured him she would see the orders followed, thinking of Raoul's limping walk earlier and the new lease on life it seemed to give him, after weeks of being near immobile. It would not be easy to convince him to limit his freedom. And how was he to recover if the confinement drove him to despair?
"I will do what I can," she promised.
"And you, sir," Swinburne continued, to Erik's surprise addressing him, "have you a physician attending to that?" He gestured sharply at the bandaged side of Erik's head. The assistant waited behind him, pencil dutifully poised over his notes. Christine's heartbeat set to racing.
Erik looked between the two men, trapped and angry, off guard. Before he could venture a response, the surgeon frowned and took a step closer, observing the bandage with a trained eye.
"How long has the wound been covered?" he demanded. "The dressing ought not to be left in place this long, or the skin will slough - there, the lower margin is already inflamed. If you will take my advice, sir, you will remove it at once, and allow the healthful air to heal the skin."
"Your concern is touching," Erik said through his teeth. "But my skin is as healed as it will ever be. This," he jabbed at the bandage, "is only a fashion statement."
"Suit yourself," Swinburne snorted, "but mind you do not end a victim of this peculiar fashion." To Christine he said, "Tell me, mademoiselle, are all your friends so obstinate? Even the best-trained physician is powerless in the face of sheer pigheadedness. Convince the one to respect his bandages and the other to relinquish them, and you will have made more difference to their recovery than any physician. Good day."
Christine dipped in a respectful curtsey, her own face burning, but the surgeon had already moved on towards the next tent. Erik nudged his mask lower, concealing the reddened edge of a scar, and bared his teeth in what was not a grin.
Tentatively, Christine reached for his arm, half expecting him to jerk aside, but Erik permitted it, and a moment later they stood arm in arm like a promenading couple frozen mid-step. At last, Erik lowered his head, all the fight gone out of him.
"Let's buy some coffee," Christine suggested. "And then, I believe I was promised a balloon launch."
Erik raised her hand to his lips and kissed her wrist above the glove, sending tendrils of warmth through her. "My god, Christine," he said, looking up with a plea in his eyes. "I never wanted this. I will only bring you shame."
Christine touched his mouth, quickly. "I would prefer it if you brought me coffee."
o o o
They finally reached the Place Saint Pierre just after noon, having crossed half of Paris on foot. Cabs were in short supply, and Erik had not the least inclination to join the waiting crowds for the omnibus, or to subject Christine to the jostle of people squeezed onto the narrow benches with all the provisions they had managed to win in the endless queues. Christine walked beside him in the bright October sun, the light breeze lifting a few stray curls over her hat, and he hardly dared look at her or speak, for fear that it would break the illusion, that he would come to his senses and find himself alone. And yet there was the reassuring swish of her skirts and the rapid click of her steps in time with his heavier tread. The day grew warmer; the few remaining trees stood gold and umber, and upon their branches the soldiers' shirts and undergarments that had been hung to dry flapped like storm-tossed remnants of a ship's sails. Everywhere were uniforms and supply wagons and guardsmen drilling with their rifles in the denuded squares. Nobody so much as blinked at the sight of a bandaged man accompanying a young lady.
"Are you hungry?" Erik asked when they at last turned off the Rue Lafayette and began to climb the smaller streets, familiar enough that he could almost feel at home. A little grocery shop on the corner, which in better days had been stocked with fowl and eggs, cheese and smoked meat now had a display of nothing but mustard jars and cans of meat extract. Next to it was a café that appeared to be open; Erik wondered if he should not be taking Christine to have lunch… The idea was in equal measure thrilling and terrifying.
Christine squinted into the sun. "Not yet," she said. "I want to see these balloons."
The Place Saint Pierre had been turned into a barren rectangular plain, with a few military tents between the flat façades of ageing apartment buildings. There was already a substantial crowd gathered, snaking all the way up the hillside on the other side of the square: men and women of all ages, bourgeois parasols side by side with the kerchiefs of local women, and everywhere packs of children darting between the gawkers, eager for a better view. A detachment of national guards and regulars was there to keep order, but they were hardly needed; the atmosphere was of curious anticipation and the joy of spectacle, a happy break from the monotony of the siege. Erik hesitated, not at all keen on joining the throng.
Beyond and above the crowd, in the centre of the square, two enormous balloons strained against their lines.
"Let's go closer," Christine said, her eyes on the balloons and her face bright after the walk and burning with excitement. The sight of the giant gasbags made Erik queasy, but he dared not lose Christine in the crowd; he followed, wading in among the people, keeping his eyes on the back of her head, the edge of her high collar. He wanted, desperately, to catch her shoulders and kiss her there, to leave this place and have her to himself.
"They're about to let go!" somebody near them called out, and for a frightening moment Erik lost sight of Christine - but then they were near the front, out in the open, and Christine was beside him. She glanced over at him, her smile so open and happy that Erik felt his heart must burst at any moment. Had she said then that she wished to get into a balloon and fly, he would have found one and soared into the sky with her, over the people, over the besieged city, out into the infinite sky.
"Look, who's that?" Christine pointed to two men rugged up in fur coats and hats, standing in the basket of the nearer balloon. Soldiers held onto the heavy lines that moored the baskets to the ground. Marines; Erik recognised the blue uniforms he had seen in Bazeilles. He did not want to think of that, not now. He moved closer to Christine, as near as he dared.
"Some Americans," a nearby National Guard supplied. "They were talking about buying in more rifles."
"Not Gambetta then!" Erik told Christine, raising his voice against the wind and the chatter of the other onlookers. "The Vicomte will be disappointed."
"Not them," Christine gestured impatiently, "There! In the other balloon."
Erik followed her arm to the basket of the second balloon, where a slim black-bearded man, also in a fur coat, was just climbing in. Another man was already inside, adjusting ropes and checking the grapples. The man in the fur coat raised his cap and waved at a gathering of people just below, and at once the crowd broke into spontaneous cheers. He turned his face towards them.
"That's him, isn't it?"
"Yes," Erik conceded, "undoubtedly. He must be mad."
"He is brave," Christine countered.
The marines released the lines, and the balloons, freed, rose slowly up, baskets swinging like the toys of a gargantuan child.
"Vive la Republique!" the crowd roared. "Vive Gambetta!"
From the basket, high above the square, the young minister unfurled a tricolour flag, and it sailed over the crowd, over the rooftops, until the balloons were no more than two ink blots in the bright sky. All around, the cheers continued long after the balloons had gone, kepis and hats of every colour flying in the air. The nearby wineshops were about to be overrun.
Erik looked over at Christine; she was still watching the sky, her hand held up against the glare but her eyes streaming despite it. There was such light in her face, in her entire body, surging towards the distant freedom.
"I hope they make it," she said. "I hope Raoul's friend is right, and Gambetta brings another army to lift the siege."
Erik did not reply; he could not. Christine was too lovely, clad in her shining hope, and he could not bear to have her see the fear he felt betrayed in his own distorted face, the fear that all this could not last. An army of relief was a hideous fantasy, painted in his mind with the black smoke of the ruins in Bazeilles. But even if no army came, this would end. One way or another, it would all end.
"Let us go," he finally pleaded, when the crowd had thinned a little. "There is a café I know nearby, we can get something to eat."
Christine nodded and they made their way out, back to the winding streets and the jumble of tightly pressed buildings. They did not make it to the café: at the top of Rue Fontenelle, Christine saw the closed doors of the abandoned dance hall where Erik had once seen a workers' meeting, empty today of political clubs and noisy demands. She paused under the unlit sign.
"Is that a theatre?"
"A dance hall. Would you like to see it?"
She looked over at him and her smile was mischievous and a little shy, carried still by the excitement of what they had witnessed. Her lips were dry from the wind, and Erik could not help picturing her open them now to sing, to let music soar from her with total abandon. He imagined Christine's music transforming the little old theatre, filling the space with cool air and clouds, with the wingbeat of birds, with sunlight. The dusty panelled doors stood unlocked and slightly ajar, waiting.
It was dangerous, too close to the edge of madness.
Perhaps it was brave.
Erik pulled at a handle, and the door swung easily outward, revealing the dark foyer. "Shall we?"