A/N: I was deeply touched by your reactions to the previous chapter, and by the generosity of the readers who wrote such thoughtful reviews (Fictional50 gets a special prize for best guess!). Please don't apologise for long reviews, they are cherished and savoured like chocolate cake. Without them, it's basically just me talking to myself.
A bit of a historical point: the National Guard was given a number of privileges at the start of the siege, one of which was the right to stop and search anyone acting suspiciously, as well as to search premises without a warrant. Understandably, given the spy-mania that raged during this time, many such "investigations" took place on the slimmest of pretexts. For instance, a woman was accused of signalling to the Prussians from her window with red/green semaphore signs. It turned out to be... a parrot. Eventually people complained and Trochu, the governor of Paris, issued a proclamation forbidding this sort of thing. Nonetheless, there were some genuine cases of spying, particularly documents being copied and conveyed to the Prussians, so the hysteria was not entirely unfounded.
Chapter 47 — The Lonely Room
It all happened in a blur that Christine could later recall only as a mad whirl of wet greatcoats and rifle barrels, and in the centre of it, Erik's feral, stricken roar as he dropped her hand and lunged at Jean Gandon.
"Don't shoot!" bellowed Jean to the others, throwing his arms out wide against the encircling men. "Keep back!"
"Erik!"
Christine grabbed at his overcoat, trying to hold him back in turn, but strong hands gripped her arm from behind. Erik's gaze darted this way and that, from rifle to face to rifle to face, making a few National Guards take a hasty step back.
"Andersson," Jean said. "I'm sorry. But you must know this looks bad. You were seen at the ramparts last night. We need to ask some questions."
"Questions." Erik hissed the word.
"Questions which you will have no trouble answering, if you are what you say you are. This has gone far enough."
Christine struggled against the arms holding her, but it was hopeless. She twisted around, and instantly recognised the face.
"Louise, take the girl home to her family. Tell them we may need her back in the morning."
Louise Gandon's kerchief was soaked through and rain coursed down her forehead, but she did not slacken her grip on Christine's arm to wipe her face. She shook her head with grim pity:
"Come along, mam'zelle, this is no place for you."
"Get your hands off me!" Christine tried fruitlessly to free her arm. "We've done nothing wrong. You have no right!"
"We have every right, as well you know!" Louise glared at her as if she were an obstinate child. "You go snooping round the clubs after dark and carry your notebooks around," she jerked her chin at the music bag, "and think the rest of us are blind? Your man here comes back from the front and says he'll work for Jean, but all he does is check out our defenses and write his goddamn notes — who's he writing to, hmm? Von Moltke and his pals?"
"It's only music!" Christine flared. "We're singers, musicians, that is all. That's all!"
"That's all, is it?" Louise shifted her dark stare from Christine to Erik, and her mouth twisted in a grimace of revulsion, "You've got some nerve, my girl, that I give you."
"Leave her!" Erik lurched towards her but two of the men thrust the butts of their rifles into his ribs:
"Don't move!"
"Peace," Jean said, "There will be no violence here. This man—"
"Spy," one of the others corrected, to general approval.
"This man," Jean repeated louder, "has a right to hear the questions we have and give his answers unmolested. Citizens, get a hold of yourselves; it will do our cause no good to start a riot. Let's not give the police an excuse to revisit old grudges. We'll take him inside for now and sort it out in the morning."
"Throw him in the Mazas and be done with it," someone suggested, "better safe than sorry, eh?"
"The Mazas?" Jean rounded on the speaker, a weedy little man with an oversized kepi on his ears, who shrank back from the sudden attention. "Better men than he have spent years rotting in its cells under the Empire, without trial, without so much as a hearing. Are we no better?"
A few of the rifles were lowered slowly, in acknowledgment. Even Louise seemed to subside a little. Jean rubbed the bridge of his nose under the rain-spattered glasses.
"Louise, the keys to the side door."
"Aye."
With her free hand, Louise withdrew a bundle of keys from her coat pocket and passed it to the man nearest the door. He jangled it at the lock and shoved the wooden panels with his rifle, revealing the darkness within.
"We'll need your bag, please, mademoiselle." Jean pointed to the satchel.
Christine had no choice but to surrender it into the clutching wet hands of the National Guardsmen who eagerly reached for it. Her father's beautiful book was unceremoniously extracted and held out under the rain.
Christine could not keep back an anguished cry. "No, please! You will destroy it."
"Put that back," snapped Louise unexpectedly, cuffing the man lightly over the ear. "It's evidence."
She stuffed the book back into the satchel that was passed to her, momentarily releasing Christine, but before Christine could move, Louise had grabbed her other elbow. Christine's coat sleeve gave way with a rip, and a rush of freezing water soaked into her shoulder.
"I'm taking this one home, for now." Louise gave her elbow a tug to get her moving. "Come along."
"She goes free!" Erik jerked towards Louise but she moved back, pulling Christine with her.
Jean only said mildly, "Come, Andersson, let's go in from the rain. No harm will come to Mademoiselle Daaé."
Erik's lip curled back in a hideous growl and Christine thought in horror that he would hurl himself bodily at Jean and it would all be over; someone would fire. Her world shrank to a view of Erik's enraged face. He did not move. No shots came.
Jean stepped in past the rifles and Christine saw his own gun slung unheeded over his shoulder. Still looking carefully at Erik, he addressed Louise:
"Take Clément with you, in case you are stopped. Clément?"
"Right here."
A big, serious-looking man with the bearing of an old campaigner gave a crisp nod as he shouldered his rifle and moved behind Louise. Christine glanced at him; he did not look dangerous but her heart sank at this additional guard. Even if she managed by some miracle to evade Louise, she would not get far. And what then? She had to let someone know what was happening, get help, get Madame Giry, anyone — but she could not leave Erik here, not like this.
Erik turned to her and Christine saw despair in his eyes. She strained against Louise's grip on her elbow; it was all she could do not to make another futile attempt to go to him. Erik's wet bandage had slipped, exposing a slick patch of scarring on his forehead.
"Go home," he said. It was almost a plea.
"It was my idea to use the theatre." Christine heard the desperation in her voice, "All we did was sing!"
"It is getting late," Jean said in warning. Someone passed him the satchel and he showed it to Christine, then to Erik. "Your music, if that is all it is, will be safe with us. I give you my word."
They led him away. Christine watched as long as she could, until Louise directed her down the street, and she was forced to walk onward.
She thought she would remember for the rest of her life the way Erik turned his gaze downward and followed his captors into the depths of the theatre, unrestrained, unbound, and yet walking with them. The door was slammed shut.
"You silly little chit." Louise half-led, half-dragged her through the puddles, indifferent to the carriages that sprayed them with mud at every turn. The soldier Clément followed a step behind, his boots splashing noisily.
"I told you to stay away from the likes of him, didn't I. He's bad news, your singing friend."
Christine could not open her mouth; cold and anger had locked her jaws tight and she concentrated furiously on not losing her footing. Her skirts dragged through the piles of dirt and leaves that lay uncollected in the streets since the sweepers, most of them Germans, had been expelled from the city. She thought of calling, crying out, but the few passersby they met took one look at the disgraceful sight of a young woman taken home by the National Guard, and prudently raised their umbrellas and averted their eyes.
"It's here," she finally managed, when they reached her building.
She had hoped Louise would let her go in alone, but even that was denied her. Louise barged into the lobby, only to be instantly observed by the concierge, who leapt at the whiff of a fresh scandal. Not two minutes later, Christine was forced to endure the humiliation of being escorted to her front door by both women, dragged in between them, dripping and muddy, like a stupid ballet girl being returned half-drunk and half-dressed to the dormitories. She stared ahead and refused to give them the satisfaction of seeing her stumble. Her feet were lumps of lead in her wet shoes, she could not feel her toes.
"Good evening," Madame Giry said from the doorstep. Her face was so calm and her voice so absolutely expressionless that Christine saw even Louise taken aback. Her gaze flicked over Christine, an assessment as quick and impersonal as a dance exam.
The concierge sniffed at the savoury aroma of stewing meat and vegetables coming from within the apartment, and craned her neck to look inside. "All right for some, isn't it."
"Thank you," Madame Giry said to her pointedly, and the nosy woman was left with no option but to take her leave of them, reluctantly. Madame Giry looked past Christine, to Louise.
"And you are?.."
"Louise Gandon. Yours, is she?" Louise thrust Christine forward.
Madame Giry stood aside to let Christine enter, then barred the doorway again. Christine turned to see Louise stare at Madame Giry, frowning under her wet kerchief, before she finally gave a shrug of grudging approval.
"You don't look like the hysterical sort, so I tell you plain: your girl here is mixed up in some nasty business. You'd not know it to look at her but were she my daughter, she'd not be roaming round Montmartre at all hours with the Devil knows what for company, poking her pretty nose into things she doesn't understand. Some honest work is what she's wanting, to keep her out of trouble, and away from them theatres."
"That is certainly good advice," Madame Giry said without irony. Christine knew this entire shameful tirade must have carried up and down the stairs, and could doubtless be heard by every neighbour and the concierge besides.
"Ah, you lot." Louise looked around, her gaze condemning the entire bourgeois interior of the building, from the wood panelling to the sooty lamps. She sighed and turned to go. Then, thinking of something, she turned back and looked squarely at Christine:
"I'll come fetch you first thing, and see you come and talk politely. But if you want my advice, mam'zelle, you'll do well not to swear your little life away. You let him answer for himself, you hear, and don't go trying to paint him innocent."
Christine clutched at the doorframe, digging her fingers into it as though she could pull a trigger. "You have no pity," she said, low and fierce. "You will see him dead for what he did not do."
Louise's eyebrows shot up. She lowered her voice almost to a growl, for Christine alone: "Pity you want, is it? I know about the Opéra, and so does Jean, how about that? Knew it when I let him under my roof, and when he came back too, though I had my doubts how he got away so clean from the Prussians, you bet I did. And then Jean tells me about that theatre. Under my roof! Think about that for a minute in your pretty head, before you talk of pity. But we never said a word, and we won't either — Jean'll not tell gendarmes things as don't concern them, not unless it's a matter for the Republic. He's a good man, my Jean, and doing a man's duty. Would that you could say as much about your lover."
She turned and tramped down the stairs, taking them two at a time as though she could not wait to be quit of this place.
"Come through at once," Madame Giry said, closing the door soundlessly behind them. She peeled Christine's wet coat from her, inspecting the torn seam, and folded it onto the chest of drawers by the door. Christine crossed her arms over her chest, painfully aware of the muddy water running onto the floor from her ruined skirts.
"Christine, what happened?" Meg was standing at the end of the entrance hall, a wooden spoon still in her hand from the dinner she had been cooking. The worry in her face was deep, and it was more kindness than Christine could bear. Her throat tightened.
"It was my fault," she said, barely audible. "I wanted to sing…"
Madame Giry stopped her. "You will explain everything, and in order, but only after you have had a bath and something to eat. Give me a minute to heat the water."
She went to the kitchen and Christine could only look at Meg, unable to explain anything at all over the lump in her throat. Meg looked mistrustfully at the door, as though she expected it to be thrown open again without warning.
"Who was that woman?"
"Meg," Christine could not quite make her voice work. "They took Erik."
o o o
The interior of the little dance hall rang with a cacophony of heavy footsteps and men's voices, all talking at once. Erik thought his head would split. He could see nothing except a square of the floor and the movements of Jean's booted feet; he pressed the rain-soaked linen of the mask to his face to keep it in place and did not try to look up. They had taken Christine away. What more was there to see?
His fault. His and his alone. He had known it was forbidden to him, yet he had followed the music like a dog slavering after its master's heel, and now it demanded its blood-price. How many must die tonight? He would have to wait until one of them got closer, grab his gun, go for the foyer… It would not be easy and he would need to move fast: a few of them moved like trained soldiers and their guns were loaded, but even so, he would have a chance.
He took no chances, but followed Jean in silence. Christine was alive and taken home and he refused to give in. Not now. Not while she lived. She would not return to find her Erik an escaped murderer again, and he would not give them the satisfaction of knowing they had been right to pursue him. Christine's voice was hidden in every corner of this theatre, in its very stones; it pulsed in his veins and kept him breathing, slowly, steadily. Inhale. Exhale. He would not see this place befouled. He would not.
"Shall I tie his hands then?"
One of the men had found a length of cord and Erik was jolted suddenly to a stop as he and another guard tried to wring his arms behind him.
With a shudder, Erik threw them off and whirled around, grasping the rope in his own hand. The movement was as instinctive as it was almost disastrous, but he struggled at the last moment against it, dropping the lasso as his fist caught the man's jaw and sent him sprawling. The guard, skinny and black-bearded, lay on the floor, too stunned by the suddenness of the punch to do more than blink. His kepi skidded to a wall.
"Merde," someone cursed behind him. "What the hell was that?"
Erik breathed heavily, ready for the next attempt. The ghost of the rope was still burning his palm. Christine's music throbbed crazily in his head, like a caged child rattling the bars. He clenched his fists.
"I will not be bound."
"Enough!" Jean held out his arm to help the man to his feet. "There's no need for ropes. Citizens, keep calm. Andersson, we will not restrain you if we may have your word you will make no effort to escape."
Erik smirked bitterly. "My word."
"Well?" Jean demanded, glasses flashing in the gaslight. Erik surveyed the determined faces of the surrounding guards, neighbours most of them, transformed by their identical kepis. A few he knew by name, most were only vaguely familiar faces. They thought him a traitor. He opened his empty hands.
"You have my word."
Jean acknowledged this soberly, before turning back to his neighbour-soldiers. "We will lock him in the room with the placards until a clerk can be found to take down evidence. Nobody is to touch him, do I make myself clear? This is a matter for Montmartre. We do not need gendarmes on the doorstep."
The others muttered agreement. The bearded man swore, rubbing his injured jaw, but even he did not contradict them. There had been a minor riot in the city only two days previous, by men who did not think the Government of National Defence answered to their idea of a Republic, and Erik judged none here were eager for a reprise.
"Andersson," Jean said, "carry on, towards the back rooms."
Erik went on. They meant the dressing-rooms backstage, where he and Christine had not bothered looking before. The corridor was dark and narrow; they had to go single file behind him. It was a lethally stupid arrangement; one sudden turn and he could reach Jean's rifle belt.
Inhale. Exhale.
He walked on.
A dressing-room door to one side stood open; inside were stacks of wooden placards that reeked of paint and, by one wall, a dusty mirror and an even dustier couch upholstered in faded and balding red velvet. No windows.
Erik stepped into the dressing-room and Jean put the key to the lock. The rusted hinges of the door swung through an agonising high B, and that sound of a cage being locked for the night was almost obscenely welcome, as a respite from fighting.
"I'll have them bring you something to eat." Jean held the door a moment. "Maréchal will be outside if you need anything else."
A rope, Erik thought, bring me a rope. But the thought was only a ghost's echo.
"Do not bother with food," he said aloud. "Paper and ink; I require nothing else." When Jean hesitated, Erik gestured at the windowless room: "What do you imagine I might do with them here? Post letters to the Prussians through the chimney? Or plaster the walls with complaints about the Montmartre Committee?"
"Paper and ink. Fine. You'll have them." Jean adjusted the kepi on his unruly red hair, and went on more quietly. "They are good men, Andersson. They have families, and friends, and girls in this city, but they know our Republic is still young and under threat. It would hit them hard to think of a traitor living among them, reporting to the Prussians, working to subvert all that they sacrifice for. Truth to tell, it would hit us all hard. There will be a hearing tomorrow, and for my own sake and Louise's, I hope we were not wrong about you."
Erik turned away from him before he could do something he would come to regret. A hearing. That almost sounded like they intended to listen.
After a moment he heard the door being shut and locked. Jean's voice sounded beyond it, giving instructions. Erik looked up. An ugly man stared back at him from the full-height mirror, with bloodshot eyes in his badly bandaged face, and mud splattering his black suit and coat.
He raised his hand. The spectre in the mirror did the same.
A hearing. An audience, for him.
Christine's music touched the edges of his thoughts, riffling through the torn pages of his mind. If he sang now, he wondered idly, would they think he was calling to the Prussians?
He pulled off his sodden bandage and stared at the image of what he was confined with.
It was going to be a long night.
o o o
Christine paced the little parlour from window to the divan and back, the same five steps each way, like a clockwork dancer in neverending recital. Her dressing-gown whirled at each turn. Madame Giry closed her eyes against what she could not change, and tried to think, but even unseen, the rhythm of Christine's steps tugged at her heart.
"Stop, please." Meg's voice was strained; she could not abide this either. "Christine, you're scaring me."
Christine halted by the piano, her hands at her mouth. Her lips were bitten bright red.
"I'm sorry… Madame Giry, please, I must go back. I should never have left."
"Christine Daaé, you will stop this instant. Pull yourself together." Madame Giry rose from the chair and went to her, quickly enough that Christine had no time to do anything but remain where she was. Madame Giry cupped her face firmly, ignoring the tremor in her own fingers. Christine's eyes were dark and wild, as if she was looking at a ghost before her.
"Christine!" Madame Giry pressed her hands hard to the girl's cold cheeks. "Look at me, please. Look at me."
When she did, Madame Giry released her and stepped back. Christine watched her uncertainly, and the spark of hope in her eyes was a familiar, heavy burden. How was she to fix this, Madame Giry asked herself fearfully, when the mess was of his own making? Again! She did not want this. She had shielded him long enough, had drained this cup to its bitter dregs; she could not allow Christine to make the same mistake. Sooner or later, Erik Andersson must settle his own debts. And yet to think of him here, bringing those accursed chocolates with a child's eagerness for praise…
"Please, Madame Giry. What do I do?"
"What is it he is accused of? No — stop — no more panicking now. What precisely did they say?"
Christine gripped the piano lid behind her. "They said he's a traitor. That he's been passing information to the Prussians."
Madame Giry counted the heartbeats before she could trust herself to speak. Ten, twelve, fourteen… At last, she said, "And you are certain he is innocent."
"Yes!" Christine struggled to bring her voice back under control. "I'm certain."
"He returned from the front. He came back ahead of the Prussian lines, and brought back the young Vicomte when the rest of our army was held prisoner." Madame Giry fought back the choking pity that threatened to silence her, but she had to speak now, because there were stains that could not be erased from the soul. She knew what the boy she had once called Erik was capable of, and she had no right to cast away the knowledge. It had to be voiced.
"What are you saying?" Christine stared her in incomprehension, unwilling to believe the betrayal of trust. "He came back. He saved Raoul."
"Christine, listen to me." Madame Giry forced the treachery out, sickening as bile. "You must understand this. There are things none of us can know. He returned, yes. He brought back Raoul, for you, because that is what he understood. But you cannot know the means. If he made sacrifices along the way, if he dealt with the Prussians — do you believe he would choose one uniform over another?"
"But he didn't!"
"You were not there. You cannot know what price he paid for the Vicomte's life! And whether he may still be paying it now. The talking-shops that have infested our theatres take their business seriously. They will not stand for their plans, no matter how ludicrous, being relayed to the enemy."
"No." Christine's voice cracked into a whisper. "You are wrong. It was only music. It is I who wanted to sing; it was for me that we went to that theatre. I made him yield to the music, when he would keep it away. He did nothing, nothing more. I know what he did before, do you think I could forget it? But not this. Not this."
Madame Giry shook her head, slowly. "Last night, when you learned he was at the ramparts, you feared. What did you fear?"
"I don't know. Ghosts." Christine hung her head, and Madame Giry hated herself for what she knew she had to say:
"A traitor is one who betrays the things he believes in. The things Erik believes… They are his, child. His alone. And that is not something the world will take to kindly."
"You think he is a spy then." Christine raised her face slowly, and her mouth was rigid with anger. She looked over at Meg, who was huddling into the divan, then back at Madame Giry. She stood very straight, as if bracing herself for a blow. "You believe it."
"No," Madame Giry said, very softly. "I do not think he is a spy."
Christine looked wrong-footed, like a dancer who suddenly finds herself flourishing the opposite arm to the others. Madame Giry almost smiled, through tears, but in truth, there was nothing comical about any of this. He might be no spy, but that did not make him innocent. He stood accused, and the people who held him had only to call the gendarmes before the rest of his terrible career would unravel. And from that, there could be no escape.
"What I think, or hope, does not matter. I want you to see these things because they are only the truth, Christine. Neither you nor I have the power to scrutinise your suitor's comings and goings, and neither of us can know what he may or may not have done. Your assurances, however well-meant, are not proof."
"What about Raoul?" Meg said from her spot on the divan.
Madame Giry and Christine turned to her. Meg stood up, shaking out her skirts, and brushed her tangled hair back for her face. She looked exhausted; Madame Giry glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece and saw it was well past midnight.
"Raoul was there, wasn't he — Christine?"
"Yes," Christine whispered.
"Well then…" Meg rubbed her eyes. "Why don't you ask him?"