A/N: The insightful, articulate analysis in reviews for the last chapter blew me away. Feeling indescribably fortunate!

A bit of trivia to clarify the timing here: this is 31 October, still several months earlier than the Commune, but the political situation was already volatile. The government was pessimistic, ineffectual and politically tactless, and it was not only the poorer districts who were fed up. And bonus trivia on the nature of the social order: there was no such thing as a single standard of behaviour for all social classes, and Paris of 1870 was a melting pot of everything imaginable, both socially and politically. The bohemian, intellectual and artistic circles flourished, and a huge fraction of the population (not only the poor) was politically liberal, anti-monarchist, atheist, and in some sense radical. This was most definitely not the "Victorian era", in the sense in which people seem to use the term.

Chapter 55 — Valour

Raoul cursed his leg, and the stairs, and the twisting, muscle-wringing pain that dragged its iron weight behind him. He was forced to slow his descent to an awkward stumble down Guyon's neverending marble stairs, hearing all the while the entreaties outside that had to be Meg's, and the gaps of silence where Christine's voice ought to have been. He could picture her standing there, in this silence that was her last refuge against injury, her eyes turned to dark bottomless wells and her slight arms hugging her own shoulders.

"Please, Monsieur le Vicomte, you mustn't do this!" Guyon's serving man staggered under the weight of Raoul's shoulder, his ageing voice cracking. "What will your surgeon say?"

"I'm going to kill him," Raoul rasped.

"Kill him! God in Heaven, whatever for?"

"Not the surgeon! That… man." Raoul gritted his teeth and managed the last two stairs at almost a normal pace, but it was a close thing: as soon as they were outside, he saw the driver had already shut the carriage door and was returning to his seat.

"Christine!" He had not wanted to raise his voice, loath to heap still more humiliation upon her, but he could not bear the thought of her being taken away like this. "Hold," he called to the driver, "a moment of the lady's time."

The driver bowed, but Raoul saw him frown in the direction of the crowds in the streets beyond as he twisted the reins in one anxious hand. "Looks nasty back there, monsieur. If you don't mind me saying, I'd just as soon be off before they barricade the way." He cleared his throat. "You know the, uh, the gentleman what was hollering?"

"I do."

"Oh." The man scratched his ear uncomfortably. "Oh, right then."

"Wait, I will not detain you long."

Bracing his side against the frame of the carriage, Raoul pulled open the door on Christine's side. She sat huddled into the plush upholstery, staring down at her hands knotted in her lap. Beside her, Meg was murmuring something; she looked up when the door opened and gave Raoul a pleading look, plainly fearing he would only make this worse. Christine did not seem to notice him. She looked battered and pale, with no gloves or hat, dark curls tangled around her shoulders, her old coat torn. Raoul had never wanted another man's blood as badly as he did just then.

"Piece of work," he breathed, and that was far too kind a verdict. He could not bring himself to ask if she was all right; he could see she was far from it. "What does he want from you?"

Christine's head jerked up at the sound of his voice and her eyes widened. "Raoul! How did you get down here? Your leg!"

"Never mind that now; what of you, are you hurt?"

Christine shook her head adamantly, like a child. "I'm fine. Erik meant no harm."

"No harm!" Raoul glanced at Meg, who looked as helpless as he felt. "If this is how he treats you when he means no harm, I do not like to recall what he may do if he means it." He buried his hand in his hair. "And I defended him! Christine, he is determined to ruin you; the entire street heard these histrionics, the way he was shouting your name and mine. Does he think this is the theatre? What was it he demanded?"

Wordlessly, Christine unclasped her hands and lifted one to show him what Raoul now realised, with a stroke of absolute certainty, had to be a ring.

It was.

A narrow gold band encircled Christine's finger, where no ring had ever been, not even during their engagement. It gleamed with a tinge of rose, as though a drop of blood had been mixed into the metal itself.

Raoul let out a slow breath. "That was his idea of a proposal."

"Not exactly. That was his idea of informing me we are to be wed." Christine's mouth twitched in smile. "At least he did not buy a dress and veil."

"This time."

"This time," Christine agreed. She sighed and squared her shoulders, but did not remove the ring. "Let it be, Raoul. Erik is—"

"He is insatiable, like the dragons in your father's tales that only grow greedier with each sacrifice." Raoul tried to ease the bitterness from his voice, but all he could see was this girl he could never manage to protect, no matter how he tried. "Your father would never have wanted this for you. You deserve better! You deserve a normal life."

"Father wanted me brought up at the Opéra. That is hardly a normal life, but… It has its beauty." Christine looked much more herself now, as though she had found a new source of strength. She took his hand in her ringed one and squeezed his fingers. "Raoul… Would you do me a favour?"

o o o

Madame Giry lingered at the barre much too long, until the apartment sank into shadow and she could not see past the end of her own arabesque arm. Any moment now the door would open and there would be her daughter and Christine, unharmed and full of the excitement of these crazy times. There would be no loud official knock or uniformed men fresh from another riot, checking her name and looking regretful to inform her of things she dared not name even to herself. No, she dared not think it. They had to be safe.

Sounds of door-hinges, crying infants and anxious conversations drifted in from the stairwell, but no worried neighbours knocked on her door to share the uncertainty. That was only to be expected: the building was middle-class, and all knew she and the girls were theatre women. Still, the absence of news was becoming an ache in her chest.

She held the extension until her muscles complained, then turned and began anew on the left. The clock struck six; the window had become a black mirror with nothing beyond. Beads of perspiration ran around her eyes.

Six-fifteen. Still no Meg or Christine. She should not have sent them out alone; chaperoned or not, it would have been better if Christine's suitor was with them. Six-twenty.

She threw on a robe, turned up the gas as far as she could, and went to the kitchen. A pot of soaked beans still stood uncooked and would have to remain thus another day: once again there was no coal and only green wood for the stove, no use for keeping the heat going long enough to make stew. She ransacked the shelves for anything else to be done with tins of preserved vegetables, but had not the energy to focus on it now. Sardines it would be, and bread. Tomorrow if there was fuel, she would cook enough for the coming days. Never in her adult life had she expected to find herself grateful for the drudgery to which she was born, the five siblings wedged into a tiny room, and her mother wracking her head for a means to feed them all. Beans could go a long way when there was no meat; vegetables could be dried, fruit preserved. It seemed she had forgotten none of those early lessons, and it was well, for the lack of foodstuffs had gone beyond the uncomfortable to the dangerous. The girls were young and must not be permitted to go hungry; she saw enough of the misery in the streets now to know that illness lay only a small step past hunger, and this must not be.

They would live. No matter how long this went on, they would live.

A key turned in the door, and Meg's bright voice filled the apartment.

"We're back, maman!"

Madame Giry released a breath and winged a prayer of gratitude to any power that might hear.

They were both in the parlour before her, pulling off scarves, shaking out their hair and looking like the scraggly, scruffy and lovely girls they were. They brought in a breath of frosty air with them; late autumn.

"It's chaos out there," Meg said in a rush, flinging her scarf over the back of a chair. "The Hôtel de Ville is besieged, but we didn't see anything else, no fighting. Nobody even knows who the leaders are. There wasn't time to draw it but I'll make some sketches tonight; we saw enough and the News will certainly expect it."

Madame Giry nodded, but her eyes were on Christine. The girl sat down in the corner of the divan, her stocking feet crossed at the ankle, her back pressed to the armrest, and something in this cautious attitude sounded a new note of worry in Madame Giry's mind.

"Christine Daaé," she said very quietly, "what has happened?"

Christine looked up but it was Meg who answered.

"Erik found her."

It was then Madame Giry saw the glint of gold on Christine's ring finger. She felt the bulk of the piano behind her and held on to its lid, hard.

She said, "I see."

Christine smoothed her curls back from her face, looking bone-tired. She closed her eyes for a moment, and in this shadowy room her face became suddenly the image of her father, in the days when illness had only just begun to steal the youth from his face. Gustave used to close his eyes just like that when he played, Madame Giry recalled, seeing it.

"We had… an argument," Christine said. "That's all."

"He made a scene," Meg corrected, "right there in the street. It was awful."

Madame Giry watched Christine, but she only kept turning the ring on her finger around and around, as though probing a sore tooth.

Madame Giry braced herself. "That is an engagement ring?"

Christine smiled without humour. "A wedding band."

Madame Giry raised her eyebrows and looked between Christine and her daughter for an explanation. When none came, she sank down onto the piano bench. "What is this new madness? A secret marriage?"

"No. It is a ring, nothing more." Christine drew the ring off and closed her first over it. "I didn't want to lose it." She stared past Madame Giry to the piano, and behind that yearning gaze was the old, impenetrable world of loss that Madame Giry had ever been powerless to reach. Two orphans helping each other. What a fool she had been to allow it.

"May I have half an hour to practice, Madame Giry? If you don't need my help with dinner."

There was nothing for it but to acquiesce, and Madame Giry took Meg's shoulder and led her away through the dining room and into the kitchen. In truth, there was not much to be done other than brew coffee and set out the bread and wine, but they took their time over it and left Christine to her music. Not for the first time, Madame Giry caught herself wondering what she might have told Gustave about his daughter's future. The music that sounded from the parlour now was wild and strange, dense, with no discernible melody or space for a vocal line. It would blaze white, then abruptly fall silent mid-phrase, with an effect like the door to some dazzling room being slammed shut.

"Erik means to marry her." Meg set the last plate down but kept hold of it, looking into its porcelain mirror.

"Yes; so I gathered." Madame Giry shook herself from the spell of the music. "She is too young. You are both much too young for any of this." She answered the unspoken fear in Meg's voice: "You may be sure I have no intention of giving my consent until I am certain it is what Christine wants, and until he can prove himself capable of taking such a step."

"And if he refuses to wait? He had papers from the mairie. Documents. Christine said they were filled out with false family names."

Madame Giry looked at her curiously. "How can she be certain they are false?"

"He gave his mother's name as Mother."

"Ah."

"He shouted at Christine, and then when he ran away…" Meg shook her head in disbelief. "I could not be sure, it happened too fast, but I thought he was unmasked. In broad daylight. Maman, could he truly be insane?"

Madame Giry sighed. "Who can tell? Living in a prison makes calmer men than he impatient — look at what is going on out there tonight. We are all of us growing a trifle mad in this siege, each in our own way."

"Please, maman!" Meg released the plate with a clank. "How can you be so calm about it? Christine defends him even now, when he thinks so little of disgracing her. He can spend days here and seem like anyone else, almost — he went to talk to Monsieur De Gas for me! But then something happens and all at once he's this snarling… lunatic. What if he does take her? If she marries him, she will have nothing but what he allows her! There is no family to restrain him, and even the law and the government are a mess. And you know his opinion of the world."

"She has not accepted him," Madame Giry pointed out, gently.

Meg halted. "Well, no. Not yet."

Madame Giry touched her cheek. "You are right to worry, my dear. But give Christine her due, she is not ignorant of his nature. As for Erik, he listens to the world much more than you might imagine. He has only proven it again with those documents."

"What do you mean?"

"A man who scorns society's approval would hardly have gone to the trouble of obtaining all the papers for a marriage licence. Living in the world is not an inconsiderable task, my dear, even for a man accustomed to the demands of law. He is learning, and some lessons come harder than others. Pass me the bread knife please."

Meg handed her the knife and paused uneasily, wrestling with the need to speak of something else. Madame Giry held up a hand, forestalling her.

"Let me talk to Christine first. Whatever it is, it will keep until after dinner."

They took their meagre meal in silence. Meg kept glancing at Christine as though she feared Christine would any moment announce that she had decided to wed, while for her part Christine did not seem to notice anything past her own plate and ate as in a dream. She excused herself the moment her coffee cup was empty, and moments later that strange music began again. If it had any sense or structure, Madame Giry could not hear it — but the bright theme threaded between the lingering chords reminded her, all too forcefully, of the looks she had seen pass between Christine and her suitor. It was hope too fragile to be named, ghosts yearning for a touch.

Meg collected the dishes and, with an imploring glance at her mother, went to the kitchen.

Madame Giry sighed. Then she rose, carefully re-pinned her hair, and followed those disturbing chords to their source.

She wondered if somewhere, Erik was playing the harmony.

Christine jolted in her seat when she looked up and realised she had an audience. Madame Giry stood to one side of the piano, saying nothing, only waiting until Christine saw her and stopped. She felt she was waking a sleepwalker, afraid of making too sudden a move.

"I know what you are going to say," Christine told her, quiet and fierce.

"Then you know more than I do, my dear."

Christine put one hand to the instrument and picked out the staccato start of a folk tune. Madame Giry saw the ring was back on her finger. "You would tell me I must remember Erik is only a man, and he must be expected to act as one."

"That is not always easy," Madame Giry agreed mildly.

"But he did act as one!" Christine swivelled on the bench to face her, eyes burning. "That is exactly what he is doing. The 'honourable thing'. Isn't that what the world used to say of Raoul, after the scandal? 'The poor Vicomte, he is doing the right thing, marrying that Daaé girl.' But they laughed behind his back all the same."

Madame Giry tried to assimilate this, and could not. "The honourable thing."

"Erik insists we must make our, uh, our understanding binding." Christine pulled off the ring and dropped it to the keyboard with a clack of metal on ivory. "That is just what a man ought to do, and I know it as well as he. Only, I can't do it. I can't."

Madame Giry thought she was beginning to see, though some stubborn part of her mind refused to acknowledge it. Our understanding. No, she thought. No.

"It's all fake, that document. Names, dates, places. All he wants is to put a ring on my finger and give me a false name in place of my father's, and make of me a respectable wife to take out on Sundays. It is the honourable thing. But I can't wear a mask, I don't want to. I won't. I never dreamed Erik would ask it of me. I thought it was not a wife but me, me he wanted!" She struck the keyboard sharply, making the ring bounce up. "I am only Christine Daaé. If my father's name is mocked, it is my doing, and it is I who must put it right. I will not simply shed it and hide behind another."

Madame Giry felt the knot of suspicion in her belly unravel all at once into certainty. It left a sweetish, sickening taste in her throat, like guilt.

Those goodnight kisses. All those mornings, afternoons, evenings spent alone.

And like a fool she had done nothing save try to rein in their courtship a little, much too late. A painful refrain floated on the edges of her mind: she ought to have taken the girls away from the Opéra many years ago, ought to have abandoned its ghost.

It was no use dwelling on the past. The present was trouble enough.

"Christine, I have asked you this before — and have been wrong before. You must not be angry with me for asking again. What if something were to come of this… understanding, as you call it?"

Christine shrugged, but kept her face averted. "I'm not a child, Madame Giry."

"No. Far from it."

"We have been very careful. Erik has not… let himself go with me." She was whispering. "And my flux came."

"I see."

Christine stared down at the piano pedals. Madame Giry ached with her whole soul for this not-daughter of hers, whom she could not seem to shield from anything at all.

"Christine Daaé," she said gravely, "we will talk about it, later. But for now you must promise me that you will not do anything rash. It would be prudent to bolt your window tonight, and the doors also. Your lover," she pronounced the word carefully, "is capable of many things, not all of them admirable. And he will have been sorely disappointed."

Christine picked up the ring again, carefully, almost apologetically. "He has never taken disappointment well."

Madame Giry could not help a small snort. "That is something of an understatement."

Even Christine cracked a smile at that, but it vanished almost before it appeared. She looked thoughtful.

"Madame Giry…" She spoke slowly, forming the words into a single thought. "If Meg's father had wanted marriage, truly wanted it… Would you have accepted?"

"If Jules had wanted marriage, my dear, he would have been a different man. And if I had accepted, I would have been a very different woman. It was best we parted when we did."

Christine touched the piano keys very lightly, as though stroking a timid animal. "He could have stayed with you," she said softly. "He could have stayed, even so."

Madame Giry shook her head. "No, my dear. Men of his class cannot live that way. He loved the theatre but he was not of it, not at all. And I certainly would have made an even worse mistress than wife."

"Erik is of the theatre."

"Is he?" Madame Giry guided Christine's hand gently down from the keyboard. "That's enough for the evening, Christine. Give it time."

Christine nodded. Then she rose briskly, and faced Madame Giry, looking at once determined and terrified. The light reflected in her pupils was rose gold, the same shade as the ring.

"I made up my mind today. I am going to perform. Only this time, it will be my own music."