A/N: I haven't left you for good, I swear! Thank you to all my lovely readers for your dedication. Here you go...
Chapter 65 — The Price of Freedom
Erik seethed all the way to the ambulance, barely noting the growing traffic on the boulevards. Damn the Vicomte. Ungrateful bastard. He ought never to have encouraged him to walk. Without his assistance Chagny could not have risen from his wheelchair, let alone walked off on his own to leave him with no cover for being here. Still bunching the conscription letter in his pocket, Erik barged straight through the wide-open entrance of the ambulance and walked on ahead, ignoring the surprised query from a group of medics who stood smoking at the first tent. A nurse in a heavy overcoat side-stepped him, nearly losing her armful of linen. Perhaps Chagny's defection was just as well, jeered a sardonic part of his mind, it was a fine rehearsal for the humiliation he was about to endure.
But it would be worth it. It would all be worth it to return to Christine a free man.
He was eventually forced to slow down by the silence. Away from the main thoroughfare all was quiet and still. Here the sounds of the city and the battle beyond had faded to a dark threat below the limit of his hearing, and only the crunch of frozen leaves under his boots disturbed the peace. Erik continued more circumspectly. The tents of the wounded squatted among bare trees, grey canvas doorways flapping suddenly in the morning fog before vanishing like ghosts at a deserted fairground. An old music-box tune suggested itself, but Erik quashed it and went on along the tree-lined path between the tents, trying to keep up a self-assured pace, trying to conceal his bandages under hat and scarf, trying to ignore the music in his head and the urge to turn around and be gone. He had forgotten how to be a freak, but an army of memories ranged behind to remind him and he did not dare stop.
A knot of activity at the far end suggested he had at last found Doctor Swinburne. Drawing nearer, Erik saw the open doorway of a tent and within, the surgeon's customary white coat and the dark suits and hats of the hangers-on who clustered around him. Before he could change his mind Erik plunged on, adopting a deferential stoop that would not mark him a stranger among them, and slipped through the doorway to insinuate himself at the edge of the little crowd. His heart was thundering. Nobody turned to him. He was in.
The tent was dark after the daylight, and stank of a butcher's shop.
"He will lose more than the arm if we don't operate," said the man in front of him, a stocky American in a fur cap, addressing his neighbour in accented French. The subject of the conversation appeared at first glance to be a soldier's corpse laid out motionless on a stretcher, until Swinburne gave a sharp tap to the swollen shoulder and Erik saw movement flicker over the waxen face. Not yet a corpse then, but near enough.
"Nonsense," the neighbour scoffed, "the bones will knit, if you consider the application of Doctor Swinburne's method—"
As though on cue, Swinburne grabbed the soldier's arm and with a practiced manoeuvre gave it a wrench. Sinew crunched; the almost-corpse roared and bucked and then lay very still. Erik's vision swam with fiery orange blotches and blood rushed to his temples. For a moment he was the Ghost in Bazeilles, the Angel of Death with a rope twisted about a wounded man's neck. His hand spasmed in his pocket, crushing the conscription letter.
Then all at once it was over. The wounded soldier lay breathing heavily, alive, his eyes goggling stupidly at the canvas ceiling. His twitching movements were not those of a man in control of his senses and Erik realised he was drugged. The hangers-on began to babble enthusiastically among themselves as two medics picked up the stretcher and carried it out, and the imposing Mrs Edmonds swept in with Swinburne's secretary, holding a stack of papers. The pandemonium was making it difficult to breathe. Erik looked towards the exit.
The moment he had raised his eyes from the succession of faces and coats, he regretted his lack of vigilance. Swinburne was looking directly at him.
The surgeon's brows quirked ever so slightly, and he made a motion with his bearded chin which Erik interpreted as invitation to make his presence known.
Erik stayed still, keeping to the shadows. Let the doctor make the first move.
Swinburne murmured something to Mrs Edmonds, answered the secretary's query and accepted the proffered binder of documents, then returned his calm gaze to where Erik stood.
There was nobody there.
The surprise that registered in his distinguished features almost made Erik give himself away, but he controlled the mad desire to laugh and remained unmoving in his new hiding place on the far side of the tent. He waited to see if this man truly had the intelligence with which he was credited.
"Mrs Edmonds!" Swinburne gestured with the binder to halt the lady before she could depart the tent. "Be so kind as to send Whiskers in here — I spotted a mouse just now. An uncommonly large one at that."
Erik made a soundless growl in his throat: the nerve, to mock this for a game of cat-and-mouse! Still, he was willing to credit the doctor's ingenuity; if nothing else, he was acknowledging his presence.
Swinburne went on, "And tell the Ambassador he might have a cup of coffee while he waits. I shall need a quarter of an hour," — he flicked through the binder he held, "to study these notes."
"Of course, Doctor." If Mrs Edmonds was surprised to have her high-ranking visitor delayed, Erik heard nothing of it in her reply. As she left another patient was already being carried inside, but Swinburne motioned to an underling to take over, glanced at where he had last seen Erik, and strode out of the tent.
Erik shadowed him reluctantly, ghosting among canvas and trees. The doctor's attitude disturbed him. He had no doubt that Swinburne had recognised him as the freak he had often seen in the company of Mademoiselle Daaé during her many visits to the ambulance, yet neither his appearance nor his abrupt disappearance seemed to have the unsettling effect he had intended. This was Chagny's fault, Erik thought resentfully. He would not have had to resort to these fairground tricks if the Vicomte had not deserted at the last minute. Chagny could have come in here to see his physician and it would all have been respectable and above suspicion.
He thought about returning to Christine, and walked faster.
Swinburne went into the tent he used as his private office, ignoring the crowd of disappointed supplicants waiting outside. A quarter of an hour, he had said to Mrs Edmonds. That was all the time he had.
Erik took a long breath and stepped out into the open. He adjusted his hat, gripped the letter in his pocket, and walked right past the stunned mutterings of the crowd and into Swinburne's tent.
At the rustle of the door-flap Swinburne looked up from his reading, removing his silver-framed spectacles when Erik stepped inside.
"Well, well. The very large mouse. Please, take a seat." He indicated the second chair on the other side of the desk.
Erik glanced down at the chair and remained standing tall and silent.
"As you will," Swinburne said, unfazed. "I take it you have come on behalf of young Raoul de Chagny."
At this, Erik almost did sit. What the devil did Chagny have to do with this?
"I warned him he was compromising his recovery to sign himself out at so early a stage. He is confined to the chair then? You must understand, the ambulance cannot readmit him."
"This is nought to do with the Vicomte, or his damned injury! And it so happens," Erik said, calming down a fraction, "that he gets around admirably well on those crutches of his." Too well, he added mentally, but managed to restrain himself from being drawn deeper into this ridiculous farce. "It is not Chagny I have come to discuss."
"I see," Swinburne said, although he plainly did not.
Erik swung the chair towards himself and dropped into it abruptly, making the springs cry out. "You made me an offer. Have you the decency to recall it?"
"I confess you have the advantage of me." Swinburne opened his hands in what he probably thought as a disarming manner, but which Erik found infuriating.
"This!" He thrust his bandaged face forward. "You sought to examine it, did you not? Catalogue the distortions, discover what the bandages hide, compose a report to your learned colleagues. You and I both know this is no mere burn or purulent wound."
Swinburne picked up his spectacles, polished them on a handkerchief, and put them on. The lenses glinted like knives. "Let me be sure I understand. You wish to have me examine this—"
"Deformity." Erik bit off the word, detesting that he was reduced to a sideshow owner crying his wares. "A true deformity and not some dime-a-dozen bullet hole the likes of which you see every day. A medical curiosity. You may examine it, measure, photograph, write all the damned reports you will — but in return, I will have this gone." He brought out the crumpled yellow wad of the conscription letter, unfolded it on the desk and flicked it towards Swinburne.
"Monsieur Erik Andersson," Swinburne read, holding it at a distance for his spectacles, "Architect. This is you?"
"Who else would it be! I need a letter, Doctor. I will not serve in their army. I have other duties."
Swinburne passed the letter back, smiling in a slightly bemused manner. "You have a respectable occupation for someone claiming to be a fairground curiosity, Monsieur Andersson. And a remarkable talent for concealing your person, if the earlier display was any indication. Why not put it to good use? You would not be the first man in Paris to evade his duty."
"I will not go into hiding. Mademoiselle Daaé is at the Variétés now, and I will not have her questioned or shamed. No. I want a letter, Doctor. One that sets me free." Erik flattened his palms to his thighs to disguise the tremor in his fingers.
"You must realise I cannot do that." Swinburne passed him back the letter. "Your deformity, if such it is, is of infinitely less interest to me than those bullet holes you dismiss." His impersonal tone was so much at odds with what Erik had expected that he could only remain where he sat, paralysed with disbelief as Swinburne began to get up. "If you will excuse me. I cannot keep the Ambassador waiting."
He was being dismissed, Erik realised. Just like any other stranger, unremarkable, unexceptional. He felt he was sliding endlessly down a black well, whose slippery sides offered no purchase.
He had become a man like any other, nothing more, nothing.
"The Devil's Child."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The act. In the fairground. The Devil's Child, born with a death's head." The sickening sensation of falling stopped. Erik removed his hat to display the extent of the bandages and loosened the scarf from his neck, but did not touch the bandage itself.
Swinburne sat back down slowly. "You were displayed."
Erik held his stare. "The letter first. Then you may do as you will."
"You are in earnest."
"Quite."
Swinburne folded his hands before him on the table and contemplated him for what felt like minutes. Erik pictured Christine in his mind, her smile as she turned to him in their hearse-carriage, her hand on the windowpane, her voice. In the darkness she was the only star.
"Very well," Swinburne said at last. "You shall have your letter. But I will have another bargain in return."
o o o
The distant hammering of the cannonade had resumed with the dawn, as though some angry deity was trying to knock a hole through the sky. Christine opened the curtains in the dining-room and found the glass veiled by an intricate lacework of frost. The apartment was very cold, but that had to be as nothing compared with the weather outside — and the soldiers were out there… She put her thumb against the glass and peered through the little peephole it made. The balcony railing was covered in a dusting of white frost, and white light reflected back to her from the windows opposite, shimmering as another explosion thudded.
Winter music, she thought, huddling deeper into the coat she had put on over her morning dress, as the music began to form in her mind. An storm in every octave, furious and threatening and brittle as ice, pulsing with life under its rage. But through that storm a hidden melody would begin to grow, weak and unnoticed at first but becoming stronger, until at last it tamed the storm, quietened it, and emerged from the silence as a solo. A violin? No, a voice… or rather two, singing in perfect unison. Yes.
That was it — the start of the third movement. Would Erik understand it when she sang it for him? She wanted him suddenly to be right here, right now, standing where she coul reach for his hand and touch him and let him hear as she heard. But he was not.
He had left before first light, and was still not back. Christine thought she must have been expecting it, for it did not surprise her in the morning to find the door to the living-room still standing open, the divan empty, and the piano mute and its bench tucked away. Even Erik's shaving box had been removed from the side table and placed discreetly underneath, as though he did not know whether he would return to claim it. She wanted to believe it only another morning errand, but last night he had talked of duty and war, and this morning the rattle of the guns confirmed a battle... The music he had composed had sounded just like this.
Crossing the dining-room, she stopped in the doorway and studied the empty living room through the cloud of her breath. Then she sighed and shut the door.
"There's bread!" Meg called from the kitchen. "And coal," she added more quietly, turning to greet Christine as she walked in. Meg too was in her coat and her nose was pink with cold. "Erik must have been up at some ungodly hour to have brought it in so early. Where's he gone?"
"To be alone." Christine took the breadboard and reached for a knife.
Meg blinked at her. "Alone."
"Yes. What of it?" The bread was coarse and crumbled irritatingly as Christine's knife sawed through it. She tossed the chunks into the bread basket and stood back to let Meg light the stove.
"He picked an odd day to be alone, that's all. There's the sortie. The way the guns have been pummelling the forts today, I keep expecting them to start on the city." Meg pulled the coffee tin down off the shelf and opened the lid, rattling the last few beans. "Do you think he'll bring more coffee? We're out. It's not so bad to be hungry when there's coffee."
"There's still tea. Here, pass me the kettle." Christine tried the faucet; it trumpeted at her and yielded nothing. "The pipes must have frozen again in the night. We'll have to wait."
"We have time. I haven't seen maman yet this morning." Meg held her hands out to the stove, opening and closing her fingers to warm them. They were stained with ink, Christine noticed, and the right hand was calloused from gripping a pen. There was ink in her loose hair too, and even a smudge on her cheek.
"It's unlike your mother to sleep so late."
"She was up long after midnight, I heard her pacing back and forth in her room. I know she is still thinking about Perros and poor Madame Pierot…" Meg pulled out her handkerchief and crumpled it to blow her nose. "I wish we had never set eyes on Monsieur Duchamp's stupid letter, when there's not a thing we can do from within this city. I hope to God the army manages to break through."
Christine came over to join her by the stove to warm her own hands. "I have a feeling it's not only thoughts of Madame Pierot that kept your mother awake. What were you doing awake half the night?" She nodded at the ink stains, "Drawing?"
Meg shifted uncomfortably. "Henri asked for a sketch. He is in the sortie."
"You didn't tell me! He's fighting?"
"Of course. He is an officer. This is not just another Le Bourget, you know, everyone is fighting. When I went to see Marie yesterday, there was hardly a man to be seen in all Montmartre."
"I know that," Christine said more curtly than she intended. Meg looked at her askance, but did not ask about Erik. Perhaps it did not even occur to her to ask. Christine hid her hands in her coat, trying to hold onto the warmth. "Erik spoke about enlisting last night."
"Oh! I suppose he ought to have been drafted with the others. Why wasn't he?"
"Maybe he was. He wouldn't tell me."
The sympathy in Meg's eyes hurt. "Do you think that's why he's gone today? To sign up?"
"Don't." Christine winced. "Please, just – I'm sorry I said anything about it. He is probably trying to find out news of the battle, that is all. It must be chaos on the boulevards this morning."
"But if he was drafted?"
"The sortie may succeed," Christine said firmly. "It will succeed. And we shall all be free again."
Meg looked at her without replying. In the silence, only the guns rumbled, and the pipes creaked as the ice in the tap slowly gave way.
"I drew him," Meg said suddenly.
"Henri?"
"Erik." From her pocket she pulled the sketchbook she used outdoors, and flipped it open.
Christine stared. In Meg's book, a man sat at a piano, seen from the back as he lowered his shoulders into an unheard music. Before him, above and around the piano, were tall open doors looking out onto a veranda. Sunlight streamed through the glass, dappled by the shade of an unseen tree somewhere in the garden. Christine felt her eyes watering. "It's him," she said. "Meg, it's him…"
Meg grinned sheepishly. "It wasn't going to be. I was going to draw Henri. But you and Erik, and that music of yours — what you played when you played together. I couldn't get it out of my head. So I drew it."
Christine touched the drawing. "This is how you heard it? The veranda…"
"It's the garden. In Perros, remember."
"Yes," Christine said, "of course. I didn't know, but you're right, it feels just like that. That tree, the light falling. And Erik at the piano… Oh, Meg. May I keep it?"
Meg was already pulling the page free from its binding. "Of course. Take it." She watched Christine put it carefully into her pocket. "We could go back there when the siege ends. It would be good to see the house again. And I think maman would like it."
"So would I." Christine turned the tap and waited while the trickle of rust-coloured water gradually cleared, filled the kettle and passed it to Meg. "You should let Monsieur de Gas see this one when he returns."
"If he returns. If any of them return."
Just then, footsteps sounded from the entrance hall, voices and the slam of the front door. Christine and Meg turned to the kitchen door as the floorboards creaked just outside and a draught of cold air announced someone coming in. Two people.
"Maman," Meg said, just as Christine exclaimed, "Raoul!"
Madame Giry stood aside to let him approach the kitchen door.
"Mademoiselle Giry," Raoul sketched a brief anxious greeting to both of them, "Christine. My apologies for the intrusion, I know it is too early." His coat glistened with dew at the shoulders from the morning mist, and he leaned heavily on the crutch at his good side, his hat in his hands. Plainly he had been trying to move faster than he should, and the pinched corners of his mouth spoke of the effort of it.
Christine went to him at once, putting her hand over his to steady him. "Something's happened." She noted with dismay the spray of mud over the shoe on his good leg. "You didn't walk all the way here!"
"I'm fine." Raoul squeezed her fingers, asking for her forbearance, as he pulled something from an inside pocket of his coat: a slim package wrapped in butcher's paper and tied with a ribbon. "I promised Guyon I would see this delivered — Mademoiselle Giry, Henri wanted you to have it."
"Really, monsieur," Madame Giry said in dismay, even as Meg reached for the package.
"Newspapers!" She tore a corner of the paper to look within, and stopped in surprise. "Oh. Is that English?"
"It's the three latest issues of the London Illustrated News. Direct from London by way of the American Legation." Raoul released Christine's hand to readjust his weight on the crutches. "I promised I would see the paper safely into your hands. Henri assures me his uncle will not miss it, but one cannot be too careful."
Meg opened the paper with shaking hands and smoothed it out. On the front page was a large reprint of a drawing Christine recognised: the Opéra, with a vegetable market in front of its ruined façade. Meg's work.
"Thank you," Meg said. The paper was unsteady in her hands, and she closed it abruptly, and pressed it to her chest. "I was wondering if my drawings had reached London."
The boiling kettle hissed a warning, and Madame Giry plucked it from its spot on the stove just as it began to steam. "Do go through into the dining room, monsieur. These are strange times, but we have not yet reached the point of receiving visitors in the kitchen."
Meg held the door open. "Yes, please come and sit down. You must have breakfast with us — well, tea and bread. Is there any news from the battle?" She led the way to the dining table and pulled out a chair for Raoul.
After the heated kitchen, the dining room felt so cold that it made Christine's teeth chatter. Raoul shook his head regretfully, refusing to sit. "Much as I'd like to stay, I'm afraid there is something else. Christine?"
"Yes." Christine clamped her chattering teeth together, trying very hard to feel nothing, fear nothing. She had surmised the reason for this sudden visit the moment she saw Raoul come in, and the urgent concern in his voice now left her no doubt. "It's about Erik. Isn't it."
Raoul rubbed his forehead. "I'm sorry. He has received a letter — he showed me—"
"A conscription."
"You know?" he said in surprise.
"I guessed." The martial music Erik composed returned to throb in Christine's head in time with her pulse, making it hard to think. "He will not wield a gun again, Raoul. You know it! You spoke of it yourself at his hearing, and it is true. He will not fight."
"I do not think he means to fight, Lotte."