Chapter 6 — "He'll Stop at Nothing"
The story came out of Christine first hesitantly, under Raoul's incisive questioning, and then in a stumbling rush. Some of it I did not learn until much later; at some things of which she would not speak I only ever guessed.
Perhaps she herself did not know the depths of her heart, or shrank to lay them open. I never asked her — though I often wondered, in the months afterwards — if she had suspected that every word she let slip that night would go straight to the ears of the one who had perpetrated upon her the deception she described, and who would regard her appeal for help as an unforgivable betrayal.
Christine did not tell us everything. But what she did say was enough to bring down disaster upon the Opera House and upon those of us present on that roof, herself most of all.
It was such a wild and fantastical tale that I could see all too well why it had seemed so impossible to confide. She had believed for months that the mysterious voice that spoke to her in her dressing-room at the Opera — a voice that spoke from thin air, or whispered directly in her ear when there was no-one by, with a power and beauty like none she'd heard before — was none other than that of an angel. Her father had spoken of such celestial visitors, and even promised his little daughter that one day she too would know the touch of Heaven. And under the influence of this disembodied presence, as commanding as it was patient and infinitely kind, Christine had found herself somehow able to achieve feats of music in which she herself could scarcely believe.
She had yielded her voice and her obedience up completely, and never doubted the benevolence or the radiant purity that lay behind her guardian angel's attentions. Miracles happened on earth, everyone knew that. Why should there not be one small private miracle vouchsafed to her, Christine Daaé — just for her? Why should not just one of the myriad voices in the choirs of heaven have come to share that gift of glory here below, guided by her father's loving soul?
I remembered middle-aged men in my father's salon in Vienna, arguing metaphysics and the existence of unseen chemical forces with passionate, unprovable conviction, and felt no inclination to laugh. Raoul began a protest of disbelief —"but surely?"— caught my eye, and subsided. Christine had found herself subject to an inexplicable power, able to awaken gifts she had not known she possessed, and one that brought with it a beauty that seemed possible only with divine intervention. What, after all, was the supernatural but a term for those things we could not as yet explain?
Despite my own experience, I still did not know how the Opera Ghost had done it, though I could hazard a guess. I'd heard stories of men who, when mesmerised, had supposedly walked tightropes, leaped up onto the overmantel at a single bound, and achieved other deeds of which they would never have believed themselves capable when waking. Christine had true talent, heaven-sent or not. Perhaps he had simply found a way to unlock it.
None of that could excuse the whole insane charade — still less what had followed. Master ventriloquist, master mesmerist the man might be, but he was by no means the disinterested protector he had led poor Christine to believe. His interest was not merely in her musical gifts, still less her immortal soul, but in her all too shapely flesh. An Angel of Music could not admit to such sentiments, however unworthy, but he could do his best to keep her from society... and until the Vicomte de Chagny had come on the scene, he had succeeded.
Christine had been under orders to refuse all invitations. She'd tried her best, I remembered now, to refuse Raoul, but I had given her no choice. I'd prided myself so much on my laughing diplomacy, and I'd had no idea just what harm it would do.
There had been an unseen eavesdropper on our conversation — not the omniscient being he'd pretended to be, but only a lurker behind the wall — and he'd panicked. He'd taken Christine without a thought for the consequences, before she could slip any further from his grasp. Perhaps... perhaps he'd thought he could win her over so that his fall from heaven would not seem so great.
Christine had not resisted. She'd gone with him in a sort of ecstatic trance, from a blaze of light into darkness that sang with a thousand voices like the stars. Music surrounded her and bore her up, and she had no thought of fear... and she had known, somehow, that all the voices were one, and the one was his, and that his hand was in hers, and while he was with her the night would be her refuge and her joy, and she was safe.
It was not true.
I heard Raoul curse through set teeth beneath his breath, and knew a helpless anger of my own; but though she had been utterly in his power, the kidnapper had not outraged her, at least. In her daze, Christine had scarcely even comprehended that her captor was a man of flesh and blood, and not some creature of magic and music incarnate, or that he might harbour the desires of any man. She had only the most confused memories of where she had been or how she had got there, but she was certain that he had offered her no violence... or not of that sort.
The horror, for her, had begun the next morning, when she awoke from what had seemed a dream —a waking that had seemed still, in its utter strangeness, to be a dream— to find herself in a place she did not know, alone with a masked stranger. If she'd been thinking more clearly, she might have reasoned that a mask meant he was well-known, or at least someone he feared she might recognise later, when she was discarded and he had had his will. In fact, she was not conscious of reasoning at all; she knew only, as if in a vision, that when she saw his face she would understand.
Save that —as she told it— there was no face. There was only a tortured mass of flesh, barely even human, and a mouth that snarled with murderous rage. His grip bit into her, bruising her to the bone, and in the moment before he flung her to the floor, as the scream left her throat, she understood at last that she was awake — and that she was in the most deadly danger.
"But those eyes— the monster's eyes— as he raged and wept and crawled and tried to hide... oh, I could not hate him, the angel in Hell, even when I knew he must be the Ghost. That he was a man, and a wicked man. And yet no man, for he had possession of my mind, he has me still, and I cannot break free. I am his, and he knows it. I hear the echo of his whispers in my chamber at night, and the ice of his caresses slides across me in the breath of the breeze, and when he calls again I will come against my will. He hates all the world, and he loves me, and I do not know which is the more terrible. He wants my voice as his instrument and my answering heart as slave and goddess to his own, and where his desires are not obeyed he will kill — and kill again!"
She could not know that, I told myself. She could not. There had been a sudden unheralded scene change, and amid all the chaos a man in the flies had slipped to his death. That did not mean there was a murderer on the loose...
I must have let slip some kind of protest, for Christine took a deep breath.
"Joseph Buquet knew too much to be safe," she said quietly. "He used to talk... I think he'd seen something, or suspected. And tonight — he must have stumbled on the truth."
"It was no accident, Hertha." Raoul's intervention held a strained edge that was almost reluctant. "I heard them talking about it downstairs before I— before I left." Before he'd chased off to prevent a cat-fight between his wife and the girl she'd caught in his arms; he would not admit to that, I thought with a twist of anger, but it had to have been uppermost in his mind.
"There was a struggle up on the catwalk," Raoul went on. "The Ghost was seen — just a glimpse, but there's no doubt about it. There were two men there, and Buquet was fighting for his life. He didn't slip and fall; he was killed, and killed in the most public way that could be contrived, by a murderer who was trying to make a point. We already knew we were dealing with a criminal and not a theatrical haunting. Now we know we're dealing with a man who will stop at nothing."
Christine pulled free from the coat I'd tried to wrap around her and ran to him, both hands in his. "Then you believe me — you know it's true?"
"I don't believe in fairy-tales — but I believe something happened, all right. And I understand that we need to get you out of Paris, and as quickly and quietly as can be managed." His voice was grim; it softened a little as he looked down at her. "Do you think you could manage the performance... just for tonight? It's giving the Ghost what he wants; there'll be nothing to fear. I'll be in the wings every moment, I promise, just a few strides away. And afterwards—"
"Afterwards"—I took up the suggestion as he glanced at me—"the Vicomtesse de Chagny will bring her carriage directly round to the stage door. We'll get word to Lisotte to let her know where you've gone, and she can send over some clothes. You won't need to set foot in the Opera again until this whole affair has been cleared up — will she, Raoul? In fact..."
I hesitated a moment, thinking of the old Vicomtesse's reaction if I were to bring home an opera-singer as a house guest, let alone one who was already associated with scandal. "There's a little estate just north of Paris where Raoul's parents lived years ago, when they were first married. The family spends Christmas there every year. Raoul can send word to have it opened up early, and I'll take you out there tomorrow. Or straight from the Opera tonight, if you think that's safer."
It would mean trying to doze in the coach in full evening dress, and descending upon an unprepared household tomorrow. I thought ruefully of the consternation that would be caused, and aimed a glare at Raoul, who'd clearly been afflicted by a similar vision, and was stifling a choking sound that might have been a laugh.
But Christine had caught her breath, her expression eager even in the dusk. For a moment she looked very young. "Oh, Madame— Hertha— oh, if only you could..."
"Then that's settled." I got a nod from Raoul —whatever his views on the practical merits of my proposal, he was evidently in agreement that the most important thing right now was to get Christine reassured and down off this roof— and smiled at her. "Come on. They'll be looking for you, on the stage. The managers must be quite frantic by now, wondering where you are... and you'll be quite safe. We'll make sure of that. Then I'll have the horses waiting as soon as the last act ends, and whisk you off before anyone has even worked out that you're not in your dressing-room."
Had I thought there was any danger, I should have been the first to insist we leave at once — but if the Countess did not sing, the Opera would close down in a cloud of ignominy tonight, and if there was any choice I would not do that to Raoul. And I did not think that Christine, who had set her heart on music, would wish it either.
If only I'd known. But Christine ran to me laughing and crying at once, and we all went clattering down the stairs back towards what should have been her triumph, to salvage "Il Muto" from disaster to a standing ovation... and if the wind howled up above in a voice of desolation, nobody heard or took warning.
Raoul was in the wings throughout, as he'd promised, and half a dozen hefty stagehands had posted themselves in the flies out of fellow-feeling for Buquet, on the off-chance that the Ghost might be rash enough to make another appearance. Madame Firmin smiled at me and made room beside her; my place in Box 5 had been left empty, on the grounds that if, as Gilles André put it sourly, they were to be obliged to take orders from an Opera Ghost, then he had best be provided with the spectral seat he had demanded. All the same, judging by the number of backstage staff who seemed to find it necessary to loiter in the corridor within earshot of the box in question, I would not have given much for the chances of any more tangible monster who chose to manifest in that vicinity. It was one thing to make fools of a new management, but murder was murder, and there was an ugly feeling in the air.
There was no guard whatsoever on the one place where it might have made any difference, high above the dome of the auditorium. But we could not have known that.
~o~
Christine was in superb voice as the Countess, despite her obvious unease, and the girl who had been put in as Serafimo in her place was a born mimic. She clowned her way through the part, making outrageous eyes at both Christine and the audience, and presently Christine too began to relax into her role. By the end of the famous —and famously difficult— Mirror Scene in the second act, in which the Countess sings an admiring duet to her own perfections in the mirror, the soprano imitating precisely the trills and runs of her mirror-voice as played by the first flute, it was clear the performance was going to be a triumph, and the curtain went down to a storm of applause.
The child playing Serafimo would be a well-deserved hit, I decided, watching her trick jewels out of Don Attilio in the next act under his/her guise as the maid. No doubt Carlotta could be coaxed back to reclaim her rightful place as Countess once Christine was safely out of Paris, especially once she knew her rival would no longer be present —at least for the moment— to challenge her supremacy on stage. The Opera would not be forced to close its doors, and Raoul would have as many weeks as he needed, with the help of Christine's fresh revelations, to put an end to this blackmail business once and for all. The Ghost had come out into the open tonight, and that meant he was rattled enough to take risks. As the final act began, I believe I was actually flattering myself that we had contrived to steal a march upon our opponent, and that he would soon be behind bars.
Christine was still in full flow, but I made an excuse and slipped out at the back of the auditorium. Our coach would be arriving soon, and I needed to alert the driver to his new instructions.
By the time I returned, fifteen minutes later, the opera was almost over, but our preparations were complete and there was nothing left to wait for but the curtain calls. Undoubtedly this was not the first occasion on which one of the performers was to be whisked away privately after the show, in what amounted to an elopement; it was certainly rather less common in the history of backstage intrigue, however, for the leading lady to arrange to run off with a Vicomte's wife. I'd been obliged to lay out a certain number of bribes, and the situation amused me immensely.
The crowd in the parterre were on their feet and shouting for Christine. I thrust my way in amongst them, heedless of the jostling and of indignant looks, trying to get close enough to catch Christine's eye and reassure her that all was ready for her escape. The principals were coming forward now to take their bows, gorgeous in powder and satin, a little dishevelled and tawdry perhaps under the house lights, and their stage paint the worse for wear, but with smiles that soaked up the cheers and the applause and the indefinable buzz of a theatre filled with success.
The calls for Christine redoubled —"Daaé! Daaé!"— and she released the hands of her co-stars and came forward alone. For a moment it seemed the whole of the audience was on its feet in a great rising wave of adulation. The lights flickered in the chandelier. Then a voice cried out overhead, an incoherent animal sound like a dog mad with anguish, and the world fell apart.
Death stooped towards us — half a ton of burning gilt-and-crystal death. I heard the echo of it up in the dome, not understanding: a rattle of running chain and the first tearing sounds as the plaster began to fall. All eyes were turned upwards, beyond the trembling weight of the chandelier. An instant of incomprehension, before the first scream.
The chandelier came down in a great pendulum rush, not silently but with the terrible clamour of a railway crash, all tortured metal and breaking glass. It seemed to come slowly through time heavy as treacle, while we crawled beneath it like flies, helpless to escape. Men fought their way over seat-backs. The weak were trampled aside.
Alone on the forefront of the stage, Christine Daaé stood frozen, staring up as if transfixed. The mass plummeted on its torn cables, swinging inwards as it came, plunging down on the parterre, on the orchestra pit, on centre-stage...
Move, I willed her, move! Instants stretched out like hours, and still she stood there. Move aside, Christine! Move — move!
Someone did move in the wings, a flash of white shirt-front that was Raoul, hurtling straight into the path of disaster. Some stupid chivalrous sacrifice—
I found breath in the crush to scream his name. My panic carried; caught his attention for a fatal second's hesitation.
Borne on by his own momentum, Raoul de Chagny collided with Christine just as he'd intended. The force of that leap should have knocked them both aside, and safely clear. But he was a fraction too late and —thinking me in danger— too unsure.
He and Christine crashed together to the stage, almost but not quite out of reach of the chandelier's fall. I saw him roll over in a vain attempt to interpose his own body as a shield, in just the heroic gesture I'd feared. Then the great chandelier of the Opera House smashed to ruin on the bare boards precisely where Christine had been standing, and I could no longer see either of them at all.
Of what came next I could remember only disjointed glimpses, afterwards. Perhaps that was a mercy.
I was not touched by the fragments of the chandelier, though others in the audience were, and though the wind of its passing swept over us as close as Hell's scorching breath. All around me were screaming mouths and struggling bodies, fighting one another for escape. Blood covered the faces of some, and others were dragged down inexorably in the crush, or ground against unforgiving wood or brass. There were writhing limbs beneath my feet as I stumbled, and a great weight that pressed in upon me until I could not breathe... and there was Raoul, for whose sake I must traverse that pit of horrors, Raoul somewhere beyond my reach, lying crushed amid the worst of the wreckage.
Somehow, against the tide that sought only for the exit, I reached the stage. But the structure that had seemed so solid was smashed apart, with broken planks gaping like splintered teeth, and I was not permitted to come to him, though with my hair torn loose and my dress in tatters I must have seemed a madwoman in my despair.
It felt like an eternity before I could see him lifted free. He was dazed and ashen pale as they carried him into the wings, lashed to a makeshift stretcher, and my heart turned over to see the great smear across his breast, white linen soaked and drying now to brown.
His eyes were open, and he knew me. In that moment my face must have been as white as his own.
"Not... my... blood..." He managed reassurance. One hand stirred a little, wavering, and I caught it and pressed it in mine, fighting the urge to cover it in foolish kisses and burst into tears. Raoul's attention was already elsewhere. "Christine's... head was cut. Is she... all right?"
He was attempting to sit up, despite the cords that held him. I thrust him down again with a firm hand; touched his forehead lightly, and told him I would go and see.
Christine was trying to protest that she could walk, but it was clear she could not. Two of the pompiers who'd been working on the debris had her between them, their brass fire-helmets dimmed with grime, and her face was a mask of dried blood and dust, like a grotesque parody of stage-paint. The elaborate wig she'd worn as the Countess was long gone, lying crushed somewhere beneath the stage, and I could see an ugly gash that ran up across her scalp. But she did not appear so much hurt as uncomprehending, with the look of a lost child.
She clutched at my arm as I came closer. "It was aimed. The chandelier. It was aimed... at me."
There was an odd note of disbelief in her voice, as if she were begging me to deny it, but I could not. The blow had been struck at the one moment she stood out front alone. I'd watched it fall with terrible, vindictive purpose, like an arrow drawn unerring to the mark.
She had been right; the Ghost was willing to kill for the sake of possessing Christine Daaé. The managers had given him everything he had demanded, the performance had resumed precisely in accordance with his demands, and none of it had meant anything, anything at all, compared to the knowledge that she intended to leave him. Somehow, he had followed or overheard.
I understood now, with a sudden cold certainty, that he had been eavesdropping all along. Claiming to love her, he had lashed out with all the murderous passion of the man who learns his mistress has betrayed him.
All around us lay the aftermath. If it had been only Christine, then perhaps — knowing the anguish locked in my own breast — perhaps I might have forgiven him. But it was the Opera House smashed into ruin, the doctors working now amongst the bodies of those who'd tried to claw and crush their way out. It was Raoul caught beneath the blade of that deadly pendulum as he tried to drag away its target. If Raoul had been killed, if he were perhaps to live crippled — that counted for nothing more than yet another disregarded casualty along the way. The Ghost cared only for his own fit of pique.
None of it was Christine's fault. I told myself that.
She was shaking like a leaf between her rescuers. I got an arm around her waist, and called for someone to fetch her a chair. There would be no question of our leaving Paris tonight; she was in no fit state, and in any case I could not abandon Raoul. A tiny desolate voice that would not be silenced whispered to me that if I had not called out, Raoul would not have been hurt. If I had not been here, none of this would have happened.
"Sit down, Christine. No, don't be foolish. Let's get you cleaned up a little so the doctor can take a look. Yes, he will come. He'll come up here if I have to drag him myself... See, the Vicomte is just over there. He's quite all right." I was not at all sure of that myself, but there was no point in distressing her further. "I'm going to have the carriage brought round to the front, and you're coming home with us, where you can be put to bed and watched over. It's not safe for you to be alone in that flat with just Lisotte. I'll send word round to her as we'd arranged. Sit still, now..."
A young woman I did not know, with a steady, sensible look, had brought a bowl of water and some rags to help clean the blood and grime from Christine's face. The cut by the hairline had bled profusely, and was clearly tender, but otherwise it seemed to me that Christine was shaken but essentially unhurt. I relinquished the damp rag to the girl who had brought it, and yielded up to her with a further nod of thanks the task of soothing Miss Daaé until the doctor should come.
I wanted nothing more than to sink down at Raoul's side and let myself weep at last. But Raoul was pale and wincing visibly every time he moved, and I could not rid myself of the vision of that great weight crashing down across his back and shoulders as he tried to shield Christine. Perhaps he was maimed for life. Perhaps he would never walk again. Perhaps I would spend the rest of our marriage sitting beside his pillow, talking with bright, forced cheer about the world outside...
At least then I would not lose him. That treacherous thought was worse than any of the rest.
The doctor must come. He was to come at once, however great the needs of those others being tended. Raoul would protest at that, but I should not give him the chance.
And so, although I longed to do so, I could not let myself collapse in my husband's presence, or take the comfort he had always offered. I spared him only a few moments' reassurance, and tried not to see that he was concerned for me in his turn. If the title of Vicomtesse had any value at all, then I would wield it without compunction to beg, bully or bribe the medical attention he needed.
~o~
It was not as bad as I feared, the young American assured me. He was only a student at the Faculté de Médecine who'd happened to be present at the performance, but he was flatteringly attentive to the Vicomtesse de Chagny, and quick and competent in his examination. The Vicomte was very much bruised, and one shoulder joint had become displaced and would require manipulation. But although the procedure was painful, it would bring the patient a good deal of relief. After that, he saw no reason why the patient could not be lifted into the carriage and taken home. Above all —with a comforting smile for woman's frailty— there was no indication of any lasting damage. I had promised him an immense fee, and knew only a vast wash of relief.
Raoul submitted to the manipulation without a sound, although there was a moment when his good hand gripped mine to the bone. Christine's scalp wound was dressed and pronounced superficial, despite the need to clip away a little of her glorious dark hair. In the carriage twenty minutes later, with my husband propped against the cushions opposite and Christine at my side, pale and silent beneath her bandaged brow, I had time to wonder just how I was going to explain this uninvited house-guest to Raoul's parents after all.
I need not have worried. Word of disaster at the Opera House had preceded us, and the Hôtel Chagny was ablaze with lights and in a ferment of concern from attics to cellar by the time we drew up outside. The old Vicomte himself came out into the courtyard in a velvet dressing gown to embrace his son and be reassured repeatedly that Raoul was in need of nothing more than a warm bed and rest. They went in together, Raoul leaning a little on his father's arm, the old man's cheeks wet with tears of relief and pride but his bearing more upright than I had seen him in a long while. Christine was exclaimed over and cosseted as one rescued from the rubble, and tucked up securely in the Willow Chamber upstairs, with instructions that she should be watched over all night. The doctor had recommended it in cases of head injury, but it seemed to me there might be other reasons on this day to ensure she was not left on her own.
It was not until I too had yielded to the ministrations of the women twittering around me — had been stripped of my battered finery, sponged clean of dust and sweat and fear, inserted between the sheets and regaled with supper on a tray comprising the daintiest of morsels to tempt an absent appetite — that I found myself shaking from head to foot, and could not stop. All around me in the dark the mouldings on my bedroom walls threatened to swell and press in, like a crush of screaming faces. There were sounds almost too quiet to hear that seemed to bear a whispering compulsion, and when a draught stirred the drapes at the window, my flesh shrank in anticipation of its touch.
I could not breathe. If I moved the world would fly apart, and yet the walls were rushing in upon me with immeasurable weight, faster and faster, and I was a tiny speck trapped utterly alone...
The door opened, and shadows leapt up in the light. I think I cried out, but nothing emerged save a strangled gasp. I know that I found myself sitting bolt upright with the covers pulled tight around me.
It was Raoul, with nightcap and candle. He set it down by the side of the bed; reached out to touch my arm. "It's me. I— Sorry, were you asleep?"
Words would not come. I shook my head mutely. Groped for him, for the solidity of his grasp, drew him down and felt him bury his head against my shoulder. He too was trembling.
"I see it," Raoul said, muffled. "I close my eyes and I see it coming towards me. The chandelier. And I know that this time, this time it will be too late — over and over again. I see it, and I can't move—"
"So do I." I clung to him; clung to reality. His touch was not icy but urgent and hot, and presently he came to me beneath the covers. I held back a moment, but it was only to blow out the candle.
On the nights when he visited my room, he had always been gentle and a little diffident. We'd navigated those moments at first with embarrassment, and later with a clumsy sense of mutual achievement. But this was not duty, but an almost desperate affirmation. We were here. We had survived. I clutched at him convulsively, and when his shoulder would not serve it was I who found a way.
Afterwards, when he was asleep, I lay awake a long time, taking comfort from the warmth of him at my side. Raoul rolled over once and cried out Christine's name, not in passion but in anguish, and I knew then that for all I could do the chandelier still haunted his dreams. A little voice I did not want to hear told me that even there, she figured and I did not.