A/N: I'm back! Hopefully this chapter will be more appealing than the last to my readers' refined tastes. I've done some research on child development for this and the next chapter. In case anyone cares, any information included on obstetrics is from my mom, the article "Physical Contact can Help Premature Babies", and the book Psychological Trauma: A Developmental Approach by Dora Black.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything original to Phantom of the Opera. My humble possessions merely consist of the book, film, soundtrack, and Susan Kay's Phantom.
HISTORICAL NOTE: In the 1300s Europe was going through quite a lot of problems, one of them being agriculture. Population growth caused food shortages, and the subsequent famines (the most eminent one being the Great Famine of 1315-1317) weakened people's immune systems. Thus, they were more susceptible to diseases such as, oh I don't know, the bubonic plague perhaps... ;) Anyways, I though a famine and resulting prevalence of malnutrition would be a great way to explain Erik's deformities, rather than him just being an ugly oddball out of who-knows-how-many births...
PART ONE: Exposition
I. Starved
In which hunger afflicts both the flesh and soul
1325 - —ville, near Rouen, France
So, this was hunger.
Madeleine Destler née Dumont gazed at her reflection in a pond by her cottage. Before the famine, many had called her a beautiful woman. Now, her high cheekbones protruded from her gaunt face, her olive skin turned sallow and hanging from her slim frame, her dark brown tresses matted and unkempt. Once, she had prided herself on having a noblewoman's bearing, despite being a mere peasant. Without proper sustenance, however, she soon adopted the weary, cumbersome gait of all the other village peasants. But appearances were the last of her problems in these hard times.
Food, she thought desperately. Beans, corn, bread, anything! Pangs of hunger gnawed at her insides with every step she took. Stumbling back to the cottage entrance, she barely spared a glance at her vegetable garden—or what was left of it. The shriveled bits of roots and tubers lying on the poor soil were painful to look at. Her dear husband Charles had died a little over a week ago, and there was now no one to tend to the fields. Most of their livestock had disappeared long ago. With overpopulation becoming a major problem in this region of Europe, there was even less food to go around.
Rummaging through the pantry, Madeleine gave a cry of relief, clutching a piece of yesterday's bread in her small hand. Nibbling on it hungrily, she let one palm rest on her belly. God knew she needed the food, perhaps more than anyone else in —ville did…
For Madeleine Destler was with child.
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So, this was pain.
Another inhuman cry escaped the confines of Madeleine's mouth as the midwife attempted to ease the pain with some herbal concoction. It was excruciating; surely there was something wrong? Certainly being subject to such torture cannot be natural? When Madeleine told the midwife her fears, however, the latter only replied with soft, soothing assurances that everything was as it should be.
Bah! Madeleine thought, trying to find an outlet for the pain by blaming the midwife. The baby is early, I know it; if that little witch cannot recognize a premature birth— Her ravings were cut short by a shriek. But it was not her own, Madeleine realized, and nor was it out of pain. There stood the midwife, trembling with fear and distrust, holding a tiny bundle in her arms as if she wanted to fling into the fire. Alarmed, Madeleine reached for the bundle, which the midwife handed to her with haste. The new mother did not look down at her crying child, too preoccupied was she with the accusation the midwife flung at her.
"You—you witch!" she screamed.
Madeleine was furious. "Oh, I am the witch?" Hastily grabbing her supplies and heading towards the door, the midwife threw a retort over her shoulder.
"What else? Only a witch could possibly give birth to that—that thing! 'Tis the spawn of the Devil himself—it has the evil eye!" She was out the door, mumbling a fervent prayer under her breath.
Silence. For several moments, Madeleine could only remember to breathe. What utter nonsense that woman sputtered! Her husband would never have tolerated this! If only—
All her thoughts came to a halt as her gaze dropped down to the pitiful bundle in her arms. Perhaps a part of her benumbed brain registered her child's gray, twisted lips parted to release a woeful howl, or the gaping hole where its nose should have been, or the strange pallor of its membranous skin.
But all she could see were a pair of blazing, golden eyes staring up at her.
The evil eye.
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Now, dear Reader, I must bring to your attention that poor Madeleine was brought up on the superstitious culture of her time. If she had given birth her son in modern times, perchance, her ignorance would have been lifted. Doctors would have told her that the newborn's apparent underdevelopment was a result of malnutrition during the third trimester of her pregnancy, and his low body temperature a complication arising from premature birth.
Alas, Madeleine could only be the product of her time. As far as she knew, she had borne a living corpse possessed by a demon. She abhorred nursing him; the fact that he was cold to the touch only strengthened her conviction that the "boy" was nonhuman. He was the bane of her life; she saw her eventual fate in his face—that death's head—and hellfire in those blazing eyes. The evil eye could only mean that more misfortune was to befall her in this time of famine-perhaps a debilitating illness, or sudden death...
One time, however, even that did not stop her from trying to be a mother.
Midnight had descended upon the little peasant town, and Madeleine was just yielding to the pull of Sleep's current when a sound cut through the warm night air. It was beautiful, terrible—a plaintive cry of such exquisite sorrow that it tugged at the mother's heartstrings and made music.
Madeleine rose from her straw bed and made her way in the dark to where a crib sat in a corner. Closing her eyes to block out the monstrous countenance, the mother picked up her son. For a moment, as she cradled the infant to her breast, she deluded herself that a child of Heaven and not Hell was in her arms. Her son had ceased weeping, and the sound that now issued from his mouth was one of contentment—oh, and such a lovely, musical sound it was!
But the delusion did not last. Her son's voice had lifted her to strange and lofty heights, but now she was returning to earth. The mortal could not but feel the chill of her son's flesh on her naked breast, its odd lumps and indentations…
Shuddering, Madeleine nearly dropped the boy as she placed him back into the crib. Vowing never to fall into another of the Devil's traps, she hurried from the dark corner and allowed sleep to reclaim her.
She could not have known that she had just done both the kindest and cruelest thing possible to her son. For, in his little wooden crib, his puerile brain was abuzz as he struggled to process so alien—and yet, so normal—an experience.
Madeleine Destler had given her son a bit of that sweet, intoxicating ambrosia called love.
And unbeknownst to either of them, he would be seeking another taste for the rest of his life.
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