VII. All I want is Freedom
Meg had breakfast with her mother, then went down to the cantina all the same. Not that she was still hungry – and it would not have been quite fair, since the cantina's food supplies had seemingly begun to shrink – but a morning in the cantina always was a social event, and she might still get a croissant. Just one.
"Meg! Meg!" It was Cécile Jammes, one of her ballet colleagues, waving frantically from the line waiting at the counter. With her pale, but merry face and long, slightly wavy blond hair, she was a rather pretty girl, though she herself found that she was plain and had an odd nose and kept lamenting about this.
"Good morning, Meg." It was Serge, who had entered the cantina behind her.
"Fine," Meg decided. "Now we're three. Let's grab a table."
"Four," Gaston corrected, appearing behind Serge.
It was too early for the tables to be fully occupied yet; the cantina always was mostly empty still at this time. Waving a greeting to a group of other dancers, Meg led the men to the end of a long table that had remained free, and Cécile soon joined them with a tray.
Gaston threw his jacket over the back of his chair, but did not sit down. "Anything I can get you?"
"Don't trouble yourself for me," Meg declined.
"No, just name it," he insisted. "Any wish a friend of the Lord Phantom might have is a command to me."
"It's really not necessary."
"Come on," Serge put in, "make him happy."
"Right," Meg agreed while Gaston playfully punched Serge in the shoulder, "I'd like a croissant with butter and honey then, and some milk, if you please."
Watching the men's retreating backs, she seriously wondered if she should tell Erik to have a word with Gaston. For Heaven's sake, he was not a servant! He had been one as a lad, and he had been quite happy then, but she knew that Erik considered him a friend rather than a servant.
The Lord Phantom. Tsk, tsk.
"Isn't he sweet?" Cécile giggled.
"Gaston? He's really nice, yes."
"No, the other one. The tall, silent one with the curls."
"Oh, you mean Serge." Oh dear, Cécile might be developing yet another of her infamous crushes… She would be entertaining the whole changing room again, no doubt. Very recently she had been telling everybody that Raoul was such a sweetheart. Of course he was, Meg had to agree, but Cécile hardly knew him. And then she had told everybody how much she would like to snuggle the Phantom…
"Oh!" Cécile squeaked. "Meg, look at that! The sweetest thing just appeared at the entrance! Any idea who he is? And the other two with him, I've never seen them before…" Her cheeks flushing rosy, she was already giggling again. "Oh Lord, now another sweet blonde has joined him! Meg, look at that!"
"Hush! I'll have to turn around discreetly." Meg found it hard not to giggle along. Cécile could be too funny at times, and the idea of looking at a pair of handsome blond lads just made her feel giggly inside.
They were with her before she could turn around completely, though, Roger at her one side, Sándor at the other. Blond sweeties? God, yes! And both at once! Meg was certain that something large was fluttering around inside her stomach right now, and the tips of its wings tickled her. "Good morning, sunshine," Roger grinned. "Do you think there's room for a couple of humble stagehands with the exalted ballerinas?"
"Exalted? Is that all?" Sándor threw him a scowl. "I always thought they were goddesses!"
"Now, now, Sándor," Lászlo said as Meg felt her cheeks heating, "this is a rather lame way to be charming." He and Aeternus had appeared behind them, all of them dressed in simple grey and brown. Apart from comments in Cecile's style, they wouldn't cause any at all.
"Who's the happy man sitting to your right?" Roger asked, gesturing to the jacket over the chair.
"Gaston," Meg said. "He and Serge are getting some breakfast."
"Then I will have the audacity to take the place to your left."
"And I will have the audacity to sit next to your friend," Sándor grinned, while Cécile blushed furiously and stared down at her plate, probably close to bursting from all the giggles building up inside her.
While Aeternus sat down beside Roger, wearing his usual mysterious smile, Lászlo went to join the queue at the counter. Halfway there he met Gaston and Serge returning with their trays, and they swapped a few words before the two returned to the table. After all, Lászlo was now working alongside them, moving around requisites with Gaston and hauling up and down backdrops in the flies with Serge. He was making himself very useful, it seemed, while Meg was not too sure about Roger and Sándor. They rather sat around waving at ballerinas, from what she had seen, but they made friends with everyone, and this was important in their current situation. They even knew part of the Communard bullies patrolling backstage by now.
As for Aeternus… Meg wondered if he did any kind of work at all. She had never even seen him backstage, come to think of it.
"Here you are." Gaston placed a tray in front of Meg, snatching off only a slice of bread and a glass of water for himself.
"Thanks, but is this enough for you? Gosh, you've brought me two croissants! Take one for yourself!"
Gaston smiled and shook his head. His brown hair looked shaggier than usual, and his skin seemed paler, and somehow his cheeks were hollow, instead of just his cheekbones protruding a little as normally. Was he tired? Was he ill, even? Meg decided to mention it to the Phantom, so he could have a word with him. Gaston had always been so kind to her; she did not want him to be sick in any way.
Or had Delannay's henchmen threatened him? Ever since the Phantom had killed five of them to avenge that unfortunate stage carpenter they had murdered for what they called spreading despondency, they had been wary, not killing, not even beating anyone, like they had done before, but threatening. They picked their victims and began by asking them all kinds of questions, and if he showed any signs of fear or weakness, they persisted cruelly.
In Gaston's case, it was easy enough to guess what they had been asking. After all, had he not told the Communards from the very beginning that they could never stand against "the Lord Phantom"?
My God, take care. Please take care.
There it was again, that pain in her stomach, as if a strong hand were contracting around her intestines… It was fear, she knew. Constant fear. Christine had mentioned just the same feeling, all the time.
Lászlo returned with a laden tray and started handing out plates, and Sándor and Roger laughed and were merry, and Cécile giggled, but Meg could not quite laugh along. Gaston and Serge were not laughing, either.
At once all conversations died down, and a whisper arose instead, an excited, uneasy whisper. "It's him!" Cécile breathed.
The cold hand's grip hardened sharply as Meg pictured Delannay standing in the doorway. Or LaCroix, that dark, scowling minion. Or both of them, maybe encircled by a ring of their men…
Serge was the first to be on his feet, and Gaston leapt up so hurriedly that he almost threw over his chair. "My Lord Phantom!"
Erik? Turning around, Meg saw that Gaston was right. There he was, immaculately dressed and swathed in his black cloak as usual, with his shoulder to the doorpost, observing the cantina's occupants quietly, like an overseer in a factory. Heavens, what was he doing there? He had never done that before! He moved around backstage, yes, but he never just stood there in plain sight without a reason for it. And at this time of day! He rarely ever came up early in the morning. What was the matter?
For a long moment he just stood there, his eyes on them, on Serge as it seemed, then he suddenly righted himself and came towards them, his cloak flowing behind him as he moved smoothly, gracefully. Many a pair of eyes followed him, but he ignored them, let the gazes slide off him like droplets of water, focusing only on what was ahead. Reaching Gaston, he leaned close to him and whispered a few words to him, and though Meg strained her ears she could not catch a single one. What had occurred? Was something wrong?
Gaston nodded and smiled a little, and she knew everything was alright. For now, it was. A wave of relief streamed through her, warm as sunlight on the roof in summer. Everything was alright.
Then he turned to her, and his eyes sparkled as they met hers. "Piglet," he muttered, quietly enough so that only those closest to her could hear it, and they had heard it before anyway, so it did not matter. "Worried, are you?"
"As long as nothing's wrong…" She shrugged, banishing all thoughts of what might have happened or might be happening at the moment without the Phantom knowing yet.
"No. Nothing wrong." What was he grinning at like that? Giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze, he passed on to Aeternus, and his smooth features shifted into a frown briefly.
"He's quite stunning," Cécile whispered, leaning closely towards her over the table.
Meg nodded. Yes, he was. And his touch could so absolutely sweep her off her feet… Her mother would box her ears if she knew, but it did. It really did. He was her friend, but maybe he was a little more, too.
"Careful." Aeternus spoke quietly, but sharply, and Meg saw the Phantom stiffen. From the corner of her eye, she thought to see a group of men entering the room…
"They're blind to us," Aeternus said evenly. "Take over from me, if you wish."
The Phantom nodded. "I'll take them."
"Agreed. Remember the cloud."
Bewildered, Meg listened to their brief exchange. From what she could gather, Aeternus was manipulating someone and the Phantom intended to continue it. Those powers… They were so sneaky, in a way, not supposed to be allowed. Useful against the Communards, yes, but still… it was cheating, Meg felt, and very much so, if not even worse.
"I'm lowering that cloud of yours. Hold them."
"You've got them now," Aeternus disagreed. "I can let go. Plain blind spot will do, except if they come too close. But I'm here to help you if they do."
"I can handle them," the Phantom muttered angrily. Meg knew how he hated when someone tried to lecture him on something. And she trusted him that he could, whatever it was he was doing.
"Fine," Aeternus said. "Everybody, listen to me." He spoke quickly and with his voice lowered. "Those four at the entrance – don't turn around! – are henchmen of Delannay's. From what I could gather in a couple of seconds, the leader among them is a former soldier and in charge of one of the Communards' hosts of rabble, not exactly intelligent, but daring and potentially dangerous. He and two of the others are new here, while the last is the same who usually guards the stage door in the evening."
"Oh, that one," Sándor interjected. Sitting with his face to the door, he was watching them fixedly. "That idiot."
Cécile looked utterly clueless, but Meg noticed that she hurried to nod her agreement – just because Sándor was blond, probably.
"Read him for me," the Phantom said curtly. "Extract all information you might find valuable."
"Ah." Once more Aeternus's features were unreadable. Meg knew he had come to visit her mother last night; she had told her so in the morning. "So you trust me after all."
"No, you have more experience." Meg recognized the Phantom's tight-lipped expression; he always wore it when he was grudgingly admitting something. Then he pushed his upper lip towards his nose with his lower lip, so that they formed a kind of pout, and scowled at the thin air. Oh, Erik… There were some things about him that were just delightfully funny.
She might have laughed, had her back not begun to hurt from sitting so stiffly. Could those Communard bastards just go again so she could have her breakfast in peace?
"They're coming," Serge hissed. "Looking around."
"They can't see us," Lászlo said soothingly, but the fact that he almost whispered still filled Meg with unease.
"So I can move again?" They could have told her earlier!
"Not too much, thank you." The way the Phantom muttered between his teeth revealed that he was concentrating on something – on creating that blind spot or whatever it was, probably. "It's harder to remove you from sight if you move around."
"But you're getting better," Aeternus remarked. "The last time, it was everyone you dimmed out. Now you can already perform the trick on a specific target, with the same method."
"Couldn't possibly do it by manipulating everyone separately," the Phantom growled. Did it only seem so to Meg, or was he really sweating?
Aeternus gestured, and simultaneously Lászlo and Sándor rose and left the table. "Watch this," Sándor whispered as he passed Meg, then they disappeared somewhere behind her back. Whatever were they up to again? Not to confront those men, hopefully?
"Single the leader out and march him out," Aeternus said softly. "Lászlo will hold him up in the corridor. He already knows what he needs to know."
At first the Phantom said nothing, then his lips suddenly thinned to a pale line. Was it anger on his face? Fury? Or just intense concentration? "Meg," he suddenly ordered, his voice sounding strangely clipped, "go after them. Gaston, Serge, you stay here. Aeternus, you go with me, but keep an eye on those remaining three once I let them go."
Pushing herself up from the table, Meg got to her feet. Why did her knees have to feel so wobbly just now? But the Phantom had assigned her a task, and she would carry it out. He had given her a little mission of her own! He was taking her with him to deal with that leader!
There they were, those men who had caused such a stir among her friends – and also among the others, as it seemed; while some were doing their best to ignore them and just continued eating, others kept shooting them uneasy glances or even watched them openly. In themselves, they were not overly noteworthy, just a group of four rough-looking men in clothes which had seen better days. They could have belonged to the Opéra Populaire's own workers, except that Meg had seen one of them lurking backstage before, together with others of Delannay's men.
Lászlo and Sándor were flanking the entrance, lingering as nonchalantly as possible. Could the Communards see them right now, if they turned around, or had the Phantom erased those two from their vision? Would she become visible once she moved away from the table?
Would Cécile eat her croissants once she was out of the door?
Even as this sudden suspicion entered her mind, one of the four men murmured a few words to the others, then turned and headed towards the door, and immediately, exchanging just a glance, Aeternus's men slipped out before him. Was this the leader of the group? This short man, the shortest among them? This dwarf? She would have expected him to be the most harmless of the lot, despite his ugly sneer and unshaven face. But a façade could deceive; one who had spent her entire life at an opera house should know that. A face could be a mask, and a mask a face. Decidedly snatching up what was left of her first croissant, ignoring Cécile's giggle, Meg followed the man, her gaze fixed on his worn-out brown jacket, right between his shoulder blades.
As she slipped out through the entrance, she feared that everyone was looking at her, but then again, what did she care? Those who might wish her ill could not see her, and the others were colleagues and friends. She did not know everybody's name, but she knew the faces; she had seen them backstage often enough. They were her own kind.
Arriving on the corridor, she turned to the right. Ahead, Lászlo and Sándor were blocking it, the man she was supposed to follow just before them. Lászlo was speaking to him softly, while Sándor had his arms crossed and simply smirked.
"Get lost," the man snarled as Meg approached cautiously. Would he be able to see her now? "I don't care about what you might have to say."
"Too bad," Lászlo replied calmly, and once again Meg noticed how evident his accent was, though without making it bothersome to listen to him. It was clear that he was a foreigner, but he must have spent considerable time in France already. "You see, I know exactly who you are."
"I'm a man of the Commune," the intruder barked. Was that a hint of an accent his pronunciation carried as well, or just some kind of dialect from the south? "That will be quite enough for you. If not, we can discuss this before my commander any time." Meg could not see his face, only the back of his head with his light-coloured hair clipped short, but she was sure he wore a smug expression now.
"Oh, this you certainly are, Hermann Lando." Lászlo was smiling now. "As you were a man of the Emperor once, some years back when you served your time in Africa. But whose man, I wonder, were you when you served your time in jail?" He paused, and his smile widened a little. "Dear me, whatever did you do to your rifle?"
Meg could clearly tell that the man – Lando? – was uncomfortable now; he was shifting his position uncertainly, surely straining his recollection for any hint of a man reminding him of Lászlo. "It was an accident," he grumbled.
"An accident? Why would they lock up anyone for six full months if it was only an accident what happened to their rifle? Lando, Lando… you've always been a bad liar, you old crook. What's your allegiance? What is it you truly want?"
"Freedom." He almost bellowed the word, as sharply as a whipcrack.
"And what did you get?"
Suddenly Lando turned, not heeding Lászlo's taunt, and Meg braced herself to hold his gaze – surely she had made no sound, or had she? – but Lando's eyes were fixed on something else, right behind her…
She followed his gaze, and her breath caught in her throat. There he was at last, the Opera Ghost in all his dark glory. His hair, hanging down to his shoulders in lightly curled strands, black in the half-light, his mask shiny white as a skull, his eyes gleaming eerily, he had draped himself in his black cloak, and around him the shadows seethed and swirled. Meg knew that it was some kind of vision that he used on them all without a difference, but still it made her shiver. This was no longer Erik. The Opéra Populaire's legend had taken shape once more.
"That one is no Frenchman," Aeternus said gently, standing directly at the Phantom's shoulder but still nothing but a grey shadow. "He calls himself Lando, which is the answer to our riddle already, and quite a simple one. When he was born in one of the German countries, he was called Hermann Landau, which is a common name in the north. He was born German, the son of a Jewish craftsman, and he was a glovemaker before he went to join the army. He never rose to an officer's rank because he was generally not considered trustworthy. After some time he spent under arrest he left the army for good and came here, where he married a distant relative, who had an illegitimate daughter already. Now he's been here for about nine years, earning a living in his old profession… until the Commune uprising, that is. In their force of scoundrels he at last made his career. He's a captain of Delannay's grace now, and he is aspiring to rise higher yet. The purpose he has come for is a simple one: It is to hunt down and kill the Opera Ghost."
Listening to Aeternus's brief, hasty account, Meg watched the man who called himself Lando. His dark, beady eyes were oddly unfocused suddenly, and she assumed that either Aeternus or the Phantom himself was deep inside his mind now, freezing time or whatever it was they could do to a man. As Aeternus ended, she felt her hands clench into fists. He's come for Erik! My God, he wants Erik's head as a trophy to present to his superior in order to rise in rank! Meg hated this man, hated him as much as one could hate anyone.
Kill him, Erik! Kill him now! The wish did not even shock her any longer.
The Phantom gestured, and the focus returned to Lando's eyes. "Look at me," he commanded. "Look me in the eyes."
Obediently the man raised his head to face the Phantom. His head barely reached the Phantom's shoulder; he was hardly taller than Meg herself. "Who are you?" he demanded, but his voice sounded thin and uncertain, as if fighting against something restraining his tongue and his thoughts.
"I am the Master over every living soul here, the Lord of the Black Legion that will rise from the shadows. I am a man so evil that Hell would not take me, and instead I returned to the world of the mortals to usurp the throne of the King of the Catacombs. I am the one you mean to hunt, and who will from now on be hunting you." It seemed to Meg that the Phantom's eyes were alight with a cold fire. "Now go. Go and rejoin your men, and carry well in your heart what you have heard."
Again he gestured, and Lando lowered his head and slipped past him, back to the cantina. Then the Phantom turned to Aeternus, who smiled quietly.
"Great job, my Lord!" Sándor was grinning broadly.
But the Phantom did not heed him. "What will he remember?" he asked. Now that Lando was gone, the swirling shadows were gone as well.
Aeternus's expression did not alter. "Those words will be burned into his very soul," he answered. "And your face will haunt his dreams. The rest of us is erased from his memory, my men and your girl, I've seen to that. As for me, he never even saw me."
"Good." The Phantom caught Meg's eye, and for a little moment he smiled. "I will see you all later this morning, in the changing rooms behind the ballet school, ten o' clock sharp. Well, until then."
Aeternus nodded and gestured to his pair of retainers, who fell in behind him as they, too, returned to the cantina. At first Meg wanted to go after them, but then she hesitated. "Erik… where are you going?"
And why had he not killed Lando straight away, when he had had the chance?
But no, it was not wise to just murder a man in the middle of a corridor while this man's companions were awaiting him next door.
But he had done things like that. He had killed even more in the open. He could have done it. Why hadn't he?
Already about to stride down the corridor with his cloak billowing around him, he stopped in his track and turned back to her. "Install an additional trap for all those who try to remove a certain movable wall without proper caution. Don't spread crumbs on the floor, piglet, it's rude."
Looking down, Meg realized that her bit of croissant could barely be called one anymore, after she had clenched her fists so that it was squeezed into shapelessness. "I can still eat it," she decided.
"Then go and do that. And stay out of trouble."
"I liked your little speech."
He waved it away. "Oh, it was just some pointless stuff that came to my mind in the spur of the moment. Nothing special."
"Erik…" He seemed a little impatient to be on his way, but she just had to tell him. "Thanks for taking me with you just now. For trusting me."
And then he smiled, a true, warm smile like she had not seen from him in some time. "Just wait what I'll tell you up at the ballet school, you'll be amazed."
"Really?" Now this sounded like another exciting adventure! Of course, she had learned in those past months that there was a lot more to an adventure than she had imagined, that there could be blood and death and despair, but when Erik was with her, everything would be alright. She trusted that it would.
"Really, little one." It seemed that he was about to go, but then he stopped and came back towards her. "Do you know that feeling when it seems to you an ocean is carrying you onwards, and you can't fight it for the waves are too strong, and you feel they will carry you to the cliffs and smash you?"
Meg nodded, but did not truly understand. What was he trying to tell her? Did this still have to do with Lando and the Commune, or was this something entirely different?
The smile had not gone from his features. "Let's say I am confronting my fate at last, my own demons. Let's say I'm breaking those waves."