Disclaimer: I do not own. Except for the tendency to get stroppy. That I do own.

A return to Meg's point of view, and a plot line that hasn't seen some action in a while. And a surprise!

Look here, upon this picture, and on this…

See, what a grace was seated on this brow –

Hyperion's curls, the front of Jove himself…

This was your husband. – Look you now, what follows:

Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear…

…Have you eyes?

Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed and batten on this moor?

Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV

(I'm using Shakespeare quite a lot, aren't I? Blame it on the English educational system. It beats Romeo and Juliet, at any rate.)

Zehra: Beware too much homesickness my son, it's a worm that eats hope and gnaws at your strength.

Amir: And why aren't you homesick at all? Why don't you ever grieve for my father?

Zehra: How can you know what I feel!

Pause.

Zehra:I am a mother. I owe my son a future.

Amir: I may not want it.

The Ash Girl, Act One, Scene Four by Timberlake Wertenbaker

(I love this play, and not just because I played an otter/coachman in it.)

Revelation

Meg pulled her crackling hair back, and tucked the curls behind her ears. That done she retreated to the side of the bed, blew out the single candle she had used to light her way, and sat down in the relative dark. The moonlight shone through the window, and painted her bare shoulders a ghastly shade on either side of her, reminding her very much of the colour of Raoul's face only a while before.

This was more than she could bear. She rose to close the heavy curtains, and groped her way back to the bed. The darkness was better than the light to her, now. When she was a child she had been afraid of the dark, a fear she had carried into her later years, but what she had seen tonight had banished all her terror of it.

I do not fear the dark, now. I fear what might lie within it.

She found it was easier now to think of what had happened without crying. After all, why should she cry? Christine had been rescued, and was unharmed, as far as they could tell. Raoul was alive, if more in need of Carlotta's hair dye than Cecile had been. They were all safe. Safe.

She only hoped, she only prayed, that that was true.

But for now, there was something even more pressing. Something that had to be resolved. She dug her fingers into the counterpane, and waited in the dark and the cold. She longed to wrap the blanket around her, but that would not do. She should not be seen to be weak, or child-like, not now.

She did not have to wait long. Soon there was the creak of the door, and a silhouette appeared in the dark doorway.

"Back so soon?" she said quietly, trying not to quail at the thought that it might not be who she was expecting, but something else…

The figure gasped, and swiftly turned on the gas lamp beside the door, illuminating her mother's startled face. "Meg! What are you doing here? Good grief, you frightened me!"

"Good. I'm glad I frightened you."

Her mother paused in the act of closing the door behind her, shooting her the hard look she did so well. But Meg met it with one she hoped was just as hard.

"You look very beautiful tonight, mother."

The older woman seemed taken aback, as the door finally snapped shut, apparently lost for words. "Why…well, thank you, Meg."

"I am sure Comte Philippe thought so as well," Meg went on, apparently carelessly, but shrewdly gauging her reaction. She was rewarded by her mother's stiffening, for all her acting talent upon the stage. When she finally spoke, her voice was far quieter than was normal for the confident if not brash Madame Giry.

"You saw, then."

"Certainly I saw. I saw you dancing with him – considerably more warmly than a female guest should dance with a male host. What is this, mother? What are you thinking?"

How can you behave in such a way, you…you…traitor?

"What are you thinking, my daughter?" her mother retorted, crossing to her dressing table. "Has it suddenly become a crime for a widow to dance with a Comte, her generous host? You have a very fertile imagination, Marguerite Giry – too fertile for your own good, I should imagine."

"Perhaps…but it is seeded with suspicion, Mother." Meg pushed herself up off the bed, walking over to her where she had halted by the dressing table. "Where did you get that dress?" she added, looking sourly at the beautiful kimono that shone in the lamp light, shining maliciously at her. "Did he give it to you? Along with the hair pins? And the mask? And the fan?"

"And why should it matter to you if he did?" her mother said, fixing her eyes on the mirror and beginning to remove the precious stones from her ears. "It is…merely a gown. With trimmings, yes, but that is nothing. He saw that I had nothing suitable to wear for the masquerade, so he provided it for me-"

"Nothing suitable? Rubbish! You have any number of gowns!" she snapped. "Or at least a fair number, at any rate, without them being added to in such a manner. I repeat, mother: what is this about?"

"It is about nothing, daughter. Nothing, do you hear me? Now go, for I would call Antoinette to help me undress." Her mother turned to look back in the mirror again, reaching up to pull out a hair pin. Meg could see that where her hand rested upon the polished wood to support herself, there, there practically touching her polished nails was Father's picture in its frame. Why did his ghost not rise yelling from the grave, as she now knew was possible, at this treachery?

It was more than she could bear, and she acted upon it. "Oh, mother, why does your tongue not turn black in your mouth at your words?"

Madame Giry's hair tumbled down her back, as her eyes grew wide.

"How can you spit upon Father's memory like this?" Meg snarled, coming up behind her, though not daring to look at herself in the mirror – not now, not after…"How can you look at yourself and bear the sight of a treacherous, lying-"

"You little brat, how dare you?"

She dodged back from her mother's intended slap, her blood hammering in her temples. "How dare I? How dare you. You said, when Father died, you said that you would never love another man. And now here you are, wearing another man's gift, dancing in his arms, smiling up at him enough to make one sick!"

Madame Giry stepped backwards from her anger, and sank down onto the divan behind her, her breath now coming fast as she clutched at her stomacher. "What are you trying to do to me?"

"What I am attempting is nothing, to what you seem to be doing, mother." Meg picked up Father's picture; trying to ignore the lump in her throat, trying not to look at her mother's tortured face, or her own in the mirror. Don't look in the mirror. "Are you so tired of being a widow?" she demanded, thrusting the picture out towards the divan and its sprawling occupant. "Are you so tired of mourning my father's memory? Are you?"

"I loved him," her mother choked, her face now growing damp, her breath coming in moans. "Oh God, oh God, I loved him, he was my only love, my only love-"

"Liar!" Meg choked, pain ripping through her throat, her eyes burning. She slammed the picture in its frame down on the table, trying to cover up her threatening tears. God, she's such a liar! "And stop looking at yourself in the mirror!" she added for good measure, seizing hold of the frame of the mirror and slamming the ornament down.

Her rage was such that at first she hardly noticed the pain in her fingers; but when she did it was agony.

"Ah! Merde!" she hissed, clutching her stinging fingers with her unharmed hand, tears now welling at the corners of her eyes from the pain.

"Meg? What happened? Did the mirror break, did it cut you?"

"Leave it be!" Already Madame Giry had risen from the divan, was pulling at her arm. "Leave it be. I am fine, I tell you, I am fine." I am fine. I am fine.

"Oh, very fine, for a hysterical girl. Sit, sit down!" Her mother's arm wrapped itself around her shoulders, forced her down onto the plush of the divan, brought her cheek against her breast, as it was when she was a little girl and she had had a nightmare. Everything is a nightmare now as well.

"Meg, your…your fingers are red, as if burnt. What happened?"

"It was the mirror. Oh Mama, it was the mirror. It wants me. It wants us all. It wants to drag us all down to Hell!" Meg could not stop herself, despite her inner screams. All her frustration, her fear, her dread was pouring out in her tears, as treacherous as those of her mother who now rocked her and shushed her like a baby.

"Meg, Meg, I do not love the Comte. I have no desire to love the Comte. He has been kind to me, and I have been pleasant to him, but that is all. Meg, Meg, I would never betray your father, never. I loved Georges. With all my heart, I loved him. I will never stop loving him, Meg, never."

"How can I believe you?" Meg blurted. "You might be lying. How can you say you loved him, when you mourned him so little, then and now? How can you say you loved him when you never even speak of him?"

Now she felt her mother's fingers running through her hair, as they had not done since she was little. "There are different kinds of mourning, Meg. How do you know that I was not sharing all the agony that you showed in your floods of grief when he died? How do you know that, in my silent heart, I disposed my un-used tears? I wept in my time too, my Meg, my life, but what good would that do? Your father would not want either of us to waste our lives weeping ourselves into our graves. He told me so himself, a little whiel before he died."

"But he didn't tell you to marry again!" Meg spat accusingly, or as well as she could with half her face buried in embroidery.

"No, that he did not." Her mother's embrace tightened. "Meg, I have done you and Georges both wrong. Not by dancing with the Comte, for even you, when you are calmer and not so inclined to scream, will admit that that is not a crime. But I was not there when you needed me – not truly. When your father died I abandoned you to wallow in my own sorrow, and so I wronged both you and your father. I know it is late, but perhaps I can make amends by becoming more willing to listen than to scold. So, I am ready to hear why you suddenly have begun to burn at the touch of a mirror's surface, and why your thoughts are so taken up with thoughts of Hell. I am here for you, my daughter, and I always will be, and I will never, ever leave you. You do not need to fear anymore. So." A finger came under her, and tilted her head up towards her mother's still damp, shining face, but also shining with remorse and love. "Tell me what is wrong, Meg. Please, tell me."

All the rage at her mother and their danger had drained from her, leaving only dread and fear stewing within her; of the mirror, of what it had done, and what was waiting beyond it.

"He'll come for us," she whispered. "He'll come for us through the mirror, from Hell. He claw for us, with his horrible skeleton fingers, and leer at us with his half-face as he destroys us, I know he will!" She buried her face in her mother's lacy breast, and threw her arms around her waist at last.

"Who?"

"Erik."

Her mother's arms tightened around her, perhaps fearing she would be snatched away from her. "Oh, God, no."

This was enough to cause her to look up once more at her mother's stricken face. "Mama? What is wrong?"

"How do you know of Erik?" But Madame Giry began to ramble, hardly seeming to be aware of her daughter's presence any more, staring instead at the disabled mirror. "A man with half a face? A skeletal face? Hidden by a mask? And…dead?"

"Yes, as far as I know from Raoul," Meg said cautiously, deciding to play along.

If it were possible, her mother's grip grew tighter still. "Dear God, I thought it would start again, but not like this, never like this. Oh, my dear…"

"Mama? D you know of Erik, then?"

"Know him? Know him, why, I-" Suddenly her mother's gaze snapped back to her, letting go of her to let her sit up more properly; her distracted look gone as if it had never existed, to be replaced with one of hard determination. "Meg, my love, I must tell you something, but upon your word, perhaps your life, you must keep it a secret. Do you promise me this? Do you promise?"

Still wondering, Meg nodded.

"Very well. Something very evil happened here, on these lands, many years ago. A man who had done no wrong, nor crime whatsoever was attacked and hunted and driven to his death by other men, no better than a criminal, a dog. He was buried in the woods."

Oh Lord, then that story Buquet told us was true?

"That's what Buquet, the grounds man, told us!" she could not help blurting out. "But he said it was just a story, a ghost story!"

"Sadly, it was not a story, but the truth, if a concealed truth." Madame Giry shook her head sadly, regretfully. "My father, your grandfather – yes," in answer to her no doubt astonished look, "your grandfather lived around here once long ago, Meg, before he moved to Paris and met my mother. He told me what happened that day, for he was one of the men who were ordered to chase the man, Erik, and finish him off. He told me that he and his comrades found him dead where he had fallen, near the graveyard, and that they buried him where he lay, while he supervised the burial. He told me about the man's mask that had half fallen off, showing his face; or at least what was left of it, enough to give a brave man nightmares for the rest of his days. But that did not frighten me; what truly chilled me was something your grandfather told me that I will never forget, either – that at the time, he felt inclined to swear that he had never seen a corpse's eyes so filled with fire, with life that still seemed present, as if it were merely the body that had died and he was still alive within it, raging at them. To your grandfather's mind it was as if they were burying someone alive, as if one day he might come roaring and tearing his way out of the earth once more, to bring retribution to those who had murdered him. He confessed it was fear of this that had actually caused him to pull up his roots and move; and it might have been as well that he did so, for he knew that not very many of those who buried Erik lived long after his murder."

Meg hardly knew what to say. "All these for an ordinary man, however scarred he was?"

Her mother shook her head again, grimly, biting her lip before speaking.

"Ah, my dear, there is much more to Erik than you could possibly know…"

Too tired. But not so tired that I cannot speak on Marguerite's little outburst:

When I was reading this to Mum, she wasn't too pleased that Meg was slagging her mum off in such a way. Now, I know that I am not part of a single parent family, and I pray I never will be, but I believe that a lot of children in such a situation are very jealous of that single parent, and loath to yield them up to any prospective partner that might come along, meaning they get very angry if such a thing looks as if it might be happening. Added to that is this death bed promise that Meg knows of, plus all the stress of bringing Christine back and the fact that she appears to have developed a phobia of mirrors, and voila! A screaming fit, that was long in the coming.

Reviews for the half-Irish seamstress, please?