Disclaimer: I don't own any of this. But I'll be laughing all the way to the review section.

You know what we need now?

A sexy party! Ba ha ha ha ha!

Eeeee….or maybe a denouement. That works too. (I couldn't say that word for the longest time. I kept getting the pronunciation wrong. I could say numerous words, especially dinosaur names, by the time I was eight - blame numerous trips to the Natural History Museum - I even had a reading age of a ten or twelve year old -I still remember having to sit beside the teacher and read words out of a book - but it took me eighteen years to say just one of many words. I still have some trouble with chaise long.)

We followed it down into a big wood; and that night, while we were still in the wood, Toadflax died. He was clear-headed for a short time before and I remember something he said. Bluebell had been saying that he knew the humans hated us for raiding their crops and gardens and Toadflax answered, "That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves."

Watership Down, by Richard Adams.

(That man is my idol. I mean, he wrote a book about bunnies and made it epic! And it makes you think about rabbits in a completely different way. Like the Matrix, only none of the rabbits wear dark glasses or bend spoons.)

Denouement

Before she had led the invaders into the tiny room, and faced down this old, seemingly harmless man, Meg had been burning, burning with anger and sorrow and the knowledge that her mother had kindled within her, a lifetime ago and on the other side of innocence that seemed lost to her now.

When she had run, at first leading her friends and then following Cecile's new gift, a gift which had come to aid them in their darkest hour, she had wondered if she would tell Carlotta to shoot the man outright when they discovered him, wherever he had hidden himself. Certainly he deserved a bullet through the head or heart; but he deserved much worse things as well. Still, her fury had made it difficult for her to think in such a manner. She wanted them to be the ones to deal the justice he had escaped for so long, and deal it in righteousness, in revenge for poor, poor Celandine.

But there is someone who has far more claim to his blood. Be patient.

That was what she had realised, as she had spoken to the mirrors. Now, now that she was at last confronting the true enemy she had been aware of for so very long, she was cool, quiet, calm. The surface of the mirror had bled through the skin of her scalding hands as she had touched and caressed it, known it, loved it, and had flowed into her blood in gratitude for her love, washing away her black rage and leaving liquid silver in her veins. She had become a part of the mirror, and she would be a surface through which the truth would be revealed and confronted.

She took a step forward, confident that Carlotta was holding the gun steady from her position on the far right – or as far right as the limited space, the walls papered with sheets she had no time to look at or even acknowledge, would allow - and that the Comte would not suddenly start up and take her by surprise.

And she began.

"Good morning to you, Comte Philippe. You gave us quite a chase, you know."

The Comte smiled softly as he sat forward, making Cecile, who had crept around to Meg's right, draw back a little, but only a little. "I did indeed. But I must admit, I was surprised that you were able to get through the mirror room." He was surprised. She had seen it in his eyes when they had first burst into the little candle lit room, swinging around in the seat at the small desk to stare at them half uncomprehending of his situation, before he controlled himself.

He had been shocked. And what was more, for that briefest moment when he had seen them, lit up by the light of the single candle, glaring at him, she had seen that he had been scared. Somewhere deep inside that aged, handsome, odious face and cool manner, he was afraid of the three girls who had tracked him and hunted him down, following him even into this, his seemingly untouchable safe hold. Granted, that was probably because one of them was pointing a gun at him, and looked as if she knew how to use it; but also because…

…he's…afraid of why we've come. He's afraid of what we know.

He had good reason to be afraid. She knew. She knew everything.

She took great delight in twisting the knife into the wound he had left himself open to, pointing out his greatest mistake. "You showed me how to do it, though, Comte. When I first came here, do you remember that day? I certainly did. I was merely following the practical lesson you so very obligingly gave me on how to find the switch to open the door." She didn't say what the truth was; how could she possibly explain that the mirror had…spoken to her, somehow, let alone pointed her to the right door in that deceptive room to take? This was no time for speculation; this was a time for action.

The old man winced, but the smile slowly came back to his face. "In hindsight, that was a rather foolish action. Maybe I should have just left you in there to waste away, hmm?"

Two weeks ago she would have been afraid and raging against the abominable man, but now she shrugged off his meaningless threat easily. "But you didn't, Comte, and that may have made all the difference. Now, get up. You must come with us."

She was mildly annoyed when the Comte stayed seated, his hands clasping his knees. "I would prefer not to exert my already fragile health until I find out for what reason you have seen fit to track me down, and point a gun at me." He shot a snide glance at Carlotta, who merely glared back at him.

"You have damaged your health by running away from the fire in the ball room. In my mind, that is proof enough that you are guilty of something, Comte. You were guilty. You were scared. And you ran."

The Comte blinked as he turned to look at someone other than her for the first time since the conversation had begun. "What makes you think I am afraid, Mademoiselle Guidicelli?"

"I can sense your fear," Carlotta said, surprising Meg. Was the Comte's apprehension that obvious? "As a matter of fact, I can sense that you have at least some guilt as well. I can taste it upon the air. You smell of it." The Spanish girl took a step forward, narrowing her eyes. "Be assured that we will take you wherever Meg wants to go, regardless of your health." One red eyebrow quirked in her face, and her set mouth softened slightly. "But I must admit, Meg, he is not alone in his desire. I too want to know why you have dragged us all the way up here. Is it something more than Celandine?"

Meg felt torn, though she was still calm despite her conflict. Heaven knew that she hadn't wanted to keep her friends in the dark more than she had to, and after all they had gone through they deserved some explanation about what was really going on. But do I have time? Who knew what was happening 'downstairs', so to speak, at this very moment? Christine and Raoul and her mother needed her help, and she couldn't simply stand here and talk while that help was denied. She wasn't even sure how they would reach that place…

…oh. Wait. Now I do.

The silvery whisper from the room behind her slipped her the idea, as neatly as a man slipping a love note into his sweetheart's hand. Thank you, she whispered, as she began to speak again.

"You're right, both of you," she said softly, folding her arms carefully. "You, Comte, wish to know why we have come to bring you justice, and you, Carlotta and Cecile, want to know the truth, the truth of this matter. I will tell you."

She closed her eyes for the briefest second, and then began to speak, remembering what her mother had told her the night that Christine had returned, and her curse had begun. She tasted the story, considered it while keeping it upon the tip of her tongue, and then she let it loose.

"Before you were even born, Comte Philippe, more than nearly eighty years ago now, your father, Charles de Chagny, was the Vicomte, living in the mansion that stood here before it was rebuilt. Am I right?"

"Of course you are. What of it?" Though his air was nonchalant, his eyes told a different story. Good. You already dread what I know.

"It is this. When your father was a young man, about Raoul's age, he fell in love with a girl from the local village. She lived all alone in her house, she had no brothers or sisters and her parents were long dead, but she did not let that sorry weigh for down, for she was filled with so much joy in everything. She was a very beautiful girl, kind, clever, gentle, passionate, half wild and half divine. Her name was Magdalene." She saw him wince, and she swiftly pressed on. "Your father loved her deeply, truly, irrevocably. It went deeper than the lust a lord might have for a peasant girl he could take at his will; it was true love. He would have married her, had he the chance, but that was impossible, she was too low born. And besides, she didn't love him. Or she did, but only as a friend, the brother she had never had. He loved her too deeply to take her against her will."

"God bless and keep my father, but he was a fool." Comte Philippe's voice had lost its joviality; it was flat, dull and harsh. She ignored him and his words, ploughing ahead with the story.

"At length, your father was obliged to marry a noblewoman. It broke his heart, since he had given it to Magdalene. And she…something happened to her, when your father wed. One day she just packed up and left the village, with no hint or clue of where she was going. People said she had gone off dancing with the gypsies, and that only hurt Charles the more. But he did his duty, and got you upon his new wife."

She paused to swallow and simply draw breath, before the story spilled out again, uncontrollably, into the silence that surrounded her in a sea of candle light. "And then, nearly nine months after the marriage, Magdalene came back, as heavy with child as your mother, though she had no wedding ring to save the child from being called a bastard. Naturally the people turned their backs on her. But Charles still loved her, perhaps more than ever, and he supported her and did not abandon her, not even when she gave birth to a boy with only half a face and yellow eyes, a boy the people around her called a demon and would have drowned in any water deep enough, had they been allowed to. That boy's name was Erik."

Comte Philippe looked up abruptly, his mouth flying open, though he said nothing, and closed it again swiftly, breathing deeply. She could see his fingernails digging into the cloth of his trousers. The other two girls were breathing deeply now as well.

"And when you were born only a few days later, Comte Philippe, your father brought Magdalene up to the mansion and gave you to her, to put to her breast alongside Erik."

Meg paused again, and stared solemnly through the sallow light, at Comte Philippe's unmoving face. "Magdalene was your wet-nurse. Erik was…is, your milk brother. Even after you were both weaned, Charles made sure the connection between you lasted. He wanted you to see Erik as a true brother, since his own wife was less than willing to give him any more children after the trouble she had giving birth to you."

The Comte's hands had slid forward on his knees, as his head bowed. "Yes," he muttered. "Imagine what I suckled from that madwoman, eh?" He looked up, and his smile was now distinctly unpleasant. Cecile, she could see out of the corner of her eye, took another step back. "If you know all this, little Giry, presumably you know what happened to Magdalene as well?"

"I know," she retorted. The memory of it was repulsive. "When Erik was ten she was deemed insane, and she was taken to a mad house. She died there many years later. I still find that hard to believe, that Charles would do that, after-"

"Oh, you have my mother to thank for that. A curiously spiteful woman, she was. She always resented Magdalene for giving me the milk that she herself wouldn't have provided in any case. And she was exceptionally jealous of how much my father loved my pretty little foster-mother, compared to her. Very pernickety. In the end, she managed to alert the proper authorities and to influence Father, and I'm sure you know the rest." He sighed, and his horrid smile faded into sadness. "Poor, poor Mama. It's quite sad what happened to her in the end, to say nothing of ironic. She sent her rival to a mad house, only to end her own days in a not very dissimilar situation when she went senile and had to be locked up. Magdalene's revenge, you might say."

"But that wasn't the end of it," Meg broke in, determined to take the story back for herself. "Your father was guilt-ridden over what he had done to the woman he had loved. He never really recovered from it. But he took care of Erik. He sent him to school, and educated him. He wanted him to have a fine future. But Erik didn't want the future the de Chagny family had planned for him. He went off on his own when he was about nineteen, and didn't come back for quite a few years. He went to Persia, didn't he? And many other places. When he came back, he agreed to rebuild the de Chagny mansion, and in its place he built this."

She waved her arm gently around her, taking in the whole room, and the building beyond it, and everything.

"He built it all for your family, even though he hated you. Every room and every hall and every wall he designed and ordered built, and it was built in record time. And just as the building was finished, your father died. And, apparently, in his will he left a fairly substantial amount of money and property to Erik, besides paying him for building the house, which was to be bequeathed to him as soon as he married." Meg tilted her head, strands of stray hair falling across her neck. "You knew about this?"

"Of course I knew. I was there when it was read out, after all. And if you think there is something in my father leaving such a gift to…him, your guess is as good as mine. No one ever knew who Erik's father was. For all I know, little Magdalene might have had a change of heart and opened her legs for Father, or only for a gypsy. Where are you going with this, little Giry?"

"I will tell you where I am going with this. Soon after Comte Charles de Chagny died, you arranged a marriage for Erik, with a girl from his old village. Her family agreed, because of the money that would be his. She agreed. Erik agreed, I don't know why." The taste of decades old blood was in the air, upon her tongue, driving out the cold taste of the mirror. "And then, on the wedding day, as he was making his way to the church, you lay in wait with some men, and then you all attacked him."

"Yes." His voice was now barely audible, in that still, secret room.

"You stabbed him in the side, your own foster brother. He fled, pursued by those you sent after him, and he died alone in the dark of the woods."

"He did."

She asked the question she had longed to know the answer to, even as she had blazed wit hanger then and now flowed with calm and vengefulness. "Why?"

Comte Philippe choked, and then suddenly burst out, "I…I wanted to save her. To save her from being married to that…to that thing. How can I even call it human? In my mind, that was a fate worse than death. That poor, beautiful young woman, being bedded by a walking corpse; what red blooded man would have allowed it? So I…I saved her. That was why I did it, since you want to know so very badly, and came all the way up here to ask me. I did it to save her, to save from being enslaved to my monster of a foster brother."

"That isn't the only reason why you did it," Cecile overrode him, perhaps even to her own surprise. "There was the inheritance which would become his, which you begrudged him."

"And my mother," Meg added, glaring at the dreadful man, "my mother told me; she said that you wanted the girl for yourself. That you wanted her to be your mistress, rather than Erik's wife."

"Your mother," Comte Philippe said, looking back up at her and attempting to speak coolly, "or whoever fed her that lie, assumed too much. I did not want her at all." But the comte's voice betrayed him. It told them not to believe the foul uses it was being put to, to hear the truth behind the lies that had survived for so long.

"I did not want her," he tried again, wretchedly. "She was so beautiful; it was such a sin, and such a waste! Everything was wasted on him, from the very beginning. He pretended to thank us for what we gave him, while all the while he cursed us all behind our backs. All the ridiculous affection that my father had for him, he scorned and refused. And what did he do after that?"

He brought his fist down on the table, so hard that the book lying upon the surface fell off and landed on the floor; Cecile, fastidious as ever, quickly darted forward and picked it up, just as quickly jumping back out of his reach. He appeared not to notice her action, his wide, desperate eyes staring only at her, letting out the horrible secret that had twisted him inside for so long. "He went all the way to Persia to become a little pet torturer! We raised and fed and nourished a very demon, and my father was too blinded by his love and loyalty to see that. But I did. I saw all too well. And once the terms of Erik's marriage was announced I knew, I knew that I had to get rid of him, somehow. For her sake, and for my own sake."

"But it did not go according to plan, did it?" Carlotta spoke out at last, her long disused voice strange and harsh after the torment her throat had gone through, tinged wit hdisgust at some taste in her mouth that was not natural.

Comte Philippe gave her a smile that twisted his face like a wound. "It did not. He was not expected to fight back as violently as he did. I thought that he would be taken by surprise, but curse him, he seemed almost to be ready and waiting for us, as if he knew what we were going to do. He knocked down two of my men, and actually cut down three others. And he left me a token of his appreciation in return for the death blow that I gave him…"

He trailed off, and drummed his fingers against his leg, the leg upon which he limped, upon which he had always limped, for as long as the two girls had known him, and long before that.

"What happened to the girl?" Meg prompted, struggling to keep her face calm and bland. Heavens, the foul thing looks like he enjoys remembering what he did!

Comte Philippe's smile faded at once. "She was such an excitable thing. So passionate, and so wilful. Poor little thing, she didn't deserve to be trapped in such a dreadful prison of a marraige. I hoped that she would be grateful for her release towards God, towards heaven, towards me. But when I went to find her, after…"

Suddenly he gave a small choking sound, choking on the sharp bones of a long dead knowledge, and half turned away from them.

Carlotta kept the pistol firmly trained on him as she had all this while, frowning. "What is this? What happened to her? What happened to the girl?" she asked softly, suspiciously. When he made no answer, she risked a look at Meg.

"Tell her, Philippe," Meg ordered coldly. "This is your story, so you tell it. I won't tell this for you. Tell her what happened." She had no pity left for him. All her pity was for the ones that he had burned with his life.

Her icy words, in an odd way, seemed to calm the old man. He took a deep breathe, and spoke, though obviously loathing his words and the event they retold.

"I found her. I found lying at the very entrance to the church where she was to have married him, her blood staining the stones and dyeing her white wedding dress and seeping into her veil. She – she was dead. Of course she was dead. No one knew how she did it, but she'd climbed up to the bell tower, and then, then she'd jumped. Jumped and fell and split her head open, and spilled her blood and her brains out on the holy ground."

Meg heard Carlotta gasp with shock and saw out of the corner of her eye that she quickly made the sign of the cross, though still holding the gun steady. She herself was not shocked at all, though. She'd heard it all before.

"Of course, she must have thought that I was Erik," the Comte went on, apparently not noting their reactions. "She hated the very thought of Erik. She killed herself rather than marry him."

Meg shook her head. "That is not the story that my mother told, Comte Philippe. She said that the girl was happy to marry Erik, that she was enchanted by him when she saw him those times he passed through the village, that she hoped that she would be able to cure his anger, his loneliness. She was a beautiful child, and as fragile as she was beautiful; and when she heard what had happened to the man she idolised, the atrocities committed in her name, she was broken. You destroyed her, Philippe, as surely and truly as you killed your foster brother. She could not bear to live with the horror of what you had done, or the horror of what you might yet do, and so she was the one who had the decency to take her own life, in the end. Is this not so?"

"Yes." Her words made his shoulders bow, like a weight crushing him down. "The news came to her while she was waiting. When she learned that I was following after, she was terrified, but determined as well. She said that she would not let me get her, and she ran away from the altar. Her father chased her up the bell tower, but she jumped through his fingers and he didn't save her." The Comte shook his grey head. "But there was more. When she jumped and she shattered her head, she shattered her mother's mind inside her skull. The poor woman went mad when she saw her daughter's skull split open on the stones. She hanged herself in their home the next day. Only one was meant to die. Instead three died."

"What was the girl's name?" Cecile asked, softly. The name of one slain by injustice, not by her own hand. A dreamer's name. A damned name.

"Buquet. Lucie Buquet. The head groundskeeper is her brother. He was only a baby when it happened, he does not know or remember."

Buquet…It seemed odd and yet strangely fitting, that this whole journey of truth and revelation had started with Buquet and ended with him as well. But there was no time to reflect, for Comte Philippe was looking straight at her. "And how do you know all this, little Giry?"

"My mother, as I told you. She was the daughter of one of the men you sent to hunt down Erik. The only one to escape the 'accidents' you laid for them." She watched his face crumple like a collapsing sheet from a wash line. "Far more than three died, Comte. Your men died to keep your shame a secret. You turned away from the church and its message and its sentiments, for Lucie's blood stained your feet, and instead of a crucifix you could only see her mother hanging from a beam. And everywhere you look, there is your dead brother, the one you're denied and spun stories about and condemned to be remembered as a demon even after his death, because you cannot forgive yourself for what you did and you cannot face the world if it knows what you did. And you hurt Celandine."

He flinched again at that, as from a bee sting, and she turned the sting into a dagger and pushed into his ribs. "You killed your great grandchild, in the cruellest possible manner, and I for one will see that you suffer for it. You've been waiting for this sentence for a long time, Comte Philippe de Chagny; and by God we'll take you to the one who has the right above all to administer it. Now, stand up and come with us. Now."

Still he sat in his chair, though considerably less cool than before. "And what if I refuse, gentle ladies?"

"Then we will shoot you in the foot and take you with us anyway," Carlotta said plainly. At the look on his face, she added, "Or Cecile could always poke you in the back with the sword."

The Comte turned around rather sharply at that, to see that little Cecile had picked up a sword he had leaned long ago by the little desk, unsheathed it and was holding it with both hands, pointing it straight at him. "You dare, you little hussy-"

"Yes, I do dare, sir," Cecile replied quietly. "And you might want to be careful with your words, sir. I'm not very used to using this thing. My hand just might slip by accidentand poke you somewhere rather painful."

"Why-" Comte Philippe began, and then stopped and composed himself, standing up. "Very well, ladies, you present a very thorough argument. I will make a bargain with you; if you," he said to Cecile, who drew back but still held the sword fairly steady, "give me the book you have there in your little hands, I will come with you willingly."

Cecile did not seem to need to give this much consideration. "You'll come with us whether I give you the book or not," she said, taking the sword in one hand for a quick moment and tossing the book to Meg, bringing her free hand quickly back to the hilt. "So I think I'll give it to Meg, instead, if it's all the same to you, sir."

Meg smiled sweetly as the Comte turned a face as dark as thunder to her. "Good. Now that that's settled, follow me, please, Comte."

As Cecile and Carlotta moved to either side of the old man, prodding him forward with their weapons, she stole a quick glance at the book in her grasp; a very familiar book indeed.

This book again? What's so special about this book? Surely poems aren't that useful?

No doubt Comte Philippe had some use for it, use enough to steal it. Well, there would be time enough to work this out later. She walked forward, into the mirror room once again.

She gloried as she saw her reflections smile tiredly at her. This is nearly over, she heard them whisper in union. The truth is known. Soon you will all be free.

"Meg?" Carlotta asked calmly from behind her, and above her, and around her, and below her. "Where are we going now?"

The mirror in front of her was singing with their sweet, subtle plan. She smiled, and her sisters all around her smiled as well, as she saw a path to her real sister through the silvery maze.

I am not afraid. Not any more. The only thing in the mirror now…

"Carlotta, take hold of the back of my dress. You too, Comte, and Cecile, make sure he does so and keeps hold of it." She didn't need to look around to know that it was done. The mirrors whispered that it was so.

…the only thing in the mirror now…

She breathed in and out, and placed her free palm upon the surface. The mirror surged up joyously to meet her, just as it had done to Raoul, but unlike Raoul she loved it where she had hated it before. Hate was only love with its back turned.

"Let me see," she whispered, and the mirrors obeyed, and she walked forward into the surging cold, taking those who clung in shock to her in her wake.

...is us.

I find that quite a lot of this was inspired by Victorian melodrama, most likely Charles Dickens. Of course, old Charlie got the chapters out a lot faster than I did. And I must admit, though I do have some pretty odd ideas, I don't think I'd ever use 'spontaneous combustion' as a method of killing off a character. Those Victorians; they had some pretty funny ideas, eh?

It's been a while since I wrote the chapter 'Page black, page white', where you first learn Erik's mother's name, and I must admit I was a little tempted to change it to Madeline. Even though I liked the name, a lot, it would have been less confusing considering the way some people pronounce 'Magdalene' i.e. 'maud-lin. Not exactly a very pretty name, is it? But that I remembered that if this thing were written in French, Magdalene would automatically become Madeline anyway, since that is how the French pronounce the second name of she of The Da Vinci Code fame. So, it stayed. And I'm kinda relieved.

Now, on to this whole wet nurse thing, for those of you who don't have the know. In the old days i.e. practically every century before the twentieth, when a noblewoman had a baby the child was at once given to a more commonly born woman who a) already had a baby suckling or b) had recently lost their own baby, so they could feed it instead of the natural mother. Partly this was because it was unseemly for a noblewoman to breastfeed her own children; partly it was because feeding your baby apparently usually ruins your bust, and rich ladies for some reason – especially in the last five hundred years or so – wanted to stuff their lovely bosoms into tight fitting dresses so that men could drool over them (I really have no real idea why the sight of mamillary glands are so fascinating to the heterosexual male, no matter what size they are); but mostly it was because if the baby isn't feeding and no new milk is produced (something called lactation, which we won't go into here), gradually the body comes into metaphorical 'heat' again, and the woman can have another baby – which is important when it comes to producing lots of lovely little legitimate heirs in record for your dear old hubby. Boobs: regulated for your convenience!

As for the milk-brother business, wet-nurses and their natural children often benefited from the service the mother provided. Aside from getting paid straight out for the job, the children who had suckled alongside the noble child often got favours and good jobs from their foster sibling when they grew older. The family of Marie Antoinette's foster brother coined it in from the royal connection with the little archduchess.

And finally, kudos to anyone who spotted the Susan Kay reference - altered - and a tribute to a character we haven't seen much of (and didn't get to suffer this fate after all!).

We are getting very near the end! I am so excited!

Happy Passover, for those who've celebrated it! Happy Easter, for those who do celebrate it! And to anyone who doesn't celebrate either – well, just have a nice time, whatever your beliefs.

Reviews for the half-Irish seamstress!