Chapter XVII.

Frollo's Discovery

"We must take action immediately!" Clopin repeated to all the gypsies who were crowding around him. "Who's with me?!"

Everybody cheered that they were, by raising torches that had been lit on fire.

"What are we going to do, Clopin?" somebody in the large crowd asked.

"What are we going to do?" Clopin repeated the question. "I'll tell what we are going to do. We're going to storm Notre Dame. We're going to free Esmeralda, and there's nothing the archdeacon of all of Paris can do about it."

"Oh, is that so?" said a voice in the shadows.

Everybody turned to see who it was. A dark hooded figure stood menacingly in the ankle deep water; his cape damp at the edges. Something was eerily familiar about him.

"Who are you!?" Clopin shouted across to him. "What are you doing here?"

At first the man didn't answer. Then, slowly, he lifted the hood from his head, revealing his face…it was Claude Frollo!

He began to cackle to himself as everyone stared at him in horror and disbelief.

"I can't believe it," he chuckled. "I've been searching for this place for years, and now I've finally found it."

"How!?" somebody asked, mortified that the secret was no longer a secret.

"Why, I followed that little scamp Julian all the way here. He had no idea that I was following him, did you Julian?"

I couldn't respond. I was so utterly shocked that not a single word could come out of my mouth. But after I thought about it, it made a small bit of sense. I had felt as if I was being followed the entire way back to the Court of Miracles, but I had had no idea it was the archdeacon.

Frollo cackled again, throwing back his head for a more dramatic villain effect. "And as for Esmeralda, well, her hanging is tomorrow. The Parliament of Paris is stripping her of her sanctuary in Notre Dame and she will be put to death tomorrow in the Greve, a long with all of you. Soldiers, take them!"

With that, the shadows behind him came alive as an entire fleet of soldiers on horseback emerged. From that minute, everywhere in the Court of Miracles was nothing but sheer panic. All I remember is running as fast as I could in the opposite direction of Claude Frollo and his army.

"What have we done?" Marcel asked, running beside me. "He can't just put us all to death. What have we done?"

"He's the archdeacon," I reminded Marcel bitterly, "he can do whatever he feels like as long as he justifies that we 'violated the church' or something."

"But we didn't? A few fake magic tricks and dancing animals maybe, but it's not like we practice witchcraft or anything."

I shrugged. "Let's just get out of here!"

It reminded me of the night when Ramus, Heidi, and Jasmine and I all escaped from Istanbul. Everywhere people were running, screaming, falling, and there was lots of fire. Frollo had mounted a horse and was hearding some of the gypsies strait into the clutches of the soldiers. They were tied at the wrists, and then loaded into carts.

"Where's Anisa?" Marcel asked me.

"I don't know."

"She's pregnant, so she can't run! She'll be trapped here."

"We'll find her," I assured him. We rushed to her room, the stone cell that she and Ramus shared. It was empty.

"Um…ok, she's not there," I mumbled. "What if a solider has already taken her?"

Suddenly we heard screaming, as a young women who was clearly pregnant was grabbed by one of the soldiers who was beating her viciously. It was Anisa.

"Hey leave her alone!" Marcel cried, picking up a rock and hurling it at the soldiers face. "She's pregnant!" The stone hit the soldier square between the eyes and he went out cold.

"Where's Ramus?" Anisa cried.

"Who knows," I replied. "Where's anybody? It's impossible to find people in this confused mess!"

Suddenly the sound of clopping horse hooves was heard right behind us. It was him, Claude Frollo! He reared up on his horse, whose hooves waved dangerously in the air like wrecking balls. We dashed away from him in fear, only to run into…could it be? Phoebus! But he was dead! Wasn't he?

"Phoebus!" I cried as he grabbed us in his rough hands and with the help of a few other soldiers tied us up.

"And who might you be, son?" he asked gruffly.

"You're the bastard who got Esmeralda and all of us into this mess. Aren't you supposed to be dead?"

"Ah, I survived, it was a mere cut," he replied. "I'm over it."

"So, won't you testify for us!? The only reason that Esmeralda is about to be hanged is because everybody thinks she killed you. But she didn't. And you're not dead anyways, won't you let someone know, so that we can be spared being killed for no reason?"

But Phoebus just shook his head and waved his hand. "Esmeralda. Ughhh, I don't want to hear that hideous name. She was a witch, she was. And besides, I'm engaged to Fleur de lys."

"You won't even help us?"

By now Phoebus had completely ignored my pleas and had loaded us into the cart with some of our other fellow.

And so, that is how every single gypsy in the Court of Miracles was put on trial, if you will. The funny thing is, we never even got a trial. I was told that while we were captured, Esmeralda had had a small trial at the Palace of Justice, but a false confession had been beaten out of here in the torture chamber. We were going to the gallows.

Hope you enjoyed! This story is almost over! I'm thinking of adding two or three more chapters, so stay tuned to find out the grand finale of the story. As I've said before, this is a mix of the movie and the book. In the book, Phoebus DOES actually survive the knife wound from Frollo, but he doesn't bother telling anybody because he doesn't want his fiance Fleur de lys to know he had an affair with a gypsy. So yah, that part is from the book. The part from the movie is Frollo capturing all the gypsies in the Court of Miracles after he finds it. Well, hope you enjoyed! Please review! Sincerely, Rainforest Treefrog.