Chapter XIX

Escape From Paris

The city was dark and cold when we emerged from the catacombs, carrying with us the few belongings that we still had. Night had fallen.

"Shhhh," Clopin whispered to all of us, putting his finger to his lips.

We all nodded. We were leaving Paris for good, we were going to escape, but if anyone caught us, then our plans would be foiled. And the gallows were not exactly welcoming.

Strangely enough, there was a bright red glow in the distance, against the dark silhouettes of the rooftops, spires and chimneys of the city. Fire? It was in the direction of the Gréve and Notre Dame, on the island, the place where the day's bizarre events had taken place.

Had the city been set ablaze? Claude Frollo and the soldiers were searching for us, and they must be trying to smoke us out. Speaking of which, where was Esmeralda? Had they indeed caught her and Quasimodo? The thought was frightening.

Clopin must have been thinking the same thing, because he asked out loud, "has anybody seen Esmeralda?"

Everybody shook their head that they had not. Clopin sighed. "We won't be able to stick around and wait for her. Any minute now Frollo and his army will be here. With or without Esmeralda, we have to leave."

The other gypsies nodded sadly. Where was she? I couldn't bare facing the fact that she might have to be left behind.

Suddenly, voices were heard down the street from us.

"Quick everybody!" Clopin whispered, "follow me."

We all obeyed as Clopin led us down the street in the opposite direction and down some stairs under a bridge. There, we waited as the people talking, who were in fact soldiers sent to search for us, crossed the bridge overhead.

"Where the devil did those gypsies go?" one of them asked his comrade.

The other one replied that he hadn't the slightest clue.

"And that Esmeralda, has anyone found her yet?" the soldier continued.

"No. They're still searching for her too. Ah, I can't wait until all of this nonsense is just over. The sooner Paris is free of all gypsies, vagabonds and vagrants the better."

The other one laughed in agreement, and soon they were too far away to hear what was being said.

When at last not even the footsteps or clopping of horse hooves could be heard, we all breathed a sigh of relief. They had completely passed over us without even realizing that we were right under their feet. I was also relieved to hear that Esmeralda had not yet been caught, although that still didn't fix the problem of where she was. Who knew where Quasimodo had taken her?

"Let's resume our journey," Clopin said to all of us after a few more moments to make sure that we were indeed alone.

We all nodded and followed Clopin. By now dawn was just an hour away, and we could see the faint strip of light far in the distance on the horizon. To avoid being easily seen by anybody, we had to leave the city before daybreak!

"Shhh," someone whispered to a few small children who were giggling softly. "This is serious! If we get caught a second time, then it's to the gallows for us."

At this, the children's smiles vanished and they became very silent.

"Good."

"Not a very happy crowd, eh?" Marcel whispered to me.

I shrugged. "What's there to be happy about? We're leaving our home, we don't know where Esmeralda is, and any second now we could be discovered and then hung by sunrise."

Marcel nodded. "Hey, Anisa doesn't look too good, does she?"

He pointed to his sister and I looked at her. Now that somebody had pointed it out, Marcel was right, she didn't look good. Not at all. On her face was an unusually distressed expression and she seemed to be having troubles breathing. Also, she was clutching her stomach with one hand while using the other one to balance herself.

"She does seem ill," I agreed.

"Everybody be quiet," Clopin suddenly called to all of us. He halted.

"What's going on?" somebody asked.

"Shhhh! Listen!"

We all did as he said and listened. We were nearing the city limits by now, but that didn't put a damper on the danger we were in by any means.

"Listen!" Clopin repeated.

It was that same, unfortunately familiar voice: the voice of Claude Frollo. It was nearby, in an alley, talking to somebody, most likely a soldier.

"I don't care if we have to burn all of Paris down," he was saying. "If we don't find those gypsies, then so help me, you'll lose your position as Captain of the Royal Archers!"

Captain of the Royal Archers? So he was talking to Phoebus!

"But your honor-" Phoebus said in protest before being interrupted.

"Don't give me any buts! I'm the archdeacon. And if you oppose me, then that's treason against the church!"

Phoebus didn't bother to respond, he just gave a frustrated muffled grumble.

They were getting closer, their footsteps on the cobblestones of the street were clearly audible, and were slowly growing ever so much louder. We all held our breath as we huddled together in a nearby alley, hoping that the sinister archdeacon would simply pass by without noticing a thing.

Suddenly, Anisa lost all control and broke down. "It's coming!" she gasped. "The baby's coming! My water broke!" Her face was beet red, and drops of sweat were dripping down her face. Ramus was at her side, coaxing her gently.

Clopin on the other hand, was in sheer panic! Frollo and Phoebus were mere footsteps away and now of all times Anisa was going to give birth!

"Why now?" he whispered to himself. "Somebody get Anisa out of here, she's only going to attract attention!"

Quickly, quietly, and as carefully as possible, Ramus, Marcel and I dragged Anisa away. By now she was sobbing.

"It hurts so much!" she cried in agonizing pain!

"Shhhh," we tried to coax her. "They'll hear us!"

"Let me down!" she cried. "Let me down!"

We all exchanged nervous glances and looked back to see if anyone was coming. We were behind a warehouse of some sort, perhaps a carpenter's shop, and the smell of garbage reeked. Rats were scurrying through little mounds of food. On the count of three, we gently set Anisa down on some cobblestones and propped up her head against some wood blocks that had been laying there.

"How are you feeling?" Marcel asked her, nervous about his older sister.

"She's giving birth, how do you think she's feeling?"

Anisa just ignored us, but continued to gasp for air like she was being strangled.

We were near the river I suddenly realized.

"Hey Anisa, do you need some water?"

She didn't respond verbally; she was in way too much pain to do that, but she did nod her head that she wanted some.

I got up then and quickly searched for something to hold water. Near one of the piles of rotting garbage and food behind the warehouse, was a flower pot. It had a hole in the bottom, but I found a small pebble that fit perfectly inside and then gathered some water from the Seine.

When I had returned, Anisa was in as much pain as ever. Her body was shaking with convulsions. I handed her the flower pot which she eagerly gulped down.

Suddenly her eyes got really big and she began to scream.

"Shhhhh, what's wrong?" Ramus asked his wife.

"It's coming out!" Anisa cried. "I can feel it! It's coming out!"

"Somebody get down there to help the baby come out!" Marcel cried.

"Don't look at me!" I said. "I'm not going down there!"

"Well somebody has to!"

"Ramus, you're the father of this baby, you do it!"

Ramus nodded, his hands were shaking. He must be so nervous.

Anisa began to convulse violently now, and there was no way to silence her blood curdling screams of pain.

"You're doing great Anisa, my love," Ramus told her, his voice quivering with anxiety. "The baby's almost here."

"What the devil is all this screaming about?" asked a nearby approaching voice. Uh oh, I knew that voice! Frollo! He sounded closer than ever!

"What are we going to do?" I mouthed to Marcel.

He shrugged, a look of terror plastered to his face.

"Could it be one of those gypsy wenches?" Frollo asked to himself, cackling softly. "I do seem to remember that one of them was pregnant yesterday afternoon before they all escaped. In fact it sounds as if she might even be giving birth. All right gypsies, no more games!"

Suddenly, the priest who had been stalking us for so long emerged from a shadowy alley. After looking at Anisa, Ramus, Marcel, and I and at what was happening, he lifted back his head and exploded with evil laughter!

"You're time is up gypsies!" he said, slowly approaching us.

Fear gripped all of us like a bone cold skeleton. The smile on Frollo's face; I've won, he seemed to be telepathically saying to us. It's all over, you've got nowhere to hide, give up!

"What…what are you going to do?" Marcel asked, trying to be brave.

Frollo laughed. "What do you think? You tell me?"

Marcel didn't respond.

"Please leave us alone," Anisa begged to him in between screams of pain. This was probably the most traumatic childbirth in the history of the world.

"I can't do that," said Frollo. "The hangman is waiting. Phoebus will come with his soldiers when I call him. Face it, it's the end."

I couldn't take it any longer. Claude Frollo had been terrorizing gypsies like ourselves for long enough. Well, today the cat was going to go home without mice. I picked up the flower pot and hurled it at the priest's head. The pot shattered into broken red pieces of clay and Claude Frollo fell to the ground unconscious. It had hit him square in the forehead. It wouldn't kill him, but at least he was knocked out cold so that we could escape.

"What was that!?" Marcel cried.

"I had to do it. It's him or us, and besides he'll be fine. Just a big headache when he wakes up."

We had been so absorbed in the confrontation with the archdeacon that we had completely forgotten that Anisa was still trying to give birth to her baby. Anisa was almost writhing on the ground. It truly was difficult to see someone who we loved so much be in so much pain.

"Come on my love, almost there!" Ramus tried to encourage her.

Suddenly, Anisa gave one final push, and the sound of crying was heard. Not her crying, the baby!

"It's out! It's out!" Ramus cried out excitedly. "I'm a father!"

Anisa lay her head down and breathed a deep sigh. "Let me see my baby."

"It's a boy!" Ramus said as he gently handed the infant to his wife.

"Oh my precious," Anisa said smiling at her naked newborn. She was crying. But they were not tears of pain, they were tears of happiness. She exchanged a loving look at her husband Ramus and they kissed.

"What are you going to name the baby?" we asked.

Anisa suddenly looked puzzled. Obviously, she and Ramus hadn't thought about that.

"What do you think Ramus?" she asked him.

Ramus shrugged. "I don't know. I like the name Hector."

"Hector?" I asked. "Why Hector?"

"Don't you remember?" Ramus asked me. "It was the name of a brave Trojan warrior, from our homeland in Turkey who died for honor in battle! Remember father used to tell us stories about him from the Iliad?"

"I like the name Hector," Anisa agreed. "Hector will be his name."

Suddenly groaning was heard. We looked over to see that Claude Frollo was waking up from his coma.

"Let's all get out of here quickly!" Marcel whispered. The rest of us nodded in agreement.

"Ah, a new addition to our big family," Clopin said when we returned to the rest of the gypsies.

"His name is Hector," Ramus said proudly.

Clopin smiled. He turned to Anisa. "I'm so sorry we made you leave," he said to her. "But Frollo would have discovered us all for sure if you had stayed."

"Oh yah, speaking of which, he's still around here," I mentioned, "so we should leave right about now."

"Ah, well this is our goodbye," Clopin said as we all gazed at the city below. We escaped successfully to the hills outside of Paris and were looking at it for the last time. It was a wreck. Buildings, streets, houses and warehouses were aflame. Frollo and his men had set Paris on fire, hoping to find us by smoking us out.

Above all this, Notre Dame still towered over the city as majestic as ever. The beautiful cathedral was what I was going to miss most about Paris. It struck me odd that it was noon and the bells weren't ringing. That must mean Quasimodo was still gone, where had he and Esmeralda gone?

Some of the other gypsies were tearing up; this place had been there home their entire lives and now they had to give it up forever.

"Ok everyone," Clopin said after a few moments, trying his best to be cheerful. "To Madrid!"

"To Madrid!" we all we sang in unison.

And so that is our story. After escaping from Paris, we traveled south through the French countryside until we came to the mighty Pyrenees Mountains. From there, we crossed the mountains into Spain where we made our new home in Madrid. It wasn't the same as Paris, but it was still a great city.

What happened to everybody?

Well, Clopin continued to rule as the gypsy king. You know how he is. He eventually began to grow old and went slightly crazy, but then again, what's the difference?

Good old Pierre Gringoire became a successful playwright and author. His books were published by a Spanish publishing company in Barcelona (which by the way the printing press was recently invented). He never married again, after the disaster with Esmeralda, but the little goat Djali became one of his best friends, and he took good care of her.

Ramus and Anisa had a happy marriage together and several other children. They call me Uncle Hulian, because in Spain, the Spaniards pronounce their j's like h's.

Little Hector grew up into a clever, scheming prankster. Whenever I visit Ramus and Anisa, he has a trick up his sleeve.

Jasmine and Heidi moved to Portugal, but we still keep in contact.

My good old friend Marcel became the last thing anybody would expect: a bull fighter. He hasn't gotten gored yet by a bull, so wish him luck!

What about me? Well, I fell in love with a gypsy girl in Madrid named Carmen. We married, and have four kids: Manuel, Pierre, José, and Raquel. We live in a villa on the Spanish Riviera. Life is good.

As for Esmeralda? Well, none of us ever saw her again after that day before we left Paris. What happened to her we'll never know. But I can tell you this: several years after everything happened, I made a visit back to France. When I arrived in Paris, I soon found out that many things had happened. Claude Frollo was dead and Phoebus was in trouble for cheating on his wife Fleur de lys…again! This time he finally got caught. Because adultery was such a severe crime against the church, he had fled from Paris to avoid the death penalty. There were rumors that he was hiding in Italy.

But this was not the purpose of the trip. I asked if anybody had heard of a gypsy girl named Esmeralda. Most people didn't seem to remember who she was, and those who did, said that neither she, nor Quasimodo had been seen since the day that all the gypsies had escaped.

I sighed. But there was one other reason that I had returned to Paris. I wanted to see the Court of Miracles once more, before I returned to Spain.

The catacombs were still there. Sometimes the catacombs in big cities had to be removed if flooding occurred, but this one still remained. When I reached the little island in the middle of the dark cavern that we had all lived on, I made a scary discovery. Two skeletons, one with a misshapen and deformed spine and unusually long arms, and the other one who appeared to be a gypsy girl, with the bronze bracelets and ankle bands still on, were locked in a tight embrace. They remain there to this day, in peace forever.

THE END

Well, that's the end! I hope you enjoyed it! For all you people out there who haven't read the actual book Hunchback of Notre Dame, read it! It's a really good story, and very complex. It's not exactly a happy story, because yes, Esmeralda dies, and so does Quasimodo. That part at the end about them being found together in the catacombs after they died was actually in the book, and I thought hey, what a cool way to end the story! Special thanks of course go to Opaque Opal, disneyqueen, and One Fine Wire, because they reviewed this story all the time and gave me tips. You guys rock, and I hope you enjoyed the ending! That's it, and now since it's very late at night, I'm going to bed. Sincerely, Rainforest Treefrog!