Chapter Nineteen
The Broken Rule
"Just now, I was preparing to start with heavy fighting
And violent war, with a measure to fit the matter.
Good enough for lesser verse, laughed Cupid
So they say, and stole a foot away.
'Cruel boy, who gave you power over this song?
Poets are the Muses', we're not in your crowd.
What if Venus snatched Minerva's weapons,
While golden Minerva fanned the flaming fires?
Who'd approve of Ceres ruling the wooded hills,
With the Virgin's quiver to cultivate the fields?
Who'd grant long-haired Phoebus a sharp spear,
While Mars played the Aonian lyre?
You've a mighty kingdom, boy, and too much power,
Ambitious one, why aspire to fresh works?
Or is everything yours? Are Helicon's metres yours?
Is even Phoebus' lyre now barely his at all?
I've risen to it well, in the first line, on a clean page,
The next one' weakened my strength:
And I've no theme fitting for lighter verses,
No boy or elegant long-haired girl.'
I was singing, while he quickly selected an arrow
From his quiver, to engineer my ruin,
And vigorously bent the sinuous bow against his knee.
And said, 'Poet, take this effort for your song!'
Woe is me! That boy has true shafts.
I burn, and love rules my vacant heart.
My work rises in six beats, sinks in five:
Farewell hard fighting with your measure!
Muse, garland your golden brow with Venus' myrtle
Culled from the shore, and sing on with eleven feet!
- Ovid, Amores, 1.1: The Theme of Love
Clementine returned to her flat, forgetting the fact she had lectures. She looked up the rebellion once more on her laptop. It was a new message, she was sure of that; she'd never seen it before. And from what she read, there was now only a few more days until the barricades would rise and Jehan would die.
Hours later, and she was in a panic. She tried to distract herself by reading or doing work, but it was to no avail. When Élodie knocked on her door to ask where she'd been, she ignored her; when Noémi tried a few hours later, she called through that she was fine and she wanted to be on her own. She heard Pauline tell them all it was probably boy troubles and was grateful that seemed to be enough to get them all to back off.
By half past seven, she'd had enough. She went for her evening shower in an attempt to cool down and then went straight to bed.
It seemed to take days to fall asleep. Her mind was running over time. She knew that the panic she was in was silly, as there was still a few days to speak to Jehan and she was in no rush, but she just wanted to see him, wanted to tell him…
Finally, sleep came, and then she was in Jehan's bedroom. It was dark, and he was not there.
She sat, waiting. She felt restless. She changed her position what felt like a hundred times, stretching herself across the width of the bed sometimes, and then hugging her knees to her chest at others. She lay on her stomach, her sides, her back; sat cross-legged, kneeled, crouched, sat with her legs stretched out in front of her.
No position felt entirely comfortable. She resorted to chewing on her nails, a habit she'd long outgrown except on occasions when she felt nervous. She'd last bitten her nails during her first university exam period when she was struggling to revise.
Trying to take her mind off her agitation she began to recite literature in her head. She began with her favourite Shakespeare quotes, but soon couldn't remember anymore; she recited some Catullus to herself, then some Ovid, then going back to the 16th century to repeat Faustus' speech on Helen of Troy from Doctor Faustus…
She had just begun to recite the dialogue from the scene in Doctor Faustus where Lucifer presents Faustus with personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins when she heard the sound of a door opening and slamming and then footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, the door to Jehan's bedroom was flung open and the man himself burst in, looking frazzled. He had a bag over his shoulder which he promptly dumped onto the bed before dragging his hands through his hair.
"Did you get my message?" he asked, without saying hello.
"General Lamarque is dead," Clementine guessed.
"Yes," Jehan said. "You do realise what that means, don't you?"
"I think I have some idea," Clementine said.
"Of course you do." Jehan sat on the bed, next to his bag. "You're from the future; of course you know what's going to happen."
She crawled to kneel beside him and placed her hand on his shoulder. She didn't speak.
"It's what we've been waiting for," he said, at last, eyes downcast.
"Yes, it is," she murmured. "But it's not too late to back out..."
He glanced at her. "I know it's not," he said. "Believe me, Clementine, I have thought about your request for me to not follow them. But I cannot do that. I cannot. I must go."
"You're scared," Clementine whispered. "I can see it in your face."
"Of course I'm scared," Jehan said. "It…It might not work out for us…It could go so badly wrong and that scares me, of course it does, but if every man ran from what scared him nothing would ever get done."
She pressed his face into his shoulder. "I can't persuade you," she said. "Can I?"
"I do wish you could," Jehan admitted. "I wish it was that easy."
Clementine felt tears falling softly down her face. She let them seep through his clothes rather than try and wipe them away. "So there is nothing, nothing I can do, or say…" Her voice broke. "Jehan, I can't be happy if you – if you…"
He rested his head on hers, and she felt his lips ghost over the spot above her ear. "I might not die," he said. "Things like this have happened before – it is no guarantee of death, Clementine. Please, don't cry."
But she did cry, because the idea of him dying cut her to the bone. She was aware that she was kissing him, and was sure he could taste the saltiness of her tears on his lips. She broke away.
"I love you," she found herself murmuring in her native tongue. She knew he couldn't speak English, but there was something on his face that suggested he understood what she had said.
"I love you," he replied.
III
The following evening, Clementine went to sleep. But this night was different. She did not see Jehan, but she did see his death; heard those horrible cries of long live the future and vive la France and the sound of gunfire and she woke up sweating. The night after was exactly the same, only the dream decided to show her Jehan's face close up as the life drained out of his face.
She woke and vomited in the sink in her room. She wanted to see Jehan, wanted to see him desperately, but her dreams were no longer taking her to 1832 to see him. Did that mean she had failed? Did that mean he would die?
Unable to bear these thoughts, she decided to go to the fortune teller once more. She knew she looked terrible, as she threw her unwashed hair into a ponytail and put on yesterday's clothes, but she hardly cared. She was grateful that none of her flatmates were up and about when she slipped out of the flat, because she didn't know what she would say to them.
She didn't have to go far, because Margaux was waiting on the grass outside their building. She wore a long black dress decorated with thousands of glittering black beads, and black leather gloves covered her hands.
"Have I failed?" Clementine burst out.
"Not yet," Margaux said, keeping her eyes on the pale, watery blue sky above them. "There is still time. Another twenty-four hours, roughly…"
"What can I do?" Clementine demanded, clenching her fists. "I have not been able to visit him in my dreams anymore –"
"Fate thought you needed an incentive to try harder," Margaux said, and then hummed under her breath. "Do you know why I am wearing black, Clementine?"
"No," Clementine bit out. "And I have tried. I've tried as hard as I can –"
"I'm wearing black in preparation of Jean Prouvaire's death," Margaux interrupted. "I will tell you the truth, now, Clementine. People die every day. But some of the people that die should not have died. When they die, it means that other things do not happen. And it is the job of people like me to make sure those things happen, and to do that, I have to meddle in the lives of people like you. Jean Prouvaire is what I call a loose thread. He dies and nothing happens that should happen. My job with you was to tie the loose thread that is Jean Prouvaire."
"Tell me what to do," Clementine said. "Please. Tell me, and I will do it. I don't want him to die!"
"A wonderful sentiment," Margaux said. "I am doing this for you. Remember that, Clementine Evans. This is for you, and for Jean Prouvaire, so you can be happy." She sighed. "Ah, Fate will be furious with me for what I am about to do – it breaks all the rules – but it must be done."
And then she lunged at Clementine. Clementine felt a palm slam into her forehead, and then everything went black.
A/N: We're not long off the end now...
And a note about the poem I used at the start. I chose this poem because it represents some unmentioned thoughts I have about Clementine and Jehan's relationship; they never meant to fall in love, as was the case of the narrator of Ovid's poem. It's generally the poem I think of when I think of this story actually...