Chapter 9:
Esmeralda thought she must have been chasing down the bell ringer for hours. She was not used to stairs, much less so many of them. Still, she kept climbing until she reached the top of the tower and found Quasimodo just up ahead.
He cried out in alarm, and ran into one of the bell towers, apparently having thought she wouldn't make it that far. She didn't know for sure if that was what he thought, but part of her was gleeful at having shattered that expectation.
Finally she caught him in the bell tower, and panted out, "There you are! I thought I'd lost you!"
Quasimodo, standing in the midst of three gargoyles, stammered out something akin to speech, managed to vaguely communicate that he had meant to evade her.
It was no wonder, after the way she'd exposed him to public ridicule. She did all she could to assure him that she meant him no harm, and was grievously ashamed of the fact that she had been responsible for pulling him unwilling upon the scaffold.
By the time she was done explaining this to him, she stood in the midst of glimmering lights, and a table upon which a thin white cloth obscured what she was sure would be another wonder, as well. Awestruck, she nearly forgot she was not alone.
"Is this where you live?" she asked through her vacant stare.
There was a cot in the shadows, though she could only see the end of it behind a massive sculpted head. The head didn't look like it belonged to anything in particular—but ah! She could not allow herself to get too distracted at a time like this!
He replied that indeed, he did, and there she was, off babbling. She could hardly keep track of her own words, even as she marveled, "You have all this room to yourself?"
Indeed, her tent could fit neatly in a corner of this tower… ah, but who would need a tent when one was enveloped in stone? No rain could penetrate! No wind could knock it down! No drunken relatives could trip over the tent pegs and make it spring apart!
She was losing her proper trial again. Without noticing, Esmeralda had fallen into casual conversation with the Bell Ringer—Quasimodo—as if she had known him for years. It was easy to focus on art: it was a language they both spoke.
It was then she noticed, after playing with the hanging scraps of stained glass which hung above the central table was that she had yet to discover what lay beneath the cloth.
Intent on the wonder she may uncover, she took hold of the cloth upon the table, asking, "What's this?" and revealing a table full of miniature Parisian buildings.
Vaguely she realized after having done so that there had been some momentary resistance from her host. Still, she was much too transfixed to heed that realization much longer than it took to register in her mind. She had found familiar faces and even the distinctive frames of people she frequently encountered on the streets.
"It's the blacksmith…" she mused, picking up said figure, then discarding him in favor of, "the baker!"
Suddenly she was struck with how little attention she had paid to her host, and how she really was not expressly welcome in his home. She turned to Quasimodo with a genuine, almost childish smile. "You're a surprising person," Quasimodo," she told him honestly.
There was a light in his eyes, and she was certain it had not simply been reflected off the stained glass. This was his impetus to swing about the tower introducing her to its every feature. He offered to show her the bells, naturally, there could be no avoiding that, but after he had named them all for her, he paused to explain to her that no, the church did not have one of those magical printing machines.
"Why would you even suggest a thing like that?" he asked her in horror.
"I… thought this was a place where knowledge was kept," she explained sheepishly. "Wouldn't you want to print off the holy word of God for everyone?" Was she guilty of some kind of sin for hoping she may get a cast-off copy? Or perhaps even help to make her own?
She had tiles for teaching Djali how to spell, but she heard tales of the incredible range of the press. Could she learn how to read proper stories?
Just as her thoughts were climbing to new heights of delusion, she saw the snaggle-toothed mouth of her companion hanging open in dismay. "I thought when I saw your ankles it was bad enough…" he whispered.
"And I can see your arms, what's your point?"
Quasimodo shook himself. "I-It's improper… b-but I-I guess if it's n-not to you…" he looked down, a fringe of his hair falling over his bad eye. "Anyway, my Master says that the printing press is going to tear down the Cathedral… you understand, right? It's my home…"
Esmeralda furrowed her brow, trying to make sense of that assertion, before at last she dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Quasi, that's ridiculous. So more people will learn to read, do you know what that means?"
He quite obviously didn't, as he only gave her a questioning look. Still he made an attempt. "I-if… people can just make books… they won't need scriptoriums anymore."
That was a word she didn't know and so she stood just as blankly as he had been. "I… guess?"
Her hesitation emboldened Quasimodo, who said, "And then w-we won't need cathedrals to show us the stories… we'll just have printed books."
"But once we have more books, there'll be more people who can read them," she asserted, now uncertain of her conclusion. What was a scriptorium?
"But then people won't listen to the priest, anymore, and then they won't know what God wants to tell us all!" Quasimodo began to shake with panic, and even his bad eye was widening.
"I think… if more people can read the bible… and other books, they'll start to know more. And then maybe more people will actually understand."
Quasimodo pouted, and she realized that she'd said something that Frollo would disagree with. If that was going to be a problem it was only going to get worse.
"Maybe not everything you've been told is true," she said gently, but she saw Quasimodo shut down further.
He brushed wordlessly past her, but he only got a few steps further before he turned and asked if she wanted to see something beautiful.
The opportunity to move past questioning Frollo was one she took eagerly, especially since he was implying she would see something more stunning than anything else he'd shown her.
As she followed him the short distance, she began to wonder if it wouldn't be so bad to spend more time in the cathedral. Even if she would constantly dodge Frollo, who could be lingering in any shadow, at least she could stay with a friend.
She dared to dream for a moment as the sunset caught her eyes, and the breeze stirred her soul. She was like a queen atop this mountain of stone and glass, but of course that was a lie. Still half in her dream, she told Quasimodo that really, she couldn't stay in the cathedral forever.
"Well… Sanctuary does end after a certain point, but there's a nice cell right off the basilica, you could stay there! I'll even fetch you some fresh straw!"
Cell was not the most appealing word Quasimodo could have used, but even if he'd used a better one, the thought was growing less and less like a dream. It would only end in two ways, she realized. Either she would be hanged, like a proper witch or criminal, or… something worse… whatever the mad judge felt like doing with her.
She'd heard tales of his dungeon, she'd seen men and women who'd been in it as they stood weeping upon the scaffold, bloodied and mired in filth with none to bandage them or care for them or speak their final rites.
That could be her, shivering on the scaffold as everyone stared at her and waited to collect spoils, a lock of hair or a scrap of her shift…
Quasimodo saw her fear, though she was attempting to hide it. "Come away from the edge," he offered as his misdiagnosis.
Esmeralda stared into the gathering shadows as she contemplated what was to become of her. She could hardly dance in a church, they'd cast her out at their earliest opportunity… so how was she to eat? "How often does Frollo visit you?" she asked.
"Oh! Every day!" Quasimodo replied eagerly.
Esmeralda shivered. "Every day… every day he will hunt for me, and every day I will run."
He frowned at her. "My master would respect that you have sanctuary."
"Do you know why I had to claim sanctuary?" she demanded, knowing she had been too coarse in the asking as the hurt welled up in Quasimodo's good eye. "It's because he chased me here… he called this my prison…" she shivered again, and could feel his hand about her throat once more, like a noose that reached for her to choke away her life's breath… "He told me gypsies don't do well inside stone walls…"
"He would know," Quasimodo said, the darkest words she'd ever heard him speak.
She jumped, startled that he would admit a thing like that, but saw that he was instantly attempting to soothe her.
"Well, but y-you're not like other gypsies! You're not like the evil ones!"
She stared at him a moment longer, wondering what tales Frollo had told him. Did he, too, know what happened within the stone walls beneath the Palace of Justice? He would be in the prime place to witness every execution in the square below… did he relish them as the moment evil was snuffed out of the world?
"I still don't understand how such a cruel man could raise someone like you," she said evenly as she forced her fear to curl into a corner of her mind.
As if sensing her fear, Djali nudged her arm with her head, and Esmeralda drew the little goat's warmth close against her.
"Cruel? Oh, not at all! He saved my life! He tells me the story often," Quasimodo nodded his head to the unasked question of, "is that so?" Without prompting, he continued, "It's how I got m-my name! It was Quasimodo Sunday, and orphans were set out in front of the cathedral so that someone could have the pick of us… and I was…" he trailed off before adding in a much quieter voice, "… a monster…" he looked down at his massive, calloused hands, and Esmeralda took one.
"You don't look like a monster to me," she told him, and it was true.
Odd, sure, but there was kindliness in those eyes, a spark of genius to go with it. His hand was warm and powerful, but the full extent of his strength was restrained in favor of gentleness.
"Oh, I know what I look like," he contradicted her. "But, thanks for saying… anyway, Frollo didn't let anyone drown me, they kept saying they would. For the good of all Paris, you know, they thought…"
"I'm looking at your hand right now," Esmeralda said softly, "and I don't see a single monster line. I see a long life line. That means you're going to live a long, healthy life, which is a blessing from God, no? Why would he bless a monster?" She willed meaning into her every syllable, praying to the god downstairs that it would be enough. "If you look at my hand, do you see evil?"
Quasimodo stuttered out a horrified declaration that, far from it, he saw her as kind, to which she responded that if she was those things, and also a gypsy, it proved that Frollo had been wrong.
The revelation hit Quasimodo harder than she'd thought it would, as after silent moments of contemplation, he said, "I can get you out of here." He said it not out of shyness, but out of his instinct which told him this was a dangerous undertaking, one which would force him over a threshold forever.
"There are guards at every door," she reminded him reluctantly. She wanted him to breach that threshold to freedom, and the sooner he did it, the sooner that nightmare of her future would evaporate… for the moment.
"I'm not saying we would use a door," Quasimodo replied in a hushed voice, and glanced at the ramparts.
"You're not suggesting we would climb down, are you?" she asked in dismay.
"Sure, why not? That's how I got to the Festival, today… All you would have to do is hold onto Djali, and I'll carry you."
Instantly the fear of her impending doom hit Esmeralda, and her heart twisted itself into apprehensive knots. Yet, would it be better to fall to her death that night, and find her freedom, or to live a prisoner with the weight of her impending death pressing down on her from all sides?
Her mind was instantly made up. "Let me spare a moment to pray," she said. "If we are to do this thing, I want the best luck possible, first."