Chapter 17:
A second day dawned on vast improvements to Pierre's routine. Pierre's show revolved mainly around balancing a chair in his teeth, in spite of all Esmeralda's advice to the contrary, but it was clear that he had finally found his calling.
Esmeralda was even confident enough to leave him to himself so that once again, she could seek Phoebus.
She had basked in the sunlight while the moon rose above, and now she sought a more private venue for their next meeting. It wasn't entirely safe, but that knowledge only made her all the more gleeful in the pursuit of her new hobby.
Alone in the streets, Pierre Gringoire was more exhilarated than he'd been when he finally finished reading the Odyssey. This was an Odyssey of his own, as he found himself much better at making people laugh than he'd ever been at moving their souls toward some idea of grand importance.
I was liberating to finally receive the applause he'd sought for so long, and it seemed that his audience genuinely liked him! What a joy!
A thunderous noise filled the square as he was playing a game of balancing as many children on his shoulders as he could while still balancing the chair on his teeth, but he would have ignored it save for the shout which emanated from nearby.
"Vagabond! Get out of the road!"
Pierre and the children he'd been entertaining scrambled to follow the orders of whoever this refined personage must be, at which point he found a large black stallion staring down at him, with an armored black carriage behind him.
A thin, pale face poked out of the carriage's window, and a set of dark, gleaming eyes stared at him in an unsettlingly reptilian manner. "Is that you, Pierre Gringoire?" The unmistakable voice of Claude Frollo emerged from that pale, wrinkled face, and Pierre mustered a smile in reply.
"I am he, indeed!" he called back. "Good day to you, your honor!"
"What are you doing here? At first I thought you were a common gypsy!"
"Ah! Funny that you would say that! I've only just married one!"
Those words brought a darker sheen to Frollo's eyes. "What would induce you to do a thing like that?"
"Oh! I've been waiting for someone to tell that story to! I had to marry her! She saved my life with that matrimony! Never have I owed more to anyone than I owe to her!"
"Ugh," Frollo scoffed, "get in the carriage, I can't bear to speak of nonsense in the streets! And who dressed you in that motley?"
"My new king!" Pierre announced readily. "They call him a king, you know, but I think it's a joke! Isn't that jolly?"
Frollo looked at him from across the carriage with a sneer that indicated he could smell Pierre and disapproved of the bouquet. "Vile."
"Where are we going?" Pierre asked, excitedly peering out the window.
"We're going to the Palace of Justice. I am a generous man, and I can extend charity on occasion, can I not?"
"Oh, most certainly, sir!" Pierre supplied excitedly, and his stomach gave a growl. "Can we do something about that?"
"Certainly," Frollo said, brushing the velvet of his robes as if to somehow remove the pollution of Gringoire's presence. "You are to take your midday meal with me, and we shall discuss your new life circumstances together."
Pierre grinned, anticipating that the man who had so generously aided him in funding his education would now lift him out of his dead-end circumstances. If only he'd been able to bring his equally poor wife along with him! She deserved a meal just as much as he did!
"Is something troubling you?" Frollo asked evenly as they trundled along the cobblestones.
"Oh, no, I just wish my wife could be here to get food, as well."
"And why are you not with your wife?" Frollo asked, the measured tone of his voice almost completely hiding his irritation.
"She thought we could make more money if we performed in different streets," he explained.
"No doubt she is already out somewhere being unfaithful to you," Frollo drawled.
"Oh, probably," Pierre shrugged.
Frollo nearly flew out of his seat when the carriage hit a particularly tall stone, but Pierre thought it was more an emotional reaction than owing to the movement, since it didn't bother him so much.
"Why are you so careless about your wife committing adultery?" Frollo growled.
"It's not as if either of us are in love with one another, she's free to do as she likes. Furthermore, I think she's quite in love with someone else."
"Then why in God's name did she marry you?"
"Pity, I'm afraid," Pierre sighed. "I'm really dreadfully sorry to have imposed."
Frollo stared at Pierre as a shadow fell over them, and Pierre checked out the window to be sure it was actually the Palace of Justice they were seeing.
Out before the palace, Frollo disembarked from his carriage with his hat's long velvet ribbon of scarlet trailing out behind him.
Pierre hobbled after him, having taken his lessons in clowning a little too seriously. He finally straightened, however, and gazed up at the palace. "I've never seen it this close!" he cried.
"Follow me," Frollo grumbled over his shoulder, adopting a stately walk which put Pierre's to shame until he schooled himself into mimicking Frollo's gait.
They were silent as Frollo led him through darkened halls, guarded by stern guardsmen, but Frollo stopped at a particular door and a sickly smile spread over his thin lips.
Pierre was too afraid to ask what had amused Frollo so greatly, so he peeked through the window in the upper portion of the door instead.
A swarthy-skinned woman was stretched out and shivering on a bed that looked more like a table, and wearing a thin white shift. It was difficult to look at her without envisioning Esmeralda in her place, except that this woman looked a little older.
"What did she do?" Pierre asked in a hushed voice, in the hope that he may find something to explain what he was seeing.
A guard was approaching the woman with a harness for her face, a mask attached to which were manacles.
"She was found soliciting male attention in the alleys near Notre Dame de Paris," Frollo said, arranging his hat so that the points of the triangle were firmly aligned in perfect symmetry, though really they already had been. "She is to be made an example of."
Pierre watched the woman as she was strapped into the mask, and noted the way she flinched and whimpered. "Are you sure she can walk?"
"Well, no matter. If she cannot walk, then she shall be carried in the same wagon we use to transport the condemned."
Pierre knit his brow, and was about to ask another question before he realized the answer was right in front of him.
The woman could not walk because it appeared that the bottom half of her leg had been shattered, the blood was still seeping out from it.
"Wait! She needs a bandage first!" Pierre cried, drawing the eyes of both the torturer and the woman.
Frollo's hand gripped Pierre's elbow and yanked him away from the window. "Stop interfering!" he growled, and dragged the stunned Pierre further down the hall. "You are not a man of justice, you don't understand!"
No, Pierre well and truly did not understand!
His mind was ablaze with questions, mainly revolving around whether or not he was currently endangering Esmeralda. Not that she'd done anything wrong, but if Frollo thought she had… And what about him? Was he to be incriminated by Frollo's version of justice?
Ah, no, that was a ridiculous notion.
He was led to a room where the walls were scrawled over with repeated chalk markings of, "La Esmeralda!"
It was enough to make him hesitate at the door, but Pierre was dragged through nonetheless, and the door was slammed behind him.
"Here," Frollo gestured to the desk he'd covered in small glass bottles which were filled with substances Pierre could not name.
"Is it safe to eat off of this?" he asked.
"I imagine it is more serviceable than what you've had of late," Frollo replied. "Now!" he rang a little hand bell, and a servant rushed in carrying a plate of baguettes, cheese and grapes. "You ought to tell me all about your wife, Gringoire… Where are you staying?"
Combining grapes and cheese in his mouth at once was so sublime, Pierre nearly forgot he was the one being spoken to. "Oh!" he swallowed more quickly than he would have liked. "In a tent!"
This was clearly not what Frollo had expected to hear, as he frowned. "But where do you pitch this tent?" he asked, slicing through his bread to take only a tiny sliver of it, cover it in cheese, then nibble at it.
"Oh, with the others," Pierre grinned as if he could not imagine what Frollo was actually asking.
He was not quite that stupid.
Frollo had been obsessed with the Court of Miracles for years, and Pierre had something of an idea what Frollo would do if he ever managed to find it. Something worse than what he'd done to the poor Egyptian woman they'd passed on the way here, no doubt.
"What others?" Frollo pressed.
Pierre took his time chewing, and hoped that Frollo would not see him casually stowing away bits of food I his sleeves. "Well… there's one that I think has a whole family in it, and that one's green… The yellow and red one is a bit further away but I think those two are really happy together!" he waggled his brows and watched Frollo's lip curl in disgust.
With any luck, that would have ended the questions, but sadly it did not.
"How can you live like that?" Frollo asked.
"Well, it's better than the street."
"So it's not on a street… is it outside the city?"
Pierre blinked. Frollo was probably scouring the city before he came across Pierre, there was little alternative to that conclusion. So he was looking for directions…
"Yes," Pierre said with clear conscience, "we never set up camp within the city itself."
Frollo's eyes were on him, gray brows lowered darkly over shadowed pupils. "Is that so? Never once?"
"Well, maybe they used to before I got married, but I've never camped in the streets."
Frollo was still displeased, but Pierre had gotten a decent meal, so he was ready to go. "What is your wife's name?" Frollo asked.
Pierre was fortunate his mouth was full when he was asked, so he just smiled before replying, "Sapphira."
It was close enough, anyway. Another gemstone name with a vaguely exotic tint, that would suffice, no?
"And have you consummated with this girl?"
"Oh, no, she's one of the most cosmically pure virgins I've ever known, and without any holy vows! Besides, she is enamored of this soldier, who probably doesn't even know she's alive!"
Frollo's brows shot up, but Pierre knew there was no drawing out this mythical Sapphira from such knowledge, so he remained as unaffected as if he were truly ignorant. "Do you know this soldier's name?" Frollo asked.
"I think it was something mythological," Pierre shrugged. "Thank you for the meal, Dom Claude, it's been too long since we've had the chance to speak!"
Frollo may have been about to insist that he answer another question, but instead he straightened. "Yes, go, I'm sure the vagabond life calls to you. I shall say a prayer for your soul at evening mass."
Pierre had never been gladder to depart from a man's presence. He joyfully skipped out of the Palace of Justice, only to be stopped by yet another thunder of hooves.
There was the poor woman, staring at him as she was rolled along with the cart down the road.
She was gone too quickly for Pierre to do any more than recognize her, and he was left only with the impression that he had should have done something.