Chapter 23:

The pleasant haze of the night before faded quickly. For the first time in days, when Phoebus checked into the Palace of Justice for orders, he found Frollo preparing his carriage for the day.

Phoebus stood at attention in front of the guards who were supposedly under his command.

Frollo stood on the stair up to his carriage as he gazed at his miniature army. His eyes seemed to have sunken deeper into the shadows and his skin looked still more pale and ashen than before.

"Are you… feeling well, sir?" he asked warily, and for his trouble received a ferocious side-eye.

"I had some difficulties last night with the fireplace, it occupied my entire night."

The fireplace must have been belching up an ash storm, to have him this cranky, or else it was a deflection. Probably the latter.

"What are your orders… sir?" Phoebus asked, remembering to tack on the honorific at the last moment.

"It has come to my attention that despite reports to the contrary, the gypsy girl has escaped the Cathedral."

The men behind Phoebus were shifting uneasily, but Phoebus knew that it was he that Frollo had focused that dark-eyed glare upon.

"What re your orders, sir?" Phoebus asked.

"Isn't that obvious, boy?" Frollo snapped, "find the girl!"

With those words, he launched a hunt which eroded any memory Phoebus had of the kind, generous Claude of his childhood. This wild hunt led the soldiers throughout the city, where the poorly disciplined guardsmen were utterly out of Phoebus's hands as they roughly mistreated French citizens and Egyptians alike.

Everything Phoebus had sought to do since arriving in the city was undone before his eyes. Gone was all hope that he could inspire more civility within the ranks and harmony with the people. They would never be trusted again.

All Phoebus could do was stand at attention and watch Frollo threaten and bribe families who were known to harbor gypsies as well as the gypsies, themselves. Each time someone refused or was unable to supply Frollo with the information he sought, he would order them taken away, either to his own personal dungeons at the Palace of Justice or the Bastille.

Either way, all Phoebus could think was that at least for a time, there were fewer soldiers on the streets.

"Sir," he said at last, when he rode alongside Frollo's black charger on his own pale gray. "Is this lawful? All these mass arrests, is there any cause?"

"They are harboring a witch!" Frollo snarled at Phoebus. "Don't you understand the gravity of that?"

"I could understand that if the allegations were proven and there was a due coarse of action which led us through the proper channels," Phoebus said diplomatically, keeping his tone low and even.

"It so happens that I asked permission from the king, himself this morning," Frollo sneered at his inferior.

"The king?" Phoebus asked in utter dismay.

"Indeed! In the future, Captain, leave it to your intellectual superiors to decide who is and is not worthy of arrest. I hope this is the last time you question my authority."

Phoebus stared at the swinging scarlet train of Frollo's hat as he rode ahead of him, and was relieved that at least the judge could not see the incredulity on his face.

What in God's name had induced the King of France to sanction this behavior? Had he even been listening?

Was he listening now to the wails of despair from his people? Or, Phoebus considered grimly, did he think himself so high above his people that he didn't care?

Thunder rumbled in his chest, and then his gut. His humors must be out of balance…

Or he was just aware that they were approaching an isolated mill, and a crowd was forming outside it.

Phoebus gulped.

It looked like nothing so much as a siege.

It had been four… or six weeks… on the front, ordering his archers to fire into the city, hearing the screams of dread and injury alike.

It was no victory. He was called a hero but it was no victory.

Those who had died at his hand were guilty only of defending their own homes, for all he cared. And yet he had been a tool in the hand of the king, to whom none of this was a concern.

Phoebus's mind was still swimming with this whirlpool of nightmare and philosophy when he dismounted automatically to follow Frollo into the mill.

"My lord, what brings you to us?" asked the aging, balding patriarch of the little family, which included his wife and three children, the last of whom was a baby.

Phoebus silently prayed that this would end quickly, before they could trouble these poor peasants any more than they already had.

The respect paid him by the peasant temporarily appeased Frollo, who said, "I have heard whispers which indicate that you and your family are complicit in harboring gypsies who enter the city illegally and who are fleeing the hand of the law," he said in an even drawl.

"Our home is always open to the weary traveler…" the miller said without admitting anything. "It is our Christian duty to offer hospitality to those who are less fortunate than we."

Phoebus detected a slight upturn of Frollo's nose, and intuition told him this was in response to being reminded that indeed, Christians were exhorted to behave in quite a different manner than he was, himself.

"Have you or have you not been harboring gypsies?" Frollo demanded of them.

The miller dropped to his knees. "Anyone who comes to us, we offer them a place to stay," he said, still noncommittally, but it was clear from how he tried to evade the question that it was so.

Phoebus looked from him to his wife and children, who were standing huddled against the far wall. The wife's eyes met his in a panic, and he knew indeed that their lives must depend on him.

He had to stand between Frollo's madness and innocent lives, in spite of the king and whatever he was willing to sanction.

"I am placing you under house arrest, if what you say is true and you are innocent, then you have nothing to fear," Frollo said evenly, without a hint of menace in his words, as cold as they were. He turned his back on the peasants and began to depart, even while the peasant man began to beg him.

"But we are innocent!" he protested. "Please! We know nothing of these gypsies!" It was too late.

Phoebus cast a look over his shoulder which he hoped would reassure them that he was not going to abandon their cause before following Frollo.

Once Phoebus had stepped outside the mill, however, with a defense of the miller's family on his lips, he saw Frollo board up the door with a sickly smile on his thin, pale lips.

House arrest. Right. On these peasants who were only being charitable.

Frollo then whirled on Phoebus, and spat out the words, "Burn it," then turned his back on the captain as if this was all he had to say without further explanation.

"What?" Phoebus demanded, flames exploding in his chest.

"Until it smolders," Frollo elaborated, mounting his horse. "These people are traitors and must be made examples of."

At first, Phoebus was speechless, staring at the torch Frollo handed him before returning his gaze to the judge himself. "With all due respect sir, I was not trained to murder the innocent," he said.

Frollo's eyes widened with fury, and he leaned down at him as if in doing so he could intimidate a soldier who had seen far worse than his rickety old frame. "But you were trained to follow orders!" Frollo shouted, and leaned still closer. "And if you don't, I'll tell everyone that you've been fraternizing with one of them. I saw you last night."

"And how will you prove that?" Phoebus asked in an equally low voice, though his was hot with challenge as he gritted his teeth. He should have chased the bastard down and killed him the night before! Who could blame him for killing a miscreant in a cloak? "Will you admit to everyone that you've gone barking mad and you're stalking the streets at night like some kind of demon?"

Frollo recoiled at that suggestion, but quickly collected himself. He snatched the torch away from Phoebus, and rode past him with intent to burn the house down.

Rather than permit this, Phoebus lurched forward and seized the hem of Frollo's robe, and yanked him down from his horse.

The torch rolled away impotently to find itself extinguished by Phoebus's dunking it in a barrel of water beside the door to the mill.

"How dare you defy me?" Frollo snarled from the floor, on all fours like the snake in Eden before it had been cursed.

All Phoebus would have to do if he wanted to snuff out the imp of a judge would be a boot heel to the face, but Phoebus was not like Frollo.

"Because only one of us is a heartless murderer, Claude!" he shouted down at him.

"Seize the traitor!" Frollo cried, and suddenly soldiers were upon him.

Phoebus expected to take down one or two men before they swarmed him, but the swarm which overtook him first was neither made up of soldiers, nor was it hostile to him.

Instead, peasants roared on all sides of him, rushing past him and hurling themselves at the soldiers. The fight was woefully imbalanced, but Phoebus lent aid wherever he could.

"Arrest them! Arrest them!" Frollo squawked from the center of the crowd, and because Phoebus guessed nobody would see, he took the liberty of punching his superior in the jaw.

Frollo reeled back and Phoebus concerned himself with separating a soldier from a peasant he was overpowering, a reedy man who was making panicked gibbering noises in the midst of the attack.

"Everyone who can, run!" he cried, pushing the reedy fellow so he would get a head start.

A flash of naked steel brought his sword from its sheath, and he bit back at the sword strike of first one soldier, then another, doing his best to deflect without killing any of them.

At the end of it, they were only following orders, and it had been hammered into their skulls for years.

Someone was at his shoulder, and that person bleated at him.

Phoebus stood stalk still, staring into a goat's face, and thus did not see someone stab him in the back. He was on his knees before he saw that below that goat's face was that of Esmeralda.