Gift Five
"The Vow"
(Part VI)

CHRISTINE DAAÉ'S JOURNAL
(entry cont.)

It was with a darkly impassioned intensity that Raoul and I hurled ourselves forthright into that waking nightfall. The afternoon light had gone out completely, now that we were in the middle of the woods, and the air around us had turned to the final shade of black. The rain still slammed hard on the carriage roof, if not harder, playing for us the most dismal of nocturnes, and it came down in such heavy sheets that I feared the safety of all of us upon this road.

I felt Erik's presence nearby. I cannot explain how I knew he was there, and I cannot even begin to describe what I felt, but suffice to say I knew he was out there somewhere. And - I suppose I prayed for his safety, too.

But where was he? I wondered about that to myself, a little naively, as we carried on. Surely not in our carriage, as it was just Raoul, the driver, and I – but perhaps outside? Had he followed us? I turned in my seat slightly to peer out the back window.

Far down the lane behind us, I could just make out a dark spot through the rain. It seemed a horse-drawn carriage, of the same make as ours. The rain blurred my line of sight, so even now I am left to doubt the things I saw… but in the moment I could have sworn both horses were the most luminescent shade of pale green.

"Lord, have mercy…!" I gasped in a quick, panicked breath.

And the bone of an echo whispered back the words: "Christ have mercy…!"

Raoul, seeing me turned around and growing frightfully pale, looked back as well. An astute and observant boy, sharp with the eye, he fixed his sight on the dark speck of a carriage behind us. Then, growing nearly as pale as myself, he sharply asked, "Is that him?!"

"It must be," I breathed. Then I straightened myself up. It would not do for us both to panic. "All is… all is well, dear Raoul. We knew he would follow us, did we not? For we knew he was on that train, and we knew his goal was to seek us out, and we knew he had the means and the mind to do so. He will pursue us, and perhaps – perhaps we should let him. Yes, that ought to be the wisest thing for us to do…"

"Christine, are you mad?" The poor dear boy beside me floundered. "He will catch up to us in no time!"

"If his aim was simply to catch, I would have been in his clutches long ago. He does not possess me yet; and that fact alone gives me much hope for the future."

"Are we not speaking of the present…?" Raoul murmured, and shook his head. He affirmed, more assertively, "Christine, don't you see? Even if he does not have you now, he will catch you eventually regardless! It is just his way! We must maneuver away from him! Shake his pursuit!"

"Raoul, I pray of you, do not ask this poor driver to change his course. We are heading exactly the way we should."

"It's as if you want him to catch you," Raoul huffed.

And then, his eyes widened, and he stared at me with a ghastly sort of shock as he repeated:

"It's as if you want him to catch you!"

I turned away, looking back towards that carriage behind us. "Please do not assume to know my desires."

"I will assume them as long as you hide them from me!" Raoul said. "Please, tell me the truth, my dear, even if it be a horrible and calamitous thing for me to hear."

Was I to be untrue? It would have been so simple to be! Unburn the passion, throw out the key to my heart, forget all that I had come to love in the past year of my life. If I lied to Raoul now it would uncomplicate a great deal of things that would otherwise senselessly murky our daylit romance. But could I dare?

His little eyes requested me to impart my secret truth, which I had never dared to admit above the earth's surface ever before, and I decided I would just have to trust Raoul to understand… though he never has before…

"It is with the most ardent of passions that I love you," I began. "But it would be rude of me, at this point, to deny the thing you have always suspected of me. So let me at last confide this in you, my oldest and most cherished friend: I do love Erik. I love him just the same as you; not quite the same way, but the same amount, and you both hold in your clenched fists an equal portion of my heart. I fear you will think I am an indecent woman for that – that I cannot give my entire heart to you, or to him – but I do not think that is a particularly vile sin. Rather, I think it best not to devote my entire heart to just one man, so that I may always have a spare piece to break off and give to another in need."

I lifted his hands in mine, and pressed them to my bosom.

"And now, poor Raoul, though I may have one ever-expanding heart that I wish to give to the world, I am now remembering that I have as well just two earthly hands… one for you, and one for Erik. If only I could use them both equally! But it is the great tragedy of our little ménage à trois that I have but one left hand, on which to put only a single golden ring. I cannot marry you both, even if I love you both."

"But you would really marry him still…? Even after – everything?"

"He has not been as terrible to me as you might think," I said.

Raoul raised his eyebrows noncommittedly, and I felt his hands tense in mine. "Enlighten me?"

"Well…" I stumbled. "Raoul, you are dear to me because of your pure and chaste love."

"Pure and chaste! Is that what you think?" he scoffed. "Christine, we are not children -"

"My intention was not to offend you," I apologized. "I meant it only as a merit to your good soul. You have never done a thing with the intention of hurting me."

"I would sooner die than hurt you."

"Oh!" I said. "Oh, Raoul, please do not say such things! Especially when you do not know…"

"I do not know what?"

"That you have actually hurt me many times, Raoul de Chagny," I said solemnly. I clenched his hands closer, so that he could not pull away. "You have called me many vicious, vile, and obscene things in moments of anger. You have betrayed my wishes. You have followed me, several times, when I expressly asked you not to – and you have inserted yourself in my life when I strictly forbid it. You did not trust me to handle things on my own -"

"I couldn't very well leave you to that miserable fate! Christine, the man kidnapped you, for Christ's sake!"

"I did not need to be saved. Not until you interloped. And you -"

Raoul's jaw dropped. "What, so do you wish I hadn't, then? This 'interloping' I did is why we reunited in the first place! If I hadn't deigned to see you in your dressing room – if I hadn't chased after you – Christine, we would not have found each other again!"

"Perhaps that would not have been the most horrible thing in the world…" I let his hands fall away. "Then we all could have been so much happier…"

"I don't see how either of us would've been happier!" he snapped.

"Don't you?" I looked back to the window, to see the carriage behind us was still the same distance away as before. "I told you once before that this is a great tragedy that we have found ourselves as players in. And it is, truly. As I told you – I love Erik, and he loves me. He loves me in a different way than I love him, and than I love you, and even than you love me. His love is not pure like yours, but it is innocent and naïve. He does not know what he expects, and so he reaches for it all. And, again, as I told you – I do not have it all to give to him."

"I still don't see your point!" Raoul griped.

"Of course you do not; I should not expect you to." I shook my head. "I lived with Erik for the past year -"

"Unwed," he added, quite unnecessarily.

"Yes," I said through clenched teeth. "Unwed. And, for your information, we acted as a proper unwed couple." I closed my eyes, let out a strained breath, and continued on. "In the beginning, after he sent you and the Persian away, I was very afraid. I did not know what Erik expected of me. I had agreed to be his wife, and to marry him at the Madeleine – and yet I did neither of those things. He did not let me fulfill that part of the arrangement. And so we cohabitated with each other, as companions but not spouses, and for the most part he seemed to be content with just that. And in my own way – I was, too."

I traced a hem in my dress as I spoke. Erik had sewed this dress for me, sitting at his sewing machine as he commanded me to sing my scales for hours on end. It was the most atrocious shade, like a bloody currant; it had little frills and scratchy works of lace about the neck that made me itch terribly; and it accentuated features I would have much rather prefered to leave unnoticed. It was my least favorite dress of all, and yet I had picked it to wear for my wedding despite that. Erik had labored over it for so long; how could I not love it just for that?

"As time went by, I learned a little more about him. I knew a fair share from our previous meetings, of course, but in a year I learned so much more. He is a very interesting, learned man; he speaks every language on this continent, and others. That's why I thought he was the Angel of Music in the beginning; nobody else in Paris but him could speak my native Swedish with such ease. And he possesses a unique charisma about him – a very, well, not attractive, but alluring air that is very sensual -"

"Christine!" Raoul ejaculated, scandalized.

But I went on: "So you see, Raoul, that I have come to know Erik, and as such have grown to love him more and more each day. He told me once, in anger, that I could learn to love him… and now, I suppose, I have. That's just the consequence of getting to know someone so intimately: we learn to love even those we think are the most unlovable. Not without effort, and not without pain, certainly… and perhaps it is not the most ideal scenario. But you asked if I would have been happy without you…"

I trailed off and gave him a helpless shrug.

Raoul, of course, looked indignant – rightfully so, I concede, as it must have hurt a great deal to hear such a thing from the woman he loved. But he was the one who asked for honesty! I could not have given him a different response and still called it the truth. And so I let him be angry, and in silence we rode further still. I grew weary of looking at him, so I looked forward in the road, over the driver's cloaked shoulder, and found we seemed to be trapped in a never-ending tunnel of dark foliage.

"Well, what about me?"

His question drifted over to me, so soft I scarce was sure I heard it right. I turned back to him, and saw the questioning gaze on his face and then was certain I had not misheard. But how to respond?

He must have sensed my incertitude, for he elaborated:

"I, who love you, and am so much the happier for it. How could you say I would have been happier without you?"

Oh, Raoul – even I was not so cruel as to remind you of your brother Philippe in this moment. So I quietly replied, "There are many women in this world."

"But none like you."

Now I took his hand again. "You must open your heart a little more, friend Raoul. I am not the only woman in this world who can make you happy. There are little things to love in every person."

"There are many little things to love in you."

"As in you," I agreed. "And in Erik."

Raoul frowned at that. "You speak of loving him so much, Christine, it makes me wonder if you have forgotten that we are the ones to be married at the end of all of this – not you and him. You agreed, didn't you?"

"Yes," I murmured. "Of course…"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Unless… you wish otherwise?"

"I am here with you," I said in lieu of an answer. "Clearly I have made my choice."

"But if I were to ask you again?" Raoul insisted. "If you were not under duress, as you were before? Or still spinning from fear as you were in the train? If I asked who you would rather be with – him or me – who would you choose this time around?"

How could he ask me that again?

How could –

How could he know?

"Raoul," I gave him a tragic smile, and my eyes filled with tears. "You are the obvious choice."

"That's not what I asked, Christine."

There were tears in his eyes, too.

I hung my head and rested it between my hands. "Oh, Raoul – Raoul! My good friend Raoul! You ask things you know you shouldn't! But you ask – and now you must know…" Now I was crying freely. "How could I have left him? How could I even think to leave you? Why are these thoughts in my head? Raoul, I wish for someone to intercede on my behalf… to whisk me to a chapel and to marry me, without making me choose!"

"But you must," he said sadly.

"Then I must!" I echoed in a cry. "Then I must! I must choose one of you two. Is it a choice if I don't have the option not to make on at all? I have said I could be happy with you both. And that is true! But one of you I know better than the other, and so that happiness comes more easily to my heart – and yet how things might have been reversed if this year never occurred!"

"Christine…?"

I closed my eyes and whispered, "If you must make me choose… in this life… if everything were equal… if everything were just, and fair, and true… if I must choose…"

If I really had to…

"I would choose Erik."

There was no sound as his heart broke in two.

Perhaps it's because it had already been broken, long before this carriage ride. He always knew the answer, even if it took me until now to truly admit it to myself.

So he did not sob, or sulk, or cry; the tears in his eyes glistened but did not fall. His face did not crumple, but hardened into a sort of resigned resolve.

"Be it that way, then," Raoul sighed, and took a breath to maintain his composure. "Once we arrive at the manor, I will arrange for you to venture wheresoever you wish to go." Another sad little sigh came from his lips. "Know that I do love you most ardently."

"As I do you."

"And I will never stop loving you."

Even now I can't stop the tears that flow from my eyes at those words. So full of innocence. I had told him that he and Erik loved me in different ways – but they loved me in a very much similar way, too, sometimes. "Thank you for all you have done for me. You will make another woman very happy one day."

"I only wish it were you."

"But you have. You have filled my life with the stars of heaven for all of the days we have known each other." Then I remembered Erik's words from the night before. "I only hope I have done the same for you."

"You have, Christine," Raoul promised.

And then we embraced, softly and carefully, as two friends might do. He held me close to his chest, arms securely wrapped around my back. As the embrace persisted his hands moved slightly, to touch upon my arms, and then my shoulders, and then accidentally upon my sides just below my bosom. For a moment they lingered there, the contact nearly more intimate than I'm sure he intended. And then he let his hands slide to my back and touch my spine, and there his fingers ran up and down a short length of my back in a way that – that friends certainly do. Finally, his hands fell away.

When we came apart, I immediately noticed an expression on his face that was not there before. He turned back around to look out the back window, and furrowed his brow deeply at the carriage still leisurely pursuing us.

"Do you think he intends to overtake us once we reach the estate?" Raoul asked, trying in vain to see through the rain. "Or maybe he wishes to run us off the road?"

Anything and everything sounded equally likely to me, and I told Raoul as such. I couldn't deny that Erik had a dangerous inclination towards the extreme, especially when I was involved.

"It will not do for him to steal you away again and lock you back up in that cellar underground," Raoul said, face still pitched with worried concern – and that other unfathomable expression. "I will not let him."

Then -

"Driver!" Raoul called, straining to be heard over the pouring rain. "We are being followed! Take us to the Chagny estate another way. Take care for safety, but do all that you can to lose this wretched carriage behind us!"

The driver nodded, and whipped the reigns to speed the horses, but did not veer from the course. There was no other way to go; we were in the middle of the tunnel-esque forest and there were no clear off-shooting roads to traverse. All we could do was hope to pass through before Erik caught up with us.

But why run from him now? With all said and done? Unless…!

I shot a frightened gaze at Raoul. Certainly, he had asked to know my opinion on the matter, and who I chose… but did it honestly matter? Would he really respect that?

"He's gaining on us!" Raoul cried. Then, with his face set in a grim expression, he called to the driver, "Pull over! And let me, in this fateful forest, finally fell this fabulous fiend in a fair fight face to fearsome face!"

The carriage swerved terribly as the driver attempted to command the horses to the side; they did not seem to like to listen to their master. But at last we managed to lodge ourselves in the muddied bank of the road, and held our breaths as we waited for the unstoppable hand of fate to direct its next terrible play.

The carriage behind us came closer, and closer, and closer…

And then it passed.

We watched it in breathless silence as it trotted further and further away. The luminescent horses reared their heads back as they stormed past our stopped carriage, letting out two nightmarish whinnies, but otherwise kept their steady pace and bounded away from us.

"Does he mean to wait for us up ahead?" Raoul mused as we watched the carriage disappear into a pale green speck at the end of the lane.

"Perhaps it was not him," I said in disbelief. "We must have been mistaken."

For Erik, once in my proximity, would never freely leave my orbit.

"Driver," Raoul called. "Carry on."

But the hunched driver held the reigns loosely, giving no intention to drive.

"Driver! I said carry on!"

Still we did not move.

The driver, instead, stood from his perch and eased himself to the ground out of our line of sight. The rain was coming down so thickly that we could barely hear his squelching footsteps coming around the carriage, and then the side door opened and -

"My God!" Raoul stammered, face whitening. "It's you!"

"Of course it is, you blithering idiot!" Erik sneered, baring his naked face to us both from beneath his black hood. "Did you think I would lie down and take this insult so easily? Let you walk all over me and take what's rightfully mine? Suffer this injury like a dimwitted cuckold? I'll say, Monsieur le Comte – you really should know me better than that!"

With that he grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward, so that I came stumbling forward into his iron grasp.

"And you, Christine!" he snarled in my ear. "Did you think you could run from your Erik? Did you think he would ever let you leave him? He warned you! He told you before that any woman who has seen Erik's face can never be allowed to go! Oh, damn you, woman, why are you crying?"

He shook me, which only made me cry harder, and then in his irritation he grabbed ahold of my shoulders and tossed me out of the carriage.

I fell upon the sodden mud on my hands and knees, and the tumultuous downfall showered my hair and dress so I became drenched to the core immediately. I quickly rose, to regain my footing, fearful that Erik would be right behind me –

But he was still standing at the entrance to the carriage, arms braced against the sides of the door and standing as a blockade before it. Beneath his arm, I saw Raoul's whitened face, cowering as far back from him as he could go in the small carriage. Erik was leaning his weight upon his arms, no doubt leering at Raoul with his most menacing of faces.

"Did you enjoy my gift, the Palomino Fino?" Erik asked. "An unremarkable vintage of amontillado, I must apologize. I had only such short notice with which to prepare it!"

"If it was poisoned…" Raoul gasped.

"Poisoned? Bah!" Erik taunted. "I am no poisoner! It'd be a waste of a perfectly good murder, not to feel your blood rushing over my hands as I throttled your swollen neck! Come here, boy, and let me feel those pulsing veins!"

"Erik!" I cried, and grabbed at anything on him – his pantlegs, the tails of his coat, his shoes – just to try to pull him down from the carriage steps. "Please do not hurt him!"

"Hurt him?" He whirled his terrible face around to me. "And why should I not? You have broken your vow to me, Christine! You turned the scorpion, and yet act as though you turned the grasshopper all along! I say, if that's your choice, let me give you those consequences instead! I'll kill your boy first, and then we can return to the Opera house just in time to give the audience an entirely new explosive ending to Inês de Castro! The critics will be on fire!"

"No!" I pulled on his coat-tails again to no avail. "Erik, if you kill him I will not -"

"Love me?" He barked a crazed laugh. "We're well past that, my dear!"

Then he suddenly dipped forward and lunged at Raoul. I shrieked, and nearly fainted as I thought my worst fear realized – but then Erik drew back, swung the carriage door closed, and locked it with a skeleton key. Then he leapt down from the carriage stairs with an eerie calmness.

"Erik?" I cautioned, eyes wide in fear, and then – "Raoul? Raoul!"

"Christine!" Raoul called back, voice muffled through the door.

So he was not dead! I ran to the stairs in an attempt to see him better, but Erik caught my by the collar of my dress and held me back.

"Tut, tut," he said, as if I were a child. "It's not safe up there!"

"Christine!" Raoul called again. "I can't – get – free -"

"What did you do to him?" I demanded of Erik.

"What did Montresor do to Fortunato?" Erik laughed. "I warned you both. And now it is time to see him off."

He released me, flinging me to the side once more. As I regained my footing in the muddy ground, he walked to the front of the carriage to address the horses – and all at once his plan became terrifyingly clear.

"Erik," I begged, running to him and gripping the fabric of his sopping wet arm. "Please, let him go. Do not do this, oh God, please do not -"

He shook my hands off him, though, and then flung off his hood completely. He bared his entire wretched death's head to the mares, which only whinnied stupidly in reply.

"The horses," he muttered, hardly paying any attention to me, "do not frighten easily, it seems."

"Please, Erik," I begged. "I'll marry you. I'll be your wife. I'll do whatever you want. Just don't do this -"

"Quiet!" he roared back at me, baring his teeth and his revolting, ruined lips as he did so. "You frumpy little tease! This was all your idea, Christine, don't you see? We could have left things as they were – but it was your idea to go to the chapel this morning! And – and again, now, as I hold in my hand the fate of your lover, you beg me to take you to the chapel still! It's always a ploy, with you, isn't it? You temptress! Scheming seducer! You know what Erik dreams of – you know, and so you dangle it before him as a way to get what you really want! That's all you've ever done!"

He whipped back to the horses and started yanking at their reigns without abandon, doing all that he could to rile them up. But despite all his efforts, they stood just as still and unmoving in the rain as before.

With an enraged shriek, he brought a fist up – and I feared he would use it to strike the one mare, but instead he pounded it against his own skull, several times in repetition. His screams turned to wails of agony, as the horses still refused to move, and at last he pulled his fists from his head and, eyes blazing, snarled at me:

"No more choices for you, Christine. You have lost that privilege. I rather think it best if I make the choices now. Who else better to keep my own interests at heart?" He lunged forward and grabbed me close to him, wrapping me in his black shroud. His breath was ragged and foul upon my neck as he spoke. "I will kill every dream you've ever had. I will draw the shade upon your mind and make your future as bleak as mine. There is no life left for you in this world – not anymore!"

I struggled against him, but he held my wrists fast in his iron grip.

"And we'll start with getting married," he spat, "just like you wanted!"

"I'll go!" I pleaded. "You do not need to drag me to the church – I'll go, willingly, I promise – just let Raoul go -"

"No negotiations!" Erik wrenched my wrists, shifting them so he held them both in one hand as the other reached blindly for the horses' reigns again. "I can't trust a word out of you right now, you lying wench! The Comte must die!"

And then – as if he had conjured it himself – a bolt of lightning struck the sky and the entire world was illuminated for a brief, split second.

It is that one quick instant that is etched into my mind still. For right then everything lit up, like the clouds had suddenly parted and sunlight was shining through, and the darkness was vanquished at last. There were no shadows for that brief moment in time, and even the most sunken hollows of Erik's deformed, ruined face did not seem that grotesque in that moment. And his face – that suddenly so normal face - was as still as a photograph, caught in a moment of intense shock and fear... and regret for what was to inevitably come next…

Because then the world plunged back to darkness, and a loud clap of thunder shook us both to our very cores. He pulled me back close to him, with less abuse than before – and it was good that he did, because the two horses reared their legs up in a frightful manner before they shot off into the woods, yanking the carriage behind them in their unbridled flight. The carriage flung itself from side to side on its wheels, violently crashing sideways upon the trees in its way, and I heard Raoul shouting from the inside for an intercession that would never come – but misfortune would have it that the ropes of the reigns never broke, and the carriage continued to be pulled along in its reckless path without stopping. It careened through the forest, plunging whatever way the horses wished, until finally it disappeared into the great black beyond.

The sound, though… Raoul's voice carried long after the carriage had dropped out of sight. His panicked calls for help, which gave way to screams of pain, as the carriage threw him around its jostled chamber… which gave way to prayers for salvation and mercy…

And then at last, when the carriage was long gone, his voice gave way only to the moaning echo of "Christine…" from right beside me.