Chapter 24 - Somewhere Hidden
Eponine and Grace watched the Opera house burn on top of the Elephant of the Bastille that night.
Out of her purple dress and huddled beside her friend underneath a measly blanket, her mood was as bitter as the cold night air.
She never wanted to see that dress again.
Never wanted to be a lady again.
And when she had torn it off her body, and flung it into the corner of her shared room, she hoped the gunpowder and sage smell that lingered on its fabric would be gone by tomorrow…
The sky was stained Amber. The sounds of the city's firefighters, rushing to and from the river to fetch more water, filled the air. And all night, Grace sat by Eponine's side, watching Paris burn.
Eponine, thankfully, had asked her very little when they'd all returned to the ABC café, smelling of smoke and scowling at each other like a pack of fighting dogs. The air between her and Enjolras had been black and rotten. And mercifully, her friend had sensed that Grace wanted out of there as soon as possible.
Everyone in Paris was awake that night. From their spot atop the Elephant, Grace could see others watching the fire on their own rooftops. They were monitoring the blaze, keeping one eye on the fire, just in case it couldn't be controlled, and it started to spread their way.
Eponine had told her that fires spread easily through this city. So much of Paris's poor districts were built with half-decayed and wormwood-infested timber that the touch of a flame was like throwing a match into a pile of hay. Nobody was sleeping. Not when there was fire in their midst.
And Grace was partly to blame for this sleepless night.
"Did you know that they were planning this?" Eponine asked softly, still sat beside her.
"No." Grace replied, her teeth clenched. "If I did, I would never have led them into that place."
"Marius knew nothing too. He would have told me otherwise. They must've kept it strictly between the three of them."
"Hmm…" Grace grumbled. Eponine's words were doing little to quell the queasy sense of shame inside her. "I told Enjolras that I wanted out." She said flatly.
"Out of what?"
"The whole operation."
"Oh, you mean… Out out?"
Grace nodded. "Especially after this. I don't know how he can go to sleep peacefully tonight. Any night, really. All I've seen Enjolras do is destroy. He thinks he's creating, but he's not. He's just destroying…"
"Grace…" Eponine sighed.
"The riots, the deaths… Even his own family. It's all destruction." Grace added, a darkness clouding her face.
"This is a black night." Eponine said sagely. "But can good things not come from bad places?"
"Not like this." Grace replied, shaking her head. "Enjolras doesn't realise that you can't fix the world if all you have is a hammer."
Eponine watched Grace carefully. Her dark brown eyes narrowed at her.
"What else happened at the Opera tonight?" She asked. "And don't lie to me. I can always tell when you lie to me."
Grace's eyes travelled to Eponine's. She felt a tightness in her chest. All of the emotion and pain and exhilaration of her time with Javert came rushing back to her. She tried to fight back tears as she felt the wind of the Opera rooftop again, as she tasted his lips in her memories again, as she felt the sting of her palm after she slapped him round the face again.
It hit her all like the slam of a wave against her body. The warmth of his breath on her face tingled across her cheek. She shivered as she thought she felt the whisperer of leather against her arm, her skin erupting into goosebumps instantly. She even took a few furtive glances around her, searching for his looming black silhouette in the shadows. His presence was like the wind; she couldn't see it, but she could feel it.
The weighty mix of exhilaration and shame filled her up to her brim. Like she was drowning in this feeling. His kiss had her in a freefall, but his anger made her feel like she wanted to hit the ground. The way Javert had looked at her, after the chandelier had fallen, made her feel a humiliation that made her bones ache. Even now, in memory, it ignited such a feeling of embarrassment within her that she cringed to recall it.
But she had done nothing wrong. She had kissed him back, wanted to kiss him back, and not because of the reason he had suspected. Yes, Enjolras had asked her to use herself to distract The Inspector that night, but that hadn't been her motive when she'd returned his display of longing. What hurt, though, was that Javert had instantly thought that of her. He'd accused her of trying to seduce him almost immediately after he'd heard the smash of glass in the auditorium. And all of those awful things that she'd told-off Enjolras for suggesting, Javert had seen in her.
She hated him for that. But she hated herself more; The taste of his mouth, moreso than the fire of his anger, is what lingered in her mind.
She could live with the possibility of him thinking she was a whore forever. She couldn't live with the possibility of never kissing him again…
"What… " She began shakily, looking at her friend with misty vision. "… What good is emotion to me in this place? How can it possibly help me?"
"Emotion?" Eponine prompted her.
"All I've tried to do here is survive. Survive first, and then maybe I can eventually find a way home." Her voice was shaky, thick. "And then my stupid little wasted heart starts kicking again… Now?! Here?! That's ridiculous! It shouldn't even be alive! It should've shut down and gone into hibernation until I was in a safe place again…"
"I know. I know… " Eponine said, throwing a comforting arm around Grace's shoulders. "Believe me, I know more than most that it's dangerous to be weak in this place. And when it strikes you, love makes you feeble with weakness."
"I can't do this now. Not here… " Grace said, her voice trembling with tears. "How do I get rid of it?"
"You can't." Eponine replied firmly but also calmly. "Trust me, you can't."
"Did you try?" Grace asked.
"I've been told that if you say a word again and again and again, it will lose all meaning to you after a while. But… I've walked this city countless nights, saying his name, and hoping that he will mean less to me with each breath. And it never does."
Grace sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. "So what do I do?"
"You take it deep inside you, lock it down deep. Let it fill you in the moments when you first wake and the last seconds before you sleep, but then you put it away somewhere hidden."
"Is that what you do?" She asked sceptically, raising her eyebrow at Eponine. "Because I see it ripping out of you whenever Marius so much as calls your name."
Eponine sighed in defeat, nodding her head solemnly. "I never said I follow my own advice." She said, smiling sadly at Grace. "And I know one day, my weakness is going to do me some real harm… But it's the only thing I've got. It breaks me over and over again, each and every day, to bury it down deep. But even if it turns my sky black above me, I still hope the night sky is pretty where he is."
Grace looked at her friend's achingly sad face, her eyes spilling with tears. She threw her arms around Eponine and hugged her tight. She could feel the like calling to like. The pain inside Grace, and the pain inside her. But there was something in the closeness that eased it a little. As if to share it out between the two of them was better than carrying it alone.
When she relinquished her from her arms, Eponine put on a brave face and wiped Grace's cheeks free of tears. "So, do as I say, not as I do." She added jovially.
Grace let out a sad laugh. Shaking her head, she went quiet, staring off into the distance, at the ominous glow of the fire staining the skyline.
"Who?" Eponine asked succinctly.
Grace paused for a moment before answering. She wondered how Eponine would react if she told her that the man who had shaken her up so violently was the Chief of Police. That grim and harsh Valkyrie that battled and beat the poor and lawless of Paris. The bogeyman of Montmartre, who had made her run for cover when he'd caught them outside Notre Dame…
"Does it matter?" She replied with an exhausted sigh.
"No, I suppose not." Eponine said with a shrug.
Grace wondered who Eponine thought it might be. Enjolras? Feuilly? Combeferre? Grantaire? She got the feeling that Eponine would be carefully watching all of her interactions with the boys in the café now, despite the rather nonplussed answer she had given Grace. Still, she was thankful that Eponine hadn't pressed it out of her.
Perhaps one day, Grace would tell her the truth… But not tonight. Not tonight.
"Oi! Brat!" A coarse voice shouted up to them
Eponine and Grace both craned their heads over the side of the Elephant, looking for the source of the voice, although Grace could guess from the coarse cadence of it who it was…
She grimaced as Thénardier stared up at them.
"Oh God, not you…" Grace grumbled.
"You shut your mouth, prickless!" Thénardier growled back, pointing up at her.
Grace frowned and took a moment to understand his meaning. But eventually she realised that she was back in her men's clothes, with her flat cap firmly back on her head. She certainly wasn't a Lady anymore. She was back to being good old 'prickless' Degas.
"What d'you want?" Eponine asked her father.
"Is it just you 'ere? Or is that thievin' little mudlark 'ere too?"
"Gavroche is asleep inside." Grace replied pointedly, nodding her head towards the belly of the Elephant. "So keep your voice down."
More faces approached the Elephant's feet. A bald-headed Goliath of a man, a short and petite cherry-lipped youth, a bean-pole thin man dressed as a juggler, and a woman…
"This one of your broods, Thénardier?" The bean-pole said, pointing up at Eponine.
"That's 'er." The woman said glumly.
Grace squinted through the darkness and saw that the woman had a baby strapped to her chest. She rocked the child on her two stout feet, her face set into a permanent, sour scowl. She was a barrel of a woman, with a red, ruddy face and a nest of blonde hair piled high on top of her head. Her eyes were dim with lassitude, and her mouth rested in an almost constant curl of the lip. Grace could have counted the amount of teeth she had left inside that gormless mouth on one hand…
"Your Mother..?" Grace said to Eponine, more an accusation than a question.
Eponine merely nodded.
Grace raised an eyebrow at the woman. It was useful to finally put a name to the face, after all this time, but perhaps she'd hoped the face might have been friendlier-looking. She might have wished Madame Thenardier congratulations on the new baby had she not born an expression of such intense repugnance and ire every time the child on her chest so much as wriggled.
"C'mon, it's all hands on deck tonight!" Madame Thénardier impatiently called up to her daughter. "Azelma's already gone ahead to see where the fire's at."
"What?" Grace asked, looking to Eponine for answers.
"We're goin' pilfering!" The Goliath shouted, his voice rumbling and deep.
"So move your arse, girl. Or I'll beat it with me belt!" Thénardier added, just for a measure of cruelty.
"Wait, wait… am I missing something here?" Grace asked. "You're all voluntarily going into the fire? Why?!"
"When people know the fire's close, they grab a few necessities and get the hell out." Eponine said quietly, her face colouring red. "And that means…that means they…"
"They leave a whole load of easy pickings for us. And they're normally in such a hurry to leave, they don't even lock the door on their way out!" Thénardier added, eliciting a cruel laugh from the other members of his gang around him.
There was a pause for a moment as the words sank in. Grace blinked a few times as their nasty laughter drifted up to her from the feet of the Elephant.
"Hang on. No, I'm still missing something here…" Grace said incredulously. "Isn't the building on-fucking-fire by then?!"
"Not if you're quick enough. In and out, like a shadow." Thénardier added swiftly. "Which is why we need to get going! Now! And get that little toe rag out here too! It's not every day that a fire comes along."
Grace was silent with shock. She looked down at Thénardier and the other members of his gang, a bitter feeling of sickness pooling in her stomach.
Eponine sighed and moved to stand.
"Jesus Christ, no!" Grace exclaimed, grabbing Eponine's arm. "Are you all mental?! You're literally walking into an inferno! 'Dangerous' doesn't even begin to describe it. And you two…" Grace said, pointing at Madame and Monsieur Thénardier. "…Putting yourselves at risk is bad enough, but to want to drag your children into it too?"
"Grace, don't…" Eponine pleaded.
"Now who the fuck do you think you are to tell me what I should do with my own children?!" Thénardier snarled up at her, his teeth bared and yellow.
"Well I might not be a parent myself, but I do know that 'don't intentionally put them into situations that involve fire and theft' is one of the cardinal rules!"
"You got a big fuckin' mouth for a man with nothin' in his trousers!" Madame Thénardier spat. The baby on her chest mewled and wriggled in its wrappings and she shushed it impatiently. "Thénardier, I think this one needs another thimble of brandy."
"A baby?! A baby!" Grace cried exasperatedly, gripping on tighter to Eponine's arm. "They're bringing a baby into this hellfire!"
"This one's our little alarm." Madame Thénardier said. "Give it enough booze to keep it quiet, and if the Police turn up, I can give it a pinch to make it cry."
Grace felt sick to her stomach. Eponine managed to wriggle out of her grip and stand to her feet.
"Leave Gavroche and the boys here. They're sleeping, Papa." Eponine said weakly to her father.
"I don't care! I need-"
"They'll be able to hide whatever you find in the Elephant, Papa. Keep it safe for you. You might even be able to go back for more if you can stash some stuff here with him."
Thénardier ground his jaw together as he thought through Eponine's suggestion.
"Ehh, that ain't a bad idea, Thénardier." The cherry-lipped youth said.
Thénardier cast a sidelong glance up at Grace. She could almost hear him grinding his teeth in the silence that sat between them. He spat on the floor and walked away from the Elephant's feet.
"Come on, let's get goin'. Otherwise the whole city will be in ash by the time we get there…"
Thénardier and his gang slid off into the dark streets and Eponine sighed deeply and began climbing down the Elephant.
"Eponine, you're not seriously-"
"Go home, Grace." She interrupted her miserably. "Go to bed. Tomorrow won't be as black as tonight. I promise."
"Eponine…" Grace said, calling out emphatically to her friend. "Eponine!"
But she could do nothing as she watched her walk off into the dark streets. The outline of her thin frame seemed illuminated in the amber glow of the fire and it felt like Grace was helpless to stop her as she walked into the mouth of Hell.
Go home.
Grace's throat bobbed as Eponine's parting words still echoed in her head.
She didn't have a home to go back to. Not here. She might have thought for the briefest of moments that perhaps she'd carved out a safe place for herself here with Enjolras and the boys in the ABC cafe. But it had come as a hard truth for her to realise that nowhere was safe in this world for her.
It was a nest of vipers and darkness wherever she went. And sometimes the vipers had the decency to look just as bit as awful as they were, like Thénardier.
But sometimes the vipers dressed in top hats and leather coats and kissed her with their poisonous mouths…
The night they had left Egypt had been so dark that the captain of Napoleon's ship had been groping blindly in the utter blackness. Navigating without the stars.
They hadn't even been allowed to light a cigarette on the deck, afraid that a sharp-eyed English sailor might see the tiny spark and raise the alarm.. But somehow, they'd managed to sneak their way past the British blockade, and Napoleon lived to fight another day. They all had lived to fight another day. Javert had only permitted himself to let out a breath of relief when they passed the island of Sardinia. Napoleon had celebrated with a bottle of Madeira wine. For a man who'd fled Egypt with failure haunting his footsteps, Javert would never have guessed that the diminutive little General would one day be his Emperor.
He could have wept for joy when his feet finally touched French soil again. The Great General was swiftly ushered away back to Paris, and Laplace too parted ways with him.
"If you are ever in need of employment, write to me." he had said to Javert, standing on the dockyards.
"I already have employment." Javert replied coldly.
"Well… if you ever tire of the army, perhaps."
"I could never be an astronomer, like yourself, Sir." Javert stated. "You said so yourself. I do not have the proper breeding for it."
He knew that if he accepted Laplace's offer, he'd end his days as a mere research assistant, forever chasing after the astronomer, never the astronomer himself. Penniless Gypsy waifs like him didn't become men of science, and he didn't want to settle for anything less. To do so would be to diminish himself.
"That's not necessarily what I-"
"So, thank you, Sir, for getting me out of Egypt. But my place is in the army."
And with that, he walked away.
Javert gave the army ten years of his life after he'd returned home from the Orient.
He travelled the length and breadth of Europe. From the frozen fields of the Russian Empire to the golden Spanish coast. He was promoted. Mostly for his "affinity for hard work and silence". During his last campaign, he was awarded the title of 'Colonel'. But no promotion stirred his soul with pride. He never once made a friend like the one he had found in Burgelesse.
Every so often, a man would pick up a guitar in the local tavern, or he'd see a young mother with a little crying boy at her side, and he'd be reminded of his one and only friend. Abandoned and lost somewhere in the dirt outside Acre.
But after the retreat from Moscow and the catastrophic crash of the once great Napoleon, suddenly being in the army wasn't as glorious as it once had been.
That's how, at almost thirty years old, Javert found himself abandoning his Chasseurs uniform and donning the dark navy coat and shako cap of a Chourmes: The guards of the prison hulks of Toulon.
Most of the other men who presented themselves at the office of the Chef des Services were also former soldiers looking for new employment. Javert thought them just as irrefutable and shady as the souls on the prison barges. They stank of drink. The man beside him looked yellowed with jaundice. All of them had mean and morbid faces.
Not even in their fresh, clean uniforms did they look halfway presentable.
A man with a few wispy strands of hair clinging to his head entered, sitting down at the desk without looking any of them in the eye.
"Prisoners wear red, you wear blue." He said, his voice dripping with boredom. "They rise at dawn for roll-call. Each has a number, which you'll find tattooed on their chest. Don't bother asking for names. They gave up their right to a name when they were sentenced here. Make sure you check all of the leg and neck irons as soon as it's light. They like to try and file through them during the night. They get bread, bean soup and ale, unless they want to use their salary to pay for meat."
"The prisoners earn a wage, Sir?" Javert asked boldly.
The man looked up from his desk, surprised that someone had interrupted him. He looked bloated and red, his mottled cheeks sunburnt from the Toulon sun. "If they have a sentence under fifteen years, then they might train to pull teeth or shave faces. If they are here for life, they work for the pleasure of the glorious French state."
"And what work is that, Sir?" Javert asked.
"Hauling cables, turning capstans, carrying supplies… Anything that keeps the prisoners exhausted and occupied. They call it 'fatigue'."
"And what if they refuse to work?"
"Then you have free reign to use the bastonnade, my good sirs." The Chef des Services reached under his desk and placed several long leather whips, each of them studded with several amber nails along the strap, on top of the wood.
The other men standing beside Javert made noises of glee and reached to take up their bastonnades. Javert took his hesitantly, his eyes studying the rusted nails with unease.
"If a prisoner kills a guard, or another prisoner, then we use the guillotine." The officer continued. "Everyone watches. No exceptions. Sometimes they kill each other just to get out of another day of fatigue. Honestly, if they weren't absolute wretches, I'd feel sorry for them, the poor buggers. The old don't last long. The sick, even less so. If you aren't strong, then you won't last three winters here."
"And does that happen often, Sir? Guards being killed?"
The other men beside Javert stilled, their eyes going wide as they all looked to the Chef des Services for answers.
"It can happen…" the officer said with a shrug. "If you don't keep your wits about you."
He paused for a moment, looking over the men before him with a sternness in his eyes.
"These men are murderers and thieves and rapists and all manner of evil, gentleman. Never be fooled into sympathy by them. They all deserve to be here for what they've done. Don't ever think any differently. They are criminals, gentleman, and the criminal mind is adept at…manipulation, let's call it."
Javert raised an eyebrow at him, hoping that the Chef des Services would explain himself. But instead, they heard the peeling ring of a large bell.
"Well, speak of the Devil, and he shall appear…" the officer said darkly. "That's the fire warning. Some brute must have set fire to his mattress again."
"Again?!" One of the other new recruits decided to pipe up.
"Oh yes, happens more often than my wife's monthlies!" The Chef des Services said crudely. He donned his shako cap and ushered them all to follow him. "Come on! We need to get the buggers onto dry land before they all go up in flames."
As one, the new Chourmes rushed out of the office and out into the dockyard.
The sky was already choked and black, the air dark, despite the midday sun. The warning bell cracked through the dockyard, mixed with the sound of the churning sea and distant, terrified screaming.
Javert looked around him, through the panicked throng of Chourmes rushing for the docks. Two flaming prison holks greeted him. Smoke poured out of the miniscule holes in the hull, and red-clad men tumbled out of the windows like a swarm of rats. They splashed into the sickly brown sea and often did not resurface. Javert realised, with sickening clarity, that it was because of the irons that he saw around their feet and necks. They were so heavy, the irons were drowning them…
"Quickly, man! Before it spreads to a third ship!" The officer said, thrusting a bucket into his arms.
Javert willed his feet to move towards the inferno. He had seen cities burn when he'd been on campaign with the Grand Armee, but at a distance, from far away whilst the Bombardiers worked their canons. Seeing it up close - the blackened faces, the scorched flesh, the screams- turned his stomach.
He willed himself to move, running at a pace that made the water in the bucket slosh. He pushed past the steady stream of red-clad prisoners pouring out of the holk. They looked back at him with nightmarish faces; a grim parade of emaciated and repellant features, hollow and haunted eyes boring into him. Not one of them was without an iron around his neck. Not one of them didn't bear a red ring of festering red welts where the iron rubbed against them.
Once inside the burning ship, his lungs began burning with smoke. Other Chourmes were inside too, pushing along the last of the prisoners with the butt of their bastonnades.
"Help us! Please!" A terrified voice called out to him.
Javert peered through the gloom and smog to see a barred door to his left. There were several clawing, grasping hands reaching through the bars towards him. Their gnarled and blackened fingers looked like the hands of demons reaching up to him from the pits of Hell.
He approached the door, putting down the bucket of water nearby and grasping at the handle. It was stiff and unyielding.
"How do I open this door?!" Javert shouted at another nearby Chourmes.
"Leave it! The door's barred!"
"Well where's the key, man?!"
"Fuck knows! The Marshal keeps 'em and he's probably out on the docks!"
Javert approached the door of hands again. The cell was black with smoke. He could hear the prisoners choking and dying inside.
"Please! For the love of God!" Somebody inside cried again.
Javert knew that there wasn't time to rush out of the holk and go searching for the Marshal's keys. By the time he returned, the fire would be raging through the bowels of the ship.
"Please! Please!" The prisoners called out to him again.
He jiggled the handle again in a panic, trying his shoulder against the brittle wood a few times. It shook and strained on its hinges, but didn't budge.
"Help me break it down!" He called out to the Chourmes.
"Fuck that! I'm getting out of here."
Javert watched the man leave with disgust in his face. He turned back to the door and slammed his shoulder against the wood again. He groaned in pain as it refused to buckle.
Javert turned around to search for anything that might help. The last few fleeing prisoners were shuffling past him, irons rattling as they walked.
"You!" He cried, reaching out and grabbing the red tunic of the nearest man.
He was like the others: A face scabbed with scurvy and a tangled beard crawling with lice. But his huge eyes stared at Javert with surprise.
"Help me with this door!"
The prisoner glanced over Javert's shoulder, and then out towards the exit of the holk.
"They'll suffocate if left there! Help me!" Javert said again.
The prisoner paused for a beat and swore silently under his breath. But in the next moment, he made for the barred door.
Javert followed him as the prisoner assessed the wood. "It's weak, but it might take three men or more to break down." He said, turning back to search the ship for more prisoners he could recruit into his task. The ship was mostly empty now, blackness clogging up the space more and more with each passing moments.
But he spun his head around when he heard the crashing of wood.
The prisoner, the man he had grabbed as he was fleeing, was slamming all of his weight into the door. He crashed his shoulder once, twice, three times against the wood, and it splintered off the hinges with an almighty crack.
All he could do was gawp at the prisoner as the trapped souls inside the cell began tumbling through the smashed wood.
The strength of the man…
To do what he would have thought only possible for three or four men…
The last of the prisoners clambered over the ruined door, chains rattling as they scrabbled for freedom. Most of them were shackled together in twos, tripping and falling as they tried to run from the fire without their partner keeping pace with them. With the cell finally empty, Javert gave the prisoner who had broken down the door a nod of respect and together, they turned to the exit and ran from the fire.
Glorious sunshine and delicious fresh air flooded his senses when he stepped out onto the docks. He placed his hands on his knees and drank it in deeply for a few moments. The prisoner who had helped him stood by his side, wheezing and coughing like him.
But Javert's eyes widened as he looked down at the feet of the man, and realisation hit him.
He wasn't wearing shackles.
Slowly, he stood up straight, casting his eyes about the muddle of other prisoners stood on the docks with them. They were all bearing irons. Some of them chained to the person beside them, some of them in a long linked line of prisoners.
He was the only one of them without irons.
He bore the marks of them. The skin of his ankles exposed and raw where they had once been. But when he looked into the man's face, his expression cold and dead, a flash of fear passed over the prisoner's features.
"Where are your irons, prisoner?" He asked quietly.
Silence yawned like a chasm between them.
The man bolted.
But Javert was quick enough to grab on to the collar of his red tunic.
"Chourmes! Help!" He cried to his fellow guards.
The prisoner reeled on him, grabbing on to his arm with his frightening strength and squeezing tight until Javert felt his bones barking in pain.
He roared, his legs going weak. And the next thing he felt was a punch of Herculean strength slamming into his shoulder.
More pain. More screaming. And his arm went useless and floppy.
But the other guards had come to his aid by then, swamping the man with their collective bodies and tackling him to the floor.
When he had stopped seeing stars, Javert drew himself upright and stared at the prisoner on the ground. It took four more Chourmes to overcome him, and he couldn't help but marvel at his strength again.
So quickly this man had changed in his eyes. So quickly that respect and sympathy had burned out into simmering resentment.
The prisoner was grunting and snarling like a wild animal. Kicking and thrashing with a violent desperateness. But eventually he quietened, the will to fight leaving him as the Chourmes arms held strong.
Javert tried to wiggle his hand, finding movement in his fingers. His shoulder moved too, although it still roared with pain. The man had almost dislocated it, just with the force of one punch…
"He wears no shackles." Javert said to the guards, his teeth clenched with hatred. "I'll wager he was trying to use the fire as cover for an escape."
"Please, Monsieur…." The prisoner wept. "Please…"
He didn't try to deny it. And that made Javert's insides twist with disgust even more. The Officer had warned him not to feel sympathy for these men, and it looked like he'd been swiftly proved right.
"Attempted escape and an attack on a guard…" one of the other Chourmes said as they hauled the man to his feet.
There were tears in the prisoner's eyes, spilling down his filthy face and into his lice-ridden beard.
"You know what that means, don't you." Another guard growled in the prisoner's ear.
He sobbed, his strong body shivering in their hands.
"Please, Monsieur, I shouldn't be here!" He cried desperately.
The Chef des Services wandered over to them, his sweaty, bald head shining in the light of the fire.
"Oh… this one." He said airily, eyes travelling up and down the prisoner. "You've tried this before, haven't you." It was a juvenile tone he used. The voice that one employed to scald a naughty child.
The Officer tutted, all whilst the prisoner wept in wordless despair.
"It'll be the bastonnade tonight, and a tribunal tomorrow. You'll most likely get even more years tagged on to your sentence!"
"No, please God, no…" the man wept.
"Take his number and enter it into today's logs." A guard said to Javert, nodding towards the weeping man.
Javert lurched for him, tearing open his red tunic and scanning his filthy skin for the tattoo.
He read it three times, just to make sure that he'd remembered it. Then, with a nod of his head, the Chef des Services directed the guards towards a tall pole of timber.
"Shackle him up to that." The Officer told the guards.
Irons were fetched, and the prisoner trembled with sobs as they bound him around the post. The tunic was torn from his body, and his already scarred back was exposed to Javert. He'd clearly been whipped before. But Javert felt no pity, only coldness as he watched him weep into the wooden post.
The Chef des Services turned to him with a breathy voice of boredom.
"I'll leave this one to you, Sir." He said to Javert before walking away.
Javert's eyes widened. But the quickly schooled his features into hard resoluteness. He couldn't let these men see his fear and reluctance. His shoulder still pounded with the mistake he'd made in showing these men anything else other than contempt. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.
And as he uncurled his bastonnade from his belt, hatred began to fester deep within his chest.
His voice was a cruel and callous sound in his own ears. Unfamiliar and strange to him then, but it would become his only cadence for the next twenty years of his life.
"This is what you deserve, prisoner 24601."
By the time Javert crawled his way back to the Place Louis Lepine the next morning, his face was smeared in soot and his clothes stank of firesmoke.
Putting out fires was a young man's game. The muscles in his arms ached from carrying pail after pail of water from the Seine. He still felt breathless from running his feet into the ground, constantly on the move until the sun had come up. His lungs burned inside him from the smoke he had swallowed, emptying house after house that was going up in flames.
Even a handful of weeks ago, he might have felt less drained after the night's exertions. But he was still not completely recovered from his hip wound. His muscles were still withered and weak from the days he'd been forced to spend in bed, and he tired easily.
Javert collapsed onto his bed, finally letting his eyes close and the weariness make his body go slack. His chest rose and fell rhythmically and he tried to muster enough strength to, at least, remove his boots.
He'd not battled a fire like that for years…
A knock sounded out at his door.
"Jesus suffering fuck…" Javert whispered, rubbing his face with a hand. "Yes?" He groaned.
"It's Malloirave, Sir." His Sergeant's bright voice sounded out. "I brought you something to break your fast, Sir. I heard you were out all night."
Javert rubbed his eyes and slowly sat up.
"Come in, Malloirave."
The door to his bedchamber swung open, and Malloirave swept in, carrying a tray of food. He placed it down on top of Javert's legs and backed away, hands behind his back.
Javert looked at the mouth-watering meal Malloirave had brought him: Golden, crisped potatoes, fried in butter and chives. Eggs with double cream and garlic roulade cheese, baked in a terracotta cocotte. Not one, but three slices of sourdough bread. But what ultimately gave it away was the steaming pot of aromatic coffee…
"Did you get this food from the Prèfet's kitchens?" He asked his Sergeant.
Malloirave's eyes widened, surprised that he'd been sussed out so quickly.
"I…" Malloirave stuttered. "I… I thought…I heard about the fire, Sir, and I thought you deserved it."
Javert took in a long breath, summoning the wind to begin reprimanding Malloirave for flouting the rules of the barracks. The Préfet had his own private kitchens, his own private chef. As rank would have it, he ate better than anybody else in the barracks.
But instead, Javert let out the breath slowly, a warm sense of gratitude filling up the place where his wish to reprimand Malloirave used to be.
The mere fact that Malloirave had gone out of his way to get this meal for Javert was…nothing short of touching.
"Thank you, Sergeant." He said gently.
From the way Malloirave untensed his shoulders, it was clear that he as well had been expecting Javert to tell him off.
"I…hope you enjoy it, Sir."
Javert bowed his head and began eating. He tore up the sourdough and began dipping it into the eggs. He was ravenous. The events of the night had twisted his stomach with hunger, and left on his own, he would have been too tired to fetch his own breakfast.
Malloirave was a kind and intuitive man. Perhaps a tad too soft for the police force, but the kind of person who any gentleman would be happy to hear his daughter was marrying.
"The men and I were on standby all night." Malloirave said whilst Javert chewed. "One of the Marshals told us that we might be pulled in to assist the firefighters."
"And when were you told to stand down?" Javert asked, glancing up from his food.
"Around four o'clock this morning."
"Hmm." Javert grumbled. "The blaze was mostly under control by then."
"How bad was it?"
"All the way down to the Boulevard des Capucines in the south, and almost up to Saint Lazare in the north-west."
"Good Lord…" Malloirave breathed.
"Mmm." Javert grumbled again.
"Tis a good thing you were there, Sir."
Javert stopped chewing and went still. Malloirave had been surprised the previous evening when he'd asked him to have his best clothes washed and pressed. Surprised even moreso when he'd told his Sergeant that he was attending the Civil Servant's Gala. He'd managed to keep his probing questions to himself, but Javert could tell that he'd been bristling with curiosity. Even now, he was trying to pick around the topic, but Javert couldn't tell him…
"Indeed, Sergeant." He replied simply.
"I hope your…company didn't mind that you were called away to action, Sir."
Javert shot Malloirave a withering look that had the young Sergeant shrinking in on himself. He was overstepping the mark again. But Javert glanced down to the tray of food on his lap and let out a long sigh. It wasn't Malloirave's fault that his evening with Grace had, quite literally, gone up in flames. He had always been guarded when it came to disclosing personal information to his underlings. He was a Police Officer, and that's all his men needed to see him as. Not a man, just an Officer.
But as he looked at his breakfast that morning, he reflected on just how far that line of thinking had gotten him: no friends to speak of, no family that he knew of, no one even remotely close to him. In the past, he had been content enough to simply just be an Officer. He'd actively wished away the parts that made him human. Detested that he had to sleep, to eat, to piss, because it distracted him from his service to the Law. Being a man made him weak.
But somehow, kind people like Malloirave had persevered with him, even though he'd given him no reason to.
He put down his fork, searching for the best way to answer his Sergeant. If he just came out with it, and told Malloirave that he'd been at the Opera House with a woman last night, he wasn't sure he'd believe him.
"It was a…disappointing evening on all counts." Javert said carefully.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, Sir..." Malloirave replied, unable to keep a smirk of interest off his face.
Javert smirked too.
Clever. He thought to himself. No questions. But leaving an open-ended statement like that, waiting for me to add more information of my own accord.
He'd taught Malloirave well.
"The next time I wish to go to a social event, remind me of how last night went…" He grumbled, not completely without joviality, to Malloirave.
Malloirave laughed and looked at his boots. "I will, Sir."
Javert finished the last few mouthfuls of food and put down his fork. Before he could move, Malloirave had swiftly removed the tray and was making for the door.
"Rest, Sir. We aren't due out on patrol now until the early evening."
Javert might have scolded him for being such a mother-hen, but he didn't have it in him at that moment. Malloirave shut the door behind him and left Javert to himself.
He sighed, kicking off his boots and sliding his coat off his shoulders. As he stood to his feet to close the shutters and removed the rest of his clothes, he felt the pull of sleep gripping him tighter. But he paused, freezing in place when he exposed his chest.
His hand lightly stroked the healing scab above his hip.
Hurt tugged at his heart.
"Goddammit, Grace…." He whispered to the empty air.
His other hand travelled up to his face. His fingers stroked his lips. The place where he and her had touched.
The first part of his evening with her had felt like a dream, the second part a nightmare.
That impulsive and imprudent kiss…
It pained him to recall it. Made his starved soul ache with longing. Like the food Malloirave had brought him, he didn't realise just how ravenous for her he had been until he'd tasted her.
In part, he had battled the fire all night to try and run from the raw hunger that kiss had awakened in him.
But he should have known better than to expect only sweetness in that hunger.
In his temper, he had lashed out at her. Dragged her through the mud. Embarrassed not just her, but himself too.
As soon as he'd seen the look on her face after she'd slapped him, he knew he'd made a grave error of judgement. Perhaps for a brief moment he'd thought her somehow involved in the crashing of the chandelier, but the pain in her eyes when he'd accused her of manipulating him had made him want to wither into nothing and die.
Javert sat down on his bed, head in his hands as a feeling of crushing guilt finally caught up to him. He wished he could go back to being an Officer, not a man. When he'd been just an Officer, he was a walking stooge, an animated puppet, an unfeeling fist. Empty, but painless. Being a man hurt.
He'd seen enough liars and temptresses in his years as a Policeman. And he should have been able to tell straight away that Grace wasn't one of them.
Had he really believed himself so unworthy of genuine human affection? Had it truly been easier to think that Grace had seduced him to aid in her cousin's hair-brained demonstration? Had he ever so brazenly and blatantly revealed himself to be such an insecure and love-starved monster?
He'd write to her again. Beg her forgiveness. Hope beyond reason that there might still be an ounce of affection for him in her heart.
He knew he didn't deserve it after last night, but he had to try. Otherwise he'd never be able to sleep soundly again. And as he looked down at his empty pillow, on his hard bed, he wished that he could lay himself down and rest, like his body craved to do.
But he knew he wouldn't sleep. He couldn't. Not until he saw her again.