Chapter 34 - Grief Comes in Two Parts
His blood was boiling as he waited outside the hospital.
This man had made him think he saw demons in the woodwork. Enemies where there were none. He had made him think he was paranoid and foolish. He had made him doubt himself.
Never again.
Never again would he lose his way.
The Law and the Law alone would be his guiding star. Not man. Not emotions. Not feelings.
Even when he thought his own eyes deceived him, he would use the word of the Law to see by.
It had been a few days since the trial in Arras. The District Officer had thrown out a handful of men across the county in a panicked attempt to find him. Some were stationed at the crossroads on the edges of the district. Some at local Inns. Some at the harbour at La Rochelle, just in case he thought about fleeing across the ocean. But Javert knew that they wouldn't find him. All things asid, a criminal like Jean Valjean was too clever to be caught like that.
The 'intuition' had told Javert to come here. After Sister Simplice had told him about the dying whore, something inside him told him that this is where he'd find Jean Valjean. He could have run anywhere in the whole world, but within him, he knew that before he disappeared into the ether, Jean Valjean would come here.
He made sure he was concealed. Hidden away behind a large ash tree. It was approaching dusk now. The sky was throwing up dramatic hues of indigo and pink. And in the half-light, he knew that only the most eagle-eyed observer could see him.
And if Jean Valjean was careless, as he was likely to be in a panicked run from justice, then he wouldn't even clock him.
A man in a thick grey coat and a dark flat cap approached the hospital.
Javert straightened his back and withdrew himself behind the ash tree. He couldn't see the man's face from underneath the dark shadow his cap cast. But from the way he cast his eyes nervously to his back, hunching his shoulders deeper, he knew who it was…
Javert ground his teeth together as a bolt of hatred coursed through him.
He watched as Sister Simplice came bustling out of the hospital. She approached the dark man as if she had been expecting him all this time, ushering him inside quickly. She too cast a hurried look over her shoulder, white cap fluttering in the breeze, before turning back into the hospital herself.
The fire in Javert's belly flared with contempt. He would deal with her eventually. Have her arrested for aiding and abetting a criminal. Habit or not, it would not protect her from the cleansing fire of the Law.
He did not waste another moment. He swept from out of the shadows of the ash tree like a descending hawk.
Hatred turned his bones to iron. Burned his blood away into steam. Made his feet fly as he stole himself inside the hospital.
It was quiet and cold in the stone centre of the building. A tomb of sandstone. Pale and still. Despite the cool cleanness of the air, he could smell laudanum and vomit in the air. He could taste death on his tongue.
He could see the gentle flap of linen as he rounded a corner, entering the ward. There were beds, lined up side by side in neat rows, a thin muslin curtain drawn between each one. He could see figures, like waxy ghosts, on the other side of the curtains. Their forms gently moving as the curtains billowed in the breeze.
There were others in the beds. Softly sleeping amidst creamy white sheets. Some of them had dried blood at the corners of their mouth and spittles of red on their pillowcases or on the sheets about their heads. It was too much like Froid. For a moment he was an eighteen year old boy, back at his bedside, waiting for the old man to die. But Javert had to tear his eyes off them. Had to look away to stop the rising tide of memories from drowning him.
He fixed his eyes rigidly on a bed down near the end of the ward. Where he could see a dark, hunched figure crouched at a bedside. Their voices were soft and muffled as the muslin curtain fluttered around them, but as Javert drew closer, he could hear the choked, whispered words of the woman in the bed.
"My girl…is she coming to me? Is she on her way?"
"Soon. She'll be here soon, Fantine. I promise."
"It's almost dark. She can't travel in the dark. She's afraid of it, Monsieur…!"
Fantine's breath leaked out of her mouth in pitiful squeezes. And when she wasn't fighting for breath, her words were snatched away by vicious, tearing coughs. The kind that had him wincing every time they raked through her tiny body. He thought he didn't have room for empathy in his heart anymore, but each time she coughed and gasped for air, he couldn't help but feel her pain deep inside himself too. A wet, heavy kind of pain that burned his lungs.
"It's alright. She'll be alright. Please. Rest yourself."
The seated figure reached out over the white bedsheets and took the woman's hand in his own.
He should have swept in to arrest him right then and there, but something made him pause. Something rooted his feet to the spot as the man stroked the back of Fantine's hand comfortingly.
"I… I don't want her to be frightened, Monsieur." Fantine said, each word a struggle to get out of her. "Seeing me…like this…"
"You will get better. With enough rest and enough care from the good Sisters. I am sure of it."
Liar. Javert thought.
He had never once told Froid a meaningless platitude like that when he had sat at his bedside. How did it help? What good did it do? Empathy soon replaced itself with that old burning hatred again. Lies seemed to tumble out of Valjean's mouth. Everything he said was poisoned with falsehoods. And Javert thought it especially cruel to lie to the dying.
At least do her the courtesy of telling her the truth. He thought bitterly.
"Monsieur, please…don't mock me…" she choked out.
"I don't mock you, I-"
"I know I will be in Heaven soon. This pain…this suffering will soon be over for me… But my poor Cosette... How can I leave her again? I can't leave her alone… I can't..!"
"She won't ever be alone. I swear it. I will take her into my protection and she will be my daughter in all but blood. No one will ever harm her for as long as I am living. I swear to you, Fantine. I swear."
"You can't promise this whore a damn thing, Valjean." Javert growled out.
Valjean's whole body went taut with terror. He lurched up from his crouched position at Fantine's side. His sunken eyes stared at Javert through the white muslin curtain. Wary, but not surprised to find him there.
"For pity's sake, Javert… Before you enslave me on those hulks again…Listen to me-"
"You lied to me. Lied right to my face." he snarled at him. "I don't see why I should give you pause to draw breath for more lies."
"Javert-"
Well, finally the tables have turned, and we have blocked our ears to your siren's nonsense. 'Monsieur Madeline' is nothing now. He is just dust in the street."
"Monsieur Madeline…" Fantine croaked out. "What is he talking about?"
"Has he not told you? This man is a criminal. He's on the run from the law. Has been for ten years!"
"But…But…" Fantine stuttered. She looked to Valjean with pleading, frightened eyes, her breaths rattling through her chest. "My daughter… My Cosette…She'll be here soon…"
"She's not coming, you fool!" Javert said sharply.
"Javert…" Valjean breathed.
"No one's gone to fetch her from whatever hell-hole you left her in. Monsieur Valjean has been too busy confessing his sins in court. Not traipsing off to collect your pitiful spawn."
Fantine whimpered. Her hollow face cracking with despair.
"What on earth is going on in here?!" Asked Sister Simplice, suddenly appearing at Javert's back.
He wheeled around, drawing his cutlass out in one swift movement, and fixed her with a look of scalding contempt. "If you attempt to stop this arrest, I shall have you put in the pillories! God's bride, or not!"
Sister Simplice shrank away from his sword, her eyes wide.
Fantine tried to cry. Tried to amass the air to sob. But instead, her grey, miserable face scrunched up in pain, her breaths turning into pants.
"Fantine… Fantine!" Valjean cried.
He seized her by the shoulders as the woman's feeble pants got shorter and shorter. Her eyes grew vacant and distant. Her struggle for air was little more than a series of pathetic gasps now.
And when a tear slipped down the side of her face, she gasped one last pitiful time.
Her life choked out before them.
Leaving nothing but a haunted, empty husk..
And Javert felt nothing in his stone heart.
Sister Simplice crossed herself and offered up a quick prayer to the Lord.
Jean Valjean held her shoulders for a long moment, gently caressing her with the back of his thumb. Head hung low. Shoulders sobbing.
"You killed her." he whispered eventually. "You killed her, Inspector."
His words struck at something uncomfortable inside him. His gaze flicked to the woman's dull and hollow eyes. The look of hopeless despair that still lingered on her face in the moments after death. But he flicked them away again before that uncomfortable feeling in his chest could take root.
"I'm not here to argue with you. Now, will you come quietly this time?" he asked Valjean.
Javert reached out to grab him by the sleeve, but he sharply tugged it away, almost sending the Inspector tumbling forwards.
"Do not touch me!" Valjean roared.
Javert withdrew from him and unsheathed his cutlass again. The hiss of metal slipped through the air.
"Inspector! This is a house of God!" Sister Simplice cried. "I will not tolerate violence here!"
"It's alright, Sister." Valjean said soothingly. "Why don't you go and tell the other sisters to stay safe in the Chapel?"
"But… Monsieur le Maire-"
"He is not the Mayor!" Javert growled. "Have you been listening to nothing I have said?!"
Javert took a step towards Valjean again, and the man raised his arms defensively.
"I am warning you!" he cried at the Inspector. "If you fight me, I will win! We both know that I'm the stronger man of the two of us!"
Sister Simplice shrieked and went running off down the ward.
Javert refused to look away from Valjean's eyes. Just like that first day when he had rode into town, he had to make sure that this man knew the Law would not be beaten. The Law was incorruptible. And he was the Law.
"And there falls away the mask of the man of mercy…" Javert laughed bitterly. "I knew you couldn't hide your true face forever, 24601."
A sour look passed over Valjean's face. He knew that his words had found their mark. He knew that using his prison number would awaken memories in him that he'd rather forget. But in the next moment, a look of calm resignation had settled over Valjean's features.
"Then I am sorry, Inspector." he said gravely.
Javert didn't even have time to draw breath before the man came rushing at him.
It was a young man's mistake. Something the greenest of solders in the army might have done. But in his distraction, he hadn't kept his cutlass straight. And Valjean swooped right on by and grasped his wrist in his own.
He tried to fight back. Tried to wrestle himself out of the hold of this beast. But , throwing his other fist back for a punch, he found it soon smothered in Valjean's meaty palm.
He ground his teeth and grunted like an animal, but the strength of Valjean could not be matched. He kicked and fought, pushed against him and tried to pull himself away like a wild cat caught in a hunter's trap. But he soon felt the cool weight of the wall pressed up against his own back. The grip of the cutlass was still encased in his fist, and he tried pitifully swinging it downwards, towards Valjean, trying helplessly to deploy his claws.
And when Valjean slammed his wrist into the wall, he felt the crack of bones.
His scream wrought the air.
The sword dropped from his limp hand and clattered to the floor.
Valjean released him from his grasp too, and Javert dropped to the ground, cradling his pounding arm close to his chest. He felt sick with pain. It took all his strength of will not to vomit on the floor of the hospital. The breath hissed out from behind his clenched teeth in short, sharp bursts.
But when he pried open his scrunched eyes, he found Valjean looming above him. Staring down at him with that same expression of painful resignation as the one Christ had on the crucifix affixed to the wall of the hospital.
"I truly am sorry, Inspector." he said again, holding aloft something big and heavy.
He squinted through his agony, just about able to see the golden lettering of The Bible on the front of the heavy object. Javert was just about to scoff. Was just about to sneer at him for the irony of using the word of the Lord to finish him off..
And then fireworks of pain exploded behind his eyes.
His world flooded with darkness.
He could hear his mother's voice in the blackness.
Smell the carbolic soap Froid made him use.
Taste Camille's incessant tongue in his mouth.
Feel the burn of the desert on his back
But after that, there was a blissful, quiet nothing….
He awoke in the same hospital days later.
His head wrapped in a turban of bandages, arm cast in plaster of Paris.
He had frightened the Sister who had sat at his bedside with his screams of rage. Making his eyes vibrate and the walls shake with his anger. She'd gone running for Sister Simplice with tears of fear in her eyes.
He was gone. Jean Valjean was gone. And he had left him with nothing but a pounding head and a fractured wrist. Javert had almost wished that he'd killed him. The anger that tore out of him when he had first awoken was unbearable. It scalded his insides. Made him writhe in pain.
But as his body recovered and his bones healed, he learned to live with that pain. Learned how to unleash it onto others and let small bits of its heat seep out at a time.
Nothing could quell it. Nothing could smother it. It fed on itself and did not diminish.
And it never, ever let him forget.
"It still hurts me sometimes on cold mornings." Javert said, lazily flexing his arm as the coming dawn seeped its way into the bedchamber. "But I don't see why he didn't finish me off then and there. He had me at his whim."
Grace watched his face carefully as he spoke. It had been easy to track his emotions through the story of his life. Pain, resentment, disappointment, fear, regret… But as he spoke of Jean Valjean, she didn't quite know what to label this one.
She lay her head against his chest, letting the thought slip away from her like the receding tide. Grace thought about that lonely boy Javert had described in the house of Froid. She thought about that heartbroken soldier in the Egyptian desert. She thought about that misguided Prison guard in Toulon. There had been times when Javert had not wanted to speak. When his voice had grown hoarse and thick with emotion when he had recounted his tale to her. That is when she'd smothered his sadness with her kisses. Snuffing it out with her love and her warmth. And when she thought the past was trying to take him from her, she'd bridge the gap back to him with the meeting of their bodies.
When they'd fall away from each other, spent and exhausted, he'd always resume his story after a few moments of quiet. He needed to tell her. Needed her to know the colour of his soul in every murky shades of grey and brown it presented itself. And when she accepted every dark and light hue, it only made him want her more.
Over time, that nervousness fell away from him like the last leaves of autumn. He had her shivering with delight and crying up at the ceiling with his head bent between her legs. He felt her pulse around him, on another occasion, when she had been on her knees. He had her every which way he could think of during the course of that night. And they almost forgot about the rumble of the guns in the distance.
Suddenly, a thought came screaming into Grace's head.
She frowned, her brow scrunching up as she lay on Javert's chest.
"What's your name?" She asked out of the blue.
The Inspector chuckled. Grace's head bobbed up and down on his chest as he laughed.
"Pardon, Mademoiselle?"
"What's your name?" Grace repeated again, raising her head from off of his chest. "It was a… promise I made to a friend of mine, and I realised…, I've only ever known you as 'Javert' or just 'Inspector'. And so does everybody else around here…"
He smirked and pulled her into him tighter.
"Are you normally in the habit of sleeping with men you don't know the names of?" He teased, tickling her playfully in her ribs.
"Stop it!" She laughed, trying to wriggle out of his hands. "I mean it. Your name, Monsieur. What is it? The one your mother gave you."
Something about the mention of his mother made him go quiet and introspective. He searched Grace's face, trying to find some parallel or shared detail between her and his mother, but he couldn't. In fact, he'd found it difficult to recall his mother's face for some years now. He only really remembered the sound of her voice and the smell of burnt charcoal on her clothes. Thanks to Inspector Froid, his memories of her were vague and unformed.
"Vincent." He said in almost a whisper. "I remember…that's what she called me."
His name, his own name, felt foreign to him on his tongue. He had said it so infrequently in his life, and even fewer times had it been spoken by someone else. Froid had called him 'boy', Burgelesse had called him 'Soldier', Camille had never bothered to ask him for a Christian name…even Malloirave rigidly stuck to 'Sir', even in their down-time in the barracks.
"Vincent." Grace repeated, trying it out for herself.
His lips quirked into a faint smile. Even though his own name felt strange coming from his mouth, his heart warmed hearing it coming from hers. He'd kept his name from all those others, hiding that secret part of himself, but he gave it to Grace freely. A present just for her.
"I like it. It's soft. Artistic. Romantic."
"All words that one would generally ascribe to me." Javert said sarcastically.
"You understate yourself, Monsieur." Grace said reproachfully. "You can summon some rather pretty words indeed when the mood takes you."
"I can summon some rather blue ones too, if you'd prefer, Mademoiselle." he said wickedly.
He nuzzled his whiskered face close into the nape of her neck. During his explorations that night, he'd found that this was a particular favourite and sensitive spot for her…
She shivered in delight as the coarse hair on his cheek brushed against her. The feel of his lips, kissing her gently in the place where her neck and shoulders met, started a familiar pounding in the spot between her legs.
Soon, she wanted more than just his mouth on her neck. She met his kisses with her own lips, hungry for every little bit of him that there was. He pulled her in closer to him, feeling the push of her breasts up against his chest and running his hands down her naked back. His own hardness stirred against the soft flesh of her thighs and a roaring started deep within him…
Until they heard the door to the cafe downstairs slam open.
Grace gasped.
Whoever had just entered was making their way up the stairs.
She wrenched her mouth off Javert and just had enough time to hastily pull up the blankets of her bed over their two bodies.
"Degas?" a voice called out to her, just as the door to her bedchamber swung open.
Grace peered through the thin purple curtain that cut the room in two, sitting bolt upright in the bed.
"Oh goodness me!" the voice sang out, mirth and insincerity ringing in his tone.
It was Grantaire, smiling impertinently down at the two of them and casting his eyes up and down the tangle of half-naked bodies before him.
"If I'd have known you had company, I would have knocked…"
Javert slowly sat up too. He pulled the blanket Grace had hastily flung over him tighter around his hips.
"Get out!" Grace commanded.
"It's a good thing I found you before Enjolras did." Grantaire continued, heeding not a word of what Grace had said. "He thought you might have quit Paris altogether after Lamarque's funeral. And so soon after you told him you were back in the gang!"
"I was hiding from the National Guard!" Grace grunted out, desperately fishing for her discarded clothes on the floor whilst trying to hold the blanked up around her body. "Or does Enjolras think now that being a revolutionary makes you impervious to bullets?"
Grace reached over the floor of the bedchamber, making a lunge for her boy's shirt. Javert made an awkward choking sound as their shared blanket was nearly yanked off his nethers.
"You've been hiding…?" Grantaire asked, arching one of his dark brows towards the man in the bed beside her. "Looks more like you've been playing a game of hide the saucisse..!"
"Get out!" Grace cried again.
"Now look, I'm all for an impromptu dalliance, when the opportunity presents itself. But perhaps now was not quite the right time…"
"Get out!" She screamed, throwing a boot at Grantaire as hard as she could.
Grantaire cried out as the shoe struck him in the leg.
"I'll be downstairs." He sighed, rubbing his thigh. "Tell me when you're both decent. Enjolras sent me here for the timber of the bedframes. I do hate to cast out a pair of lovers from their little nest, but needs must!"
With that he turned and slammed the door behind him. Grace let out another long sigh and turned back to Javert to see which of the two of them looked the reddest.
"That's Grantaire." she said with a bob of her head towards the door. "He knows about me not being a man…"
"I gathered." Javert said croakily, still trying to find his voice after the moment of mortification he'd just survived.
Grace got up and started dragging her trousers back up over her legs. "It sounds like he's gutting the whole city. They were gathering wood for the barricades back when I was looking for you."
"It was perhaps eight feet high when I last saw it." Javert added.
Grace bent down to scoop up Javert's clothes, pausing as she realised she hadn't yet asked him about his unusual attire.
"What's all this about?" she asked, holding up the emerald green waistcoat to him.
He rose from the bed and Grace's eyes momentarily dipped low as his nakedness stepped towards her.
"Focus, Mademoiselle…" he said huskily, touching the tip of her chin and raising it up to his face.
When she'd gotten her sinful smile under control, she nodded to him and Javert swallowed hard.
"The Préfet asked me to spy for him." he said heavily. His voice was a whisper but it dropped like a stone.
"What?!" Grace breathed.
"They want me to try and bring Enjolras's revolution down from the inside."
"Oh my God…" Grace said as the world started to spin. "What if one of them recognises you?!"
"None of them have thus far. I met quite a few of your little band of schoolboys when they started building the barricade on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, including that one who was in here just now."
"Jesus suffering fuck…" muttered Grace, fisting a palm of her hair in her hands.
"Oh, glad to hear that one's catching on…" Javert said glibly.
"What… what did you tell them?" Grace asked. "What do they know about you?"
"To them, I'm a volunteer. I offered them my skills as an ex-soldier and your cousin thought my expertise with the National Guard's training and tactics might come in useful in the fight to come. I told them my name was… Monsieur Bleuthielle."
Grace blinked at him. "Monsieur… Bloody Hell?!"
"It was the only name I could think of at short notice!" he hissed back. "And if I couldn't find you again, after I told you to leave the carnage of the funeral, and God forbid, something had gotten me killed… I thought it might have helped you to identify me."
"Monsieur Bloody Hell?!" she asked again, her voice slightly louder.
Javert rolled his eyes and sighed. "Grace, do you truly think this might be it? Is this the course of history flowing around us?"
"Wh- I told you. I don't know… Why?"
"Because it's pointless of me to try and swim against the tide if this is the event that washes away the Monarchy for good."
"You mean… you'd switch loyalties? Abandon the Prefecture?"
His face twitched uncomfortably when she said that. It was a notion that he'd never dared articulate aloud. Abandoning the police was something he wouldn't ever have considered in his wildest imaginations before. His stern countenance would never have betrayed even the faintest whiff of disloyalty to justice. But his steadfast resolve to duty and order had been rocked long before tonight. Because of Grace. Because of everything. The rigid walls around his heart had crumbled away stone by stone, and he was now left standing in an open plain. The sky above felt vast and free, but it terrified him nonetheless.
"Please… try to remember," he said weakly. "Is this it? Can this be it?"
Grace stared at him, open-mouthed and silent. She could tell he desperately wanted an answer. And she wished that she could give him one.
"Are you two concluded up there?!" Grantaire hollered up from the cafe below.
He didn't wait for either of them to reply. His footsteps thudded out as he ascended the steps and Javert and Grace hurried to put the last of their clothes on.
He burst back through the bedroom door and strode over to Grace's bed. Without giving them so much as a sideways glance, he flung the sheets and the mattress to the side.
"Give me a second…" Grace muttered, notching her belt around her trousers as she finished dressing herself. "...and I'll help you carry it down the stairs."
"No time for that, Degas!" Grantaire announced.
He strode over to the window and flung open the shutters. The light of morning spilled into the cafe and Grace blinked in the harsh whiteness of the day. The sun had come up whilst her and Javert had been languishing in each other's arms. And she hadn't even noticed.
The next thing she knew, Grantaire was hauling up her bedframe and dragging it towards the open window. He puffed and strained, but he soon had one end of it propped up over the ledge. The scrape of wood against wood had her teeth on edge. With a final push of his shoulder, he sent the whole thing out of the window, and it landed with a great crack upon the pavement below.
"There." Grantaire said, dusting off his hands. "Now, you can help me with the other one."
The barricade, when Grace finally stood before it, was a monster of a thing.
It bristled with the sharp and the stinging. Like a back-barbed creature, full of pain and venom.
A Frankenstein of bricks and wood and timber. It loomed almost twenty foot high, prickling with shards of splintered material and nails. The flag of France stood proudly atop the tangled mess, waving softly in the breeze. Like it was a conquered mountain. Like they wanted to claim this hideous thing as their own.
The sight of it sent a bolt of terror deep within her. This thing was dreadful. It already stank of death and blood, even though the prattle of gunfire was far away and distant. She reached for Javert's hand, looking for a small bit of comfort as they approached it. Even with his arms full of the smashed wood of the bedframe, he still managed to free up one of his palms and squeezed back reassuringly.
"Don't shoot! It's Grantaire!" The young man called up over the barricade.
"Who's with you?" A voice replied, and Grace only just then spotted the barrel of a rifle poking out from one of the jagged ramparts above her.
"It's Degas! And the volunteer Bleuthielle!"
Grace cringed at the mention of Javert's false name again, but she closed her eyes and fought down a sigh.
"Come on up!"
Grantaire turned to them and gave them both a warm nod. Without looking back their way again, he began climbing the barricade, hauling himself up over the crates and flotsam.
Grace cast Javert a nervous glance but again, he nodded reassuringly at her to follow. The last thing she wanted was to step on something unsecured and fall to her death, or perhaps get herself impaled on one of the sharp spikes of wood that protruded out of it. But she steeled herself and began the perilous climb up the barricade.
Her feet shook as she mounted the first rickety crate. But she felt Javert's hands at her back, supporting her from behind, and up she continued to climb. She dared not look down, dared not look too long at the timber around her. Once or twice, she reached out to place her weight on a barrel or a half-smashed chair, only to have it fall away from her and go crashing to the ground. It was like this ugly beast beneath her was moving. Breathing. When she whimpered and felt her legs quiver beneath her, Javert put his hand reassuringly at her back again until she'd stopped shaking.
Eventually, she crested the monstrous mountain and looked up to find Enjolras offering a hand down to her. His golden hair shone like a halo in the early morning light and despite the harsh, reproachful look he gave her, she was glad to see him.
He hauled Grace over the summit, his eyes flicking to the man that followed close at her back.
"Follow Grantaire's route down." he said to her, pointing after the dark-haired young man as he crawled his way down the barricade. He turned to Javert and similarly offered him a hand up too. "Good to see you again, Bleuthielle. We have some questions for you about the National Guard."
Thankfully, the route down was easier than the route up, and Grace soon had her feet touching the floor again. She looked around her to see many of the boys from the cafe milling about, preparing for whatever was to come. Courfeyrac and Feuilly were counting out bullets, distributing them evenly amongst the other volunteers who had come to help. Combeferre was tending to a young woman who'd slashed her palm open, possibly on one of the many nails on the barricade. Bahorel was trying to teach a line of young men how to hold their rifles correctly in the crook of their shoulder, demonstrating for them and judging their stance as they mirrored his action. Joly was helping a small group of ladies serve out the morning porridge from a smoking cauldron hanging over a log fire. And there were other faces that she did not recognise. New people milling about the makeshift camp with bright eyes and busy movements. Grace cast her eyes backwards. There were even more people poised on top of the barricade, rifles pointed astutely outwards, scanning for enemies. Everywhere she looked was bristling with activity.
Javert and Enjolras touched down onto the cobbled floor.
"It was just as you said." Enjolras said to Javert. "They didn't dare try an attack in the dark. One of our men on duty this morning spotted someone snooping around just after dawn, but we haven't had a battalion come within four or five streets of us yet."
"They will be feeling you out." Javert replied. "Trying to gauge your size, numbers, armaments..."
"Hopefully we're enough to make them worried!" Enjolras cried, slapping him hard on the back. "And when do you think is the earliest we can expect their company?"
"I'll wager nothing important will happen until the early evening. They'll want to make you wait around for a bit. Stretch it out. Eat through your supplies. Catch you sleepy and unawares."
"Huh! Well, we'll make damn sure not to be caught with our trousers down!"
Enjolras's eyes settled on Grace and that brilliant, golden confidence that radiated out of him withered away. He swung his rifle over his shoulder with a huff, face turning from hopefulness to reproach in the blink of an eye. "I suppose Grantaire told you I was sad to note your absence, cousin."
"I ran into this young man trying to flee from the National Guard." Javert interjected quickly, nodding his head at Grace. "It was not long after dusk, when you sent us all forth to begin building the barricade. Trust me, we spent much of our night dodging mounted cavalry and hiding in the sewers."
Enjolras raised an eyebrow at Grace. "Is that how it was, cousin?"
Grace nodded her head. What Javert had said was true; they had spent much of the early evening traversing the sewers and running through the labyrinthian maze of Montmartre, but the latter half… Grace shifted on her feet and tried to ignore the delicious soreness between her legs.
"You don't think I'd purposefully miss out on all the fun, do you?" Grace asked, smiling cheekily at him.
There was a beat of silence. He looked into her eyes carefully and Grace made sure to hold his stare.
"Don't you remember?" Grace added swiftly. "I want to be on the right side of history at the end of all of this."
Javert watched the exchange between Grace and Enjolras with eager eyes. He flicked his gaze backwards and forwards between them and he wondered for a moment if what Grace said was true. If this side of the barricade was indeed the right side of history.
Warmth slowly returned back to Enjolras's eyes. The contempt melted off his face and he gave Grace too a hearty pat on the back. "Then welcome back to the crucible!" He cried enthusiastically.
"Degas, come have some breakfast!" Joly called out to her.
Grace looked over to the cauldron to see Grantaire at Joly's side, poised by the fireside and already tucking into a small bowl of food.
"Bring your friend too." Grantaire added, waving over Javert as well. "Some good vittles will do you good. You both look like you barely slept all night!"
Grace ground her jaw at Grantaire, and he smiled wickedly to himself as he stuck his head into his bowl of porridge.
"Go. Both of you." Enjolras said, encouraging them over to the steaming cauldron. "You'll both need some sustenance for the day ahead."
Grace and Javert wandered over to the log fire. She gratefully took the first bowl Joly handed out to her and Javert the second. They both ate in silence for a while as Grace watched the constant moving bustle around them. However, despite the mix of activity around them, Grace couldn't help but notice that it seemed a little… thin on the ground.
"Are we…expecting more people to join us?" She asked through a mouthful of food.
"Not to worry, Degas." Joly stated chipperly. "Enjolras says that more of the people will rise to join us once we give the National Guard a good round or two of biffing!"
"But you had hundreds following the cortège yesterday." Javert said with a frown.
"Oh, so many of them slipped back to their homes once they'd done a bit of pillaging and looting." Joly sighed, shaking his head. "Enjolras said that they weren't the kind of folk that we wanted spearheading this revolution anyway. More will come. More will come…"
"Well… I'm not sure we'd have enough bullets to give out to any more that turned up here, anyway." Grantaire added, pointing his spoon at Courfeyrac and Feuilly.
They were counting through the remaining musket shots they had left on the table in front of them. Even from some thirty paces away, Grace could tell that the conversation they were having was a grim one. Both of them looked concerned, and a little pale, as they looked down at the six dozen or so spare rounds they had left.
Grace chewed silently for a while. The shadow of the barricade loomed large overhead and the sun was just now beginning to crawl over its tip. But there was no warmth. Nothing felt warm and safe in the darkness cast by that monster…
"So…" she said, swallowing down a hard lump of anxiety in her throat. "Now I'm back, are we all accounted for?"
"God is good, yes we are." Joly said merrily. "Enjolras may have given you a bit of a mouthful, but he was rather worried for you, Degas. We all saw him pacing all night and manning the top of the barricades, just in case you stumbled into view."
Grace blushed a little and looked bashfully at the floor. She stirred her porridge awkwardly for a few moments, before snapping her head up and looking around the camp once more.
"Hang on…I don't see Marius." she said, her voice edged with concern.
"Oh, he's sulking about in the tavern, over there." Grantaire said, pointing his spoon again behind him.
Grace looked over his shoulder to see the windows of the building behind them smashed, and the interior almost gutted. The wood of the bar had been torn up and, most likely, added to the spiked monstrosity of the barricade, but a few broken stools remained. And there, sitting on a precariously wobbling three-legged chair, was Marius.
Grace handed her bowl to Javert and took off in the direction of the tavern. His head was hung low as she approached, his hands fiddling with a bit of rope. He was trying to pull apart the fibres and wind them into something strong, but his fingers were slow. His shoulders drooped low.
Grace placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, and the boy didn't even look up.
"No word back from Cosette yet?" she asked gently.
Marius silently shook his head. She couldn't see his face at that moment, his eyes still cast to the ground, but she wondered how drawn and hopeless he looked after a night of torment.
"There still might be time…" he said reassuringly.
"You told me that her father would have her across the ocean as soon as their bags were packed." Marius said monotonously. "She most likely left with the light of dawn."
"But…Eponine? Do you know if she got your letter to her?"
"No idea. I haven't seen her since I sent her away to the Rue Plumet. And with all of the soldiers crawling the streets now, I doubt she'll want to come back into our district. Eponine is clever. She'll stay away from this place."
Grace hoped that Marius was right. She sent up a quick prayer to God that Eponine wouldn't want to come back to Marius's side after escaping the shadow of the barricade. But she wasn't hopeful. Her stomach squeezed anxiously…
"It's too late for all of us here now, but perhaps Eponine can go somewhere quiet and green." Marius continued on. "If I die, I die. What is life without Cosette, after all?"
"Marius…" Grace sighed. She grabbed another nearby stool and pulled it opposite the young man. He raised his head up off the floor a fraction when she took a seat. His eyes red and puffy. "You can't go into whatever this will become thinking like that. Do you understand?"
The young man said nothing. His whole face was a hollow pit of despair.
"Listen to me…" Grace said, grabbing his hands. The rope he'd been holding in his palms scratched along her skin. It dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. "You want to live. Day by day, you'll learn to let go of the loss, but you'll never let go of the love."
Marius shook his head softly as tears welled in his eyes.
"Is this what Cosette would want for you? She'd weep to hear you talk like this!"
"She should not weep for me. I would not wish her to shed a single tear over me."
"I thought like you once…" a stony voice suddenly said behind Marius.
Grace cast her eyes up to see Javert standing at his back, the two bowls of porridge in his hands. Marius too craned his heavy head up off the floor and looked at him with despondent curiosity.
"I was once heartbroken and adrift. And I callously threw myself into a world of danger and violence because I believed I no longer wanted to live…" Javert continued, his low voice quavering slightly. "But no matter how hard your heart is broken, the world doesn't stop for your grief."
Grace stared up at him with tears in her own eyes. She could feel that grief that he spoke about, still twisting its way through him like a knife. Somehow he'd learnt to shoulder it. To bury it deep within him for many, many years. And she could see that it took a lot of him to drag it up from its murky depths. To have done it for Grace was spectacular. But to be repeating it here too, for Marius, was nothing short of miraculous.
"I learnt this truth too late, young man. So, don't close your ears to it." Javert said to Marius. Marius waited with a strange, quiet stillness as he stared up at Javert. "Grief is not a weakness. It is not an illness. It is not a sign that you are dying, however much you wish it was. It is a sign that love has been a part of your life, and that you want that love to continue."
"I don't want love that's not her love." Marius said heatedly.
"I know. But grief comes in two parts. The loss of the life we had, and the making of another. And the fact that you're here tells me you do want to make a new life for yourself, for others, for the ones you still care for…"
Marius rose to his feet and looked Javert in the eye, his face stony. "Perhaps after your grief, you found another love, Monsieur, that made you feel like you'd never truly loved before. But I will never love again. Not after her."
"Marius…" Grace sighed again.
But her words were cut short by the sounding of a bugle close by.
Everyone in the camp went as still as statues, turning towards the screeching announcement of the bugle like alerted hunting dogs.
Javert was the first to turn back. Was the first to look around to find Grace's face. His eyes were wide and full of fear. Grace's throat went tight with terror; she'd never seen Javert look like that. And she wondered why the sound of that bugle made him lose his calm when war and bullets and maelstroms had not.
"DEFENDERS OF THE BARRICADE! HEED ME!" a voice cried over the tangle of wood. "WE ARE MANY AND YOU ARE FEW! WE HAVE REINFORCEMENTS AND YOU DO NOT! YOU ARE SURROUNDED! NO ONE IS RALLYING TO AID YOU! GIVE UP YOUR GUNS OR DIE!"
Some of the people of the camp had the good sense to look pale and frightened, but Enjolras soon strode into their centre, the coy smile on his mouth bright and huge.
"Don't give them even a second of your thought!" He called to them all. "Do you hear the lies they spew when they're frightened?!"
A cry of agreement went up from elsewhere in the camp, and soon the men and women around Enjolras were hurling back insults over the barricade or trying to lob bricks down from the ramparts.
Grace didn't join in their revelry. She sidestepped her way around Marius and joined him at his side.
"What is it? What does this mean?"
"That's the bugle of the sappers." Javert answered, his eyes still gazing widely, out beyond the barricade.
"Sappers? What's a sapper?"
"They…they dig, Grace. We used sappers to undermine the enemy's walls or carve out trenches for the cannons."
Grace's brow lifted with understanding. "So…if they're being deployed…then that means-"
"Enjolras!" A watcher called out from atop the barricade.
Grace followed the sound of his voice and she saw the watcher waving him up to the ramparts furiously.
Enjolras ran to answer his call, and so did Grace. She began scrabbling up the barricade, following her 'cousin' closely.
"Grace…Grace..!" Javert called after her.
But she did not stop until she stood at the summit of the mountain, next to Enjolras and that watcher. Both of them stared out to the land beyond the barricade with firm-locked jaws of grim acceptance. Grace almost didn't want to look. But she made herself do it. Peering through the thin mist of early morning.
There were figures, watery and thin, coming towards them.
They looked like banshees. Evil spirits of death and tragedy moving slowly through the fog.
And even more started to emerge. The first few rows holding what looked like pickaxes and sledgehammers in their arms, and then the others, following on behind, holding rifles.
"Troops spotted!" Enjolras suddenly cried out to the men below. "To arms! To arms!"
Grace's legs began to shake again as the boys from the cafe leapt into action.
"To positions! To your positions!" Enjolras roared, and soon they were climbing up the barricade like scurrying rats.
"Degas! Here..!" Combeferre called out to her, thrusting a rifle into her open arms. A belt of cartridges and a bag of musket shots soon followed. "I'm sorry, Bleuthielle, but we don't have enough bullets for everyone."
The doctor gave him an apologetic look, adjusted his spectacles and climbed on to his post, leaving Javert and Grace looking shocked and horrified at one another.
"You have it…" Grace said, pushing the rifle into his arms.
"No, you must protect yourself!" He said firmly, thrusting it back her way.
"I don't know how to use this thing! I'm a dreadful shot! Just ask Grantaire!"
"Then there's no better time to learn!"
Grace began to tremble quite ferociously. She looked down at the cartridges and the bullets in her hands, both of which were shaking in terror.
"Fifty or more!" Another man on the ramparts shouted.
She began to hyperventilate. Her blood turned to acid in her veins.
"Come on! Put these on!" Javert tried to say calmly, but it came out rather as a barked order. He pushed the cartridges over her head and tied the bag of bullets to her belt.
"Oh fuck…Oh fuck…!" She breathed shakily.
"Wide stance! Push your feet apart!" Javert continued, the familiar, strange calm of the soldier settling back over him like an old instinct. He kicked at her boots, forcing her feet to move until she stood more solidly rooted to the floor of the barricade. "Now quickly, start preparing your first round!"
"I can't…! I can't…!" Grace panted.
"You can! You must!"
Grace sobbed and shook her head.
Javert grabbed her by the lapels and roared into her face. "Focus, Grace! You must! You have to now!"
The anger in his eyes was enough to shock her out of her panic.
She took in a deep breath.
Grace gave him a feeble nod and reached for her first cartridge of gunpowder.
Javert prepared himself for the cracks and pops. He braced himself for the surge of terror that he always felt inside when he heard gunfire. The desert would always find him. The sand would collect at his feet again. The fear would take him back there.
But when the first of the shots from the sappers sounded off, and he heard Grace whimper with fright, that noise was enough to keep him here. She was enough to keep Egypt at bay. He had to stay here for her.
And he had to get both of them through it, to the other side
"Open fire!" Enjolras roared.