"Tirechappe? I detest that place!" Frollo argued, cleaning the spilled pap away from Quasimodo's chin. He scowled at the notion of once again setting foot into his childhood home. "Besides, I only return to that accursed place if I have to. I don't enjoy making social calls."
"I know that, Claude, but you really need to come with me," Jehan attested, sincerity now in his voice. "Don't you want to know what might have been uncovered in your house? Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"But you have no idea what it is?" Frollo asked sarcastically. He curled his lip now as he now examined the stain of barley and water coloring his black robe.
Jehan shrugged. "No, but I want to find out."
The judge rolled his eyes at his brother's naïveté. "And you don't worry that this might be some sort of trap conducted by my tenant?"
Jehan chuckled. "Always overcautious, aren't we? Stop worrying so much! Besides, you're Minister of Justice; Duval wouldn't do anything to you!"
Frollo pondered it for a moment. He made it a point to even avoid that damned street on his patrol routes, as to avoid having to look upon that wretched place. But if seemed that important to his brother, would it be so terrible to indulge him in this little mystery? "Very well," he caved with obvious reluctance. "I will accompany you, Jehan. But I will be on high alert for anything suspicious if this is a trick of some kind."
The boy smiled widely. "Great! We should leave now! The sooner the better!" he beamed, tugging Claude by the arm in an attempt to rush him out the door.
Yanking his arm away, Frollo turned from him and took his adopted son in his arms before saying, "Why don't I just meet you in front of the Palace of Justice in about an hour?"
"I'll be there!" Jehan called as he ran down the steps, exiting the bell tower with great enthusiasm in his step.
"Ignorance truly is bliss," Frollo commented to himself after his brother was gone. The child's wriggled in his arms and Frollo now seriously wondered what his tenant, Duval, must have found in Tirechappe.
X
"How long has it been since you've actually been to Tirechappe, Claude?" Jehan inquired as he sat across from his brother inside the dark carriage.
Frollo furrowed his brow as he thought hard about it: How long has it been?
It seemed like it had only been a hub of painful childhood memories, words and strikes against him at the hands of his father. One of the last times the judge had been inside was when he had received word that the plague had spread to his family's home. Upon entering, the young man had discovered that his parents had succumbed to it and an infant Jehan had been abandoned.
It was a moment like this in which Claude had concluded that the house might be cursed, vowing never to enter it again, even having one of his servants collect the dues of his tenants rather than doing it himself. As the new lord of the manor, he would rid himself of this shack if he could. He would have sold the property if he was not reliant on the meager rent money it brought it, something necessary for a university student with an infant brother. Soon afterward, Claude had leased the former residence to a man named Duval and his peasant family that would bring in a form of income, most of which would later go towards funding Jehan's vices.
Reeling back to the present where his younger brother patiently awaited his answer with an inquisitive look on his cherubic face, Frollo answered, "I have not ventured inside the estate in many years."
"Why not?" Jehan quickly asked, absently looking out the window.
Frowning heavily, Frollo rebuked, "I have my reasons. Let us just assume that I have never been fond of such a place and leave well enough alone." Truthfully, he had always been somewhat grateful that Jehan never pried too much on his life before his brother came around.
Jehan waved his hand in indifference. "Fine, Claude. Keep it all bottled up inside then."
For a moment Claude envied Jehan's free spirit—never having to worry about returning to the source of such dark, troublesome memories that still haunted him. Always able to rely on others to shoulder the burden of his constant gaffes and mistakes. Blissfully unaware of all that he had endured for his "beloved" baby brother.
Not much later the carriage came to a halt and Jehan eagerly jumped to get out, but not before Claude elbowed him back. Stepping out first, black cape billowing behind him, the judge set his eyes upon the once great manor. It seemed as though its tenants were not as enthusiastic about proper maintenance as his family had been: once a pure white was now a dull yellow with hideous vines creeping up its walls, paint chipping off the ancient shudders, and weeds popping up every which way.
They would be rolling in their graves, the Minister thought cynically as he examined the state of the house. He remembered his parents paid handsomely for the artful upkeep by their groundskeepers. He was shaken from these thoughts when he heard Jehan pound loudly on the front door, stepping forward to join his younger brother who grinned heartily.
Seconds later, a haggard old man opened the door. "The brothers Frollo," he gruffly addressed, bowing to the Minister. "Please, come in."
Inside, Frollo's expression turned into a scowl as he examined the interior of the home: once a pristine and neat noble home was now a cluttered mess, littered with empty wine jugs and held a lingering scent of both alcohol and meat.
"Disgusting," Frollo muttered under his breath. He remembered how accustomed he was to navigating through his own home as a child, expertly avoiding his parents' many cherished furnishings.
The old man hobbled on a cane as he led the brothers into the parlor. Unkempt white hair, complete with a scraggly beard, and dressed in equally dirty white clothes, he looked as much a part of the estate as the worn furniture within. The withered old man turned to the elder Frollo. "Minister, I haven't seen you in a while. Usually a landlord does regular check-ups on his property."
"With my position and schedule, it does not leave me much spare time to be constantly inspecting my estates, which I can see," Frollo retorted, motioning his hand towards the clutter behind him. "Is at its finest." With that sarcastic jab, he flashed a condescending smirk.
"So," the Minister continued, batting away one of the numerous flies that buzzed around ceaselessly. "What did you request our presence for, Duval?"
"Well, I ran into this blond devil, and, as you've probably heard, I told him that I have found something that might interest you, Claude."
Frollo nodded and glanced over at Jehan, who was subtly ransacking a nearby chest. "Jehan!" the judge exclaimed, his little brother coming to his side. "Well then, what is this "something" that is so important?"
"Follow me," the man Duval ordered, leading them out of the room and up the stairs, the steps creaking in protest. The judge noticed the abundant dust motes floating around in the beams of scant sunlight coming in through equally dusty windows.
Frollo looked around the house, remembering being a teen and the Parisian nobility gathered there to celebrate his baby brother's christening; how he frantically ran through the home after finding it deserted when his parents had died. He left the estate with his brother in his arms and feeling more alone than he ever felt before. A small instance of guilt passed through the steely judge, leaving his chest feeling heavy.
Duval led them forth to the door that lay at the end of the long corridor, opening it to reveal the room that once belonged to Claude's parents, or, at least, his mother. Hesitating, Frollo felt as though a cold force prevented him from following his tenant. Shaking off the feeling, he followed into the large bedroom.
Like most of the house, the room was not the most well-kept and harbored an eerie sensation that unsettled the judge. He was not superstitious, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say he felt as though something were watching him in this room The only remnant left of the previous owners was the large oak armoire where their father once kept various weapons.
"So," Jehan said glancing around the room, sniffing at the musty smell pervading his nostrils. "What are we looking for?"
The old man pointed toward the large armoire, prompting the brothers to exchange confused looks.
"My grandsons said that there's something behind it," Duval explained, now leaning heavily against the cracked wall. "Something attached to the wall, as they claimed."
Suddenly, it occurred to Frollo that there was something…significant about this armoire. But what? Years away from Tirechappe left the memory long gone.
"If there's something behind this thing, we'll take care of it," Jehan assured, hugging his brother. "After all, money's no problem. Right Claude?"
Shrugging him off, Frollo made his way towards the armoire and grabbed one side of it. "Jehan, help me and take the other side."
The brothers pushed the heavy furniture forward away from the wall, though with some difficulty considering Jehan was not used to such manual labor and resulting in Claude doing most of the work. The younger made an evident show of how heavy the wooden obstacle was with an audible groan.
With the armoire out of the way, peeling away the many cobwebs with it, the group was baffled that of all the possibilities of what could be hidden behind the armoire was in fact a metal latch in the middle of the wall, accompanied by the outline of space about half the size of a regular door.
"What the hell is this?" Jehan wondered aloud, stooping to examine the hidden compartment.
His brother shared in his puzzlement, racking his brain for answers to what it was. However, whatever it was, it had long been forgotten by the Minister.
"Well don't just stand there," old Duval said. "What's in there?"
Frollo stepped forward and lifted the latch and forcefully pulled, the sound of thin wood creaking as the small compartment revealed itself. He and the other two looked in amazement at the secret space that now lay before them. Though the tiny space inside was dark, the only thing visible was a large rectangular mass covered by a white sheet.
What…? Brushing away more cobwebs, Frollo pulled the object out of the space and into the light, Jehan ripping the sheet away to reveal a stack of wooden frames that held…paintings. Frollo blanched, bile rising in his throat and instantly remembering…
Pointing at the frame, Jehan asked, "Claude, who is this?"
The Minister studied the contents of the paintings, his heart becoming stuck in his throat as his gaze met that of the portrait's subject: a large, austere-looking man with a thick, black beard, broad nose, black chaperon, and fierce gray eyes. He could have let the painting fall flat on its face had Jehan not narrowly caught it.
"Well?" Jehan nudged his brother in the arm. "Who is it?"
For some reason the judge could not find the words to answer his brother, shuffling away. It was coming face to face with a ghost—a ghost that was never adverse to reminding him his place as a child, whether with a switch, whip, or his bare hands.
"The late Minister of Justice," Duval gravely answered instead, quickly averting his tired eyes. "Isn't that something?"
"Yes," was all Frollo could respond with, tearing his gaze away from the portrait. Even in death, you can't escape him, he gloomily thought. "That, Jehan, was…our father." Even as a mere oil painting, there was a harrowing sense of dread pressing on the judge making him tense up as he looked into the identical gray eyes.
Jehan's mouth hung agape at his brother's revelation. "You're bluffing!" He pulled the painting closer into the light to examine the mysterious man he had seldom heard about.
"Truly, I wish I was not," Frollo lamented solemnly. A certain old resentment he hadn't felt in years had began to bubble up inside him, making him tighten his hand into a fist.
Jehan continued to examine the painting with great fascination. "Well, it's clear to see who I didn't get my looks from; but you look a lot like him, Claude."
The statement sent a chill up the Minister's spine. It wasn't the first time he had heard such a "compliment", and it never failed to sicken him to his core. Even growing up, he loathed to be compared to that man.
"What I want to know is," the old man interjected, hacking a loud cough. "Why are these things hidden in my wall?"
Frollo sighed. "I think I might know why…"
X
It had been days since the former Minister of Justice and his wife had been taken by plague, leaving behind their two sons. Claude had arranged their funeral and the fate of his baby brother, never letting on to others how terrified and alone he felt. Needless to say that it had been a whirlwind of emotion for the young man.
Claude had needed a source of income to provide for him and his brother; other than the fief of Moulin, he had rented his family home of Tirechappe to a peasant family. The first thing to do was clearing out most of the remnants of his deceased family members. But other than his dorm at the University, where could he possibly hide these last few effects?
Unbeknownst to the rest of the world the young man had not been taking the recent events very well; he had been alleviating most of his pain with red wine, dulling his senses and judgment. In the dead of night, after completing his reading and studies, he had to nurse this inner wound he knew how.
In his frustration, Claude only wanted to see such relics gone—out of sight, out of mind. But he could not bring himself to have them destroyed. On a particularly difficult Sunday, intoxicated, he stupidly hired a carpenter to make an addition to the manor…somewhere where he could hide these dreadful possessions. Make it quick, make it fast, but it wouldn't be cheap. But at this point, he couldn't care less. After cleverly disguising this crawlspace behind his family's old armoire, the future Minister had completely forgotten about it…
X
"I'm assuming this is our mother then?" Jehan was fascinated by a painting of a pale, fragile woman whose golden locks were held back by a thin veil.
"You assume correctly," Frollo replied, now staring pitifully at the young lady in the frame. "The poor woman: trapped in a hollow marriage to a self-centered, uncaring, and licentious bastard." He wasn't usually one for foul language, but here he decided that the man deserved it.
Jehan and Duval looked with surprise at the judge's spout of resentment. "Come on, Claude," Jehan retorted, waving a hand back at the man staring back at them on canvas. "I'm sure he wasn't that horrible."
Frollo shot an icy glare at his brother in response as he tried not to lose his temper. How little he knew of their family...
"You didn't know him, Jehan," Duval chimed in, trying to play diplomat between the brothers. "Old Nick Frollo, your father, was a, umm...a cold man, to say the least."
"That's an understatement," Frollo commented with blatant hostility, glowering again at his father's face. How he wanted nothing more than to fling this image into the nearest fireplace he could find. A fitting place for such a man.
"Really?" the younger one inquired, arching his brow at the two. "What did he ever do to you, Claude?"
Frowning, he vaguely said, "More than you could imagine." The topic of their family was not one that Frollo discussed with enthusiasm, if at all, despite a young Jehan's constant inquiry. He wanted to avoid the history behind many of the Minister's abundant number of scars that he consistently kept hidden.
"Well, most of the old geezers at some of the taverns tell me different things about him," Jehan callously pointed, tapping the edge of the frame with his finger.
"Like what?" the irritated judge was now curious to know what falsities Jehan's drinking companions might have fed him.
His brother explained, "I've been told that he was a powerful, no-nonsense man who ruled the city with an iron fist."
"Sounds right so far," Duval agreed, scratching at his beard. "But lacking in few details."
"I also heard that he knew his way around the whore-houses, you know, like the Val-d'Amour," Jehan smirked at the statement, no doubt reverent to where he might have inherited his prowess from.
Frollo felt nauseated that his brother would actually be impressed with this, never knowing the burden that he himself had carried because their father's escapades. "Another wretched truth," he admitted regretfully, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck.
"Looks like we both took a little after him, didn't we?"
The Minister was filled with revulsion by Jehan's amusement. "Never compare me to such a vile man," his voice was low and threatening, matching the viperous glare he now shot to his brother. "You have no idea of the shame and humiliation that he brought to our family."
"Jehan, perhaps it would be best not to continue this conversation," Duval warned as he peeled himself away from the wall with evident pain, not wanting to see the brothers get into exchange verbal blows—or physical ones.
The teen examined a new painting as he ignored his brother's fierce demeanor: a serious young boy—dark black hair, thin lips, and crooked nose—sitting in the center of a large library. Frollo loathingly studied the artwork, wishing he had destroyed this particular relic long ago.
"Happier times here?" Jehan teased, inspecting the depiction of his brother.
"None whatsoever," the judge deadpanned. He remembered that day: his father had commissioned a painter—an old Flemish man, perhaps—from far away to have the piece done at the insistence of his wife who wanted a painting of her son, probably around nine or ten years old. He sat for hours, bored and miserable, as the artist took his time capturing every detail—even muttering swipes and insults which did not go unheard by the subject. Accidently shifting in his discomfort prompted the artist to openly express his frustration and the Minister to harshly remind his son to sit still, Claude wordlessly obeying. Frollo recalled his father conversing with the artist in Latin, seeing as the family did not speak Flemish.
The judge looked at the signature adorning the frame, barely making out the name Jan van Eyck.
"Even as a child you looked like you hated the world!" the teen commented, laughing at his brother's expense. "Nonetheless, you look adorable, Minister!"
"So I assume that you want to remove these things from Tirechappe then, Your Honor?" Duval inquired, drawing close to the judge and tilting his head towards the artwork.
"I suppose so," the aggravated Minister answered. He sneered as his brother continued to examine the paintings. "Jehan, help me with this."
After pushing the armoire back into place, Frollo bid farewell to his tenant, promising to send for someone to collect the next rent, before he and Jehan carried the paintings back to the carriage. As the carriage began moving, Frollo could not keep his eyes from wandering to the art pieces that lay between him and his brother.
"So what are we going to do with these things?" Jehan piped up as he pulled back the sheet to take another look at them.
"Honestly…I am not entirely sure," Frollo admitted, trying to keep his attention from the artwork, as they now seemed to mock him. "I myself do not care to display these mementos in my home."
"Well I can't keep these in my dorm. Come on, Claude, you have to keep these paintings!"
Frollo curled his lip at his brother's pleas. "And why would I do that? Why should I hold onto these artifacts that are constant reminders of the past, which should remain untouched?"
Clasping his hands together, Jehan gave his most innocent and pleading look, before again saying, "Please, Claude! I was too young to remember our parents, and these are the last things I have of them! You have to!"
The judge was loathe to admit it, but Jehan might have had a point. If he did away with them now, it would effectively erasing their family name off the face of the earth. Even he was not so cynical that he could do such a thing. "Alright! Enough of your incessant whining! I will keep these paintings at the Palace of Justice; but I will not display them."
"Fair enough!" Jehan chirped, gleefully smiling.
"I swear, Jehan, one day you are going to have to stop crying like a child to get what you want," Frollo scolded, leaning back in his seat.
"Admit it, Claude: you want to hang onto these paintings just as much as I do!"
Frollo schooled his expression into one of indifference. "I wish that were true," he clipped before averting his gaze from his brother's accusing eyes.
Jehan was confused at his brother's reply. "What exactly happened between you and our parents, Claude?"
For a brief moment, the judge's expression almost looked…pained. "That discussion is best reserved for another time. But let me give you some advice." Frollo now leaned closer, his expression now familiarly cross. "Do not think so highly of our father, considering you had never met him. And this is possibly the only time I will say these words, so savor it: you are fortunate that you were orphaned, as you did not have to suffer the same experience that I did."
Jehan blinked at his brother's cryptic words. Frollo, on the other hand, remained rigid and grim-faced.
"You really do have a lot of unresolved issues, don't you?" Jehan broke out into another fit of laughter, his brother sighing in exasperation.
"You have no idea," Frollo muttered under his breath and began circling his temples.