Good evening, all. My apologies for missing my usual Wednesday night posting this week; life got in the way. By way of apology, I'm offering you not just one new chapter tonight, but two.
For anyone who is wondering; the surname Erik chooses to use to get married with means "dweller in a new city." I thought that appropriate for his embarking upon married life.
Chapter 8. April 1887. Second day after Erik abducted Christine (concluded).
Christine had been greatly surprised to learn that Erik and Madame Giry apparently knew each other well – for Erik, anyway. Well enough, at least, for him to ask her and her eldest daughter to be witnesses. Erik confirmed that the Persian was not qualified to play that role at a Catholic wedding, being a Muslim; then Christine asked for an explanation of his acquaintance with the widow.
"She tended me once when I was very ill, and found out a good deal more about me than I liked. But there was nothing to be done by then, so I made the best of things and worked out an arrangement with her that benefited both of us. She was the attendant for Box Five; it was convenient to have her be my go-between, to collect my salary and for her to convey my wishes to the managers."
When they reached the Girys' flat, Adele confirmed this. "It is true, Christine. I have known Erik for some time. I will explain it more to you another time, when it is not your wedding-day. Come and see me when you can, and I'll tell you all about it."
There had followed a short but firm conversation to satisfy Madame's misgivings about the situation, as Meg stood in the farthest corner of the room, her eyes huge as she stared at the towering figure of Erik. She shouldn't be so unnerved, thought Christine with annoyance, he hardly looked as terrifying as usual dressed as he was today. Finally her mother sent her out with a sharp word. Adele, once reassured as to the changed circumstances and Christine's willingness, had agreed to swear witness and to have Meg do the same thing. Adele excused herself for a brief period to change, and they heard her exhorting the children to do the same. Then there was a visit, en masse and everyone wearing their best clothes, to the small apartment which, up till now, Christine had shared with Mama Valerius. The group filled the entire front room, and there was no place for Meg and her brother and sister to get very far away from Erik, or for him to escape them. But there was no help for it. So Christine was forced to leave a visibly discomfited Adele and her children, and a visibly panicky Erik, together in the little parlour of the flat and went into the bedroom to wake her foster mother.
The old lady was no longer in either physical or mental good health, and it took some time for her to grasp that she was being roused to go to her foster daughter's wedding. Christine worried as they got out the wheelchair which had not been used in months, and she and Anne, the maid, manoeuvred the patient to the side of the bed before helping her to stand so they could get her dressed. Mama's best black silk gown no longer fitted her at all. She'd lost so much weight of late. But it was all that was available, so Christine pinned her foster mother's garnet brooch at her throat, gave her her well-worn rosary and tidied her hair for her, and ignored the half-formed anxieties going on in the back of her mind about nearly everything.
When the two young women wheeled the elderly one out into the flat's tiny, overdecorated parlour, Erik stood instantly up out of the chair he'd been sitting warily in. His hands were trembling; he folded them behind his back, and Christine could tell that he was extremely uncomfortable and wanting to bolt. She hastily made an effort at introductions, thinking how bizarre this all was, but then forgot completely about her own unease when Erik's commendable attempt at the conventional reply resulted in Mama Valerius' clasping her hands together before her and gazing up at him raptly.
"Why, Christine, it is he!" she exclaimed. "How did you manage to convince him to appear like this?"
"What, Mama?"
"My dear, I thought the Angel would appear only to you! But yet here he is, in corporeal form!"
Oh, dear lord. It was perfectly true that Erik's slightest utterance showed the unearthly beauty of his voice, unless he were actively trying to disguise it – and he must have been too ill at ease to think of that. "Mama – this isn't the Angel of Music," muttered Christine, studiously not looking at Erik, who was now radiating displeasure with the entire situation.
"Oh, you're teasing me," said the old woman. "With a voice like that, who else could he be? I know you told me of its beauty, but it must be heard to be believed, just like you said!"
Christine tried again. "No, Mama, he's not an angel. He's a man, the man I am going to marry, and you and Anne must come with me and be my witnesses, like I told you."
She sensed the maid's curious look, and was deeply embarrassed. To be gone for days, repeatedly, and then suddenly show up with a strange man and announce, out of the blue, that they were getting married today… She hoped the maid would not spread the tale around. Doubtless most people would assume that there was only one reason for a couple to marry so precipitously, and would take that sordid explanation for granted even though it was utterly untrue. But then the fact that it might, however, soon be true jabbed at her mind. The room seemed suddenly stifling, and she wished greatly that all these people were not present. Everyone but Mama was looking everywhere but at each other.
Christine hadn't thought too much about that aspect of being married, but now she did, and was abruptly flustered. She was casting unhappily about for something to say to ease the horrible tension that had sprung into being, when her foster mother said thoughtfully, "I suppose God must have allowed him to take human form, then, so he could be your husband? Why, of course! You said you could never marry or he would leave you. But now you can, and be happy. Oh, how wonderful!"
"Mama…" Christine trailed off, at a loss. Her guardian reached out and took her hand. "I worried about that, you know," she said confidentially. "No woman can be really happy without a husband and children, and if you couldn't leave your angel, you could not have that. But now you can have both! Oh, how merciful God is!"
Christine wished that the floor would open up and swallow her. She felt as though her face had never been so red. She chanced a mortified glance at Erik, and saw that he had apparently decided to abandon any effort toward the observance of social etiquette. He had sat back down in his chair, ignoring the fact that there were multiple women standing, and had lowered his head so that she could not meet his eyes. His hand was clenched on the armrest, the muscles and tendons standing out as the spidery fingers clawed upward into the upholstery. Madame Giry looked sharply from him to Christine, nodded once, as if to herself, and straightened her back with an odd air of…resignation? Meg, also red in the face, looked helplessly from her mother to Christine; the two younger children simply appeared bewildered, thank God.
Christine was utterly tongue-tied, and was therefore abjectly grateful when Adele commented blandly, "We had better hurry up if we are to meet with both a notary and a priest today. It is three p.m. already."
Mama Valerius would not be dissuaded from her conviction that Erik was an angel made flesh, and Christine could not muster the words to argue very much. She wrapped her guardian up warmly in her fine black wool shawl, located the necessary identification documents, and then the small bridal party left the little flat, to see the business end of things through first. Christine had signed papers haphazardly, trying to avoid thinking too much. The words swam before her eyes, and she had difficulty focusing enough to see which line to sign on; reading the small print or considering any of it carefully was impossible. They must be married. She wanted to get all this over with. Erik, for his part, had written slowly and laboriously, forming his letters awkwardly as he always did, and looking so undone by everything that she had wondered vaguely if he were managing to remember how to spell his own name, let alone anything else.
His name, and therefore hers, had in fact been something she had not stopped to think about; what, after all, was it going to be? She soon found out. As she ceased to be Christine Daae, the surname she had been given in its place was Villeneuve. Erik had a sheaf of documents attesting to that as his identity, and Christine had shut her mouth firmly and said nothing to the clerk. When she glanced at Madame Giry, she saw a similar expression on the widow's face. Adele met her eyes sardonically, and then folded her hands in her lap and assumed a suitably respectful look. Christine had reflected silently that there were not very many weddings where the husband got a new name as well as the wife.
Back that first day after he had abducted her the initial time, she had asked, over lunch, which country he was from and if his first name meant he was Scandinavian. She had thought that if he were, that might give them something to converse about; it had been so awkward trying to eat with him sitting there at the other end of the table, staring at her with his eyes glowing from behind the mask, and so still that he himself might have been the statue that Don Juan disastrously invited to dinner.
But poor Erik, ignorant of the ways of courtship, had wholly missed the opportunity she offered him, and responded instead that he had no name and no country. She had realised, after a bit, that by "no name," he meant, "no surname." This made no sense; he had to have had a father and a mother at some point. But he would not tell her his family name, and had insisted that she address him merely by his first name, improper though that was at a time when they scarcely knew each other. She had not wanted to press the issue with a man who was clearly quite unstable. And the disjointed bits of information about his mother's revulsion at seeing him, which he had mentioned as he raved at her two nights ago, had made her see that the reason he would not use his family name was because of some horror in his childhood, of which he had only let tiny pieces slip even when at the height of his madness.
But one could not get legally married without a surname, and so he must have taken steps to acquire one. Christine decided she probably did not want to know the details. And eventually the papers were all in order, and they were married. She stared blankly at the unfamiliar signature. Christine Villeneuve. It did not seem to really be her name. Why had he chosen that one? She would ask him, later.
Once the legal issues were settled, it was now time to proceed to a church, and to the second ceremony which was necessary in France for those who were devout. A priest's blessing had not sufficed to make a couple legally married since the 1789 Revolution. On the way, Christine had dropped a brief note into the post, telling Raoul tersely that she was breaking off their engagement and could not see him anymore. Erik had said nothing as she did so, but appeared as though he were terrified to believe all this were actually happening. Then a thought struck Christine, and she turned to him and said, "Oh! Your Persian friend. Don't you want to at least invite him to the…ceremony?" She felt inexplicably uncomfortable saying the word "wedding" now.
"That traitorous old busybody has done quite enough, Christine, without being given a chance to call in the rest of the police force and have Erik arrested," Erik informed her, looking haughtily down the nose of the lifelike mask. "I am highly unlikely to be his favourite person in the world just now, after the debacle of Erik's torture chamber. Even though it was that meddling Persian's own fault that he ended up there in the first place."
They were skating too close to having to actually mention Raoul's name, thought Christine, and Erik did not seem to want to do so; that was likely for the best just now, so she wouldn't either. She tried to change the subject, and said, sounding rather more curt than she meant to, "Let's go, then. The Madeleine is that way." She turned and began stalking away, her heels clicking on the pavement.
Erik stood still at first, obviously taken aback, but then followed her. She must have appeared angry, though, because he said grudgingly, "I will go and see him in a few days. He must be allowed to cool down a bit first."
"Didn't you say you just dropped him off on his own doorstep? Well, then he will have no notion what happened. Why don't you send him a letter?" she asked, turning her head back to look at him. "That way he will know at least that we are all safe and well, and you can tell him that we are…married."
Married. Oh, God. She felt dizzy again, but then Erik lengthened his stride back to what was natural for him and came up alongside her, and with an air of incredulous delight about him that was extraordinarily moving, tentatively extended his arm. And she could not do anything but take it. She felt him quiver when she did so, and the muscles of his arm were hard as iron under her hand. There was an answering shiver in her own stomach, and she wasn't sure what it meant. Soon they would be really married, not just signing papers. But this was right, she reminded herself, this was what they were going to do. All brides felt misgivings, it was normal.
She focused her eyes on his shoes, finely made, black leather wing-tips, and he said placatingly, "I will do so. Yes, I am sure he has no idea of how things went after he fell asleep in Erik's parlour, and will be very worried. A letter will reassure him, you are right, and give him time to stop being angry with Erik before Erik pays him a visit."
His voice helped. Her doubts eased a bit, and her stomach settled. After a few moments of silence, Christine glanced up at her maestro, and realised that this was the very first time she had ever seen him in the light of day. It seemed fitting that that first time would be their wedding-day.
It had been a small and simple ceremony. Though it had actually taken place in the same church that Erik had insisted he wanted, his wedding mass was not played. He did not seem to mind. His hand had trembled so that he could barely get the ring on Christine's finger. The cold, clear images of the day were permanently imprinted in her mind; Meg's doubtful looks, Adele's sternness, the worn rosary twined in Mama Valerius' knobby fingers and the expression of serene devotion on her aged face, the priest standing before them, and the light falling through the stained glass windows onto them in many-coloured patterns as they kneeled together. And the leaping, irrepressible light of complete and overwhelming joy in Erik's golden eyes, that had strengthened her resolve that she was indeed making the correct choice.
O-O-O O-O-O