High City on a Hill (ch8)
12 August 2022 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeFive- and six-thousand-word chapters are definitely not a good idea, from the point of view of getting them typed and proofread... Here at last is the Masquerade that should have been posted weeks ago.
I decided at the last moment that I really needed to unmask Hertha (having, if truth be told, forgotten in the course of the chapter that I'd stated at the start that she was wearing one like everybody else, in conscious opposition to Raoul and Christine who are transgressively running around in canon without theirs). So she temporarily takes it off immediately before the Red Death shows up, and is thus exposed for everybody to see her reactions afterwards -- and for Christine to unintentionally catch her eye, which I don't think would be likely to happen if Hertha still has a gilt mask on.
I was going to alter the corresponding passage at the end where Hertha is given back "the handkerchief and reticule I’d left behind on the chair", neither of which had been explicitly mentioned and are just my guess as to what a party-goer might routinely be carrying around, in order to hand over "the empty mask I'd left behind on the chair" instead. But the inserted allusion felt too strained and obvious, and it didn't seem to make much sense for Hertha to put her mask back on in the name of convention when she was about to walk out of the masquerade and go home (I was tired and uncomfortable, and I'd had enough), even if the shielding effect might at that moment be welcome.
So in terms of continuity she just implicitly puts it down in the moment before she catches sight of Christine, and remains unmasked for the remainder of the chapter. One can assume, if wished, that she may have put it in the reticule :-p
I hope nobody is going to be thinking about that sort of detail, but having explicitly said that Hertha was masked earlier on I think I do need to say explicitly that at some point she takes it off!
Chapter 8 — “Why So Silent, Good Messieurs?”
The great foyer of the Opera Populaire was filled with bright silks and fantastical costumes, as if some exotic stage production had spilled out from the auditorium and taken over the building with a cast of thousands. Masked figures were to be found gossiping in alcoves or pausing to exchange greetings on the grand staircase, and aging devils in tights and red horns danced together with angels whose wired wings were bobbing across plump shoulders beneath their haloes of gold foil. A Julius Caesar with a lopsided laurel wreath was conducting a flirtation with a demure Diana, who was fending off his attempts to lift her mask with reproving taps from the silver bow and quiver she bore. Waiters circulated amid the throng, and the orchestra ensconced in a corner behind red velvet ropes could be seen to refresh themselves from time to time in a less decorous fashion from brown bottles.
Madame Firmin, hot and flustered in hoops and a powdered wig, had heeded my advice and eschewed the draperies of an odalisque for the stiff skirts of a Dresden shepherdess; her husband and Monsieur André had evidently failed to consult on their respective costumes and had both arrived dressed as skeletons, to their mutual discomfiture. I thought I recognised Carlotta Guidicelli’s formidable presence in a statuesque redhead masked and gowned in an elaborate design of bats and spiders, and the peacock fan and unmistakable throaty giggle belonged to Eugénie d’Hapageon, whom I’d known before my marriage. We’d seen very little of one another of late, but I knew she had recently acquired a husband of her own, doubtless the middle-aged Neptune who was trailing after her through the throng and menacing suitors rather ineffectually with his trident.
For my own part, I’d taken inspiration from the old Vicomte’s library and come in mediaeval kirtle and bliaut as the unrepentant Héloïse, with her hair falling to her shoulders and her maiden’s girdle belted high above the sinful swell of Peter Abelard’s child. It was a costume I had at least attained the figure to carry off.
I had joked with Raoul that by the time of the ball at the Opera I should be in danger of having to attend as a hippopotamus. But the joke was on me. At six months gone with child, amidst the jostling, swirling crowds —all of them eager to push up to the Vicomte de Chagny and offer their congratulations on the success of the event, and all of them seemingly endlessly eager to dance the night away— I was beginning to feel myself every bit as awkward and ungainly as those lumbering animals at the zoo. I was conscious of various bodily indignities, and I very much needed to sit down.
Dr Leverdier had assured me that peasant women who laboured in the fields until the first birth pangs were upon them came far more easily through the ordeals of childbed than aristocratic ladies who were overcome by fatigue at the slightest exertion, and that for the sake of the child I owed it to myself to remain as active as possible. At the time, that had seemed less a hardship than a licence to do precisely as I pleased, but I was beginning to foresee that with the advancing months even everyday life would become more and more exhausting. Just at the moment, the idea of adopting a languid pose upon a chaise-longue and having lavender-water dabbed across my temples had never held such appeal.
With any luck, we would be able to leave soon; I certainly had no intention of remaining for the unmasking at midnight if it could be helped. I shifted my weight and tried to catch Raoul’s eye from behind the gilded shield of my mask. Impatient as ever, he’d cast off his own altogether and was resplendent in a cavalry officer’s frogged tunic and pelisse, an outfit that set off his figure admirably, in a way of which he was not in the least conscious but which had been attracting admiring glances from other women, as I was all too well aware. He’d scarcely left my side all evening, but the constant press of company and the dictates of politeness had meant we’d barely been able to exchange more than a few words.
Just at present he had been accosted by a tall woman dressed incongruously as Mother Goose, in whom I recognised the poetess Edmée Villiers. Doubtless, I decided uncharitably, she was hoping to win support for her latest collection of charming verses.
I laid a hand on her sleeve. “Forgive me, Madame — a word with the Vicomte, if I may... Raoul, I’m dying in this heat and crush. How soon do you think we can decently go home?”
He looked stricken, and I knew a pang of guilt. This evening’s celebrations represented the culmination of all he’d been working on for the last six months, a triumphant affirmation that the Opera was undaunted and undiminished, and I’d been adamant that I wanted to attend. If anyone had tried to oblige me to remain behind quietly at my own fireside, I should have been seething with resentment and ready to believe the worst, and to do him justice Raoul had never once suggested it. And now here I was after barely an hour or two begging him to leave, like a child who has stayed up to see her first adult party and found herself overtired, and the glamour of anticipation all worn away by headache and tedium.
“Here, let me get you a chair.” His arm was round me, all concern, and I let him support me back to a seat among the dowagers, sinking down with gratitude to take the weight off my aching feet. Raoul was examining me with obvious worry. “You should have said sooner... Do you feel ill? Should I fetch a doctor? Will you be all right if I leave you for just a moment to get a glass of water?”
“I’m fine.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Truly I am. I’m just more tired than I thought I would be, that’s all. And thank you — I’d love a glass of water, if you can find one.”
Edmée Villiers was hovering behind his shoulder with an anxious expression plastered over avid curiosity. Raoul brushed her off and exchanged a few words with the formidable matron seated to my left, a splendid set of diamonds displayed across her splendid shelf of bosom, patted my hand in reassurance, and plunged off across the room in search of refreshment. My neighbour bestowed a smile in my direction, dispatched Madame Villiers with a single well-chosen phrase, and offered me her fan. I deployed it with relief, feeling clumsy and inelegant, and less like Héloïse than ever.
She had taken the lover of her own desire in defiance of the Church and her uncle’s authority, borne the fruits of that union with head held high, and regretted and repented nothing in the long life that followed, save only the maiming of Abelard by her uncle’s bravos in vengeance for their sin. She had not ceased to love him even when he was unmanned, and she a nun. She had been brave, and proud, and the most learned lady of her age... and she had known exactly what she wanted and scorned to hide her heart.
My eyes swam for a moment, and I set aside my mask to wipe at that unaccountable blurring. Despite myself I found my gaze searching for glimpses of Raoul through the crowd, trying to seek out the familiar line of his shoulders amidst preposterous costumes and towering wigs. There, by the buffet; I caught a flash of gilt from his uniform as he turned, head bent for a moment in profile in answer to some question.
An instant later the throng had closed in again between us and I could see no more. But that one glance had told me everything I already knew.
The girl behind Raoul wore a gown of midnight blue fading to faintest rose, Christine Daaé’s costume as the Star of Dawning. And Raoul’s face and figure, in that unguarded instant, had spoken of denial and of a shared despair from which I was utterly shut out.
I did not need to know what they were saying. Did not need to see Raoul turn abruptly away, leaving that forlorn little figure. I’d heard —overheard— it all before, in the yew alley at Beauvais, and I did not know if I would ever be able to forget.
Christine had taken the news of our departure with the frozen stillness of a mouse beneath a wind-hover, as if any protest might bring down disaster. I’d tried to convince her that there could be nothing left to fear, but none of my reassurances had had any effect. Her eyes had kept going back to Raoul with the whipped-dog look of one who has been betrayed, and in the end, exasperated, I’d left him to deal with her and gone to bed.
It had been on the next morning, cold and bright with the promise of coming spring, that I’d gone out to walk in the old yew alley. The sun was gilding the tiles and walls of the east turret, high above, and the close-clipped hedges, laid out long ago in the fashion of a bygone age, were no longer as gloomy as they’d seemed all winter but formed a sheltered private gallery in which I could take exercise up and down to my heart’s content. My nerves were still on edge, both from Christine’s perceived ingratitude and my own sense of guilt at tearing her from a refuge to which she still clung.
But she had not been happy at Beauvais any longer, beneath the old Vicomtesse’s disapproving eye. Besides, it was ridiculous for a singer of such talent to be burying herself in the country in the role of a glorified lady’s-companion. She should be studying with the best teachers, I told myself, in Leipzig or Vienna if she was afraid to return to Paris. I would see if Father had any contacts who could help.
It was in that moment, just as I’d come to my decision and turned, that I heard the voices from beyond the dense curtain of yew; hers on an edge of anguish, and then a moment later his.
“We can’t.” Raoul’s voice, with a raw note in it I’d never heard. “Christine, I gave my word.”
A glimmer of white movement through the boughs that had to be Christine’s dress, virginal against the chateau’s weathered stone. She came closer. “I can wait— you know I can wait. Let me go on like this, living on glimpses at a distance and crumbs of hope—”
“No hope.” It was jerked out of him like an oath. “If I’d known...”
“I did know,” Christine said very quietly. “I knew from that first moment I saw you again. Before I knew that she—”
“I gave her my word.” The stark agony in that bit home, all unknowing, as deeply in my breast as in hers. “I meant to keep it. I thought I could... Nothing can happen between us.”
“It has.” Two words, tiny and desolate.
“Then,” Raoul said steadily, “it must be as if it had not.”
Silence. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. Watched the flutter of the girl’s white dress, her face turned up to his. Heard her whisper his name, barely a breath, and turned away, sick at heart. I had no right to see this, and she— she had no right to plead, to look so lovely, to mean so much to him, to have come too late.
I did not know whether to hate her, or myself, or both. I had been a fool, a wilfully blind fool to trust him and to pity her... only there were no words of comfort or of passion between the two who stood so close beneath the chateau walls, nothing save a sob from Christine, and the sound of her feet as she fled.
It was a long time before I heard Raoul move, and when I looked up to find him at last he stood there still rigid against the wall, head bowed between his arms. Only I could not go to him. We could not speak of it, not this, not ever. He was mine by law and by loyalty, and by the joining of our bodies, but he had never been mine in the way that mattered now.
And so I had said nothing, to him or to Christine, and had kept from him the churning of hurt that was bitter in my throat. It was clear enough now why he’d contrived to spend so little time at Beauvais. His mother had shot closer to the mark than I had guessed, and yet been more wrong than she could have imagined. The only thing I did not know was whether it was his own resolution he had not trusted to such proximity, or that of Christine.
There had been no confrontation; nothing acknowledged at all. Christine had gone almost without a word, back to Paris and the apartment on the rue Saint-Sulpice and the jealous protective arms of Lisotte. I’d scarcely set eyes on her since Raoul and I had come back to town, but I’d been acutely aware of her presence tonight, and she, no doubt, of mine.
If it had been a contest between us, then I had won — by default and from the start. I had a household, an attentive husband, a child to come: everything I’d wanted from my marriage. Christine had no power to take that from me, and I thought she was too gentle to try. Only it did not feel like victory, not for any of us. And none of it had been my doing.
I could not hate Raoul. When it came to it, I could not even find it in me to hate Christine. But I could not reach him.
It must be as if it never happened, he had told her, and where our existence together was concerned it seemed he was determined to make it true. We lived side by side, as close and yet as detached as before, and managed a mild joke from time to time or even a comfortable night by the fireside, without any hint of the yawning silences that sometimes seemed to me to lurk behind the most casual word. I’d never known I had such a talent for dissembling. And Raoul... whatever Raoul was enduring, he’d clearly resolved to spare me —as he saw it— the slightest cause for concern.
A dozen times already I’d come close to flinging my knowledge in his face. I wanted him to suffer. I could not bear the thought of his suffering. And as the weeks went by we pretended, both of us, that all was well, and I had begun to believe that perhaps, with time, it would be. Perhaps, with time, I would forget what I had learned of my heart and of his, and we could be content with being kind to one another.
When you could not have what you wanted most, kindness could still mean a great deal. There were many women in Paris —many women here tonight— who could not say as much when it came to marriage. But my eyes went back again to Christine Daaé, and to my husband returning to me across the crowded room, with a glass of water and a gaze that sought anxiously for mine... and did not even for one stray moment allow itself to glance behind.
A tall gentleman dressed as a dashing musketeer bent over Christine, offering her his arm to sweep her into the dance. Between us, costumes whirled and parted, a mass of bright colour that broke and foamed away like the ebbing rush of the sea. When I saw her again, she stood still frozen and alone.
An instant later —as Raoul reached my side, as the music came to a sudden, discordant halt, as the Red Death began to stalk down the staircase and Christine moved at last, one hand flying to her mouth in horror— it began to dawn upon me that we had indeed made a terrible mistake. Only not the one that I had thought.
The Red Death walked abroad, all bloody clad from head to foot, from the sweep of his vast feathered hat to the cloak-hem that eddied at his heels, and wherever he passed all gaiety ended. I had not seen him arrive. No-one had. He had not been in the hall until this moment, and perhaps only Christine, poor frightened Christine, had ever imagined that he might come — and yet, even before he spoke, there was no doubt at all in my mind as to whom this must be.
The Ghost had taken form at last, and chosen to attend the masquerade. And he had done so in the guise of grinning death.
“Why so silent?” His voice mocked us all. “Did you truly suppose you had seen the last of me, messieurs? Phantoms are not so easily laid... or at such little cost. I fancy six months’ salary will prove a tidy sum.”
Gilles André, sweating and ungainly in his ridiculous skeleton suit, let out something that might have been a moan, and the great head swung towards him, unerring. “Oh, you need not fear for your pocket-book, my dear André. I shall expect more from you than mere cash if you are to buy back my favour.”
His laughter seemed to run all around the room, crawling on my flesh with the persistence of nightmare. I reached out for Raoul almost blindly, uncertain even as my fingers found his whether my clutch was for reassurance or to hold him back from folly.
The Opera Ghost had decided to come out into the open and deliver his latest threats in person, and yet he’d done so in a way calculated to make fools of us all. He’d made Raoul a present of a hundred witnesses, not one of whom could provide any description that would not be laughed out of court. I could feel Raoul rigid and trembling beneath my touch; I too was shaking, but in my husband’s case I thought he was caught between the man’s mesmeric power and a sense of pure outrage.
In his other hand Raoul still held my forgotten glass of water, clenched as tight as if it were a weapon’s hilt. If the thought so much as crossed his mind he was more than capable of dashing the whole thing on impulse into the Red Death’s face, futile and dangerous as that might be.
At the foot of the stairs in that same instant the towering figure reached into his cloak, as if to silence the merest breath of defiance, and I flinched. He could not have read my mind. He could not.
It seemed he could not. At least, his gaze swept over us without pause and returned to the wretched André, and to Firmin, frozen in the crowd.
“I see you had forgotten me.” His voice dripped a mockery of disappointment. “Did you think I had forgotten you? See, I have brought you a gift... and you will make me a gift in return. You will stage my masterwork.”
From beneath the cloak he had pulled out a great manuscript-book, wrinkled and bulging between its clasps. Now he brandished it as if it weighed nothing at all, and none of us could look away. His voice filled the farthest recesses, a clarion call of scorn and power.
“I have written you an opera, and one such as you have never heard: ‘Don Juan Triumphant’!”
He flung the score to André, who caught at it unthinking and staggered, staring down at the book in his hands as if it had been a shell with smoking fuse. A strangled sound of protest escaped Firmin, but the Ghost turned on him.
“Every detail is complete, and you will stage it precisely as it is written. Precisely, or there will be consequences. Perhaps your imagination cannot conceive of worse things than a shattered chandelier, monsieur, but I assure you mine can.”
Another step forward. One hand shot out, gloved fingers curled and beckoning. Hands of ice, Christine had said...
She was there, alone where Raoul had left her, stricken and staring. The Red Death’s skull tilted a little as if in summons, and the fingers reached forth. Face and throat ashen above the midnight blue of her bodice, she made a movement towards him, jerky and unwilling. Then another.
When he calls again, Christine’s voice whispered in memory, I will come against my will...
She looked round, once, in desperation. Perhaps she was seeking Raoul. But her eyes met mine, and hers held a terror that left me sick to the heart.
“No!” I sprang to my feet. Tried to spring to my feet, forgetting my ungainly body. I clutched at Raoul, and found his arm around me, half-lifting me from the chair and holding me tight. The glass of water, disregarded, slipped from his grasp and broke, with a flat sound that splintered the chord of tension in the air. Christine gasped and fell back a pace, and the skull-head swung round, the caverns of its eyes pinning me without release.
“Hertha Graupmann.” His voice slid intimately across me as if somehow obscene, seeking out every weakness, every crack that offered entry. “Did you think your moneybags could buy you acceptance? That the world would forget where you came from— what you are?”
Raoul’s arm around me stiffened, withdrew; came back tighter than before, and the Ghost laughed, flaying us both. “Are you truly blind, madame, or merely complaisant? You will not hold him long. And you, Vicomte— take your pleasure where you will, but the girl is mine.” His voice rose to a crescendo, snarling. “Her bonds belong to me!”
A flash, and a sudden eruption of smoke, as if fuelled by that all-consuming fury. Dazzled, I heard the hiss of Raoul’s breath; someone cursed, and a woman cried out. Then there was nothing, nothing but a babble of voices and a fading image of that flash, dark on white... and smoke beginning to ebb away across a clear space of marble on which the Red Death had stood.
He was gone. Gone... and in the wake of that severance, like a puppet held up only by taut-strung dread, Christine Daaé crumpled and fell, and not a soul made a move to help her.
There would be gossip enough after tonight, and the most righteous, as ever, would be those with the most to hide. I looked round at Raoul; saw him visibly conflicted, but in a direction I had not in the least expected.
Taken aback, I followed his gaze to a lean, dark woman whose figure was vaguely familiar... A moment later, even as memory placed her, my own attention sharpened into understanding.
The girl at her side, tugging at her elbow, was Meg Giry, and this was Meg’s mother, the ballet mistress I’d seen backstage. She was turning back now towards Christine, who had after all been under her care as one of the ballet corps. There was nothing strange in that. What marked her out among the crowd —what had caught Raoul’s eye almost at once and held him frozen on the point of indecision, as scandal could not— was the fact itself that she had been looking the other way. Everyone in the hall, all of us present when the Opera Ghost had pulled off his vanishing trick, had been left staring blinded and blinking at the spot where he had last stood. She alone had not.
She perhaps alone had caught sight not of where he had been, but of where in the course of that trick —for trick it was; I told myself that— where, in the course of that trick, he had gone.
“She knows something,” Raoul said in my ear, voice taut and low. “Madame Giry— she has said too much, made too many hints, brought in too many of those notes...”
Even as I looked, she was shaking off Meg’s hand; turning back, with a final glance at Christine, to slip into the shadows, towards that same obscure little passage on which she had been focused at first. Raoul, arm still around my waist, made an instinctive move to follow, and caught himself back with a stifled breath.
“Go.” I pulled myself free of his support. “Go after her. I’ll be all right.”
I could feel the hesitation in him still. But in another moment it would be too late.
“Christine—” It was jerked out of him painfully, in what might have been plea or confession. Perhaps both.
“Later.” I caught up his hand, pressed it to my cheek. Brushed my lips against it, heedless of bitterness or consequences, and thrust him away. “I’ll see to it. Go— go!”
Madame Giry had crossed the hall and vanished. Raoul met my eyes with a nod, and followed, swift and light-footed.
I watched him go, conscious of the gaze of those in the crowd—hostile, prurient, curious— on myself and on Christine. But he had resolution enough not to glance back at either of us. I sighed, gathered my skirts, and went forward to the empty space at the foot of the stairs where Christine Daaé lay, easing myself down to kneel awkwardly beside her.
She was no longer alone. An indignant Meg Giry had pushed through the ring of onlookers and was busy fanning her friend’s face, chafing her hands and demanding that somebody should do something. Christine raised her head a little, and Meg slipped an arm underneath it, glaring at me with the air of a self-appointed guard dog.
It was a little late for that now, I thought wearily, especially if her own mother had been helping to shield the Ghost. Meg’s lips were pressed tightly together, but I ignored her truculent expression. “How is she?”
“All right, I think.” Meg’s tone was ungracious. “But anyone could see she’s been under the most dreadful strain — she hasn’t been herself ever since she came back to Paris.”
It was clearly on the tip of her tongue to demand to know just what had happened at Beauvais, but prudence —or else some vestige of courtesy accorded to a Vicomte’s wife— held her back. And it was not a subject I had any intention of discussing with Meg Giry, here or elsewhere.
Christine had stirred at the sound of our voices and was trying to sit up, with Meg’s aid. She caught at my arm, distraught.
“Madame— it’s not true. We—”
“I know.” I knew a great deal more than I had wished. Could guess at what it had cost her and was continuing to cost, and at the desperate temptation that must be hers to grasp at happiness —however illusory, however illicit— for a matter of hours or of a few stolen minutes. It was all very well for men to talk of honour and sacrifice. For a girl like Christine, there was nothing to be had in return save the barren fruits of a virtue in which the world did not believe.
I kept my voice very level. “I... know, Christine.”
The flush of colour that had run up into her cheeks when she met my gaze drained slowly to a stricken white, and I thought she understood me all too well.
It made no difference. I told myself that. In this whole insane, threatening business of the Opera Ghost, our personal feelings made no difference, and mine least of all.
“I intend to go home, and Miss Giry is right — you should be doing likewise.” I did not know or care what would become of the ball after the Red Death had paid this visit, and I was not about to wait to find out. Let Firmin and André try to chivvy their guests back into gaiety and a grand unmasking, if they could. I was tired and uncomfortable, and I’d had enough.
“Miss Giry, perhaps you could see to it that she gets back safely?”
I held out a hand for assistance in rising —however reluctant, Meg could scarcely refuse me that— but it was Christine who took it, scrambling quickly to her feet. “Let me...”
She was stronger than she looked, and I was reminded that she was a trained dancer. With her help I managed to stand again, a process that had become rather less graceful of late, and she held onto my arm a moment longer. “He’s back— and he won’t let me go. Please, you have to believe me—”
I did believe her, in all respects... so far as that went.
“You should be in bed,” I said quietly. It was a peace offering, of sorts. “And so should I.”
A formidable dowager in the crowd was the one who’d been seated at my side and to whose care Raoul had confided me, what seemed like several years ago. In silence she held out the handkerchief and reticule I’d left behind on the chair, and returned a small, tight-lipped smile in return for my words of thanks. No doubt I’d given rise already to more talk than Edmée Villiers could possibly have hoped for.
I drew myself up; held my head high, remembering Héloïse. “I should be much obliged, madame, if you would have the goodness to let the Vicomte know that I shall be awaiting him in the carriage. No doubt he will be returning shortly.”
I could simply take the carriage now and go home, and Raoul would understand. But I did not want to go home alone, tonight of all nights, and sooner or later there were things that needed to be said.
