High City on a Hill (Ch11)

[igenlode]

Having an all-female graveyard scene definitely changes the dynamic here (and forces Christine to take a more active part)...

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Chapter 11 — “You Betrayed Me”

It was, as I’d suspected, not “La Reine de Navarre” but the Ghost’s self-proclaimed opera “Don Juan Triumphant” that was under rehearsal. It was strange and monstrously difficult to sing, Christine explained, and hazarded a hesitant opinion that it was “no doubt very clever”, from which I was able to draw my own conclusions.

I gathered that Carlotta Guidicelli, who had been obliged to accept a part far beneath her usual star billing, had been rather more forthright in expressing her opinions of the music, its composer, and a management spineless enough to allow such a travesty to see the stage. There had been scenes; the latest of them this afternoon, but the worst of all two weeks ago on the day after the masquerade ball.

It was a day I remembered all too well, but for very different reasons. The day of that shattering encounter with Raoul when I’d given up —run away— and left my husband alone with nothing to hold to between us but that grim determination to bring down the Opera Ghost.

I’d never so much as thought to ask myself where he had gone in the hours that followed, after I had left him. It had been straight to the Opera, to walk in on a meeting with the managers and on La Carlotta’s half-hysterical accusations that Christine herself had somehow orchestrated the entire affair.

“I thought I would go mad.” The thread of Christine’s voice was barely audible above the sounds of the carriage. “That evil woman screaming hate — Monsieur André and Monsieur Firmin pressing me and pressing me to play the role — Madame Giry whom I’d always trusted, hovering there like some bird of ill omen...”

And there had been no-one to take Christine’s side. She was under contract to the Opera Populaire; she had a duty to sing as she was ordered, even if it was an open secret that the orders came at a lunatic’s behest. Even if she knew better than anyone else the depths of that lunatic obsession, and what it could do.

The Vicomte —Raoul, my husband, who had laid out for me, with a vividness that stung, just how deep her terror ran and how desperately she feared to fall under the Ghost’s dominion— had said not a word in her defence. He’d barely even acknowledged her existence. The room had begun to fill with clouds of anger, with the Vicomte’s cold distance as suffocating as the rest. When the managers had insisted that she had to sing in this opera in accordance with the composer’s demands, Raoul had withdrawn enough to make it clear there could be no appeal in that direction.

I’d flung Christine in his face, had I not? With the wounds still raw from our encounter of that morning, he must have flinched inwardly at every moment. The knowledge should have brought with it some kind of satisfaction, but there was none to be had.

I’d told him the only way to the Ghost was through Christine Daaé, and shrugged off what that might mean for her. Now I heard the echo of my own words in Christine’s halting account of that meeting.

Fresh from our separation, whether in expiation or in a change of heart, Raoul had proceeded to lay out a scheme for the Ghost’s capture to which her presence was vital. If the Ghost wanted her in the leading role of his magnum opus, then he should have her. If he wanted Box Nº 5 for his private use, then he should have that as well. All that they needed was some means to ensure that their elusive opponent was, for once, in a known place at a known time... and what composer, after all, was likely to miss the premiere of his own work, least of all a performance that he had gone to such extraordinary lengths to procure? He was arrogant enough to believe he held the management at his beck and call, that he could force the whole Opera House to do his bidding, and as with all criminals that arrogance would be his downfall.

They would go through the whole charade of staging the new opera, whatever the expense. (“And what on earth are we to print on the playbills?” Firmin had protested fretfully. “An unknown work, by a nameless composer — preposterous!”)

There were only five entrances to the vast edifice of the Opera Populaire, each with its concierge. By its nature, the building had few windows at street-level, and all of those were barred. There was only a single pass-door that led backstage from the auditorium; only a few points of access to the network of ladders and roped platforms up in the flies.

The building was huge. It was also surprisingly easy to seal off.

This time, they would have the overwhelming advantage of knowing when to expect him. If and when the Opera Ghost chose to make another of his vainglorious displays, there would be men armed and waiting to close in.

Only everything rested on Christine Daaé. It was her voice alone that could bait the trap; her presence that formed one of the Ghost’s principal demands. Gilles André had adopted a paternal air, laid a heavy hand rather too warmly upon her shoulder, and assured her that she had nothing to fear, that a guard would be posted outside her dressing-room, and that she would be accompanied at all times backstage: “We shan’t let a phantom run off with the star of our show!”

His jocular phrasing had brought on a further tirade from Carlotta, interspersed with protests of equal vigour from Piangi, the principal tenor, on the grounds that nobody had offered him any additional protection, and that he, after all, was the one taking on the title role. Raoul alone had stood there with a set, determined face amidst the wrangling and said nothing at all.

“I had to do it. I had to take the part.” Christine was twisting the edges of her shawl between her fingers again. We had crossed the river, and were driving through the northern suburbs of Paris, past streets of little houses I did not know. “They— all of them see it as some kind of battle against a criminal, a confidence man who aims to ruin the Opera. Only it’s not like that. He’s not— not like that. I’m afraid of him, yes, but I know him, know him better than anyone else, even if half what I thought I knew was a lie, and the rest leaves me torn between pity and terror.”

She swallowed, looking away from me out of the window, where a long grey wall had come into view.

“He taught me so much. I owe him so much. And he is so dreadfully lonely, so afraid of being hated that he sees the whole world as his enemy... It isn’t the money. It was never about the money. It’s the music he cares about. The music and— and me.” The last word was nearly inaudible. “Oh, Hertha, to be loved like that is horrible — to have a man crawling at your feet, hating himself, suffocating you with worship you never wanted or deserved, always there, always watching—”

The horses were reined in, and the carriage halted, the driver clearing his throat. “Here we are, Mesdames.”

He did not dismount to open the door, and Christine reached out to do it herself, struggling to keep the various packages that surrounded her from tumbling out into the road. She managed a somewhat inelegant exit, thrusting back a final box that threatened to accompany her, and closed the latch hastily, looking up to meet my eyes. “I’m sorry. I— I said too much. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m very grateful to you for bringing me here, but this... this is something I need to do on my own.”

She glanced over her shoulder, to where a low archway in the wall led through to the long rows of graves beyond. The last of the afternoon light fell on clipped cypresses and statues bent in attitudes of eternal grief, and the gravel walks were neatly kept but at this hour quite empty. On the far side of the road, the houses had dwindled to little more than the occasional hovel, with rough pasture beyond. On a summer’s morning, it might have been picturesque. At the end of a chilly day it was merely grey and deserted. It was not a place I had any desire to visit, and whatever impulse of desperation had driven her to confide as much as she had, it did not bring with it any obligation for me to accompany her.

“By all means — a visit to a father’s grave is a private affair. But I’ll wait for you here. I can’t imagine there’s a cab to be had in these parts, and you can scarcely walk back into town alone at this hour.”

From her quick flush I could see she had not thought that far ahead. I did not suppose, either, that it had crossed her mind —even if she knew of it— that her unworldly, disinterested Ghost had in fact been bleeding the Opera systematically of money under the previous management, long before any mention of Christine Daaé had been made.

I leaned forward and rapped for the driver’s attention. “We wait for Mademoiselle — understood?”

Further grumbles under his breath, but he could scarcely demur. Nor could she.

“Thank you,” Christine said quietly, and a moment later was gone. I sighed and peered out at the silent marble monuments, wondering how long it would take her to pour out her troubles at the graveside and perhaps come to some resolution about this opera. Raoul’s scheme for entrapping the enemy had merit, I had to admit that, and after all it was only the same suggestion that I had made. Keep Christine on the stage, keep her in Paris, and sooner or later the Ghost would show an interest. And if her reluctance was such as to estrange her from Raoul in the process, then surely that at least, I told myself, surely that could only be to the good.

Only... if she were to back out altogether, as I thought she well might, all Raoul’s labours of the last fortnight would be gone for nothing, and we would none of us be any safer at the end of it. She had to face her fears, had to for her own sake above all... but she had been close to hysteria when she fled from the rehearsal this afternoon, and in my heart of hearts I had to face myself with the knowledge that I had had a hand in that.

Who knew what advice her father would have given her while he was alive? And then there was the debt she felt she owed —in a sense, undoubtedly did owe, whatever the motives that had prompted that aid— to the Ghost as her erstwhile teacher, who had helped mould her voice into what it was, a thing of beauty that was a gift to all the world. Christine might easily come back, tearstained but firm, to announce that she was not prepared to sing in this opera after all, even if that choice were to come at the cost of her contract.

In which case, I reflected somewhat ruefully, I might well find myself in the position of having to convince the management —and maybe even my husband— that today’s intervention really had been just a disinterested attempt to help. It was hard enough to explain that impulse to myself, let alone to prove that the whole journey hadn’t just been a contrivance by a jealous wife to pour poison into the ear of a rival and remove her from the scene by any means possible.

Well, we would cross that bridge if it came to it. However much I might prefer Christine out of our lives, Raoul, at least, knew that the last thing I wanted was to sabotage the production — and just at the moment, I had other concerns on my mind. I was becoming increasingly conscious that thanks to the delay, I was yet again in need of relieving myself.

In my current condition it was a discomfort to which I’d become resigned, and not the most inconvenient of them. The roadside was empty, and a decent period had elapsed since Christine had left; sighing, I descended awkwardly from the carriage into the open air, with a word to the driver, and began looking for some privacy in which to perform my natural functions.

It was when I was struggling to my feet again, one hand on the cemetery wall, that I heard it: an odd tug of sound, almost inaudible.

Come to me... come to me...

Without thinking I turned towards the path, into the heart of the cemetery where the twilight was beginning to gather grey and the shadows were no longer distinct. The summons called to me, drawing me on with a promise of hope, of serenity, of an end to fear and a place to be cherished and belong. Tears filled my eyes for the beauty of it, and I was drawn forward, closer and closer, stumbling in my haste. I was tired and heartsick, so very tired of longing for what could never be mine, and now at last I was desired and understood, embraced and wanted completely...

Only I was not. The child kicked within me like a hard stab of reminder. I was not a dreaming girl lost in prayer at the graveside, imploring some sign from beyond. I was not beautiful, romantic, vulnerable — not in that way. I was a married woman in her sixth month, growing ungainly, and no tragic heroine to drift among the graves to a lost lover’s call.

How he would laugh, that unseen Voice, if he were to find me waddling eagerly forth! I was not wanted here at all. It was Christine for whom the honeyed tones whispered — Christine who was in danger — Christine for whom the trap had been laid.

The baby I carried moved again, fists and feet flailing in what seemed less like their usual dance than a spasm of unspoken distress. I leaned against a tall cross to catch my breath, cradling the swell of my body as if both to give comfort and to seek it. “I’m here, little one, I’m here.”

There were marble monuments on either side of me like an avenue of menhirs, massive tombs raised by subscription and statues that averted their tears or spread protective wings over the grave of a child or beloved wife. Any one of them might have concealed a watchful shadow in the dusk. But the voice came from ahead of me, borne on wings of another kind.

Come... come to the Angel...

I set my teeth and began to walk forward again, this time of my own free will. My hands had clenched into fists and I could feel the nails biting into my palms. If I came upon the Ghost, I meant for it to be on my terms and not his.

It was Christine I sought, and Christine whom I saw first. Her upturned face was a pale patch against the obscurity beyond, and she was moving forward, step by step, with the dreamlike slowness of one caught in nightmare or struggling against a spider’s web. Beyond her the letters DAAÉ were carved into stone, and darkness clung beneath an arch like a vast yawning maw.

For a moment, with that summons still beating in my ears, it seemed a portal had opened to claim her into the underworld. I tried instinctively to cry out; felt my voice crack and fall away. Christine did not hear me, or did not turn. High above, where a great cross reared against the fading sky, another figure moved. Cloaked arms spread like the wings of a carrion crow.

He was plumed and feathered, as he had been in his guise as the Red Death, but this time all in black. In this place of the dead he had discarded the skull mask, and beneath his hat there showed an odd bone-white gleam in the shape of a half-face, cut away like the crescent moon. It was as effective a disguise as the other; under the wide hat and in the encroaching dusk I could see nothing of the rest of his features alongside that stark white. Now he raised his head, and the single empty eye seemed to stare directly into mine.

There was no passage to the abyss, I could see that now. Only her father’s heavy sarcophagus, set deep into its alcove like its neighbours, as clumsy and ornate as the portrait that hung in his apartment still. The beckoning name was not hers, but his. It was not her time to cross the threshold... yet overhead the dark angel stooped, arms spread wide to engulf or embrace, crooning to her with a power from beyond the grave.

Mine, the summons whispered, mine... mine. Music is mine, protection is mine. Come, lost child, be happy... be safe... be mine...

“...be mine,” Christine echoed, entranced, arms outstretched, “oh, be mine...”

“Stop it!” Words burst from me at last, hoarse and ugly against the mesmerising beauty of that call. “Stop this, I tell you — leave her alone!”

The Ghost took no notice of me; why should he? The white half-face floating in the dusk did not —could not— change expression, yet it seemed to mock. I was plain, ungifted, of tainted blood. My figure was thickened and my dress gaped at the side where I was in sore need of Madame Walbroek’s new costumes. Clumsy, ridiculous, no kin or kith to the girl—

With a gasp I broke free from the black annihilation of that gaze and ran forward to drag at Christine’s arm. “No! Fight him— fight it! Christine, you have to know this is not your father!”

I could feel the sudden shudder of awakening. She caught her breath with a sob, turned, and buried her face against my shoulder.

“Hertha, I—” She was trembling from head to foot, but the spell was broken; the terrible compulsion was gone, and it was only the two of us alone at dusk in front of her father’s grave.

Or not so alone. “Interfering again, Madame?” The words were edged with threat, but it was discernably a man’s voice, shorn of its otherworldly power. I’d cracked open his illusion and brought the whole thing crashing down to earth — and maybe I was as crass and prosaic as he had tried to make me believe, but here and now that was a strength in itself.

“Do you think you can just hypnotise her into your fairy-tale? That you can keep her prisoner to your power forever? You know very little of our sex, monsieur, if you think that is the way to win the heart you so much desire!”

His breath hissed. “And you, Madame la Vicomtesse —the unwanted wife who flees an empty bed— you would be an expert in the holding of hearts, I suppose?”

Servants talked. I’d thought I could keep scandal from Raoul’s door. I should have known better.

No doubt my absence had been food for gossip all over the Opera House. That knowledge hurt, in more ways than one.

“I don’t think we have anything to say to one another, you and I.” I put Christine aside, and moved forward, interposing myself between them. “Your shabby tricks won’t serve here. She knows now what you are, and to what lengths you will stoop — mountebank and fraud.”

“Such eloquence, Madame. Such brave insults!” There was a sudden snap and splash of fire from one raised hand, and despite myself I flinched.

Schooled myself to swallow, hard, and take another step forward. It could only be stage tricks. Stage magic.

“Your courtesy leaves something to be desired, monsieur. As do your methods of courtship.”

“Indeed? And yet I have no recollection of ever appointing you as arbiter of either!”

Another crack and ball of flames, close enough to lick at my skirt with a warmth that was all too real. Babies died, every year, when their trailing petticoats caught fire. Women writhed, screaming, from the consequences of a spilled lamp or an unguarded grate.

Without thinking, my hands had flown to shield the curve of the child. I left them there; forced my terror and fury alike into defiance. I was utterly defenceless, and we both knew it. It was my only weapon.

“Is that the only answer you have — more violence? More death? Do you think you can win Christine’s love with the murder of an unborn child?”

Another fireball, this one close enough to graze my cheek. It dawned on me with sudden force that if I’d contrived to shake his aim enough, he might kill me without even intending it.

Panic turned my knees to water, and I sank down. But it was not a graceful movement but a clumsy lurch, and one that caught my foot against the kerbstone of a grave behind me. Taken unawares, I overbalanced and fell sidelong with bruising force.

For a moment, all breath driven out of me, I was numb. Then a deep, griping pain ran through my body, bringing with it a deeper pang of terror that cut through swimming senses.

It was too soon; far too soon. If this were childbirth, then the baby would die, and there was nothing —nothing!— I could do. Why had I been so rash? Why had I ever intervened at all in something that was none of my affair? Christine had cost me my peace of mind and my husband. If I were to lose my child on her account I could never endure it.

I curled around, trying to shield myself. Felt rather than heard the brush of Christine’s skirt beside me as she moved. Her hands pulled at my shoulder, uncertain, desperate. “Hertha? Hertha, we have to get away from here— oh please, please be all right!”

I groaned, and tried to huddle further away from her insistence, afraid even to breathe, as if by so doing I could somehow keep the child still and safe, nestled deep within the body that threatened to betray me and cast it out untimely into the world.

Christine got an arm around me and hoisted me almost by main force to my feet, doubled over as I was. She was trying to drag me out backwards, and on balance that seemed like a sensible idea. My feet moved almost without my willing it, and I gasped and clutched at my middle again, unsure if what I was feeling was real or only spasms of dread.

“Hertha— oh no.” Half-sobbing herself, Christine had us both moving. Away from that shadowed tomb. Towards the gate. But it was so far, so hopelessly far, and it came to me for the first time that I was lost in this place... “No, please no — come on!”

Christine at least knew where she was going; had been here before, in sunlight and of her own accord, with no dark whispers to cloud the mind. I clung to her, trembling, and felt my head begin to clear.

I had... I must have fainted, or something very close to it. What a foolish thing to do. Almost as foolish as attempting to drive off the Opera Ghost empty-handed... I tried to crane upwards to see if that black figure still clung against the cross, but Christine tugged at me.

“Hertha, no— come—”

“So you turn away from your tutor?” The voice crashed across us like a breaking wave, and at my side Christine flinched, lowering her head as if to shoulder through. “So you shun all that I can offer, too proud to admit there is much still to learn?”

“I’ve learned enough!” She halted abruptly and swung round to face him down at last. “I came here torn by an impossible choice, and you have made it easy for me. I was foolish enough to feel some loyalty, and you betrayed my trust. It’s plain now you are nothing but the thief they call you — when you wept at my feet I thought you could change, but still you choose to take by deceit what might be freely given. And just because you pretend to have some grudge against the Vicomte de Chagny, does that make his wife and child fair game?”

“Intemperate actions bring their own risks.” Cold arrogance. “As your encroaching rival needs to be taught.”

“She— Even if she were my rival, do you suppose I would want you to give out some kind of self-appointed punishment from on high?” She was trembling, but her arm around my shoulders was like steel. “I owe you nothing any longer. You’re not my tutor — you’ll never be my tutor again. And if you try to beguile me even once more, I’ll hate you for it as long as we both still live!”

Silence that echoed like a cold wind blowing. I found my breath, leaning less heavily against her.

“Goodbye,” Christine said very clearly into the growing dark, and together we began to run.

“Come back!”

It was the cry of a soul in torment. Christine shuddered, but did not turn.

“So be it!” Distant anguish had snarled into menace hurled in our wake. “Then let it be war— war upon you also!”

Only it had been an undeclared war on her for a long time, I thought, gasping as another cramp threatened. All that had changed was that at last he too perceived it as such.

~o~

There was no pursuit, though a one-legged man could have caught up with the pair of us. It seemed the Opera Ghost could not or would not descend from his high vantage point, to go blundering among the tombstones like any drunken yokel coming after his wife with the strap.

Clinging to one another, Christine and I made it to the gate through the grey twilight. She had said not a word, but when my cheek brushed hers I could tell it was wet with tears.

It had been a far longer wait for the horses than I’d intended, and they were very restive. The driver began to expostulate as soon as he caught sight of us, but Christine cut him short.

“Madame has been taken ill. You will drive her back home at once, by the shortest way. It’s urgent.”

One look at my face must have confirmed her words. Christine propelled me up into the vehicle with more force than grace, and I caught at her hand and held it, the two of us sitting together in the dark while the driver, muttering half-heard imprecations, adjusted carriage-lamps and harness and began to back and turn.

The return journey seemed to take forever, and there were long periods when nobody spoke. I was rigid with tension, waiting for further contractions that would spiral into the inexorable convulsion of a child born too soon. The pains were irregular, deep pangs that seemed to wring me from within whenever my fear had begun to ease.

Surely— surely, I told myself, they were too far apart to be taking effect? It was just a warning, that was all, just a protest from a body of which I should have taken more care...

“I’m sorry,” Christine burst out suddenly, muffled, as we turned into a wider boulevard and reined in abruptly for some obstruction up ahead. “I never meant— I didn’t know, or I would never have gone. This is the last thing I wanted to happen. I’m sorry, so sorry...”

Courtesy and long habit demanded that I should demur; should offer reassurances that of course she was not to blame, that she could not be held responsible for the actions of the Opera Ghost. Only there was an implacable part of me that did hold her to blame. If it had not been for Christine I would never have been in that place or acted so rashly, and if the worst came to pass no profusion of apologies could wipe out that knowledge.

So I said nothing, and took a harsh, unfair pleasure in wounding her by my silence. If I had been in her place —I could picture it vividly enough— if I had had to stand aside and watch Christine Daaé swelling with child by the man I could not have, I knew well enough that my emotions would not be unmixed if she should come to grief. And however full of remorse she might be, I did not suppose Christine was any more saintly than the rest of us.