Chapter Twenty-three

Larks chattered in the trees like arguing lovers. Christine did her best to ignore them. The secluded spot in one of Chagny’s more remote gardens provided a needed respite from the hustle of her Chateau. The moss on the bench she sat on was cool to the touch. One hand absently stroked it, while the other clutched her prayer book to her chest. She stared at the distant walls of her home. The revered Chagny ivy, mere specks of green on the stone from this distance, spread as it would, like gaunt fingers across the walls. She wondered if they were attempting to claw their way into her heart.

Christine hated those vines.

She sat beneath the canopy of a chestnut having shooed away her lady-maid and the handmaids dutifully attending to her. Her body mended, but she could not speak for her heart. After weeks of being doted upon, she welcomed the blissful solitude.

“My heartfelt condolences on your loss.”

The shadows the immense tree cast could have come to life, and she wouldn’t have feared it as much as she did that voice. The hound bounded into view first setting the hairs on her neck on edge. Instinctively, Christine pressed The Imitation of Christ closer to her breast. Her breath shuddered past her lips. “What are you doing here?”

Loup leaned on the tree. “I follow where my hounds lead. Did you miss me?”

Those vine-like fingers tightened their grip on her. Loup follows where the hounds lead.

Were Erik and that woman here?

Loup leaned in, seeming to read her mind. “If the hounds are here, then she is near. If she is near, then is he?” Loup swept his arm in front of her, and unwillingly she followed his gesture across Chagny. “What shall I do when I find him? Bring him to you and tell him your womb is free for his child? Oh, pity, you can never bear his child now, can you?”

“My daughter was born to the man I love. As was my son! She was a beautiful little girl. You are never to speak of her! Never!”

Loup plucked the stem of a nearby rose and began to shred its petals. One by one blood red bits landed at her feet.

“Would Erik’s children be beautiful, do you think?” Loup’s lips pursed. “Is it possible he might seed another woman’s womb? Do you think that he might select someone else to be the object of his—tutelage?” Bit by bit the pile of petals grew. Loup changed tactics and tossed them in her lap instead. Their scarlet hue contrasted the deep black of her dress. “What do you think of another woman carrying the Angel of Music’s child? I’m sure he will have children someday. He is, after all, merely a man.”

Christine bit her tongue and watched the wind carry the torn petals from her lap.

“If it were you bearing his child, would the child be born looking disgusting or with your beauty?” Loup chuckled. “Forgive me. I ask such silly questions. You’re in love with a nobleman. You’d never ponder such inappropriate things, now would you?”

Christine flinched as he leaned in close and blew in her ear.

“Care to lie with me?” he cooed. “I don’t mind that you’re worthless as a woman, now that your womb is ruined. What’s one more man to desire between your legs?”

“I desire only my husband.” Her stomach churned. She was going to be sick.

A shrill whistle cut through the air as Loup called for his hound. “You’re practiced in the art of deception. Try as you may, you can’t deceive yourself.” Loup reached down and fingered the black lace on the collar of her mourning dress. “A fitting color for you. The color of the man she loves—Erik.”

“I love my husband.” The wind carried away her sigh.

“Lucky for you our arrangement still stands. I won’t tell your husband that you sit here wondering what, if any, children will be brought to your Angel of Music by that scandalous harlot, Anna. I won’t tell your husband you weep over the fact it will never be you in Erik’s bed. If you’ll excuse me, my hounds need to rest before we take to the hunt again. Your lover awaits my attention, my pockets your payment, and my lips a bit of refreshment.” He sauntered down the grassy path toward Chagny calling back to her over his shoulder. “The offer for my bed stands, by the way.”

The faint strains of Alouette twanged in her ears as he disappeared. Christine’s fingers turned white against the book of prayers. Would she never be rid of her deceptions and that man? The book bent in her hand as she clung to it. Loup was right. Her point as a woman was destroyed. She could never give her husband another daughter. She could never fulfill the dreams of the man she loved.

Unbidden, the image of Anna giving Erik all the love she couldn’t give Raoul rose in her mind. Christine swallowed the heated rock in her throat and regarded the ivy of Chagny. Though she couldn’t see it from a distance, she knew the ancient vines arched over the entrance to the chateau and encircled the Chagny coat of arms. They crept up the sword that signified their noble right to bear arms. The sword thrust through a crown, emblematic of their loyalty to France, and a hand, palm open, rested behind the sword, not grasping the hilt, but at the ready. Chagny was most proud of that hand—of their philanthropy. Above the coat of arms, the ivy rambled around the motto chiseled six hundred years prior: Fidelity and compassion: the sacred endowments of our mind.

Through green leaves, past manicured lawns, and toward those distant vines, jealousy and envy stared at her like laughing enemies.

The vines clung to every ridge and crack, winding their way up and down the stone crypt. They stretched across its surface like a network of nourishing veins, budding out to bring a bit of life to the stone’s dead surface.

Raoul loved the Chagny ivy.

He stared at the plants thinking of how they will develop, reflecting on how he’d watch them change in the coming weeks and realizing, with a heavy heart, that he’d never be able to do the same with his daughter.

Sitting on a bench before the crypt, his forearms pressing into his legs, Raoul hung his head. His hands, folded in prayer, stroked against his silent lips as he watched the sunlight gleam against the religious medallions around his neck. Normally he’d keep them tucked out of sight, but watching Saint Joseph and Thaddeus swing gently against the newly added Saint Nicholas comforted him. The medallions swayed in the slight breeze chiming together in a high-pitched, angelic way. He’d give Saint Nicholas to André, when he was old enough.

He could never give the red scarf in his lap to his daughter. Raoul fingered it as he looked over the new name added on the Chagny crypt. There were too many names on that door.

“Monsieur le Comte?”

Raoul barely lifted his head. He let his breath seep from his mouth and returned his hands to their position. “Please, Jules, don’t call me that. I don’t want to be the comte presently. I just want to be a father.”

“Are you well?”

“I am empty.”

Legard took a seat beside him. He indicated the scarf. “A bit feminine for you.”

Raoul smiled sadly at his humor. He studied a frayed edge waving in the breeze. “It was Christine’s. It flew into the sea when we were children. I met her after I rescued it. Dove in clothing and all to fetch it.” The ridiculous things he’d done in his youth. Raoul laughed softly. “She gave it to me in thanks for my gallantry and promised it would bind us together someday.” He tore his eyes from it to read daughter’s name standing out stark and bright against the stone. “As a young boy I dreamed if that I had a girl with Christine, I’d give it to her. I’d drape it around her neck as a gift from the first man to ever love her, and a reminder that no matter what man may come between us, she’d be bound to my heart forever.” His eyes misted and trying not to be weak; he cleared his throat. “I can’t bring myself to place it in a crypt.”

Legard grabbed the back of Raoul’s neck and gave it a quick squeeze. Raoul’s bottom lip twitched knowing if he could cry in front of anyone, it was Legard.

“I am drained,” Raoul said. “Drained and tired. I can’t figure out why I can come up here and be moved to tears at the sight of my baby girl’s name on that door and not over the name of my brother.” Raoul leaned off his knees and winced at a sharp twinge in his back. He’d not moved in quite some time. He squeezed his eye a few times until his vision cleared. “How is my wife?”

“Sleeping. Something upset her. I suspect she’s still not coping well. The doctor has her mildly sedated.”

Raoul shook his head. “No more drugs. She needs to deal with this and keeping her numb to it all will do nothing. I’ll not have her compromised any longer.”

“I’ll let him know your wishes.” Legard fell silent. His pause was so heavy it made Raoul lift a brow. “What are you going to do?” he finally asked. “Regarding what you mentioned in the chapel?”

Raoul lifted his face heavenward and watched a puffy cloud bob across the sky. He’d asked himself that so many times the answer should have come quickly, yet it seemed impossible to respond. “If Christine did make a mistake and she does love Erik, what can I do, Jules? I follow the law of my faith and the church. I’ll not divorce. I can move on from this.”

“I think you’re too forgiving. Your peers take mistresses all the time, yet you’ve never even thought of another woman. If she is in love with Erik, then this is a betrayal you don’t deserve. I believe the church would understand. You love her so deeply. Don’t you deserve someone who loves you the same?”

“The church doesn’t need to understand. Only I need to. She’s blameless.” Raoul watched Legard shift on the bench and shoot him a look as if he’d gone made. “I blame him.”

Legard kicked at a sun-bleached stone. “She doesn’t act like a woman who was forced upon, Raoul. I’ve seen women who were. Your wife chose this. She has some blame.” Raoul’s face fell as long as his frown. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, Legard had a point. He watched his friend gesture toward the child’s tomb. “Perhaps it isn’t so? Christine was distressed when she called Eve her Angel of Music. Maybe she doesn’t love Erik at all.”

“Whether she loves Erik or me doesn’t matter.” Raoul pointed at the doors to the crypt. “What matters is that I’ll never hold her, spoil her, dote on her or break up a quarrel with her brother. I’ll never wrap her in this scarf.” Raoul’s voice cracked as the tears threatened to clog his throat again. As soon as that emotion came, it disappeared, swallowed away with anger as he pointed to the other name on the door. “I’ll never understand my brother or why he left me, and I’ll never understand why I can’t defeat the man who took them both from me.”

The anger seems misplaced in such a reverent spot, so Legard rose and patted him gently on the shoulder, turning to leave him to his prayers.

“Jules, don’t leave. Please,” Raoul extended his hand. “You’re the only one who hasn’t lied or betrayed me.”

Legard filled Raoul’s hand with his. The simple gesture from friend to friend allowed Raoul the comfort he needed. Legard stood silently behind Raoul as Raoul wept for his daughter and the sun faded away.

The train sighed out its remaining steam. One by one, vagabonds scanned the train yard before jumping out the boxcar and racing for cover. While the last illegal passenger darted to safety, against the far wall of the boxcar, Erik attempted to calm the pain in his head.

From Dijon and the counties of Burgundy, with its endless expanses of vineyards and quaint provincial towns, to the dairy lands in-between, Erik had made his way across the countryside of France. For months he’d followed a trail of Anna’s existence, but it was to no avail. He did nothing now but wander aimlessly. There was no point in trying to make it to Dieppe. She was gone, and he’d convinced himself that the stories he had heard of her along the way were nothing more than well-crafted lies.

Erik did his best to disassociate himself with the world he despised. He was no stranger to loneliness or solitude, not even a stranger to bitter resentment and untamed anger. Yet after tasting a life of being loved, the darkness he now experienced sucked his soul into places even he couldn’t describe. Optimism had died upon the last empty camp. Foolish expectation faded, and a curtain of silent despair drew across his mind, blinding him to anything other than desperate misery. Without Anna, whose hands had always pulled his veil of madness aside, he lived in vain; he hoped in vain, he loved in vain.

Never knowing if he would see the rays of joy again, Erik embraced his destiny and shrouded himself in the chilling echoes of madness.

Sitting on the splintered wood floor of the boxcar, he listened to the sounds in his mind. His madness sounded like the din of voices in a crowded room, scrambled by the howl of a gale force wind. The music in his mind had disappeared long ago. It no longer existed anywhere in his life. Without music, there was nothing to chase away the strange mix of “screaming whispers” as his mind sought silence but found only chaos.

Outside the slumbering train, Erik could hear a heated conversation riding just above the noise in his mind. A voice, scratchy with age, insisted upon sneaking aboard the boxcar and a younger, feminine voice demanded they cover the distance they needed to slowly. Erik shifted and tried to ignore their ranting. His eyes dipped shut, as the argument grew louder. All he desired was darkness.

Erik barely got his eyes closed before he bolted upright.

Did he hear his name? The arguments switched from French to German. He heard something about leaving a horse behind.

Or maybe he didn’t. Perhaps this was just another cruel trick of a wishful heart. Erik squeezed his eyes and slammed his head back against the metal wall. The sound ricocheted like gunfire around the boxcar. Anna was dead. He had watched her burn.

The piercing sound of an infant’s wail vibrated against the air. Erik, his heart flipping, jerked off the wall and strained to hear what came next. The argument became impassioned. The older voice demanded they travel in comfort for the child, while the woman argued it was too risky, they may be caught sneaking onboard. Her voice grew louder and louder the closer they came to the boxcar door. She explained her fears of the authorities and—

“Chagny!”

What had she just said? Erik shook his head clear as he rose, swearing he had heard mention of Chagny, but nothing met him but silence. Balling his hands into fists, he pressed them against the throb in his temple. This was madness playing tricks on him. This whole situation was a joke; a brutal string of lies meant to swing him on a violent pendulum before plunging him into an endless abyss of loneliness.

Erik paced along the rusty wall of the boxcar fearful he was hallucinating. His family couldn’t have lived. The voices in his head in his mind were simply becoming stronger and penetrating the air.

The sharp cry of a baby cracked its way into his mind next and stirred what small ember of consciousness he had left. The shriek of the boxcar door sliding open shoved an icepick into Erik’s brain. From his shadow, he watched an old man clamber onto the train. Then, the man grabbed an infant, lifting the baby in the air before cradling it in his embrace. Erik’s chest constricted. The old man extended his hand. A smaller one filled it.

Erik blinked. His throat clamped the instant he saw her, his voice filling the boxcar with immeasurable grief. “I watched you burn.” Stepping from the shadow, Erik lifted a finger in their direction. “You are dead.”

“Erik!” Anna shrieked.

This wasn’t possible. Erik huffed through his mouth and pressed his palms to his eyes. The mask bit into his flesh. A flood of music churned the noise making his head sting. He felt two small arms clamp around his waist and cinch him tight as Anna buried her head in the center of his chest. Erik rocked backward from the force of her embrace but kept his hands tight against his eyes. Anna cried his name over and over again.

But she couldn’t be crying for him—she was dead.

Erik trembled. Suddenly, her touch seared his skin like a hot iron. Lowering his hands from his face, he pried her off, and her shoved her aside. “You burned.”

He had to get away. These were some sorts of demons in his mind coming to haunt him. Without warning, he jumped through the door and into the pre-dawn darkness, fleeing through the train yard like a possessed man. He ran in disoriented circles until he spotted a familiar stallion abandoned next to crates of cargo in a far distant corner of the yard.

This was not happening.

“Erik, wait!”

Whirling toward her, Erik watched as Anna—or whoever it was— jumped from the train. His eyes zoomed in on the satchel over her shoulder. Memories started beating his mind like the steady pounding of a drum. He could name every item in that satchel, but that satchel couldn’t be real. It had burned too! Erik breathed heavily as the woman raced toward him; each gulp feeling like he was sucking down glass.

Puffing for breath as well when she stopped, she reached for him. “Erik—”

Erik cut her words off sharp as he shot toward her, one hand encircling her wrist. He grabbed her opposite shoulder and yanked the satchel off with such force he dragged himself to the ground along with it.

The old man caught up to them yelling something that Erik ignored. Instead, Erik sprawled on the ground grabbing at the contents of the satchel searching for the one small scrap of sanity he thought he had left.

“Erik, you’re scaring me,” Anna shouted, dropping to the ground before him.

Erik looked at her, seeing her kneeling before him yet not registering it in his mind. There was no way she was real.

“Erik?” Anna shouted again. Contents of the satchel flew in every direction around her. “What’s happened to you? What are you looking for?”

Erik looked from the ground to her face. Her eyes had gone wide.

“Little bag. Little bag of life and death!” Erik shouted back, feeling his pulse quicken. “Where is my bag? Give me my bag!”

Erik scattered the dirt in front of them as he searched the contents of their travels. Among the useless items they had collected over the months, he saw Anna’s hands trembling as she rummaged through the debris with him. He heard her babbles, heard her ask what bag he was looking for, but Erik didn’t answer. He cried out when he found the small leather pouch near her boot and greedily lunged on it. Its contents dumped to the ground when he tore it open.

“Erik, what is that?”

He ignored her question. Frantically, Erik scattered the contents before him: two small brass keys, a gold chain adorned with two medallions, a pocket watch, a gold signet ring and a small piece of newsprint. With an unusual calm, he reached for the article and stood, staring intently at the words. Erik’s shoulders hunched as disbelief ran into his veins. The article he had ripped from the Époque months ago made no mention of where Philippe de Chagny had died.

Raoul lied! He had to have lied! Philippe could not have been down in my labyrinth again. I did not kill him!

Anna rose, clutching the pouch and its former contents to her chest. He watched her dumb expression as she tried to refill it.

“It does not say. It does not say.” Erik crumpled the page in his fist and thrust it aside

“Erik, please speak to me. It doesn’t say what?”

“I killed him.” Shooting his hands out in front of him, he grabbed her shoulders and yanked her inches from his mask. “My hands no longer have to touch a man to kill.” That couldn’t be possible, but it was the only logical explanation. He laughed deliriously as Anna stiffened in his arms. He spied the pouch she clung to. “Give me back my bag.”

“Erik, slow down. You’re scaring me!”

“Be very afraid child! Rightful you should be!” He flung her aside with such absent-minded force she splintered a board on a crate as she landed. As soon as Anna cried out, Erik’s heart drained from remorse. Horror struck, he backed away from her wide-eyed, cowering form.

Will my madness hurt her too?

The old man rushed toward her careful to keep the baby he held tucked safely out of reach. Pappy? Erik stared at him until the child wailed. Philippe?

Anna took him from Pappy’s arms and huddled on the ground, shushing the baby silent. Erik swung toward his son.

“It’s alright,” she cooed to the baby, looking up at Erik. Her voice trembled slightly. “Erik, you need to slow down.”

Slow down? He couldn’t slow down enough to think straight. Before that phrase of hers may have helped him but now… now it was too late. His mind was free falling He reached for the baby as if trying to touch an apparition. “Philippe Georges Marie…”

“Erik, stop,” Anna begged.

“I killed him.”

“Erik, no.”

“Why did he go down there?”

“Go away!”

Erik reached down for his son, but Anna curled her body over the baby, trying in vain to calm Philippe’s discomfort.

“You can not calm the cries of a Siren, you fool!” Erik hollered. “They will drive you mad!”

Anna buried Philippe’s cries against her shoulder. A subtle tremor ran over her hands. She took a slow breath before she spoke. “Who is the Siren? Who did you kill?”

“Philippe Georges Marie. I killed Philippe.”

Anna shook her head. “The Comte de Chagny? Erik, you were nowhere near Paris when he died.”

The red-faced look of combined fear and frustration on her face inflamed Erik’s disbelief. “Not me, Erik’s Siren!”

“Slow yourself down, Erik! I don’t understand you!”

“Try to, dammit!”

“Then help me to!”

Their cries volleyed back and forth. Erik took a sharp step and loomed over her. He leaned down as far as he dared. “How did he die?”

He said her name but still couldn’t believe it came out his mouth.

“He drowned at the shores of a lake,” she replied. “But that’s not your doing!”

“Not any lake, my lake! The lake under the opera house!” When Anna stammered senseless words back at him, he thrashed his head from side to side. “Philippe went down there because of me. If not for me he would never have returned to that lake, and he would never have drowned, and he would be alive!”

“That doesn’t mean you killed him!” Anna yelled over their baby’s cries and his nonsensical shouting. “You did nothing wrong.”

“No,” Erik moaned, too overcome to see her point. “If not for me he would not have gone down there again. My fault… my fault…” Clutching his mask, he rocked in his spot the crate Anna leaned against and the train yard around him a dizzying blur of shapes and sounds. “Music… music… to drown out the Siren you must hear the music. You have to follow the music. There is no point in fighting it anymore. I killed again.”

Arms across his breast, Erik tossed his head back. He swayed as if madness was a euphoric drug that had pushed its final load into his veins. “Orpheus cannot play to cover the Siren’s song without music…”

“You’ve given in to your madness,” Anna gasped. “The Siren is your madness, isn’t it? Music is what calms it. Holy mother of—Pappy! Give him the violin!”

It took Erik several seconds to register what she had said and to focus on the fact that the old man was still there. Erik pierced Pappy with an unfocused glare as the old man bent to the ground. Erik’s eyes grew wide as Pappy lifted a bundle from the scattered contents of the satchel and un-wrapped the cloths that swaddled it.

The violin! Pappy barely had it and the bow unwrapped before Erik snatched it from the old man’s hands. Erik hugged his violin so tightly against his chest, out of desperation to feel it against him, he nearly snapped it in two.

“Play, Erik,” she pleaded.

Erik stared at her and the baby as if they were a sick hallucination. He hugged the instrument tighter.

“Whatever you have to do to stop this madness, do it!”

Reeling his back to her, Erik assaulted the violin. His music screamed what his heart could not and wrapped his family in indecipherable tones of anguish and beauty.