Raoul choked on blackness, gulped again for air he could not find, and knew in some fast-shrinking core of awareness that this was the end. The battering waters, the iron tree, his own drowning struggles had all become — in one final mercy — very distant. He was twenty years old. He could not die...
Christine. A lightning-bolt of memory through the dark, in one last agonized convulsion. And then the flicker was swallowed, and went out.
He awoke to charnel-scent, and a bony bruising pain. It came again, a crushing force that sent water gushing up and out in a volcanic flood, filling mouth and nose. He struggled, weakly, and was sick.
Corpse-fingers plucked at him; forced his jaws apart and performed indignities with damp rag. His assailant’s knee pressed once more into the small of his back, relentless, voiding him of the last of the liquid he had swallowed, and then he was rolled over to lie limp and face-up, and the steady half-remembered rhythm recommenced.
Held in an iron grip, his arms were raised and flung wide, compelling his ribcage to rise; clamped back against his chest to expel involuntary breath. He’d witnessed artificial respiration performed before, on a sailor who’d survived a fall from the mainyard, and watched the ship’s surgeon at work. Erik’s movements above him now held the same detached precision of intent.
Too drained for fear, Raoul turned his head and managed a weak protest. “Can... breathe...”
The words hurt. Breathing hurt, as if each inhalation were searing smoke and not dank air that held the taint of decay.
But he’d expected death, after all. And here was Death, just as Christine had described him; hidden behind a mask, but nonetheless reeking death from head to foot.
He was overwhelmed with a sudden hysterical desire to laugh; felt a faint giggle force its way up against his will, and saw Erik recoil. Raoul found himself released, abruptly, conscious for the first time of the rough handling he had been through and the hard floor on which he lay. He ached all over.
“Enough.” Erik’s voice was cold, but it was directed elsewhere. “The Vicomte lives — and if you wish to purchase the full benefits of your charity, you had best let me take over work on that fool of a daroga...”
That last word, foreign to Raoul’s ears, was pronounced with a tone that made it a further imprecation of some kind. He remembered with a pang of conscience that Erik had thus addressed the Persian who had offered to guide him here, and managed enough of an effort to struggle up onto one elbow.
He got a brief glimpse of his erstwhile companion’s features — grey and motionless enough to show that the older man had paid a heavy price for that mutual errand against Erik, and its disastrous end — and then caught sight of Christine. Kneeling over the limp body, she had looked up from her labours in an instinctive unguarded movement. Their eyes met. For an instant, he forgot all else.
Then icy hands had hold of him, forcibly averting his gaze. He was plucked from his position on the floor, slung face-downward onto what proved to be a low divan, and dropped there with all the grace of a sack of meal dumped out of a cart.
Above his head, Erik snapped out something he could not catch. Faint protest from Christine.
“It will do him no harm, my love”—the monster’s voice grew more distant, insinuating and silky sweet as if stooping to murmur in her ear—“quite the contrary. Why, the young man requires only refreshing slumbers to be quite himself again! And now, if my wife will busy herself to do as I bid...”
“Yes, Erik.” Her tone was low and colourless, but Raoul’s heart had contracted at that mockery of marriage. And yet... had he not himself commanded her to turn the scorpion that signalled her assent? How could he— how could either of them have done otherwise, when hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent lives hung upon that choice?
Sick and dizzy in body and mind alike, he turned his face a little from the divan’s rough brocade and lay with his eyes closed. About the future he could not bear to think.
Christine’s touch on his shoulder, hesitant and warm, roused him. Beyond her skirts the Persian lay ashen still upon the ground beneath Erik’s insistent hands, giving no sign of breath, and around the walls of the room, half-seen furniture seemed to crowd in with all the oppressive banality of boarding-house despair. There were no visible horrors here; nothing to mark the agonies that had been devised and undergone in this ugly, old-fashioned apartment. Christine’s forehead was marked and bruised, and her wrists bore weals where Erik’s cords had bitten in, but her face was shuttered now, withdrawn and remote like that of a nun.
Only it was not the guardian walls of a convent that were closing about her, but those of a jail. And he knew all too well that when that final door slammed shut between them, she would be locked alone in the labyrinth with the monster to whom she had made herself the sacrifice.
His voice cracked when he tried to shape her name and he felt, rather than saw, the tiny shake of her head that forbade the attempt. With one hand she held a porcelain cup to his mouth, but her gaze was averted and she would not meet his eyes.
Raoul let her raise him a little so that he could drink, her touch as brisk and impersonal as that of a lay sister. The aroma from the cup was that of a tisane, soothing and spiced, with honey sweetness that could not hide the telltale bitter tang. He understood well enough by whose orders this dose had come; but whatever Erik intended for him now, he thought, it no longer made any difference.
He got one hand up to support the draught, in token of consent, and sipped at it as best he could, with a grimace for the cloying taste. The metallic taint was faint, but not quite concealed.
Christine said no word, either then, or after, when the tendrils of dizziness began to close about him inexorably once more. But her clasp brushed his on the side of the cup and slipped down to cover his hand with her own, fingertips entwining his in a plea that was almost imperceptible save to the two of them.
It was farewell. He knew it as well as she. Raoul clung to the memory of that caress and let it take him down without a struggle into the dark.
A sharp odour piercing through oblivion. Raoul coughed, drew in a further lungful of vapour, and felt the world around him drift back into sudden, unwanted focus.
He was still in that same ugly, banal little room, overcrowded with furniture; but the wet clothes in which he had been drawn from the water were no more than clammy about his limbs, and there was no sign of the Persian.
Perhaps the man had not lived, Raoul supposed dully, and knew a pang half-regret, half-envy. To sink into slumber at Christine’s hand would have been only welcome release. It seemed his captor was not so merciful.
His eyes had begun to drift shut again. The acrid scent returned, jolting like a whiplash through the haze. There was a vial held beneath his nose, and an icy grip dragging upward on his hair.
Raoul found himself lifted; compelled, swaying, to his feet. His head swam afresh, and his limbs seemed oddly distanced from his will. One of his arms was somehow draped across a bony shoulder, and Erik’s mask blurred towards him in nightmare, leaning near.
He tried to resist, and found he could not. His feet stumbled forward, puppet-like, at Erik’s urging, and none of his muscles seemed to belong to him at all.
Panic flared, and must have shown on his face, for he heard Erik laugh. “Always so hasty, Vicomte! Always so quick to jump to conclusions! Not one hair of your head, no, not even the tip of that handsome nose will be harmed. For your life was promised to Christine for a wedding-present, you know, and Erik always keeps his promises.”
A nasty little giggle that implied nothing of the sort. Erik reached out, with an odd, blurred motion, and suddenly there was an opening in front of them in the wall where there had been no door before, and an unlit passageway beyond.
In rising panic, Raoul tried to struggle in earnest. It made not the slightest difference. With the reek of Erik’s vial still swimming in his nostrils and the soft, insinuating unreason of that voice in his ear, he was as helpless in Erik’s grip as a kitten in its mother’s mouth.
“But what if Christine should fail to keep the promises she made? Oh, she’s a good girl, an honest girl, she would not lie”—the voice sank in shocked self-reproach—“but in a moment’s temptation she might yet be overcome, and what then of her vows? For she swore to be Erik’s living bride...”
He broke off on what might have been a sob and swung his captive round, reaching to take down a stub of candle from a ledge behind the door. A snap of his fingers, and the wick caught light. In that wavering flame the passage stretched away into shadow, and twin gleams woke in answer in the black pits of his eyes.
It was stage magic, Raoul told himself, clinging to the last vestiges of logic; cheap trickery to fool the gullible. But he could not stem the tide of horror in the pit of his stomach. He was alone and powerless in the hands of a hideous madman, lost deep in the bowels of the Opera beneath a suffocating weight of stone.
Half-dragged, half-supported by his captor, he followed with the obedience of an automaton. Candlelight flickered on the corridor walls, and soon he could not tell one passage from another — but of what avail could it be in any case to memorise turnings and count steps, when he had no idea where in the maze they had begun? And all the time Erik’s words ran on, sometimes as a moan of despair, sometimes in what seemed the most rational of arguments and reassurances... save that it was a conversation that neither expected nor invited any response; the ramblings of a mind that had been too long alone.
“The young man cannot stay, because of Christine. But he cannot go — no, no, he cannot be taken up above and left there, for he might be needed. He might serve perhaps for persuasion, if Christine should falter... But no, Christine cannot care for him, she will not think of young men when she is married. She will be a good wife, a faithful wife, and she will learn to love her husband and be happy, so happy...” Round and round, insistence spilling over insistence, as if the very force of it could conjure the future.
“Only she might forget,” Erik whispered, the sound a desolate thread in the dark. “She might think of what she should not, and turn away the light of her eyes, and leave her poor husband alone and bereft. And so the young man must be kept; kept safe and secure, so that Christine knows she must be happy. Safe where he cannot be found, and cannot be heard—”
And in the instant before the implications of that could chill Raoul into futile resistance, he found himself turned aside and thrust ahead of Erik through a low door. Strength was coming back to his limbs, and he tried to fight; found his legs swept from under him and iron fetters clamped about wrists and feet. Winded by shock and still limp from the narcotic, he stared up at Erik’s dark shape stooping down over him, and tried to bite back the cry that was rising in his throat.
But there came no more than a sharp tug on the bonds that secured him, and a rattle of chain, as if his captor were assuring himself that the restraints would hold. Raoul glimpsed rusty metal, and a discarded litter of rubble piled in the narrow room to which he had been brought. Or... no room, but a cell, he registered belatedly in disbelief. This was no improvised prison; this place, with its barred inspection grille and its manacles, was worn down with old suffering and with fear.
“Welcome to the cells of the Communards, monsieur.” Erik had set down what remained of the candle stub. Now he stepped back and made a mocking bow.
His face was unreadable, but the voice cut like a knife. “Or perhaps you were not present in Paris for that shining example of man’s inhumanity to man? I assure you, monsieur le Vicomte, that I was — and that all the despotisms of the East hold little invention compared to what honourable civilised men can inflict upon one another, when they seek to survive.”
He laughed. “Oh, I can take no credit. My talents were not required... and this place is none of my making. Crude beyond belief... yet it will serve, I fancy. Yes, it will serve. No-one comes near, not even the fire-watchers or the catcher of rats. Feel at liberty to shout as much as you like, monsieur — for since the days of the Communards, stone has been set upon stone and these cells lie forgotten now beneath the deepest basement of the Opera. You will not be heard, and you will not be found.”
Another titter, hard and brittle. “Only I suggest you save your voice, and spare your thirst... See, I brought down a flask of water to last you until tomorrow — supposing at least you are not so foolish as to overset it when you drink. And for Christine’s sake I shall leave you the candle. You have until that flame burns out to memorise the bounds of your domain, monsieur... and after that, why, you must do perforce as Erik has done, and learn to function in the dark!”
He stared down at Raoul for a moment longer, perhaps awaiting some token of defiance. Words boiled incoherent in Raoul’s mouth but would not come, and his captor left him with a slight, contemptuous shrug. The light guttered down almost to extinction in the gust from the closing door, and from outside there came the grating of a bolt, and receding footsteps, measured and sure.
“Erik!” Raoul found his voice. It was no more than a croak. “Erik!”
He did not know if he was pleading or cursing. There was no reply.
Overhead the great weight of the Palais Garnier and of Paris itself bore down, closing in like a silent stifling tide... He yelled again, throat cracking, and then again and again in wordless panic as the drugged daze began to fade. Nightmare had begun to assume a horrible reality.
It was not the vestiges of a dream that dragged at his limbs when he tried to move but cuffs of cold iron, chained to the wall. He was pinioned here like a felon, buried alive in this oubliette beneath a labyrinth of madness and a crushing mass of stone. He would live here or die here at Erik’s whim, dependent on the passing mercy of a monster for recall of his very existence. Sooner or later, Erik would forget a little too long, grow weary of his prisoner’s needs while he took his pleasure with Christine...
With a sob of breath, Raoul struggled violently against his fetters; fell back finally, bruised and exhausted. The chain was rusted, but it would not yield.
Christine. He was held hostage for Christine, to keep her docile and obedient in the arms of a man who filled her with horror... Consent and acceptance of oblivion was all forgotten; there was only wild rebellion against the unbearable, and a future that was not to be endured.
How long... how long would he live trapped and blind in the depths? The last of his sight was measured out now by the duration of that stub of wax. When the flame guttered sideways for the final time, there would be no world beyond what he could feel at his fingertips, and the swallowing maw of the night.
Philippe —an upswelling of hope— Philippe would search for him. Christine might be alone and friendless, but Raoul de Chagny could not be snatched so easily into oblivion. Philippe would not rest until he knew the fate of his brother...
Only he had walked out on Philippe, Raoul remembered, painfully. He’d defied the Comte de Chagny on Christine’s behalf with every intention of cutting himself off from his family for ever. When he had flung that final adieu in his brother’s face, it had been in the belief that by now he would be out of France, with Christine safe in his arms — and of course from Raoul’s disappearance in her wake Comte Philippe would conclude just that. The whole affair could not have been better arranged if Erik had planned it himself.
The candle flickered lower, and Raoul bit his lip, resolving to make the most of what time was left. He was not quite helpless, after all. The chains that held him were fixed firmly into the wall and ended in heavy cuffs, but they afforded him some small freedom of movement. He could gather the weight of it all into his arms and stand, although the effort left him a little dizzy. With the few steps at his disposal, he could not reach the door, or —quite— touch the far wall of his dungeon, narrow though it was. But at full stretch he thought he could just set his fingertips around that precious candle-end where Erik had set it down, amidst the litter of rubble across the centre of the cell...
Loose stone shifted beneath his weight at the critical moment, and he made a frantic last-minute lunge, consumed by panic. Shadows rushed in madly on all sides... but there was soft wax held secure between his fingers, and the flame did not fall.
It was a futile victory, but all the same his first in a long while. Raoul lay savouring it for a few precious moments while his heartbeats eased, and caught sight of something else that almost stopped his breath altogether.
He wormed backwards cautiously, angling the candle to get a better view. Perhaps, as Erik had claimed, this place had been created in the days of the Commune, when war swept over Paris and the Opera lay open as a vast unfinished shell. But an army of workmen had laboured here since, and left débris of a far more mundane variety. No-one had cleared out the cells. This was the remnants of no crumbling catacomb, but an ordinary heap of builder’s rubble, dumped in an unused corner. And amidst the stone-dust and mortar he’d seen what might be rusted metal. If he was lucky— if he was very, very lucky...
Men had been known to escape from prison with the most unpromising of tools, after all.
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