At the end of a few minutes’ frenzied excavation, the candle set well back out of danger, Raoul had in his possession the rotted remains of what had once been a wooden sabot, several lumps of stone large enough to serve as a weapon or a hammer, and — the ultimate prize, clawed out at the farthest stretch of the chain from between two slabs too heavy for him to shift — a blunted and broken chisel-blade. It would not do for carving out caryatids or smoothing off the bannisters of a marble balustrade, but at this precise moment it meant hope, and perhaps life. Perhaps freedom for Christine. Beyond that prospect he dared not let himself think.
But brief and exceedingly painful experiment taught him that he could not break the cuffs that held him, or at least not by untutored force. Nor could he split open the links on the chain, or do more than raise a faint shine on its pitted surface, for all his efforts to wedge it fast against his blows.
The joints of the wall, then, where the great staple that secured his chains lay embedded between the stones. He’d read tales of prisoners who had worked window-bars loose from their setting or dug their way to freedom with nothing more than the end of a spoon, given time... only without a window, time was what he did not have. Soon he would be working by blind touch alone.
Then, if needs be, that was what he would do. Raoul set his teeth and rained down hammering blows, heedless of his own fettered clumsiness, of bruises and jarring and a gashed wrist where his effort at breaking the lock had slipped, or chips of stone that stung his cheek. Presently, breathless, he paused to survey his labours.
The wall bore a few fresh-pitted whitish scars. That was all.
Reality welled up and broke across him in an icy wave. His hand was sore, and his shoulders ached, and even if by some unimaginable effort he did at last succeed in wrenching his tether loose from the wall, even if Erik should grow careless enough to open the cell and let himself be ambushed, even if Erik ever came back at all — none of it was of any use. He would be left to wander trapped and starving in the dark, trailing broken chains like some spectre from the Breton peasant tales, until he no longer had the strength to crawl the labyrinth alone. And all the while, Christine —Christine!— would be subject to who knew what horrors in the world of Erik’s creation, the twisted kingdom of a twisted mind...
He hurled the chisel at the wall with all his strength. Where it struck, it left a long curving mark as futile as all the rest. Raoul buried his face against the stone and gave way to despair.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the words.
At first he thought it was a trick of his imagination, blurred vision conjuring up patterns in the dim light. But from this angle the shadows were deeper, more regular, and one could almost believe... He reached up, tracing lettering with his fingertips. It was there.
Names, initials, prayers, all had been carved into the wall by prisoners before him. Many of the markings were little more than scratches in the rough stone, as hastily made as those of a schoolboy on the lid of his desk; brief, insistent assertions of existence by men whose lives were measured out in hours or days. A single line of appeal to Our Lady had been inscribed higher up, more deeply and more precisely, by a prisoner who had retained a pocket-knife, and perhaps a breviary. Others had made a last record of more earthly devotions: a woman’s name in a clumsily-rendered heart, and sets of linked initials like those adorning tree-trunks in the lanes of Perros-Guirec.
He reached down with caution to lift the precious candle-end to read more closely, as if by so doing he could somehow pay respects to the dead. Wax spilled over onto his hand, and the flame burned higher for a minute, brightening the cell and throwing the carvings into sudden clear relief; ebbed away seconds later to leave the shadows encroaching more swiftly than before.
Raoul set it down hastily, encumbered by chains and cursing his own folly. With the candle at the foot of the wall, there was nothing to be seen now but the fresh white scar low down that he himself had inflicted, trailing away like the tail of a sprawling letter C.
Back in their childhood Christine had set out to carve one like that, struggling with his penknife, on the side of the great mossy boulder where her father would tell them stories in the twilight. It had taken her a long while, and old Daaé, a twinkle in his eye, had had to hold the young Vicomte back from his eagerness to rush in and help; finally she had looked up at the menfolk in triumph, with the straggling initial scored into the stone by her own efforts. Raoul had been too eager to reclaim his knife and add his own mark to spend time on admiring the accomplishment, but at length the two of them had stood back and surveyed their work, side by side.
The C had been uneven; the knife-blade had been blunt by the time Raoul had tried to complete his more difficult R, and he had not made a very good job of it either. All the same, there could be no doubt. (The knife had been given to him for Christmas by his sister Cécile, and it had never been much good again for anything afterwards. But that had not mattered to Raoul.)
“Ours,” Christine said softly, looking at the R and C emblazoned on the rock. Her hand slid up and slipped into Raoul’s, a little shy, for he was a boy and sometimes felt himself above such things as hand-holding. “Our place, for always. We’ll come back here every year, again and again, shan’t we, Raoul?”
But old Madame Suget — Madame Suget, the governess whom Raoul insisted he had outgrown, rustling up at that moment in her black bombazine and shabby bonnet to whisk the Vicomte off to the indignities of a clean collar and inspection behind the ears before he could be seated at his aunt’s table for dinner — old Madame Suget had regarded those coupled initials and the linked hands of the two children with an eye of deep disapproval, and had muttered darkly all the way back in a fashion that Raoul had not in the least understood. There had been words with Raoul’s aunt, that fluttering ineffective widow, and a long letter to Comte Philippe. And in the end there had not been an ‘every year’ for him at Perros-Guirec; there had not even been a next year.
There had been one more brief meeting, the summer his voice broke, when an impulse of rebellion had sent him down to Perros on his own. One shy, stammering afternoon together, and one last goodbye, when he’d kissed her hand with all the flushed formality of his newly-conscious adulthood. By the roadside where they parted, his initial still stood with hers upon the great stone, in token of an ‘always’ that had never been, and a future between the two of them that never could be.
Raoul had passed it unheeding, half-blind with misery and the awareness of his own folly. He had not thought of it again from that day to this.
Now, remembering the sight of those pathetic initials carved by doomed men into a prison wall, remembering innocent tokens left behind by lovers on the trees of Perros — some already ancient, grown out until they were no more than stretched traces on a mighty trunk — remembering Christine grown to glorious womanhood and then lost once more, and her face as last he had seen it, eyes cast down and all her youth greyed and drained away, he caught up the chisel anew from where it had fallen. Erik could destroy their lives. He could take the future. But he could not change hearts, and he could not obliterate truth.
Let there be a record, then, of that — a record of Raoul’s own heart, even if it should be forgotten, never to be found. If he had only a few minutes left of light, then in that time he would blazon forth what he could to stand as an avowal in stone; one thing at least that would last when they were all gone.
And it did not matter how foolish that impulse, and how little it would mean to those who came after. He, Raoul, would know; Christine, who had been beside him at Perros, would understand. And Philippe — if Comte Philippe de Chagny should by chance learn the true fate of his brother, in years to come, he might perhaps remember those initials that had so incensed him at Perros. Raoul wished, with a sudden ache, that he had parted from Philippe on more kindly terms.
There on the wall the tail of the C was sketched out for him already. Raoul flung himself into the task of making that chance resemblance reality; widening, deepening the scar, until, however clumsily gashed out, it was a curve he could feel.
That much would stand for Christine. Now for himself. The wick was sinking sideways in a pool of softened wax, and he had barely enough light for the work. How long had he been down here? It seemed hours already, yet the candle flame told him otherwise. Erik... Erik could not have been back so very many minutes in that ugly little room by the side of his so-called wife...
Raoul shut his mind to the thought of that. Shut his mind to all else but his self-imposed labour, and the stone that yielded so very slowly to his struggles. The final leg of the R was the worst; his hammer-hand was swollen, clenched around its rock, the chains bruised him with every effort he made, and his head was ringing dully from blow to blow.
The chisel slipped in his sweating grasp one last time and clattered to the floor, and he let it lie. Chest heaving, he stood back to survey the outcome, then came closer to trace with his fingertips the markings he had made. By the dying light of the candle it was hard to see much, but the outlines, however crude, were unmistakable.
The letters RC stood out upon the wall, fresh and new amid all the other scratchings. He had neither the time left nor the will for hearts or arrows, or any of the other devices he’d seen used to link lovers’ names. It was enough. It was his name and hers as a promise and a defiance, and something that could not be taken away, as irrevocable — a little laugh shook him — as a seaman’s cross upon the enrolment papers: Raoul and Christine, their mark.
Hysteria caught at his throat. He choked it back and sank down to sit leaning against the wall, nursing his various aches. Presently he reached out for the flask of water Erik had left him and allowed himself one carefully-rationed sip, making sure to replace the container where he could be certain to find it again in the dark. And then there was nothing left but to watch the candle sink down into extinction, just as, a solitary wakeful child, he had so often watched the last of his nightlight gutter away in the lonely hours before dawn.
He was never sure, afterwards, how much time had passed him by before he saw the glimmer of light through the grille. From all that he learned later, it could not have been very long. But eternity was silent, and black, and it held him in its choking grip. The rattle of iron as he moved was the only reality; the rough letters that met his touch when he reached up, again and again, to trace them, were his only reassurance that the world had not always been so. The curve of her name ran like rosary beads beneath his fingers, as if he could make an incantation of it to free them both — as if it were the slim curve of her waist within his arm, when she had sought refuge there on the rooftop, or the yielding warmth of her lips against his when she had offered up that one precious kiss...
When the first pale gleam showed through the bars in the door, he took that, too, for an imagined vision.
But the ghostly shape persisted, an almost invisible suggestion of a barred rectangle floating in the dark that would have been quite unremarkable had there been anything else to see. Presently there could no longer be any mistake. And there was a sound, too — an ugly shuffling, sniffling sound that seemed to belong to nothing human.
Raoul sprang up, to be jerked back cruelly by his chains, half-remembered horrors tumbling through his mind. There could be things down here worse than Erik; the Persian had hinted at such. He groped for the chisel-blade he had so carelessly let fall, and could not find it in his panic.
His fingers closed instead around rough-edged rock. That, too, could be a weapon at need, and it steadied him. Besides, his cell door was thick, and — though he had mastered himself enough to manage a rueful smile at the folly of his own imaginings — the bolt at least was cold iron, and proof against all things uncanny that prowled in the dark.
All the same, he moved back, tense and alert, to make the most of what shelter the wall could afford, crouching to gather up the slack of the chain as quietly as he could. A man could lash out with that against an enemy who thought him cowed and helpless... and at the back of his mind, unacknowledged, was the superstition that those heavy links were of cold iron also.
The light came closer; became discernibly an ordinary yellow lantern-light, accompanied by footsteps that lagged and scraped along the floor. When a voice began a low moaning litany, Raoul found himself recognising it with an odd jolt of relief. Whatever else he might be, Erik was at least a creature of flesh and blood.
“Christine,” the voice said. It swallowed, wetly, as if choked by tears. “Christine. Christine must be happy... and Erik will be a dog, a dog at her feet...”
Another wet snuffle, pitiable and horrible. Raoul’s teeth were on edge, and he tasted bile. Backed against the wall, he waited.
Outside, there came the grating of the bolt. Light approached the grille, as if a lantern was raised. Hesitated.
“But the Vicomte will make trouble, probably,” Erik considered with weary distaste. “Perhaps it would be easier... Yes, perhaps...”
The thought trailed off into evident contemplation as the door moved heavily upon its hinges. A bar of brightness appeared around its edges. Swung inwards, spreading, to fall upon Raoul.
And upon the wall behind him. He sensed, rather than saw, the sudden check in Erik’s movements; caught the sound of an indrawn breath. Raoul fought back a pointless impulse to spring to his feet and interpose himself between his enemy and those freshly-made markings. He was not a cadet hiding misdeeds from a schoolmaster’s whipping. He had set those letters there on the wall as a final defiance, and he had meant them to be seen.
Whatever conclusions Erik might have drawn, he made no comment. His mask had slipped awry, and the blankness of it was as discomfiting as the rotting remnants of his face beyond.
“A last heroic stand, monsieur?” By some wrenching effort, Erik had clearly regained control of himself; the words were tired, infinitely tired, but calm. “I assure you there is no need... and if I wished to make an end of you, I should not give you that chance. I have come to fetch you... for a wedding! Oh, you do not believe me, that is very natural. Or perhaps you suppose it to be my wedding — my wedding with Christine. But you would not be needed there, no more than you will want Erik to see...”
His voice grew thick again, and he broke off, while Raoul, completely dumbfounded, could do nothing but stare. Even by comparison with his own confused memories, Erik’s figure in the lantern’s light seemed to him shrunken and unsure.
“For whose wedding then?” he said at last, hearing his own voice distant and oddly steady amid a world whirling with fresh insanity. Perhaps this was all a dream. Perhaps he was breathing some new dose of Erik’s vapour, administered to keep his victim from ‘making trouble’ at the last.
“Why, for Christine’s wedding! For Christine’s wedding with her young man, monsieur Raoul de Chagny on whom she set her heart...” Erik was coming closer, leaving the door open behind him. He was encumbered with the lantern, but his approach was wary, and there would only be one chance.
Raoul had meant to spring upon him at the first opportunity, to sell his life dearly, and grasp at that faint hope of freedom if he could. But rock and chain had slipped from his numb grasp. He straightened slowly, in bewilderment, feeling for the support of the wall as he stood.
It was a trick. A trap, a sick joke of some kind —
The stones were rough behind him. As if by rote, his fingers sought reassurance; found and traced the letters RC. Christine. Raoul and Christine — Raoul and Christine...
“How do I know this is true?” It burst from him hoarsely, almost unthinking. “Why should I believe you? Why should I trust for one moment in anything you say?”
Clearly Erik could not have said it. He, Raoul, had misunderstood. The certainty came over him almost on the instant, in a realisation that was queerly like relief. Erik... could not possibly have meant to imply what imagination had somehow suggested, not even for some further scheme of deception. After all that had passed, it simply made no sense.
But the other man was shaking his head — “No deception, monsieur” — and Raoul flushed, aware, in that same detached distant fashion, that he must have spoken his thought aloud.
“You will be married to Christine, if you still wish it,” Erik promised. “I will take you to her, and she will set her hand in yours, and both of you will go free. She shall have the husband of her choosing and live wherever she pleases, and be happy... she shall never shed another tear... not one more of those precious drops she granted her poor, suffering Erik...”
Raoul could barely make out those last, incoherent words, and nothing at all of the outpouring that came after. Edging sideways, he backed away, feeling the chains tighten like his own panic, and Erik straightened a little. The blank face swung round.
“Make trouble,” the man murmured again, thickly. He was feeling for something in a pocket— drawing it out—
Raoul caught the merest glimpse of the object in Erik’s hand, small and dully glinting, before it was tossed towards him. Movement skittered across the floor, and he had just time enough to fling up one arm on instinct, shielding face and throat.
Only... it was not an ampoule. It was not a weapon of any kind. It was a slip of metal, almost lost amid the dust and grit at his feet, a hollow shaft perhaps twice the length of his thumbnail.
He’d seen men put in irons, on board ship, and had the task of releasing them. He’d handled keys like this, in locks like these. Erik had just given him the means to set himself free.
Raoul knelt, slowly, watching Erik, who did not move. With hands made clumsy by haste and the dragging weight of iron, he fumbled with the crude keyhole first in one cuff, then another. The fetters fell away, leaving only scars of memory. He looked up, and their eyes met, Erik’s unreadable behind the mask.
His captor seemed hunched and somehow diminished, and Raoul saw him afresh, as if for the first time: an aging, scrawny man of middle height, arms corded with ropy muscle beneath his coat, a body that fought its own afflictions by sheer force of will... a will that had gone out. In that gaze, Raoul’s unformed youth and inexperience were the first page of a pristine future that lay open beneath the sunlight, with chapters of settled happiness full of promise. He was young. He would grow, and Erik — Erik, whose life was scrawled in lines that crossed and recrossed beyond legibility — Erik would end forgotten and unseen.
There would be a future. That dawning realisation was still strange, scarcely to be believed. There would be a future, for him and for Christine. For him and for Christine together.
“Come, monsieur.” Erik turned away, raising the lantern. Shadows moved and fell. “I shall take you to her... there where she awaits your embrace, her face alight with hope... when for Erik no sweetness shone in those eyes, save drops of pity... Come, Monsieur de Chagny. Make her happy. Let Erik give her this last great gift... that he may savour those tears until the end of his days...”
Distorted, incoherent, the words seemed almost bereft of sense; but behind it all there rang some thread of truth, and Raoul could no longer doubt. Something had happened. In that brief eternity, that half-hour of his chained despair, a miracle had taken place.
He glanced back into the darkness one last time, without thinking, as he followed his guide from the cell. But he did not need to see the letters that were his handiwork to know that they were there.
Later he would laugh at himself, a little ashamed of his own presumption. But it had come to him in that moment that perhaps — just perhaps — there had been a power of incantation, after all, in what he had done.
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