“It isn’t real; it wouldn’t bring much money. Besides, she can’t bring herself to sell it—it’s the only thing she has that belonged to her late mother.”
“Really…?” Her grip on the door slackened as she thought it over, but she suddenly shook her head. “I know what I saw.”
“But Christine, darling, splendorous rose, you don’t! How could I ever be unfaithful to a beauty such as you? Especially with Anceline—she is nothing compared to your beauty!”
“You—you really mean that?” she demanded, struggling to keep up the anger that had raged in her stomach for the past twenty-four hours.
“Of course!” He kissed her hand and held it fervently, gazing into her eyes with love and desperation. “You are my goddess, my nymph, my skylark!” He kissed her hand again, closing his eyes as if savoring the feel of her skin. “A life without you is like a life without the sun—dark, cold, meaningless!”
“She—she’s your cousin?”
“Yes!”
Her staunch, unforgiving posture slumped as she started to give in. But then she remembered about François and resolutely revived her anger. “And what about François? You had no cause to fire him!”
“My sweet, my precious, I was so jealous I couldn’t help myself!”
“You were?” she repeated. The sudden thrill made her giddy. Her plan had succeeded! It hadn’t been as…well…punishing as she had intended, but it didn’t matter. The sense of power almost overwhelmed her.
“Of course! I couldn’t sit by and watch my beauteous bijou fall into the clutches of a farmhand!”
“Really?” It was stupid to try to keep herself angry when he was just as much a victim here as she was. He couldn’t possibly have been having an affair. He loved her. But she had to make sure. “Then you’re still going to marry me?”
He blinked, and for a single, horrible moment she saw her world falling apart in the stare of those ice-blue eyes. Then he smiled. “Of course, precieuse—how could you have ever doubted that?”
She released the door and allowed him to enter, feeling so giddy with relief that she had to sit down. As Raoul, kneeling at her feet, continued to lavish her with praise, she raised her eyes to the sky and thanked the gods for returning her perfect world.
Chapitre Vingt-et-Un: La Madeleine
Moncharmin frowned, circling Christine and studying her with an uncomfortable intensity. “I don’t know—isn’t Ilia’s dress supposed to be Greek? It’s too…too…”
“Frilly,” finished Richard with a nod.
Monsieur Bertrand, the head of the costume department, folded his arms in displeasure. “Yes, messieurs, Idomeneo takes place in ancient Greece.” His tone was clipped and rather self-important, his eyes narrowed into haughty slits. “But in case you have forgotten,” he continued coldly, “I am the costume expert in this opera house, and I have been for twenty-six years. And I’m certain that, if you will pardon my frankness, you will find more costuming knowledge in my little finger than in both of your heads combined.”
Richard and Moncharmin glanced at each other, eyebrows raised, both highly offended. Christine watched them mildly from her position atop a chair, clothed in a half-finished wedding gown. With interest she noted that the managers knew each other well enough to confer without actually speaking. Richard’s face had reddened slightly, and his eyes flashed with anger at Bertrand’s pompous remark. It was clear to Christine that he wanted to fire the man then and there. But Moncharmin gave a small shrug, as if to say, He is the expert, and we need him.
Richard nodded reluctantly, saying, “We do not contest that, Monsieur Bertrand. We simply ask that the one-hundredth anniversary of Idomeneo be accurate.”
Bertrand gave a pert bow. “And so it will be, monsieur, if you stop badgering me and allow me to get on with my work.”
“Allow me to remind you,” said Richard furiously, “that we pay your salary!”
“Let—let’s not become unpleasant, gentlemen,” begged Moncharmin, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief, looking rather pained. “Monsieur Bertrand, is there any way we could try to…ah…”—he fumbled for the right word, seeming loathe to voice something so distasteful—“minimize costs? If I am not mistaken, the Greeks wore much simpler garments than this one is turning out to be.”
“Audiences don’t appreciate accuracy,” Bertrand refuted with an air of superiority. “They appreciate extravagance. To send Mademoiselle Daaé on stage in anything less than the latest fashion would be catastrophic.” He insolently turned from the managers, fishing a box of buttons out of a mountain of bows and lace. “Monsieur le Vicomte de Chagny knows nothing about opera production, and even he realizes that simple fact—he especially requested that we spare no expense in her costumery. You can’t risk offending your patron.” Christine flushed with pride at hearing Raoul’s title and his command. It had been a week and a half since his apology—which had ended with her apologizing for jumping to ridiculous conclusions—in which time he had showered her with flowers and gifts and constant praise of her beauty. She had never felt happier or more in love.
“Technically,” said Richard loudly, “our patron is the Comte de Chagny, who would undoubtedly take our side on this matter, both in terms of taste and economy.”
“Ha!” Bertrand jabbed a needle into the dress with unnecessary force as he threaded a pearl button. Christine yelped.
“Did he stab you?” Richard demanded.
“Um—well—no—I just thought he was going to—”
Bertrand kept right on talking. “How would you know what the comte thinks? He doesn’t even venture out of his house, let alone come to oversee anything. He’ll just have to live with whatever we decide. And by that, I mean what I decide.”
As the managers glanced at each other again, obviously considering firing the haughty costumer, Madame Giry entered the room. Carefully stepping over the haphazard mounds of fabric and lace littering the floor, she surveyed Christine’s costume with something akin to amusement. She had the tact not to say anything rude, but the flicker in her eyes conveyed more than words.
“Shouldn’t her dress be more Grecian?” she asked at length.
“Aha!” exclaimed the managers in unison.
Upon hearing her comment Bertrand angrily threw down the box. Buttons scattered everywhere, but he didn’t seem to care. “No one asked you,” he spat, lip curling to reveal a set of narrow, overly-white teeth.
“Well then,” Madame Giry replied calmly, “why don’t you ask Mademoiselle Daaé? It is her dress.”
All eyes turned to Christine, who had been forgotten in the heat of the proceedings. She stared at her reflection in a nearby mirror, hurriedly trying to decide. Accuracy was important, but the dress was very pretty as it was. Though it was only partially complete, the pure, ghostly white of the gown and the shimmer of her collar of diamonds made her seem almost like an ethereal being. In years past she would have thought immediately of Skadi, the Norse goddess of winter who gave Scandinavia its name, and would have wept as she recalled her father telling her of the beautiful goddess and her castle of ice in the mountains of Jotunheim. But now she wasn’t sure what to think.
She hadn’t set foot in the Garnier’s chapel since she had realized that her own desires were more important than her father’s plans for her. Even the stories—her father’s beloved stories—had become less and less mystical and cherished to her as the weeks went on. She still prayed fervently to the gods at least once a day, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel the same way about religion anymore. She wasn’t certain what to think about anything.
She suddenly realized that everyone was waiting for her answer. As the silence dragged on, she wondered what Raoul would say—surely he would know which was more important. ‘Why, my perfect angel,’ she could imagine him saying, raising a surprised eyebrow at her ignorance, ‘of course fashion is more important. Fashion reflects what people like today, rather than what they liked thousands of years ago. What d
oes it matter if the play originally called for Grecian garments?’
But Erik would say the opposite—he would probably say that accuracy took precedence over the latest fashion. In fact, she could hear his voice as well: ‘Christine, the beauty of music and opera is that they open a window to a previous time, to a life that is far different from our own. Would you destroy that by blotting out their culture with our own simply to impress the shallow masses?’
“Um, I—I don’t know,” stammered Christine, angry at her inability to decide. “It’s very pretty—”
“Ha!” interjected Bertrand.
“—but still, um…” About to state that the composer had called for accuracy, she realized that she didn’t know who the composer was. “Um, the composer—”
“Mozart,” supplied Madame Giry.
“Yes, Mozart. If he wrote that the costumes should be Greek, then I think that’s important too.”
Moncharmin nodded decisively. “Well, that settles it. Mozart was one of the greatest composers of all time—and I do believe his opinion supersedes yours, Monsieur le Costumer.”
“But that’s not what she said!” Bertrand snapped. “She said that she liked the dress—that means you’d like it better than a Grecian one, right, mademoiselle? Yes,” he continued, without waiting for a reply, “she most certainly would. And may I remind you that our audience is made up of modern people, monsieur, not ancient Greeks.”
As a heated debate ensued, Madame Giry said quietly to Christine, “I just came to tell the managers that they sold fifteen more seats for the opening night than there are available.”
“How terribly embarrassing!”
“Indeed. And what’s worse, the health officials are suggesting—almost demanding—that the managers cancel the performances to combat the spread of the pneumonia.”
“Has it gotten that bad?” Christine asked, surprised. She had heard very little about the epidemic lately; she had assumed that it had begun to wane.
“Good heavens, yes—it’s dreadful! It’s creeping up from the proletariat to the bourgeoisie and into the very nobility.”
“Bwah-gher-what?”
“That’s it!” Richard shouted, slamming his cane into the floor. “Monsieur Bertrand, consider this your notice! Have your things out of our opera house by tomorrow morning!” Madame Giry and Christine paused to watch the scene.
“Or you’ll do what?” the costumer sneered, equally as loud.
“Or we’ll charge you with trespassing, that’s what!”
“You’ll never survive without me!”
“Ha! You aren’t worth the clothes on your back!”
“How dare you!”
Madame Giry shook her head. “Perhaps I’ll speak to the managers later. You might as well leave too—no point wasting your day waiting for those three to stop fighting.”
“…so I said that if Mozart wrote that the costumes should be Grecian, then it would be a terrible crime to ruin the perfection of his opera—a window to another time, you know?—just to impress the masses.”
Erik, who was cleaning out her closet, straightened up with a pile of clothing in his arms. “That’s wonderful, Christine,” he said with a smile, making her swell with pride. She felt slightly bad that he was doing her cleaning for her, realizing that she was treating him like a servant, but she certainly didn’t want to do all that work, and he seemed happy to help her with anything, even picking up her dirty clothes, so she allowed him to keep cleaning while she sat at her vanity. Cleaning was a waste of time anyway—she was only doing it because he had lectured her on the virtue of neatness; it had been easier to say she would clean, and then get him to do it. She felt perfectly justified in her plan. It isn’t as if he keeps his caverns neat and tidy, she thought righteously. The man is as much a slob as I am!
Well, almost. Sort of.
Not really, she finally admitted. But still, he could learn a thing or two from his own lecture.
She assuaged her slight guilt at his servitude by fiddling with the clutter on her vanity, throwing the obvious rubbish into the wastebasket and cramming everything else, including the rubbish she wasn’t sure she wanted to throw away, such as chipped buttons and empty tins of blush, into the overflowing drawers.
“Then Bertrand objected,” continued Christine, “and they all started yelling, and completely forgot about my dress.”
“What shall I do with this?” queried Erik, holding up a broken hairbrush that had quite evidently been stepped on.
“Throw it out,” she said, pulling a disgusted face as she dumped a moldy remnant of pastry into the wastebasket. How could her dressing room have ever gotten so messy? It would take hours to clean up the mountain of junk and dirty clothes that had taken over her floor space.
Casting a despairing eye over the dresses strewn everywhere—all either costumes, patched, stained, or too small to fit—she wondered when she would be able to get new clothes for herself.
Erik moved to the table to place yet another plate atop the growing pile of trays, bowls, and cutlery from the kitchens, and the movement caught Christine’s eye. She took a moment to study his attire, formal and unadorned, as usual. She would have to get him to procure some clothes for her of the same quality—their plainness notwithstanding, they were a much higher quality than her own. When she married Raoul she would have all kinds of gorgeous gowns in the latest fashion, with lace and pearls and all kinds of extravagant fineries, but for the moment, she needed something besides the patched dresses Mamma had made for her. It was ridiculous that the managers had not paid her yet; she had been a diva for a little over a month now. But the contract she had so stupidly signed (before either Raoul or Erik could examine it) stated that she would receive her salary upon the successful completion of the performance of Idomeneo, and that she would receive only chorus wages until that time. According to Erik, the late date of payment was due to the combination of Christine’s refusal to work on two operas at once, the possible return of Carlotta, lack of funds due to gross misspending by the managers, and Christine’s proclivity to miss rehearsals—making her, apparently, in the managers’ eyes, a potential liability when the opening performance came around.
It was absurd—but even she had to admit that she had missed a fair share of rehearsals, what with her alleged kidnapping, post-Ambassadeurs ailment, and numerous dinners with Raoul during practices. So she would just have to make do with plain clothing until she received her first paycheck. With that thought in mind, she resumed her examination of her instructor’s attire.
Though the garments looked very good on him (as long as she didn’t think about the mask), she couldn’t appreciate them—they weren’t expensive, they weren’t ornate, and they weren’t the latest fashion. Still, she couldn’t picture him in anything ostentatious; it just wouldn’t become him.
For a moment, as she observed him gathering up the hangers from the floor and placing them back in the closet, she was so struck by the elegance—a strange, plain elegance—of Erik’s serviceable clothes that she wondered if they were not somehow equal to Raoul’s glorious flamboyance.
Raoul’s handsome face and golden raiment were absolutely divine, blinding in their brilliance, reminiscent of Baldr, god of beauty, of whom no mortal could look upon without being instantly blinded by his beauty. Every living creature in all the Nine Worlds loved him.
It seemed to Christine that Baldr had a brother. What was his name? She had never thought much about him, always preferring to hear about the more famous of the brothers. Hodur—yes, that was his name. Instead of the golden rays of the sun, Hodur’s aura was soft and cool, like the faint light of the moon. His sightless eyes were pale and cold, seeming like the muted shadows of bluebells; they were gentle compared to the burning azure fires that made up Baldr’s eyes. Hodur was rarely mentioned, even by her father, who had loved to tell her stories of the gods, but from what she could remember of him, he had been good and kind. She had always ignored Hodur; but now, in th
at fleeting moment of clarity, she thought that he was, in his own way, perhaps even more beautiful than his brother.
But that was ridiculous. She couldn’t question the legends—and the legends said that Baldr was the most beautiful, and that the whole world cried when he was murdered. Who had cared when Hodur was killed? No one. That’s what the legends said. If they said Baldr was the better one, she believed it.
“And Monsieur Bertrand gave in?” prompted Erik, bringing her back to the present.
“Well, no,” she admitted, shoving her makeup tins, loose change, and dirty handkerchiefs into a drawer. “But the managers won that particular battle.”
“I’m very proud of you,” he said, and she smiled happily. If he was pleased with her, maybe he wouldn’t make her help clean. “The managers decided to fire him,” she added, hoping to distract him into tidying more of the room for her. “Of course, they couldn’t go through with it.”
“They should—he’s talented, I’ll give him that, but not enough to counterbalance his arrogance.” He suddenly noticed what Christine was doing. “Christine, shoving clutter into a drawer does not constitute cleaning.”
“But I’m just going to drag it all out again.”
“Nevermind the makeup—it can stay on the vanity. But hand me those handkerchiefs so I can see to it they’re washed.” She opened the drawer to extracted the wad of dingy fabrics.
When he saw the drawer’s contents, he shook his head in disbelief. “Just what is all this?”
“It’s my collection.”
“Collection of what, exactly?”
“Stuff I’ve found—you know, in the halls, under seats, that sort of thing. You wouldn’t believe all the wonderful things I’ve found! Look at this,” she said, pulling a handful of trinkets out of the drawer. “An army button! And here’s a cuff link! It’s a bit worn, and it’s not even real gold, but it’s still pretty.
“Oooh!” she squealed, holding up an earring for him to see. “This is the prize of my collection: a ruby earring!”
He examined the gold-set gem with a disapproving frown. “This is a garnet. But Christine—”