Fantôme – Chapter 9, Part 10

Catch up with Fantôme from the beginning

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The party, though, was not over, and Raoul found himself obliged to be sociable once more: he was passed around, pillar to post, dancing with great ladies and pretty damsels and frivolous performers. As Raoul danced, his gentlemanly nature demurred to the women he was with, encouraging their chattering and responsive to their gossiping. He heard from each of them tales of the party he had missed, and each lady told of the powerful, striking Red Death costume. Though Raoul asked all where he mind find this gentleman not one could answer him with any certainty, and though Raoul passed through the party, room to room, seeking The Red Death, he never saw the gentleman – nor did he see beautiful Christine, in her lily-white habit, again.

Missing his belle, and aware that he had perhaps not conducted himself the best in their private moment, Raoul stole away to the back of the Opera, down the passage he often found filled with desirous men toward the dressing-rooms. Today it was empty as he tiptoed down, and he didn’t like the resonant walls that seemed to whisper secrets about men in power and beautiful, compliant women. Raoul crept to Christine’s cosy dressing-room and let himself inside, where he walked around the room for a few brief moments, running his fingers across the things she used, loved, ordered and which remained wrapped on her dressing-table. He untied the ribbon from her perfume-bottle and ran it under his nose, wrapped it around his knuckles, and held it to his heart before tucking it into his shirt next to his breast like a jouster’s love token. Sat at her mirror he took up a pen on her own coarse stationery to write, as he had on the night she had gone missing, but some way through his letter he was distracted by footsteps outside. In his haste to hide behind the screen at the back of the room, Raoul left the lid off the pen and it rolled against the mirror where it bounced slightly before coming to a rest.

It was, of course, Christine who entered – for who else would be in a woman’s dressing-room alone at night? Raoul felt himself blush with the realisation of what a strange thing he had done, to slip into a woman’s private space and hope to remain undetected. He trembled, thinking what he had stooped to and what would happen were he found out.

“Stackars Eerik!”

The words were Swedish, and Raoul didn’t know the meaning, but luckily enough for him they were repeated in Christine’s adopted French: “Poor, poor Éric!”

He was peeping through the gap between the screen’s panels, and he could see just a thin line, barely able to discern what was happening on the other side. He could see that Christine was (mercifully!) looking to her mirror. He saw her scan the small table around her and see the papers, though he could not see if she was confused or alarmed. He saw her snatch up his half-written letter and stuff them down into her form, he heard the pen clatter once more against the mirror. Listening closely for more clues he heard a foreign, melancholy chanting; had Raoul’s elementary education, which fitted him for a life as an aristocrat and soldier, put greater stock in Latin, he might have been more confused, for to recognise that the voice sang, in church Latin, about the Virgin Mother. “Unde o suavis Virgo in te non deficit ullum gaudium” he sang, beautiful and otherworldly, drawing nearer. Christine sighed – “he is late”, she whispered to herself.

She stood, now, and with her arms out she let her voice ring out true: “jam Christus astra ascenderat,” and she and the voice sang together “reversus unde venerat Patris fruendum munere”. Their voices were a drone, almost tuneless, yet magical and elegant and effervescent with joy. “Sanctum daturus Spiritum,” they sang, and Raoul didn’t understand a word. Nor did he understand how the voice burst into the room without entering by the door, or how Christine moved forward, her reflection entering the mirror and her blank doe eyes looking forwards, away from Raoul, and then vanished. For the briefest of moments he thought he saw The Red Death in the reflection, his huge crimson feather plume dancing in the candlelight, his articulated jaw menacing and shaky, his silken robes as deep and rich colour as a cardinal’s – but, of course, such a flash was surely the brain creating the vision it wanted to see, after a whole night of description. There was a harsh, cold wind for just a moment, then Christine’s bright hood and raven hair was gone. Raoul heard the mysterious chanting, joined by Christine’s clear soprano, but muffled now, and moving slowly away. He once again heard the clack of his pen against the wall… but now the pen was nowhere to be seen.

As he stepped into the brisk, fresh air outside the Opera Raoul thrust his hands into his pockets and chanced upon a fresh envelope. This one was not in Christine’s handwriting, and when his cold hands were done fumbling, all was written on the interior paper was a time and a place.

Raoul had his man take his Montmorency to be sharpened in preparation for the rendezvous, and pulled his Browning out of the sock drawer where it had lived since his demob. The pistol came with him now wherever he went.

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