This Night

Chapter I

Blackest of Night

For Aebtissin. Woman extraordinaire.

They fought. A lot. It really was inescapable. With her being who, or rather, what she was and him the bitter, dried up bigot, they couldn't help but end each halfway decent conversation they tried to have in a shouting match. The worst fights occurred when he had the sheer nerve to try and justify his actions towards her people. He tried to explain to her, in a kindly condescending way that the people she considered her brethren, were no more to him than the lowest form of street rats, begging to be swept of the streets of Paris like the garbage he projected them to be. She saw the corners of his mouth turn down and his eyes light up with an unholy fire as he slipped into a familiar sermon, the words vermin, hell and damnation rolling off his tongue like the names of old familiar friends. The resounding slap of her hand on his gaunt cheek was her parting shot on that occasion. She had hurried back to the sanctuary of her chambers, palm of her hand smarting and tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, wondering why it had to be her stuck in this impossible position of living with the biggest monster France had seen in ages. A villain who didn't even have the common sense to consider himself a villain. Utterly remorseless he appeared, for the many lives he had taken in the name of God, the King and France. One by one, gypsies and other unfortunates whose only fault it was that they were born with a different colour of skin. How did he sleep at night?

And yet.

She knew something about him, a little sneaky truth that set her teeth on edge and made her treacherous heart flutter wildly each time she thought about it.

Claude Frollo, Monster Extraordinaire, He-Who-Considered-Gypsies-Hellspawn, was in love with her. Loved her. Loved her. Claude Frollo loved Esmeralda, Queen of the Gypsies. What a great cosmic fucking joke. And the worst thing about it was this: He didn't even know it. For a man who ruled a city like Paris meticulously and with an iron fist, Frollo was remarkably stupid about matters of the heart. Oh she saw it, in the way his heavy lidded gaze rested on her just a little too long when they met for their convivial sparring sessions. The way his pulse raced as she placed her hand on the crook of his elbow, to be escorted by him through countless colourless halls in the bowels of the Palace of Justice. She felt it in the way he leant unconsciously into her, his body warmth slowly seeping into her clothes, as they sat side by side in his cramped coach. And she pretended not to be affected by the smell of him. The smell of wet earth on a hot summer afternoon, after a thunderstorm. Such a wild scent, it seemed almost out of place on a repressed man like him.

There it was though, staring her in the face, clear as day. The crux of the matter. The great paradox of this man. Claude Frollo loved the thing he claimed to hate.

Esmeralda decided it was high time somebody confronted Frollo with a mirror.

Dinner in the drawing room. Despite the sweltering heat of summer, soup for starters. Frollo frowned at his companion, who seemed distracted today. She projected a sense of dejection. Almost as if the fight had gone out of her. Pity.

He toyed with his soup for a moment, before dropping the spoon with a clang back in his bowl. Esmeralda's head came up at the sudden sound, one eyebrow raised in silent query. Frollo's furrow turned into a scowl as he examined her mulish expression. What the devil was going on inside that head now? A sense of foreboding crept up on him and he fought the urge to squirm.

Silence before the storm.

He dabbed the side of his mouth with his napkin, before placing it next to his bowl again, in an exact angle. Because he was fastidious like that. In every aspect. He hated messy eaters. His father always said that men who didn't know their table manners dined with demons and pigs. To underline this, he had, when Claude was just a young boy, punished him once for speaking with his mouth full by dragging the struggling, scared boy down to the stables and nearly choking him in the pig's trough. Father had held his head in the pig's feed, forcing him to chew and swallow the stuff, and when the boy had choked on his own vomit, he had yanked the boy's head up by the scruff of his neck and down again into the trough, great clumps of fine black hair in his large, angry hands. It had taken Claude months to grow back the missing hair, and to this day, he preferred the hair on his neck as short as possible.

"There's something that's been bothering me, Frollo," her voice cut through his musings, and he shook himself, annoyed at being caught daydreaming. He needed his wits about him enough as it was around her, without being blindsided by maudlin thoughts.

"Well? Pray tell, enlighten me," he replied, annoyed at the catch in his own voice. He had meant to sound suave, not like a gravelly old beggar, dammit.

Esmeralda stood up from her seat then, and before courtesy could make him rise out of his seat as well, she was at his side She pushed gently down on his shoulder, and he sank down again, bewildered at her sudden ease in touching him. But all the while silently relishing it.

She scooted closer, finally perching herself on the edge of the table, conveniently placing herself higher than him. The edge of her skirts flowed past and over his knees, her booted foot resting on the edge of his armrest.

Slowly her fingers slid down his shoulder, down his chest, to slowly tap against the place where she suspected his heart ( if he had one) to be.

"I am going to ask you a question." She stated simply. "And I want you to be honest with me."

Frollo swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. A slight tremor started in his left hand, and he clenched his fingers hard around his armrest in a bid to conceal his body's reaction to her. Still, he noticed her green eyes flicker briefly to his hand and then slide knowingly back up to his eyes again. Caught. Damnation.

"What?" He croaked, secretly disgusted with himself.

"How do you feel about me, Frollo?"

There.

His eyes widened at her question and he swallowed again. He reached for his goblet, eager to moisten his dry throat, but Esmeralda beat him to it, sliding the goblet just out of his reach. "Answer me first."

"I..I," he stammered stupidly.

"Because it seems to me," she continued blithely, " that it would be a strange thing for a man of your...stature to fall in love with a, what is it that you called my people the other day? Ah yes. A sub-human." Esmeralda made a disparaging noise in her throat. " A sub-human." She repeated. "Not really human. Apes. Monkeys." She leaned in closer and her hair swayed forward as well, tendrils of black curling and caressing his sweaty, thin face, giving him another whiff of that alluring scent that was uniquely her. "Does your kind have a word for a man who falls in love with a monkey?" She hissed in his face, her angry hot breath taking away his. " Tell me, mighty minister Frollo, do you wake at night, painfully aroused and confused? Do you touch yourself in the darkness? " Her hands came up to claw at the sides of his head, fingernails digging in the sensitive skin behind his ears. "Do you moan my name when you come, Claude?" She shook his head slightly and his eyes slipped shut, afraid of the righteous fire in her green eyes. How did she hone in on his feelings like that, exposing those things he would not, could not examine further?

He was also disgusted to note that he was painfully hard.

"How do you justify yourself, Minister?" She went on, fingers groping his sensitive hair, making him shiver despite the heat. " Lusting after one monkey, (here he tried to interrupt her: "It's not lu-," but she just shook him harder, making his teeth click together painfully) while you cheerfully burn others?"

"Do you want to know what the other monkeys were called, Judge Frollo?" He tried to shake his head, he didn't want to hear, didn't want to know-, but she forged on, like a wrathful angel.

"The man you quartered in the town square, for stealing and resisting arrest?" A face flashed unbidden before his mind's eye, and he gritted his teeth. " His name was Nuri. He was married, with three children. Your men laughed as his innards spilled over the stones."

"The boy you maimed for pick pocketing? He was nine. His name was Simzi Trouillefou." Her fingers trailed lower, to rest on the pulsing point in his exposed neck. "He died, because what was left of his feet became infected. I was there when he was born, and I was there as I comforted his mother, my cousin, as we put him back in the earth. Earth that you refused to have blessed, so that his spirit is lost forevermore." Frollo choked at this.

"Why Frollo," she crooned mockingly. "Your pulse is racing!" Her fingers fingered his jaw. They slid further down, almost teasingly, the pad of her index finger resting briefly on his thin bloodless lips.

"Need I go on?" she whispered finally, dropping her hands back in her lap. Frollo shrank back in his seat, ageing visibly before her. Sunken eyes stared up at her. "Stop," he whispered. "No more...please!"

That word, so strange coming from his lips, got to her and she looked down on him, this broken shell of a man. His trembling had worsened and he sat, clenching and unclenching his long fingers, clearly in mental agony, silver eyes staring up at her in silent terror.

"I can assure you, there are many more names for you to hear." She replied evenly.

It was always for the greater good, dammitalltohell! He tried rationalizing to himself, waiting for his conscience to agree with him. But the voice, that angry voice that sounded so much like his fathers', the voice that had driven him for so many years was suddenly silent and he was left with the tatters of his mental peace and the dull roar in his ears. He gritted his teeth at the scratchy feeling in his eyes. His vision blurred momentarily and he blinked furiously, willing the sudden moisture in his eyes away.

"I still think you need to hear more."

And she continued. Names of her brethren, her friends, her family spilled from her lips, combined with their apparent crimes and his sentences. Sometimes he would try to reason against her, but she would silence him every time with a soft finger placed on his lips.

Her voice grew hoarse as she continued. Still she carried on, every name a sweet sad poison on her lips as she remembered, mourned and condemned. The man before her sat paralyzed, the grooves in his thin face growing deeper as she heaped name upon name on his thin shoulders.

In the end she fell silent. She picked up the goblet beside her and drank deeply, a dark red wine of some luxurious vintage that bloomed on her dry tongue, quenching the dry fire in her throat. Only the best for him, of course.

After a moment of hesitation she held out the wine to him and he took the goblet from her hand, his fingers touching hers briefly. She watched him as he tried to restore a semblance of calm to himself. But still his hand shook badly as he brought the goblet to his lips. For a moment she considered assisting him, but she disregarded that thought as soon as it popped up. He would hate her even more for that. An imbecile, not an invalid.

He drained the cup in one go and let it fall from numb hands, making it clatter loudly on the grey flagstones. Esmeralda watched as it bounced once and then rolled away, coming to rest against the foot of the table.

Sighing to herself, she pushed herself off the edge of the table, skirts once more sliding over his exposed legs. She felt more than saw him shiver and smiled, satisfied that his body, despite his terror, still sang to her in response. She bent down to pick up the goblet and straightening slowly to work out the kinks in her back ( and it didn't matter that she gave him a good view of her rump while she did that), got up again. She placed the goblet back on the table, on the exact spot where he had placed it. Because she knew how fastidious he was about things like that.

Then, reaching for a piece of bread carelessly, she snuffed out the candles on the table. Leaving Frollo only illuminated by the faint light of stars and moon. She departed, leaving him only with the dying echo of the door slamming on her way out.

She wouldn't see him for three weeks.