A/N: I never anticipated that my historical fiction about a siege would suddenly become quite so relevant... yet here we are. I hope this finds all of you and your loved ones safe and well. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here to read this now-traditionally late instalment, and please do let me know what you think!

Chapter 71 — Homeward

The voices grew louder. Erik blew out his candle and remained very still. It was possible – just possible – that whoever was upstairs would not notice the kitchen door he had left ajar for his return. The stairwell was cold and pitch dark, there was nothing to be seen, not even his breath. Who were they? Friends, relatives of the couple who had lived in his chosen apartment? Not the gendarmes, surely. He had not been followed. He had been very careful.

The creak of a floorboard echoed into the spiralling void of the stairwell: three or four of them, all men judging from the weight of the footfalls, striding noisily across the kitchen and arguing without suppressing their voices, so certain they were of being alone. Damn them. If they found the kitchen door and came down here before he could find another way out of the trap, he would have no choice but to… no. No. He had no appetite for such an encounter. Christine would be waiting for him at the Variétés.

He had a minute or two to leave before he was discovered. The sounds faded as the men retreated deeper into the apartment. There had to be another door somewhere.

Heart pounding, Erik ripped off his gloves and ran bare fingers along the rough frozen masonry of the stairwell, expecting to feel the edge of a doorframe to the kitchen of the apartment directly below his. He found nothing. A blank wall. The door must have been bricked up. In absolute darkness he ran down another turn of the stairs to the first floor, feeling blindly all along the wall. Still nothing. It made no sense. There had to be other doors! The cellars below were a cavernous maze of corridors shared by the whole building, he had glimpsed half a dozen padlocked storerooms down there. How the devil did the residents of the other apartments access their own storerooms, if not through their kitchens?

Upstairs, the footsteps were back. Someone gave a bark of laughter, with an unmistakable flavour of Montmartre in his voice, and the faint red glow of a lit cigarette filtered into the darkness, followed a moment later by the whiff of tobacco. The smoker had to be standing right by the kitchen door. Tossing caution aside, Erik covered the rest of the way down in three long leaps, landing soundlessly on the stone flagging at the foot of the stairs.

A breeze brushed his face around the bandage. A draught! Luck was with him. The stale basement air was moving; in the darkness he could smell a trace of the winter outside. That meant another door was open, if only he could find it.

Come to think of it, this rear stairwell had not appeared on the floorplan he had studied in Duchamp's office, he happened upon it by chance. This building was older than the construction projects that had reshaped the face of Paris; there had to have been additions and changes to make it fit in with the neighbouring façades. No doubt these stairs were a relic left behind during remodelling, replaced by a new set near the main entrance. If so, all he had to do to find it was get across to the other side of the basement…

But judging from the sounds coming from that direction, whoever had found the upstairs apartment had found the main door too.

Erik melted against the wall just as a lantern flared. The sudden brightness after so long made him blink; when he could see again, flickering orange light outlined the arch of a bare-brick corridor leading into the depths of the cellar. He could just make out another storeroom door there, with an apartment number painted upon it. Men in heavy boots and snow-encrusted greatcoats trundled through with wheelbarrows and bundles of what looked like clothing. No, not clothing, sacks, empty sacks for carrying away whatever they expected to find in storage here. The one with the lantern gestured to either side of him, making the flame jump:

"You, right; you two — that way. Check everything. Take nothing rotten mind, and coal — coal above all else, got it?"

You had to hand it to them, Erik thought, they were efficient. The lantern-bearer tossed a bundle of keys to another man; within a few minutes they had the two nearest doors flung open and the sacks were filling fast. They threw bags to one another, tore lids from baskets to sniff the contents, grabbed bottles from shelves. Erik had not explored the other apartments' storerooms and now he watched everything from potatoes to a great joint of cured meat being brought out and stuffed into bulging sacks, along with bottles of oil, tins of sardines, candles, and who knew what else. The coal came last of all, a half-full barrow that was wheeled out reverently and put to one side.

He should have taken it first. It was his. His! An embarrassment of riches, food and fuel both — why had he looked only in that one cellar, how could it have not occurred to him to open the other storerooms when he'd held the tools in his hands? And now he had lost it all to a gang of looters who had no more right to it than did the rats, and he had nothing for Christine.

Bringing Christine to live here was now out of the question. It was over. The most he could count on was escaping without arousing suspicion, but escaping to what? He tried to remind himself there were other apartment plans in Duchamp's office, but it scarcely made a dent in his growing, rising, choking sense of having been robbed. This should all have been his. A beautiful apartment that Christine could fill with light and warmth and her music. So perfect. Destroyed.

The raid continued for a quarter of an hour with storeroom doors being thrown open one after another, locks smashed, the lantern swaying dizzily back and forth as the men filled their sacks and barrows. Erik watched dismally from the foot of the stairs as they emptied his cellars. These stores would fetch handsome sums from those who could pay. And why not? It was scarcely even theft, they were scavenging what had been abandoned. The city was starving.

The men he had heard talking upstairs came down past him at last, passing a handspan from where he stood as they argued, but they noticed nothing. A black shadow followed them through the cellars and along dark walkways, between storerooms and dust, until they carted the spoils to the main stairs and went up towards the lobby, taking everything out with them.

And then he was alone in the empty cellar. They did not even bother closing the door, and as the draught swept away the reek of their cigarettes and lamp-smoke, Erik tried to imagine that he could go after them. Take a rope from one of the storerooms, surprise them in the courtyard, retrieve all that was his… Empty threats, and he knew it. These looters did not deserve death, and even if they did, what good would come of him returning to Christine with an armload of supplies taken from corpses? He would do no such thing.

He trudged back up to the top floor empty-handed, padlocked the door behind him, and dropped onto a chair at the kitchen worktable. Behind the little window opposite it was snowing again. He stared at the whiteness. Five minutes. He would give himself five minutes to mourn what was lost before he would get up again and go on to the Variétés. Then tomorrow he must return to Monsieur Duchamp's office to find the rest of the architect's files, and begin his search for a home all over again.

Five minutes, Christine's voice said in his memory. Five minutes when you are with me; the rest of the time you may keep all your masks.

The knot at the nape of his neck was stiff with perspiration, but Erik tugged and persevered until the bandage gave way and unravelled over his shoulders. He scrubbed at his bared scars. The flesh burned in the cold air — but it felt so good, so sinfully good. He closed his eyes just for a moment, imagining how after Christine's performance at the Variétés tonight he would have presented to her the key to their new home, and how he would have accompanied her here, drinking in her delight as she discovered all the books and curios and strange musical instruments…

Five minutes stretched to ten, then twenty. He knew it was time to leave but instead he found himself wandering through the empty apartment like a foreigner in a beautiful land, the language of which he did not speak. In the library there were albums and journals full of meticulous dense script, and on the shelf a sheaf of sketches of what looked to be a type of mandolin. The real thing must have gone with the owners, but they had not taken the heavier instruments: a harp here, several brightly patterned drums there, and over in the corner, something the shape of a miniature grand piano.

It was no bigger than an old harpsichord, with four spindly legs inlaid with nacre and ivory peering out from under its dust sheet. No doubt it was only a trophy, a souvenir brought back from some adventure, voiceless under its shroud.

Was it the loss in him that made him perverse? Or the sense of disappointment? Erik could not have said what moved him to do it, but with one foot he hooked a stool over to the harpsichord-thing, seated himself, and tore away its veil.

Gypsies.

That was his first great overwhelming thought. The bunched dust sheet fell through his nerveless fingers, slowly, as recognition dawned. This was no harpsichord. It was a tzymbal. That was what the gypsies used to call this instrument when they'd stop the caravan for the night away from the roads to light their night fires. They had kept its music for the road, never brought it out for the onlookers at the fairgrounds. It was not for the unclean. Least of all, for the likes of him.

The tzymbal he recalled had been a simple wooden box, smaller than this lacquered one and well worn, but with the same arrangement of string after string crossing it like a tapestry of horizontal rain. Its voice had been like rain too, with the beaters hammering at the strings too rapidly for sight, creating anything from the patter of droplets to the crash of a thunderstorm that could only be silenced by the weight of the player's both arms pressing upon the strings.

The beaters lying before him were prettily lacquered, and looked unused. Erik withdrew them carefully from their leather case, weighting them in his hands. He had imagined they ought to feel heavier. Perhaps these were only toys after all, decorative curios… He tapped one to a string.

The note fell like the first raindrop in a desert. Come! it cried to him in the empty room, come!

He wanted to stop. He tried to drop the beaters and throw his weight upon the strings to silence the music, but already the second note was tolling through his hands to his arms and chest, then a third and fourth, and it seemed he was dissolving in the sound itself, floating up, up, up, rising over this apartment with its empty cellar and hollow dreams, far above this building and this siege.

Each glissando made his breath hitch and his throat tighten. So this was what it felt like to play it! — this elusive instrument that had sounded in the bleak landscape of his loneliness, whose music he had coveted from that first fateful day when he had seen the caravan arrive. He had gone to them with no backward glance that night, stumbling on childish legs toward the brilliant sound. He remembered the brief exchange of coins, his mother leaving, but he'd hardly noticed, captured as easily as another foolish child with her faith in the Angel of Music. The gyspies' music had called to him and he had followed it blindly into the mirage of freedom.

He did not know then that he would never be permitted to play it. And yet here he was.

The lacquered beaters grew hot and alive in his hands: Erik watched in wonder and horror as they flickered over the strings to pick out a rhythm seemingly of their own accord as if bewitched. The tempo was quick and getting quicker, he had no notion of where the melody was leading him or how to direct it, he knew only that he would not stop. He did pause only for a second, to tighten the pitch of a string, and in the next moment the music resumed as though it had never been broken, and he — the Devil's Child! Come and see, the Devil's Child! — played on and on upon this beautiful, forbidden instrument.

It was not a gypsy song his hands were creating, nor was it another Marseillaise. It was his music. His music.

He lost himself. The library grew dim, then bluish dark, until the only illumination was the moonlight streaming through the window and reflecting from the snow-covered windowsill. He forgot the empty cellars and his search for a home, he forgot his useless lockpicks and his scars and the hunger gnawing at his gut. He forgot that he was a husband. Gradually, he forgot everything but the silvery strings singing under his hands and the music shimmering in the darkness. The strings sang to him in Christine's perfect voice, caressed his bare face, raising him up to greater and greater clarity of structure and melody, creating music that burned and seared itself into his mind and seemed to set alight the very air around him.

In the study he found paper and ink, enough to get started.

o o o

She sang badly. Her heart was not in it and, if she was honest with herself, neither was her head. It was difficult to focus on her Variétés repertoire of grand patriotic songs when the lobby where she sang overflowed with wounded soldiers from the sortie and more were still coming — far too many of them, a red and white sea of faces and bandages in the poorly lit lobby below her. Each breath she drew for a note hit her with the stench of butchered flesh, until she could taste it in her throat and it was all she could do not to gag.

And yet nobody noticed her poor performance. Dozens of wounded men stared up at her where she stood at the top of the marble staircase, eyes bright with hope, as though she were a star guiding them home. Her role was to be an angel of hope, shining far above the world of pus and blood to bring light to their suffering, and there were tears glistening on their cheeks as she began the climb toward the final, obligatory rendition of the Marseillaise.

Angel of music, she thought bitterly, you are a liar.

Ashamed, she took the cadenza to new heights, adding every vocal firework she could think of, in a display of such breathtaking mediocrity that it would have made La Carlotta weep with envy. The applause was rapturous. It almost drowned out the laudanum-addled groans from the cloakroom, where the amputations were done.

She sank down in a bow, then another deeper than the first, hiding her eyes.

"Christine Daaé!" saluted Camille Michaud, raising the kepi he still wore although he had not been on a national guard patrol since the theatre had reopened, as he marched over to shake her hand in both of his. "Truly my dear, you are a marvel."

"Monsieur." Christine accepted his compliments quietly, wishing she felt a fraction of the satisfaction he and the others seem to find in these soirées. Scattered whoops and cheers rose above the applause in the lobby, and she bowed again to her audience, and permitted Michaud to kiss her hand.

"If you'll excuse me, I cannot stay late tonight to speak with the wounded. My, uh," she stumbled, "my husband has need of me."

Michaud looked nonplussed. "But Christine — madame! The officers have been waiting to pay their compliments. They suffer in this campaign. It is all we can offer that they might hear our nation's greatest artists and be reminded of what is at stake. It is us they defend, the republic, our theatres, our music, all that makes our poor France. We must bolster their resolve! Or would you have us all speaking German by Christmas?"

"My parents spoke Swedish."

Michaud looked appalled at himself. "I do not mean to cast doubt on your loyalties."

"No, of course not." But it is true, Christine thought. Perhaps I am not French enough. Perhaps that is why my heart cries out for my father's old songs and cares nothing for the hymns of war.

Or perhaps, she let the thought continue, it is what the music says that matters and not the words, and I am tired of delivering the most banal melodies as though they mean more than they do.

Michaud offered his arm. "Come, do speak with them. You know they look forward to these recitals in the midst of their pain. They are asking for you."

"I know," she admitted, "but not tonight. I cannot. Monsieur Andersson will be here in a moment."

"I've seen no sign of him yet."

That was true; Erik was not in the back of the crowd where he normally waited for her at the end of these soirées. Christine scanned the lobby again but if he was there, he had concealed his presence even from her. She bit her lip; his obsession with finding a home for them was consuming him as all his obsessions invariably did, and still he refused to confide anything of it in her. Each evening he returned to her looking sullen and preoccupied, and she knew from that look that he had failed yet again. She wondered if that was what was keeping him tonight.

"You see," Michaud continued, taking her elbow smoothly and trying to steer her toward the stairs, "he is not yet here, there is no reason to hurry, and we have three or four officers from de Bellemare's division who asked most particularly for the pleasure of meeting you. They are but lightly wounded and will cause you no distress, Christine."

Christine glanced at him, surprised that he should have thought her reluctance due to nothing but squeamishness. "It is not their wounds that distress me," she said quietly.

"Then what is it?"

Christine freed her arm and turned to go toward her dressing room. "All this," she said, indicating the lobby. "I can't stay here. I feel I might suffocate."

She left hastily, ashamed of the chorus of groans and imprecations she heard in her wake, and yet relieved beyond measure to be free. If they thought her a puffed-up airhead with a silver voice who cared for nothing but her own comfort, then so be it – she had been called worse. Christine Daaé, the Phantom's plaything… the stranger, the daughter of that Swedish violinist…

She collected her things from her dressing room with efficiency born of weeks of practice, but this time chose to leave nothing behind. Every last hairpin went into her purse, and she kept her dressing robe on under her coat and shawl. Then she closed the door, leaving the key in the lock. Perhaps she would return tomorrow. But if she did, it would not be because she had no choice in the matter.

"You're off early!" said Sabine, one of the volunteer nurses who passed her on the back stairs, herself a chorus girl now dressed in sober hues. There was snow on her coat and shoes; she had just come from outside with a pile of clean bedlinen she was hugging to her chest. "Aren't you staying to greet the wounded?"

"Not tonight," Christine said calmly. "I've the night off."

"Monsieur Michaud said…"

"All the same, I'm going home. Good night, Sabine."

"Home? But what about the new officers? They've been talking my ear off about you, said they heard you singing in Montmartre a while back. You're 'the most beautiful voice in Paris', apparently."

Christine gave her a crooked smile. "I told Meg those posters were too much."

Sabine made a dismissive noise. "You know they'll only want you all the more tomorrow if you leave them hanging today. Or is that the whole idea? Unless," — curiously she peered down the stairs to the back door, "ohhh, you're going to meet someone! Aren't you?"

"I hope so. My husband."

Sabine grinned from ear to ear. "Ha. I came through the courtyard just now, with all these," — she hefted the linens — "and can't say I noticed any stray husbands around. Well, carry on then. Don't worry, my lips are sealed."

Christine only shrugged, feeling suddenly embarrassed at the way she was leaving, as though she had some reason to steal away. Her reaction seemed to delight Sabine all the more, and Christine had a sinking feeling that before too long the whole theatre would be talking of the primadonna trading her new husband for some newer lover. Not even the war could extinguish the theatre's love of gossip. Well, so be it.

"Good night." Lifting her shawl over her hair to keep warm, she made her way past Sabine and down toward the exit, where a small drift of snow had blown under the door. It would be dark outside and very cold. She did not relish the walk home on her own, but there was no help for it. If Erik was coming tonight, he would have to catch up with her, because she could not stand it here a moment longer. Her lungs wanted clean air and her soul wanted music — real, living music, not soldiers' entertainment.

"Hey," Sabine called from the landing, as uncertainty crept into her voice. "You're not really going out there alone, are you? It's late."

"I'm a married woman," Christine said firmly, and was surprised by how readily the words came. "Don't worry. I know the way home."