Been having some questions/complaints about the language that Edina uses. I envisioned her character as being almost from Yorkshire, and if you've read "The Secret Garden", you know how they talk. I wanted to set her apart, also, as a religious woman, the type who would be a nun if not her current profession. If there are any other questions, please hesitate to ask.
Remember to review! Your flames keep us warm at night!
Chapter 4—Scarlet InkThe next day, at teatime, Christine was carrying a large tray to the parlor for Monsieur Garnier and a guest of his, a baron by the name of William von Trappe. Intent on bringing the tray through the door, she did not notice the lurking little shadow that had positioned itself across the hall.
As she stepped over the threshold, she felt two young hands shove on the small of her back. Startled, she dropped the tray, keeping her balance only just barely by grabbing hold of the nearby Monsieur Garnier. Everything smashed to the floor with a loud crash.
"Audrey," she hissed beneath her breath, whipping around. The hall was empty, the boy gone.
"Christine!" Monsieur Garnier said sharply. His shoes and trouser legs were now splashed with tea, and his sleeve unbuttoned from her wild grasp. His hand lashed out and slapped her across the face. "Clumsy girl!"
Christine was burning with fury, but swallowed to keep it under control. "Apologies, sir," she said through gritted teeth. "I must have tripped…apologies, sir."
He struck her again, the other cheek. "Clean it up straightway!"
"Yes, sir." She bent to begin picking up the pieces, seething over how much she hated her duty.
"William, forgive me," Monsieur Garnier said to his guest. "I must go and change—wait here, won't you? I'll send a new tea tray…with a more graceful servant."
Christine's fist clenched, and she opened a small cut across her palm from a shard of broken china.
"Of course," said the baron with a nod and a smile. "Make no haste on my account, Charles."
When the master of the house left, there was silence in the room save the clinking of the shattered tea set as Christine piled it back onto the tray. She was constantly aware of the baron's eyes on her, watching her every more. It unnerved her, but she was occupied with the work at hand and with fuming at the five-year-old mischief-maker.
What could she do to him in return?
--
Many weeks passed. Audrey played daily jokes on Christine, often directly under the unobservant eyes of his parents, when they bothered to be around, or the senior members of the household staff. She acquired bruises from their open hands, and even closed fists, or whatever instrument happened to be in their reach at the time. Her shoulders turned into sickly havens for the black and blue splotches. Once her eye was blacked by an angry Nate with a soup ladle.
Nate…
He was more than a disturbance to Christine. He stalked her whenever he wasn't working. He even followed her at night, in a drunken stupor. Several times he cornered her, shoving his body roughly into her space, once going so far as to tear the thin straps that held up her dress at the shoulders. She had broken away, clutching desperately at the garment until she could retire to her room to fix it.
Christine found a little refuge in her music, but in the nighttime stillness, she could not play to her heart's content. Quiet requiems and minuets were all that she allowed herself, all written by former composers.
Christine wrote nothing quiet.
She often left the house entirely at night, monitoring the progress of the Opera, exploring Paris, and simply being by herself. Several times she visited The Artisan and found Lucius working late, and always happy to involve her in his projects.
But there was Monsieur Garnier…
Christine soon learned how very much he hated his project.
Often, she learned, after a day's work, he would not come home, but go to a local tavern to drink the day away. He came home each night staggering drunkenly, often not till one or so in the morning—about the same time that Christine would return from her wanderings.
He was an angry drunk. The first time that they crossed paths coming in, he growled swearwords at Christine before pinning her against the banister of the stairs by her neck. He threw her headlong halfway across the room then, and she hit the cold marble floor with a bruising thud. He disappeared.
Often, it seemed to Christine, that although she tried to avoid him, he would hunt her out to make a scapegoat, to take out the stress of his project on her. One terrifying night, she had been taking her only meal of the day in the pantry, and he had found her.
Unluckily for her, the object in his reach happened to be a sharp cutting knife with a blade the length of his hand.
His aim was good, for a drunken man, and the knife flew toward her. With a shriek that she could not bite back, Christine felt a searing pain streak across her thigh. She heard the knife clatter, heard him stumbling out of the felt her blood running, felt her head spinning…
Darkness.
--
Edina heard the high-pitched scream that penetrated her sleep, and rushed to the pantry with one arm in her dressing gown. She nearly screamed herself when she saw the blood that stained the floor, and the heap of black, white, and crimson that was Christine.
The dottore was called. The wound was deep, he said as he prepared to stitch it closed. Christine would not be able to stand for, he told them, at least one month. She was also malnourished, he said, practically starved. She would live, but she must be properly fed and get plenty of rest.
Edina stayed by the girl's bedside for the remainder of the night, waiting to see her awaken. However, when morning came and Christine was still deep in oblivion, she had to settle for a later return, and could only pray that her good little servant would be okay.
--
Horrifying, dissonant symphonies haunted her in the torpor that swamped the cursed girl. Pain blazed through the music, wracking her heart. Battle raged within her—horrible, bloody battle that music notes fought across three staves. It terrified her subconscious that the very substance she was made of could behave so raucously.
Her mind's eye saw herself, her body, lying sprawled across the lines of one staff, covered in black ink, which, as she watched, seeped from a wound across her chest and turned to scarlet blood.
Death, personified.
Her music gave her life, and it would kill her as well.
--
Christine's eyes opened many hours later. Her body ached, her throat was dry, and her left leg seemed to be tied in place. Her room was lit by a single candle, but it seemed overly bright to her after the darkness of her torpor. She turned her head away from the light, but the door opened then, letting in more. She winced and blinked, and heard a gasp from someone—Edina.
"Dieu bon, charitable!" she cried when she saw Christine move. "She lives!"
Christine tried to speak, but her voice only rasped.
"Now, now," Edina said, bustling over with a tray, "just stay right where thou art, dear child. We thought we would lose thee!"
Christine hurt too much to fight. She let Edina's arm prop her up enough to sip a cup of bitter tea. She began to cough as the last swallow went down, harshly, tearing at her throat viciously. The elder woman patted her back and held a handkerchief out for her.
When the attack was over, Christine barely had the energy to breath properly. She fell back against the pillows, this time into dreamless, deep, natural sleep.
--
The next time that Christine awoke, her body did not hurt her so badly. She felt weak, though. Her leg, she saw as she looked down, had been bandaged tightly and weighted down at the ankle by what might have been a lead compress. Her room was again dark, with no light coming though the door at all, and she perceived that it was night. She couldn't bear to move very much, but lay still instead.
There was so little reason for her to exist.
I have no purpose,she thought to herself, except to be wretched and shamed. Here am I, without what gives me life—music. Trapped in this hellish house, where I can be of no good but as a scapegoat. And, she added grimly, a victim.
Her mind, as it sometimes did, suddenly turned her thoughts around. She began to remember what she had done for herself—most importantly, she had learned to speak, read and write on her own, not only in French, but in English, Spanish, and Italian. She had discovered the power of her voice on her own as well. She had sought Father Coleman when the rich strains of music that floated down from the church windows had rendered her captive to their beautiful sound.
She felt slightly better at this, knowing that she, at least, had some power. She bit her lip in thought, then tried to push herself to a sitting position. Another bout of coughing overtook her, and she quickly collapsed back onto her pillow. The sound brought a sleepy-eyed Edina to her doorway.
"Awake again?" she said when Christine's attack had subsided. Christine nodded. "And feeling better, art thou?"
The girl nodded again, resting. It was true, she was in better health. "How long must I lie here for?" she asked the woman who hovered over her.
"The dottore said thee wasn't to stand or walk for a month," Edina said, stroking Christine's hair gently. "Now, thee should sleep till the morn, and then I'll check on thee again."
Christine nodded for the third time as the elderly maid exited. A month. Four weeks of immobility—how would she stand it?
"What is pain to you, Christine?" she asked herself aloud, sneering to the darkness. "You've endured it enough. What is it? An annoyance, merely," she conceded, "if that. A fly to be swatted. Nothing important."
With this decisive remark, she steeled herself and pushed her torso up. Her leg burned as she unknowingly clenched the muscle, and she jerked. She would allow her leg to heal, but she doubted that it would take a month. As soon as she felt able, she would stand and walk about the room to strengthen the wounded limb. Who should know her body better than herself? The dottore? Hardly.
Her mask, which had been in its place, dropped as she shook her head slightly. This was odd. She replaced it, noticing, indeed, that its contours seemed not to fit her as exactly as they had. Of course, she thought, I have managed to grow some. She would need Lucius to visit her soon. She made a mental note to tell Edina, then reached for her bedside table. There lay a small basin of water and a cloth.
She dipped the cloth in the cool water and wrung it out, then removed her mask again and laid it against her deformity. It was a welcome sensation—it relaxed her, and for a moment, she imagined what it would be like to be…
Whole. Complete. Perfect.
These thoughts dismissed themselves airily, almost before she noticed them.
She could learn to accept her face, and her fate.
She could learn how to make her life worth living.
It was all she had to live for, after all.