Chapter 29
“Dear André, what a splendid party!” Raoul stepped forward and gave a masked skeleton’s hand a boisterous shake.
The theatre manager was dressed in a jacket with sparkling ribs appliquéd over its front and an elaborate mantle of red satin.
Long femurs and tibias were stitched down his tailored pants.
“I believe you’re already acquainted with my fiancée? ” Raoul slapped him on the back.
“Ah, yes, Miss Daaé. So good to see you again. What do you think of our little festivities? Quite the prologue to a bright new year, wouldn’t you say?”
I gave an appreciative sweep of my eyes over the Populaire’s grand entry. The black marble staircase shone with a gleaming luster, and the golden nymph statues lining the balustrade glimmered in the candlelight so fiercely I almost needed to squint.
Hundreds of people filled the space, each preening and twirling as they showed off their elaborate costumes. I saw sultanas and mermen, lions, and a shepherdess leading about an actual lamb. There were fortune tellers and clowns, jesters, and even someone dressed as a goldfish.
“It looks marvelous,” I told him as Monsieur Firmin approached.
Like his cohort, he also wore a skeleton mask, though his looked like something that would be pulled from the deepest trenches of the sea.
Bony spikes poked out from his jaw, and a wide swath of green velour covered his torso.
His wife followed after him, waving from behind her oversized sunray mask. “I’m sure it will be quite a night.”
“I’m impressed!” Raoul said, jumping in and greeting the other manager with great exuberance. He’d downed his first two champagnes so quickly his cheeks were already a ruddy pink.
“Well, one does one’s best.” Monsieur Firmin signaled a waiter to bring over a tray of glasses. “Here’s to the two of you!” He hoisted high his coupe, readying to begin a toast.
I glanced about nervously. It was bad enough that Raoul had already told the managers of our engagement. I didn’t want anyone else to overhear.
I didn’t care what well-meaning assurances Raoul had given.
I knew Erik wasn’t gone. He’d not died; he’d not fled. It was impossible to believe he would ever quit the opera. It was his home, his sanctuary, his playground, and his altar.
No. He was not gone. Only hiding.
“Here’s to all of us!” Raoul corrected. “To you! To Paris! To the Opéra Populaire!”
“To the Opéra Populaire!” echoed the managers and their wives.
“Happy New Year!” Madame Barbier called out as she passed by, fluttering her fingers at all of us. She had on a rigid dress, structured to look like a grandfather clock. Numbers were painted round her face, with prosthetic hands glued on to read just before midnight.
“May it be a prosperous one!” Monsieur André said, raising a hand as if to tip his nonexistent hat at her.
“What a night!” exclaimed Meg as she joined our group. Her ringmaster jacket was a cheerful shade of red. Beneath it, she had on striped tights and a scandalously short ruffled skirt. A small top hat, tipped at a jaunty angle, served as a fascinator.
“Meg!” I cried out, throwing my arms around her as relief flooded through me.
I had not seen her in months. I’d tried visiting her before Raoul and I had gone off to Burgundy, but she’d always been out, at work or with new friends, and though we’d kept up our letter writing, the missives felt shallow and devoid of any true information.
There was so much I needed to tell her. So much I needed to explain.
It had been impossible to write about Raoul’s proposal and my rapidly approaching retirement.
I knew she would be happy for me, but it would be a hard thing saying goodbye to our lives as we’d known them.
We would always be best friends—of that I had no doubt—but our circumstances had changed, going off in radically different directions.
I wanted to keep my relationship with her as it had always been, at least for a little while longer.
My hand strayed to my bodice, making sure my silver necklace was still carefully tucked inside the dress. Before we’d left the apartment, I’d slipped Raoul’s engagement ring onto the chain—to wear it, but in secret.
“Such a crowd!” Madame Giry said, coming up to the gathered group. Her only acknowledgment of the evening’s festivities was a sparkling netted shawl worn over her usual black gown. “You must be well pleased, messieurs.”
“Indeed, indeed!” Monsieur Firmin confirmed.
“Look at all this—the crème de la crème, here at our New Year’s Eve ball.
I don’t mind telling you all, we had feared that our audiences wouldn’t return after…
well…all that. But just look! So many ticket holders!
If tonight is any indication, the new season is sure to be a grand success! ”
“I will admit, this does make me feel better about that bill for the new chandelier!” Monsieur André laughed, sounding loose and more than a little in his cups. He elbowed Raoul’s ribs. “We can’t thank you enough for that donation, old chap.”
My head snapped to Raoul. “You paid for the repairs?”
“Happily,” he said, and took another sip of champagne. “I know what this place means to you.” He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I had an astonishing night at the faro table and thought such winnings should go to a worthy cause.”
Still, I gaped. “But that must have been a fortune!”
“It was.” He nodded. “But now you know.”
“Know what?”
“That I’d do anything to make you smile, Christine,” he pledged, and brought my fingers to his lips.
“Well, well, well,” Carlotta drawled as she and Ubaldo approached us, promenading through the crowd.
I couldn’t tell if Carlotta was meant to be a bat or a spider.
Glittering wings sprouted from her back, but her skirt looked like a diamond-dusted web.
“What a surprise. Our little Christine Daaé cozying up to our patron. Happy New Year, Monsieur le Vicomte.”
“To you as well, Signora Giudicelli, Signor Piangi.”
“I’ve never seen the Populaire look so magnificent,” the tenor said, peering up at the lengths of black and gold satin swagged about the hall.
He wore a golden breastplate and crown—the Sun King returned to life.
Gazing wistfully over the gathering, he nudged Carlotta.
“Look at all this, cara.” He raised his glass to the crowds. “May its splendor never fade.”
They clinked glasses, and we all turned our attention to the swarm of people coming down the grand staircase with choreographed precision.
They flapped silver fans back and forth over black domino masks.
It took me a moment to realize that this was the corps de ballet’s performance for the evening, and then another to notice that Meg was not among their number.
“Mother said I didn’t have to be a part of it this year,” she whispered when I turned to her, answering my question before I could even ask it.
“For Tannh?user, they’ve cast me as the lead siren for the dance in Venusberg.
Mother is preparing all new choreography for me,” Meg said, and her eyes sparkled happily.
“Meg! That’s wonderful! Congratulations!”
“No more nights at the Moulin Rouge for me.” She took my hand and squeezed it tightly. “I’m going to be a danseuse étoile!”
“I’m so proud of you!”
She beamed but then frowned, her inner light dimming by degrees. “In all my excitement, I forgot to see what part you’re playing, but it must be Elisabeth. Surely they wouldn’t cast Carlotta as a young princess. She must be playing Venus.”
“Surely,” I echoed, and my mind drifted, wondering just who would be cast as Elisabeth. The opera called for two sopranos. Had I not resigned, I would have been certain to take one of the roles.
I felt a pinch of unhappiness under my sternum and tossed back the remainder of my champagne. The bubbles went straight to my head, pushing aside my sadness and making me feel a bit dizzy.
“Masquerade!” sang the opera chorus, now joining the corps on the split levels of the stairs.
They were a veritable menagerie. I spotted a firebird and a giraffe, a rooster and a minotaur.
A young woman dressed as a monkey, complete with velvet vest and brass cymbals, gave me pause, looking uncomfortably similar to Erik’s automaton.
“Grinning yellows, spinning reds…Masquerade!” they continued, coming down the stairs to filter through the crowd, their voices booming throughout the space. “Take your fill—let the spectacle astound you!”
The performers took a jubilant bow, indicating that their piece was done, but before any of us could begin to applaud, someone else began to clap, impossibly loud and sardonically slow.
As if we were marionettes pulled together on the same string by a cruel puppeteer, everyone in the hall turned, and we let out a shared gasp of surprise and horror.
There, in the middle of the grand staircase, was a towering figure, nearly eight feet tall and dressed in a voluminous cape of blood-red crushed velvet. He wore a great plumed hat and black court heels bedecked in enormous crimson-colored bows.
But his face…
His mask…
It was a skull, grotesquely exaggerated in both size and shape.
It looked nearly human, but not quite. There was an uncanny oddness to it.
The jaw unhinged too far. The wide eye sockets were too big, too spread apart.
And though I knew someone was inside the suit, hiding behind that mask, the holes appeared empty, as if the figure truly was the very thing the costume represented…
Death.