Pears, Apples, Cinnamon, and Honey


Part One

He doesn't usually have the time to walk in the sun of an afternoon. Usually, a play, another play, a different one from this time last week, a most excellent tragedy, a tedious brief comedy - although he's not into the habit of comedies -, a historical drama, a satire: usually, he wouldn't have the spare moment to come to the Luxembourg gardens. And yet, today he does.

He walks slowly, though it is a not the sauntering step that belongs to one such as Courfeyrac. It is simply a slow walk, and he makes his way around rose bushes and hedges with it, stopping now and then to touch the curve of a petal wonderingly.

If Courfeyrac were here, he would make some remark about how the Fearless Leader is turned lamb by flowers, disregarding even Hamlet for the tender pink of young buds. Courfeyrac wouldn't know that Enjolras has a script-book in his coat pocket.

Christophe-Marie wouldn't be practising it, though, far too enthralled by the branch of a pear tree, and the white shower from it, and the gold-grey of shadows flickering through it, although he doesn't seem to really very much care about it. He does, once, lift his face up, and allows his cheeks to be momentarily dusted with white flowers. Then, of course, he looks down again, a lock of golden hair escaping and falling over his ear. He pushes it back unthinkingly, and accidentally crushes a few strayed flowers, finding them tangled in.

Picking petals out of one's hair is a strangely earthly task, and he finds that the surrealism of the pear storm is vanquished, gone with each discarded blossom.

At last he resumes his walk, looking back regretfully, and finding that, unceasingly, a few words are running through his head.

And pansies, that's for thoughts...

(Damn it, what did the man think he was doing last night? Grantaire. Difficult, persistant, loud. Almost as annoying as Courfeyrac, though the latter is more exasperating, and the former infuriating. But that night, and then yesterday. It's impossible to know what's in his head. And good lord, rehearsing the death of Hamlet... Becoming aware, cradled gently in his arms, of all people. Being himself, he probably would've tried to take advantage of you. Wouldn't put it past him. It was a good thing you were reasonably sensible... And then last night, falling asleep like that. And he was reading off the script. The places were changed, and there was a mark on the page from his fingers. God knows what it was.)

"Pardon, m'sieur..."

He takes his eyes off the ground, and realises that he is standing in the way of a young woman and her escort. He moves to the side, and waits for her to go past, but she stops, and smiles at him.

"M'sieur was admiring the rosemary? There's rather a lot for a public garden, isn't there? I wonder if it just grew on its own?"

"Likely," he murmurs courteously.

"Rosemary... That's for remembrance..." she says thoughtfully.

He startles. "Yes, that's so. And pansies for thoughts."

"And pear blossoms for hope."

"Cosette," the older man coughs. "I'm afraid we should be getting on."

"Cosette?" That isn't what he'd expected to hear.

"Cosette. --Yes, papa."

(But she oughtn't to leave yet! She can speak in flowers; she knows what they mean. She could be Ophelia. The ease with which she'd said, "Rosemary, for remembrance...", it fit her. It sounded natural to her, and she hadn't made any effort to seem pitiful, as Delphine insists on doing. She's just true. She speaks in truth. What this girl is, is not too sweet, or too anything, or artificial, or aught but real. That was how Ophelia was meant to be. Just a person. You could play Hamlet to this woman.)

He can imagine, for a moment, Cosette sitting on a streambank, garlanding willows in lavender and useless hellebore...

He inclines his head politely, and moves aside again, waiting for her and her father to go on. The elderly man brushes past him first, coldly, looking at him fiercely a moment, and the girl follows, pausing to give him another smile.

"Good day, m'sieur."

"Good day, mam'selle Cosette."

And she is gone, as quickly and simply as that.

Part Two

It is rather a time before he sees Cosette again. It is a terrible day, raining but without any thunder to liven it. Everything is grey, and drizzled, and there is a homeliness about Paris, and a dreadful quiet, destroyed only by the drip of the raindrops. Today, a practise was cut short, and he has the better part of three hours before he need return home and attempt schoolwork.

And he therefore wanders the wet cobblestones of the city, going wherever he will, wrapped tightly in his coat, and thinking about the condition the homeless must be in, trapped in this. Some of them are likely huddled in doorways or in alleys, but most of them are suffering, soaked and cold. It's disgusting.

When he comes to the iron gates, he stops, casting his dark blue eyes over the black metal patterns barring the world out.

"Good my lord, how does your honour for this many a day?" she whispers, seeming afraid of him. Her hair is all down, just as his always is, saving of course hers is that nice dark brown colour, and his is golden. Hers is in curls, and his in fluff. Hers is combed through, and his tangled up.

He steps forward, taking her hand gently. "I humbly thank you, well, well, well."

She steps back, away, pulling her fingers from his. "My lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver. I pray you now receive them."

(Remembrances of mine? I gave her rosemary? I did not.)

"No, no, I never gave you aught." He insists this firmly, proving his point by plucking a large spring of rosemary from his hair and presenting it to her, raising his fine eyebrows to tell her, 'No, I still have this. I never gave it you.'

Christophe trails his fingertips along the metal, slowly, not quite thinking of the action. He startles suddenly when he feels them brushed shortly by another pair of hands clasping the bars.

"Mam'selle, I'm sorry. You will pardon me, please."

"It's quite all right..." Cosette looks up at him with curious brown eyes. Her arms are stretched to reach as high as she can on the gate, and the long, floppy lace trim at her wrists falls back. "What is your name, m'sieur?" The rain drips down her skirts, sinking in and deepening the colour.

"Ha-- Christophe-Marie Enjolras."

"And you already know me. Cosette. White lilac." She frees one of her hands and brushes back a stray curl that has slipped from the blue silk ribbon she wears in her hair. Christophe is surprised; this is a difficulty he often endures. Then the last two words she spoke register. White lilac, for the innocence of youth.

"You have luck."

"To know nothing?"

"To be innocent yet to the troubles of the world. I expect you are very happy."

"I am not innocent of that. Fiacres have windows, and this is a gate, not a wall, m'sieur." She says it softly, though not nervously, trying to make him understand that just because she is a woman, she is not blind.

"Of course... But if you are white lilac, and I ought to identify myself in the same manner, I am the willow flower."

"With a touch of rosemary, m'sieur?"

He can speak as softly as she. "Yes. Willow and rosemary."

She shakes her head, and reaches in a pocket of her dress to withdraw a few tattered letters and a bracelet. He tilts his head, not recognising them as she insists in turn:

"My honoured lord, you know right well you did, and with them words of so sweet breath composed, as made the things more rich. Their perfume left, take these again; for to the noble mind, rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. There, my lord." And she presses them into his palm.

He feels the soft crackle of parchment, and the cold stone of the beads in the bracelet. He raises the jewellery to study it, and sees the stones are blue. That's odd. Things connected with him are normally purple, gold, or black. He's certain he never gave these to her, but he shrugs, and slips them into his tunic. The dry paper is pleasant against his skin.

The girl who stands before him appears unsure, touching the silk of her sleeves uncertainly. He smiles disarmingly, and clasps his hands, pressing the knuckles to his lips, then asks, "Ha, ha, are you honest?"

Cosette looks out past him, sighing a little. "M'sieur, I am innocent of much of the world, but that doesn't mean I don't also understand how many people are dying. On the way to the Luxembourg, we sometimes see them... There are girls out there, outside of our safe carriage, who are just my age. But one'd never know it. They're like dusty shadows, and they watch us. They look as though they hate us."

Christophe frowns. They probably do. "Mam'selle, I intend to help them."

"Yes. You told me that, willow." She smiles briefly.

God save him, even the innocent can play Courfeyrac. "I did."

She seems aware of having somehow displeased him, and casts around for some means to remedy it. The first thing that comes readily to hand is the high branch of the only pear tree in the garden. She breaks off a stem, and offers it to him.

"Pear, remember, that's for hope? For good administration, also. For wise government."

He takes it, pushing the twig of white flowers under his waistcoat. "Merci. Your knowledge is admirable."

For some reason, this feels like a sort of rebuke, and she nods repentantly. "Thank you, m'sieur..." The rain begins to slow, the drops becoming few and silent, though the sky is still overcast.

"My lord?"

"Are you fair?" he questions her, reaching out to touch the line of her eyebrow.

"What means your lordship?" She ducks back again, eyeing him with worry.

"That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty."

"Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?"

Does she ever call him anything but 'my lord'? He regards her for a moment, then draws out from his tunic the bracelet, holding it up in the air, so that the late light that streaks through the window from the sinking sun catches it and makes the stones glow. Blue fire sparkles between his fingers, and he lets it fall, then neatly snatches it from it the air at the height of his waist. He is preparing for what he'll say.

He gives her another disarming, guiltless smile. "Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it was to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof." A pause. "I did love thee once." And he presses the bracelet into her palm, in the exact same manner she used on him.

"I haven't upset you, have I?" Christophe asks warily.

"Oh.. not at all." She shakes her head and looks at the ground, then looks up again, meeting his eyes. "Is there something you want?"

He freezes. What he wants is difficult to request. And Courfeyrac would laugh at him. But it feels important, and she's delicately edged in dark gold from the setting sun. So, with slight apprehension, he draws the ever-present script-book from his coat pocket.

"There is something. Could you...?"

She takes it in confusion. "Hamlet? Do you want me to read it?"

He carefully thumbs through it upside down, opening it at a certain spot. "Act three, scene one, line ninety-seven. Ophelia's part. Would you read that?"

"Would you prefer I acted it?"

"What?"

"I shall be Ophelia, if you like. I've read these lines before..." She says it with the wonder of one recognising a long-lost friend. I've seen this face before... "I know them."

"Indeed my lord, you made me believe so." She begins to close her fingers around the piece of jewellery, but he steps quickly forward and rests his hand over her soft palm. As he stands thus so near, he allows their shoulders to brush, then drops to his knees in a sweeping bow, taking the bracelet with him.

"You should not have believed me." He springs to his feet, moving away, slipping it 'round his own wrist. "For virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it. I loved you not."

She gazes downwards at her empty hand. "I was the more deceived."

He sighs in frustration, and gives up. "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud," he tilts his chin defiantly, "revengeful, ambitious," he glares fiercely, gesturing, "with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery."

(Escape what befell my mother. Be faithful and fair, always, Ophelia.)

"Where's thy father?" he adds as an afterthought.

"At home, my lord," she whispers.

"Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool nowhere but in's own house. Farewell." He turns away, hoping that the silly girl understands.

She doesn't. Typically. "Oh help him, you sweet heavens!" When it's she who needs the help. He gives up again.

"Do you?"

"Surely. Among all the books on how to speak in bouquets, I have some Shakespeare. I fancy Hamlet. I can't recite it to you, but I can make it out." She strokes the book-cover, tracing the words cut in.

"I see. Then..."

"Then of course I will, m'sieur." She sits on the bench just inside the gate, and holds the book open. "Good my lord, how does your honour this many a day?" She looks up. "How do you, m'sieur Enjolras?"

"I humbly thank you, well, well, well. Rather all right. Damp." He brushes back a soggy curl from his forehead, and she smiles, flicking back one of her own.

"We are all damp. The world is damp, isn't it, m'sieur? The desert's drowning. The sea overflows. The small stream laced with willows is swelling, to overcome its banks. All the water will make the lavender grow. And the lilac."

"And the rosemary shall flourish."

"Whenever we have roast duck, I shall think of you. Just to bother you with the lack of dignity."

"Sometimes you remind me of a man I know, named Courfeyrac."

"Is he your friend, m'sieur?"

"Most of the time."

"Oh, that's all right then. But I've wandered. Here, my lord, I have remembrances of yours that I have longed long to redeliver. I pray you now receive them."

"If thou dost marry," he tells her, "I'll give thee this plague for a dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go, farewell." He flaps his hand at the wide door of the hall. "Or if thou wilt marry, marry a fool, for wise men know what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go," he speaks sounding incredulous that she isn't already gone, and flaps a little more for effect, "and quickly, too. Farewell."

"Oh heavenly powers, restore him!"

She isn't listening. Feeling rather put out, he catches her wrist and earnestly informs her.

"I have heard of your paintings too, well enough. God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another. You jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nickname God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll have no more on't, it hath made me mad. I say we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already --all but one-- shall live. The rest shall keep as they were." Flap. "To a nunnery. Go." His voice has taken on that high pitch of incredulity again.

She still isn't understanding a thing, just staring wide-eyed at him. He shakes her gently, then throws up his hands, and turns away. She'll never see. It's useless. She'll never understand how important it is that she not be allowed to grow into a woman who is easily seduced. And judging by his mother, all women are easily seduced. And therefore logic declares that the girl go off to a convent, and remain precious.

He gives up for the third time, and abandons her.

Cosette ends at last, squinting at the pages in the dim light of evening. "Oh woe is me, t' have seen what I have seen, see what I see!" She closes the book. "We have done't, lord. We have finished." She gives it through the bars of the gate, standing against the metal to return the script.

"Thank you very much," Christophe whispers.

"It was nothing, really. You read a wondrous Hamlet, lord." She curtsies, bowing her head, and he places a hand on her shoulder.

"Thou'rt Ophelia."

"Yea, if thou wishest it, lord."

"You needn't always say 'lord'."

"Very well, m'sieur."

"I ought to leave, oughtn't I?" He takes her small hand and kisses it politely. "Farewell, mam'selle Cosette."

"Au revoir, m'sieur. Rosemary!" she calls after him as begins to make his way along the cobblestones.

He turns back once. "Rosemary." And then he smiles at her for the first time, an angel's smile, beautiful and a little frightening and superb, a smile to be etched in stone.

And he is gone, as quickly and simply as that.


Chapter Six.
Back to Chapter Four.