Chapter Text
"I tell you, Mademoiselle de Gondelaurier is indisposed."
The housemaid regarded Phoebus from under her wimple with a steely, reproachful eye. She was a formidable old harridan, with a broad face and broad hips, and a broad, presumptuous smirk which seemed to taunt the young captain with the fact that she knew the secret goings-on of his betrothed's domain far better than he.
He gazed back at her undeterred – although, if truth be told, his wide, winning smile was beginning to wilt slightly at the edges, as was the hastily-bought nosegay he had picked up not three minutes earlier on the corner of the parvis.
"What do you mean?" he ventured – a worthy first riposte. "If my darling one is ill, I simply must see her –"
"She will see no-one," replied the housemaid, and her stony expression seemed to add, Especially not you.
The captain's smile hardened into something of a grimace. He had come prepared for at least a little resistance, but the old hag was putting up a vigorous defence. "Very well, Madame, but I am her fiancé…"
His adversary raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "Ah! So you had not forgotten!"
This remark gave Phoebus an ominous feeling. Something was definitely afoot. Still, he pressed on.
"Forgotten, my good lady?" he asked, with good-natured bemusement. "How could I have forgotten such a thing?"
The smirk turned into a malicious leer, and the maid surveyed the captain as a huntsman gazes on a particularly fat rabbit walking straight into his trap. She delivered the death blow.
"We were all asking ourselves the same question whilst you were cavorting around Paris with Egyptian sorceresses!"
Phoebus saw red. Instinctively, the hand that wasn't carrying the nosegay flew to the hilt of his sword, before he remembered with some disappointment that housemaids were generally unarmed and therefore considered off-limits to men of honour like himself. He contented himself with mere intimidation.
"Now listen here, you old bitch," he growled in a menacing tone, stepping forwards. "You have no business repeating this slanderous nonsense. I could have you dismissed for insolence."
The old woman laughed in his face. "Ha! I would like to see you try. I have been in service to Madame Aloyse since before you were old enough to wear hose! Do you think she would take a crass soldier's word above my own? For shame!"
Phoebus seethed. Skilled as he was with a sword, battles of tongues and wills often left him on the back foot. "Infernal harpy!" he hissed, but had no other retort. Sensing victory, an air of relaxed self-satisfaction settled over the housemaid's irritating face.
"I shall be sure to tell Mademoiselle that you passed by," she said.
"Thank you," said Phoebus, through gritted teeth. The old woman made a low, exaggerated curtsey, and slammed the heavy door in his face.
"Corne et tonnerre!" the captain swore, throwing the nosegay to the ground and stamping on it with a bespurred foot. "Ventre-dieu!"
"Good heavens, Captain!" sang a familiar, laughing voice at his shoulder. "Why is it that we never meet here but you are turning the air bluer than Our Lady's mantle with your oaths?"
Phoebus turned to meet the impish grin of his sometime drinking companion, and occasional catamite, Jehan Frollo du Moulin. At the sight of those merry blue eyes, and that tip-tilted nose, our worthy Jupiter at once felt the thunder-clouds in his mind begin to dissipate. The little scholar always seemed in such irrepressible high spirits, it was difficult to maintain a decent sense of ardent rage in his presence.
Jehan threw a plaintive glance at the trampled petals beneath the officer's boot.
"I see you have been in vicious combat with a bunch of marigolds. Surely, there is no peace for men of the sword! Bella, horrida bella! Whatever did they do to you?"
"They didn't do a thing," sighed Phoebus unhappily. "That's the substance of my quarrel." He cast a black look towards the Gondelaurier house. "I had hoped to win over that crone which guards my cousin's door, but to no avail." Another heavy lamentation escaped his lips. "Fleur-de-Lys hasn't spoken to me these past three weeks. She doesn't leave the house. The maid says she is ill, but I know it is all on account of that wretched Similar."
Jehan looked up. "Similar?" he asked, cocking his head to one side curiously.
"The gypsy."
"Ah!" A mean-spirited jest seemed to rise to Jehan's rosy lips, but died there when he saw the genuine affliction writ on his friend's handsome countenance. Instead, he took Phoebus's arm in his and began to lead him along towards the Petit Pont.
"There, there," he said. "Let us be each other's consolation. I believe my brother is suffering from a similar malady. Come to think of it, it's also been three weeks since I last saw him alive. He refuses to receive me – me! The light of his life, the apple of his eye, the joy of his twilight years…"
Phoebus frowned. If he were to find fault in the boy, it would be that he always spoke such a constant patter of nonsense, it was hard to separate the few sensible grains of wheat from all the chaff. "Twilight years? How old is he, anyway, this brother of yours?"
"Oh, ancient," sighed Jehan, leaning his blond head on the captain's arm coquettishly. "I would well believe the rumours that I'm secretly his bastard, and not his brother, if he weren't such a confirmed virgin… My dear captain Phoebus, what say we drown our sorrows at the Pomme d'Eve?"
Phoebus shuddered. The name of that cursed wine shop would be forever entwined in his mind with the memory of that awful night of mischief and devilry, the spectre monk, the goat, the girl… It didn't bear thinking about any more.
"No," he said firmly. "Let's go to La Vieille Science."
"Very well," said Jehan. "Varium et mutabile semper Phoebus est. But it's all the same to me. As long as you are paying, of course. I haven't a sou."
***
Later that evening, in the Rue Jean-Pain-Mollet, filled with wine and certain other tokens of Captain Phoebus's appreciation, Jehan fell to pondering how he might set about gaining access to his brother's purse. For all the ardent enthusiasm in his more amorous moments, the golden-haired officer who snored peacefully beside him was not the most reliable of benefactors.
Still, he thought, gazing tenderly at his friend's sleeping form, there had to be some advantage to bedding a captain of the king’s unattached archers…
Sluggish though it was from the effects of the grape, his ready mind soon happened upon a bright idea. He sat bolt upright in the bed and shook Phoebus's shoulder.
"Not now, my dear Léonhilde," the captain murmured into his pillow, lost in pleasant reveries of conquests past. Jehan frowned. He accepted he would never take premier place in Phoebus's affections, but all the same, it was surely discourteous to dream of one lover before he had even left the bed of another. For this slight, he gave the captain a hard kick, ejecting him onto the hard wooden floorboards of his student's garret.
Phoebus rose with an indignant roar, reaching blindly for the sword in his scabbard, before realising he was stark naked. He blinked at Jehan stupidly through the gloom.
"Fiend! What did you do that for?"
The grin that flashed back through the darkness had something of a malicious edge. "You were snoring in the most barbarous way," the student said, archly, unwilling to let any suggestion of jealousy on his part caress the captain's already inflated ego. "Plus, I want to tell you something. Come here, and sit on the edge of the bed, if you will not lie in it quietly."
Phoebus did as he was directed with a rueful sigh, wishing that this particular Ganymede weren't always quite so full of energy; but gazing at the pretty blue eyes and the lithe, delectable form ensconced in a mantle of bed linen, he felt himself in a forgiving mood. He reached over and pulled the boy closer, burying his nose in that lovely mass of soft curls that crowned his head like so many rays of sunlight. There was something especially delightful, the captain thought, about short hair, compared to the cumbersome, heavy tresses that were the fashion with the ladies of the time. "This had better not be one of your midnight inspirations about Diogenes, or Plato, or some other of your damned heathen philosophers," he murmured, only half in jest.
"Alas, no, my gentle captain," said Jehan, leaning back with eyes half-closed, luxuriating under the captain's touch like a cat with its master. "What I have to say is rather more dull, but there's money in it for both of us."
"Splendid," said Phoebus, lowering his head to trace a string of kisses from Jehan's shoulder to his neck. "But first –"
"No, stop that!" said Jehan, swatting away the amorous hand that was stealing up his thigh. "You will only fall asleep again. Listen first, and then you can do as you please…"
"Very well!" came the begrudging reply.
***
The next morning, Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers once again found himself on the Place du Parvis; this time, however, his mission was quite different. After casting an accusatory glance at the Gondelaurier house, he made his way stridently towards the cloisters of the cathedral. He had taken care to make himself seem as impressive as possible; the sword in his belt glinted in the sunlight, and a new set of golden spurs sparkled at his heel. He looked every inch the conquering Jupiter descending on the unsuspecting Saturn currently holed up in his cell.
Reaching the door of the archdeacon, he gave it a confident rap.
"Ho, Monsieur Archdeacon!" he called, in a resonant, authoritarian tone. "Dom Claude Frollo! Open, in the name of the King!"
No reply came from within.
The captain cleared his throat.
"I have news of your brother, Joannes de Molendino. It is a grave matter," he added, and paused expectantly, his ear against the door.
A rustle.
Phoebus sensed this tack was working. He lowered his voice to a sombre undertone. "Very grave, indeed… Will you admit me, Monseigneur?"
Eventually, he heard a weak voice issue forth from the other side of the door.
"A moment," it sighed, faintly. Phoebus heard a sort of creaking, and a shuffling step advance towards the threshold. He stood back from the door. Slowly, gingerly, it scraped back on its hinge to reveal a pale and ghostly visage, which stared at him for a moment with hollow and haunted eyes.
Phoebus assumed his most gallant smile. "Good day," he said. "Captain Phoebus de Châteaupers, at your service!"
These words had a singular effect on his interlocutor. The eyes lost their dullness, flashing dark fire, and the priest made a quick movement to shut the door in the captain's face, and would have succeeded, had Phoebus not managed to slip his foot inside the doorway first. The heavy wooden door crashed with sudden, excruciating force against the captain's boot – which, alas, he had chosen more for its prettiness than its protective qualities. He howled.
"Sang-Dieu! Nombril de Belzébuth!" he cursed.
The priest's eyes widened with disapproval. "Such obscenity!" he exclaimed, through the crack left open by the sacrifice of Phoebus's dainty boot.
The captain's head was spinning, his composure in disarray. This was not exactly how he had envisaged their initial interview. However, he was determined not to fall at the first hurdle, and did his best to regain himself, looking down on the priest's bald head with a watering eye.
"My apologies, Monsieur," he said, wincing. "I was not expecting such violence from a man of God…" He attempted a grin, his eyes travelling downward. "We appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot…"
The archdeacon regarded him coldly. Phoebus tried to find traces in that sombre face of the other Frollo, his dear little Jehan, of the golden curls and forget-me-not eyes. Indeed, the underlying structure of the features before him were not dissimilar – there were the arresting, almost luminous eyes, and there was the haughty, stubborn chin, and a certain wilful expression about the mouth. But where Jehan was sunshine, this man was shadow; the sweetness of Jehan's countenance matched the gall of the archdeacon's; and where Jehan's merry glance spread good cheer, the priest seemed to infect his surroundings with intractable gloom.
Moreover, he was quite bald, except for a few tufts of scant hair which encircled the pale dome of his forehead like clouds around the moon.
"You have news of my brother?"
Phoebus nodded. "And I shall give it to you, if you would pray bestow a little Christian mercy on my poor boot."
The archdeacon was, deliberately or not, still leaning on the door and crushing the soldier's foot against the frame. Somewhat reluctantly, he released it, and Phoebus breathed a sigh of relief.