Chapter Text
Lord Weston put the morning paper on the dining table without even folding it. "What you ask is impossible." Behind him Mr Coyle and the other waiter struggled to restrain the outrage they felt: even though Mr Destler had fought in India with the Duke and he had great confidence in him, leaving him alone with Ophelia was simply unacceptable!
Erik smiled while sipping his coffee: another man would have said improper or would have used another similar word. "You have no choice, if you want your granddaughter to talk again, you’ll have to trust me."
"My castle and my rules, Mr Destler!" Without being able to prevent it, the words were accompanied by a violent punch on the table that made the porcelain clink.
"Castle I can leave whenever I want, if I remember the terms of our agreement. And for Ophelia and your House there will be no more hope." He replied coldly. "She will talk; I will do that, I guarantee, but I can only do it my way."
"You are a scorpion, ready to attack the hand that feeds it only because it is a victim of its nature." The nobleman hissed "Swear you won’t touch her!"
"You have my word, Your Grace. I may be a scorpion but I am a gentleman: Ophelia will be unharmed when you return."
Weston forced himself to relax his posture by breathing deeply over and over again. "Mr Coyle, is there a way to grant my friend’s wish?" he asked, regaining his composure.
The butler took one step forward, "Not for this morning, Your Grace. Perhaps in the early afternoon."
"Then I give all the servants half a day of freedom, you will return at five and dinner will be served at the usual time. I’ll take the opportunity to go to the tenants and sort out some business in the village. Tell Mr Collier to come with me."
"Certainly, Your Grace." said the butler, bowing before returning to his seat.
"I guess you realize I just put Ophelia in a very compromising position."
"I’m perfectly aware of that, but only she needs to hear what I’m going to play. If there was even a scullery maid in the house, it wouldn’t work. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about." And the back of all those present was covered by a thrill that can only be explained by the mysterious tone of those words.
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"The rest of the servants have just left." Collier said, entering the music room.
"Is that really necessary?" Lord Weston asked again. He had heard the Phantom of the Opera stories directly from Christine de Chagy, but what music could ever play that could only be heard by Ophelia? Why did they have to be the only ones in the whole house?
"You wouldn’t resist. You’d beg me to stop, you might even decide to kill yourself so you wouldn’t hear me play anymore," Erik replied seraphicly. He eitherdid not like what he was about to do, but Ophelia had to start to understand the difference between Music and a non dissonant jumble of notes.
"You have already done it." That of the Duke was not a question, only a reflection pronounced aloud.
"In Persia, to amuse the Shah." Erik nodded, his voice even heavier than Sir Edward’s."Will she suffer?" A few times he was as worried as at the time. Not even on the battlefields when his life was at risk. At least in India he knew exactly what he was afraid of.
"Only what is necessary. If I could I would not, but Ophelia must feel that she still has a voice, otherwise any future effort will be completely useless." And unfortunately that was the only way he could think of.
At that moment a clock rang at three and Ophelia entered the room for her first music lesson.
"Do her more harm than necessary, and by this evening I will tear your head off and hang it among my hunting trophies." A menacing Weston whispered to the Phantom before going to his granddaughter. "Come on Ophelia, sit down." he said encouraging. The girl looked around, lingering over the tutor, and then sat on the sofa. "Now I will blindfold you and leave the room with Mr Collier. Mr Destler will start playing the piano and you will just have to listen." He said holding her hands between his. "Always remember that you are not in danger." He continued by kissing her forehead.
Ophelia turned to her tutor, who was already sitting impassive at the piano and stood motionless with his hands elegantly resting on his legs. His bright yellow eyes fixed on her figure, magnetic like those of cats in the dark. Hard as granite but at the same time rich in something she couldn’t define. What did they see so interesting in her? There had been many tutors before him, many different methods and many first times but no one had ever looked at her like this. No one was ever allowed to be alone with her in the castle. What did he have in mind and why couldn’t that be heard by anyone other than her? The girl took the notebook from the pocket of the lavender-colored dress but Erik interrupted her before she could open it.
"You won’t need the notebook. Give it to Lord Weston." The Duke looked first at his niece and then the tutor, thinning his eyes, as if he could point a foil at his throat. "I don’t need that to understand your granddaughter. Take it with you."
Lord Edward bit his tongue with a canine to maintain a compound expression, "If you’re sure." He smiled kindly because Ophelia did not perceive the veiled challenge implied. She handed him the notebook and he put it in an inner pocket of his jacket as Mr Collier approached with a black silk tie in his hand. "It’ll be all right." said the Duke, kissing the girl on the forehead before blindfolding her. Deprived of sight, Ophelia clinged to her grandfather’s sleeve. "Fear not, Ophelia. Nothing will happen to you." He reassured her again, swearing to himself that if it were otherwise he would kill the Phantom of the Opera himself.
Erik began playing before the Duke and his valet left the room so Ophelia wouldn’t hear the door close. At first it was a waltz, a cascade of notes so harmonious in their succession that soon they would make her forget where she was and with whom she was, but as soon as she had completely surrendered to hismusic she would feel its power. All he could do was hope it was enough.
Ophelia couldn’t remember how long she’d been on that couch. Immediately after hearing her grandfather’s hand leave her she was surrounded by cheerful notes that seemed to hover gracefully around her. She had dug into her memory, trying to figure out which composer could have created a music so beautiful that it seemed alive. But none, neither the beloved Beethoven nor others were in any way similar to that harmony. Without realizing it, the music changes, becoming increasingly dark and frightening. Mr Destler was only playing a few notes, but rhythm, cadence, intonation or something else enveloped her, as an exotic snake would makeing her breathing shorter and harder. Or maybe it was the corset that was shrinking victim of a strange spell made of sounds?
She clung to the armrests of the sofa with all the strength she could because, after all, all she had to do was sit and listen. But the more she tried, the more terrible the music became, as if Mr Destler read her soul and found all her fears and managet to shape it with the music. Fears she didn’t even know she had, but now they were dancing in her ears, laughing mockingly. Shee felt the hands leave the heavy fabric of the stuffing and fly up to the silk of tner neck when even opening her mouth to breathe had become difficult. Why did she have to sit through that torture? What had to happen for Mr Destler to stop? She tried to speak, to beg her tutor to stop, but, as much as that music was tormenting her, she was unable to use her voice. She remained imprisoned in places she didn’t want to be and relive moments she’d rather forget. A crowded street in London. A cart that breaks upside down. And a scream.
Unable to stop the music or loosen her power, Ophelia found herself walking still blindfolded to any place other than that room and had not even realized that Erik had stopped playing when she felt grabbed by a wrist.
"Do you really want to run into the fireplace to stop me?" it was Mr Drstler’s authoritarian voice that brought her back to Granstar House. Slowly, almost as if he were afraid to hurt her, Erik discovered Ophelia’s eyes from the blindfold wet with tears and sweat. She tried to free herself from the iron grip of the teacher but he increased the strength by imprisoning the girl with his body and bridling her wrists in her hands, well careful that she was facing the floor and not too close to the mask. If Ophelia had accidentally seen his face at that moment, she probably would have gone insane. "I won’t let you go until you’ve calmed down."
Ophelia tried to break free again and again. The dress wrinkled and strands of hair slipped away from the hairstyle to fall on her and Erik’s shoulder, but, as much as she tried, the man was much stronger than her. Her heart was beating in her chest, rumbling in her head, and every fiber of her body wanted to escape, free from that imprisonment and from the music that still echoed in her ears. How could a simple piano melody shake her so much?
"The sooner you stop freaking out, the sooner I’ll leave you!" thundered the teacher.
Unable to resist, Ophelia stopped trying to escape and ended up falling to the ground, taking Erik with her. Only when the man felt that the breaths were no longer agitated, he hurried to leave her, standing up, while she remained motionless, kneeling with her wrists crossed, sinking into the lilac skirt full of air. "Have you noticed?"
The noble girl did not move, hearing the voice of her teacher almost in the distance. What did she notice? Listening to something she couldn’t describe if she could talk?
"I guess not." sighed the other. "Then I’ll have to ask you to trust my word. Although that’s probably the last thing you want to do right now. You’re so scared you screamed." And it was a scream that would make any ghost proud, to be honest. "I know I have caused you a lot of suffering but there was no other way to make you understand what the Music is capable of, the way it reveals the soul of whoever listens to it. You have my word that I will never do anything like this to you again and that I will never touch you again, as much as I can."
Incredulous Ophelia turned to his tutor, looking for some confirmation or emotion behind his white mask. But Mr Destler’s voice was always too austere, and half his face was uncovered and nothing leaked. He was the first person who could get her to say even one letter and yet he seemed utterly indifferent. Not a word more than necessary, as if he had always spoken.
"Go back to your room. Tomorrow we will start again: I will play for you, and if necessary I will sing, but it will not be like today. One day you will sing a note, it will come out of your mouth spontaneously and then I will teach you how to sing. Now go to your room and rest, I’ll play something that will calm you down." He said, reaching out to help the student get up.
Ophelia grabbed the skirt still trembling and moved a knee to put a foot on the ground on which to place the weight, then put her hand in that of the master and stood up completely.
How? She wrote on the tutor’s hand.
"How what, my lady?"
How can you do this by playing?
"I do not know. I have heard the Music since I was a child, just as you hear me speak now, and I have learned that it could be as heavenly as the angels's song or as tremendous as the Devil’s laugh."
Then it is a gift from God
"Or a curse of the Devil. Now rest, I promise you will never hear me play anything so terrifying again."
The girl soon recovered the austere posture that shrieked with her eyes still lost. She seemed to move out of habit, while her mind wandered elsewhere. Slowly, as if following a funeral chariot, she left the room heading towards her bedroom accompanied by a music so sublime that it could only come from Paradise.
The notes filled every nook and cranny with the air and space they found, changing the essence; almost as if the furniture, tapestries and the same stone were beaming with that sublime sound. Ophelia went upstairs realizing she could barely see. With one hand she held her skirt up while the other held firmly to the handrail only for the need to touch something concrete, her gaze turned to the steps she just made to make sure that they did not dissolve like the notes that followed her light and calm in her ears.
She reached her room almost floating, thought to close the door behind her but that music was too beautiful to be stopped by a wooden board. It made her feel almost a privilege: who besides the angels intent on contemplating God could hear a similar wonder?
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"Why did you do it?" Lord Weston’s stagecoach was taking the road from Estwood to Grainstar House.
Sir Edwrd drew the edge of the white envelope next to him with the tip of his gloved index finger. The postmark was still fresh and smelled of ink. "Why do I turn him from monster to human? Or why I left him alone with Ophelia?"
"Both, Your Grace." replied the valet seated before him.
"If he remains, he must have a more substantial past than my words. A birth certificate, military academy membership, whatever. Now Monsieur le Fantom is a man in the flesh, though he don’t need to know."
"Do you think he can take the papers and run?"
"He won’t leave. He could have left yesterday, why should he now? No. He’ll stay, and whatever the Devil taught him, he’ll use it to keep his word. Do you think I would have left him completely alone with her otherwise?"
"But the servants will speak. Not even in Schweizer ..."
"The distinguished Schweizer is a swollen balloon of his own words." Weston interrupted the valet only to avoid thinking again of the illustrious Swiss scientist who, despite all his grandiose credentials and repeated assurances had been very happy to leave Granstar after just a week, saying that Ophelia just needed hydrotherapy. "Destler is a different breed. He may not have fought in India but he has the same temper as a man of arms."
"What about the servants? Your conversation this morning has left them somewhat perplexed. Not everyone calls scorpio an old friend."
The noble smiled. He would have liked to hear them. The scullery crew and the waitresses make a thousand assumptions, Thomas who had witnessed the scene would surely tell everything, while poor Coyle would have gone to great lengths to try to belittle what happened. "Does anyone suspect anything?"
"Daisy, the head waitress, pulled out of her apron one of those horror novels in installments, those little books full of atrocities and blood that you can buy for a penny. It was called The Bloody Ghost. But Mr Coyle and Mis Price made her feel so foolish that I doubt she’ll go back on the subject." Collier said.
Sir Edward laughed "I’ll have to remember to increase her Christmas bonus then."
Both remained silent for a long time. The road slipped under and wheels and in the distance they began to glimpse the castle. "Why did he stay?" the valet asked.
"Because he saw something, Collier. Something beyond talent, something that even Grainstar pales in front of. But he loves mystery too much, or thinks we’re too blind to share his vision." From the window appeared the array of servants in front of the main entrance, as if in ecstasy in front of a magnificent invisible. Before he could be seen by anyone, Weston passed the envelope to the valet and ordered him to put it where no one could find it. As soon as he opened the door they too were struck by the music that filtered through.
"That’s not Lady Ophelia!" Collier’s voice was little more than a marvelous whisper.
"Do you remember what Madame de Chagny called it? La musique d'anges. the music of angels." the nobleman replied without losing his decisive ways. Though it was hard to resist such a wonder. There were simply no words to define it: the glory of Heaven had descended to Grainstar House. The servants came out of the shook with difficulty, one after the other, as soon as they saw him. Coyle approached him to apologize for how inappropriate this was, but Weston replied that it was understandable to be so impressed by Mr Destler’s ability and said that everyone could enter with him without having to go around the house, if they wanted to hear a few more moments. The servants thanked him and followed him through the door, remaining in the room with the large white fireplace until Coyle reminded them that preparing and serving an impeccable dinner would be the best way to thank the Duke for the kindness he had just granted him. At that moment they all vanished, from the footmen to the scullery maid, exchanging murmurs of incredulous admiration.
Lord Weston walked into the music room, struggling not to hear what Erik was creating. Ophelia was more important than that beautiful melody. "Where is she?" But when he spoke he discovered that he too was a victim of the music that spread from the piano, so much so that he almost hardly recognized his own voice.
"In her room, unharmed as I promised." replied the Phantom without raising his eyes from the keyboard.
Although he felt like Ulysses listening to the sirens, the nobleman continued to walk to the piano until he reached it. "How is she?"
"Ask her. After all I am the tutor not the confessor."
"Did it work?"
"I am a scorpion of my word." He grinned.
The Duke walked away but soon returned to his footsteps, again reaching the piano "You should play something less ... yours."
Erik immediately lifted his hands from the keyboard, his fingers motionless and ready for the next chord. "Do you think you can tell me what I can and cannot play, Your Grace?" he asked with the force of the stormy sea.
"I believe that everyone in this house can only listen to you if you continue and I believe that something so beautiful can drive even the best men mad."
Without saying anything, the other started playing again. He had forgotten that other people live in the house besides him and Ophelia. The Duke himself had disappeared from his mind while he was playing. The Music had always absorbed him to the point of almost losing his memory of who he was or where he was. Sheltered in the basement of the Opéra, he could leave the Music free without worrying about an audience that did not exist. But, at Grainsar House, Lord Weston was right: such beauty could have made the wisest of men lose his mind.
Weston could recognize the Goldberg Variations. Banal exercises in technique, so everyone considered them, but in the way the Phantom of the Opera played them they seemed to live and breathe, like the greatest of masterpieces. "Thanks nonseur." said the Duke before leaving him alone.
Sir Edward climbed the stairs and reached his niece’s room. She was lying on the bed, her hair disheveled and her dress crumpled, but she seemed to sleep peacefully. He leaned his top hat and cane on an armchair in the room and sat down on the side of the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible. For a moment he saw his wife Emma at the age of seventeen: they had the same face, only the hair color was different; Ophelia had inherited the red from her mother, while Emma’s were brown. Hoping not to wake her, he reached out to give her a caress but Ophelia opened her eyes. The Duke helped her to settle more comfortably between the embroidered cushions so that the crinoline would not hurt her. He looked for some trace of what Erik had done, but everything in the niece seemed just fine.
"What happened with Mr Destler? What did he do?" he asked, hanging Ophelia’s notebook.
The girl took it in her hand, opened the first blank page and started writing in pencil. She didn’t even try to talk. Before falling asleep she had tried to say something, a simple sound would have sufficed, but whatever the terrible magic of Mr Destler had ended with the music.
He played scary music.
I don’t even know how to describe it. It was terrible and tremendous. The more I listened to it, the scarier it got.
I tried to hold on as long as I could, but in the end I just wanted to leave so I wouldn’t hear it again.
Weston read as Ophelia wrote. He could hardly believe a word of that story. If Erik could play the beautiful melody he had heard, then he could certainly create equally frightening ones. Surely if he had been present he would not have allowed him to do anything like that. Leaving Granstar was really the only way to allow Ophelia to talk, only now he understood it all the way.
Then Mr Destler grabbed my wrist and said I’d hit the fireplace if he didn’t.
He also said I screamed, but I don’t remember.
When he was playing, it was so confusing that I can’t remember.
Then he told me to come here and rest.
"Are you all right? He didn’t hurt you?" Only after he saw his granddaughter shake her head with a smile he could breathe a sigh of relief and smile. A scream! Much more than anyone had ever achived! A scream of terror, an inarticulate sound probably, but a sound that came out of Ophelia’s mouth.
"It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. Mr Dester doesn’t lie, even at the cost of being an extremely rude person." He said softly. "And if he says you’ll talk, be sure you will. Trust him, strange as that may sound. Do you think I would have left you alone if I didn’t trust him? You are worth more than this land and my titles, you value them not the other way around. I wouldn’t have let him be alone with you if he didn’t have all my confidence. I know Mr. Destler can be scary and he’s not an easy man, but I can assure you he’s a great teacher. Trust him, no matter what happens from now on or what happens before this moment. Can you do it for me?"
Hesitant the girl nodded. Surely Erik Destler was a completely different man from all those she had known in the past, but her grandfather reserved his admiration only for a few people and even if she did not know Mr Destler for a long time she knew her grandfather and this was enough for Ophelia.
"Well done," he said, kissing her granddaughter’s forehead, "You can rest until Coyle rings the dinner gong. I’ll tell the servants not to disturb you first." After another caress on the cheek Weston got up and went out, taking back the cylinder and the walking stick before closing the door.
Ophelia would talk soon, He was more certain than ever.