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Imagine, for a moment, that you’re captain Phoebus de Martin.
A new year, Anno Domini 1482, has just dawned, and you’re looking forward to a fresh start. You’re a veteran of many battles, but today, you’re finally back in the city and ready to take it easy for a change. Captain of the cathedral guard – it sure sounds impressive, and, more importantly, you’re certain it can’t be one tenth as bad as the battlefield. You’ll just patrol around the church and make sure that the archdeacon doesn’t get harassed and that no one pilfers from the alms box, or whatever.
Easy peasy.
On your first day on the job, you meet a girl. Well, you meet several, but one of them is different, a dancing flame with black hair and emerald eyes. Esmeralda, they call her. She’s like no one you’ve ever met. What’s more, she’s Romani, and clearly a troublemaker. Dancing outside the cathedral is one thing, loitering on the inside is quite another. You don’t want to ask her to leave, but it’s what you have to do.
You try to escort her out. She tries to stab a knife into your neck.
It’s not love at first sight, but it is something.
Try as you may, you can’t get the girl out of your mind. You know that the soldiers in your command ridicule you behind your back for having your head in the clouds, and you’re not exactly proud of yourself either, but you can’t help yourself. You can’t bear the thought of never seeing her again. You can’t stop yourself from searching all over town for her.
You almost lose your hope and your patience, but when you finally find her again, your trouble proves worth it. She agrees to dance with you and kiss you, and then some. Your head is spinning, and for a moment, you’re lost in a lovely daydream. You’ve had so many flings, but this one… maybe this one could be for life?
No. The soldiers are right to laugh at you; nonsense like that popping into your head clearly proves you’re out of touch with reality. You sternly remind yourself that she’s Romani and you’re the captain of the guard. It would never work out. Better just enjoy this while it lasts and then marry some pretty blonde from a rich family, one with a big dowry and even bigger… well, nevermind.
Then, just as you’ve almost persuaded yourself that you’re satisfied with your lot, out of the blue, your boss goes insane. Fantastic! Just the thing you needed right now. For whatever reason, the man’s convinced himself that there’s a witch on the loose, seducing good Christians left and right, casting her black magic all over. And his master plan for catching her? To burn down the entire city.
Obviously.
You’ve served your share of madmen before, but this one takes the cake.
And then, to make the whole mess of a situation a hundred times worse, you figure out the witch he is after is your Esmeralda.
No, not yours.
Esmeralda, in any case.
Soon enough, you find yourself standing in front of a brothel with a torch in hand. There and then, you realize this so-called holy man you’ve pledged to serve is just as willing to sacrifice blameless people as any bloodthirsty warlord. It’s a tale as old as time and you’ve been there to play your part countless times before, but tonight, you’ve had enough. For the first time in your life, you disobey a direct order.
And before you know it, your former boss has stabbed you, you have lost your sword, and Esmeralda has saved you and left you in the care of her strange hunchback friend. And then she has gone missing.
So, with an open wound in your side and no idea where Esmeralda has gone, what's there to do?
Naturally, you and the hunchback mount a search-and-rescue operation. A rather pathetic one, you might add, with him hardly knowing how to speak and your stab wound bleeding through your bandages… but it’s what you have to do. There is no other choice. You know for certain that she is in danger. It’s your turn to save her now.
The beginnings of your operation are anything but auspicious, so you think it’s something of a miracle when, finally, you manage to find your way to the Romani hideout. At least it’s easy to ascertain that you’ve really come to the right place: the leader of the Romani is there too, and he is threatening to hang you.
The way this week has been like so far, having a noose around your neck doesn’t even really surprise you.
Esmeralda saves you again. Catching your breath, you quickly count your blessings, only for it to dawn on you that you don’t have any left. Ever since your parents and little sisters died of the plague all those years ago, your career has been your whole life, and now, it’s over. You’re out of work, out of money and out of prospects, no better off than the Romani populating this hideout.
You stop to think.
All your life, you’ve always thought that you’re better than the Romani, more upright and honest, more hardworking… but standing there, hand in Esmeralda’s hand and surrounded by her people gathering their bearings to escape persecution once again, you understand you’ve been wrong. They are people just like you – the only difference is that all your life, you’ve been helping the archdeacon and his ilk to keep them down, while all they’ve ever wanted is to be left alone to live their lives.
So you tell Esmeralda you want to join them. She smiles at you, her emerald-green eyes sparkling, and your heart skips three beats. Maybe it’s time to recount those blessings. You have nothing left in the world except for her, and that is plenty. And from now on, you’ll get to follow her wherever she goes.
But there’s no time to go anywhere. Without warning, the archdeacon busts in, his ridiculous robes billowing, a sword swinging in his wiry old hands. It’s your sword, you realize, the very sword you lost in the fight the night before. There’s no time to dwell on that right now, though. The archdeacon’s guards drag you and Esmeralda apart and throw you into a dungeon.
Time goes by in the darkness, hours, days? Finally, a door opens, and you’re dragged out and thrown into another cell. Inexplicably, Esmeralda is there. Dressed in white, she looks like an angel, your guardian angel… but she is shaking. And she tells you the archdeacon – by this point, your archenemy – has promised her to set the both of you free, on condition that she becomes his mistress.
The bastard.
Still, you tell her to do it – not for your sake, she is your everything and you can’t bear the thought of that filthy old man touching her – but for her own. She is smarter and braver than any woman you’ve ever met, she will find a way to escape him, to live free… but she says she’d rather die. Your brave, strong Esmeralda.
That means you are both going to die.
The next morning, Esmeralda is taken out, and you stay in the dark, suddenly too heartbroken and scared and hurt and tired to think. But there’s no time to suffer. The door opens again. To your surprise, it’s not a guard coming to take you to your death. Instead, it’s the leader of the Romani, the man that wanted to hang you, extending his hand out to you and shouting that the hunchback has saved Esmeralda and there’s a riot happening in the cathedral square. Care to join?
Before you know it, you’re in the square, sun in your eyes, inciting people to attack the cathedral guard. That is, you’re standing against the very same guard that, only a few days ago, you used to command. And for once, you feel like you’re fighting for something you really believe in.
The fight fills you with such a strong fervor and excitement that for a while, you forget your distress and your pain. Too bad that, while it may be a righteous battle for you, you’re still losing it. Before you know it, the soldiers of the cathedral guard manage to break down the cathedral doors.
A wave of panic hits you. Esmeralda is not safe, not even inside the holy cathedral, so you have to act fast. You struggle your way through the crowd and rush inside towards the staircase that leads to the hunchback’s tower, powered by fear but slowed down by your wound…
and then your heart rips apart as you reach the top of the tower only to see that you’ve arrived too late. Esmeralda is dead. Of what, exactly, you do not know, but she is dead, and you’re too weak to even lift her slender body.
So you collapse on the floor, the pain from your wound pulsating through your entire being and a heavy fog entering your mind and slowing down all thought, and let the hunchback carry away the only woman you have ever loved.
There’s nothing left in the world for you anymore.