Lonely Souls, Chapter Three

When Eponine opened her eyes, it was to stare at a bare plaster ceiling with a jagged crack running from corner to corner. She was lying flat on her back, on something much softer than the pallet in the corner of her family’s dingy apartment, and covered with quilts much warmer than her threadbare blanket. She lay still a moment, blinking hard, trying to bring to memory what it was that had brought her here… and where was she anyway? Oh yes… Montparnasse… she grimaced as his leering grin flashed through her mind. 

Ignoring the pounding ache in her head, she struggled to sit up, biting back a gasp of pain. She touched her ribs gingerly and lifted her hand to feel a linen bandage wrapped around her forehead. It made her smile. How long had it been since she had been cared for? A distant memory of a little girl lying in bed, and Maman sitting at her side with a steaming mug of soup… when had it all gone wrong? The smile changed and she blinked back stubborn tears. 

She stretched hesitantly, assessing the aching of her body and reflected that after all, it wasn’t much worse than anything she had gotten before. Montparnasse knew nothing of being gentle, even when he wasn’t angry… and her father was almost worse. She gazed nonchalantly at the purple fingermarks on her wrist and blinked hard again, guessing her left eye must be swollen. She shrugged her shoulders with a sigh. It had been a good night in spite of everything… at least she had been able to sleep in a warm bed, just this once… and a man had cared enough to fight for her. She lifted her head higher. Perhaps she was worth something after all. 

Quiet voices filtered through the closed door as she slipped from bed, gathering up her belt lying on a nearby chair and wrapping it around her tiny waist. It was time for her to go… but not through the door if people were here. The window would suffice, it was on the first floor. But as she moved towards it, she paused and turned back, recognizing the voice that was speaking.

“...was the first time I’ve ever been able to fight for the people… even if it was only one girl,” he was saying, his voice quiet and intense. “It felt good, Joly. To be able to do something with my hands for once, and not just with words. It’s what I’m meant to do in this world, I’m sure of it… to go on fighting injustice until my last breath. It’s a noble cause… I pray God that I’ll be worthy of it.”

“It’s a good thing you found her when you did,” Joly was answering, and Eponine could hear a shudder in his words. “Whoever this man was, he was brutal. I wonder why he was hurting her…”

“Who knows?” Enjolras sighed. “France is full of brutality. This kind of evil can only be washed away with blood.”

“There should be another way,” and Joly’s voice was more serious than Eponine had ever heard it before. She knew him, the laughing, merry one always at the Cafe Musain with the rest. “I’ve pledged myself to saving human life, not destroying it.”

“And you think a revolution can come about without bloodshed?” Enjolras’ voice rose with anger. “Don’t you see it? This is what is destroying human life… letting this tyranny be prolonged. It is squeezing the life out of the people of France, crushing them into the dust! The greater evil, Joly, is to stand aside and do nothing. Patria has been brutally wronged, and someone must pay the price.”

There was the sound of a chair scraping across bare wooden floorboards, and then footsteps. They paused before Eponine’s door, and Joly spoke again.

“I know, my friend. It is the cruel truth of this broken world we live in.”

A moment of silence, and then the door swung open. Eponine stood still in the center of the room, starting guiltily as if she had been caught doing wrong. Joly’s grim face broke into a cheerful smile.

“Ah, good morning, mademoiselle! I’m glad to see you up and doing well… how do you feel?”

“Well enough,” Eponine smiled crookedly. “I thank you for your kindness, monsieur, but I must be on my way.”

“What, in such a hurry?” he shook his head. “Please, come and have some breakfast. And I must check the wound on your head. You were out as soundly as a stone when Enjolras brought you here, I must ensure that you are alright before you go.”

He took her hand and led her into the other room before she could protest. Enjolras had risen from the table when she entered, but he said nothing more than a quiet “good morning”, his eyes fixed on something behind her as if he didn’t care to look at her. Well, she must look a sight. She smirked in amusement, tossing her hair behind her shoulders as Joly pulled out a chair and motioned her to take a seat.

“It’s not much, I’m afraid” Joly was saying apologetically as he placed plain brown bread and cheese on the table. “But at least it fills the stomach.”

“You set a poor table, Joly,” Enjolras said wryly. “Is that a fair meal to put before a lady?” He withdrew a package from his pocket and shoved it awkwardly at Eponine before tossing another one at Joly. “Surely you can at least serve chocolate. Do you know how to make it?”

“Chocolate?” Eponine spoke the unfamiliar word slowly and then bit her tongue. She would not show her ignorance before this man! She tilted her chin upwards as she reached for the package and pulled back the paper wrapper to reveal dainty pastries. Her eyes widened and she glanced at Enjolras in awe. But he was busy instructing Joly on how chocolate ought to be prepared and didn’t seem to see her at all.

“Forgive me if I know nothing of your fancy nonsense,” Joly laughed to Enjolras as, a few minutes later, he set a mug of the steaming liquid chocolate in front of Eponine. “You see, he used to be bourgeois,” he added to the girl in a confidential tone. “It seems one day he just got tired of the wealthy life and renounced his family and they renounced him…”

“Enough, Joly.” The quiet words were filled with a sort of ferocity. 

Eponine shifted in her chair, uncomfortable in the momentary silence. Joly was enthusiastically tasting the chocolate, his eyes dancing merrily, while Enjolras sat with his head bowed, one hand clenched into a fist on the table as he stared unseeingly into the distance. Eponine nibbled at a croissant, stared longingly at a lovely pink macaron, and warmed her fingertips against the mug of chocolate, but more than that she hardly dared to do. Enjolras looked at her then, frowning.

“The pastries are not to your liking?”

“Oh… no, monsieur, I…” Eponine fidgeted with a corner of the paper wrapping. “You see, I… I never had such things before… you should not… waste them on me…” Why was she saying these things? Shouldn’t she be grateful for what she could get?

“They’re for you,” he muttered, looking away again. She cocked her head at him curiously, decided he wasn’t prone to conversation today, and turned back to the pastries. He had given her permission, might as well not let them go to waste. She gave in to her ravenous hunger and devoured them, almost desperately. Oh, but the chocolate… the chocolate was heavenly… she sipped it slowly, letting the creamy richness slide over her tongue and trickle down her throat. It warmed her through and through, from the inside out. 

“Monsieur,” she ventured at last, reaching out to touch Enjolras’ sleeve. His head jerked up abruptly and she moved her hand away. “Monsieur,” she went on, raising her voice. “Merci. Merci for… for everything.”

He nodded, his lips set into a grim line.

“No need to thank me, mademoiselle. I did my duty, nothing more.”

She smiled at him. It was as if he was almost daring her to be afraid of him. Well, Eponine Thenardier was hard to scare. And besides, she could see straight through to his heart… he couldn’t fool her with this gruff exterior.

“You are a good man, Monsieur Enjolras,” she said simply. “And good men are hard to find.”

She left as soon as Joly gave her reluctant leave, slipping off through the Paris alleys in the warm glow of morning sun. And so off she must go, back to her miserable little life in the streets… but her heart had been touched and it gave her courage to go on. This strange and stubborn leader of Les Amis had given her more than one night of safety and a good meal in her stomach… he had given her the gift of hope, fragile though it was.

oOo

“Enjolras, marble lover of liberty, conquered by a woman at last,” Grantaire laughed as he tipped his head back, lifting his ever-present wine bottle to his lips. “Tell us more,” he added, dragging his sleeve across his mouth. 

The story of how Enjolras had come to Joly’s door in the middle of the night, an unconscious young woman in his arms and something akin to panic in his eyes, had spread through Les Amis like wildfire, and each one of them had twisted the meaning of it to his own liking. They dragged it on and on, laughing over it and at their leader, who was sitting at a table in the corner, glowering at them all over a stack of books.

“Come, man, tell us her name… who is your fair lady?”

“I did not ask her name,” Enjolras snapped at the offender and buried his nose in his book, determined to block them all out until they were ready to speak of more sensible things. He was more than a little irritated… not only were his friends tormenting him mercilessly, he couldn’t seem to focus on a single word of the page before him. It frustrated him that he could not completely push her face from his mind. The way she had looked up at him, with such relief in her eyes… it had done things to his heart that he refused to admit, even to himself.

“She was Marius’s shadow friend,” Joly supplied quite willingly. “The Jondrette girl. Eponine.”

The name was repeated half a dozen times, but Enjolras did not hear. He was forcing himself to read, to absorb every word and to think of them as hard as he could. This would never do… he had so much work before him… papers he needed to write, plans that needed perfecting… and there was the rally he meant to hold tomorrow afternoon. He couldn’t afford distraction now. Ever.

“A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger,” Bossuet was laughing. “It is the woman that sets the man off. Well, Enjolras has no woman. He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire.” The jests flew around the room, thicker than the smoke that was rising through the dirty little chimney. No one heard Enjolras as he forced a single word between clenched teeth, his knuckles white as he gripped his book.

“Patria.” He meant it with every fibre of his being… and yet he could not rid himself of the fact that the girl’s face accompanied the beloved name of Patria… no matter how it angered him.