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“You love her.”
Never has Cyrano Savinien Hercule de Bergerac felt such abject, cloying terror as when Christian enunciates those words. His true soul is laid bare between them. He thought he had played the foolish poet-friend quite well; his illusion of insincerity now shattered because of a few, uncontrollable tears. Christian knows. Cyrano is resigned.
He straightens under his friend’s expectant gaze. “That, too, is true.”
Christian’s heroic countenance trembles with despair. “Madly.”
“More.” Cyrano does not allow his voice to waver, despite the tears welling in his eyes.
Then Christian suggests the impossible. “Tell her.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Anger and exasperation at the young fool’s obtuseness finally corrodes the fear which had Cyrano’s heart beating like the hooves of a galloping horse. “Look at me,” he nearly growls.
Christian is unfazed, just as he was when he launched all those ‘noses’ at Cyrano months ago. “Ah, yes…ugly. Ugliness is what she wants. She wants me to be ugly!”
Cyrano could fling his hands to the sky in vexation, but if only for the wounded heart of the man before him, he refrains. “Can you blame me if I bless the thought? But you mustn’t believe it.”
Christian will not meet his eyes, but Cyrano persists. “You must not believe that she wishes you to be—.”
“Let her choose. Tell her everything.”
Terror roars back to life in Cyrano’s breast, the unwavering conviction and resignation in Christian’s gaze oil on the flame of it. They are condemned men already, Cyrano most of all, but now he feels it. Let him face a battalion of Spaniards alone, but to be forced to face Roxanne and have her hate him… “Not this cross…this gallows.”
Christian draws breath to insist, and Cyrano could shake the man to rattle what sense he has left back to life, but neither is afforded the time to speak or act.
“Cyrano! Christian!” Le Bret’s thunderous call starts them both from the obstinate turmoil of their argument. They step apart as the broader cadet scrambles over the uneven terrain to their secluded position, but a final sideways glance from Christian communicates that this discussion is far from finished. If Le Bret observes the pallor of anger and irritation they share he notes it and does not mention, his eyes already wide with alarm.
“Has the assault begun?” Cyrano assumes.
“No, not yet.” Le Bret gasps from his run. “It is Roxane.”
Both men pale further, speaking at the same time. “Is she all right?” “There is no sound of a fight, what has happened?”
Le Bret stills them both with extended palms. “She is unharmed, but has got it in her head to stay, she must fight. Like a pirate, she commandeered a spare small sword and pistol from two bewildered cadets.” He shrugs, “I thought the pair of you might wish to know.”
Le Bret isn’t quick enough to catch Christian as he dashes past, bolting back in the direction he had come from, but Cyrano is slower, weighed down by anger and something more melancholic that Le Bret cannot define.
“You did not think to stop her?”
“The entire company attempted to dissuade her — De Guiche was already red in the face from trying — but she’s as headstrong as you are. None of our words would change her mind.”
Cyrano stills, and after a beat he presses a hand to his forehead. Le Bret clasps his shoulder. “What is wrong, my friend?”
de Bergerac laughs, but it is weak and he is pale. The grin he musters is ghastly, a final baring of teeth from a man about to die. “No words…no…” He shakes himself, “All my past decisions are unravelling before me.”
Cyrano grips Le Bret’s shoulder in return, if briefly. “I will see you on the line. Tell the Captain I’ll join the company at present.”
With barely a nod, he departs after Christian, seething with something more complex than regret. What should he regret? Roxane begged him so many years ago to teach her swordplay, to defend herself, why would he regret it? How could he have foreseen she would take up a sword and stand beside men commanded to die? Roxane with a sword: a fairer and more terrifying an image Cyrano cannot conjure, but as well as he taught her, a pitched battle could drag the best of combatants to swift and ignoble ends.
Roxane deserves better than to die in the mud. Cyrano trudges over the churned earth more quickly.
When Cyrano reaches the cluster of cadets, the change is palpable. What once were a group of exhausted, mostly-starved Gascons are now lively, restless frenchmen itching for a fight. Roxane is at the center of them, utterly lovely in her summer-rose colored satins, a flush of pride and determination high on her cheeks despite Christian beside her, urging her back, worry-ridden and stern. On her other side stands the Comte De Guiche, his mustache bristling with indignation at being ignored. She holds a small sword in one hand, and a pistol in the other, like Le Bret had said.
Cyrano allows himself one long look at her before he approaches. From the mettle in her eyes, he will not try to convince her to stray from her chosen course; he did not try to dissuade her from learning fencing that night under the same look. Instead, he seizes Christian by one arm and tugs him just enough away so that they may speak without being overheard.
Christian thrashes against Cyrano’s grip, but de Bergerac is steeled. For the second time in their entire acquaintance, Christian sees genuine fear in Cyrano’s azure gaze. Not for himself, but for Roxane. Christian realizes everything Cyrano has done for him, every noble and often brash word or action, has always been for Roxane.
Cyrano speaks, and his tone is that of a commander in the cadets, his usual mercurial humor gone. “We will not convince her to go with Ragueneau; that is a more futile battle than the one before us. She will fight, and you must stay close to her.”
“Of course I will–.”
“I will be at the front…” he hesitates, “Christian…if you see me fall, get her away. Throw her over your shoulder if you must, and flee.”
Christian bristles. “I will not abandon the cadets! I will not desert you!”
“You will if you want her to live. If I fall, the battle is lost.” Cyrano does not say it with any arrogance, only the certainty of a man who knows his own skill and determination. Christian knows Captain Castel-Jaloux would say the same if asked.
Cyrano’s countenance wavers, his grief showing in the cracks for just a moment. He jostles Christian gently. “Should it happen…know that you are my friend, and all I wanted was for Roxane to be happy.”
He does not leave Christian the time to respond, pivoting on a heel and striding to take his place beside the Captain. His tri-waving plume dips with the length of each of his steps.
The first crack of Spanish muskets signals the beginning of their assault. Christian is quick to relieve Roxane from De Guiche’s company, directing her a step behind him and to his left side. Surprisingly, she listens. He looks at her once, a long, loving gaze with the hope that he can memorize the parts of her face that he hasn’t yet seen enough of. A second crack of musket fire, and then the Spaniards are upon them.
--------------------------
Christian nearly dies. He trips over the corpse of a Spaniard he had killed minutes before, and another enemy with a pollarm makes to spear him. Their efforts are cut short by a gurgling scream as an expertly aimed small sword dips in and out of their throat. The Spaniard falls, and Roxane is revealed.
She is magnificent. Christian does not have the breath to say so.
The Marshal and his reinforcements arrive in time to claim a French victory, though the Gascony cadets have already sustained heavy losses. Christian finds himself hoping to God Cyrano is not among them; he lost sight of the man in the final Spanish surge, a veritable whirlwind of death, the leonine hero of the Siege, leaping and slashing and roaring with the glee of a fight.
Now the bone-aching quiet of the after has descended. Muted cheers ring across the French forces as the Spanish retreat becomes a rapid escape. Christian turns, seeking Roxane, and finds her picking her path through the body-strewn ground behind him.
Smudged with soot, blood staining the lacy trim of her bodice and sleeves, sword still held between delicate, un-callous fingers, Christian thinks her a valkyrie come to earth, or the risen spirit of Joan of Arc. Only he isn’t dead. He did not perish on the spear point of half a dozen Spaniards because of Roxane’s skill with a sword. He knew she had studied, but to owe her his life…?
He suspects those who remain owe, in majority, their lives to the courage and tactical prowess of Cyrano.
Quite the pair, they are.
Roxane’s smile is blinding as she leaps to him, comprehending their victory. She carefully drops her sword away so that he might catch her about the waist. She peppers kisses across his cheek and brow; Christian is loathe to let her go, but the letter — Cyrano’s letter — is a burning weight in the pocket of his doublet. The debt of the life he owes her weighs heavy on his heart. The one with absolve the burden of the other. It is his duty to do so now.
He extends her to arm’s length, gently. The perfect bow of her mouth turns down.
“You saved my life.” He manages to rasp.
Her returning smile is touched and earnest. “You are my husband and my love. Should a lady not fight valiantly for such things as well?”
Love. Christian recalls Cyrano’s artful phrasing on the topic, the elegance of his verbiage, and only truly understanding in these past few hours of starvation, bloodshed, and terror that his friend had plucked those words of admiration, of adoration, of love from the garden of his soul, the blooms meant only for Roxane. That first letter in Ragueneau’s shop had fit like a pair of gloves because Cyrano had stitched them together according to Roxane’s measurements. Cyrano had loved her — loves her — so dearly as to sacrifice his own happiness to see hers secured.
Christian summons the courage to do the same.
“The first…” his words come haltingly, as his words always have. “And it has been my greatest joy and honor.”
Roxane’s brows furrow. She must think their earlier exchange still lingers between them. “You are my love, Christian.”
“I owe you my life, Roxane. Allow me to repay you with yours, please.”
Whatever words she draws breath to say fall silent at Christian’s plea. He continues:
“Loving you…wedding you has been my honor.” He repeats, “But I must tell you the truth about the other.”
“The other?”
“I am not your love.” He says gently, clasping her hands in his. “Not that I do not love you, but you love my soul.”
“Is your soul not yours?”
“No!” he hisses. He does not possess the pretty, eloquent words to explain it. It is all he can do to try. “Do you…remember the first letter I gave to you?”
Pink tinges Roxane’s cheeks. “Of course!”
“And the night we kissed upon your balcony?”
“A century could not banish the memory from my mind and heart.”
“I cannot lay claim to those words, Roxane. They are not mine.”
Her expression falls, and she blinks at him as if waiting for a jest. He has none to offer.
“From that first letter to this last,” he pulls the folded parchment from his coat, sweat-stained, spotted in blood, and Cyrano’s neat hand a little smeared. “I have been a mask, an actor speaking a playwright’s words. The man who wrote you two letters a day risked his life each morn to post them. He fed me lines below your window, and before that. You do not love me, you love him. My soul.”
“Christian…” Roxane’s breathing has quickened with confusion and distress. “I do not know…”
“The man masquerading as my soul has a name…it is Cyrano.”
Roxane gasps. Silence stretches between them for so long Christian fears she will not speak at all.
“Cyrano wrote those letters.” Her tone is measuredly calm.
“Yes, Roxane. It was his voice, that night, in the dark, after I made a fool of myself before you.”
A beat of stillness, of shock, before she snatches her hands from his. Her dark eyes blaze. “An abominable ruse! Why, Christian?”
“I don’t have the words to woo you, to hold your interest. I never did.” Christian finds himself unafraid to admit it. “As for Cyrano—.” He falters. “Do you think your cousin fearless, Roxane?”
“Of course he is.”
“No.” He does not mean for his voice to lower, but she starts at the sound of it. “No. He did not lie to you in the gloom that night when he said one harsh word from your lips would crush him. He would not dare to see you anything but happy, even after you told him you loved me.” He presses the last letter into her hands. “They are his tears spotting the page. Most importantly, they are his words. Not mine. Never mine.”
Christian tastes the flow of his own tears and only then realizes he has begun to weep. Roxane’s eyes well too, yet remain unshed.
“He loves you, as you now know. I, too, love you, but you love his soul. His soul.” He sighs. “Whatever you choose to do, know that I only wish you happiness.” He echoes Cyrano’s words from before.
The paper crumples as Roxane’s fingers close too tightly. She is pale, but it is in anger. Her gaze falls to the letter. She pries it open fold by fold and reads. Her tears fall, silently marking paths down through the ash on her cheeks. “All these words…these dear, mad, foolish words…his?”
Christian nods in answer to her murmured question, but she does not look up to see it. Her voice grows louder.
“From that first letter, you say? That was the day I bade him meet me in Ragueneau’s pastry shop. Did he have it tucked into his doublet then, and my girlish confessions — how naive I was then, speaking of love — stayed his hand? If I had looked at him, truly looked, instead of imagining your curls in my mind’s eye, Christian, might I have seen the nobility of his soul? The one he bared to me, sent to me piece by piece in letters he could not sign his name to!” Her voice is a storm when she pauses for breath. “Fools! the lot of us! I, perhaps, the most foolish.” Her voice breaks, but she steels herself, literally, reclaiming her small sword from the ground. She steps back from Christian, and flicks it at him.
“Help me find him, and your life-debt to me is absolved. If he is dead, I will regret having saved you.”
Christian bows, falling back into politeness in the face of her rancor. She is even more terrible and fearsome than Cyrano. If she had not just implicitly threatened him, Christian thinks he would laugh.
He leads the way through the corpse-strewn and battle-churned camp, calling out to survivors who might have seen where Cyrano had gotten to. All shake their heads, or shrug weakly, clearly dreading the answer Christian and Roxane might find.
Finally, it is Le Bret, limping over on a bandaged leg, who directs them to the makeshift surgeon’s tent. Cyrano had taken a musket ball in the shoulder during the final, desperate Spanish charge. He points, and Roxane runs as best as she is able.
Without aplomb she bursts into the shoddily upright pavilion, uncaring in the face of startled exclamations and the thick smell of blood in the air. She does not hear Christian following behind her, and with a glance she sees he has stayed to support Le Bret, his head bowed as he helps the man limp forward. She looks away; she must find Cyrano.
One of the cadets, his head and hand enswathed in bandages, points to the back, behind a thin curtain. She thanks him with a smile.
She hears her cousin as she approaches, low oaths in Greek and latin, and catches sight of him quickly after. He’s bared to the waist, slumped half-upright in a chair while the physician stitches a wound high on his shoulder closed. Blood has run in dark rivulets down his arm, and his teeth bare in a hissing grimace with each tug of thread through his skin.
“You were lucky,” the physician says. “The ball did not shatter the bone. It will heal cleanly, though the scar will be large.”
Cyrano’s head lolls to his chest; he must be slightly delirious from exhaustion, blood loss, and pain. Regardless, he chuckles, and gestures broadly to his face. To his nose. “I am not unfamiliar with enormous and unavoidable blemishes, monsieur.”
The physician indulges him with a roll of his eyes, and ties off the last stitch.
Roxane had entered with plans to be angry, to rail at her cousin, to confront him with the truth of his own words, to perhaps indulge the urge to scream at him for not being brave enough to tell her, or being so brave as to hide himself from her so that she might love the man she thought she did. All of it dissipates in the face of his wry self-depreciation. She instead flails herself: how could she not have seen it? His love? The magnificent, vast, oceanic depths of his soul? She had mocked suitors who saw nothing past her beauty and had made the same horrid mistake with both Christian and Cyrano. In one, she saw too much, and left the other without a second glance.
He would have taken his words, his love, to the grave had the aim of the Spaniard who had shot him been any better. Where would she have been then?
She makes her presence known as the physician finishes bandaging Cyrano’s wounded arm, her skirts rustling loudly in the quiet.
Cyrano does not start, but it is a near thing. He pushes himself upright, a gentleman before a lady, as always, despite the weariness lining his face and the ash darkening her ribboned curls.
A smile breaks like the dawn across his craggy face. “Roxane…you are alive. I lost sight of you and feared the worst.” He pales, thoughts marching ahead of his mouth. “Christian? Is he…?”
“Baron de Nuevillette is well.”
Cyrano looks at her askance, hearing the edge in her tone. Roxane turns to the physician, smiling gently. “Would you be so kind as to leave us?”
The man bows and departs, leaving them alone in their isolated corner. Cyrano must see the embers of her anger with him and Christian in her face, for he speaks cautiously.
“Roxane…you need not worry over me. My wounds will heal.” He pauses, disconcerted with her barricade of forced calm. “The day, the siege, is won. Go to Christian; hold your husband in your arms.”
“And, if instead, I wished to hold the man I love?”
Cyrano’s knuckles go white where he grips the arms of his chair. He suddenly cannot look at her. “Christian is your husband.”
“True.”
“Christian loves you.”
“But he is not the man I love.”
The breath catches in Cyrano’s throat. Roxane fills the air between them.
“The man I love wrote me this farewell.” She lifts the now severely crumpled letter. “He wrote me letters twice a day while he was at war, and allowed another man to sign his name to them. He let another man wed me, kiss me, after his words filled my heart and tingled my lips that night in the dark. And most galling to me of all: the man I love said nothing when the foolish girl I was stood before him in that little pastry shop and confessed a naive, superficial infatuation. You said nothing. You uttered none of the dizzying rhapsodies you wrote to me. You fed Christian the ripest of your words of love because I asked it of you, unknowingly, and you did it even as you starved yourself, for my happiness.”
A sob shudders through Cyrano. Fear, shame, and adoration war for dominance in his adamantine eyes, even as his tears roll gently down his cheeks. Now that she knows him, he is beautiful. He has always been, but she could not see it.
She goes to him, and he is solid muscle beneath the span of her palms, skin warm and slightly tacky with sweat. Her name is a whimper from his lips, a reverent plea for her to grant him mercy.
Roxane has none left in her. “Christian told me because he owed me his life. He sought to give me mine back…” She places her hands on his face, and forces him to look at her. “Are you the man that wrote all of those letters?”
“No, Roxane…”
“Do not deny me the truth when I ask it of you, Cyrano de Bergerac.” She stands over him, claiming the higher, advantageous ground while he remains seated. “Do you love me?”
“Roxane…”
“Do you love me, Cyrano?”
“Yes.” The word is barely a whisper, but he rallies. “Yes, Roxane. Madeleine de Robin as you were when I first began loving you. Love is yet too small, too simple a word for what I feel. It is a herculean labor of strength to carry such love, but when graced with your smile, or a warm glance, or a touch of your hand, it is feather-down to rest my weary heart upon. If I could take one feather of it, one long feather, and bring it into existence, it would replace the plumage tucked into my hat, and I’d be all the prouder for it.”
Cyrano’s words tremble, but they are artful nonetheless. Roxane cannot bear to hear any more in the voice that wafted up to her like the sweetest of perfumes from her garden the night she had first kissed Christian. She should have kissed the man before her. Impulsively bold — perhaps she is more like the cadets than even she knows — she steals the rest of Cyrano’s words from his lips with her own.
A soft sound strangles from him, panic or deep shock, and he hesitates to touch her. Roxane gently persists, only to sigh with relief when Cyrano’s dexterous, broad hands cradle her face with the utmost tenderness. His lips are narrower than Christian’s, but no less supple, his mustache and goatee points of rough contrast to the warm slide and part of their kiss. Her hands splay over the curve of his shoulder to his throat. One calloused finger twines in her hair, guiding her closer.
When they part, she does not let him go far, resting her forehead upon his. He still weeps, but his tears run over the contour of his smile. He is murmuring her name, a whispered prayer, oath, and benediction in two syllables. Eventually, his hands anchor on her shoulders. There is something sorrowful in his eyes.
“But Christian?”
“He said all he wishes is for me to be happy. I think I am.”
“You are married, Roxane.”
“It can be annulled. We had no official witnesses, and no record of the match.”
He draws away from her. “I will not risk your good reputation, dearest.”
She clasps his chin in her hand. “Hear me well, Cyrano, because I will only say this once. From this day forward, I claim all your words of love, and give you mine in return. You are mine to defend, as I am yours. I will waste no more time on people who pale in comparison to you.” She tilts her forehead to his once more. “I will waste no more time apart from the man I love.”
It is he who kisses her, this time. It sears her, firmer than the last, but too brief. He pulls away with a blinding grin, but his eyes betray that he is deeply touched by her words. “The tyrant from our youth has returned, I see. She has forgone her short skirts for a sword.”
“When all is resolved, and we are…well, as we should be…you will continue my lessons?”
“Nothing, except perhaps your lips on mine again, could give me more joy, mon coeur.”