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He dreads the Festival every year, and every year justifies his dread for the next one. His antipathy is only worsened by the fact that the hunchback has in recent years started to ask excited questions about the Festival whenever he visits, for the belltower provides an unfortunately ample view of all its decadent squalor. If only he’d had the foresight to have it trained as a caretaker of the catacombs. But even then, it would likely be drawn to the stomping revelry and merry-making overhead, for it is a feeble-minded creature, easily misled by illusions of joy no matter how Frollo imposes the importance of austerity on it.
Yes, the Festival is the lowest point of the year for any truly pious man. He often has a vision of the piercing eye of God observing the sinners and fools and mudlarks and harlots revelling in their obscene bacchanal display, and himself, in the centre, solemn and unaffected, heavenbound. For his God surely-
“Monsieur, watch out!"
A gypsy grabs at the back of his robes, and he realises that in his brooding he had almost stepped on a set of carefully arranged- and most likely stolen- marbles. He snatches his robes back from her, whirling around to scold her insubordination, but finds himself dry-mouthed and wordless.
In all his years, Frollo has never seen a gypsy quite like this one. For she is perfect. Her long, coarse black hair hangs in thick, unruly curls around her bronze face, down just to her shoulders, voluminous in a way a native Parisian could never hope to achieve. Unusually for someone of her complexion, her skin glows with warmth, exotic and inviting like a ripe mango- she probably tastes just as sweet, too. Her dainty feet are caked with mud, and a mad urge seizes him to fall to his knees and scrub them clean until they are fit to press his lips to. His breath catches in his lungs and his head spins and he thinks that he is having his first bout of asthma since childhood. His armpits are sticky with sweat.
“Move these before the Festival begins, or someone will trip on them,” he forces out, his voice cracking in a most undignified manner.
She nods, solemn, and starts to gather the marbles and place them in a small satchel. Frollo watches until she has picked all of them up, then, after casting a nervous glance back at him, she scampers off down some dank side road, curls bouncing on her shoulders, skirt billowing around her legs in the wind.
Tempting him.
She can't be more than five years old.
That night, he aches for the girl and her innocent beauty.
He considers the road ahead of her. Gypsy women don’t retain their innocence for long. They are a profligate, hedonistic group, lower even than French whores, as gypsy women take pleasure in their own degradation. It is only a matter of years until the girl takes her place with her face to the ground. He is sure she will eventually bear an incongruous brood from the seed of many men, perhaps like her own mother who is undoubtedly a seasoned whore with little in the way of maternal instinct, allowing her children to play in the shit and muck on the street. Their filth makes him shudder. The gypsies of Paris are worse than the lepers, and they cannot even be forced to carry bells.
But the girl, she is pure, saint-like. For now. He doesn’t dare sully her with his thoughts as he runs his fingers up and down the length of his aching erection through his robes, not quite allowing them to close over it, for he is not an onanist, but he nonetheless discharges in his breeches with a miserable groan.
He doesn't see the girl again until years later, when she starts her juggling act. She is only a splash of paint on the fresco of the Festival, but his eyes are drawn to her laughing, frantic figure as she tosses colourful objects up and catches them, bowing low for the crowd after particularly daring sets.
The real draw, of course, is the gentle bounce of her budding breasts, just beginning to protrude through her dress. Frollo is well aware of how these gypsies work- they exploit the appeal of a pretty young girl to lure in the common folk, whether she is aware or not of the kinds of indecent thoughts she is being used to place in the minds of men. The poor child doesn’t know that this is merely a precursor to prostitution. She hikes up her skirt, flashing that tantalising brown flesh adorned with circlets of gleaming gold, oblivious to how the onlookers leer at her lurid display, tossing coins and hollering like lechers.
Why was it that he had been burdened with a disfigured invalid who would never benefit him nor anyone else, and not this beautiful creature? If only she had been in that bundle, he might have saved her from this fate, this unbefitting life of sin. Why, he can’t even know that she hasn’t already started down that path of moral decay, and unbidden his mouth floods with thick saliva as he sees in his mind the girl on her knees in a brothel, servicing man after man with her little mouth and too-small fingers.
Gypsies are truly disgusting creatures, to allow this depravity to befall such a young girl.
He should put a stop to this. He must put a stop to this. He is an enforcer of the law.
The small crowd gathered around her dissipates as he approaches, with a few lurking stragglers turning their backs to him and pretending they were simply there to talk to one another. She crouches on the grimy ground to collect her coins, no doubt planning to make a run for it, so he stoops and grabs her by the collar of her dress, forcing her to her feet. To place his hands upon the luxury of her clothing, so close to her bare skin, sends an electric jolt through his groin. Her body heat warms his frozen hands. He looks down and sees how the greyness of his skin contrasts against the vibrance of hers and a wave of sickly bitterness rolls over him.
“What is your name?” He asks stiffly.
She looks behind him, to the rabble, showing off the soft flesh of her long neck. “I’m not causing any trouble, Your Honour.”
“Your name, girl.”
She stutters, batting her long, dark eyelashes at him, flashing those mesmerising emerald irises in a hypnotic pattern. Frollo leans towards her, entranced, helpless.
An old crone of a gypsy grabs the girl by her arm, none too gently. He jerks back, startled, releasing his grip on the girl’s dress. How did he not notice her in his periphery? Perhaps she is a witch. He twitches with fright as she places herself between him and the girl. Could this all have been a mirage, a cunning gypsy ploy to distract their only dedicated and God-blessed adversary? Cold sweat trickles down the back of his neck. In his mind he sees a great sharp-toothed bear trap snap shut on his ankle and a phantom pain spasms up his calf.
“Come along now,” the old woman says, dragging the girl off into the crowd. She sends a dark scowl in his direction, distending her already ugly, sagging face. He curls his upper lip, defeated.
Months later, in an unrelated trial, he finds the old woman guilty of heresy and sentences her to death.
The girl appears year after year with various new tricks, moving on from juggling to palm reading to painting mehndi on children. A spiral into degeneracy that he is powerless to prevent. He becomes accustomed to pacing his rooms for hours the night before and after the Festival, erection waxing and waning as she drifts in and out of his thoughts.
What has become of him? Her existence itches under his skin like a scabies mite, burrowing into every dark nook and sweaty crevice that no female has ever before reached. He despairs for her virginal innocence, but dares to hope that she has, against all odds, still retained it, and remained a woman worthy of both himself and God. Every day he signs papers barring the gypsies from work and public life, sentences their men and women to death or imprisonment or public humiliation, spits on them in the streets, and every night he prays that she will one day understand that he has only helped her, for when the gypsies are no more and she is vulnerable and alone he may train her out of her heathen ways. She will thank him when she finds salvation.
He ignores the hell-sent temptation that pulses in his pelvis when he envisions her debasement.
One year, in a fit of despair, he sends a formal letter of complaint to the King’s counsel, begging to be relieved of his torturous Feast attendance duty. But when they grant him his wish, he realises that he can’t abandon his post in good conscience. God has brought him to Paris in its time of greatest need for a reason. He is the only arbiter of morality present at the Feast, a soldier of Christ, and to turn his back on this city now would be to spit in the eye of God.
So he attends, year after year, hairline receding and eyes recessing into his skull as she ripens into a firm and luscious young delicacy that sets him off twitching and stumbling and sweating and hiccuping like a drunken imbecile. His sight yellows at the peripheries when he sees her, narrowing his world down to a jaundiced vignette of lust.
He disgusts himself.
This year, her act is different.
He gapes, stomach broiling, as she takes the stage in that provocative, whorish dress, exhibiting her womanly curves, her sleek, toned limbs, and those bewitching eyes. Bubbles of scalding bile spit up the back of his throat and heat swells in his loins.
Now she is a fully grown temptress, no longer satisfied with his passing glances and private fantasies. Now she demands his attention, leaning over his lectern so he can look straight down the full bust of her dress, grazing her painted red lips against the tip of his nose. Now she is a woman. Sweat soaks his back, sticking his undershirt to his damp, clammy skin. He strains against his dignity, eyelids fluttering under her wicked touch and the delicate pull of her scarf and nothing around them exists anymore, not ale nor music nor France nor God.
And she pulls his chaperon over his face.
He knew all along that this girl- Esmeralda - was nothing more than a dirty diseased hellbound gypsy prostitute. All these years of torment, these subliminal sexual messages she has transmitted through the curl of her toes and flicks of her hair, hinting, suggesting but never stating, have finally come to a head.
His prayers for her redemption dashed in a sultry sway of her hips.
There is nothing left but punishment. Oh, yes, he will see to it that this Jezebel has a taste of divine justice on Earth. She has forsaken herself for sin- no, she is sin, the Devil as a woman, a walking, breathing, cocksucking invitation to eternal damnation.
If she will not accept her saviour, he will put her in her place- with her face to the ground and a mouthful of dirt and his boot on her head. She will choke on the Earthly pleasures she covets and he will relish her useless, powerless thrashing. For this is not his sin, it never was, no matter how this witch had distorted and distended the truth as he could see it. Her sorcery is no match for the faith that has cleared his vision.
She finishes her dance with a flourish of her head.
His cock twitches.
Finally, he can do with her as he pleases.