La Mort Rit En Dernier

PARIS, 1472
Vicomtesse Ginevra de Vincennes strode purposefully down the long black corridor in the Palace of Justice. Like all the others it was stone, bare and cold, with intimidating high ceilings and sparse windows. A stranger would be lost amongst the building's labyrinthine twists and turns, but the Vicomtesse was by no means a stranger to the Palace. Elegant and stately, she cut a striking figure in deep plum silk, heavily embroidered with silver thread, her thick black hair coiled around her head. Both the color of her dress and of her hair accentuated the deathly pallor of her skin, and she was faintly luminous in the Palace's bleak half-light. Guards drew hastily aside for her to pass, she showed no hesitation or uncertainty in her stride, and they saluted her respectfully as she swept past them, just a flicker of scorn lighting her large black eyes.
She reached her destination finally, a huge solid oak door, and without bothering to announce herself with a knock, pushed it open and entered in a whirl of purple skirts. "Claude," she greeted the man who graced the tall and elaborately carved chair in front of the fireplace.
The man slowly averted his gaze from his steepled fingers and pulled it finally to focus on the Vicomtesse who stood in front of him in a strange attitude of defiance and respect. "Belladonna," he responded, his voice running silkily over the nickname with just a trace of mockery.
She waited, but he said nothing, a tiny, humorless smile bending his thin lips. Finally she spoke up with almost imperceptible impatience.
"You wanted to see me, I believe."
He did not respond for several moments. As she stood in front of him her face was completely blank, a smooth piece of painted silk, but inside she was aware of the dull thud of her heart. The man's superiority was infuriating, but his magnetism was enthralling for her, and she was alternatively resentful of his dominant nature and glad of the alleviation of boredom he provided her with.
When Claude Frollo finally did respond, he raised himself slowly from the chair in which he sat, his tall, skinny frame betrayed by his palatable strength of will, just as the seeming simplicity of his long black judge's robe was betrayed by the expensive rings which decorated his hands. He glided over to where she stood, staring at him unflinchingly, as one long skeletal hand reached out to lightly brush her cheek. "My dear, your arrival is, as always, exceedingly fortuitous."
She narrowed her large clear eyes at him and said coldly. "Don't play games with me, Claude. You sent a summons for me as soon as my husband left."
He brought his hand back to him, clasping it with his other, turning and gliding away from her. "Oh? And what makes you so certain, my dear?"
She bit down the violent retort on her lips. His condescension infuriated her because she knew herself to be his intellectual equal, as he knew it also. This game of aloofness and superiority he played was a deliberate goad, and one she was determined not to give into. Silently taking a deep breath, and allowing a tight smile on her face she responded calmly. "How else would you expect me interpret a jongleur reciting 'La Belladonna' at the gates of my estate? I felt it was rather crude to be honest, my dear Claude."
The tone of sarcasm on the last of her words was not lost on her companion who turned to her again, his face and body lost in the shadows of the room they were in. He stood in such a way that only one of his eyes was visible to her in the light of the fire which did little to warm the room, but she could see this eye remained as calm as she herself had. He raised a fine eyebrow.
"As you wish to believe, my Belladonna" he said smoothly, and she narrowed her eyes at him again. It would be useless to continue this line of conversation; he clearly would admit to nothing, and she had no desire to lose her temper and allow him to get the better of her.
"As I am here now then, Claude, I hope you will do me the courtesy of explaining why my arrival is so fortuitous."
"But of course, my dear." With an elegant flip of his long hand he gestured for her to take the chair which sat nearby his own. She accepted it formally, settling into it carefully so that her dress would not crease. She sat erect and with her chin high, her eyes never leaving her companion who glided sedately over to his own chair, and took it gracefully.
He did not begin talking straight away, instead he slowly filled two silver goblets with red wine from a nearby bottle, and handed one to the Vicomtesse, who took it with a slight nod. Then he sat back, contemplating the contents of his cup, his eyes hardening and his lips curling ever so slightly at his thoughts. "I have in my dungeons, at present my dear, three of the gypsy vermin which plague this fair city. I have no doubt that they are guilty of the crime for which they have been accused, that is theft, but at present have no solid evidence with which to convict them."
He paused for a moment and she spoke up, her voice brittle and cold. "I sincerely hope you are not expecting me to adopt the dress of those heathens and go amongst them as a spy, as you have persuaded some of you other female... friends to do? If that is the case, Claude, I am sure you will understand why I will return to my estate this afternoon."
A small smile escaped his mouth. "Of course not, my dear. Such activity is beneath you. No, what I had in mind should in no way affront your dignity. I was of the mind that perhaps upon seeing my prisoners you would be reminded of three gypsies who passed by your estate last autumn, and took some of your best silver with them."
She pursed her lips and her black eyes turned sly. "I am missing no silver, Claude."
He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise, still gazing at the red liquid in his goblet. "You're not?" His voice abruptly hardened, just a twinge of impatience, just a hint of a man who was not to be toyed with now, Belladonna. "Well, something else then."
Her eyes were again expressionless and she gave a slow nod. "Now that you mention it, I have noticed a few valuable heirlooms are nowhere to be found."
His smile widened in smug satisfaction. "I rather thought you would, Belladonna." 
She raised her glass to him silently, and took a drink. Vicomtesse Ginevra de Vincennes was a highly intelligent and educated woman. She was also cold, calculating and disdainful of the general population. Forced into a marriage because her ruthless tongue had caused embarrassment to her Italian father, she was bored and resentful of a domestic life, and her poetry, once scathingly brilliant, had reflected this. Until she met Claude Frollo, that is. She'd been thrilled to meet someone who scorned the common rabble as she herself did, an educated and ferociously superior man, and, disdainful of social morality, had quite happily entered into an extramarital affair with him. That had been just two short years ago, and they had collaborated together whenever Ginevra's husband was away, which was frequently.
Frollo's main purpose in life - what she secretly called his obsession - was to rid France of the Romany population. He often employed her services to aid him in this, and although she felt his mission was slightly frenzied, she certainly sympathised. The Romany were a blotch on the otherwise pleasant landscape of France, and she could barely hide a sneer whenever one of them passed by her carriage. They were dirty, uncivilised and stupid. But unlike Frollo they did not plague her mind or hold her attention for indefinite amounts of time. She applauded Frollo's efforts, but would not have been active in them had it not been for the relationship between herself and Frollo. He stimulated her mind and her heart, and she would use any excuse to be in his company as opposed to languishing on a chaise-lounge and struggling to write words which had once flown from her pen effortlessly. She supposed that she felt some degree of love for him; no other explanation for bearing his condescension sprang readily to mind. Frollo was a man typical of his generation - disdainful of women's intellect, and whilst he certainly appreciated Ginevra's intelligence as superior to others of her sex, he still saw it as inferior to his own. The reality was that the Minister of Justice, as he was, used the Vicomtesse as it suited him. A reality that, for all her intelligence, the Victomesse could not see, so pleased had she been to find a mind akin to her own.
The Vicomtesse was perhaps not divinely beautiful, but she was, nonetheless, rather good-looking for the period's tastes. Her large dark eyes and hair, and pale skin, made it certain she was always noticed and admired wherever she went, and the challenging, open expression she invariably wore invited one to look again and again. The Minister was a slightly different story. Close to twenty years her senior, he was a man whose life was governed by a strict moral code. It was unfortunate that this moral code was in turn governed by fear, suspicion, prejudice and overbearing self-righteousness. Immensely tall and gaunt, his face would have been handsome had it not been marred by the thin cruelty of his lips, the haughty slant of his eyebrows, the cold and calculating gleam in his eye. His cheeks were sunken and his skin deathly pale from lack of exposure.
A man of slightly lower birth, he had progressed through the Courts until being made Minister in 1461. Since then he had devoted himself wholehearted to ridding France of the Romany population. To be a Gypsy in Paris was worse than being born deformed. Frollo employed guards who shared his ideas, and if they had nothing on you, they would find something. Tales of torture in the dungeons of the ironically named "Palace of Justice" spread through the city like a flood: horror stories Romany mothers fed their dirty-necked, wide-eyed children, to keep them close to their skirts. It was an obsession, and a dangerously violent one. A modern psychologist of the twentieth century would have diagnosed his war on the Romany as a subconscious means of ridding himself of his own temptation, his own base desires. However, he had been graced with a powerful magnetism of person, the same magnetism that held otherwise independent women like the Vicomtesse in his thrall and subsequently his power.
He had regard for the Vicomtesse, but saw her in a light lower than himself - further strengthened by the fact of her willingness to indulge in an adulterous relationship. The nickname he used for her - "Belladonna" - had been taken from a mocking poem written about the Vicomtesse some years earlier, and he was the only one she tolerated calling her by that name. They made an odd, yet somehow well-suited couple, superior, disdainful, intelligent and cruel in ideas they firmly held as right. Working together they could be considerably dangerous to their chosen enemies. It was these two people Joker decided to visit first. 

GOTHAM CITY, 1999
Columbine Mountebank burst into Joker and Harley's "Ha-Hacienda", a garish motley of lavish trappings and old carnival discards, and headed for their bedroom.
An enormous Clown's Head with a demented, wide-open grin for a mouth, graced one corner. It was once the entry to a Circus ride, now it housed the elaborately covered green and purple bed. An enormous desk of black marble, behind which stood Joker's "throne", a huge artefact topped with a head in Joker's image and enormous playing cards, filled another corner. An orange couch was lavishly strewn with plush cushions, and the red and black carpet was five inches thick. Posters of Abbot & Costello, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and Rik Mayall & Ade Edmondson (the last two Harley's choice) decorated the walls, and an elaborate chemistry set stood on a small carved black table, something dripping from one of the test-tubes steadily burning a hole through the wood. The large wardrobes and many, many mirrors, were draped alternatively with Joker's expensive and elaborate suits, and Harley's frilly underwear and skimpy shorts and tops. A few other remnants of Harley lay about - her portable CD, nail polish, hair baubles, fluffy slippers and a few magazines, and Columbine's eye graced them all lovingly.
"Harley, get up!" she called to the bed, overshadowed by the Clown's mouth. There was no answer. Sighing, Columbine strode over to the bed. "Come on, sweetie!!! We've got plans to make, remember?" She poked the bed and her dark eyebrows shot up when she realised it was empty. Then she frowned. "That's that bastard Joker making her do things again," she growled to herself. "Just when we have some time together he takes her away from me!"
She whumped the bed with her fists in frustration, knocking the note Harley had written into the air. Columbine leapt on it with a cry of glee, and brought it out into the light, reading what Harley had hastily scrawled.

Columbs BABY!!! Columbine read. Hey, sweetie pop, I'm REAAAAALY sorry we can't go do what we planned, but Mistah J's got planned this whacky (but utterly brilliant) adventure for us to go on SO I gotta go be with him, BUT here's whatcha do if ya wanna come join us (and I'd love that!!) Go find this whacky zany belt. It's brown leather and it has like a big silver ball on one end and a little program console on the other. (I don't know where you get them, sorry!) Then you program the date into the console (we're in Paris, 1472 BTW) and then you put it around you and plug the console into the silver ball and WHAMMO! Bob's yer Uncle!! Hope ya come!! Lots of love,
Your bestest friend in all the world who loves and adores ya,
Harls. xxxxxxx

Copyright © Harley Quinn 1999 (harley_quinn@cheerful.com) May not be reproduced without permission.