by Nicole Locke
A good lie. She suspected he said it to ease her worries, but it was all too apparent he had indeed gone out and stolen four loaves of bread. She didn’t want it to be true.
It needed to not be true.
But it was. Just as it was true she was responsible for a ten-year-old boy whose parents have been sent to the gallows and an elderly couple, Vernon and Helewise, who were ripping into their bread as though they hadn’t eaten properly in a sennight...which they hadn’t.
She was failing them. At least Vernon and Helewise were used to it, they had been with her the longest. Before her, they had survived on their own. Aliette discovered them over a year ago, in another part of Paris, sitting on the ground in the filth of the streets. Helewise, whose bones were crooked from her ears to her toes, and Vernon, whose eyes were so clouded he couldn’t see more than shadows. They were too frail to move when slop was thrown on them.
Over the years since she’d been abandoned in Paris, she’d seen hundreds of street beggars. The old or frail were usually dead within a week either by starvation, assault or reckless carriages.
But not these two and they fascinated her. Over many weeks, she’d watched as Helewise, too crippled to walk, told Vernon where to find food. They made terrible thieves. Vernon, almost blind, was slow and Helewise’s loud verbal commands let any nimble, listening child to reach the prize first. There were no fresh loaves for them or animal-trough remains. In truth, what they scavenged was dropped by others or given by charity.
Filthy, starving, but nothing hardened their souls as it did the others, as it had done to her. They were kind to each other and shared food if they were fortuitous that day or the warmth of their bodies if they weren’t.
But her observing ended the day Vernon made Helewise laugh. It wasn’t the laugh of the privileged, full of conquering lightness. Nor was it the laughing sneer of the street. Her laugh was full of...she didn’t know. It lit up both of them and did something to her heart as well. Like warmth, only so much better.
That was the day she gave them every scrap of food she’d scavenged and they welcomed her to sit with them. Then they gave her stories. Of who they were and where they came from. Stories about legends and brave heroines and love. That was the word they used. Love.
Was love what kept their souls intact? Whatever it had been, something began that day she gave them food. At first, she thought the tightening in her chest was something foul she ate, but the feeling grew and wouldn’t let up. It was like that warmth which spread with Helewise’s laugh, but it had an achy longing about it as well.
A longing for something she knew she’d never possess. Her parents had abandoned her. No matter how much she wished for someone to love her, it wouldn’t happen. If she was capable of giving or receiving it, she certainly would have found someone in all the years since. Still, seeing love between Vernon and Helewise, she wouldn’t let it go either. Even if at times her longing filled her with sorrow and not just warmth.
She blamed that longing for moving them to where she had been living: under a small bridge. It was in an industrial area of Paris, with no private homes or residences where respectable people could potentially force them to leave because it was too near the tanners and stank.
When shelter and safety were tantamount, scents that made your eyes water mattered little. She couldn’t count the times she’d been accosted or had a weapon pointed at her. Sometimes it was to take something away from her like food or clothing. Most times, they looked at her as a threat and used a dagger, or a large blunt stick to ward her away.
Paris was a jumble of wealth and poverty and she’d learned to take advantage of the good within the bad. And there were drawbacks with the bridge, the lack of walls not much of one. The true drawback was it was far from any food and much too far for Helewise and Vernon to scavenge on their own. It was up to Aliette to feed them.
On one of these travels, she’d spotted Gabriel outside the gaol making sounds she’d never heard in her life. On the streets, there was abuse and maiming. There were harsh words and harsher fists, but the street’s survivors were bitter or angry.
Gabriel’s helpless sobs were as if his heart was cracking. As though he only just realised life contained cruelty. He cried as an innocent would cry. A word Aliette knew, but had never truly understood. She tried to be good, but she stole and lied. Her life couldn’t afford anything pure. Gabriel’s clothes, though worn, were newish and clean. And he looked soft despite the bloodied mutilated mess where his right ear used to be. He had never been born and raised on the streets as she had.
As the guards had. Guards who chatted because the sounds of a weeping child near their feet was meaningless to them. For Aliette, Gabriel’s defenceless whimpers called to her.
A few gentle questions his way and he told her of his parents’ imprisonment and their hanging scheduled the next day. How he had no one and no home. He could tell her nothing of why they chopped his ear and not given him a simple flogging. Such an extreme punishment for one so young.
His eyes were so full of grief, so full of fear. Half-starved despite the cleanliness of his clothes. Despite his ear, his hands told her he wasn’t raised on the streets like her. She knew what happened to soft children. To thieve or be used. By the carving of his ear, he had failed at thieving. She refused for anything else to happen to him.
Slowly, coaxingly, she led him to their home under the bridge. His feet were laden down with exhaustion, hunger and loss. His eyes darting from her to every corner, looking for traps.
No matter her soft words, he remained wary until Vernon greeted him and Helewise opened her arms and, crumpling at Helewise’s feet, Gabriel laid his head on her knees and promptly fell asleep.
The longing to belong grew fiercely inside Aliette. The life she led with Helewise and Vernon wasn’t good enough for Gabriel. She could no longer steal a few turnips or potatoes. She needed proper food. They needed more than huddling under a bridge with one blanket. To achieve that she couldn’t only steal, she needed work.
Which wasn’t easy. Everyone needed to work. For an unskilled woman, no one was willing to pay her actual coin, but after a while of going from market stall to shop to farmer, she found people who paid her for work with extra food, day old bread, more threadbare blankets.
So much work, but eventually their supplies were noticed. Gabriel had gained strength, but not enough to defend against thieves or those with weapons. She needed to protect her acquired family.
She had searched abandoned homes, but more than once she returned to the bridge with bruises and cuts made by residents who guarded their territory. It forced her to venture into finer neighbourhoods, until she discovered one that had been once grand, but now lay neglected. Many of the homes were boarded, the owners waiting for years until the area became suitable again.
The house she found was boarded tightly up, secure against those too lazy or desperate to break in.
Over a period of weeks, she watched the property and worked the back boards on the servants’ entrance loose. When she walked through the dank rooms, she knew she’d found what they needed. The roof didn’t leak much, there was a space for a small fire and there was furniture for comfort. Chairs and tables. Beds.
They couldn’t have asked for a better home. With such fine furnishings, she suspected the owners might have left Paris for the winter and she didn’t imagine that they could live here indefinitely. Spring would soon be here, though there was no sign of it. And a few extra months until warmer weather would give them much reprieve and allow Gabriel to gain better health.
But Gabriel had stolen and jeopardised everything.
Without unclenching her eyes, she said, ‘At least tell me you didn’t steal them all from the same baker.’
‘Not at all,’ the boy quipped, not an ounce of guile in his words. To him, the words he said were the honest truth. Yet it was another lie since the rem
aining untouched loaves bore the same mark from the same bakery. He said the words to make her feel better.
Nothing about this could make her feel better. She had two options. She’d need to return the loaves or pay for them. Neither scenario would end well for them. If she returned the loaves, it was likely he wouldn’t accept them and she had no money to pay.
Easing her hand away from her stinging nose, she let out a breath and opened her eyes. Gabriel’s large brown eyes were more enormous than ever and sheened with tears.
His gangly body shuddered when she embraced him. He did not put his arms around her, but she did not expect him to. Almost three months with him and he was still unused to a kind touch. Who had he been before his parents were sent to the gallows?
‘I was only trying to help.’ Gabriel wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Helewise and Vernon’s stomachs are growling and the potatoes are rotten.’
That was because she pinched them out of a hog’s trough and counted herself fortunate that she grabbed them before anyone else since they were only half-rotten. She was working, but it only accounted for some of their needs. More often, she depended on what she could scavenge.
All of them thieves, none of them good. Her, least of all. That was the reason her family left her in Paris when she was five. Fifteen years didn’t make a difference. She was still appalling at it.
Now this. Four loaves from the same baker meant they’d be noticed. She’d take back two of the loaves immediately while they were still fresh.
First though, she’d observe the baker interact with his customers. If he wasn’t kind or reasonable when she returned them, they’d be hunted the next time they walked the market. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. This was the best home they’d had and she knew they wouldn’t find another before the winter ended.
‘I need to go.’
‘Don’t,’ Gabriel begged. ‘Let me do it. I did the wrong.’
Was this how he had lost his parents? They went out, committed some crime and couldn’t return? These questions would never be answered, though she’d tried that first day and the next to see them privately. To this day, Gabriel said nothing of what he was stealing for the punishment of losing his ear. In fact, he didn’t talk about his childhood, ever.
She bent to bring her eyes level with his. ‘You did nothing wrong. Please don’t think that. But I need you to stay with Vernon and Helewise to keep them safe or help them escape. You know this.’
Gabriel clenched his jaw and she glimpsed the man he’d be. One didn’t stay a child long on the streets.
‘I’ll be back for you.’
Gabriel shook, sneezed and shook some more.
She wouldn’t be his parents. She wouldn’t leave any of them. They were a family now. One she’d found, one she protected, one she was giving her life for.
‘No matter what it takes, Gabriel. No matter what, I’ll return.’
Chapter Three
Down the winding pathways Reynold followed the woman carrying the child. She made one more offer for him to hold it, but he refused and she didn’t ask again.
Another turn in the muddied, roughly cobbled streets. This area had once been grand, but now held the musk of ages, the patina brushed away to show instead the mortar underneath.
He had picked this part of neglected Paris to reside in because it contained no lavish homes. No grand balls or people with influence. In every city he stayed in he avoided those parts of town.
It didn’t suit his games to be noticed and ostentatious wealth was always noticed. He made only one exception to the rule of absolute anonymity: his books. He had too many to hide and they were far too precious for him to leave behind. They travelled with him to every home. So, despite the many pains he took to blend into the fabric of every city he visited, his books were always seen. Only an individual with an obscene amount of wealth could own such luxury. But what could he do? They were his family, his sole comfort. At least they were quiet and could be kept at home.
As he should be doing now. Another turn and the woman stopped in front of a door.
This home was more derelict than the rest. Windows were cracked and curtains were scorched from the sun; from this distance, it was clear the silk was thin and frayed. Even the daub was crumbling into the street, forcing the wattle to look more like a skeleton than a house. He glanced down the street. Most of the other houses in this area were boarded up. This was the only one occupied.
If it was occupied.
‘She’s in there,’ the woman said, shifting the child again. It was awake and the angle she held it, with its head on her shoulder, showed the full length. Yes, this was a child who could be his.
His. A burgeoning warmth, hope, bloomed inside his chest and he crushed it. Cursed ever reading Odysseus’s tale and giving him ideas that there could be more for him. Nothing and no one ever was.
There would be no hearth and home at the end of his journey. There would be only death. His only hope was that he took his family down with him.
‘Let’s go in.’
She looked to the child, then him.
He had no intention of taking that child now or later. He was free to block attacks and to make one of his own. Unburdened, he was free to leave and continue his games.
The woman eyed him, surprised he refused the child. ‘One look and you’ll know it’s her you spilled your seed in,’ she said. ‘You’ll know this burden’s yours.’
Even if it was...it didn’t matter. He was too close to what he’d been born to do: to take down his family.
‘Then we shouldn’t tarry much more,’ he said, fully intending for her to enter first. ‘One more look and you’ll be a rich woman. What’s keeping you?’
The indecision in her eyes turned to greed again, to cruelty. Ah, yes, he was familiar with people like her. They were easy to manipulate.
She pushed open the door. The sounds and the smells accosted him immediately.
Sobbing. A woman’s cries as if everything in her world was gone and missing. Deep racks of grief interrupted by coughs and wheezes. By wet gurgles, like a clogged brook.
Like blood that didn’t stay within the body, but came up through the lungs and out of mouths and noses, forced through tiny pores in the skin.
Which explained the smells. The dank smell of mould, a leaking roof allowing mildew to move along the walls. That smell fought for dominance over the acrid smell of piss and human waste.
But it was a deep cloying scent that permeated the entire house and settled against his very soul. Death. Human decay, as if they walked straight into a desecrated tomb of newly buried bodies.
It stopped him in his tracks.
‘Told you to stay at your fancy home, didn’t I?’ the woman sneered at his side. ‘I told you to stay and take the babe, but you had to come. Suits me fine, but I was only trying to be nice, to do you a favour. Had to make it difficult for me. Wasn’t as though I wanted to come back to this either. I’ve had to suffer enough these last months, waiting for you to return. Should make you pay me more for coming back when I thought I didn’t have to.’
What was wrong with him this evening? Why did he stop? He didn’t let boredom overcome his safety and allow strangers in his home, especially those he was soon to kill.
‘Cilla? Cilla, is that you?’ A woman’s thinned voice wafted from another room. Cultured and reedy with sickness. ‘Do you have her, Cilla? Did you bring her back to me?’
The wretch, Cilla, glanced his way, her eyes narrowing. He shook his head once which was enough for her to understand she needed to stay quiet about his presence. It didn’t hurt that it suited her purposes as well.
With a shrug, she swept into the other room. ‘I’m here with your bastard, my lady.’
‘Oh!’ Fresh tears, the sound of joy and gratefulness. ‘I thought you’d left. I thought you took her.’
Reynold held back. He needed a bit more exchange between these two to satisfy his purposes.
‘I merely took her for a walk,’ Cilla said. ‘She needed a bit of air.’
‘What would I do without you, Cilla? You’re so...good for her and me. Staying with me when everyone else left. Keeping her well, keeping her away from the sickness. Of course, she needed air. But...she needs me more. Bring her here, please.’
The tone of her voice, a cadence broken by hacking coughs, he did not recognise, and Reynold waited longer in the shadows. He liked waiting in the shadows.
A snapping of blankets, grunts from Cilla and wheezes from her mistress. Reynold envisioned Cilla giving the child back to its mother.
‘But you were wrong to take her without letting me know,’ the woman’s thin voice now containing some superiority. ‘You made me worry. You know how I cannot have any worry in my condition. Once I recover, your deeds will have to have some consequences.’
‘Of course, mistress,’ Cilla said. No doubting she had heard this argument before. The words held no threat. The woman in the other room was dying.
Dying, but cultured with a ring of privilege. Perhaps she was the noblewoman he had lain with those many months ago. There was only one way to discover that, by stepping into the other room.
Silently, a few paltry steps and everything was revealed to him. The room held scant pieces of furniture, no tables or niceties. The wooden floors highly polished where a rug once had been. The colours of rose and yellow in the broken bench hinting at what the room once must have been. A grand parlour.
Now it was a sick bed with a full chamber pot underneath, and various small linens flung around it like bloodied halos.
A few more moments lost as the woman spoke to Cilla, but kept her eyes on the child like a lifeline. The sickness had made harsh lines fan from her eyes, but as she gazed at the child, they softened.
Privileged. Entitled. But that gaze was of a mother to her child. Whether she was a fallen noble or whore, she loved the child who was trying to sit in her arms.
