“This time?” Roman asked, raising his eyebrows and looking to the leader of the group. “Do you oft find yourselves with unwanted corpses?”
“We’ve yet to possess a wanted one,” van Groen quipped and then squatted down. “It’s the guard from the gate.” He flicked the fringed purse on the man’s belt, slid some sort of folded wooden measuring device partially from its leather holster and then returned it. “He’ll be recognized when he’s found. And we have all of the morrow to wait until our performance.”
“Surely the city wouldn’t immediately blame anyone here,” Roman suggested. “He could have been killed by any number of people. You witnessed his behavior at the gate, van Groen. He likely had enemies, considering what he attempted this night.”
“Oh, certainly,” van Groen agreed, rising to his feet and brushing his hands together. “But that’s an inherent danger of our trade, I’m afraid. And it’s why, for the most part, we avoid staying long in the cities; we are easy targets upon which to blame the more distasteful transgressions. It is infinitely more palatable for the officials to seize our things, hang one of us, and send the rest of us packing than to contend with the political strife of trying one of their own.”
“Especially if one of their own happens to be a noble or official,” Zeus offered bitterly, and Roman wondered about the man’s experience in that situation.
“Indeed,” Asa agreed. He looked to Roman. “And it’s why we are oft not permitted entrance to the cities. Things seem to . . . happen when we’re about.” He looked down at the body again. “Things such as this.”
“What do you . . . typically do?” Roman asked. “In a situation such as this?”
“Well,” Asa sighed, “as I see it, we have two options. One, we hide the body in our midst until after our performance. Then we leave it somewhere it will not likely be discovered until we are well out of sight and out of reach.”
“What’s the other option?” Roman asked.
“We leave Dubrovnik at first light, as soon as the gates open, eschewing the morrow’s performance and dumping the body into the sea. The first option allows us to at the very least double our profits, although we run the risk of him being discovered. After all, your cart might resemble a slaughterhouse in the light of day. The second option gives us a better opportunity of distancing ourselves from the area before the body begins to decompose and stink in this mild weather, but our abrupt departure after such a gracious invitation to stay on by the mayor himself will inevitably seem suspect.”
Roman nodded. Van Groen was incredibly composed about such things, and it gave him confidence in the man. “We’ll not be sleeping in the cart now. We could hide him within.”
“Aye, stay,” Zeus said. “We need the coin.”
“Stay,” another strongman added.
“My advisers have spoken,” van Groen said, “and I must admit I agree. Of course we must speak with the queen to be certain she will be able to perform again so soon after enduring such an ordeal. All right, lads, let’s get him up and into the cart.” He turned to Roman when he bent to take hold of an arm. “No, man, not you. You’ve eliminated the threat; we shall dispose of it. Your job continues to be looking after our lady.” He leaned to look around the side of the cart. “Where is . . . ?”
“She went to the fire,” was all Roman said, because in truth it was all he knew. “I’ll see if there is aught she requires from the cart, though I doubt it.”
“As do I,” van Groen acknowledged. “Quite the spot of luck she had, hitting that vein in the dark. It certainly made a hellish mess, though.” He held out the long dagger, hilt first, to Roman. “I don’t know if she’ll wish this returned or not.”
Roman took the blade. “It was a gift from a friend,” he murmured, looking down at the fantastically forged handle. He wondered that Maisie Lindsey hadn’t set out to save Isra’s life that morning they’d left Melk. “She’ll want it. Eventually.”
“Very good,” van Groen said, unfastening the green velvet of his frock and shrugging out of it. He hung it on the edge of the cart bed and squatted with the men to take hold of the corpse. “I’ll join you both in a trice,” he wheezed as they lifted the body in one motion.
Roman began backing away. “My thanks, van Groen,” he said, and found that he truly meant it. He turned toward the fire and was halfway through the maze when he heard a woman scream in fear for the second time that night.
* * *
Isra had not bothered to knock on the low door at the back of Fran’s wagon. She’d seized the latch and pulled, and the door had swung wide.
“Thought I’d leave it unlocked because you had so foolishly returned my key,” the woman slurred from somewhere within the blackness of the shelter. “Come in, my Roman.”
Isra’s heart pounded like a hammer in her chest. The woman had thought to have Roman well busied while Isra was being raped. Instead, Fran had forced that good and noble man to commit murder. The only time in the whole of her life Isra could recall being in more of a rage was the black day when she’d found Huda.
She climbed into the darkness of the wagon readily, flung herself into the unknown environment with her hands outstretched, her fingers hooked, clawing through the blackness. She felt her nails skitter across flesh for the briefest moment, and the woman gave a shriek.
“Roman? Ow! What—?”
Isra lashed out again just above where the sound of the woman’s voice emanated, and her fingers tangled in silky hair. She tightened her hand into a fist and gave a scream of rage, yanking the woman after her as she backed out of the wagon.
Isra hopped down through the door, dragging the screaming Fran. She gave a mighty heave and the woman fell away into the dirt, the firelight playing over her rumpled skirts and undone hair. From somewhere over her head, Isra thought she heard Lou screech.
Fran looked up, her face a pale mask of fright with reddened eyes. When she saw Isra, though, those eyes narrowed with ill-concealed malice.
“Who do you think you are, coming into my wagon and putting hands on me?” she demanded.
“Get up!” Isra shouted.
Fran suddenly looked about her and saw that the fire ring was deserted. Her face shot back around. “Where is everyone?”
“Get up!” Isra screamed.
Fran’s porcelain features hardened so that they resembled polished ivory and she drew her knees beneath her, her hands steadying her as she staggered to her feet, her eyes never leaving Isra.
“I would have thought you busy with your little admirer,” she slurred, swaying on her feet. It was obvious Fran was more than a bit affected by drink, but Isra didn’t care.
She drew her arm back and struck Fran in the face, spinning the blond woman around and knocking her to the dirt with a cry.
“Get up,” Isra insisted again.
Fran looked up sideways at Isra, and it appeared a touch of reality had come back into the blonde’s eyes as she took in Isra’s bloodied appearance.
“What’s wrong with you, you savage?”
“I am the savage?” Isra asked, taking slow, measured steps closer to the blonde, who began to pull herself along the ground, trying to increase the distance between them. “Did you hope he would kill me? Or just humiliate me?”
“I—I—” Fran stammered. She gave up and looked around the fire again. “Mother!” she cried out, seeing the old hag who had shuffled over to tend one of the numerous pots over the fire. “Mother, help me!”
The old woman looked up and frowned in their direction. “What’s this about now, Franny?”
“She’s going to kill me!” Fran shrieked.
Mother looked to Isra. “Well,” the hag drawled, “we should likely confer with Asa before all that. I’ll fetch him.” She began to shuffle away into the darkness.
“Mother, no!” Fran cried. “Don’t leave me here with her.” Fran’s head swiveled back around. “You stay away from me, you . . . you rubbish! Leech! Asa will throw you out of the band
now, attracting the like of such predators!” she taunted.
Her words brought back the image of Roman’s hardened, unrecognizable face, the scream of the man, and the lurch of the wagon when Roman was inside.
Isra fell onto the dirt atop the woman, her arms flailing. In her mind she heard every feminine voice that had ever insulted her, degraded her, humiliated her.
“You evil, wretched woman!” Isra screamed. “What you made him do!”
“I didn’t make him do anything!” Fran shouted, fending off the blows as best she could. “You invited it!”
Isra shrieked, and her next slap caught Fran across the mouth. She took great handfuls of the woman’s blond hair in her fists and raised her head so that her face was close to Isra’s.
“I am speaking of what you made Roman do!”
Fran gave Isra a belligerent, drunken smile. “Oh, I see. Jealous, were you? How d’you like it?”
Isra raised her arm again, but she was snatched into the air in the next instant, her feet sailing out in front of her, long silken strands of blond hair floating down lazily like fairy streamers.
She knew it was Roman’s arm around her middle, Roman who held her suspended against him, her feet still far from the ground, and so she struggled, pried her fingers around his arm.
“Let me go, my lord!”
“No,” Roman said. “Isra, what is this?”
She saw Asa van Groen and the rest of the band streaming into the fire circle around Mother, who only looked on with her arms crossed over her flat chest, shaking her head.
When Asa caught sight of the blond woman on the ground, he broke into a run toward her, skidded to a stop in the dirt on his knees by her side. He lifted her by the shoulders.
“Fran! Franny! What is it? What’s happened?”
“She’s mad!” Fran cried, seizing the front of Asa’a white undershirt. “She came into my wagon! She tried to kill me!”
Roman let Isra slide to her feet but retained a hold on her arm. “Isra?” he asked. “Why would you attack Fran?”
She looked around and saw that every pair of eyes around the fire was trained on her, the performers sharing similar looks of astonishment. But Isra looked only at Fran when she spoke.
“She sent the guard to our cart,” she said. “She told him I would be alone.”
Fran snorted. “He was harmless! Such attention hasn’t seemed to bother her before.”
“He would have raped me!” Isra screamed and lunged forward, but Roman held her firm. “Are you blind to my costume?”
“Did you, Franny?” Asa asked.
The blond woman frowned, looked from Isra to van Groen and back again. “He said he wanted to meet her, give her a token of his admi—” She broke off and looked back to van Groen. “Asa? What happened?”
“He’s dead, Franny,” van Groen said.
Fran looked back at Isra, who was shocked at the genuine horror that seemed to come over the woman’s face as she appeared to look at Isra’s gown for the first time. Or perhaps it was only now that the sight of it could penetrate the fog of drink enveloping Fran.
“Are you—are you hurt?” Fran asked, and her chin flinched.
Isra could only stare at the woman.
“Did he . . .” Fran pulled away from Asa and struggled to her feet. She put out a hand and began walking toward Isra. “Are you hurt?” she insisted again, and her eyes filled with tears.
“Stay away from me,” Isra warned.
Fran halted, although she let her hand remain outstretched. “I didn’t think he—I . . .” She couldn’t seem to form a coherent sentence. She looked around at all gathered, first in one direction, then the other, before turning back to Isra. “I’m sorry,” she choked. “I’m—I only . . .” She looked to Asa. “There’s a body now?”
He nodded, his expression grim, sorrowful, but Isra couldn’t fathom the complexity of it. There was much going on beneath the surface of this scene that she did not understand.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, but this time she turned to address the group as a whole. “I’m sorry, everyone. I did go a bit mad, I suppose. It’s only that . . . it’s been a year now. I know it’s warm here, but . . .”
Many of those gathered glanced away, as if it pained them to look at Fran.
“I’m sorry!” she cried out. “I’m so sorry!” Her words deteriorated into a sob and she brought her hands up to cover her face.
Asa went to her, his own face creasing into a mask of—pain? Regret? Isra couldn’t tell. But he wrapped his arms about her, murmuring into her ear while he steered her back toward her wagon. He looked over Fran’s head to where Isra and Roman still stood.
“Take my cart,” he said. “I’ll need to stay with Fran. I should have been staying with her for a while now,” he said, his voice heavy with regret. He helped the blonde into the wagon and pulled the door shut after them.
Isra looked around at the others, who were dispersing to sit around the fire, the mood considerably subdued. Some of the women were even weeping quietly.
Only Mother was walking toward her and Roman now, a tall mug in each gnarled fist, and when she reached them, she offered the drinks.
“Here you are, children,” she said with a touch of breathlessness in her voice, as if carrying the mugs had been a physical trial. “I suppose someone ought tell you what all this is about.” She turned around and began shuffling back toward her perch on the far side of the fire.
Isra looked up from the steaming mug to see that everyone gathered around the flickering flames was now looking at her and Roman expectantly. Zeus stood up from a three-legged stool and looked to Isra as he swept his hand toward it, a clear invitation to sit.
“You might as well,” he said, moving away to lower himself down onto the dirt beneath the sturdy chair in which Delilah sat. “It’ll take a fair bit.”
“Not really so long,” Mother said as she resumed her perch on her tall stool. She sent a bowl and a bundle of rags around the circle of people to place near the stool Zeus had offered. “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at Franny’s behavior of late. And I further suppose we all share some of the responsibility for it.”
She looked across the fire at Isra specifically, her old, colorless eyes seeming to bore into Isra’s skull. “It’s a year since we lost Max.”
Somehow, Isra knew in that instant; she could see the signs, the clues, and it caused a cold, bitter dread to creep into her heart.
Roman voiced the question Isra thought she had already answered. “Who is Max?”
Now Mother’s eyes left Isra and looked at Roman. “Franny and Asa’s son. He would have been six years this winter, we reckon. Although that’s only a guess. We didn’t know how old he was when we found him.”
Isra did sit down then, feeling as though all the strength had gone out of her legs. She pulled a rag from the pile and dipped it in the bowl of water. “You found him?”
Mother nodded her old head as she stared into the fire. “On the side of the road outside of Budapest, four years ago. It was winter, the snow unusually deep that year. The baby was crouched in a ditch, only a long shirt on him that barely covered his little legs.” The old woman paused, her mouth pursed with the memories Isra was glad she couldn’t see. “Dirty, cold. Hungry. Franny and Asa’d been together for nigh on ten years at that point, and no babes had come.”
Standing just behind her stool, Roman took the wrung-out cloth Isra had handed him and then offered, “I didn’t know van Groen and Fran were married.”
Mother looked up from the fire and sent him a kind smile while he wiped at his arms. “Things like that aren’t of much import to people like us, big fellow. Any matter, ’twas Franny who found him. We stayed about Budapest for weeks, mostly because of the snow, but also to see if the babe’s parents were searching for him. By the time the snow melted, it was clear the child had been abandoned. Max was Franny and Asa’s, as certainly as if she’d borne him herself. Maximilian George van Groen,
” Mother finished in a gentle voice, as if in prayer.
“He worshiped Nickle when he joined the troupe two summers ago,” Zeus added, and Isra looked up, her eyes instinctively seeking out the boy. She saw him sitting with his slumped back to the fire just behind Mother, his long, straight hair hiding his face. “Treated him like an older brother. Followed him everywhere.”
Nickle stood from the stool and walked into the maze of wagons, and Isra’s heart flinched.
“Max was ill when we found him in Budapest, and although Franny and Asa did their best to care for him, he was never a healthy lad. At the slightest chill in the air, he’d come down with the ague; keep it for weeks, it seemed. Last winter he was especially touched. He never recovered.”
Helena was stroking her favorite pet, asleep in her arms. “Neither did Fran.”
“Things became uneasy between her and Asa,” Zeus said. “We . . . we were all mourning. In different ways. It seemed they were better apart than together for a time. But we could see Fran slipping away from us all. We could see.”
“We should have seen,” Mother corrected with a frown. She looked up at Isra and Roman again. “We’re a superstitious lot, we are. You don’t talk about a thing lest you want it, you see? We’d hoped they’d find their way back to each other.”
“Then we came,” Isra said to no one in particular. She felt the warmth of Roman’s hand on her shoulder, and without thinking, she reached up and grasped his fingers.
“This is not your fault, child,” Mother said. “But now you know.” Her dark eyes bored into Isra’s. “Now you know.”
Chapter 17
Roman helped Isra into the back of van Groen’s wagon as most of the rest of the band dispersed from around the fire. He got the feeling no one really wanted to sleep then, but even though they would not begin performing until the noon hour, there was a watch to keep now over Roman and Isra’s cart until the moment they left Dubrovnik, lest the body hidden inside it be discovered.
She ducked through the doorway and then turned to look over her shoulder, her eyes fixed somewhere on the ground. The gown Helena had lent her was clutched in her fist.
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