The Legend

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  “Who are you?” he whispered. The words came out stuttered and clumsy as if he had forgotten how to speak.

  She did not reply but tucked a strand of unruly hair behind his ear to unveil some of his face. He reached up with an unsteady hand and grabbed her wrist, feeling the throbbing of her pulse in his palm.

  “Who are you?” he repeated more urgently.

  “It does not matter who I am,” she said, and he could hear the heavy influence of French in her words. “What matters is that you are loup-garou and I need your help.”

  He peered at her, his brown eyes narrowing upon her in bewilderment. Loup-garou? What was that?

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  Unlike her, he would not hesitate to give her what she wanted. He would give her anything after the miracle she had just performed. “John. John Croxen.”

  Chapter 2

  He was unlike any loup-garou she had ever seen. Though her experience was somewhat limited, the last loup-garou she met wore finer clothes and looked like more of a gentleman than John Croxen. His stench alone was detestable. His dark hair was unkempt and slick as if he hadn’t washed in weeks. His beard, scraggly and tangled with blood, was not as long as some, but it was clear that John hadn’t shaved in quite some time.

  Yet, there was no denying that he was loup-garou. The way he tore the vagrant apart and how his eyes had glowed an animalistic gold was enough to confirm her suspicions. He was loup-garou but where was his pack? Why was he so alone and clearly detached from civilization? It was not their way, to live like beasts. Yet, here he was with a film of blood on his hands and around his mouth and nose.

  Any other woman would have run in terror at the sight of him, but Annalette knew better. She saw through to the core of his strength.

  “How did you do that?” he asked, each breath coming out in rasps as if he were afraid to upset the balance she had put into place.

  “I know how to do many things,” she replied with a smile. “And I know many things about you, loup-garou.”

  John’s hand tightened around her wrist, and she knew that the blood of those men would make her unclean. She was unclean just for being close to this creature. If her father were to see her now, he would rage about her disregard for their way, but this was a matter of life and death. It could not be helped.

  “I don’t know you,” John said, his deep eyes narrowing into tiny slits of distrust. “I’ve never met you before. How could you know anything about me?”

  Annalette sat back on her heels, and John slowly released his hold upon her. “No, we have never met.” It was a shame they hadn’t met sooner. The way the moonlight slanted across his features, Annalette knew there was a handsome face beneath the layers of grime and filth.

  She looked down to the dark red handprint around her wrist and swallowed hard. Such an impurity wouldn’t have bothered her years ago, but she had forced the doctrines down her own throat, and it had paid off.

  Slowly, she rose and walked towards the direction of the river with the undeterred need to rinse away the shame. “Where do you come from, John Croxen?” she asked, keeping in mind to talk as if he were standing next to her. John could hear for miles away. There was no need to shout over her shoulder.

  As she expected, John scuttled to his feet and followed her through the trees. “Why should I tell you? You won’t even tell me your name.”

  No, she wouldn’t. Not yet, anyway. The old ways were still ingrained in her thoughts. To give her name would be giving him power that he didn’t deserve; not because he was a loup-garou, but because he was a gajo – a non-Romani.

  “In time,” was all she said as they came upon the spot where the two vagrants had been murdered.

  The sight of their mangled bodies would only make her ill, so she turned from the corpses and traveled up river, to the north, where the water would be the purest. “My camp is not far away,” she told him as she knelt by the water. “In the morning, I will tell you everything.”

  As she began to scrub and rub away the bits of blood upon her hands, she heard John throw the bodies into the river. It was not a proper burial, and the villagers downstream would certainly be shocked to see what floated their way overnight, but like her purity, there was nothing to be done.

  This had been an ordeal from the start. Leaving her family, following the trail of a loup-garou to the east, manipulating those men into thinking she would be a willing victim… Annalette could hardly believe she had stooped so low.

  She took a deep breath, expelling the fear just as she washed away the last of the blood from her hand and wrist. If she was to succeed in her mission, she had to be the rebellious Romani girl that she once was. Her disrespect for their customs was excusable as a child, but she was a woman now and could not so easily push aside the ways of her people. Not anymore.

  It had to be done. When she returned to her family, they would hear nothing about the loup-garou or the men she had placed in death’s path. They would know nothing.

  She looked downstream and watched John scoop the river water in his hands and splash his face. Droplets dripped from his beard as he continued to clean away the blood. Annalette opened her mouth to warn him that he was washing with polluted water, but she bit her tongue.

  The gadje did not need to know all of the Romani ways, and she could not expect a shameless people to consider such things. They would bathe with horses if the water were agreeable, regardless if it was contaminated or not.

  When he dried his face with the hem of his shirt, she caught a glimpse of the strong body that lay beneath his beggar clothes. He certainly had the physique of a loup-garou. It was unlike any she had ever seen on a mortal man. Not even the most handsome man in her clan could boast such a body as John had.

  Daily labor and hard work could not produce muscles so defined. It was as if he were the masterpiece of a sculptor. It was only a glimpse, but Annalette felt a wave of heat course through her. It was as if she had been left outside in the snow all her life and then suddenly brought inside to warm herself by a roaring campfire.

  Her body flushed even greater when he looked to her with a clean face that could not disappoint. She quickly turned her eyes away, but the damage had been done and could not be reversed. A bit of her childish innocence had been chipped away by his roguish looks. It frightened her, at first, to think that there was something waiting underneath her pious concern for customs. A wildness, perhaps, that she had once known in her youth, but buried away for years.

  Only John could hammer away the rest of her defenses, but she could not let him close. He was too valuable and her mission too precarious to allow herself such indulgences. Her father always told her that the Romani never associate with the gadje unless it was absolutely necessary and only for a short time.

  Well, this was necessary and if Annalette had her way, they would be on their way to Canterbury right then and there. She had to draw him in slowly. To give him all the answers now would be to give up her leverage in the bargain that would need to be made.

  Strengthening her resolve, she looked back to the loup-garou. “Will you sleep by my camp?”

  John sighed and looked to the forest, indecision and unease in his eyes that sent a streak of panic through her. If John didn’t consider her to be worth his time, then he could easily leave, and though she could track him again, there was no telling what it would take to gain his interest again.

  It was already clear that he was lost, confused, and if she were any judge of character, Annalette would have ventured to say that he was frightened. Of what, she didn’t know, but she would have the answer he needed more than anyone else.

  “No,” he finally replied, his deep voice crashing through her mind with foul news.

  “It’s not far,” she offered. “Just upstream.”

  “I will sleep on the edge of the wood.” He turned his eyes upon her once more, and she tried to breathe again. “Do I have your word that we will speak in the morning?”

/>   She could already see the questions forming in his eyes. Though she wanted to rejoice in her victory, it would be premature. John needed to trust her, and right now, he was curious more than anything. She could accept that.

  With a nod, she stood and set herself upon the path to her campsite along the river. Whether she would get any sleep was uncertain.

  Dawn brought with it the dew of the morning that settled over the leaves and blades of grass. Fog drifted over the River Stour as frogs and other creatures stirred from their nests. Birds chirped their cheerful morning song, but it did nothing for John’s troubled heart.

  He sat under the shade of a twisted and knotted oak and watched the gypsy sleep. All night, his stare was fixed upon her slumbering figure, his mind hard at work to solve the mystery before she awoke but nothing made sense anymore.

  Whoever she was, she refused to give him more information. John didn’t even know her name.

  John should have left her the moment he knew she was asleep. He should have moved on from this place before the bodies of the two vagrants were discovered downstream. Villagers might try to investigate and search for the killer along the river. He stayed for only two reasons.

  She called him something. Loup-garou. He knew now that it was French, but what little French he had learned second-hand from the tutors at the manor had fallen out of his head a long time ago. The word seeped into his thoughts like a poison and begged him to stay. If he remained with the gypsy, perhaps she would keep her promise and tell him everything, but how much could he trust the word of a gypsy?

  Perhaps she would tell him what a loup-garou was and why she had called him one. There was hope in this; that she could explain his sickness and perhaps provide him a way to redemption like no other priest could. If he could escape hellfire, he would stay by the river for the next one thousand years waiting for the answers.

  The other reason he stayed was far more enigmatic. The woman, whoever she was, had an ambiguity about her that he couldn’t turn away from. If she was a gypsy, where was her clan and why was she traveling alone?

  Queen Mary had decreed last winter that all gypsies were to be executed and anyone known to be harboring gypsies or associated with them would be punished severely. If this woman was fleeing for her life, John should have been the patriotic Englishman and brought her to the constable in Wye, so she could receive her punishment.

  It was commonly known that the gypsies were a wicked people. From what he had heard, they were nothing but thieves who could twist the minds of ignorant peasants for their own purposes. Their women were sultry and seductive, while their men could kill and maim without mercy.

  He had only seen gypsies from afar. They hardly seemed to be the same people that gossipers whispered about in the streets. The gypsies danced and sang around campfires, but it was not in tribute to some pagan god. They celebrated life and the company of their clan. Perhaps it was this bias that stayed John’s hand of judgment upon the mysterious gypsy. He had to know why he felt the instinctive need to protect her and why she needed his help.

  Perhaps it was the way her body curved in such an alluring way. It called to his manhood with its siren song, but he resisted, even as he watched the way her chest rose and fell with each steady breath. He could not let himself fall into the trap of lust. Otherwise, the rumors about the gypsies would be true.

  He heard her heartbeat quicken as she rose from her makeshift bed. The thin blanket couldn’t have been comfortable, but perhaps she was used to sleeping on the ground just as he was. John grew still as the gypsy looked around and cast her captivating gaze over her shoulder.

  They locked stares, and John’s chest ached. Even in the daylight, he couldn’t deny that she was a handsome woman, even if she was a foreigner.

  “Sleep well, gypsy?” he asked.

  He didn’t mean it in offense, but her dark eyes shot daggers at him, pinning him where he sat. It was clear that she did not take kindly to something in his tone or his question.

  She stood and straightened out her thick skirt before moving towards the river’s edge. John rose to follow as soon as her gaze released him.

  “Will you not speak to me?” he questioned.

  As soon as John realized that the woman was disrobing, he staggered backward and fled to the tree line once more. He averted his eyes out of respect, but he would not give her peace.

  “The least you could do is give me your name now that it’s morning,” he called out to her.

  Even a single word would have been better than silence. He had lived so long with only the sound of his own demons circling in his head. An utterance from any kind soul would be like the ringing of church bells to frighten away the evil.

  He listened to the whisper of fabric dropping to the earth and the sound of the river receiving her naked body. Water sloshed, but he would not turn for anything, not even if she asked, though every sinful need begged him to steal an eyeful while he had the chance.

  Resigned to silence once more, John sighed and leaned against the trunk of an elm to wait.

  It was some time before he heard the woman take up her clothes again.

  “How long have you been loup-garou?” she asked, her sweet and lyrical voice like a balm to his tired spirit.

  “What is that?” he questioned hastily, his gaze turning to the blue morning sky. “I don’t know what a loup-garou is, much less how long I have been one.”

  She approached, and he could smell the tang of river water in her long hair. When she came into view, he was grateful to see that the gypsy was fully clothed, though the fabric clung to her damp skin.

  “You are loup-garou,” she said, her hands wringing out her hair that had been tossed over her shoulder. “You are a man and a wolf in one, are you not?”

  John scoffed at the very idea. “I am possessed by a demon. I am not a loup-garou.”

  The gypsy giggled and shook her head, the golden earrings tapping against her jaw. “No, the wolf is not a demon. It is an aide.”

  John passed a hand over his face and rubbed at his eyes. “You’re taking rubbish, gypsy. I don’t understand.”

  She stomped her bare foot into the grass like a defiant child. “Do not call me that. I am not gypsy. I am Romani.”

  He recognized that term from pieces of conversation and understood it was what the gypsies called themselves. John jerked his chin at her. “Then give me a better name to call you. Do you have a name?”

  The woman seemed to debate with herself as if wondering whether to trust him or not. If she didn’t trust John, then it was a wonder she let him stay with her while she slept. Any vagabond could have stolen what few goods she had, or taken her in the carnal fashion as those men tried to do. Yet she allowed him to remain. Why would she not trust him with her name?

  “Annalette,” she said.

  For a moment, he wondered if it was another foreign Romani word. “Does that mean something in your language?”

  She flipped her hand at him, and a droplet of water cooled his cheek. “That is not important. What is important is that you help me.”

  John shook his head. “I’m not doing anything for you until you explain to me what a loup-garou is.”

  “I told you,” she insisted. “It is a man and a wolf in one. You are a loup-garou. Your eyes, they were like a wolf’s last night.”

  “I’m telling you, it’s not a wolf. It’s a demon.”

  She sighed and cast her eyes heavenward. “You English and your demons and angels. The wolf is not a demon. It is a spirit of nature.”

  John looked away, frustrated by her lack of understanding. They were from different walks of life, different worlds entirely, but how could he explain to her what he had known to be true for so long? “Wolves are beasts. They don’t possess a person. Demons do.”

  “A loup-garou embodies the spirits of both man and beast.” She moved to stand in his field of vision. “Once a month, you change into a beast, yes?”

  John swallowed hard, remem
bering all the times he had fallen senseless. He would wake up next to a fresh kill, normally something larger than his usual prey, and he would be naked. Each month he had to steal new clothes or think ahead to undress before the change took hold. Such a painful and frightening change.

  At first, it took him by surprise. Then, over the many years of living with his demons, he learned to predict their movements and when they would choose to emerge and wreak havoc on his body. There were signs that hinted to the coming of the devil in him. Thankfully, he had a few weeks left before it would come again.

  He nodded to her question.

  “And you cannot eat as you once did, yes?”

  “I get sick if I eat anything that grows from the earth besides fruit.” He wasn’t too afraid to admit that much. He had known of others who could not eat certain foods because it would disagree with them. Just one bite of a potato would weaken him for days.

  Annalette nodded and smiled as if excited that he might finally understand. She would be disappointed. “Yes, and you can hear and smell things over long distances.”

  “The demon makes me do all of those things,” he pleaded, still unconvinced that it was a wolf or beast of any kind. The demon made him behave like a wolf, but that was not the same.

  “It is not a demon, John. You are a loup-garou. Isn’t there a name for this in your language? Wolf-man?”

  His face wrinkled in disgust. “Werewolf? The full moon has no sway over me,” he explained, recalling the frightening legends and stories that the old and grisly cook used to tell him. They were stories to make him behave, nothing more. Werewolves devoured babies and disobedient children on the nights of the full moon. Although he had woken up to plenty severed heads of sheep and deer, he had never awoken to stare into the lifeless eyes of a child or infant.

  “That does not matter,” she said. “The wolf doesn’t care about the moon. It only cares about the hunt and once a month, it must run free. Do you remember anything when the wolf comes?”