Author's Note: Forgive my terribly long absence. Life happened in such a way I had to decide which was more important, writing, making money to well- live, and so many other things I'll not bore you with.
Finally, I'm very proud of this chapter, especially the first half. As for the song in it, rather the tune, I was inspired Little Women movie where the March sisters skip along on a snowy day singing "Here we come a-wassailin, among the leaves so green."
Chapter 10
Gypsies
Charles walked along the hard dirt road with his arms wrapped around himself, regretting this venture he took in this need to leave his guardian. Ever since that day, the weather grew steadily cooler as the leaves began their color turn at the mark of fall. To spite yesterday's storm, the summer had been dry, resulting in many falling prematurely from struggling trees, and crackled into crumpled bits beneath his brown shoes.
As he continued down the lonely road, trying to ignore the cool breeze that kissed his skin, Charles reminded himself why he was doing this at constant intervals.
His tutors taught him English at the start of his education, thus understood every word spoken in the stable. Erik killed. There was no way to justify it, even if was in retaliation of other death. Only God had the right to take lives, not Erik, not the assassin he hired, just God.
To bid even a mere thought of sharing a house with a man he knew killed in recent history, churned his stomach with such violence, it hurt. If it were not empty now, Charles was certain he would have dispelled it into a bush three hours ago. How many lives had Erik ruined? How many families had he torn asunder in those moments of blood lust?
Why stay with the man who was no better than those who ruined his life? Those fiends who took away and destroyed most everything he knew, and abused him in the process. Could anyone truly expect him to remain there as if he knew nothing? As though Erik was any less guilty? Just how much was he like the others?
These thoughts suffered numerous interruptions from contradictory reminders along his journey, such as the night Erik sung him to sleep after saving him from his nightmares. Then, there was their playing in the creek. Not to mention the fact that some delicious meal always was waiting for him, even though he was the only one who ate. These things, amongst many others, ensnared Charles into an endless loop of contradictory thoughts.
What was he to do with a man he found so gentle, and now, so terrifying?
Charles stopped his trek to gaze ahead at the faint hue of Parisian light rising from the swell in the road ahead. Surely, after two hours– if not more –of walking, he was more than halfway there. Closer to Gramma Giry than Erik at least…
He looked back down the darker road in which he came. A venture now he was beginning to realize was a trip from the darkness into light. Dare he leave the promise of light for the night? Light was so much more secure; few things could hide in it. Yet moon and star light could whisper of a sun-filled day, by being so bright they cast shadows across the nightscape and fill it with a soft glow that on some occasions, it made it so that one would not need a lantern to see. While sunlight was garish, moonlight was gentle.
But, what did he want?
For now, answering that silent question became a discarded thought when raucous laughter echoed from behind him. It filled the air with almost painful discord in its lack of tune and even harmony. Its noise was enough for Charles to spin on his heel, back towards Paris and the bellowing voices that hammered out what he could only guess to be an old folk song that sounded similar to 'Here We Come A-Wassailing' he heard often in England when they were up there around Christmas and New Years one year. Only this one was an utterly butchered variation.
"They come to see,
They come to play,
They come to gape away!"
Their song was woefully out of general shape with poor training, or general lack thereof. The only excuse that he would accept to explain the talentless singers was that they were deaf and not just tone deaf. Ironically, he inwardly hoped for the former. With their voices improperly produced from their throats, he could not begin to decipher anyone's genders.
Lamplight bounced off a lone tree on the current stretch of road as a large wagon climbed over a small hill into his sight. As more of it came into view, the wagon, pulled by two small – worn horses, whose coloring eluded him beyond lighter-shades, looked more like a tiny house on wheels with wooden walls and roof than an actual wagon or cart.
"All the while,
We rob 'em blind,
Of their wallets and their purse!"
A part of Charles urged him to creep off the beaten path and let them pass without notice. However, curiosity rooted him in place. He wanted to know just who or what these strangers were. Why were they traveling after sundown?
As they drew nearer, he heard the pots and pans hanging from the eaves clattering against each other, accompanied by the high-pitched tings of wind chimes. Then the squeaking groan of their wheels in desperate need of grease, grated on his sensitive ears.
"They'll be broke, but we don't care!
They got money, back at home!
And we'll be richer than before-er-er-eroer!"
Charles winced at the horrid, inebriated, climb of notes.
"And we'll be richer than befo—!"
They cut off the wretched verse with a jerk of the reigns and an agitated grunt from the horses as they halted. A large man leaned over his fat belly to leer at Charles from his seat while his scrawny friend popped a cork from his jug of whiskey and spat it aside.
"Well, well, well, what've we here?" asked the large one. A bit of lamplight hanging from the front corner of the roof, touched on his messy black hair framing a fat, sweaty, pimple scarred face with an ugly bulbous nose.
Scrawny hiccupped while pushing his greasy hair out of his very small face that did not fit with the broad shoulders of his tall, lanky frame.
A beautiful woman popped out from inside the tiny house with her arms draping around her companions. Large gold rings hung from her ears, glittering against her thick mane of dark curly locks that fell over her shoulders. "Why– it's just a kid, Gart," she intoned.
The big man, which Charles assumed to be 'Gart' made a gurgled noise that sounded like a cross between a grunt and a belch. "Right then," he grumbled, "What's yer name, kid?"
Charles's mouth went dry as he wished he paid his instincts more heed, and slunk off to the side of the road.
"Well?" Gart bellowed and Charles jumped at his tone. "Ye stupid? What's yer name!"
"Oh calm down!" cried the woman with a roll of her head and eyes. "Can't ye see yer scarin' 'im?" She slipped off the front of the wagon as Scrawny leapt from the bench seat onto the back of a one of the small horses, who whinnied a protest.
In turn, Charles jumped back a step.
"Where are yer parents, lil' one?" asked the woman.
Scrawny laughed a bit madly as he kicked the horse's side wildly, without strength in his motions.
Gart jumped to the ground with enough force that the earth quivered on impact. "We can get ye home fast, boy. If ye still have one…" he leered with a mirthless chuckle.
Charles swallowed against the hard lump forming in his throat. He didn't know what to say to get himself out of this situation without too much trouble.
A distant, thunderous sound touched his eardrums in repetitive rhythm. With his pulse quickening in his veins, Charles blamed his pounding heart for what he heard.
The trio drifted closer, Gart to his right, the woman in Bohemian dress to his left, and Scrawny before him, slinking off the old horse. All were too close for comfort, though several feet spanned between them.
The pounding grew louder.
"Come with us," spoke the woman, first to reach him as she caressed his cheek in both a motherly way, and as an inspection of some sort.
In a blur of darkness, the two men scrambled away with a string of curses and the woman jumped back before a shade on a black horse efficiently cut between Charles and the trio, then remained there like an impenetrable wall. It took a long dazed blink to realize it was Erik sitting upon Ebony, who panted hard beneath him as she pawed the ground. Erik's posture was tall and menacing all at once, with the reigns tight in his gloved hands. When the wind caught his cloak, the trio stumbled back further.
"Who the hell are ye?" barked Gart, who took a step forward after gathering his wits about him after a long calming breath.
"A masked man," answered Erik in his unique dryness.
"We sees that…" Scrawny gobbled with a bob of his small head.
"Then you understand the stupidity of asking a masked man who he is!" Erik growled in a tone that made Charles shiver. "Return to your caravan and carry on about your business. This child is of no concern to you."
Gart spat out a large lump of tobacco to the side, "I'd say he is, with 'im wanderin' about after dark!" he took several strides towards them, and Ebony up reared at Erik's unspoken command.
Gart wheeled back and fell on his bum.
Once Ebony had all fours on the ground once more, Erik dropped a hand to Charles, who did not hesitate to take. Charles hopped as Erik tugged his arm and pulled him upwards. In an instant, he sat astride Ebony whose fur was soaked with sweat. He wove his fingers into her coarse mane, relishing in the radiant rising up from her flesh, to both brace and balance himself. There was little denying the security he felt with his Guardian's taunt frame behind him.
The woman and Scrawny went to Gart's aide, however, when Erik flicked his wrist, a string of brilliant white flashes of light erupted at their feet with plumes of smoke rising from it. They flinched away from the startling display, clutching to each other like frightened children. Erik took advantage of their distraction by wrapping one arm around the boy, holding him fast a moment before Ebony lurched into a gallop down the road.
The flash of light impaired his night vision, which made everything he managed to focus his aching eyes on little more than blurs flying past them. They jerked right and continued that course for several strides before they swayed left in unsettling movements. Although Charles kept his fingers wound in Ebony's mane, Erik's arm kept him secure and rooted into place. It seemed nothing would ever launch him from the saddle against Erik's will.
A minute passed after they took flight of the strangers when Erik brought them to an abrupt standstill and slid to the ground. Charles felt the air shift in that movement, and not for the better.
Erik snatched the reigns over Ebony's head and out of Charles's reach, posture angry and stiff.
He knew what was coming.
"What in God's name do you think you were doing!" Erik snarled with venom twice as deadly as any poisonous snake he read about. "Running off like that— traveling that road at night! Do you realize, had I been a minute later, those gypsies would have made off with you? I swear that is not a life you want any part of."
Charles tried to summon courage, carry himself a little taller in the saddle to spite the angry glint of his Guardian's eyes that glowed yellow in darkness. It might of worked, had his voice not cracked under the scrutiny. "I couldn't stay with you– You, you've killed people!"
"Yes, I've killed! I've killed to defend myself, to survive!"
"There are other ways, better ways that doesn't involve murder!" protested the child in volume rising to meet Erik's.
"Oh! You naïve child, you know nothing of this world! All you know is the privileged life. You know not what it is to struggle. But let me enlighten you to the difference between murder and killing. Murder, is when someone invades a home and kills the occupants. Killing is when the occupants killed the invader instead."
Silence fell between them at that. Though Charles disagreed wholly with Erik's statement, his view, he did not have the energy to persist. Those eyes bore into him in the most unsettling way. Whatever light emanated from the surrounding night, be it stars or the moon, managed to touch Erik's retinas in such a disturbing way they glowed faint amber. Much like a nocturnal creature caught in lamplight.
Erik waited ten seconds before he muttered, "I thought as much."
Charles felt Ebony swell her stomach and chest beneath him moments before she dipped her head and dipped her head with a cough, which felt weird and a bit frightening as the shudder rippled through her. A second cough rolled through her, preceded by a small wheeze, and Charles thought his eyes were ready to pop out from their sockets.
In turn, Erik let out a weary sigh as he shifted the boy's foreleg over the saddle's knee-roll and lifted the flap and began adjusting the girth so the exhausted mare breathe better. Then, he returned Charles's leg back to its proper place and moved ahead, leading Ebony and Charles towards the glow of Paris on the horizon.
"We're not going home?"
"No. We are closer to Paris, and Ebony gone far beyond her limit in our haste to find you."
Although the equine had a looser girth, she wheezed out a cough again, as if to emphasize Erik's point. Charles could feel the waves of heat rising off her body, and the sweat that soaked her fur.
She was exhausted and overheated because of him. The very notion of it made his lip quiver from pangs of guilt swelling up with him. "I'm sorry…"
Erik issued a long quiet sigh, but said nothing as they began to crest a hill that would put Paris within their sight. He kept them over two dozen paces off the main road. Although it was a night where moonlight cast long shadows and the road remained visible, their distance from it added a measure of security. Like shadows of the night, Erik took advantage of all its elements, staying the shade of adjacent trees. Here, he would see any travelers long before anyone saw them.
How long they went from there, Charles could not begin to fathom. Grogginess began clouding his mind and sense of time in a dense fog. Guilt had overridden any willingness he might have possessed to climb out of it. No, for now he was content to wallow in that emotion as he hugged Ebony's clammy neck.
When they crested a long hill, the night lit up before them with the dazzling lights of Paris, glittering like stars above them. To spite the hour, a number of dwellings and places of business were still breathing wakeful life, if only by a wisp of a candle or lantern in a window. Charles had to sit up to take it all in with flashes of awe scampering across his mind. Never before did he see the city at night like this. It was beautiful.
Below him, Erik stopped walking and moved Charles's leg again to adjust Ebony's girth, grateful over the small fact she stopped coughing a little over forty minutes ago. This meant he had not completely ruined her in the dash to find the boy. Still, he needed to pace her out for some time as to avoid any long-term affects.
A moment later, Erik swung up behind Charles, whom he startled out of apparent reverie. He paid him no mind as he adjusted both of their positioning, primarily pulling Charles so the lad's back was flush against him.
"What are you–?" Charles began before a scarf, or something of the sort was wrapped around his head, nose, and mouth.
"Hiding you."
"Fr'm wha'?" he tried to ask through the muffling fabric, trying to pull it away from his mouth only to find it there again.
"People are looking for you, thus I am making you less observable. Now be silent before I gag you."
"Bu' E-wik!"
Erik tightened the smoky scarf around Charles's mouth to reiterate his threat.
Charles grumbled something unintelligible.
With a flare of his cloak, Charles all but vanished against him as it fell around him in a protective shroud. Most people would not even pay them a second glance if Erik kept them well into the shadows.
As satisfied as he was capable of, Erik urged Ebony onwards towards the bridge ahead of them that would ultimately lead them into the city.