Chapter # 28
A Future in Your Hands
We didn't break apart.
At least, Erik did not. His hand, now impossibly cold, held fast to my wrist. Whatever moment we had shared had vanished in a puff of olive-skinned fury known as Aishe Faa.
Her expression had made an impressive evolution from shock, to betrayal, to all-out murderous. I made the mistake of moving to try and free myself from Erik, and anger that had been fluttering like a lost bird suddenly found its target.
"What do you want?"
Her fury tempered momentarily at Erik's brisk question, but her eyes once again landed on our interlocked limbs.
"Brishen," she started, and stopped herself. She gave me a brief, snide look and when she did speak again, it was in Romany.
I sighed and leaned back on my heels, content to wait out whatever ridiculous lover's quarrel Aishe was intent on having in my presence. Even had I been able to keep up with her rapid words, I had no doubt she'd pepper her sentences with slang I would never know had I lived a hundred years as a Gypsy.
Erik, when he bothered to reply, did so in French. Releasing my arm, he again assumed his usual air of bored indifference, and it only served to agitate Aishe even further.
"He got himself into this, he can get himself out," he said.
The sun was nearly gone by now, leaving a dreamy golden glow that made it hard to see anything clearly. But there was enough light to see the way Aishe's eyes flashed and her lovely jaw locked in a most unbecoming scowl.
"It will be your problem when they turn him out with nothing," she said, slipping back into French. "He helped you, too…you owe him that much."
Erik crossed his arms and said nothing.
Aishe lost any vestige of control and exploded in rage.
"You would be DEAD without him! Does your own life matter to you?! Does nothing?" her voice made a progression up the scale until she reached a near whining pitch. "Why can you not care? For once, why can you not give a damn about-"
Her beautiful face was pleading, a mesh of love, betrayal, and youthful disappointments. And then abruptly she seemed to deflate, all her passion vanishing in the early twilight. I often forgot she was only seventeen. Maybe I knew her better than I thought, because her meaning was clear.
Why can you not give a damn… about me?
I did not know what I was hoping for Erik to say. Perhaps a rejection or maybe measure of kindness to a girl I had hated only minutes ago. Yet even as I watched him cock his head, assessing her, I knew what he would do, and I winced as he made the killing blow.
"You speak as if I should care about this. I fail to see how this is in any way my problem."
Aishe's eyes widened.
"You owe me!" she said, incredulous as if she could not believe he did not realize it himself.
"If I ever did-and rest assured, child, that is certainly debatable- any debt has long since been repaid."
There was a steely edge in his voice I had not heard in a long time. And while there was very little he gave away-still less I knew with all the time that had gone by- I knew that tell-tale twitch of his fingers, seeking to grasp something- a lasso, perhaps?- as his temper slowly rose.
"You think yourself immune?" she mocked, reckless youth demanding one last hopeless stand. "Once he's gone your alliances will diminish, and I will do nothing to help!"
"I need assistance?" he returned the scorn.
"I can make them turn against you!"
"Try it," his voice thickened.
"If I go to the authorities, I'll tell them everything. You'll be caged like the freak you are and your little wifey will be tossed out the back of a caravan to die in the streets!"
Erik took a single step towards the girl, one arms rose to the level of Aishe's perfectly shaped throat. Just as fast, she stepped back, reaching a hand up one of her sleeves in a smooth motion, and withdrew a small, sinister looking dagger.
Before I could consider my actions, my arm shot out and grabbed Erik's extended hand.
And the whole world felt as if it had stopped spinning. Erik froze in his tracks, and gave me a look I could only describe as startled. I imagined I returned it.
Slowly, I took my hand away. I could count the times I had willingly touched him on less than one hand, and the memory of the first left a faint tingle on my lips.
When I spoke, it was to Aishe, my voice oddly calm. "Umm… I'll go with you, Aishe, and see if there's anything I can do."
Aishe snorted. I didn't think I would be much help either. Something moved, though, behind her eyes and she nodded furiously to herself.
She moved between us, back straight, her head tilted up towards the masked man. One fist clenched tight and hung limp at her side, the other held the dagger up to his face, over the lines of pink scar twisting from under his chin to the secret place behind the mask.
"You might not care, but she will."
She turned and pushed me ahead of her to leave. Before we rounded the corner, I looked back.
He stood where I left him, still, like he was part of the silence and shadow, a nearly formless shape in the dark with only mask and hands visible. One hand fluttered by his side near the space where I had stood beside him.
Aishe said very little as I followed her through the narrow alleyways. I did not know the name of the town, but it had the usual make-up of any French walled city: ancient and quaint, with barely enough room for a body to move. I kept glancing behind me, and bumping into walls as I did. I wasn't too keen to speak to her after Aishe's threat of letting me die in the streets, yet I found my heart going out to the poor girl, clearly miserable despite her stiff upper lip.
Even in our most useless quarrels, Raoul had cared enough about me to argue back. Erik barely participated in the conversation, and only enough to goad the poor girl. Something had tied him to this troupe of Gypsies when he could have disappeared and made a life a thousand safe miles away. As I'd watched her looked at him with such adoration in her eyes, I had thought it must have been her… until he had crushed her as if such reverence were a mere inconvenience.
Any tie between us- faux marriage notwithstanding- had been severed long ago. That Erik could share such a heated moment with me, then bring the girl who clearly loved him nearly to tears, spoke of either a perpetual blindness on my part, or an ice that had consumed Erik to the core.
I was contemplating which was worse, when we rounded another corner, and the cramped alleyways and side streets opened slightly into the village square.
"Are you crazy?!" I whispered. "Why on earth would you bring us back here?"
The apothecary's shop was closed across the square, but the upstairs living quarters glowed with sedated life.
"Can't be helped," Aishe replied and stopped so suddenly I bumped into her.
"Ow!" I rubbed my nose, "Why did you-"
She wasn't listening, and when I realized what she was looking at, quickly forgot about my nose.
We had stopped in front of a small inn called 'The Stag and Hunter'. It was quiet, though several people stood in front of the premises, and even more in the square. We didn't move into the crowd, and when I tried for a better view, Aishe stopped me.
"Don't be a fool," she said, deathly calm. "We're safer here."
She was right, of course. Though most around me were watching with the usual interest people do at a public spectacle, there were plenty of suspicious and plainly hostile faces both here and elsewhere around the square. Staying anonymous was probably the best idea.
Because if there had been a fight, it was over, but only for the moment.
From my vantage point, I could see Brishen's father sporting the beginnings of a black eye. The rest of the men I had come with were disheveled, sweating, and fuming with barely suppressed violence. Brishen was backed against the well in the center, arms crossed, looking angrily at the ground. His normally friendly features were considerably harsher, due to a newly crooked nose, dripping blood.
His father was shouting something in Romany over and over again, until I was able to translate it roughly as "Who is she?! Who is the filthy Gadjí?!"
Brishen kept his head down. I shifted my weight awkwardly and somewhat lost my balance and connected with a man near me. He yelped in surprise and shoved me violently off him. I rubbed my shoulder as I stared uncomprehending and he stared back with such hatred, I felt myself shrinking under it. In fact, nearly all the Gadjís were watching every single Gypsy with enmity, myself and the men included.
I had to look away for a moment, my gaze traveling over the front of 'The Stag and Hunter'. The inn had few windows, save on the upper levels, and those were filled with several people staring. One face, on the second story, looked as though taking a particular interest in the proceedings, pressed so hard against the glass she looked pig-like, with her red hair plastered against the glass.
When my gaze returned to the scene, Brishen was looking at me. His eyes were narrowed as if I were somehow responsible for his problems. At my own bewildered gaze, his softened, apparently finding an answer in my ignorance.
He'd done that once before, weeks ago, in a village called Huelgoat when I'd found him limbs entangled in a heated lover's embrace with a Gadjí girl, just like me. I felt Aishe's hand tentative on my shoulder as I began to understand.
"Will they…. They couldn't, could they?"
The old man's hands, twisted and black from a lifetime of metal work, trembled as he grabbed hold of his son's shirt and shook him, shouting with fervent rage and tears streaming down the sides of his wrinkled face. He had lost a daughter and grandchild just weeks ago. Now he was losing a son. Not through death, but through betrayal of his people; consorting with a Gadjí.
Aishe's fingers squeezed my shoulder. Her face was soft and serene, her thoughts turned inward. There were exceptions to nearly all rules; I and perhaps Erik were proof of that. But they were rare, and certainly not for Aishe's mother or herself.
"They can," she said softly, "and they will."
With a final thrust, Brishen's father sent his son backward, falling over himself and landing soundly in the mud. He did not fight it, nor did he get up when his father and his people turned their backs on him and walked away.
I made a move to go to him, but Aishe stopped me.
"Don't. We were too late and we have to go. The villagers are getting restless."
'Restless' was being generous. Aside from the man who had shoved me, now that the spectacle was over, I was getting outright hateful looks from nearly everyone we passed. Many of them, just hours ago, gazed at me in wonder as I sang.
So what had changed? I was so absorbed in watching the villagers watching me, that I didn't see my answer until Aishe reprimanded me for treading on her heels for the dozenth time.
She rolled her eyes at my apology, then made off in the direction of the men, dodging people, animals, and rubbish with an easy grace, her body nearly a colorful blur with her long mass of dark hair tumbling down her back. Though half-blooded, still a Gypsy through and through.
I let her gain some distance and stopped to peer into a barrel catching the rain off the side of a butcher shop. A Gypsy face stared back at me from the still water: paler and less reserved then most, but undeniably not the woman I had always been accustomed to seeing in my vanity mirror. My tanned face, my hair wildly free under an exotically beautiful dilko, the clothes that allowed so much freedom from restraint; I looked as if I'd been on the road my whole life.
It did not matter that in the sunlight I was paler, uncoordinated, and usually at a complete loss as to what to do with myself: to all of them, I was a Gypsy too.
I felt someone watching me, and raised my head, expecting another villager waiting with a crass word or two. Instead I saw Aishe.
Her head was cocked, in a curious imitation of the mentor that had scorned her.
"You never knew his name before I told you, did you?" I asked.
Her jaw clenched and, for a moment, the self-possessed girl was gone and that petulant seventeen-year-old's eyes flared slightly, before she was, once again, herself.
"They're waiting for us," she said simply, and walked away.
Camp was subdued by the time Carmen and I returned. Aishe had ridden ahead on Brishen's horse to deliver the news to an unsuspecting troupe. Jofranko was nowhere to be seen and everyone was silent as families gathered to eat, perhaps in memory of a young man with a friendly countenance and lilting guitar.
I refused Jal's offers of dinner and headed to my own tent, content to forget Brishen, Gilles, and the rest of what had been a thoroughly awful day.
I found Erik beside the tent, and a pile of wood at his side, swinging an ax with perfect precision down upon an unfortunate log. Once the wood was split, he picked up another and gave it the same fate.
I rarely expected to see him, especially after that ugly scene with Aishe. He was fully clothed, save a button or two undone, and a perfect sheen of sweat shone at the base of his throat and the visible part of his clenched jaw.
Averroës was back, unsaddled and drinking from a bucket. Carmen, eager for drink herself, pawed restlessly until I released her and she trotted to join my horse.
I watched as Erik made his way down the pile, swinging more violently with each new log. The strokes needed to split the wood went from ten, down to eight, then seven, until he reached three. Splinters flew in all directions, landed on the tent and in his hair, until finally, there was nothing left.
He stopped his work, and, turning to me, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the grime from his hands.
He could split logs with the best of them, compose music, and make me seem to float on air. Force Gypsies to accept me as one of their own, and make a confident and independent young woman fall madly in love with a man she knew nothing about. Surely, there was little he couldn't do. Surely, he could have saved Brishen.
"No," he said calmly, reading my face as he shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket. "There was nothing I could have done. If he hadn't been so foolish and been seen with her, she might have eventually been welcomed in. As it is, it was too late before I knew."
A part of me probably knew that. Still, I knew what it was like to sleep cold and alone in the woods. It seemed impossible that nothing could be done.
"What will become of him?" I asked softly.
Erik knelt over and began stacking the wood into a perfect pyramid. Each time he neared the top, one stubborn bit of wood rolled out of its place. After several attempts to secure it, Erik took the firewood and hurled it as far as he could. I heard it crash in the distance and both of us stared after it in silence.
"If he's lucky, he might get a job as a stable boy."
"And if he isn't?"
Many horses had gone with us to the village that morning, and few had returned. Brishen was as good a salesman as he was a horseman. If he had a fair chance, he would be fine.
It was the difference between the Gilles I had seen in Brest and the filthy, desperate man I had seen a few hours ago.
"You may think it's cruel to have to start over, but you yourself managed it."
"I had help." Jal, Dika, even Aishe had helped in their own way, fed me, gave me something while my sanity and broken heart mended somewhat.
"Is that all that's needed, Madame? A little help from a friend, or a stranger?" At this, he turned back to me. I could barely see him in the dark, but I could tell he was playing with something in his left hand. From the sound of it rolling between his fingers, it must have been metal. "Or is it innate? Something you're born with, that fights to be no matter what?"
He walked past me, nearly brushing my side, and continued out into the wide-open countryside.
"Go to bed, Madame," he called over his shoulder. "Whatever Brishen's fate, it's no longer your concern."
I stayed outside the tent long after he left, staring at the moonless sky, searching for sense in the darkness.
Survival. Was that all there was to life? Or was it something more? Those instants of utter bliss that sprang unbidden from the drudgery of everyday life, was that why anyone even bothered at all?
I kept those bright moments close to my heart, guarding it like a fortress for when I thought the world would rip it from my chest. And yet, it hadn't been any innate desire for more of those that had kept me going during those empty years after Gustave Daaé's death. Hadn't even been my love for Raoul that had gotten me out of that carriage, nor compelled me to run for my life.
So what was it then? And whatever it was, would it be enough to sustain Brishen?
The camp was still, people well into their dreams. I began walking unbidden toward a familiar caravan, my mind already made up before I even realized it.
Survival or no, I had found compassion when I needed it, and so too would Brishen.
I picked my way carefully through my adoptive family, until I found a girl sleeping alone in the corner. Gently, I nudged Aishe awake. She opened her eyes peacefully and nearly smiled up at me, as if she had been waiting just for me.
"Aishe, do you still have that money?"
"Are you sure?" I stared at the carvings, small and subtle at the base of the door. One, I thought, looked like a dancing horse.
After my encounters with Gadjís today, I couldn't imagine any welcoming Gypsies, no matter what Aishe said about the markings.
"Positive," she replied, full of confidence.
It was a simple enough plan and that was what made me nervous. While Aishe danced, I was to sneak upstairs and search for the redhead girl and Brishen. I felt guilty about giving them Jal's money, but Aishe assured me she would not mind.
The money might keep them clothed and fed for a while, but until spring? I weighed the pouch in my hand and frowned. It had felt much heavier earlier that morning.
I let Aishe go first into 'The Stag and Hunter'. There were few enough people paying attention that I could have simply slipped on by. But Aishe, perhaps craving the attention, declared in the middle of the room she would dance, if someone would play.
Had it been me, I doubted anyone would have looked up. Aishe quickly had several men offering a tune on a fiddle, or on the old piano lying forgotten in the corner.
I snuck along the edge of the room, doing my best to be invisible and discreetly bumped into the owner as I passed. I backed away, hand hidden in my apron, apologizing for my mistake. Luckily, he was as entranced by Aishe as the rest of the men in the inn. I waited until I was up the stairs and out of sight before I reached again into my apron, and pulled out the master key.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Though it had been one of the first things I'd learned from my adoptive family, I had never tried to pick a pocket until that night. It was surprisingly easy.
It was quiet when I reached the top of the stairs, only one window at the end of the hall giving off little light from the moonless sky. I opened door after door until on my fourth try, I found the two I was looking for, curled up together on a bed.
I pushed aside the sharp stab of heartache I felt at remembering being held like that, and quickly crossed the room to shake Brishen awake.
"Brishen?" I whispered. "Brishen, wake up!"
The girl woke before he did. She took one look at me, and let out a scream I was sure woke half the inn. Brishen, though just as startled, clamped his hand over the girl's mouth and blinked several times.
"Wha…?" he said sleepily. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and regarded at me with a mixture of wariness and curiosity. Before he could say any more, I grabbed hold of his wrist and dumped the money in his palm.
"It's not much. Maybe not enough for the both of you, but if you were to perhaps try Avignon. I know several families there are desperate for men good with horses. Just say you worked for-" I stopped suddenly, amazed and frightened at how easily my true identity had almost slipped out.
Brishen stared at the money in bewilderment.
"Why are you doing this?"
I shrugged.
"You've been kind to me." That was enough, more than enough actually.
"Can't you go to her family?" I asked, pointing at the redhead.
Brishen scratched his head. "Um… no."
I was about to ask why, when the young woman stood. No, the family probably would never take her back if she had waited so long into a pregnancy to find the father. Most of the pregnancies I had encountered had been well hidden, or at least attempted to be, under tight corsets and full skirts. It was something of a shock to see a pregnant belly could be that big!
"You can go to Paris," a voice said behind us, and we all jumped. Aishe stood in the doorway, eyes bright and face flushed.
"I only have a few moments. I told them I'd come right back." She smoothed her skirt and took in both her tribesman and the young girl who had stolen him away. "You'll have a better chance in a big city. Find a man named 'Bernard Coté'; he can help find you something.
"He's my father," she said, rather tersely, acknowledging our puzzled expressions. "Don't stay with him long, or he'll… just until you can find something better. Tell him I sent you."
I stared at her curiously, but I didn't have time to ask. The crowd below was growing louder, restless for their entertainment.
Aishe captured Brishen in a fierce hug and whispered something to him.
"I'll miss you too, paash," he smiled, and, with a final squeeze, let her go.
She turned to me. "Wait for me at the top of the stairs."
I nodded and she was gone in a whirl of skirts.
It was late, and I was tired. Brishen and the girl were nodding where they stood, and after all that had happened today, they deserved one night's rest before the reality of a new day.
"Goodbye, Brishen," I said taking his hand. "Good luck."
"You too, Christine," he gave me one of this friendly smiles as he shook his head. "Though I don't know how you can with that… that…" he paused, shaking his head probably at the thought of my erstwhile Mulani. "Thank you."
I could tell he meant it.
"Goodbye." I gave his hand one last squeeze, and left them to sleep.
I found a spot overlooking the tavern out of sight, and leaned my weight against the railing to watch the scene below until Aishe was done..
The man at the piano had given up on dizzying jigs for the time, and played what must have been a love song. My body moved lazily in time with the simple tune, and my mind fought an ever more futile battle against exhaustion. I leaned more heavily on my elbows, and imagined myself dancing, swaying slowly, as my eyes fluttered against sleep.
I knew how Aishe felt down there, drunk on the admiration of dozens of eyes watching her with such admiring intensity. But it was nothing compared to the fire that came of one person venerating you as if you were a goddess, a welcoming heat searing you inside and out. And if they were bold enough to touch you? A light skim, perhaps at the elbow, then up past the shoulder only to rest intimately on the neck… and if I was brave enough to welcome it? To lean into the touch as if it should have been there from the beginning? Would the feeling consume me, too?
The hand on my neck was joined by another, and, suddenly, I was turned and a mouth clamped violently onto mine, my waking dream suddenly shattered.
I was now completely awake. I opened my eyes but whoever it was was too close and the staircase landing too dark. Closed eyes blurred into view before my own as I tried to wrestle myself free, but my assailant wasn't having it. Only when he willed it did he let me go, and only enough to let us both breathe.
Gilles smiled cruelly through his ragged expanse of beard, the sour taste of him lingering on my mouth.
"You left before we could finish, Christine, and there is still so much to talk about." He leaned back a bit more to reveal a knife, glittering like starlight in the darkness. He pressed it into my bodice, and I heard several fastenings pop.
I wrenched myself backward, nearly toppling over the railing, and Gilles was on me in a heartbeat. He swung me back from my death and slammed me into a wall, the painful sound of it drowned out by a riotous new jig below. The air rushed out of me as I saw stars and when I finally came to, Gilles had the knife pressed against the insistent pulsing of my jugular vein,
Calmly, he gestured behind him toward an open door with his free hand, a hint of a smile in his voice when he spoke. "If you'd please…"
He forced me inside, silently, the knife persistent at the base of my spine and the last strains of the music cut off abruptly as Gilles Robillard shut the door behind him.
A/N: An update in less than six months?! *dances* Huge thanks go to thank RJ and N for really helping me out with this chapter.
Please review!
