Esmeralda: "Happy now?" the girl growled, eyeing the prone, tied, resigned form of her brother. He had been strapped to a horse for the entire exhausting trek to Germany, and looked much worse for wear. The French soldiers had left without bothering to untie his bindings.

He merely sighed. "If you're referring to the Minister of Justice in Paris…yes, I'm happy that he is no longer in the picture." Clopin shot a resentful glance at his sister. "He used you, Esmeralda. You were an unwitting pawn on his master chessboard. And now look what's happened! He used you as bait to catch me, and he used me to bully the rest of the group—" here Clopin inclined his head to indicate the multiple gypsies surrounding them "—into just following me into exile. 'Look, I have your leader. Make it easy for yourselves, go to Germany with him. Please don't force me to hurt you or your leader, because you know I would absolutely hate to do that.' Bah!" Clopin spat out the last word with contempt.

"Clopin, I'm insulted." Hands on her hips, she returned his angry glare. "You just likened me to a pawn. My importance is more on par with a rook, or a knight."

His bound hands unable to facepalm, Clopin resigned to repeatedly beating his forehead against the dirt. "Stop," he groaned. "Now you even sound like Frollo when you talk!"

"Just listen, blockhead!" Esmeralda knelt down closer to his smudged face. "Yes, Frollo ran all of us out of Paris. But get this, he didn't spill a drop of gypsy blood. Think about that. Look, it would have happened sooner or later. There is no denying that man anything; he would not have rested until all of us were gone. But he let us go for free."

Inspiration suddenly struck, and she continued. "No, he actually did more than let us go for free. He provided for us." Standing, Esmeralda reached under her shirt and pulled out the signet ring on a thin chain. "This is Frollo's signet ring. He told me to show this to any authority figures that tried to give us trouble. They'll recognize the crest. Frollo has travelled all over Europe and he's a very respected man."

"Feared, more like," a voice mumbled in discontent, but most of her clansmen were regarding the ring with great interest.

"Were it not for me, do you think Frollo would have done this?" she continued. "Of course not. He would have squashed us like insects." She gripped the ring, her voice and gaze growing in intensity. "I advocated for you. For us. During the entire time I spent with him, I never once lost sight of who I was, even after you rejected me." She sank to the ground and roughly took Clopin's face in her hands, forcing him to make eye contact. "And you have no right to tell me what to do with my body. I am an adult."

Clopin winced as if her rebuke had been a physical blow. "Es, I know you're an adult. You've been an adult for two—almost three—years now. I know that I cannot make your decisions for you." He swallowed. "What upset me is that I could plainly see that Frollo was working you like a puppet! You were just letting him get what he wanted with no compunction as to how he was tarnishing you…"

"A man with his face in the dirt ought not be calling other people 'tarnished'," Esmeralda interrupted. This remark prompted a few giggles from the audience. "And you know me too well to think I would allow myself to become a mindless puppet. I worked with him. I got him to realize that his perception of us, while not inaccurate, was—incomplete, to say the least."

"You did." Clopin's admission was followed by a pause. "But you got yourself so dirty…"

"Listen," Esmeralda interrupted sharply. "You know that I can't be bullied into doing something that I don't want to do. If I was so concerned about my so-called purity, I would have fashioned a noose from my clothing and hung myself from the rafters rather than submit to him." She got down on her hands and knees, sticking her face up in her brother's face. "This was not slavery, this was not rape, and you WILL get that into your brain. Understand?"

"I understand." The gypsy squeezed up his face in defeat. "But I fail to see what you found so attractive in him."

"Exactly. You fail. Because you cannot look past the surface," Esmeralda countered. "Claude Frollo is educated, refined, and brilliant. He is quiet. He is thoughtful. Such a welcome contrast to most men who desired my attention." Her voice hardened in anger. "He's a person, not a pig. He can eat with a fork instead of his hands, and not talk with his mouth full, and he takes a bath more than about three times per year, and he combs his hair and cleans his teeth, and he can carry an intelligent conversation, and he has methods of communicating with women besides catcalls and butt-grabbing!" Esmeralda was positively fuming. "Say what you will about him, but I have not found those traits in any other man!" Her eyes narrowed. "Present company included."

"Got it," Clopin grumbled. "Thanks a lot."

"Good." The word was hard and clipped. Esmeralda returned to her feet.

"I won't bring it up again." Clopin spoke a little more loudly. "It's a moot point anyway. We live in Germany and he lives in Paris. Frollo is no longer in the picture. Let's both agree to forget about the entire thing."

"Deal," Esmeralda agreed. "Let's stop arguing and start setting up camp."

Clopin was untied, wagons were unloaded, makeshift beds assembled. Once within the privacy of her own covered wagon, Esmeralda finally had an opportunity to examine the cloth rags she'd stuffed into her knickers for the past several days. Doubtless they would be liberally soaked and dripping blood by this point; she hadn't been able to check herself all day.

To her surprise, the rags were clean. Esmeralda shook her head and shrugged. The bleeding should have started over a week ago. She knew that her body had phases as regular and reliable as the cycle of the moon; unlike the moon, she seemed to have recently fallen out of rhythm.

Perhaps the clouds had decided to choke the sky this month, shrouding the moon in a heavy veil of darkness. Readjusting her clothing, Esmeralda resolved to pay it no mind. She certainly would not miss the inconvenience of washing the blood from her rags; with their recent relocation, she had far more important matters to worry about than a late menstrual cycle.