She was drowning.
She could feel the current pulling her under, dragging her away from the light, and she knew she was going to die. She could not smile at the thought, but it never occurred to her to fight. Why should she? This sluggish peacefulness wasn't like life. It didn't sting. It didn't hurt. Around her thick dark clouds swirled, parting and rejoining, forming silhouettes of the life she was leaving behind. Notre-Dame, tall and majestic. The Court of Miracles, alluring colors and broken promises. And the last thing she would ever see, the Seine with a glitter so bright it hurt her eyes.
The nuns always called me the "river angel".
And Jarrett -
Jarrett was there in front of her, laughing. His fingers were clamped hard around her upper arm. "You fool," he whispered, a cruel smile on his lips. "You should have known better than to think you could escape me -"
She tried to pull away, but he was too strong for her. "Tempé!" she'd screamed desperately at her friend, the black-haired beauty who stood beside. "Tempé, it's Jarrett! Run! Get help!"
But Jarrett's answering laughter broke her heart. "Get help? Ma chere, it was she who led you straight to me!"
"T-Tempé..."
"She was for sale, and I bought her!" Jarrett sneered, proud and exultant. "She didn't tell you she'd got her daughter by a man whose name she didn't even know, did she? Didn't tell you that when I found her she was starving on the streets! So I offered her enough money to climb out of the gutter she'd landed in, and she took it. Didn't have to think too hard about it, either."
"Tempé!!" Curran twisted desperately within his grasp, trying to get a good look at her friend's face. "Tempé, tell me he's lying!"
"MAMA!" wailed the little girl. "Mama, what's he doing?"
"Shut that brat up!"
Sobbing, little Jeannette buried her face in her mother's shoulder. Tempest turned away. Curran's eyes turned back to her husband's face, then to the scabbard on his belt, and she understood.
I was found by a river... I will die by a river.
"Jarrett," she pleaded, "You don't have to kill me. For both our sakes, let me go." He laughed. She went on, more desperately. "Jarrett, if you kill me your soul will be damned to Hell and nothing will be able to save it! Let me go and I will pray to God for you every night of my life-"
The slap of his bare palm on her cheek silenced her. "Superstitious nonsense!" he growled at her. "I can't let you go. I can't let you live. The whole of Calais thinks you're dead, and next month I marry a countess with more money than ten men could count for a year!"
"Jarrett - I'd never tell -"
"I will tell no lie when I stand in front of the priest," he said, his eyes as distant as if he was imagining the moment. "I have no living wife. I will be married without blame. I will be rid of you!"
Curran screamed as his hand reached down and pulled the huntsman's knife from his belt. Scarcely knowing what she did, she pulled away from his iron grip - and at that moment she felt the knife-blade enter at her shoulder. A bone cracked. Fire poured down the length of her arm and she screamed. He flung her away from him - she saw the sky above her, empty and still as a painting - and then she felt the second wound.
Now the fire left her arm and she wore a red-hot collar on her throat. She felt the weakness of her neck, felt the blood pouring down and soaking into her dress.
When he let her go she was too weak to do more than stand, arms lying limp at her sides, trying to breathe. He pushed her away and she fell into a bank of rushes.
Her lungs were bursting. She was drowning in blood. The river sparkled mockingly at her.
You will die by a river. You will die...
And suddenly death, oblivion, was no longer sweet. She wasn't going to give in to the darkness that beckoned her. She would fight. Using her good right arm she propped herself up against something, then lay back and lashed out. Her hand connected with something and she grasped hold of it. She heard her name, a man's voice speaking, and she screamed at it. She struck out blindly again and again.




"Curran, Curran!" The voice no longer echoed in her mind. It ripped through a very real silence. "Open your eyes. You're safe now, you're home!"
She opened her eyes, and found herself propped up on stuffed cushions. She was in a bed with linen sheets and woollen blankets, and Clopin was sitting beside her. One of her arms was in a sling: her one good hand had seized the front of Clopin's costume and held it with a white-knuckled grip.
"Oh," was all she could think of to say.
Clopin's eyes held both relief and nervousness. "Either you were dreaming, ma cherie, or.... You really do hate me. When I said your name you attacked me, screaming curses I never imagined you knew!" He looked at her sadly. "Do you hate me? Tell me honestly if you do, I won't blame you. I deserved every one of those names."
"No!" Curran said wildly, grasping hold of his hand to steady herself. "Clopin, that wasn't you..." Still shaking, she told him what she had seen and who she was fighting against. As he began to mutter a curse on Jarrett in his harsh-sounding Romany language, she glanced around her. With its rough walls, darkness on every side, the room looked like nothing she had yet seen in Notre-Dame.
"Erm - Clopin - where exactly am I?"
"The Court of Miracles. We've been looking after you for the past week."
"That long?!" she exclaimed.
"You were in some kind of stupor. You'd lost a lot of blood, and you didn't seem to know what was going on. So I fed you as best I could, and I waited for you to come back to us. The wise woman of the Court told me you had to want to come back -"
"And I did," Curran finished for him.
"Curran... Why did you want to come back?"
She sighed heavily. "I'm not going to say what you want me to say, Clopin," she replied sarcastically. "I'm not going to pretend that I fought for my life just to see you again, or that you're the only reason for my existence! I know you must have a thousand girls telling you that, you don't need me saying it too."
Now he sighed. "That's not what I want."
"What do you want then?"
"Just... I just wanted you not to hate me."
"All right," she said woodenly. "I don't hate you. I don't have any feelings for you, one way or the other -"
"Curran!!!" He groaned her name as if it was tearing him apart. She stopped speaking. "Curran, forgive me. I was a fool and a coward. I had to choose between you and my people - if I had dared to love you, they would have deposed me as ruler of the Court! So I told myself I could live without you, I hardened my heart and stamped out any feelings I had... And it still did me no good. When you walked out of the Court, I realized I'd been the biggest fool on this earth."
She was silent.
"And now it's too late, isn't it? You love Quasimodo, don't you?"
"I do love Quasimodo..." she whispered.
He turned his face away.
"...But only as a friend," she continued, as if to herself. "He's been the kindest person I've ever known. He's looked after me, defended me, put me above everything else... But I can't think of him as anything more than a friend. I wish I could, I know how kind he is, but I can't."
"But why not?"
"Because... My heart isn't made that way."
And she let her eyes meet his gaze.
"Curran," he said softly, "I told the Gypsies what happened to you, and every one of them is sorry. Vesha was distraught when I told her about your life. And I told them I was ten times worse than any of them, for letting them treat you as they did. I told them - that I didn't deserve to be the King."
"That's not true!"
"Oh, they refused to let me leave," he added, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "I'm still their leader, for the moment. But whilst you lay here I made you a promise. I promised you that if you wanted to live up there with me - in your world, the gajo world - then I would leave and go with you. I'm not afraid of hard work, and I want to deserve you."
"Clopin, you can't make that kind of sacrifice for me!" Curran exclaimed, her eyes wide in horror. "You barely know me!"
"I knew you were the one for me as soon as I found you in the belltower," he smiled. "Now I look back on it, I finally understand what people mean when they use the word "love". And you felt something for me too, didn't you?"
As his arm snaked around her waist she leaned against him, her spirits soaring. "I couldn't understand what I felt," she said excitedly. "My mind fought against it every step of the way! How could I feel anything for - for a perfect stranger?"
"Oh, I'm not perfect," he said wryly. "Anything but. An imperfect stranger, let's say."
She hugged him with her one free arm. "Clopin, I won't let you do it! I won't let you leave the Court!"
"We won't have to. I asked my people if they could ever accept a gajo woman as their Queen."
The full meaning of his words stabbed her, and she gasped. "But - my love-"
"Hush! They said they would, on one condition."
"W-what condition?"
Clopin kissed her forehead gently. "That it was you, ma cherie", he whispered. "That it was you."




THE END!!!