The Multitude

by J M Fraser

  The giant of the group, a bear of a man, leered at him with dark eyes bulging above too sharp a nose. His barrel chest heaved with each breath as if trying to burst free from the dusty robe constraining it. “You won’t enjoy our answer, sinner.”

  The others shifted closer, stones in hand.

  Quintus pulled his pistol from his belt and aimed between the man’s eyes, struggling to hide the shadow of worry from his. None of the monks were armed as far as he could tell, but if they sensed any weakness in his resolve and chose to fight, eight stones thrown in unison would surely take him down. “What’s your answer now?”

  The big man worked his jaw on a wad of tobacco. He shifted his glance back and forth to the men on either side of him, but the fight had gone out of their eyes.

  The other monks started backing out of the circle.

  Quintus released the woman. “Watch my back.”

  “They’ve eased away. I’ll gather my things and—”

  “Stay put.” He left her standing there, stepped up to the giant, and pressed his pistol against a bead of sweat on the man’s forehead. Those other monks in his range of vision had dropped their stones. He heard additional stones falling to the ground behind him in a series of soft plunks. Quintus could only hope the group would remain more frightened than he was. “I’m on the king’s business.”

  The man sneered. “Hasn’t the king enough whores of his own?”

  They locked eyes. A crow squawked somewhere in the distance. Gusts of wind sent a tumbleweed rolling up against the stone fountain. Finally, the giant wavered. “Take the whore and leave.”

  The woman rushed up from behind, grabbed Quintus’s free wrist, and whispered in his ear. “I’ll need my belongings.”

  “You can buy new things in the next town.” He kept his eyes fixed on the giant. The battle could still shift if the others saw the opening and came to life.

  “Please!” She pointed toward a makeshift tent some distance from the fountain.

  The silly fool seemed bent on getting them killed, but he couldn’t disregard the urgency of her plea. Women had always been a great mystery to him. Every trinket in their possession served some vital if incomprehensible purpose.

  “Let’s go.” He shoved his adversary forward, then raised his voice to a shout. “The rest of you can move on. I have more than one bullet left in this gun, in case you’re wondering.”

  The three of them—Quintus, the woman, and a bear of a hostage—marched to the woman’s tent. The others scattered, but he didn’t trust them not to rally for an ambush. He gripped the pistol so tightly his hand ached.

  The woman disappeared within the folds of her tent and came out a few moments later with far less than anyone should have bothered retrieving.

  The monk laughed. “You sell your flesh for these simple things?”

  “Shut up.” Quintus held his pistol to the man’s head and waited an eternity for the woman to stash her things into a pack, fold the cloth tent, and stuff it in with the rest. Then he backed with her to his horse and got out of town as fast as he could.

  After two miles riding behind him in silence, the woman eased her clenched grip around his waist. “My name is Adala.”

  “Quintus.”

  “I’ve dodged death before.”

  He doubted she had. Her voice still trembled.

  “But never through the courage of so handsome a soldier.”

  He cringed at the compliment—most likely the opening gambit of a gypsy’s campaign to get her fingers into the money pouch at his hip.

  “I can repay you for saving me.” She slid a soft hand from his neck down into his shirt, tightening her other arm around his waist to stay steady on the horse.

  He refused to be stirred. “Have you considered a worthier occupation?”

  “Don’t be like those monks.”

  “I’m nothing like them.”

  “You assume the worst of me, just as they did.”

  “Tell me the best.”

  “I sing, I serve wine, and I sketch. Which would you prefer?”

  “Let’s be honest with each other, Adala.” The all-important belongings she’d retrieved from her tent consisted of no more than a pitcher, a sketch pad, some charcoal, and three pencils—hardly as marketable as the charms beneath her dress.

  Adala turned stony silent until they reached a fork in the road. “I’m heading south,” she announced.

  She’d almost been killed earlier when trying to fend on her own. Quintus arrived at the same decision he’d made in the town. Every woman deserves a champion, no matter her station. “The capital is two days east. You can sing to me and pour wine from your empty pitcher to pay your fare.”

  She scrambled off the horse. “I’ve been to the capital.”

  “Suit yourself. The town of Portus lies two miles south. Go pitch a tent and sell your charms.”

  She glared at him. “There’s a brook nearby. Do you hear it?”

  “What if there is? My canteen is full.”

  “Is it filled with wine?” Adala turned on her heel and strode toward a row of low bushes.

  Women and their mysteries. He dismounted and followed her.

  They came upon a shallow creek snaking a bubbling path around scrub brush and scattered rocks. Adala knelt on its bank. She filled her pitcher and held it up with both hands. “Drink and doubt me no longer.”

  Quintus noticed a butterfly tattoo on the underside of her wrist. The marking stirred a vague memory he couldn’t place. He’d seen this image on another woman’s neck, hadn’t he?

  “Drink!”

  He accepted her offering, but an inexplicable whiff of wine stopped him short before he brought the pitcher to his lips. The liquid inside was far too golden to have come from the stream. “What manner of sorcery is this?”

  “A superstitious man would call it witchcraft, and a religious man the hand of God.”

  He set the pitcher on the ground beside her. “I’ve seen these tricks. You spiked the water with powder from a vial.”

  Adala stood, lifted her head, and laughed at the burning sky. She planted her feet wider, raised her arms. “Search me for the empty vial.”

  “Save the chamber games for your customers.”

  Adala was on him in an instant, slapping him hard enough to ring his ears. “Save the insults for your whores.” The fury in her eyes said he’d misjudged her from the beginning.

  Both of his cheeks burned although she’d struck only one. “I apologize.”

  “No need.” Adala rummaged through her pack and pulled out the sketch pad he’d seen earlier. She tossed it to him. “Behold the mistress who turned me into a whore for a single night.”

  He flipped through the drawings but found nothing notable—landscapes, flora, a few sketches of men and women.

  “Are you familiar with the bridal pool in the capital?” she asked.

  “Who isn’t? The sale of slaves fills the king’s coffers.”

  “Do you know how harshly these women are treated before they’re sold?”

  He clenched his fists. He’d been powerless to stop the ruthless debaucheries of his brother’s rule. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Keep turning the pages.”

  He flipped one more and froze at the sketch of a woman he’d seen before. But where? An overpowering sense of déjà vu buckled his knees.

  “Her name is Maynya,” Adala said.

  No. He knew the maiden by another name.

  But how could the recent, intoxicating companion in his endless series of midnight dreams be real?

  “She’d been suspected of helping other brides escape,” Adala said. “So they put her in the stocks for a day and a night without food or water.”

  The charcoal likeness of the strikingly beautiful woman spun his mind like a top. Her name is Carla. He shivered.

  “I waited till after dark. Then I let her drink from my pitcher.”

  Maybe the blazing sun had finally taken its toll on
his brain. He forced his gaze up from a drawing he’d mistaken for an imaginary siren.

  Adala had gone soft, too, judging by her crazy jabber. “The guards would never allow such a thing.”

  “Soldiers can be bought.”

  “What are you saying?” He blinked, and the pendulum sway of his dizziness steadied.

  “I’m saying I surrendered my virtue to help a saint.” Adala snatched the sketch pad. “That guard was the only customer to ever set foot in my chamber.”

  The tears in her eyes tore at his heart. “I’ve misjudged you.”

  “Yes, you have. My sketches are the charms I sell, and sometimes the wine, but only to men I can trust.” She stuffed the pad back into her pack. “If the monks knew of the illusions Maynya taught me, they would’ve burned me at the stake for practicing witchcraft.”

  “You trusted me with your wine.”

  “I wanted you to know you risked your life to save someone better than a whore.” She lowered her gaze to the ground. “Perhaps my pride will get me killed one day.”

  “It might if you try any tricks in Portus. You won’t find many trustworthy men in these frontier towns.”

  “No illusions, then.”

  “You mean vials of powder?”

  “Believe what you want.”

  “I don’t buy your notion of saints, either,” he said. “They’ve been few and far between, in my experience.”

  Adala turned away. “Surely you’d agree Maynya is one of the few and far. Her mere sketch brought more life to your eyes than I could.”

  Quintus didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t intended to reveal his inexplicable feelings for a woman he’d never met, nor had he picked up on Adala’s attraction to him. In a gesture he hoped was spurred more by generosity than guilt, he reached into his pouch and came out with a fistful of coins. “You’ll need money for provisions.”

  “I’m quite good at barter.”

  “Take some bread at least.”

  “Save it for Maynya. No doubt she’ll be in the stocks again when you reach the capital, if she’s still alive.”

  * * *

  “Servo is pro Maynya.” Save it for Maynya.

  Brewster shot up in bed, fully awake, but with Adala’s words still ringing in his ears. Lately, the memories of his Latin dreams had been lingering. This time, he clung to enough detail to realize the storyline didn’t match Carla’s. She’d told him about life in a woodland, not bondage in Virtus’s bridal pool. Her shadow world was completely different than the one he’d just seen.

  He turned to Carla. To where she should have been, sleeping beside him.

  And he found an empty side of the bed. Not even an indentation on her pillow.

  Gravity might as well have doubled. He lacked the strength to stay upright.

  Something small and metallic pressed against his back. He rolled over and found a two-headed silver coin with a chain hole near the top. The identical sides displayed a centurion surrounded by a ring of Latin words. Somnium. Virtus. Spiritus.

  Virtus? Carla might have been having dreams about a forest existent, but she’d left a coin behind with the name of his imaginary homeland. He racked his brain for a logical explanation but failed. No matter. He could chew on that one later. For now, he closed his fist around the coin, closed his eyes, and tried to bring it back.

  But the wormholes didn’t surrender their prizes so easily.

  CHAPTER 15

  Back in Syracuse

  Carla squirmed on a stool at the checkout counter of her store, flipping through a stack of bills she hadn’t found a way to pay. Sales were half what they’d been a year earlier, and she hadn’t brought in enough cash to cover expenses. Most shoppers were too worried about putting food on the table to buy anything as superfluous as a stuffed bunny. One domino falls and brings down the others. She understood economic theory well enough to know her store teetered straight in the path of those dominoes.

  She’d taken steps to seize control of the situation, having set plans in motion to cut expenses, carry less inventory, and borrow a bit more from the bank. While the unpaid invoices still brought a tingle of unease each time she went through them, she didn’t panic anymore—not over her business, anyway. No, her anguish had a new, more frightening focus. Her pinball bounces from one reality to another had been increasing, as had her worry she was losing her mind.

  Earlier that morning, she’d fished Brewster’s card out of her purse and tried calling him, only to get an out of service message in reply. He’d told her the card carried his new cell phone number, so it should have worked. Directory assistance for a Brewster DeLay landline in Northbrook, Illinois, hadn’t panned out, either. On the other hand, if she and Brewster were separated by a year…

  The haunting possibility he didn’t actually exist, other than in a crazy corner of her subconscious mind, nearly brought her to tears—and not only from fear of insanity.

  They’d clicked, big-time. This funny, kind, tender, honest, intelligent man, this kindred spirit who dreamed in Latin, this fellow vortex traveler had triggered a hum in her soul and an ache for much more. She wanted him in her life.

  Carla tried talking herself down from the ledge, reminding herself Brewster had to be real or she wouldn’t have his card.

  And now he had her coin, a talisman her mother had given to her when she was a child. Carla had awakened before Brewster did. She’d run her fingers through his hair, kissed the tip of his nose, and pressed the coin into his palm. Then she woke again. In Syracuse.

  The act of giving served as additional proof, didn’t it? The talisman truly was gone in the morning—not in the drawer of her bed stand, where she remembered seeing it the night before. But tentative confirmation of her sanity brought little joy. She missed Brewster. Hard.

  Carla paid the few invoices she could afford and stuffed the rest into a drawer. Browsing through her collection of merchandise often lifted her spirits, so she headed to the window display up front.

  “Hello, sweeties.” She ruffled the curly heads of two oversized rag dolls. Raggedy Ann and Andy sat in little yellow chairs, ruling over a collection of toys scattered on the floor—soldiers for him and the Seven Dwarfs for her. She’d made the figurines out of wax and painted them with loving care.

  The two dolls kept watch out the window, taking in the sidewalk, a row of meters hosting too few parked cars for a shopkeeper to survive, a street almost devoid of traffic, and three stores on the other side, the bakery, the fudge shop, and the ice cream parlor. Word had it those owners were in the same straits as she, barely hanging on, but they kept a stiff upper lip and always greeted her with a smile, offering a free cupcake or a piece of fudge or a scoop of vanilla-chocolate swirl whenever she stopped in. She’d given some of her miniature waxed toys to them for their kindnesses. And she’d taken delight when the shopkeepers put them on display, lining up the little figurines on table tops or counters and one time even in a window, gathered around a giant plastic ice-cream cone.

  She turned away and wandered down the aisles of her store, first passing a display of eggshell ornaments—they conjured the memory of her tenth Christmas, when her mother surprised her with a tabletop fir tree to hang them on. Next, she walked alongside shelf upon shelf of handmade dolls and cuddly animals, followed by an aisle lined with candles and wax figurines, and finally the section reserved for consigned goods and herbs provided by others, mostly single moms hoping to scratch out a few extra dollars.

  When she reached the back of the store, the little bell up front tinkled. She rushed over to greet a rare customer but ran out of steam when she identified her visitor. She tried smiling to hide her reflexive disappointment over a lost sale that never existed.

  “You can’t fool me. I know that look.” Her mother breezed into the store wearing one of her trademark twentysomething outfits—in this case a floral skirt topped with a short, midriff-baring blouse tied closed at the bottom. Turquoise reigned supreme, coloring a winter coat left open
despite the cold, her blouse, the bow twisted around her ponytail, and a pair of heels rising an inch higher than seemed reasonable.

  She’d dressed the same way a week earlier when accompanying Carla to a local fundraiser dance. A man chatted them up in what had to be a misguided attempt to get laid, claiming mother and daughter might pass for identical twins, especially since one dressed somewhat older than her peers and the other much younger. He went on and on about various shared features unsullied by any generational differences, from their classically curved frames to the dimples when they smiled, their matching high cheekbones, the hint of green in their hazel eyes, and the auburn shadows in their raven hair. Her mother ate it up, but Carla couldn’t back out of the scene fast enough.

  “I’ll smile wider if you buy a stuffed bunny,” Carla said.

  Her mother shook her head. “We’ve talked about this before. Why not stop worrying over rent and move home with me for a while?”

  “Mother, please.”

  At thirty years of age, running home was so not an option. She’d as soon give up her apartment and sleep in the back of the store.

  * * *

  They chose the window booth of a corner restaurant for their lunch. A youngish hunk of a waiter brought menus. When he walked away, her mother stared after him a couple beats too long. Carla couldn’t let that pass. “Would I find your picture in the dictionary under midlife crisis?”

  Her mother laughed, then fixed her with a stare, the sharp kind capable of piercing a daughter’s soul. “I think we’d find yours under brooding.”

  “Wrong letter. Flip forward a few pages to the Cs and look under crazy.”

  “Everyone feels that way at times.”

  “Just once, I’d like to be part of the great everyone. But there’s good news! Lately I’ve been having doubts about my insanity.”