Romani Armada (Beloved Bloody Time)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  She nodded and lifted her knee up and around the rise at the front of the saddle, while Justin slid her other boot into the stirrup. He patted her ankle. “We won’t be doing any trotting or galloping, so you should be fine. Just be sure your ankle is covered by your dress.”

  “It’s rude to show your ankle?” she asked.

  “It’s very forward,” Adán said. He smiled at the idea.

  Deonne plucked at the sleeve of her dress. “But this dress is made of some sort of chiffon. It’s practically see-through. You can see what I’m wearing underneath if you look hard enough.”

  “It’s muslin,” Justin said. “They’re considered the highest of high taste, muslin dresses. My sister—” His face clouded over.

  “Is that what her white dress was made of?” Deonne asked gently.

  He drew in a breath and nodded. “Anyway,” he said, changing subjects. “You’ve said more than once that I don’t talk about myself and I suppose I don’t. I thought, since we had to hide out somewhere in time, I’d show you instead of telling you. Both of you,” he added, glancing at Adán.

  Adán smiled. “Lead the way.”

  It was a long but easy walk through bush and across natural meadows, to reach the edge of the burgeoning town. Justin walked ahead, while Adán led the horse. Every now and again one of them would step back to check Deonne was comfortable. It was her first time on a horse, but this one seemed to be very placid and even-footed. It didn’t snort or sidle at anything.

  Beechworth was a thriving place. Houses spread out across the valley and up the sides of the hills, a dun-colored carpet of shacks, cabins and more luxurious houses with verandahs and gardens.

  The roads were unsealed gravel and dirt, rutted by the passing wheels of coaches and carriages. Horse paddies were everywhere, making Deonne more than grateful she did not have to step through it.

  Adán and Justin kept to the center of the narrow street, only moving off to one side if a faster moving horse or carriage came up behind them, or passed in the opposite direction.

  The cabins they went by were rough affairs, with small windows, no fences, and little in the way of decoration or gardens. Some had vegetable patches just outside their front doors, but they were struggling, weedy lots.

  Justin had said he lived in a shack. He had grown up in something like this.

  As they travelled further toward the heart of the town, the houses became larger and better established, although they were still tiny by Deonne’s estimation. The most common type of house seemed to have a door in the middle, a window on either side and a verandah. The roof extended over the front of the house to cover the verandah. But despite their diminutive size, these houses all had glass in their windows. They were painted and curtains hung in many of the windows. They all had well-tended gardens. Most of the gardens were the practical sort, filled with vegetables and trees that Deonne suspected were fruit trees. Some had additional flowers and shrubs hugging the fence line. Low picket fences separated each yard.

  The center of town was easy to recognize. The buildings abruptly became much larger and grander and many more people and horses, carts and carriages appeared. There were sidewalks – wooden planks laid side by side along the side of the road. Justin and Adán moved over to walk on the planking, while the horse walked alongside, its hooves making an echoing clopping sound now they were among higher buildings.

  At a crossroad, the buildings leapt to two and three stories, with verandahs and balconies on all floors, tin roofing, brick chimneys and big glass windows. They were all painted a dull red color with white trimming, if they were not made of brick.

  From the open doors facing the center of the cross roads Deonne could hear loud talk and laughter. From all four buildings.

  They passed an open door and a distinct, recognizable odor washed over them.

  “These are bars?” Deonne asked, amazed. “All four of them?”

  Justin dropped back to her side. “Hotels,” he corrected. “Australians like a cold one after a hard day’s work.”

  “More than one,” Adán said, looking over his shoulder at them. “I thought I had a head for liquor, but I learned when I came to Australia that I had been a goldfish among whales. Drinking is a cheap past time for most of them.”

  “The hotels provide accommodation, too,” Justin added. “There are many people who live almost permanently in the hotel rooms. Most of them are single men with good paying jobs.”

  “What sort of jobs?” she asked.

  “About twenty years ago, gold was discovered in the area,” Justin said. “This town, then, was not much more than a hut or two and one shanty hotel. Then the gold rush hit, and the town built itself almost overnight. Almost everyone in Beechworth works in the gold mining industry in some way or another, or they provide services that support the gold.”

  “Miners?” Deonne asked, thinking of the hovels they had passed on the edges of town.

  “Miners, engineers, administrators. Business owners. Speculators.” Justin grinned up at her. “Then there are the wives, the children, and the whores. A single woman doesn’t stay single long in this town. There are too many lonely men.”

  She glanced down at her gloved left hand, where the wedding band was covered by soft kid. Now she understood better why Justin had put it on her finger.

  “Your mother came here to get married?” she guessed.

  “The marriage didn’t happen. Three days before the wedding, the man she was going to marry died in a shaft cave in.”

  “But she stayed?”

  “She met my father,” Justin replied. He was speaking easily, with no hesitation or coyness. But he was looking around, absorbing the reality of the town as he walked. It was distracting his attention enough to allow him to speak freely. “She got pregnant, but found work in the Beechworth Arms as a barmaid, despite her condition. I suspect my father may have arranged it. His reputation had been building by then.” He pointed to one of the smaller hotels on the intersection.

  Adán pointed to the biggest hotel. “I lived there for nearly a year.”

  “You worked in the town?” Deonne asked.

  “I was a civil engineer by day, overseeing the building of shafts and tunnels. At night time, I made more money.”

  “Professional gambling,” Justin said.

  “Among other things. A booming new and raw town offers unique opportunities if you look for them. I doubled my personal worth three times in five years.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “Beechworth became too settled and controlled. There were other boom towns, further out from Melbourne. I headed north. Then, a few years later, I met Justin.”

  Justin grinned. “And saved my life.”

  Adán glanced at Deonne and she recalled his confession that meeting Justin had saved his own life. She smiled at him.

  The walking tour of the town went on; the music hall, the theatre, the major’s house and the police station. Justin had a story or knew something about each of them, from when he was a child, while Adán added his own knowledge of the town from his perspective as an outsider.

  Deonne could have happily toured Beechworth for days, listening to Justin and Adán talk. Justin’s accent had become stronger and far more distinctively Australian, just from being among the sights and sounds of his childhood. Adán’s speech became normalized and almost accent free – he didn’t mix the order of his nouns and pronouns as he often did when he was relaxed and there were no strangers to hear him.

  Eventually, though, the built-up center of town fell behind them. Justin turned off the main road and led them through narrow streets and lanes. Both men stopped speaking, for there were only houses and cabins and lean-to’s to see.

  The afternoon was waning when they reached what looked like the far southern edge of town, which butted up against the steeper hills. The horse started to breathe more heavily as he tackled the sharply sloping road.

  “I should walk,” Deonne said, concern
ed.

  Justin shook his head. “You would look strange, walking. It would draw attention to us and people would remember us.”

  Adán didn’t comment, but he looked thoughtful as he gazed at the poor housing around them.

  Justin eventually stepped out onto a narrow road and turned right. There were no houses on the other side of the road he stood upon, and very few dotted along the northern side. He looked down the road, shading his eyes against the sun that was hovering over the tops of the hills. Twilight was gathering along the streets, pulling a dark blanket over everything. There were no street lights, but some homes were showing a flickering golden light from their windows. Of course, there would be no electricity now, either. There was candlelight and firelight. The richer families might own lanterns that used kerosene or gas, but none of the windows they passed was showing the steady light such lanterns would produce.

  Adán stepped up to Justin’s side. “Which one?” he asked quietly.

  Justin nodded toward a cabin sitting off by itself. It had a picket fence around it and there was a warm glow of light from all the windows. The garden was more substantial than any nearby, and included roses along the fence.

  “We can’t go in,” Adán murmured.

  “I know,” Justin replied.

  There was a movement of darker shadow, further up the street, emerging from the man-high shrubs and bushes that carpeted the hills. The man moved quietly and quickly toward Justin’s home.

  Justin turned abruptly, facing away from the house and toward the horse. He hurried over to Deonne’s side and put his hands around her waist. “Let’s get you down,” he said quietly.

  “What’s wrong? Who is that?”

  “I’m not sure,” Justin said, very quietly, putting her on her feet. “But I think…”

  The door of the cabin opened and light spilled out onto the road, illuminating the man standing there. Under his hat, his skin was fair. He wore a full, bushy beard that was pitch black and fierce.

  His face in profile was familiar to Deonne.

  Justin turned his head away from the light, hiding it.

  A woman stepped out of the cabin and pulled the door almost closed behind her. Deonne saw that she was heavily pregnant. “Ned,” she whispered, although the sound carried clearly in the still night air. “You shouldn’t have risked it. They’ve put out more patrols to find you.”

  “I ought not to visit my sons?” He laid a hand on her belly, soft and gentle.

  “Justin is already asleep. And this might well be a girl,” she chided him.

  “I’ve ridden hard and far this day, just to see the face of my only love sitting at t’other end’o my table. Let me in, Maggie. I’ll leave before sunrise. You won’t suffer for my presence.”

  “Oh, Ned….” she said softly. “Where will it end? With you at the end of a rope?”

  “Shhh….” He kissed her with heart-breaking gentleness and pushed the door open behind her. They stepped inside the cabin and the door shut.

  Justin dropped his head onto Deonne’s shoulder. He was trembling. After a moment, he lifted his head with a deep indrawn breath. “I didn’t know,” he whispered. “I don’t remember him at all. My mother never said that he…” He licked his lips.

  “Loved her?” Deonne asked.

  Adán rested his hand on Justin’s shoulder. “I think you might have to revise some of your family history, Justin Edward Kelly.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Hammerside, Detroit-Rocktown Supercity, 2264 A.D.: Marley’s conditions were all the cash up front and that Gawain go everywhere she did, plus she wanted to know exactly where she was being taken at all times. No blindfolds, or silly stuff like that.

  Her conditions meant that the seating arrangements in Rhydder’s car didn’t suit her in the slightest. She was placed in the passenger seat next to Rhydder in the driver’s seat, in order that she not miss a single turn of their journey, while Gawain perched on the inadequate back bench with Demyan. The four stacks of cash had already been squirrelled away somewhere in the apartment. Gawain had bolt holes and stash spots all over the apartment for illicit and hidden wealth, in case the apartment was ever turned over by looters.

  Gawain was nervous. Which meant Gawain was chatty. He clutched his old, battered reading boards to his chest and kept up a continuous stream of comments, questions and an intellectual version of verbal fidgeting that quickly drove Demyan mad, but merely seemed to amuse Rhydder as he steered the Stingray through the fringes of DRC, to the landing strip where he planned to take off from.

  The semi-ballistic leap from DRC to somewhere in Europe silenced even Gawain, who watched the sky darken to indigo, then back to the blue of a late afternoon. Marley, sitting up front, was able to pick out the continental shapes as they descended and looked at Rhydder sharply. “Rome?” she asked.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be returned home safe and sound.”

  “I hate Rome,” Gawain muttered from the back seat. “Especially in September.”

  The landing strip Rhydder used was somewhere in the north of the city, but Marley didn’t know Rome at all. This was her first time to the fabled city, and she was completely out of water. She studied the chipped and faded stone of the buildings they passed as Rhydder drove them through the streets, and couldn’t begin to estimate if this was a good neighborhood or not.

  “We’re nearly there,” Demyan said. “Or we would be if Rhydder took the direct route.”

  “Time is an issue for you, isn’t it?” Gawain asked. “That’s why, even though you clearly have some empathetic ability, you mishandled things in the first place. You screwed up because you’re anxious.”

  “Gawain,” Marley said softly, in warning. Gawain was keeping himself from boredom by following unanswered questions. It was another way he fidgeted, but it often led him into awkward social situations before he realized what he was doing. When he wasn’t chasing down unanswered questions he was as smoothly charming in a social setting as she was...which was to say just not much, but enough to navigate through without making a fool of himself.

  “Anxious?” Demyan sounded affronted.

  Marley bit her lip, wincing. Gawain had offended him. She glanced at Rhydder and was startled to see a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth as he glanced at the rear view mirror. Apparently, he didn’t mind watching Demyan getting skewered a little bit, either.

  “You have some ability to understand how people feel. Their emotions,” Gawain replied. “Either you’re very, very good at reading body language, minutia and have a highly evolved understanding of psychology so that what you do seems like mind reading, or you actually mind read, or you’re an empath. I didn’t think vampires could do the same tricks as psi, until now. I’m still trying to decide which one it is, but I don’t have much empirical evidence and no offense, I’m not going to ask you directly, because you have a vested interest in lying to me.”

  Rhydder made a small choking sound. Marley glanced at him. It looked like he was fighting not to laugh.

  “Now you’re calling me a liar?” Demyan asked. He sounded bewildered and winded at the same time. Marley felt a little sorry for him. Gawain at full gallop often had that effect until you got used to him.

  “Well, you have to be, don’t you?” Gawain asked reasonably. “You’re vampire.”

  This time, Rhydder really did laugh. He gave a gusty, short bellow, then sighed. He turned the car into a steep, narrow street lined with tall, multi-storied homes that all featured arches and columns and privacy walls, marble and tiles and lots of green plants in containers.

  Marley had no trouble guessing that this was not a slum area.

  “Why do I have to be a liar?” Demyan demanded.

  “If you’re just good at reading people, then I imagine it gets you into a lot of trouble and you have to lie to get yourself out of it all the time. If you’re a mind reader or an empath, then you’re already lying about that. You didn’t tell us before poking arou
nd in our minds when you first met us. That’s pretty rude, if you ask me. And it’s lying. If you’re for real, you’ve probably been lying about mind reading for years. If you’re not for real, then you’re lying about what you say you can do. You let people think you can read minds.”

  Marley didn’t need a rear view mirror to know that Gawain had shrugged.

  Rhydder cleared his throat as he parked the car very close against one of the walls of a house. “Everyone out on the other side,” he announced.

  Marley glanced over her shoulder to look at Demyan. The man was staring at the back of Rhydder’ head. “I don’t imagine you have many friends,” he said at last. “If this is how you treat strangers when you first meet them.”

  “No,” Gawain said happily. “It’s the ones that come back that end up my friends. They’re the ones that know and can stand truth when it smacks ‘em in the face.”

  Rhydder looked at Marley. “You would be one of those friends, then. Good. We’ll need that.”

  He got out of the car before she could begin to formulate a question and headed for a set of stairs that climbed up between two houses.

  * * * * *

  The Pritti she was supposed to treat had an apartment in a small block high up on the hill, apparently reachable only by climbing the long set of stairs from the road. The apartment building had security that Demyan accessed with a retinal scan and palm print. It gave Marley a measure of the affluence of the area.

  It didn’t surprise her the apartment was in such a moneyed suburb. She had heard rumors about vampires – that they were all beyond rich and took paying jobs only to look human and blend in. Demyan and Rhydder seemed to be loaded with discreet money — if you could call a replica antique Stingray discreet. Demyan walked about the city with a satchel stuffed full of money to bribe ex-doctors to treat a single patient who lived in a penthouse in one of the most expensive cities in the world.