The censer was gone. Likewise the bell.
Isra looked over her shoulder to where the blackened remains of their fire lay damp and glistening with dew. The thieves had even taken the neat pile of branches and twigs Isra had gathered the night before.
She looked back to Roman, her mind in a panic at what this would mean for their journey, and opened her mouth to beg his forgiveness.
“Isra, I’m sorry,” he said before she could speak, one hand on his hip, the other swiping at his forehead. “Our first night on the road and I’ve not proved myself a capable protector.”
“No,” she stammered. “I . . . I heard them making camp not far from us after we retired. I should have alerted you that they were nearby, but I was afraid you would think me overanxious. The loss of your belongings is the fault of my pride.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then a slight grin came over his face. It was so unexpected that it caused Isra to frown.
“Why are you smiling?” she asked. “We have lost our animal, our implements of disguise, even the wood for our fire.”
“I suppose it’s the irony of it all,” Roman said. He held his arms out from his sides, turned his face up to the misty gray sky, and gave a loud bark of laughter. After he let his arms fall back down he turned to her. “Before we left Melk, my friends tutored me on surviving the journey.” He walked toward her and then past her, and when he continued talking, Isra felt she had no choice but to follow him if she wanted to hear what he was saying.
And she most certainly did want to hear.
“Adrian schooled me on the geography of the terrain and weather patterns of the season; Valentine advised me on the roles we would play and how best to stay true to them; Constantine warned me of the dangers inherent in each of the territories we would pass through and which leaders were corrupt.” He bent as he walked, gathering the leftover bits of fallen wood that would have to suffice for their fire.
“And each of them impressed upon me—over and over,” he continued in an affected accent, “do not deviate from the plan, Roman. Stay with the plan. No matter what, Roman, you must follow the plan exactly.” He laughed again and then glanced at Isra as he once more passed her on the way to the small circle where they’d made their fire the night before. “Do you know why they did that?”
Isra blinked. She hadn’t been certain he was speaking to her rather than simply voicing his irritation aloud.
“No. Why?”
Roman dropped the pile of wood onto the damp coals and looked up at her, his hands going to his hips once more and his grin taking over his mouth. “Because I am terrible at playing along.”
Isra felt her eyebrows knit. “ ‘Playing along’?”
“Pretending to be something I’m not.”
“You seem to have done well at pretending to be a monk,” she offered.
“I haven’t really pretended anything,” Roman said as he went to the bag that was—thankfully—still in the bed of the cart. “The camaraderie there is not unlike what I have found in a work camp, although there is much less swearing and it is considerably cleaner. I do many of the same things I would do in my life did I not live at Melk—I work, I pray, I cook.” He squatted by the wood and began to remove the flint and tinder from the bag.
“I do not understand,” she said, “why they would be so concerned with you not following a plan when there is so much at stake for both you and your friends.”
“That’s just it,” he said and paused for a moment while the sparks flew from the stone onto the fluffy wad of tinder. Roman leaned spindly twigs against the tiny licks of orange and then turned his cheek against the ground to blow up the fire. He sat up and reached for another handful of damp wood. “It’s precisely when there is so much at stake that I tend to . . . deviate from the generally accepted course.”
“You do not seem deviant to me,” she defended.
He arranged the little finger-width branches in a cone and then dropped his palms to his thighs. “Think back to when first we met.”
Isra did not have to rattle her brains to retrieve the memory of it from her mind. Indeed, for many, many months, her memories of Roman Berg were what had kept her alive.
“You walked into Damascus alone. Undisguised,” she said.
He nodded. “When I set myself to a course of action, it is usually my manner to go straight at the thing. My friends know this, and it is why they were so anxious to make a simple ruse with a detailed plan for me to follow.”
“They wanted to keep you from walking into Damascus undisguised again.” She felt a twinge in her heart at the deep bonds the four men must have, how committed they were to one another after what they had experienced. “But it seems their plan has been forfeited before it could be put to use.”
“Does it not?”
She was taken aback by the smile he sent her as he fetched the bag of food and jug from the cart and returned to the smoking fire on the ground. He removed the cups and poured wine into them but kept the open jug braced on his knee.
“Do we now return to Melk?” she ventured. “Surely it should not take us longer than a pair of days on foot to retrace the way we have come.”
Roman had turned one of the cups up against his mouth, and Isra was mesmerized for a long moment while she watched the thick cords in his neck as he swallowed the entire contents. He lowered the cup and sighed even as he was refilling it.
“I think it would not be a good idea to venture through the village in which we were questioned yesterday,” he said, and Isra felt foolish at having already forgotten the terror she’d felt at their near discovery.
“And besides,” he continued, setting the jug aside and lifting his cup, “I know Constantine Gerard well now. Should we return so soon to Melk, he will likely take it as a sign that this journey is ill-fated, and will do his very best to prevent us from setting out once more.” His expression was placid, but Isra understood the underlying message in his benign words. He raised the cup to his mouth and again drank it in its entirety.
“What are we to do?” Isra asked, cringing at her own boldness.
Roman set his cup aside and rose with a satisfied-sounding sigh. “You’re going to break your fast here by this somewhat comfortable fire. I’m going to go retrieve our things.”
Her eyes went wide. “From the caravan? Alone?”
“Yes.” He walked to the bed of the cart, where the open compartment held the remainder of their belongings, and began rifling through them.
Isra came up behind him. “My lord, forgive me, but you cannot. You do not know the sort of people you will be facing alone. The very size of their party warrants your caution.”
“I know they’re the sort of people who would steal a man’s donkey and the sick flags from around what could reliably be understood to be a corpse,” he said, removing a folded piece of leather and setting it on the rough boards. “And besides,” he paused while he gathered the long length of his habit and shimmied it up over his wide body. In a moment he had pulled it off, and Isra could not keep her eyes from going to the strip of firm flesh and chiseled ribs that flashed from beneath his white undershirt.
“They came into my camp, very close to where you slept, uninvited,” he finished, and shook out the leather to reveal a fine vest with raw lacings up the front. He slipped it over his head and began tightening the ladder of leather ties over his wide chest. “They will answer for that.”
Isra didn’t know what to say. A part of her was consumed with fear for him, for what could possibly happen to him should he walk into the camp alone and accuse the inhabitants of theft; fear for herself at being left alone for the time he was gone—and perhaps forever should he not return.
The other part of her was thrilled at his daring, his surety. Who could refuse this man? His forearm was greater in size than most men’s upper leg. Even his clothing seemed big enough to fit a bear as he removed a wide caped leather cap from his bag and snugged it down over his head before fasteni
ng it at his collarbone.
But even though his resolve and confidence were impressive, Isra still feared for his safety. “My lord—Roman,” she corrected herself, raising her palm at his frown. “I—”
But her words were cut off by a brown blur that swept through the air of the clearing from behind her, so close to her head that Isra felt the pull on the roots of her hair. An instant later, the brown thing billowed and flapped and shrank and then came to perch on Roman Berg’s leather-draped shoulder.
Roman’s laugh filled the foggy air as he brought a hand to his shoulder, and Isra gasped.
“Lou!” Roman exclaimed. “I shouldn’t be surprised, should I? No, you couldn’t miss out on the adventure, could you?”
The falcon had found Roman, the same way it had found him in Damascus.
Lou’s painted head seemed to swivel until its brightly rimmed black eye found Isra, and in that instant, she knew what she wanted to do.
“I am coming with you,” she announced in a wavering voice, trying to ignore the cringe in her middle. She had just restrained herself from adding “this time” to her statement. “If you please.”
Roman turned his still smiling face toward her while he stroked the hunting bird’s sleek back. Then he nodded.
“All right.”
* * *
They walked down the center of the road for what Isra guessed to be at least a mile before they began to see evidence of the party that had passed theirs in the night. Wagons had been pulled off to the side of the road, the animals missing from their harnesses, no signs or sounds of movement from within. She looked up at Roman from beneath the edge of the white linen that covered her head and saw that he was scanning the line of oddly covered conveyances while the falcon on his shoulder scanned the sky—hoodless, tetherless. And even though Roman’s steps were calm and measured, Isra could feel his alertness through the thick, scratchy wool of her borrowed gown.
As they walked, they found wagons veered farther off the road and into a spreading field, from which sounds of activity could be heard. Once again, music reached Isra’s ears, and laughter. The wagons grew larger, and some had windows, but the oddest thing about them was that they appeared to have been painted and stenciled in bright colors, stylized versions of animals and men and birds decorating their bulky hulks.
Roman, too, veered off the road and Isra followed, walking in the deep, soft ruts left by scores of wide wheels leading into a fallow field where it appeared a common area had been set up. A large fire marked the center, ringed by metal scaffolds of spits and tripods and cauldrons. An old woman with straggly gray hair crouched near the fire, stirring the contents of a pot. Several chickens scratched through the dried and jagged stalks poking up through mud and dead vegetation; a pair of young children emerged, squealing and chasing each other before disappearing between another pair of wagons.
“There she is,” Roman said, and after a quick glance at his face, Isra turned to look beyond the fire and past the farthest wagon, where it seemed all the animals had been corralled.
There, indeed, had to be their donkey; it was smaller, fatter, and certainly better groomed than the rest of the animals gathered together beyond the—yes, certainly, that was the long length of sick rope, its red pennants fluttering in the morning air. Perhaps the donkey spotted Roman, for she gave a pathetic and lonely-sounding bray.
The old woman rose from a stool she’d had hidden in her skirts to reach up to one of the tripods and grasp a rope. Isra caught the flash of the curved dome of the bell that had, until recently, been attached to their own cart.
“Cheeky lot,” Roman said.
The witchlike figure rang the bell and then cupped her gnarled hands around her mouth, as if readying herself to give a shout.
But Roman stepped toward the fire, giving Isra little choice but to follow, while he called out to the woman. “Hark, mistress,” he said in a firm voice. “Who is the master of this party?”
The hag swung around and, although she did not seem surprised at their arrival, she did look appreciatively up and down Roman’s large form, her eyes lingering on Lou.
“I’m the master, for all you need to know, Goliath,” she snipped. “I’ve got no scraps to feed the likes of you and neither does he. Be gone.” She began to raise her hands again, but Roman interrupted her.
“I’ve not come looking for a meal,” he said, and Isra noted how his voice grew deeper. “I’ve come for the belongings that were stolen out from under me in the night by someone or someones in this group.”
“Bugger off,” the old woman muttered over her shoulder.
Roman began to march past the fire toward the corral, Lou maintaining his perch.
“Ay, now! Where do you think you’re off to?”
He didn’t turn around, and Isra stayed where she was, her hand gripping the knife hidden in her skirt. She was not going to let anyone sneak up behind Roman.
“That’s my donkey,” he called out, pointing with a long forefinger. “My sick flags. And I’m taking them back.”
Isra felt her backbone tightening. “That is our bell as well,” she said to the old woman, who swung her wrinkled face around slowly. “And I believe you are making your porridge in what is meant to be a censer. You shall be ill from that, old woman.”
“You don’t say?” the hag squealed. And then she reached up once more with her skeletal fingers and began ringing said bell as if trying to shake her own arm loose from her body.
As if by magic, people of all shapes, sizes, and even colors began to emerge from the spaces between the wagons, filling the common area and separating Isra from Roman. Her fledgling bravado disappeared like smoke from the censer, which now contained an unknown portion of contaminated foodstuff.
“He’s stealin’ the animals!” the hag screamed, pointing her bony finger toward Roman and then swinging around to face Isra. “And she’s palmin’ a blade!”
The crowd began to grumble, roughly one half turning toward Roman and the other half moving in Isra’s direction. But Roman’s strong voice cut through the rumblings.
“I have come only for what is mine,” he called out, and Isra couldn’t help but notice the young boy with long, dirty brown hair cut straight across at his collarbone who sank back into the advancing crowd and disappeared. Perhaps he was the thief? But she could not devote further thought to him as Roman continued to advise the group.
“This donkey was stolen from my camp last night, not long after your party passed us on the road. I’m taking her back, along with our bell and censer and the flags indicating an infectious patient in quarantine. I mean no one here harm. Any of you noble enough to claim leadership of this den of thieves and deny me, step forward if you would.”
The crowd parted to let a man pass into the center of the clearing, and they backed away from him, leaving Isra a clear line of sight past this new stranger to Roman and the animals beyond.
“Is that so?” the man asked amiably enough, still fastening the thin black belt around his green velvet tunic, looping the long end of it through itself so that it hung down against his leg. His hair was dark, thick, and longer on the top of his head so that it swooped and curved into an attractive wave over his brow. His skin was pale, in sharp contrast to his dark brows and lashes, like charcoaled slashes on his ivory skin.
“If anyone here has deprived you of your property, sir, then I extend to you my deepest apologies,” the man said, bringing one of his palms to rest on his chest. “Certainly I bid you retrieve your belongings with my heartfelt thanks for alerting me that there is a thief in our midst.” At his words, the crowd snorted and twittered.
Roman glanced to Isra and then nodded to the finely dressed and well-spoken man. “Very well. I’ll only be a moment.”
“Of course,” the man continued, causing Roman to pause in turning toward the makeshift corral, “you will be able to prove rightful ownership before you remove them from my family’s possession.”
“What?”
Roman said.
“How do I know these things belong to you?” the man asked, looking around wide-eyed at all gathered there, and then fixing his eyes on Isra. “Perhaps you are the robbers, preying upon humble travelers and extorting them of their effects while you distract us with such a beauteous companion.”
“That is my donkey, my sick flags, my bell, my censer,” Roman growled. “And I mean to take them with me. I need not prove anything to you, for you know as well as I that none of these things were in your possession before this morn.”
The man shrugged, even as his eyes lingered on Isra. His smile was friendly, curious, and he did not seem at all perturbed at Roman’s stern tone. He held up a finger and swung it between Isra and Roman.
“Which one of you is sick?” he asked.
“What?” Roman demanded again.
“You said those were sick flags; I don’t believe they are to be flown in an arbitrary manner. The sheriff of the town we passed through yesterday warned of a man transporting a leper on the road ahead of us. But neither of you appear to be rotting where you stand. So I ask you: Which one of you is sick?”
Roman met Isra’s eyes again but looked away. “That’s none of your concern.”
“Well, that is too bad.” The man clasped his hands behind his back and looked down at his feet, as if considering. Then he looked up at Roman. “I think you’d better be on your way, then.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Roman said, and then turned and snapped the line of pennants from the tree, bringing the little donkey trotting to his side.
Isra brought a hand to her throat as a handful of men separated from the crowd after only a single glance from the well-dressed leader. All the men were large, wide, their sleeveless tunics displaying well-muscled arms.
But Roman knew what was about as he quickly turned and faced the five who stopped in a line before him, all crossing their arms over their chests.
“I don’t think so, cap’n,” one said to Roman.
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