Roman

by Heather Grothaus

  His meaning hung in the air between them: He would return to his friends at the abbey and Isra would be left alone. In an instant, images flashed through her mind of the moment when she would bid this man farewell. The weeks without him, when she would be wondering where he was on his journey, if he had arrived, succeeded, survived. She might never know if he lived to return to his friends at Melk. If she let him go now, it would surely be forever.

  How would she even breathe without him?

  “I go where you go,” she said calmly, although the emotions trapped in her chest were anything but calm. “Until the end of it.”

  “You’re certain?” he pressed, and she couldn’t help but recall with a stab of regret that those same words had crossed his lips only last night, when she had thought they would make love.

  “I came a very long way to find you,” she replied carefully. “It was I who insisted you return. Even for this moment, I was destined; this barn. The guard who attacked me; Fran and Kahn. It was always intended for me to flee Dubrovnik in the middle of the night.”

  “Why?” he asked intently, as if very certain he must know her answer.

  “I do not know. But if all of this is not part of something bigger, something better, then my suffering—yours, and that of your friends—was for nothing. Huda’s death only a random evil.”

  “I would like to know for certain that we are doing the right thing,” he confessed. “If it is for naught . . .”

  She squeezed his hand and then slipped away from him.

  She could not tell him that she had dreamed of Huda.

  * * *

  “I should have known better than to grant them entrance, let alone invite them to stay another night,” the mayor said, falling into his chair with a sigh. “Monsters and criminals, the lot of them! It’s a miracle they didn’t burn down all of Dubrovnik. The woman, though—ah, she was a pleasure. Would that you had had the chance to see her with her beast, my lord. An amazing sight, I must confess.”

  “Your courtesy is much appreciated, Lord Mayor,” the guest said, settling into his own chair and taking the chalice from the tray held forth by the servant boy. “Though I am too much enamored with my new bride to have any interest in a random encounter, no matter how exotic the creature. I have seen my fill of strange beasts in the past several months. They hold little appeal for me now.”

  “The Holy Land, eh?” the mayor guessed with a scoffing laugh. “I have heard tales of the savage ways there.”

  Glayer Felsteppe shrugged one shoulder. “There, and lands across the sea. Regardless, I wish I could tell you that our party passed them on the road so at least you could give chase and bring such criminals to justice.”

  “Bah. Good riddance to them,” the mayor said with an annoyed grimace and a wave of his thick hand. “Although I am surprised you have come overland and not by ship, if you are in such a hurry to return to your home with your wife.”

  Glayer let a boyish grin creep over his face. “Indeed, it was my original intention to return by sea. In fact, although permission had already been granted us by the king, we were not to be married until after my return to England.”

  “Oh?” the mayor’s eyebrows rose.

  “Without causing my lady undue embarrassment . . .” He looked over at the woman sitting apart from them in a chair by the window, her beautiful face devoid of any expression as she stared through the glass, her rich brown hair twisted into a thick, spiraling rope over her shoulder beneath her veil. Her hands in her lap, the refreshments offered to her sat untouched at her side. “She gave me quite the surprise by arriving in Jerusalem unannounced. We soon discovered we had need of an early ceremony, lest the legitimacy of my heir be held in question. Travel by sea was no longer in my wife or child’s best interest.”

  The mayor threw back his head and let out a roar of laughter, which, at last, caused the woman to flinch. “Ah! Well, my best to you both, and let us raise our cups in hopes of a boy, shall we? To the future of your great endowment—may it prosper and forever find favor.”

  Glayer Felsteppe, Earl of Rosemont, lifted his chalice with a grin. “Indeed.”

  Chapter 19

  They left van Groen and Fran behind before the sun reached its zenith in the sky the next day. Although everyone in the band was still exhausted and frazzled from the sudden flight out of Dubrovnik, they would not jeopardize the couple by drawing attention to the dilapidated barn. Roman and Zeus and the other men had shored it as much as they could, and then led the horse pulling Fran’s wagon inside, guaranteeing cover from the road by any who might pass by, as well as making the animal easy for van Groen to care for on his own.

  Old Mother had wanted to stay and help nurse the menagerie’s artist; perhaps she had even intimated to Asa that Fran might live. But van Groen had sent the hag—like the rest of the band—away with his kind apologies, expressing the sentiment that he wanted Fran’s last hours, last days of life to be spent in solitude with no travel, no guests. At last having the full attention and care of the man who still loved her so deeply.

  Everyone had left an offering of some kind. Mostly foodstuffs and drink to sustain him during his wake, although some had left talismans, charms of sorts, along with mementos they possessed of the woman who lay dying. Bits of costume she’d created, drawings she’d made of the troupe members. Perhaps they thought to leave a part of themselves behind as witness. But no one had argued with van Groen’s wishes, and so now Roman led the caravan southeast over the dusty road toward Constantinople, Isra on his right upon the driver’s seat, Gunar on horseback beyond her; Zeus riding to Roman’s left on his own mount.

  Roman didn’t know how he had come to be the leader of this strange band of folk, who, upon their first meeting, had stolen from him and attempted to have him beaten to a pulp. But he would do his best not to disappoint them. Or van Groen.

  Or the once more quiet woman at his side.

  “Will you show Kahn again?” he asked. “Van Groen told me he gave you leave to do with him what you would.”

  Isra looked over the tan stretches of fallow field, so like the sand they would soon be surrounded by, but with the thick smell of plant matter lingering like ghosts of crops past.

  “I do not wish to,” she said at last, her voice faint, distant. “What happened with Fran was no fault of Kahn’s. But . . .” Her words faded away and she was quiet for a time. “I see little reason why the act should be revived.”

  Roman agreed, and in truth, he was relieved by her answer. It would be enough of a task to keep the band together and out of the jails of the various municipalities as they traveled farther south; enough to keep everyone safe and fed and distracted from the heartbreak they carried away from van Groen and the ruined barn. To think of Isra continuing to climb in the cage with the tiger night after night gave him a searing pain in his stomach.

  “We have plenty of coin to last us the remainder of our journey,” he said in an effort to cheer her. “A surplus, in fact. Considerably more than we left Melk with.”

  Isra gave a disinterested hum and was quiet for so long that Roman thought she was simply not able to speak to him at the moment, and he had resolved to let her be.

  “Now we must only survive the journey,” she said at last and then looked to him. “And the destination. We have no plan for once we reach Syria. How we are to locate Baldwin, gain access to him.”

  Roman pinched his lips together. He was surprised that she had been thinking about the task that lay yet before them. If he was to be honest with himself, there had been entire days when Roman had forgotten the real reason he and Isra were on this mad journey together.

  “I work best without a plan,” he reminded her. When she didn’t answer him, he looked to his right and saw Isra was regarding him with a weary smile, her cheekbone propped on a fist, one eyebrow quirked.

  “You’re very pretty when you’re exasperated with me,” he said.

  Her smile widened. “I could never be exasperated
with you. My lord.”

  “Is that so? Well, I see you have no compunction in exasperating me.”

  And, having been well caught out, Isra at last laughed.

  * * *

  They passed through only two villages in the next five days, and the first burg was still too close to van Groen and Fran for reaping from it what coin they could. The second village ordered them through in no uncertain terms. By the time they reached the first signs of the metropolis of Constantinople on the afternoon of the fifth day, Isra could plainly see the crease of worry that had taken up residence between Roman’s light eyebrows.

  Some in the band were running out of food, and grazing had been scarce for the animals. They needed to find hospitable hosts willing to sell to them that night—on the morrow at the latest—if everyone shared what they had left and they could find a meager patch of land to overnight on.

  Zeus returned to their cart from his patrol with his horse at a gallop and a gap-toothed smile on his face, and within an hour, the troupe was pulling all through and round a fringe of dwellings lying just two miles outside the city walls. Isra was glad to once more see Roman’s ready smile as the folk procured their supplies from the village merchants. They set up the round as dusk fell and the musical cacophony of readying for an audience Isra had become so fond of filled the air.

  But she watched Roman’s frown gradually return as she leaned next to him against Kahn’s paneled wagon, and the dusk turned to night and the moon rose high into the air over the sounds of the lute and drum and the yapping of Helena’s dogs . . . and the audience didn’t come.

  Save for a few bored adolescents who appeared to scoff at the performers, none of the villagers bothered to attend van Groen’s Magical Menagerie. Not one shilling was made. The troupe was subdued as they tore down the awnings and bundled and strapped the extinguished torches and retreated to their wagons for the night.

  Tomorrow, they called to each other.

  Tomorrow, they repeated like an incantation.

  Roman was one of the last to quit when he crawled into Asa van Groen’s wagon; Isra guessed it must have been past midnight. Lou flapped for balance on his thick shoulder.

  “You are taking your duties very seriously,” she observed from the cot, the silken embroidered coverlet fisted under her chin. “There was little reason for you to stay so late.”

  He dropped to one knee and pulled the door behind him, then deposited his falcon on its perch before settling onto his hip against a side wall with a sigh rather than stoop beneath the ceiling. “I promised van Groen I would look out for the troupe as far as Jerusalem,” he said. “Or wherever we end up.” He scrubbed both large hands over his face and then dropped them to his lap while he leaned his head back to gaze up past the lantern. “I don’t think I’m doing a very good job of it.”

  “It is through no fault of yours that no one came,” Isra argued softly. “The troupe ate tonight. The horses are grazing. I count that as a success.”

  “I badly underestimated van Groen for a very long time after we joined the caravan,” Roman mused, ignoring her arguments. “I thought him little more than a peacock. A petty thief with no usefulness at all.”

  “A peacock?” Isra asked, intrigued, liking when he spoke at such length.

  Roman continued looking at the seam of wall and ceiling. “A man who has better costumes than I.” He rolled his head along the wall to give her a slight smile.

  She returned his smile and allowed, “Asa is a good man.” She swallowed, giving herself a moment to rethink what she was about to say. “Roman?”

  He looked at her, his eyebrows raised. The fatigue, the worry was clear on his face.

  “Will you sleep with me tonight?” His eyebrows shot up even farther, and she rushed to add, “Not . . . no! I mean, will you take your rest here, in the cot? I cannot bear to think of you sleeping on such an unforgiving surface when you have toiled so diligently.”

  “I would crowd you,” he said, looking away from her and reaching up and pulling his folded stack of blankets from the narrow shelf along the wall. “There is barely enough room in that bed for a slight thing like yourself; I don’t know how van Groen and Fran managed all those years.” He made a show of arranging his makeshift pallet on the floor. “I’ll be fine here.”

  Isra knew she had a choice to make in that moment. She could demurely agree and thank Roman for his consideration, roll over, and go to sleep in the bed alone.

  Or she could own the knowledge that the days they had left together might likely be counted on both her hands. She could own it, and she could look for a bit of bravery somewhere deep inside her, where the horrors of her past had somehow failed to reach. She could be brave enough to try again.

  Did she have any bravery left?

  She felt tears welling in her eyes as the fear of what might happen in the next several moments became a near tangible thing sitting heavy upon her shoulders. She didn’t know if she could survive another rejection by him, but she wanted him close so badly, needed him, and she knew he needed someone, too. Perhaps it wasn’t her, but she was there, and perhaps she would be enough for a time, any matter. She could try her very hardest to be.

  She reached behind her for the long, thin pillow she’d been using, and her other hand balled the coverlet onto her lap. She dragged the bedclothes from the cot as she slid over the side to her knees and then crossed the short expanse of rough wood in that manner to settle onto her hip at Roman’s side against the wall. She didn’t look up at him as she dragged the covers along the floor after her, bunching them up onto her legs and then slowly, incrementally, pushing them over onto Roman’s lap.

  He didn’t stop her hand, didn’t protest, so Isra then spread them out deliberately, reaching across to tuck the hem of the coverlet beyond the long length of his leg. When they were both covered over with the blanket, she tucked her arms inside, pulling the top up over her shoulder. Then, without daring to peek up at him, she hesitantly lay the side of her face against the thick hardness of his arm.

  Her eyes were wide in the dim light of the wagon, the painful, obvious quiet. She tried not to breathe, as if she could somehow suffocate her nervous trembling.

  It seemed an hour later before his deep voice rumbled, and the sound of it caused her stomach to leap.

  “Isra, you cannot stay like this.”

  There it was, then. She began to rise to a seated position once more, feeling the absence of his warmth already from her face, the despair sinking into her stomach and eating through the bottom. What a pathetic fool she was.

  “If you are going to insist that both of us sleep on the floor, you might at least turn over so that we may lie flat,” he said, and it took every shred of physical self-control she had not to gasp in giddy relief.

  But she said nothing, only moved her bottom along the rough boards so that she could recline. She turned onto her left side, facing the empty cot, Roman’s large body between her and the door.

  The lantern light swung wildly for a moment and he gave a huff behind her before the interior of the wagon went pitch. In the next moment, his long warmth seemed to envelop her as he lay down behind her. She squeezed her eyes shut and brought a hand to her mouth; she could not weep now, even in happiness.

  She had been right; he did need her.

  But then his arm came around her just below her shoulder, and it was so the embodiment of everything Roman Berg had done for her already, stood for, meant to her, that Isra could no longer hold back her quiet sob.

  He didn’t question her weeping, though, only drew her more closely to him. Isra took her hand from her mouth and lay it along Roman’s forearm, a smile coming over her entire face in the dark even as her tears ran free and soaked the thin pillow beneath her head.

  “Shh,” he said against the crown of her head, and then he pressed his lips there for a long moment. Even when he turned his mouth away from her scalp she could feel the heat of his breath cutting through her hair.

&n
bsp; And then Isra slept.

  Chapter 20

  Roman led the caravan into the city proper the next day, not bothering to send Zeus ahead. Constantinople was an enormous, messy mix of humanity, filled with holy houses and brothels, princes and criminals. The troupe were paid little heed as they passed through the gates, and Roman felt his heart lighten further at the idea that the band following him would change their lack of coin into a surplus that night. The streets were teeming with people: merchants, children, pilgrims, soldiers. It took the caravan the better part of two hours to make it through the crowded thoroughfares while exotic and lively music seemed to manifest from the very air of the city itself.

  They settled most of the wagons in a long line along the city wall, paying a shopkeeper two nights’ rent in advance to pull the main performing wagons into the alley along his place of business. There they would entertain the city dwellers as night fell, although some of the performers—Barnaby, old Mother, Delilah—set up works right away. Even Lou took the opportunity to be off on the hunt. It wasn’t the best location in the city to be certain, but their prospects were better here than anywhere they had been in the past week. Roman helped shoo the last of the animals into a temporary corral in a corner created where the alley met the city wall and then turned to Zeus.

  “Have you need to be away from the troupe?” he asked plainly.

  “Not at once, big fellow,” he answered with a grin. “What would you have me do?”

  A moment later, Roman strode through the narrow alley, his eyes scanning the heads of the band in search of long black hair and—

  “Isra,” he said near her ear as he gently took hold of her elbow, pulling her away from the stack of beaded necklaces she was helping Delilah untangle.

  She spun around, a smile already on her face. “My lord, how may I serve you?”

  “I fancy a walk about the bazaar. Would you care to join me?” He knew his grin was foolish, but he didn’t care.