The Gypsy King Page 5

  But she didn’t have time to think, because the owner— whose wrist was still trapped in the thief’s iron grip— winced again and muttered, “Very well. I promise I shan’t strike the girl until I know what you’re about.”

  “Excellent,” said the thief. Releasing the owner’s wrist, he deliberately wiped his hand across the front of his doublet. Then he turned his very blue eyes on Persephone, touched his throat and murmured, “I thirst. Might I trouble you to fetch me that tankard of ale now?”

  Persephone wanted to kick him in the shins to show that she wasn’t afraid of him, that she didn’t think him clever and that whatever he was up to, if it caused her grief, discomfort or distress, she’d make sure he paid dearly for it. However, feeling that—for the moment, at least—a more circumspect approach was warranted, she bobbed him a stiff curtsey, said, “Right away … my lord,” and stepped past him, taking care to trod heavily upon the toe of his boot as she passed.

  When she got back from the shed where the ale and other provisions were stored, the thief and the owner were seated at the rough-hewn table in the corner, their heads bent in conversation. Surreptitiously, Persephone’s eyes darted to the floor in search of her dropped dagger, but it was gone. Looking up in confusion, she saw the thief gazing at her with an inscrutable expression on his handsome face, and she knew—she knew!—that he’d somehow managed to pocket her dagger without the owner noticing.

  Persephone was so affronted by his audacity that she forgot all about her resolve to take a more circumspect approach. Stomping across the room as best she could in her heavy leg irons, she slammed the two tankards of ale down on the table and snapped, “There’s your ale!”

  Predictably, ale foamed up and spilled over the brims of the tankards.

  “Clumsy!” cried the owner, slurping frantically to avoid spillage.

  “Thank you,” murmured the thief.

  Ignoring both of them, Persephone removed the badly charred Lord Pirate from the fire and stormed off to fetch bread and cheese. When she got back she was surprised to hear the owner praising her.

  “… terribly strong,” he said, giving Persephone’s thin biceps a squeeze, “though you wouldn’t think it to look at her.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” agreed the thief. “She looks rather scrawny.”

  Setting the bread and cheese down on the table, Persephone smiled pleasantly at the thief, then calmly cast about for something to plunge into his eye.

  “Not scrawny,” protested the owner hastily. “Wiry. Like a plough horse.”

  “A plough horse,” mused the thief. His eyes wandered over Persephone. “Yes, I see what you mean.”

  I don’t need something to plunge into his eye, Persephone corrected herself. I need something to plunge into his heart.

  “Plus, she don’t eat much,” bragged the owner. “And she knows her way around animals, and you can set her to almost any task and she’ll do it twice as good as you ever could have done it yourself and—”

  “I thought you said she was a lazy, useless good-for-nothing,” interrupted the thief.

  The owner began to laugh so hard that his whole head turned the colour of a blood blister. “Oh, ho!” he blustered. “I said that—yes! But … but.…”

  “But you didn’t mean it?” prompted the thief.

  “Exactly!” exclaimed the owner. “I only said it because … because.…”

  “Because you’re in the habit of insulting her?” suggested the thief.

  “Yes!” cried the owner, clearly relieved to find himself so well understood. “Yes, it’s nothing but a habit! The truth is, I’m terribly fond of the girl.”

  Persephone watched in amazement as the owner punctuated this remarkable statement with a sniffle. In the five years since he’d acquired her, he’d never once asked her name nor anything else about her. She was his slave—more important than his goats and chickens, less important than his cows and horses. If there was one thing she was sure of in this world, it was that the owner was not fond of her.

  “In fact, I don’t know what I’d do around here without her,” he mumbled now as he gazed up at Persephone with what he obviously believed was a kindly expression on his fat, ugly face.

  It was like being ogled by a demented hog.

  “Even so,” said the thief, “you must be reasonable.”

  “Reasonable!” said the owner, flinging his arms into the air so that the ripe smell of unwashed armpits wafted through the low-ceilinged room. “What is reasonable, m’lord, when we’re speaking of such a jewel?”

  Casually, the thief took a small velvet bag from the front of his doublet and tossed it onto the table.

  At the sound of clinking coins, Persephone froze. She’d seen purses like that change hands before, and she knew what it meant when they did. The blood in her veins turned to ice as she realized what a fool she’d been to listen to the men’s conversation but not to hear it, and to have forgotten—even for an instant—that, like the owner’s horses and cows and chickens and goats, she could and would be sold if it suited his purposes.

  As it did now, it would seem.

  Biting the inside of her cheek to keep from immediately crying out in protest, Persephone desperately sought a way to prevent this from happening. It wasn’t as though she liked the owner—she didn’t, she hated him—but she knew him, and, more importantly, she knew how to control him. Moreover, this farm was the closest thing she’d had to a home since the merchant had lost her in a game of dice on that terrible night so long ago. And she knew and loved all the animals—even the ill-tempered old sow—and if she sometimes didn’t get quite enough to eat, and if she suffered the occasional beating, well, she knew from hard, personal experience that it could be worse.

  Much worse.

  “Coin of the realm,” said the thief now, as he nudged the little velvet bag toward the owner.

  The owner eyed it greedily but made no move to pick it up.

  “You could buy two fine slaves for that price,” encouraged the thief.

  The owner licked his lips. “Well, then, so could you,” he said.

  The thief shrugged. “Yes,” he agreed. “But I’d not be able to do so until I reached a town with a decent-sized slave market, and it suits my purposes to purchase a slave immediately. My other girl died three days past, and I’ve some ways to go before I rejoin my retinue on the road to Parthania—”

  “No!” blurted Persephone.

  Both men looked up at her.

  Persephone cleared her throat. “No,” she repeated, more calmly this time. Focusing her full attention on the owner, she continued in a low, persuasive voice. “You need me. You know you do. I tend to everything about this place—everything—and your wealth and circumstance have improved immeasurably since I came here. Perhaps you could buy two slaves for the price this man would pay to acquire me, but you know as well as I that two slaves would eat twice as much and work half as hard.”

  “Perhaps,” retorted the owner sourly. “But at least I would have a hope that they would behave like slaves instead of disrespecting me and running away and sympathizing with the scum who would rob me blind given half a chance!”

  Studiously avoiding even the tiniest glance in the direction of the “scum” who’d most recently robbed the owner, Persephone swallowed hard and murmured, “I … I know I haven’t always behaved exactly as a slave should. However—”

  “You really want to stay here?” interrupted the owner in an almost-kindly voice.

  Persephone could feel the thief’s eyes upon her as she nodded.

  “All right then,” said the owner, who waited until he saw Persephone sag with relief to add, “beg.”

  “What?” she said, stiffening at once.

  The owner leaned forward. “You heard me, girl. You want to stay here?” he asked with a slow, mean smile. “Get down on your knees and beg for it.”

  For the merest fraction of an instant, Persephone actually considered making things easier on herself
by doing as he’d asked.

  Then she had a vision of herself on her knees before the owner—head bowed, back bent, hands clasped in supplication—and she decided on a different tack altogether.

  Throwing back her shoulders, she lifted her chin, looked him straight in the eye and calmly said, “I’ll see you in hell first, pig.”

  Then—to make absolutely certain that he understood how she truly felt about him—she spat in his face.

  With a mighty roar, the owner leapt from his seat, but the thief got to him before he got to her. Lifting the owner right up off the ground, the thief hurled him back into his seat so hard that the owner grunted with the force of it.

  “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s bad business to mishandle the merchandise?” said the thief, who sounded as though he was trying not to laugh.

  “Did you see what that … that stupid cow did to me?” ranted the owner as he furiously wiped Persephone’s spittle off his face. “She spat at me! At me! I’ll kill her. I swear it! I’ll drag her down to the stream by her hair and drown the life out of her! I’ll wring her scrawny neck! I’ll—”

  “I’ll throw in this pendant if you’ll sell her to me,” offered the thief, throwing the piece on the table.

  “Done!” screamed the owner.

  “Of course,” continued the thief, “for that price, I also expect to take ownership of any possessions belonging to her.”

  “Fine!”

  “And the leg irons—”

  “You may have them as well!” snarled the owner. He fumbled inside the pocket of his dirty breeches for a moment before snatching out a rusted key and practically hurling it at the thief, who deftly slipped it into his own pocket. “And on top of all that, I’ll give you a piece of advice for free, m’lord—keep this one locked down tight and beat her hard and often. As you can see, I was clearly too soft a hand!”

  “Clearly,” said the thief, with a glance at Persephone’s bruised eye. “Now, have you the original bill of sale as proof of ownership?”

  The owner stopped thrashing and frothing at once. “Well, now,” he said, looking as shifty as a fox in a henhouse. “I’m, uh, not quite sure where—”

  Persephone’s heart leapt as she saw her chance. “He doesn’t have it,” she said quickly, “because he never bought me. He caught me after I’d run away from … from another place and he gave me the choice of being sent back to that place or else staying here.”

  “And you decided to stay here?” asked the thief in a voice that sounded almost pitying.

  Persephone ignored the question—and the tone. “The point,” she continued, “is that I am stolen property and if my true owner were ever to happen upon me in your possession, you would not only hang for it but your family name would be ruined forever—a fate, as you well know, that would be far worse than death for any nobleman worth his salt, my lord.”

  The owner—who was now clutching the pendant and purse to his chest, as though in terror that “Lord Bothwell” would suffer a sudden attack of conscience and snatch them both back—immediately began babbling protestations, but the thief silenced him with an elegantly raised hand.

  Then he turned to Persephone.

  “You make a good point,” he said gently. “However, as I’ve never cared much for the name ‘Bothwell’ and as I’ve yet to meet a man who could force a noose around my neck, I’m content to take my chances. The deal is done, Mistress, bill of sale or no. Come, let us collect your possessions and be on our way.”

  FIVE

  IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG to collect Persephone’s meagre possessions. The dried-up tail of the rat who’d once been her best friend; the comb she’d painstakingly whittled out of a single piece of wood three summers past. Her blanket and her nightshift; the braided, berry-dyed twine she used in place of ribbon to tie back her beautiful hair. The scrap of lace she’d torn from the hem of Cookie’s apron the night she’d been dragged screaming and crying from the merchant’s house.

  And, of course, the knife she’d stolen from the thief the previous evening.

  “That’s mine,” announced the owner as soon as he’d recovered from the nasty shock of seeing his former slave draw such a formidable weapon from beneath her straw bedding. “I’ve been searching and searching for it these last months. I am so pleased to have found it! It belonged to my grandfather, you see, and—”

  “You lie,” said the thief absently as he tugged the knife from Persephone’s resistant grasp.

  The owner gasped at the insult. “Now, you listen here, m’lord!” he blustered. “You’ve no right to say such a thing to me! I said you could take ownership of the girl and her possessions—”

  The point of the thief’s knife was at the base of the owner’s throat with frightening speed. “And I said you lie,” said the thief in a voice that was all the more menacing for its softness. “Do not test my patience, sir, for I find I like you not at all, and if you push me, you will find that I have as little fear of the noose when it comes to bloody murder as I do when it comes to purchasing stolen slaves.”

  The owner was so stunned by this outburst that his only response was to stare at the thief with his mouth hanging open. The thief glared back at him for a long, tense moment before removing the knife from his throat with a great show of reluctance.

  “Come,” he said to Persephone, through his teeth. “Let us leave this place before I commit yet another hanging offence.”

  Mutely, Persephone looked around “this place”—at the spot where she’d laid her head for four years’ worth of nights; at the rotten boards and rusted implements that were as familiar to her as her own hands. At the grumpy old sow and her rooting piglets; at the silly cock who preened and strutted before the magnificently uninterested chickens. At the half-grown kittens wrestling in the hay; at the spindly-legged kid who bleated and butted anxiously at his mother’s teats before finally managing to latch on. Riveted by the sight of the suckling kid, Persephone held her breath and stared as he drank greedily of his mother’s warm milk, and when his eyes began to roll in contentment, her own began to sting.

  “Are you all right?” murmured the thief, touching her elbow.

  Persephone blinked once, and the sting was gone. “Fine,” she muttered, jerking her arm away from him. “Come. Let us leave this place.”

  His horse was nothing like dear, broken-down old Fleet, who’d begun charging about the yard kicking at the fence boards and whinnying in panic the instant he’d caught sight of his beloved Persephone walking away from him. Rather, the thief ’s horse was a beautiful, high-bred bay— expertly shod, with a finely groomed mane and exquisite leather tacking polished to a soft shine. The thief had just made a show of pulling on his ill-fitting riding gloves and unwinding the reins from the hitching post when Cur came dashing across the yard, snapping his teeth and snarling fearsomely. With an undignified yelp— and all the grace of a drunken ox—the thief scrambled atop the horse, who whinnied her displeasure at this oafish behaviour and immediately reared up. Cursing mightily, “Lord Bothwell” somehow managed to catch two handfuls of mane just before he went sliding off the back of his mount. Before he managed to do so, however, his pigtail came loose, setting free his auburn curls and instantly giving him the look of a pirate thief once more. The owner—who’d thusfar been standing well back of crazy “Lord Bothwell” and his knife—narrowed his piggy little eyes in sudden suspicion and took a step forward.

  “All is well!” called the thief cheerily, waving him back. “It was, uh, just your dog—”

  “He’s my dog,” interrupted Persephone, dropping to her knees and burying her face in Cur’s smelly fur. “And he’s coming with us.”

  “What? No!” exclaimed the thief. “Absolutely not. I categorically forbid it!”

  “He’s coming,” repeated Persephone. Rising to her feet, she tucked her bundled belongings under one arm and gestured with her free hand—first to Cur and then to the owner. When she was certain that the latter had understood he
r gesture and been suitably insulted by it, she turned and began striding purposefully away from the thief, the chain of her leg irons rattling with defiance.

  Cur bounded after her, barking with joy.

  With significantly less joy, the thief chirruped his still-skittish horse into motion and cantered after both of them.

  “I understand how difficult this must be for you,” he said as he drew alongside Persephone, “and I am not without sympathy. However, for reasons that will reveal themselves in time, I’m afraid I must stand firm on my decision that the dog cannot accompany us.”

  Instead of answering him, Persephone called a greeting to Ivan, who swooped down and landed on her shoulder.

  “You can’t bring the hawk, either,” said the thief with a trace of complaint in his voice.

  Ivan regarded him with almost as much respect one would afford a particularly disgusting slug. Persephone kept walking.

  “Oh, all right,” grumbled the thief at length, throwing one hand in the air. “You may bring them both. But they must fend for themselves, and if they cause us any delays whatsoever, we will leave them behind. Agreed?”

  “No,” said Persephone.

  She flinched inwardly immediately after she said this—worried that perhaps she’d pushed her luck too far—but to her surprise, the thief threw back his head and laughed unreservedly. She watched him warily, just in case this sudden laughter was a sign that he was becoming unhinged.

  It wasn’t, apparently, because the only thing he did after he’d recovered from his fit of mirth was to look down at her with a strangely exultant expression on his handsome face and say, “Your former owner was right— you really aren’t a very good slave at all, you know that?”