‘I was only trying to help.’ Gabriel wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘Helewise and Vernon’s stomachs are growling and the potatoes are rotten.’
That was because she pinched them out of a hog’s trough and counted herself fortunate that she grabbed them before anyone else since they were only half-rotten. She was working, but it only accounted for some of their needs. More often, she depended on what she could scavenge.
All of them thieves, none of them good. Her, least of all. That was the reason her family left her in Paris when she was five. Fifteen years didn’t make a difference. She was still appalling at it.
Now this. Four loaves from the same baker meant they’d be noticed. She’d take back two of the loaves immediately while they were still fresh.
First though, she’d observe the baker interact with his customers. If he wasn’t kind or reasonable when she returned them, they’d be hunted the next time they walked the market. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take. This was the best home they’d had and she knew they wouldn’t find another before the winter ended.
‘I need to go.’
‘Don’t,’ Gabriel begged. ‘Let me do it. I did the wrong.’
Was this how he had lost his parents? They went out, committed some crime and couldn’t return? These questions would never be answered, though she’d tried that first day and the next to see them privately. To this day, Gabriel said nothing of what he was stealing for the punishment of losing his ear. In fact, he didn’t talk about his childhood, ever.
She bent to bring her eyes level with his. ‘You did nothing wrong. Please don’t think that. But I need you to stay with Vernon and Helewise to keep them safe or help them escape. You know this.’
Gabriel clenched his jaw and she glimpsed the man he’d be. One didn’t stay a child long on the streets.
‘I’ll be back for you.’
Gabriel shook, sneezed and shook some more.
She wouldn’t be his parents. She wouldn’t leave any of them. They were a family now. One she’d found, one she protected, one she was giving her life for.
‘No matter what it takes, Gabriel. No matter what, I’ll return.’
Down the winding pathways Reynold followed the woman carrying the child. She made one more offer for him to hold it, but he refused and she didn’t ask again.
Another turn in the muddied, roughly cobbled streets. This area had once been grand, but now held the musk of ages, the patina brushed away to show instead the mortar underneath.
He had picked this part of neglected Paris to reside in because it contained no lavish homes. No grand balls or people with influence. In every city he stayed in he avoided those parts of town.
It didn’t suit his games to be noticed and ostentatious wealth was always noticed. He made only one exception to the rule of absolute anonymity: his books. He had too many to hide and they were far too precious for him to leave behind. They travelled with him to every home. So, despite the many pains he took to blend into the fabric of every city he visited, his books were always seen. Only an individual with an obscene amount of wealth could own such luxury. But what could he do? They were his family, his sole comfort. At least they were quiet and could be kept at home.
As he should be doing now. Another turn and the woman stopped in front of a door.
This home was more derelict than the rest. Windows were cracked and curtains were scorched from the sun; from this distance, it was clear the silk was thin and frayed. Even the daub was crumbling into the street, forcing the wattle to look more like a skeleton than a house. He glanced down the street. Most of the other houses in this area were boarded up. This was the only one occupied.
If it was occupied.
‘She’s in there,’ the woman said, shifting the child again. It was awake and the angle she held it, with its head on her shoulder, showed the full length. Yes, this was a child who could be his.
His. A burgeoning warmth, hope, bloomed inside his chest and he crushed it. Cursed ever reading Odysseus’s tale and giving him ideas that there could be more for him. Nothing and no one ever was.
There would be no hearth and home at the end of his journey. There would be only death. His only hope was that he took his family down with him.
‘Let’s go in.’
She looked to the child, then him.
He had no intention of taking that child now or later. He was free to block attacks and to make one of his own. Unburdened, he was free to leave and continue his games.
The woman eyed him, surprised he refused the child. ‘One look and you’ll know it’s her you spilled your seed in,’ she said. ‘You’ll know this burden’s yours.’
Even if it was...it didn’t matter. He was too close to what he’d been born to do: to take down his family.
‘Then we shouldn’t tarry much more,’ he said, fully intending for her to enter first. ‘One more look and you’ll be a rich woman. What’s keeping you?’
The indecision in her eyes turned to greed again, to cruelty. Ah, yes, he was familiar with people like her. They were easy to manipulate.
She pushed open the door. The sounds and the smells accosted him immediately.
Sobbing. A woman’s cries as if everything in her world was gone and missing. Deep racks of grief interrupted by coughs and wheezes. By wet gurgles, like a clogged brook.
Like blood that didn’t stay within the body, but came up through the lungs and out of mouths and noses, forced through tiny pores in the skin.
Which explained the smells. The dank smell of mould, a leaking roof allowing mildew to move along the walls. That smell fought for dominance over the acrid smell of piss and human waste.
But it was a deep cloying scent that permeated the entire house and settled against his very soul. Death. Human decay, as if they walked straight into a desecrated tomb of newly buried bodies.
It stopped him in his tracks.
‘Told you to stay at your fancy home, didn’t I?’ the woman sneered at his side. ‘I told you to stay and take the babe, but you had to come. Suits me fine, but I was only trying to be nice, to do you a favour. Had to make it difficult for me. Wasn’t as though I wanted to come back to this either. I’ve had to suffer enough these last months, waiting for you to return. Should make you pay me more for coming back when I thought I didn’t have to.’
What was wrong with him this evening? Why did he stop? He didn’t let boredom overcome his safety and allow strangers in his home, especially those he was soon to kill.
‘Cilla? Cilla, is that you?’ A woman’s thinned voice wafted from another room. Cultured and reedy with sickness. ‘Do you have her, Cilla? Did you bring her back to me?’
The wretch, Cilla, glanced his way, her eyes narrowing. He shook his head once which was enough for her to understand she needed to stay quiet about his presence. It didn’t hurt that it suited her purposes as well.
With a shrug, she swept into the other room. ‘I’m here with your bastard, my lady.’
‘Oh!’ Fresh tears, the sound of joy and gratefulness. ‘I thought you’d left. I thought you took her.’
Reynold held back. He needed a bit more exchange between these two to satisfy his purposes.
‘I merely took her for a walk,’ Cilla said. ‘She needed