Not Juliet (2 page)

The acrid smell
left behind by the blaze choked her and made her eyes water. Where
was everyone? She ducked through a grey cloud of smoke, tripped and
fell over on her hands and knees.

“Get back!”

Riella heeded
the shouted warning and backed away, to lean against the truck. She
fought to get her bearings, and sucked in a hot lungful of air only
half-saturated by floating ash. Trembling with anxiety, Riella
forced herself to focus on only one detail at a time, and to do so
in a calm and composed manner – as calm and composed as any person
standing on the edge of an inferno looking in would ever be capable
of remaining.

Smoke, lots of
it, engulfed the whole of the space that had been the camp’s
square, the meeting place where husbands settled their dealings,
elders passed judgments, children played and wives traded secrets.
The stench of destruction was strong enough to make her retch.

Right in the
middle, out of a large pile of charred remains, tongues of fire
lashed toward the skies, looking smaller and smaller all the time.
Firemen were shooting jets of water at the last stronghold of fire,
giving the impression of relaxed authority. They must have
everything under control; probably got there just in time.

Straight ahead
– devastation. Two of the trailers had been completely gutted and
one more stood close enough to catch. Six men were pushing and
tugging at a fourth, desperately trying to roll it out of the path
of danger. All the tarpaulins that had been stretched between the
trailers to provide some protection from the elements were now
hanging from their hooks in charred shreds. One of the older women,
Sara, held two small children to her bosom as she fled out of the
swirling smoke’s way.

“This is all
your fault!” Riella jumped at the sound of the hateful voice. “You
brought us so much bad luck with your wayward ways, it’s a miracle
we’re not all dead and with the spirits, simply for having known
you. I don’t know how you can live with yourself. You’re so
polluted, you must be black inside!”

The woman
finished her tirade with a harsh noise, and next she knew, Riella
felt a glob of slimy mucus stick on her right cheek. She didn’t
dare move a muscle, even after the soft jangle of the woman’s
bangles died off in the distance. Unnatural fear clenched her heart
with a physical hurt that rooted her to the spot. She was afraid to
turn or wipe the spit off, worried about the vile words as much as
the ridiculous possibility she may have, indeed, caused something
so dreadful to happen to her people. She may have moved out, got a
job and a house of her own, but that didn’t mean she loved them any
less. They were her people, her kin, and she was proud of them all,
proud to have been born and raised in their midst.

Tears sprung
forth from her eyes and she sniffed as quietly as possible,
trembling in the wake of such devastation. A strong arm circled her
shoulders and she jumped, then her brain processed the fact that it
was a male arm, solid and well-muscled, and she relaxed slightly.
She wiped her cheek on her sleeve as he tightened his arm and drew
her to his chest.

“No one’s hurt,
you know,” he said, and she sobbed louder.

“Kai,” she
murmured.

“Hey there,
sweetheart. Come, let’s take you to your father, so you can see for
yourself.”

She sniffed
again, wiped her nose on her sleeve and let him drag her away from
the commotion. Outside the door to his caravan, she stopped
him.

“I need to
know, Kai. I need to know what’s going on, and I need to know right
now.”

She was the
king’s daughter, his only offspring, and she knew only too well
what happened when a king grew weak in her world. She let her
frustration at being shunned, resentment at her own inability to do
more to protect her father from afar and self-hate at the scarcity
of her own visits, mingle with the horror of the night, the very
clear possibility that her father had been targeted, and then added
to the mix a healthy dose of anger. Kai had known her all her life.
He would understand. He would tell her.

Kai stared at
her, unsmiling, for a long moment, deliberating. She gave him time.
Eventually, his features tightened. A muscle in his jaw twitched,
then he grabbed her by the arm and led her away, into the
shadows.

“Come. I don’t
like it, but you deserve to know.”

“Dad! Why didn’t you
tell me? Dad!”

Riella stormed
through the caravan door and turned straight towards the large bed
at the front end. Goliath Petulengro lay back on a mound of plump
pillows, breathing slowly, shallowly. Riella’s hands moved to cover
her mouth in an involuntary action. “Oh, Dad! I… I’m sorry. I… I
should have –”

“Nonsense,
child. Come closer.” He waved a graying hand feebly through the air
and she approached.

Riella stepped
up to the bed and caught his hand between hers. She knelt on the
ornately carved border surrounding the king’s resting place and
brought his hand to her forehead in worship.

“I hadn’t
realized how…” She left the sentence unfinished. What could she
have said? How ill you look? How close to death you are? How fine
I’ve cut it, leaving it so late to come and visit?

Goliath let out
a quiet chuckle. “It’s only fair I went. If we never died, how
would the world be able to renew itself, huh, baby?”

Riella cleared
her throat in a last-ditch attempt to stop the flow of tears. It
didn’t work. “I miss you, Dad.”

“I know.”

“I love
you.”

He nodded and
smiled. “That’s pretty obvious, too. I love you, too, baby.”

“Have you been
back to hospital? What did they say?”

Goliath
remained silent.

A soft hand
cupped her shoulder and her mother’s voice, fainter than a whisper,
brushed the hair around her ear. “He’s better off being here, among
his own people, where we can look after him and show him love until
the very last moment.”

Riella
bristled. “He needs the latest treatments, the best money can buy.
It’s called technology, Mom. It can keep him alive, or… or at least
keep him with us for a while longer.”

“Yes, but at
what price? I’m not talking money, sweetheart, but you know only
too well how prejudiced people are, how they’ll look at the color
of his skin, at his clothes, at the ‘no fixed address’ entry on his
forms, and immediately decide they’re superior. That alone would
cause him more harm than good, don’t you think? He won’t receive
the care gadjee would. At best, he’ll be lucky to be ignored. What
if I let him go and they hurt him? People are such cruel creatures.
At least here he’s safe.”

“I can speak
for myself, Isadora,” Goliath said in a strong voice, but Riella
spoke over him.

“Safe? Did you
take a look outside, Mother? That fire truck is the last minute
camp decoration, is it? Because it looks a bit out of place to me.
I will agree, your hospital assessment is pretty spot-on, if you
ignore all the health benefits and concentrate only on the
negatives. We could fix that by never leaving his side. We could
take shifts – me, you, Kai…”

“I don’t want
to go, Riella.”

Again, Riella
ignored her father. “But how you can call this place safe, I don’t
know!”

“That fire was
probably an accident. A burner left on, or kids at play…”

Riella stood
up, took a step back and stuck her hands, fingers splayed, into her
mass of curly hair, growling in frustration. When she felt in
control of her voice once again, she rounded on them. Her eyes
pierced her father’s as she spoke, unsmiling.

“I know.”

Goliath and
Isadora exchanged a charged glance, then Isadora stood and made her
way to the kitchen end of the trailer – her way of giving father
and daughter space to talk.

Goliath’s gaze
followed his wife’s retreating form and rested on her a few seconds
longer. Finally, he turned his heavy eyes on his daughter.

“What exactly
do you think you know?”

“I know about
the threats.”

“Who told
you?”

“It doesn’t
matter. I doubt there is one person in this camp who doesn’t know.
A king being challenged is a big deal, Dad, and you’re in no
position to fight.”

“Don’t you
think I know that?” he snapped. Riella averted her eyes to the
floor, ashamed for being so blunt and disrespectful, her father’s
hard stare boring into her skull like it always did when he was
reprimanding her.

She felt it
when he looked away, like a physical weight lifting off her
shoulders, and she searched his face in earnest. “I didn’t mean it
like that, Dad. I love you, and if I could, I would fight the world
for you. I would do whatever I could to keep you with me.”

He grabbed her
hand and pulled her down to the bed, then lifted his skinny fingers
to stroke her cheek gingerly. “I love you, too, baby girl, but
there is nothing you can do. About any of this. I will not disturb
the order of the universe by fighting the inevitable. And as for my
challenger… it is only fair the people get a new, worthy leader
when I’m gone. They’ll need a king, and as you’ve just pointed out,
I’m not much use to them or anyone else anymore.”

“Dad…”

“Shhh. No
words, baby girl. It is the way it should be. My only wish is that
I could go in peace, without struggle or humiliation. This,” he
gestured along his disease-racked body, “is enough to deal
with.”

Riella held him
closely, yet gingerly, her brow pressed to his, until his grip on
her hand slackened and he fell asleep.

The train jerked
sideways on the tracks, but didn’t slow any. Riella swayed in her
seat, her eyes flickering over the scenery unseeing, blind to the
beauty of the Tuscan landscape, fuzzy with tears. This was her
seventh trip away from Rome. Today, she was on her way to Florence.
The Romany campsite on the outskirts of Rome had been her first
port of call, as the information she and Kai had managed to pull
together seemed to point at the very powerful Italian patriarch,
Cosimo Anziano, but she had not been able to get any closer to
talking to him than if she’d stayed in England.

Each day, she’d
entered the strange camp, and each day she’d been sent to a
different destination. She’d had no reason to doubt their
intentions at first; no one had thrown a party in her honor, but
then again, no one had stabbed her, either. After the first two
fruitless days she did suspect they were wasting her time, but she
persevered. It was probably done as some form of protection for the
king. They were watching her from afar, trying to determine whether
or not she might be dangerous. Whether or not she might give up and
go away. So she kept going back, day after day, thinking she was
bound to trip over some clue or other, or perhaps find a more
helpful person, someone who would finally point her in the right
direction, or maybe they would, at last, decide she was no danger
at all.

But enough was
enough. This was going to be her last trip on the say-so of some
minion of the gypsy king. If she couldn’t find him today, she was
going to put on her battle gear and stomp through every trailer on
the site until she found him. This journey wasn’t some holiday tour
around Europe. She had a purpose: to talk to the man that mattered
and ask him – beg him if she had to – to call a ceasefire on the
assassination attempts on her father. He deserved some peace in his
final days.

Kai had
confirmed it with the fire crew – it had been arson. The arsonist
had not even attempted to make it look like an accident or a
natural occurrence, and Riella had every intention to do everything
in her power to make the threats stop, by any means available to
the scared-stiff daughter of the English Romany king.

She’d sell
herself, if it came to it. Seven days on long train journeys had
provided plenty of opportunity for pondering her options, so she’d
done a lot of thinking. She may have moved out of the gypsy camp
and into a house more appropriate for a gadji, but she still
followed Romanipen, the traditional code of her people. And that
meant she was still a virgin. It was the most valuable thing she
had; she would gladly exchange that for the promise from the
Italian rom baro that her father would be allowed to die in
peace.

Failing that,
she would kill the bastard.

Two hours of walking
across town to locate the address given to her by the people at the
Roma campsite, and she knew she wouldn’t meet Cosimo Anziano that
day either. There was nothing she could do about it until she
returned to Rome, so she decided to make the most of her trip and
visit one or two of the eighty or so museums in the home of the
European Renaissance.

Florence was
indeed a spectacular city. A small smile on her face, Riella
skipped towards the Uffizi Gallery, choosing a route that took her
through Mercato Nuovo. She passed a restaurant on her right, and
hurried along the cobbles of the pedestrianized narrow lane that
led to the market.

The market
itself was not big, but it was chock-full of tourist souvenirs and
she couldn’t resist picking up a few to add to her collection. She
placed the smaller items in her backpack, but the beautiful,
hand-painted carnival mask, she kept in her hand.

She was just
placing a coin in the bronze wild boar’s mouth, the Porcellino,
making a silent wish to return to Florence one day, when she caught
sight of a face she knew.

“Zamir,” she
whispered to no one in particular.
What is he doing here
,
she wondered. Zamir was one of the six trusted advisers one could
always expect to see around Goliath Petulengro, and one of her
father’s oldest friends.

She blinked and
he was gone.