The Gypsy King (9 page)

The Gypsy King

into the lovers’ room. The voices quickly became louder and the arguing became more intense. One man was shouting and sounded abrasive and very drunk. There was a loud crash, then a brief moment of silence. Veronique gasped as she could only guess what had happened between the men.

She started to get out of bed, but Ahndray pulled her back briskly.

“Stay here, Princess.” He held her hand tightly in his. It was quiet downstairs, then suddenly someone erupted and was bounding up the stairs very quickly with a powerful stride. The lovers recognized the voice now barreling toward them and they looked at each other with dread. They squeezed each other’s hand and knew there was no time for questions. There was nowhere to run and Veronique cursed herself for the second time in as many days.

She hissed through her teeth, “As fast and

beautiful as the passion we just shared came rolling over us both, it is being destroyed again, just as quickly!” She felt her heart burning a dark hole in her chest and she heard the marionette’s strings that had been holding her up for the past several weeks snap, one by one.

Before they moved to get out of the bed, the door exploded into the room and Veronique’s screams blasted throughout the house. Chunks of wood from the doorframe sailed into the room as splinters rained across the floor and the bed.

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Veronique shrieked as Leone burst into the room like a thundering rhino, snorting and kicking the remains of the door to the side. Then he stopped and stood grunting at the footboard of their disheveled bed.

He was breathing hard and fast and they could both tell immediately, he was drunk and lethally dangerous.

* * * *

Leone let his eyes adjust to the dimly lit room, then quickly surveyed the scene. He fingered the sword swaying back and forth at his side, catching the moonlight. He glared at Veronique as she pulled the sheet up to her neck to hide her nakedness from him. Ahndray looked at his

brother and his blood ran cold as he realized he was seeing a stranger. He tried to speak but Leone’s glare cut him off.

Leone did not wait for excuses, reasons, tears or forgiveness. He unsheathed his Eppe smoothly and held it out in front of him so they could both see it. He rocked back and forth, the wine and emotions leaving him unbalanced and mercilessly unhinged.

In the shadows and crags of his face, Veronique thought she saw tears and, for a brief moment, felt sorry for him and for what she had done to him, but she felt helpless.
Could he understand my pain?

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Anymore than I can understand his?
She wondered as she stared at her emotionally wounded ex-love.

“Leone. Wait!” she managed to shout.

“No whores!” He lunged forward with such

speed and intention, he caught them both

unaware and, although drunk, his aim was acutely precise. In a blur of silver, his furious blade slashed Veronique’s face from the bottom of her chin up to her ear. Before she could scream in pain, bright red blood splattered the sheets. She desperately clutched the side of her face while she screamed hysterically and held her torn flesh.

Blood gushed and rippled between her fingers and streamed down her forearm. Ahndray fell toward her, but held fast as Leone dropped his blade between them, separating him from her.

“Now nobody will want you, tramp. That

wound will not kill you, but you can wear your scar of shame the rest of your life!” Leone bellowed and glared at her, vindicated and

unforgiving. He wiped his blade on the edge of the bed and shot a quick glance at his brother.

* * * *

Ahndray cringed while his Princess used the

sheets as a bandage. Horror seeped into his heart as he helplessly watched them quickly change from crisp white to sanguinary red. Anger swelled from deep within him, but there was nothing he 88

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could do, yet. Leone’s blade separated them from each other just as effectively as it separated Leone from the both of them.

Leone turned sideways revealing to his brother a second sword. He swiftly unlatched it from his belt and threw it at his brother.

The sword landed practically in his lap and Ahndray recoiled from it as if it were a poisonous snake.

“You will fight me,” Leone said in a tone that chilled Ahndray’s blood to a slow crawl in his veins. “It will be a fair fight.”

Ahndray was too shocked to move. He stared at Veronique who was bleeding profusely and

sobbing. He was trapped. They were trapped. He tried to remember the last time he held a sword.

Ten years ago, maybe? What had he read about the Gurhkas in Eastern India? The British SAS?

Israel’s Mossad? None of it helped him now.

“Fight me now or the next cut will be to her throat!” Leone yelled.

“I will not fight you, brother.” Ahndray’s mind was racing, but he remained calm. He left the sword where it lay, but slowly slid out of the bed, stood up and wrapped a sheet around his waist and tied it off deftly. “I can explain what happened, Leone.”

“Shut up and fight me, you little bastard! You betrayed me and you betrayed our family. Now you will find out what loyalty means. You and 89

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your little slut whore are going to find out,” Leone hissed.

Veronique was sobbing loudly, but she didn’t move from their bed. Her wound was dripping blood onto the sheets and the searing pain made her face feel like it was on fire.

Leone looked at the bloody sheets and the bed and laughed at her. Then he turned to his brother and snarled. “I guess that’s not the only blood you’ve seen lately, eh, little brother. Did she bleed like a stuck pig when you fucked her for the first time?” Leone spit at him and raised his voice to a roar so his voice shook the room. “Where did you find the nerve to fornicate with my fiancé?”

“I love her, Leone. And it wasn’t like that. We were going to tell you. We tried. She tried. We didn’t mean for this to happen, Leone. Christ, think of your family, our family. Think about our father, Leone.”

“Fight me! Goddamn you!” He rushed toward

Ahndray and slapped him hard across the face.

The sound made Veronique yelp as her lover’s head spun sideways and he dropped it sullenly toward the cold wood floor.

“Take the sword and be a man, fight for your whore’s honor.” He slapped him again.

Anger built in Ahndray.

“Look at you. You’re wearing a diaper in your whore’s bed and you can’t even fight me like a man.” Leone ridiculed him loudly, raising his 90

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voice over Veronique’s screams and sobs.

Ahndray had no choice but to keep his

attention on Leone as he reached for the sword and smoothly began removing it from its

scabbard. He watched the blade as he pulled it out slowly. He grinned as if he was going to enjoy the chance to stop this madness. Fear gripped him as he saw Leone grin at his false bravado, wobble a bit and blink his eyes hard to clear his head.

Ahndray knew his brother was a far better

swordsman than he would ever be. As the sword was a little more than halfway out from its sheath, he yanked it violently with all his might and lunged toward the drunken monster with a

perfect stroke aimed directly toward his gut.

Leone’s blade moved like a bolt of lightning, crashing into Ahndray’s thrusting sword, sending it careening off to the side and the slight opening was all he needed. He circled his blade up and around and plunged it straight into the breast of his little brother.

Ahndray coughed and staggered, but remained standing. Shock spread from his face to his heart.

Leone stamped his foot on the floor loudly and pulled his sword from its mark.

* * * *

Veronique’s screams pierced the night as she

watched Ahndray bend over clutching his chest, 91

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look up at his brother in disbelief and sadness and drop to the floor in a crumpled heap of sheet and wounded flesh. Leone turned toward her and

lifted his sword again, but his venomous heart seemed to burst. He collapsed, broken, onto the side of the bed, his face in his hands. He wept uncontrollably, gasped for air, then vomited violently.

Veronique steeled herself and leapt from the bed, reached for her dress and night slippers, then ran past Leone before he could raise his head in protest. He didn’t move as she fled from her bedroom. She screamed hysterically while

clutching the banister and stumbled down to the foyer. She screamed for her father. Her mother.

Emelie! She got no answer and continued running out of her home into the street.

“Somebody help me! He’s killed Ahndray.

Leone has killed Ahndray!” She ran out of her drive, into the street and into the dark night. She ran as fast as she could to the only place that made any sense in her life now. She ran from Leone, from the blood and from Ahndray’s broken body.

She ran until acid filled her blood and fire filled her lungs. When she finally stopped running, she was nearing the path in the woods that led to the footbridge and the Chamois.

She sobbed and walked, barely able to see her way through the overhanging vines as tears filled her eyes and branches scratched at her body. She 92

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held the side of her face in a desperate attempt to stem the bleeding, then glanced at her hands, stained red. They looked black and greasy under the moonlight. The wound on her face was

stinging and throbbing, but she could tell the blood had slowed enough to start drying and it cracked and split in searing pain when she moved her mouth from side to side. She traced her finger from the bottom of her ear along the serration to almost the middle of her chin and she saw herself in the mirror in her mind and screamed in anger and pain into the night.

She ran further. She stopped and heaved, then gagged and slumped over until collapsed in the damp wood. Veronique looked up at the moon.

Her tears were hot and sobs racked her body. She cried for Ahndray and for herself. She cried for Leone and for her family. She lay in the dirt and sand in the woods while she cried all night thinking about her life and what it had now become.

Hopelessness crept into her soul like the wet dew from the earth, seeping and spreading into her bloodstained dress. She began shivering from the shock and the fear. The chill of early morning in the woods settled over her. The reality of what she had done, the ramifications of the choices she made, fell over her like a waterfall of pain rushing through her body. In that instant, on her back looking up through tears, she knew what she had 93

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to do. She had no choices to make anymore.

Veronique crawled to her feet and walked with a quiet desperation toward the river. This time continued straight toward the path leading to the footbridge over the Chamois. She scrambled up the path like a wounded crab, ignoring the

bruising falls and scrapes. Before she knew it, she was hundreds of feet above the water on the footbridge looking down at the river. It looked like a fat black snake below her and moonlight barely lit the ropes securing the bridge planks. The footbridge creaked under her weight, but she didn’t care. She had nothing to be afraid of anymore. She hobbled and scurried to the middle and stopped.

Veronique held on to the rope, hoisted her

dress up and put one leg over. She balanced on it while she pulled the other over and now stood on the outside of the ropes, holding on with only her hands. She looked up to the heavens filled with stars and thought about how Ahndray was good to his word. He promised to make the sky shake enough that the stars would fall, and she pictured herself a dying star falling to earth in a bright white streak across the darkened sky.

She wondered if the Greek fishermen over in Crete would see her star, the Bedouins, the lovers in Italy, the elephants in Bangladesh. Would they all see her tonight? She knew she would never see those places with Ahndray. She gasped at the 94

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picture in her mind of her love lying in a pool of blood in her room. It was more than she could accept and she heard the final marionette’s string snap in her mind. It was
all
her fault.

Veronique felt the warm breeze over the

Chamois and heard the wind rustling through the woods. She looked high into the sky. Without a sound, she let go and slipped into the night.

Veronique plummeted like a bright white star swooshing through the night into the open arms of the river’s black abyss below.

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Chapter Nine

anosh firmly patted the neck of his favorite Nhorse and the animal shrugged as if to say
thank you.
They both seemed to enjoy riding at night with only the moon to light their way. He was an expert with horses and, although he did not know this trail, he was happy to be out on such a beautiful evening and he never worried about getting lost. Nanosh was rarely afraid of anything in the woods this far from a local town.

He had more to fear from the people in the town than any wild animals in these hills.

His
kumpania
, his family of gypsies, were traveling in a caravan of twelve wagons that had been moving through the prosperous farm

country for several summer months. Their mood was improving as they plodded through the

countryside and this new town of Lourmarin

looked promising. In the courtyards of sprawling farms, they passed gray roofs and thick stone walls. Plump cats drank milk from deep bowls 96

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and in the meadows, the cut hay had been stacked high. These country people were well fed and comfortable, but from his experience, these
gaje
were more hostile toward them than they ever expected.

When the gypsies came to town, the peasants barricaded themselves in their farmhouses and cottages. They wouldn’t sell meat, bread or milk to any outsiders and, in some towns, they even refused access to the lavoirs and communal water pumps. Some of the women had been chased