Tori Phillips - The Dark Knight

I must be coming down with a fever or am faint from lack of food.

“Methinks breaking your leg is not in the warrant, Tonia,” he murmured. A sudden twinkle lit his eyes before he looked away. He squeezed her hand briefly before he released it. Tonia’s breath caught in her throat. Her name on his lips gave her an unexpected rush of warm pleasure. She coughed to cover her momentary confusion.

“I agree,” she replied. He started to turn back toward the meadow. “Sir!” she called to stop him. She didn’t want him to return to his gruesome chore. When he looked over his shoulder, she continued in a more controlled voice. “Sir, since we will be together a little longer, will you not please tell me your name? Surely you must be weary of hearing yourself called Master Death.”

Sandor heartily agreed. He enjoyed saying Tonia’s name. It had a pleasing roll on his tongue. But the inherent caution that marked all the Roms’ interaction with outsiders held him back from sharing his identity with her, though he had a strong desire to hear her say his name. He pulled his gaze away from her pleading eyes. He found it harder and harder to resist the lady when he looked into those bewitching blue orbs.

“I could give you one name today, another tomorrow and a third the day after that,” he replied.

Tonia drew closer to his side. Her cape brushed the back of his hand, sending a shiver of awareness rippling through him. The temptation to slip his arm around her waist and pull her against him grew harder to resist. She is a dead woman who merely breathes for a time. She is nothing to me but a cold corpse. Even as he thought it, he did not believe a word of it.

She touched his arm. “But none of those fine names would be your own true one, would it?”

His body burned. “The Rom consider a person’s name to be the most intimate thing we possess. Knowing your name gives someone power over you.”

She smiled up at him. He could barely breathe. “You know my name. Does that give you power over me?”

How I wish it were true! He cleared his throat. “The Rom never reveal their private lives to gadje. ’Tis our way to protect ourselves.”

She furrowed her brow. “What is a gadje?”

A smile trembled on his lips. “You, your family, the king who desires your death, his ministers and churchmen, everyone in England who is not a Rom.”

While Tonia considered this piece of information, he admired the beauty of her face. She reminded him of the saints that were painted on the stained glass windows of the Christian churches he had visited in France.

She laughed, a sound like dainty silver bells on the wristlets of dancers. “You say the word gadje as if it were coated in mud.”

You cannot guess how close to the mark you have hit. How could he tell this beautiful, pure, holy lady that his family would consider her worse than the dung in the streets? That her mere touch, her nearby presence defiled him? Yet Sandor craved her smiles, the brush of her fingertips—and more. ’Tis nothing but wanton lust that tortures my loins. Yet he had known lust with others—even gadji. With Tonia his feelings were much different, even different from those he had experienced with his dead wife. Nothing in his twenty-five years of living helped him to understand why the power of Tonia’s attraction shook him to his core.

Sandor shifted the weight of his armload of wood. “’Tis for protection that the Rom do not mix with the gadje except to do business. Did you know that in England there is a harsh law against the Gypsies? In truth, I am a felon.”

Tonia’s eyes widened, though she did not draw away from him. “What is this law?”

“Twenty years ago, when the English saw so many Rom come into their land, they grew sore afraid. We were called lewd people and outlanders. King Henry VIII decreed that we were to be banished forever from his kingdom. Just three years ago, King Edward signed a law that said any Rom found in England would be branded and made a slave for two years.”

Halting, Tonia stared at him. “Are you so marked?”

Should he show her his livid scar or should he lie? Why did her opinion matter to him anyway? She was to die by his hand in the very near future. Sandor put down his load of sticks, untied his jerkin’s laces, then the laces of his shirt. He pulled back the cloth so that she could see the wine-colored “V” seared on his chest.

Her body stiffened; she could not smother her gasp of shock at the sight. “’Tis a cruel mark,” she whispered, her eyes wide. “It must have hurt you beyond imagining.”

“Aye,” he replied, closing up his shirt and retying his jerkin. “Fortunately I fainted afore they were done.”

“What does the ‘V’ mean?”

Sandor curled his lips with disgust. “Vagrants. Yet we have always worked for our bread.”

Worked to dupe the dull-witted gadje, but Sandor decided against revealing the details of his clan’s many shady professions. He, at least, had always been fair in his horse trading with the English, even though Uncle Gheorghe had often called him prosto, a fool, for doing so.

“Why did you stay in England after…that?”

Sandor picked up the firewood. “One trip across the Channel was enough for me. Life is good in England. The weather is kinder than in Flanders or the German kingdoms. The land is fat, full of fruit that falls from the trees and chickens that wander far from home.” He gave her a sidelong grin.

Tonia pursed her lips. “You mean you steal chickens from honest farmers.”

Sandor shrugged. “’Tis not so bad. A Gypsy may convey a hen or two to feed his family, but we would never steal the whole henhouse. That would deprive the farmer of his livelihood.”

“But ’tis wrong to steal. ’Tis a sin.”

He shook his head at her innocence. “Methinks that God looks at your sins and mine with a different eye, Tonia. The Lord Jesus knew hunger when he was a man upon the earth. Tell me, noble lady, have you ever been hungry?”

“Not until I came to this place,” she answered with distaste.

Sandor decided to change the subject. This talk of laws and sins with such a holy woman as Tonia made him very uncomfortable. “Well, I am hungry now. What say you to a fine dinner of fresh fish?”

She quirked a half smile. “I would say you were a wonder-worker. Can you truly conjure up a fish?”

He laughed, pleased by her amazement. “Not conjure them, but entice them, if luck is with me and yon stream is well supplied. Come.”

Together they went back to the place where the bridge crossed the clear running water. Sandor set down his bundle of sticks, then searched along the bank for a spot in deep shade so that the wily fish could not see his shadow. Finding a place that satisfied him, he hunkered down beside the water. Gathering her cape under her, Tonia seated herself beside him.

Sandor put his finger to his lips signaling her to remain still. She nodded. Whispering a charm for luck, his slipped his hand into the icy water and rested it on the shallow bottom. Within a few minutes the cold had numbed his fingers, but Sandor did not move. He had promised Tonia a fish; his pride demanded that he procure one. After a long while, a large, fat trout swam upstream with lazy undulations. Sandor waved his fingers in the stream’s current as if they were an underwater plant. He wet his lips with anticipation but otherwise did not move. The trout edged nearer, as if drawn by the swaying fingers. Tonia craned her neck to see better.

The trout swam closer until it hovered over Sandor’s fingers. When the trout nosed him, looking for something to eat, Sandor gently brushed against the fish’s silvery flank. It shivered but did not dart away. Sandor smiled to himself. This fat one liked to be tickled. He brushed it again. The fish sank a little lower, closer to Sandor’s open palm. He touched its other flank. He could almost imagine the fish sighing with pleasure. After another drawn-out minute of tickling his quarry, Sandor’s hand closed around it. Before the lulled trout could react, it was flopping on the bank, practically in Tonia’s lap.