Chapter 1: Foreword and Glossary
Chapter Text
Foreword
I acknowledge 1) that the G-word is a slur for many Romani, 2) while some want to reclaim it, and that 3) there are individuals who embrace it as a form of self-description.
As I am not Romani, it is not for me to decide its legitimacy. Therefore, I will refer to the characters in this story by their respective endonyms (i.e., “Romani”, “Romanichal”, “Calé”) instead of by the G-word, whenever possible.
However, the G-word was widely used in early 20th century Britain, and is extensively used throughout Peaky Blinders. Therefore, in this work it will only be used 1) when directly quoting a Romanichal character from the show, and 2) as a slur from non-Romani characters. Whenever a chapter contains the G-word, I will include an author's note with a content warning.
This work is the result of research, consultation of historical sources, and my own creative interpretation. Any errors or misrepresentations are my responsibility alone.
Glossary of Terms
The macrolanguage of the Romani people, sometimes called Romanes (lit. “in a Romani way”), is related to Sanskrit. However, it is highly regional. While some words will be close to the original language, the grammar and pronunciation will vary even among speakers of the same dialect or Para-Romani language, influenced by the dominant language(s) of where the speakers live/have lived. Because of this, many dialects and Para-Romani languages (i.e., mixed languages)—such as Caló and Anglo-Romany (also known as “Anglo-Romani” or “Angloromani”)—are not mutually-intelligible.
Note: Pronunciation and spelling can vary widely by region and family tradition.
Romani (sometimes called Romanes)
baro: Great, big, important. Can also be used to refer to a respected elder man. (like “big man” or “chief”).
chib: tongue/language.
gadji: A non-Romani woman.
gadjo: (pl. gadje) A non-Romani man.
kalo: black (the color).
kushti bok: “Good luck” or “Many blessings”.
manro: bread.
pani: water.
Rom: A Romani man.
Romanipen: Romani law or way of life.
Romni: A Romani woman.
tachipen/tachiben: truth.
Rokker/Rokka (Angloromani)
Rokker literally means “talk” in Angloromani. The Shelbys and Johnny Dogs refer to their language as Rokker in the show. However, cultural context (specifically, the painted wagons) points them as Romanichal people, who speak Angloromani.
beng: devil or evil spirit.
chav: boy.
dadus: father
dei: mother
diddicoy: a half-Romani person, esp. one who doesn't participate in Romanichal culture.
gorger/gorjer: (see “gadje”)
jib: (see “chib”)
maura/mora: death, dead, or 'to kill'.
panny: (see “pani”)
rokker: talk.
tickner/tickna: little girl or daughter.
Note: Aside from being Romanichal on their mother's side, the Shelbys are also half Mincéirí (Pavee/Irish Traveller) on their father Arthur Sr.’s side. In Ireland and the U.K. the G-word has historically been used to refer to Romanichal, Pavee, and other travelling groups alike. While some today have embraced the term as a self-description, the Pavee and Romanichal have completely different cultural and genetic origins.
The Pavee are an indigenous Irish ethnic group thought to originate from pastoral Gaelic communities prior to the English Tudor conquest. They speak Shelta, which is mentioned in the show. The Pavee are NOT Romani.
The Romani, in contrast, originated from South Asia, likely from the Rajasthan, Punjab, and/or Sindh regions of India and Pakistan.
This story focuses on the Shelbys’ Romanichal heritage and the fictional Portola family's Calé heritage.
Caló
Caló is the language of the Iberian Calé people, and is spoken in Spain, Portugal, and some parts of France. Caló has had a significant influence on the Spanish language, both European and Latin American.
The fictional Portola family hails from Andalucia, Spain and their form of Caló reflects this in grammar.
baró: (see “baro”)
bato/batu: father
chaval: boy.
dai: mother
gachí: (see “gadji”)
gachó: (see “gadjo”)
pañí: (see “pani”)
For more information about Irish Traveller and Romani histories, I encourage readers to consult reputable cultural organizations and first-person accounts.
Bibliography
Romani-authored books:
Hancock, Ian F. We Are the Romani People. University of Hertfordshire Press, 2002.
Hancock, Ian F. Danger! Educated Gypsy: Selected Essays. University of Hertfordshire Press, 2010.
Doughty, Louise. Stone Cradle. Simon & Schuster UK, 2006.
Other references:
Gamella, Juan F.; Fernández, Cayetano; Nieto, Magdalena; Adiego, Ignasi-Xavier. La agonía de una lengua. Lo que queda del caló en el habla de los gitanos. Parte II. Gazeta de Antropología, 2012.
Veraldi-Pasquale, Gabriel. Vocabulario de caló-español. Bubok Publishing S. L., 2011.
Chapter 2: I.
Summary:
Tommy wakes up in a camp full of Romani unlike any he has ever met.
The strangers are suspicious of him.
And rightly so.
Notes:
TW: War flashbacks, violent imagery
CW: In a direct quote from the show, a canon Romanichal character uses the G-word in a non-slur way.
Chapter Text
The wagon was burning and with it, all of Tommy Shelby's belongings.
Photographs of Grace. John. Ruby. His wedding ring. His pocket watch.
He could have shot the groundskeeper who'd set it all ablaze. He could have rushed back down to Holford's place and demanded retribution or, at the very least, a few buckets of water.
But instead, Tommy lowered his gun and watched it all burn. Everything he'd worked for. Everything he'd bled for. Everything he'd killed for. Everything dear to him. All lost to the flames.
And Tommy felt…
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
By the outcrop, his white horse nickered, spooked. Tommy soothed it with his voice and touch until it settled.
And then he rode away.
Tommy woke with a start at the sound of voices and was immediately greeted with the sensation of an axe splitting his skull.
Copper sunlight exhaled its last through weathered canvas, clawing its way through the slit in the entrance flap and spilling over the floor in a single tapered shaft.
Fuck.
But this wasn't his tent. Whose it was remained a mystery to him.
Tommy pushed himself up with a groan, his muscles screaming in protest from—abuse? Disuse? He wasn't sure.
The canvas tent was spare. Bundles of folded wool blankets formed a neat stack in a corner next to a wooden chest. On a rickety chair sat a large bowl filled with water. A cloth with embroidered flowers dangled off its rim.
The flap opened, letting in a torrent of light and an older, dark-skinned woman.
She had fine lines like whiskers at her eyes and mouth, and a silver braid tucked under a dark scarf. She took one look at Tommy, frowned, and muttered something in a language he was unfamiliar with, before touching the back of her veiny hand to his forehead. It felt cool against his skin. Too cold.
He tried speaking in Rokker. Then Shelta. But his tongue was made of sand and cotton and the woman just shook her head and tried to push him back down on the bed.
The flap opened again. Another woman stepped inside.
Younger, but just as worn, with a face like a hazelnut in both shape and shade. She had a thick black braid wound under her scarf and her vigilant eyes were so dark, they could have belonged to a raven.
The women spoke in hushed tones to each other.
“She's telling you to lie down,” the younger said in English, her accent lilting.
Tommy leaned his head back against the pillow and sighed. “Where am I?”
“With us,” the older woman said. “You are sick. You will rest here.”
So she does speak English.
“No, I don't need—” he protested.
“You almost drowned,” the older woman insisted. “You. Will. Rest.”
The younger woman snorted in amusement and stepped next to his cot. Her gaze flicked over him, taking in—he assumed—the bruises and the tattoos on his chest and arms. They paused over the one on his left bicep: the rose intertwined with a horseshoe.
“Now, what kind of Rom falls asleep facedown in a creek, eh?” the older woman—Mercedes—mused.
“Having Romani blood doesn't mean he belongs here,” the younger one snapped.
“No, but it means by law we can't kill him without reason.”
Then he saw it:
His pistol, attached to the younger woman's hip. A challenge in her eye: Just try and take it.
“What I want to know is what kind of man just…” She looks down at him, gesturing lazily with her hand. “Floats facedown into our camp. More importantly, what he was running from.”
Mercedes clicked her tongue. “Enough, Celeste. You see he cannot even stand.”
“Oh, he can.” Her gaze locked on Tommy. “If he wants to explain himself.”
His teeth gritted as he braced himself on his elbow to force himself upright to sit, fighting the new wave of nausea rolling below his throat. Craving hands instinctively reached for his usual pack of cigarettes but only found flesh and cloth.
Exasperated, Mercedes reached for his shoulder.
Celeste kept her arms crossed. “If he were a horse, we would have shot him a long time ago.”
Tommy took a ragged breath, his bruised ribs screaming for mercy. Strange tent. Strange people. Strange circumstances. But he was more than well-acquainted with the look in her eyes:
Calculation.
She bent forward to bring her face closer, the fringe of her black shawl dancing over her arms. “You will come to the fire,” she said, enunciating as if to a small child. “You will eat. And then you will tell us why the fuck you came here.”
Mercedes sighed. “He is weak, Chele.”
“No, he is trouble. And I need to know what kind.”
With that, Celeste—or was it Chele?—turned and left.
Tommy closed his eyes and took another painful breath.
He wasn't sure how long he sat there, listening to the rush of blood in his ears, to the animated disembodied souls beyond the tent, but when he finally summoned the energy to get on his feet, Mercedes hissed in disapproval.
“You will fall.”
But he didn't.
The camp was nestled in a hollow near a creek, sheltered on three sides by rolling hills sprawling with purple heather and moss. A copse of silver birch rustled in the late afternoon breeze. Tufts of smoke rose above a scatter of worn tarpaulin and canvas tents, and a single shack of raw lumber and rust-bitten corrugated metal. Near the firepit, women with headscarves toiled: mending ragged pieces of cloth, or preparing vegetables for the stew pot, or sharpening old, dark-bladed knives and axeheads worn thin by years of use.
Around them, younger children scampered and giggled as they chased some of the chickens.
An old man sat on a stool, his knobby fingers tuning the guitar balanced on his knee.
There were very few men at all. Just a handful, graying or maimed, with dark, sunken eyes and scowls that deepened as they met Tommy's gaze.
Tommy stood up and swayed on his feet, or perhaps it was the camp that spun around him. Bitterness rose in the back of his throat. For a moment, he thought he'd sink to his knees right there in the mud.
Mud.
Always mud.
Why always mud?
The Somme. Mons. Verdun. The abandoned field. Every time, mud up to his ankles, his thighs, sucking all noise and all men—living and not—back into the belly of the earth, as if the soil were the maw of something ancient and ravenous. A man could, and often did, drown in it without a sound.
Nineteen years later and he still woke up to the same malodorous filth seeping into the bandages wrapped around his unsteady legs.
These Romani all spoke in that strange, sibilant dialect, voices low and quick over the crackle of fire. Every now and then he would pick up a familiar word or two. Rom. Gachó—gorger. Pañí—panny. Manro.
He cleared the itch from his dry throat and tried to speak in Rokker again. “Take me to the Baro. The Baro. Understand? Baro.”
The women either ignored or gawked at him and then spoke among themselves.
A severe old woman cocooned in a shawl then spoke in a sonorous voice.
Celeste, sitting far away from the rest, plucked feathers from a chicken carcass as she spoke. “She says he's in the shack.”
She lifted her bloodied knife and pointed at it.
Tommy nodded his thanks and staggered over to the shack.
The Baro was a barrel-shaped man with a wiry black beard peppered with silver. His eyes had the look of a man with favors to cash in. The flickering light of the hurricane candle on his makeshift table—one of many crates—gleamed against his balding scalp. Three other burly men stood behind him. Soldiers, most likely.
“Sit,” the Baro said.
Tommy carefully lowered himself into the chair in front of the crate, trying not to betray the tremor in his limbs.
The Baro studied him for a moment. Then he reached behind the crate, producing a flask, and poured a measure of it into a clay cup.
“Brandy,” he said. Tommy hesitated. Then he took it and swallowed a careful mouthful. It burned down his raw throat, prompting a series of hacking coughs.
For a moment, there was only the crack and pop of the brazier between them.
“I am Braulio, the Baró of this camp.”
Tommy nodded once.
“You understand,” Braulio continued, “my people depend on me. Old ones, women, children. We are not so many anymore. Not so strong as we once were.”
Braulio gestured to his own chest. “You have Romani blood, so we did not leave you in the creek. That is our law.” And then, he added, “But the law only goes so far.”
Tommy held his gaze.
Outside, children squealed in delight as they played.
“I need to know that whatever you were running from will not come find us.”
Tommy set the cup down.
Two women argued outside.
Braulio stared on, unwilling to take silence for an answer.
“I hadn’t eaten in days,” Tommy finally said.
The red glowing coals reflected in Braulio's dark eyes. A moth singed its delicate wings against the brazier's lip with a bright spark that disappeared as soon as it ignited.
“Is anyone looking for you?” Braulio asked.
Arthur.
He should tell Arthur that he was still alive. He'd been intent on following Tommy to the other side.
Or, he could say nothing for now. Play dead. Start over. Embrace freedom.
A truly alien feeling for Tommy Shelby: indecision.
He recalled what Esme once told him: Your Gypsy half is the stronger. You just want to ride away.
And ride away he did.
He'd wanted to crush her then. For suggesting John should throw it all away. For suggesting he should throw it all away and embrace the life their family was running from.
And now here he was.
Fuck me.
Tommy shook his head. “Everyone thinks I'm dead.”
Braulio lit a cigarette, offered him one, for which he was grateful. “And… Do you plan to keep it that way?”
Good fucking question.
His eyes flicked back to the coals.
“For now.”
Braulio nodded and smoothed over his beard. “Well, if you decide to contact anyone else, please inform me first. We cannot have more strangers in the camp. Our resources simply will not allow for it.”
The severe older woman from before brought a clay bowl of steaming broth and vegetables. She made a point not to hand it to Tommy, but set it in front of him on the crate set by the entrance—the shack's designated eating space. A Black Madonna medallion hung around her neck. She looked down her nose at him.
Braulio gave her a nod of appreciation, then gestured for Tommy to eat.
His stomach was empty save for the puddle of piss-warm brandy sloshing around inside whenever he shifted. The broth smelled of onions and garlic. But he couldn't be sure what was in it.
Hunger-borne bile rose in the back of his mouth.
The woman watched him for a moment before disappearing.
Another guest ducked into the shack: Celeste, carrying an ornate bowl of soup for Braulio. She gave Tommy a cursory look.
“What's wrong with him?” she muttered.
Braulio made a noncommittal noise.
“What, peasant food not good enough for you? Or are you worried we poisoned it?” she pressed.
“Celeste, please,” Braulio sighed.
She stood there, arms akimbo, her gaze, dark as a void, burning into him like the coals in the brazier.
Then she picked up the bowl and took a sip from it. Braulio and some of the men looked uncomfortable and muttered in disapproval. Something about gorjer.
“There. Not poisoned. Now eat. I don't want to have to burn a perfectly good chair just because you choose to die on it.”
Tommy gave in. The broth's heat spread like a wool blanket over his core, over his aching bones. He did his best not to spill any, but it ran down his chin anyway.
“We have good cooks here,” Braulio said.
When he was finished eating, Braulio told him the cup and bowl were Tommy's to keep.
When Braulio asked his name, Tommy only gave his first.
“Well, Tommy,” he said. “I hope we can be friends. Drink. Rest. We will talk more when you recover.”
Days passed and lent a lick to his wounds. His muscles protested less when he moved, and he no longer felt like emptying his guts whenever he sat up.
Meanwhile, the Portolas labored on, each one knowing their exact place and role.
Women hauled overflowing tin buckets of water from the creek upstream.
Some washed carefully sorted laundry downstream, while others hung the laundered clothes upon lines suspended between birch trees, heavy with meticulously arranged clothing. Tommy recalled in the fog of his distant caravan days, his mother and her kin sorted it by location on the body and age group—upper body clothes with upper body clothes, and adults’ clothes separated from kids and elders’ clothes.
Others took to dressing the hunt of the day, further downstream from the washing.
Frolicking children collected kindling from around the birch copse, hauling baskets in their slender arms.
And Tommy was alive.
Yes, he was just fine.
But it was the idle silence that flared the cursed memories back to life.
The stark white smoke flaring to life. The smell of singed hair and burnt flesh mingled with the cloyingly sweet stench of rot and the decay-like scent of white phosphorus. The last gasps of a boy, barely a man, chest torn asunder by the wild beast of artillery shells.
And the mud.
The fucking mud.
I need to move.
As he dragged a hand down his face, the crisp rasp of his stubble caught on his fingers.
He took a walk around the perimeter, if only to clear his mind.
His white horse snorted happily as a young boy and a woman brushed her down and tended to her hooves. So the horse made it after all. Tommy felt it tug at the corner of his mouth.
A rustle of leaves.
Tommy startled.
Looked up.
A fit, middle-aged man he recognized from Braulio's shack sat up in the trees, a rifle strapped to his back.
A soldier.
The man didn't speak.
Neither did Tommy.
Then the man lifted his binoculars again and continued searching the horizon.
The rustling breeze over the heather and sunlit leaves swallowed a set of slow, shuffling steps until they stopped next to Tommy.
“It won't be enough,” another man, his accent distinct from the Portolas’. An old, bespectacled man, perhaps in his seventies or eighties. He was sturdy despite his age although his fingers, gnarled like the branches of an aged tree, clutched a brass-tipped cane. Unlike the other Portolas, his skin resembled wet crepe paper in color and texture. “Our soldiers are good, but they won't be enough.”
Tommy hummed.
“If you can believe it, this family used to be mighty,” the old man said. Tommy had never met his grandfather, but he imagined he would have told stories like this by the fire. “The Portolas spanned from the Iberian peninsula—” he waved his hand from left to right “—all the way to the farthest reaches of the Holy Roman Empire.”
From the vacant smile on his thin lips, the man was clearly somewhere else.
“That so?” Tommy said.
“Yes. Lots of extended family. Now, not always beloved, of course, but family nevertheless.”
“Mm.” Tommy ritually rubbed a cigarette over his own bottom lip before lighting it. “You kin?”
The old man's smile widened. “Only by marriage.” He then introduced himself as Emanuel Halberstam.
“Tommy,” he said, and shook his wrinkly hand. “Not a lot of men here. What happened?”
Emanuel sighed. “Many things. War, mainly. Between countries. Among family… Ah, may I trouble you…?”
Tommy handed him a cigarette and the lighter.
He took a grateful pull. “Thank you. Now, where was I…? Ah, yes. War. And, well, the logistics of travelling. The Civil Guard.” Emanuel muttered something in the language Alfie sometimes spoke when he was particularly annoyed, and then he spat on the ground. Yiddish. “May they all disappear into the earth! …Where was… Oh, you must be patient with an old man who is losing his mind.”
Cigarette balanced between his fingers, Tommy's lips curved up. “I'm in no rush these days.”
“It is much better this way, I tell you. Why rush? Life ends so soon. So quickly. You will miss things when you rush. No, no, it is so much better this way.” And then: “Things are different on the continent these days. Yes. You see, people are so very afraid, Tommy. Afraid of their own shadows, even. Even more so with the shadows of their own neighbors. Why I remember—” Emanuel waved the thought away. “Nevermind, I was trying to tell you…
“Yes, the fear. It is… Hmm. A virulent plague. It is… a disease of the brain and kidneys that consumes humans and turns them into ghoulish creatures, see.” He pulled from the cigarette and exhaled. “And these ghoulish creatures crave the diseased brain matter of other creatures. And thus they infect and reinfect and destroy and devour each other until there is nothing but the stench of rot. And off they go again. It's a cycle. It continues. Over and over and over.”
Tommy blinked. Shuffled his shoes over the moss and heather. Sucked on his cigarette. Sighed. “Well… That's one way to put it.”
“Anyway, where…? Yes, yes, yes. Yes, the point is, Tommy, fear is a uniquely animal experience. Now, do plants destroy each other? Absolutely. Just you try planting mint outside of a pot.” He waved his hand broadly. “It takes over, and starves ev-er-y-thing to death. But does it do it out of fear? …No.—Well, at least, not to my knowledge. I suppose it would depend on whether one would consider… built-in defensive mechanisms to be—Oh, you really must be patient with me. I ramble so much these days.”
Tommy’s mouth twitched. “I don't mind.”
Emanuel shrugged. “Very well, if you don't mind. I have not had a conversation that has not been about ledgers and contracts and passports and about how many units of lentils and bandages we have left, in… Well… Yes, it's been well over six months.”
“That's a long time.”
“We arrived at Dover last January. Now, none of us have ever faced a British winter before. Spanish and French winters are… Well, we lost several that month. Braulio's particular kin has been on the decline since we had to leave Spain. The Civil Guard chased us everywhere. And then, when we crossed into France, it was the gendarmerie.” He spat another curse in Yiddish. “Rotten animals, the lot of them. We lost a lot of people. My wife, back in Andalusia. Braulio's, too. Some of his children, in Provence. Some of their children, in the outskirts of Paris and in Dover. The last, Braulio's youngest daughter. Such a tender life, carelessly pruned… But this isn't what I wanted to tell you.
“My point, Tommy, is that fear makes humans act like animals, because we are animals. And fear is contagious.”
He then paused, studying Tommy.
Tommy watched his reflection in the hazy, blue-ringed darkness of the old man's eyes, eyes which seemed to question and know everything all at once.
“Do you get my meaning?” Emanuel asked.
He licked at the coppery crust on his still-split lip and tipped his head in a nod. “Message received.”
Emanuel nodded with a pleased smile and patted his upper arm. “Good, good. I am glad we have come to an understanding.” And then, he added, “They call me El Viejo around here. You may call me that, if you wish.”
With that, the old man stubbed the cigarette under his boot and trudged back to the center of the camp.
Chapter 3: II.
Summary:
Tommy struggles to find his place in the camp. But ghosts never stay buried for long.
Chapter Text
Two weeks later, he almost wrote Arthur.
If Arthur was even still alive.
Tommy couldn’t bear the look Arthur had given him when he'd explained the tuberculoma, when he'd told him he'd be in the wagon and Arthur would be the one to light the pyre. As if Arthur were some pathetic injured, overgrown puppy Tommy had kicked in the rain.
Where was he now?
Without Tommy's constant monitoring and guidance, Arthur was useless. He'd either turn into the spineless, neutered hound Linda willed him to be. Or a live trip-wire, ready to bring life down around himself.
The note he'd written:
Where you are going, there I will be very soon.
Were Tommy a better man, a braver man, he would have headed back to Birmingham and confessed everything.
The false diagnosis. Mosely's sick game. That he'd taken the fucking bait.
If he were a good man, he would have raced back to Birmingham and taken the noose off Arthur's neck again, slapped the bottle out of his hand, and shaken some sense into that thick, rattling skull. He would have ridden through the humiliation, the pain, the bloody fucking terror.
Because, for fuck's sake, Tommy was alive. He would live. And he should have been thankful that fate had granted him more time to fix the conflagrated trainwreck that had become his personal life.
But the idea of dragging himself back inside that dark, cramped terraced house on Watery Lane, surrounded by those pitying eyes, the questions, the—But why didn't you just tell us, Tom?—and the—We're all here for you, Tommy—and—How could you let them fool you for so long, Thomas?
No.
Birmingham wasn't an option right now.
He put his lighter to the cigarette between his lips.
In the center of the camp, old women sorted dried beans and cleaned vegetables. A pair of old men braided cord while arguing over something.
“If you're well enough to stand around and smoke,” a woman said, “you're well enough to work.”
He turned.
Celeste held a basket of clean laundry in her hands, scowling. She was the kind of sour, bitter woman who seldom had a good mood.
“Unless you'd rather keep being a parasite, I suggest you at least start washing your own drawers.”
She nodded at twin clotheslines, separated several trees away from the family clothes. A pair of young women were pinning his shirt on one, and his pants on the other, holding them at arms’ length as if his clothes would jump back and bite them.
Now, Old Tommy would say a lot of things.
He could tell her to fuck off and go pick her fucking herbs or whatever she did whenever she wasn't watching him like a falcon eyeing an injured rabbit.
He could tell her he'd give her a couple of pounds to buy herself a moment of pleasure with a young man or two, because—undeniably—that was the core of the problem.
She arched a brow at him. “Hello?”
But where was Old Tommy?
Not here.
Whoever this host, this shell was, felt like the raw skin under a freshly-burst blister. Too new. Too tender to the touch. Not ready to emerge. And her accusation poked right through the broken flesh and jabbed into it.
Still, he glanced at the elderly and their tedious, menial tasks.
Then he took a deep breath, felt the air stretch out the sore muscle fibers girding his ribs.
“Fair enough,” he said.
And so, This Tommy finally did something Old Tommy would do:
Work off the doubt.
He hauled water to the animal troughs. Then, to the barrels by the supply wagon. Next, he carried bucketfuls to the cooking area, where a pucker-mouthed matriarch dismissed him.
“Do you or do you not want water?” he asked.
He didn't understand her rant, but she took the bucket from him, dumped it out on the ground, and shooed him away.
“Adelina,” called Braulio. He approached the area from the side of the awning, his thick eyebrows pinched together.
Tommy didn't stay for the fight. They didn't need to point for him to figure out what they were arguing about.
When he reached Mercedes’ tent, the severe old woman from the other day—Lucinda—was there. Surprise seemed to stretch out her face permanently. Or at least whenever he was around. Her large, prominent eyes were domed with thin, high arched brows.
She cleared her throat primly and looked away from him.
“Over there,” Mercedes said. “By the bandages.”
“Right.” He then filled the copper basin next to the scant medical supplies.
Six rolls of bandages, total.
These can't be all they have.
One bad fall and they'd be gone and nowhere near enough.
The one around his lower leg felt tight and sticky around the wound.
“Do you need something, gachó?” Mercedes asked. She did not look up from the cup of fragrant tisane she was preparing for Lucinda.
“I'm not a gorjer. Me mum was Romany.”
“Then, it no count,” Lucinda scoffed.
Is everyone here pretending they can't understand me just to fuck with me head?
“If you father is Rom, you are Rom,” Lucinda stated. “The blood is pass down through the fathers.”
These Romanies did everything backward from what he was taught.
He huffed. “Is that right?”
“Yes. Here, among the Calé, you are a gachó,” Mercedes said.
As if she were telling him he'd already been measured and found lacking.
Of fucking course.
“Right, then.”
Then he left the tent.
As the days passed, blisters formed on the creases of his palms from where the bucket and axe handles had rubbed his skin too thin. He embraced the pain. Told himself it was all part of the process. Punishing work, yes, but preferable to the alternative of watching his life play out in a film reel behind his eyelids whenever they shut.
At first the children only watched him. A small group of wiry young children with gap-toothed grins followed at a distance, whispering. Then came the games: tossing pebbles near his boots to see who could get closest. Whenever he caught one's eye, they scattered in shrieking laughter.
Somewhere in Birmingham, children once scattered at the sight of him for much different reasons.
One afternoon, while Tommy was smoking, a little boy with thick, curly hair threw a grape-sized stone into the grass just a few paces away from him. In his small hands, a whittled wooden horse painted in bright, swirling colors. His hazel eyes went wide when Tommy stared back.
Tommy crouched to pick the stone up. Held it out to him. “That's a fine horse, there, lad.”
The boy only gawked, frozen.
“Eli!” Celeste barked from across the clearing, hands on her hips.
The boy bolted, the others in tow.
Celeste looked Tommy over, her eyebrows pinched in two deep creases. Then she walked away without a word.
The scolding didn't stop the kids.
While he couldn't understand what the children discussed in hushed tones, he could guess:
He has tattoos.
Is he a bad gachó or a good gachó?
My mum told me he is haunted by ghosts.
Don't touch him! He's cursed!
Days later, some older boys joined the fun, emboldened by his silence.
A boy in his early teens approached while Tommy split firewood, eager to prove himself a man. He was at that awkward stage of growth, limbs pulled like taffy, out of proportion.
“Coward,” he said, the insult clumsy in his mouth.
Tommy sighed. He set the axe down next to the stump.
The boy's breath hitched.
“¡Eh!” Celeste yelled. “If you have enough time to waste taunting the gachó, you have time to haul water, ah?” She clapped her hands at them. “Let's go! Move!”
As the brood of kids scattered like frightened chickens, the teenager muttered something under his breath and slunk away.
Celeste nodded once at him. Then she walked away.
One little girl with two missing front teeth stayed behind, staring at him from behind the trunk of an ash tree. She held up a single yellow buttercup she'd plucked from the meadow.
“Very nice,” he said, mustering a tired smile. “You should keep it. Give it to your mum.”
But she held it out for him until he took it.
Then, she laughed and ran off to join the rest of her friends.
The door to the Vine Inn swung on creaky hinges, letting out a puff of hot, stale air as Agent Wynn entered. In late November, the air was much cooler outside in comparison, making his eardrums ache and pop from the sudden change. The miasma inside was pregnant with the tang of ale, sweat, and the sweetness of old, rotting wood.
All went silent under the deliberate steps of his polished Oxfords. And as his eyes adjusted to the indoors, he realized all eyes were on him.
Wynn cleared his throat, approached the bar. Ordered a pint. He hated beer, but he didn't expect these people to have anything worth drinking.
His cigarette case clicked against the sticky counter. He took one out. Lit it. Smoked.
When the frothy pint slid his way, he drank. The clutch of yokels resumed their inane, clucking gossip.
After he finished the pint, the barkeep asked:
“Get you anything else, boss?”
Wynn reached into his jacket and slipped out a sepia-toned photograph. “I'm looking for a friend. He had a country estate in Warwickshire until recently. He went missing maybe two months ago. Shellshock, I believe.”
“Shame, that.”
“Indeed.”
The barkeep plucked the photo from Wynn's hands. Studied it. Then shook his head.
“Sorry, boss. Never seen ‘im in my life.”
Wynn flicked the ashes of his cigarette over the ashtray. “I see.”
The barkeep didn't seem to be lying. His eyes weren't darting around. What remained visible of his flabby neck wasn't tight with tension. Florid, but naturally so, not a stress flush. The complexion of a man who spent his life pickling in cheap gin.
“I'll leave this photo here,” Wynn said. “If ever you see this man, please give the address in the back a call. He's a potential danger to himself and others.”
“Aye, boss. Right you are.”
Wynn crushed the cigarette into the ashtray and left without another word.
Tommy had spent the day fixing one of the covered wagons’ arched wooden frame. Different from setting up the framework for the tunnels he dug back in France, but similar enough that he quickly got the hang of it.
When night began to fall, he busied himself with repairing a length of frayed rope. Over. Under. Over. Under.
Menial.
He wondered what Polly would say if she saw him here now.
She'd arch that brow, her mouth pursed in that knowing, prideful moue. I told you so, Thomas.
He thought back to the beginning. When he'd still been deciding what to do with the stolen shipment of arms his men had found in that yard. When he'd sat in the pew behind Polly, who'd been busy praying in the chapel. When she'd turned around and told him:
You have your mother's common sense, but your father's devilment. I see them fighting. Let your mother win.
He set down the rope and rubbed his thumb over the raw crease in his palm.
Let her win.
How? By staying with a family of foreigners who would never accept him? Unsustainable.
So, what now? Where would the fuck he go?
A pair of low voices caught his ear. Celeste and Adelina's silhouettes were stark in the firelight. Even if he understood Caló, he wouldn't have been able to sketch out what they were saying from this distance.
Adelina raised her voice.
Celeste spoke low. Calm.
Then Adelina's hand struck Celeste across the face with a loud clap.
Celeste, however, did not retreat. Instead, she stepped closer, leaning forward, her shoulders coiled with defiance.
Adelina's mouth trembled. She looked over one shoulder. Then the other. Searching. Then: “Braulio!” she called, her raspy voice cracking. “Braulio!”
From the shack emerged Braulio, weariness etched on his strong features. He tried to put a hand on Celeste's arm, but she shook him off without looking at him. Whatever it was that he said only seemed to make the two women angrier.
So, Tommy returned to his task.
Over.
Under.
Over.
Under.
While Celeste stormed away from Braulio, she paused by the fire long enough to dig out from her apron a small bundle wrapped in cloth. She then looked Tommy in the eye. Even in the dark, he could see the red mark Adelina left on her cheek. Could see that her eyes were wet.
“Catch, gachó.”
She tossed it.
He caught it by reflex.
Inside the cloth was a tin of salve and a thin strip of clean bandage. No explanation.
When he looked up again, she was disappearing into her tent. One of the little boys—Eli, was it?—poked his head out briefly before retreating inside.
He set the bundle aside and went back to his rope.
Chapter 4: III.
Summary:
The Portolas receive potentially life-changing news.
Chapter Text
Dawn broke over camp. Middle-aged women were already up, kneading bread. Soon, the rest of the camp would stir to life and start the monotonous rhythm of outdoor life anew.
One of the covered wagons was already rolling down the track. Supply run, Tommy assumed.
From the old routes of his childhood, he guessed this camp was somewhere in South Staffordshire. Kinver was the closest town, so the Portolas would likely go there to restock. But knowing how tight-knit the town was, the Portolas would be treated with suspicion at best.
A horse-drawn dogcart pulled in the opposite direction. It didn't return until the afternoon, when Tommy was caring for the horses.
One of the soldiers jumped out of the dogcart and disappeared into the shack.
“Tommy.” Emanuel Halberstam had sidled up to him.
“Mr. Halberstam,” Tommy said.
He waved his hand. “No, no. Emanuel or Viejo will suffice,” he said. “Mr. Halberstam was my father.”
Tommy inclined his head.
“Have you come to a decision?” Emanuel asked. The look in his eyes told Tommy he already knew the answer.
So he changed the subject:
“Why England?”
“Indeed,” Emanuel said. “Why choose such an inhospitable place, indeed?”
The chestnut bay mare's long tail flicked and lashed against Tommy's arm.
“Braulio has kin by marriage in Wales,” Emanuel continued. “But more than half the time, they cannot understand what the other is saying. My grandson, he is a linguist by nature. Speaks more than 6 languages, that boy, and learning more.” He pointed across the camp at a lanky young man with glasses, in his late teens or early twenties, with pale olive skin and dark hair. “That is my Samuel. He is brilliant—brilliant! One day, I swear it, he will teach at the Sorbonne.”
Tommy listened, nodding. Better to let Emanuel ramble than be interrogated.
“Samuel, he says the languages have the same Romanes root, but are influenced by… Ah, who knows? I forget. He is the linguist, not I. What was I…? Ah, yes. There is a man. Silas Grey. Have you heard of him?”
“Can't say I have.”
“He is of the Boswell family. A smuggler.”
Tommy decided not to mention the Shelbys were distant kin to the Boswells by way of Polly's maternal grandmother.
“Why the shock?” Emanuel asked. “You know how trade works.”
Tommy didn't react. Best to keep it that way.
In a nearby tent, someone coughed.
“Silas and Braulio have moved Andalusian horses across the Spanish border for ages. Impossible, really. But they find a way. Have you ever seen one?”
“The horses? No, I can't say I have.”
“Oh, they are magnificent creatures, Tommy! They are strong, compact. Elegant and intelligent. And they look at you with these big eyes, black as night, and can see into your very soul! Oh, I sincerely hope you are able to see one someday.”
The bay mare snorted.
Emanuel beamed, and rubbed its flank. “Yes! See, she agrees with me. Don't you, Kali? Oh, yes. Such a smart girl, you are.”
He readjusted his glasses and turned back to Tommy. “Ah, here I am, boring you again.”
“Not at all,” Tommy lied. Better to listen to an old man's rambling than continue the sisyphean task of restraining his own meandering thoughts.
“Like I was saying… Silas Grey and the Boswells. Yes, Silas and Braulio have known each other since they were young men. Back when Braulio still had a neck—before the years and the bread and the brandy caught up with him.” He laughed. “Imagine!”
Tommy smiled politely.
Emanuel shifted on his cane, positioned like a brake in front of him.
“In France, we had a conflict with another family. You know how things are.”
The Lees, Tommy recalled. He couldn't remember what the Shelbys’ feud with the Lees had been about anymore. But he distinctly recalled the crunch of a Lee soldier's teeth as they had made contact with Tommy's fist.
He should have never called Tommy's mother a diddicoy whore.
And he never would again.
Now, thanks to John and his children with Esme, the Lees and Shelbys were kin.
“I forget what the conflict was about. It could have been money, or a marriage gone bad. You will have to ask Braulio. I only get involved in legal matters. I try to mind my own business. You live longer that way.”
Oh, is that where I went wrong?
“And the stock market crash! Terrible thing. Stocks were never as popular among the French, so I suppose it could have been worse. But business dried up. Braulio's forge, it went under. Farms, they stopped hiring for seasonal labor. And we—”
In the distance, Braulio, now outside the shack, called out in Caló. The family ceased all activity and approached the firepit.
“Ah, it seems we have some news. How exciting,” Emanuel said with a weary sigh. He patted Tommy's arm. “Come, let us see what all the commotion is about.”
Braulio's thick hands gesticulated as he spoke with effusive cadence.
The camp listened, rapt.
Relieved smiles appeared on some faces. Others looked tense.
“It appears a scout has found some work,” Emanuel said to Tommy. And then he added, “An orchard.”
As Braulio went on and others inquired, Emanuel explained that the orchard belonged to an old widowed man whose only son perished in the War. The old farmer could no longer take care of it by himself, and therefore would be hiring 10 laborers for the upcoming spring, summer, and autumn. Apparently, he was open to a housing agreement, where the Portolas could stop their camp there during the length of their employment.
“And you believe him?” Tommy asked Emanuel.
“That is what I am for, Tommy,” Emanuel replied. “My specialty.”
Tommy nodded, but said nothing.
Celeste was hauling water when she saw Emanuel and whatever-the-fuck- his-name-was speaking in the distance. Her dear great uncle seemed to be in one of his storytelling moods.
She poured out the pail of water into the barrel near the covered supply wagon.
As Emanuel turned and approached from afar, she noticed he favored his left leg.
The breeze combed through what remained of his gray hair, lifting a solid, curved strip of his pomaded hair away from his scalp. It swung up and bobbed like a window shutter on a hinge, until he placed his straw boater hat over it.
“Hurting today, Viejo?” she asked when he approached.
“A little.”
“Mercedes said to tell you the ointment for your foot is ready.”
“Thank you, my child.”
Celeste set the bucket down on a crate next to the barrel. “I saw you making friends, huh?”
Emanuel made one of those elastic, noncommittal faces he wore whenever he wanted deniability. “He seems to be a smart one, the gachó.”
That's precisely what I'm afraid of.
Celeste looked at Tommy, who kept wandering around the camp like a ghost. Here, but not completely there.
He met her gaze.
Celeste fought the urge to curl her lip in scorn.
She turned to Emanuel, took his hand, and kissed the back of it. “Well, don't worry, you're still my favorite gachó.”
He patted her hand with his free one. “I'd better be.”
“Now, go put your foot up on a stool before it swells up again like last time.”
“I will die from all this nagging.”
“Oh, you love it. Now go quickly, before I sic Mercedes and Tía Lucinda on you.” As he waddled away, she added in Caló, “Good health to you, Uncle.”
He didn't turn around as he waved her off.
When she went to pick up the bucket to refill it, she saw the gachó apparition standing sentinel atop the hill. On guard. Despite the distance and his statuesque stillness, the undercurrent of restlessness seemed to sweep the air around him, and drag everything in its liquid pull. Powerful. Dangerous.
This time, when he caught her staring, she didn't look away.
His deep-set eyes were the color of a glacier, and they always sent an icy frisson up her spine. They seemed to leech away all warmth wherever they landed and give none in return.
A small, panicked voice called out: “Dai!”
Celeste turned around to see her son Elias, tear-and-snot-stained, holding out his carved wooden horse in two pieces.
“Oh, no, Eli,” Celeste said. “What happened?”
“They… I told him to be careful, but…” He hiccuped as he sucked in wet breaths. “They kept running and… He dropped… dropped it on a… He tripped on the root.”
The horse's leg, curled in mid gallop, had split off from the main body, revealing the brittle, pale wood fibers inside. With some sanding, glue, and a set of heavy-duty clamps, it would have to do for now. It would never be as strong, but it would look almost exactly like its old self.
Almost.
“I told them… My bato made it and—and they didn't…” He gasped for air. “Didn't even… care!”
“Come,” she said, ruffling his hair. “I'll show you how to fix it.”
The covered wagon returned from Kinver past sundown, carrying much-needed supplies. Braulio could finally allow himself a breath.
More bandages, Mercedes had said.
More flour—Adelina'd insisted—the good kind!
More bleach, Lucinda had demanded.
Everybody, everybody wanted something from Braulio.
Why did you lead us here?
And:
Control your niece, Braulio!
We're dying, Braulio!
Braulio poured himself three fingers of watered-down brandy. Gulped it down. He couldn't remember the last time he had decent brandy. It had been so long, his taste buds could no longer sketch the vaguest shape of its flavor.
Did he regret it? Yes. Braulio had accumulated quite a lot of regret over his 56 years of life, and this was no exception. But what else was he to do?
No one understood the pressure that came with leading a family until it dropped upon their shoulders and crushed them under its weight.
“Baró.” Mateo, one of his soldiers, entered the shack.
Braulio waved him over.
“I have some news from town,” Mateo said in Caló. He set a sheet of onionskin paper in front of Braulio.
Braulio put on his glasses and lifted the paper closer to the light. Adjusted it here and there. He should really save up for bifocals.
And then, he read it.
Chapter 5: IV.
Summary:
Tommy is sent on an errand in behalf of the Portolas.
Notes:
CW: Racial slurs, including the G-word.
Chapter Text
Today, there was more activity than usual. Braulio's soldiers hauled some supplies into a dogcart while Braulio spoke at length to Emanuel and Samuel. The women preparing bread watched.
Tommy felt Samuel's stare on him. The moment their eyes met, Samuel looked away.
Tommy had intended to go hunting, bring back a few rabbits. Those plans broke when Braulio called him over.
“Walk with me, gachó.”
So he did.
Dawn tinged the duvet of autumn fog covering the hills a muted blue. Blackbirds sang its arrival.
“You will go with El Viejo and Samuel today,” Braulio said. “They require your help.”
“With?”
“The old man and the orchard.” Braulio studied the distant hills blanketed with fog as far as the eye could see. “He wants to meet before he agrees to let us stop on his property.”
“And you think my presence will convince him?”
“El Viejo believes having you with him will make a respectful impression.”
“Because I'm English.”
Braulio stopped. Studied Tommy. “Because you know how to look a man in the eye when you lie.”
Despite the chill of anxiety surging in Tommy's stomach, he steadied himself with a long breath.
What is he not saying? What does he know?
“And if I don't convince him?”
“Then my people will have to move and search for work and food elsewhere. We can only hope the next town will not greet us with cudgels.”
Tommy hummed in acknowledgement.
No pressure, Tom.
The fog remained after the sun rose.
Emanuel went on and on about summers in Spain, summers in the South of France, and summers in Vienna and how different they all are.
All the while, he could feel Samuel's gaze burning on the back of his neck.
“What about you, lad?” Tommy asked, cigarette pinched between his lips as he drove the dogcart.
“Sir?” Samuel asked.
You've been glaring at me for hours.
“You haven't said much,” Tommy said. “Your grandfather said you speak 6 languages. Impressive. Are you going into law, too?”
“Er… I'm not sure.”
Tommy caught Samuel shifting in his seat from his periphery.
“Oh, my Samuel! He has a gift, Tommy. Gifted, yes,” Emanuel exclaimed. “You see, before he ever uttered his first word, his first language was numbers.”
“The one language in which lies do not exist,” Tommy mused.
“Oh, how he loved my abacus! Do you remember, Samuel? The one with the painted beads? Oh, and how he broke each and every single one after that one! Painted beads, everywhere, always!”
“I told you I was sorry,” Samuel sighed. “I didn't know it had been a gift.”
“See, the abacus was a gift from my late wife, Candelaria. Braulio's aunt. It had been hers in childhood and she had taken the time to paint it. So gifted she was, my Dela. But, I swear they are all like that, the Portolas.” Emanuel coughed. “Have you seen La Chele's paintings?”
All these nicknames. Which one was she again?
“Her work should be displayed in Parisian museums, that girl. She must have inherited her talent from my Dela. Have you ever been to Paris?”
Tommy cleared his throat. “I left Paris in a cattle wagon.”
Emanuel frowned and nodded. “My son, too. He did not return from the war.” He attempted to turn back to face Samuel, but only managed to tap his leg with the back of his hand. “Too bad. He would have been so proud to see his boy grow up.”
Tommy turned his head. Samuel was still staring at him.
If they'd wanted him dead, they could have pulled over hours ago and dropped his body in a dell.
In the background, Emanuel pontificated about museums and art. Over the noise of his burgeoning paranoia, however, Tommy paid it little mind.
Blackbriar House was not the manor its name suggested. It was a farmhouse matching its orchard in state of decay. The gutter rail was rusted clean through in spots, and it sagged from the eaves as if it, too, had given up. Overgrown tree branches, heavy with tiny, unripe apples, formed tangled, broken mats between trees until they formed a single thicket. Weeds covered the paths between them.
Sitting outside the ramshackle farmhouse was Mr. Albert Cartwright, smoking his pipe. He didn't greet them when they approached, but waved them into what remained of the house.
“It may not be much, but it's what's left of the Cartwrights,” he said.
“Your family's legacy,” Emanuel said, setting his boater hat aside. “You must be proud.”
Cartwright's milky eyes studied his guests, a sour look upon his thin, wide lips. “You Gypsies?”
“Me? No, sir,” Emanuel said. “I am merely a legal advisor. And this is my grandson, Samuel. He helps me because my eyes are not so good anymore.”
Samuel gave Cartwright a curt nod.
“But you ain't Englishmen.” Cartwright spat. It missed the spittoon.
“No, but I am,” Tommy announced, lighting up a cigarette. “Born and raised in the streets of Birmingham.”
The gate outside the farm screeched and slammed shut and open, shut and open in the wind.
“What's a city man doing, trying to purchase an old man's farm?” Cartwright asked.
Tommy paused to study Samuel, who was glaring at him as if he'd just insulted his mother. Then, Emanuel who was busy scanning the orchard outside the dusty window.
The wind slammed at the loose gate. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. It grated on Tommy's nerves.
He should have stayed silent. Let Emanuel take care of it. Let the Portolas find somewhere else to beg for shelter before the frost came.
Emanuel cleared his throat. “Mr. Cartwright, I do not expect you to decide today. But if you would consider a simple lease arrangement—”
“I'm not leasing!” Pipe smoke poured from Cartwright's large nostrils. “I'm not some bleeding landlord.”
“No, of course!” Emanuel soothed. “But you must also understand that without labor—”
“Labor! What labor? A pack of swarthy tinkers rooting around my orchard like foxes?” His failing eyes drifted outside toward the weeds swallowing up the orchard. “It'd be quicker to let this place rot.”
Tommy let the smoke in his mouth curl in front of his lips. No one could blame him if he walked out the door right now. Fuck the old bastard. Fuck his pride. Let Cartwright bury himself with it.
But then he thought about the ragged tents. The patches he'd seen Celeste mending whenever she thought no one else was looking. He thought about the gap-toothed little girl with the buttercup. Of Eli and his broken toy horse.
Not your fucking problem, Tom. Let it go.
“What about you?” Cartwright turned to him. “You look like you've got more sense than these two. What's in it for you?”
Tommy flicked ash onto the chipped saucer on the table. He sighed. “Peace of mind.”
Emanuel gave a subtle shake of the head. Tommy wasn't sure if it was encouragement or a warning, but like most red flags, Tommy chose to walk right through them.
“If I buy this land outright,” Tommy said, “you stay here as long as you're alive. The deed remains in your family's name in the village register. No scandal, no charity. Just a transfer of stewardship.” He pulled from his cigarette. “Until you’re ready to let go.”
Cartwright went stiff. The stillness that came just before curiosity and hunger overwhelmed a catch into nibbling at the bait. Just a little bit.
“And when that day comes?”
Tommy’s bottom lip twitched. “Then it's mine. And you won't have to watch it rot.”
Outside, the gate squeaked and slammed again.
Dusk had already fallen over camp when Tommy and the Halberstams returned from Blackbriar House. No one came out to greet them, not even the sharpshooter, Mateo.
There was movement in camp, however. Several women boiled something in large copper pots. Odorless and colorless. Water. Other women poured it into basins, which Celeste hauled into Mercedes’ tent.
“What's going on?” Tommy asked.
At the sight of Emanuel, Lucinda hobbled over with her cane, her brows furrowed with worry. She uttered something in Caló.
Emanuel took off his hat and muttered something in Yiddish.
“Oi. What's going on?” Tommy repeated.
“There is an outbreak,” Emanuel said. “A widow and her children have taken ill. One of the children will no longer wake up.”
Tommy felt his stomach lurch.
He started for Mercedes’ tent.
“No, gachó!” Lucinda called out. “It is dirty!”
But he ignored it and opened the flap. Inside, Mercedes and Celeste had clean rags tied around their mouths and noses as they tended to the patients. The widow tried to sit up, her perspiring skin sallow with sickness, and coughed.
Ruby.
Her last moments. He'd missed them over some Hail Mary attempt to bargain with the gods over her life.
Was Tommy cursed? Was Ada right? Did he really kill everyone he touched?
“Gachó, out!” Celeste called out from behind the herbal smoke. “We don't need more contamination here.”
Next to the coughing widow was a sleeping little girl. Or she could have been, were it not for how wan she was. Her chest was still rising and falling, but every uneven breath she took made her body tremble.
Her.
The little girl with the buttercup.
“What do you need?” Tommy demanded. “I'll go get it from Kinver right now. There's a chemist.”
Mercedes didn't look up.
But Celeste did. And stared.
Why was no one saying anything? “Tell me!”
“No,” Braulio's voice said from behind him.
Tommy whirled around. “Why the hell not?”
“Because they're looking for you, Mr. Shelby.”
Outside the tent, Braulio waited with his thick arms across his broad chest.
Tommy stepped out after him. The flap fell shut, muffling the rattling coughs inside.
“Walk with me,” Braulio said.
They passed the firepit in silence. Past the tents and the separate eating area. Past the chickens and horses. And into the ash copse.
All the while, Tommy felt the tension snapping at his spine like a bass string. He knows. He's known the entire time.
Neither spoke until they were behind the privacy of the trees.
“Thomas Michael Shelby,” Braulio said. “Born 1890 to Arthur Shelby Sr. and an unregistered woman. Labor MP of Birmingham. OBE. Need I go on?”
Tommy took a deep breath. Blinked slowly. “What do you want from me?”
“The truth, Mr. Shelby. You put us all at risk with this little personal holiday of yours!”
A personal holiday. Was that what this was? He huffed. “Well done. How long have you known?”
Braulio lit a cigar and put it to his lips. “Your face is posted all over Kinver. And we have… a network.”
He'd bet a few pounds it was that fucker, Silas Grey. Fucking Boswells.
“It's dark. I can get to the chemist's and be back without anyone being the wiser,” Tommy said.
“Mm. I see that part of the report was also true.”
“She is going to die!”
“She was always going to die, Mr. Shelby,” Braulio stated flatly. “Mercedes said she will never wake from this. We will put the girl's cot outside the tent, as is tradition.”
“Christ…” Tommy paced away toward the creek.
Always too late. Never enough.
He should have pulled the trigger.
He could have been with Ruby by now.
“It's not too late,” Tommy insisted. “I can get a doctor—”
“No one here will allow a gachó doctor to touch them. Especially not the women.” Braulio exhaled a cloud of smoke that dissipated into the fog. “Not after Spain.”
“Right.” He sighed. “Right… Then—”
“Mr. Shelby, nothing can be done for her anymore. My own daughter went the same way.” Braulio clapped a hand over his shoulder.
Tommy swallowed.
“We will talk more about the farm in the morning, Mr. Shelby. Go rest,” Braulio said. “And think very carefully of how you will proceed from here.”
Tommy watched him go.
And then he mounted a horse and rode to Kinver.
Chapter 6: V.
Summary:
Tommy returns to camp with medicine and an offer.
Notes:
CW: racial slurs, and child death.
Chapter Text
When Celeste woke that morning, something needled her to think that something was wrong. The dawn chorus was agitated, a reflection of her mind. Noisy. Frantic.
She put away her blanket roll and headed outside to confirm.
Someone had tended to the fire recently.
His white horse was gone.
She rubbed circles on her temples.
Ay, gachó.
No note. No warning. Just gone.
Because of course he would leave at the worst time. Of course he'd want to take on the role of savior. His type always did.
Celeste lit up a cigarette.
She didn't bother waking the soldiers or Braulio.
Let him ride. Let him try and fix the unfixable. Let him learn the unsanded, unvarnished truth—the kind that splinters under tender skin and draws blood.
The white horse galloped across the rolling Staffordshire moorlands. Not even the dust kicked up by its hooves could obscure the noon sun’s indifferent blaze over the emerald hills. Buttercups and oxeye daisies shivered in the summer breeze. Not a cloud in the sky. Only an endless, brilliant azure. The type of day where even an average soul could wax poetic about: Clear. Warm. Alive.
In Tommy's hand, wrapped in oilskin: aspirin, quinine, and laudanum. He didn't think about the stares he'd gotten in town, nor the poster at the chemist's with his likeness on it.
All he could think about was:
Tickner maura… O beng… O beng.
The little girl, killed by the devil.
The gray man with the green eyes who'd come after Ruby during a fever dream. A shadow waiting at the foot of her bed.
When his ghostly hands failed to drag Tommy back into the cold bowels of the earth, he'd decided to take those around him instead. Just to fuck with him. To fuck with his mind. To mock him.
Or maybe Gina, Michael, and Campbell had been right all along and Tommy truly was the devil himself.
You are cursed, Tommy. Lizzie had looked at him as if she'd come to terms with this revelation. As if she'd been disappointed in herself for not having seen the monster sooner. A curse never to be lifted.
In the distance, Mateo dug into the heath, revealing the rocky soil beneath.
An icy feeling of nausea sank from Tommy's stomach down to his legs and toes.
No.
The firepit was cold.
Not a soul sat around it.
The only flame still burning flickered at the far edge of camp.
Cloths covered every mirror.
The medical tent had its flap pinned open. Outside, a single candle melted into a squat puddle beside a bowl of water.
The water buckets had all been dumped out.
Celeste stepped out of the tent. Her hair and mouth were covered in black cloth, but he already knew those piercing, ever-watchful eyes, even rimmed in red.
As he dismounted and approached, she held out her hand to stop him from afar.
“I'm not clean,” she said. “Did you get it?”
“What happened?” he asked.
“She died. Two hours past,” she stated. “Do you have the quinine?”
God. Anyone you touch, Ada had said.
Tommy stood there, oilskin parcel in hand, watching the candle turn into a puddle.
She had died.
Two hours ago.
The little girl with the buttercup in her tiny fingers. He hadn't even learned her name.
“The quinine, Mr. Shelby,” Celeste insisted. “Set it by the tent.”
His legs felt as flimsy as blades of grass in the wind, but he ambled over to set the parcel down on the crate by the entrance of the medical tent.
The air was filled with the scent of boiled herbs, smoke, and bleach.
He scarcely made it away from the tent before the bitter contents of his stomach hit the ground. Somewhere in the background, he felt the heavy presence of her stare land on his back.
An owl hooted once in the trees, in broad daylight. All the hairs on Tommy's arms stood on end.
“There's a flask of whiskey in my tent,” she said. Her voice was unusually quiet. “Take it. Braulio wants to talk to you.”
Tommy didn't think. He went to her tent and took the flask. Didn't bother with a cup; he uncorked the flask and drank straight from the mouth. The piss-poor whiskey was too thin to be of any comfort, but it scoured the taste of bile from his throat all the same.
Foolishly, he'd imagined the girl surviving. He'd ride in, like the cavalry he and his fellow soldiers had been anxiously awaiting, with medicine in hand and lies on his tongue: It'll be all right. And then, she'd go back to picking wildflowers and chasing the little chickens and dogs around the camp with the other children.
By the third swig from the flask, his hands stopped shaking.
Out past Celeste’s tent, the sound of stifled mourning carried in the wind. A woman keened somewhere past the hills.
You are cursed, Tommy.
There he sat, on a crate outside Celeste and Eli’s tent, head in his hands. The world carried on without him. Without Ruby. Without Grace. Without Polly.
Without the little girl.
As if nothing ever mattered in the first place. Maybe it doesn't.
The song of a reed warbler rose from the brush. Thin, breathless, insistent. Oblivious to grief.
A shadow fell upon Tommy.
“Mr. Shelby,” said a male voice.
Mateo. The expression behind his wide mustache was blank.
“Tell him I'm coming,” Tommy said.
“You went against me.”
Braulio had a particularly rebellious hair on his beard. It was silver and curled and stood out defiantly among its well-oiled peers.
“I did,” Tommy said. “I've also news of the orchard, whenever you are ready to hear it.”
He smoothed a hand over his beard. The silver hair straightened out before springing away from the flecked, dark mass.
Instinctively, Tommy rubbed at his own chin, rough with a few days’ worth of stubble.
“Business can wait, Mr. Shelby,” Braulio said. “I am not sure how your particular nation conducts matters of death and grief, but here it is improper to conduct business—”
“Before the ninth day, yes.” Tommy took a deep breath. “I am familiar.”
“You put the family at risk, Mr. Shelby. Were you followed?”
“No.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I arrived before dawn. No one saw me until I entered the chemist's.”
Braulio leaned forward. “And then?”
“And then…” Tommy waved his hand. “I bribed the chemist.”
A groan erupted from Braulio.
“I made a call, Braulio.”
“Yes, you made the call.” He took out a cigar, lit it, and puffed it to life. “Not as a soldier in my command. Not as kin. So what, then?” A serpentine of smoke slithered out of his mouth. “A savior?”
Warblers joined their shrill cries down by the creek.
Tommy patted himself down for a pack of cigarettes he did not find. His fists clenched over his knees.
“Or I could’ve sat on my hands and watched her die. You’d prefer that?”
“Now, after burying the child, we must uproot and camp elsewhere. We cannot risk being found.”
Tommy crossed his ankle over his knee. “Which brings me to the news. The old man said he won't allow—and I quote—‘swarthy tinkers’ to live on his family's property.”
“You said you had news.”
“So I offered to buy it. Quietly. Under an alias. The deed will be transferred to the Halberstam Trust. No one will trace it back to you. Or me.”
Braulio's wide mouth twitched, lips thinning.
The Halberstam Trust was older than its paperwork. For decades since his marriage to Candelaria, Emanuel wielded it as a skeleton key, unlocking properties, business licenses, and safe passage where Romani names alone would've slammed doors shut.
On paper, the only trustees were himself and, recently, his grandson Samuel. In practice, it was a covenant. A pact among kin. It had once held orange orchards in Seville, bakeries in Granada, and vineyards lining the hillsides of southern France.
Emanuel never took a cut beyond what taxes demanded. He signed nothing without spitting first. And no one had ever called the trust by its proper name when speaking of it in camp. They simply said: el viejo lo arregló. The old man handled it.
Braulio's thick eyebrows crumpled together. He had rebellious hairs there, too, standing out like an insect's antennae.
“So we become your tenants. Smile for the bread. Bow for the roof. Is that it?” He shook his head. “A gift with strings is still a snare.”
“It won’t bear my name. Won’t ever belong to me. The old man holds the deed — like always.”
Braulio let out a long sigh as he tugged on his beard. “El Viejo always did like to undermine me.” There was no bitterness in his tone.
Ashes from his cigar plummeted to a chipped clay dish.
A woman's wail cut through the silence. The girl's mother, Tommy assumed.
“We are moving camp,” Braulio finally said. “We'll leave by dusk. But some must stay behind with the sick. The mother has recovered, but refuses to leave before the ninth day.”
“And you want me to stay.”
“I don't trust you yet, Mr. Shelby.” He takes in a noisy breath through his large nostrils. “But in this matter, I have few other options. So I must entrust the most vulnerable of my kin to you.”
A few women recite a prayer, chanting over the mother's wailing.
“We will not be able to properly mourn our dead until all the sick recover,” he continued. Braulio then reached into one of the crates and slid forward Tommy's gun and holster. “Guard them. I will leave Mercedes and my older nieces with you.”
“No men?”
“No men.” He stubbed out the cigar on the dish. “And, Mr. Shelby, if anything should happen to any of them, I promise you will not make it to the old man's orchard.”
“Where will you go?”
“One of my men found a place near a ridge, a day's ride away from the orchard.”
Braulio then stood. Halfway out of the shack, he paused. “My niece Inés does not trust you.” He didn't turn around. “Celeste does not need to.”
Then Braulio was gone.
The wailing had faded. The warblers no longer sang.
Wheels creaked as they tracked through the mud and rocks. The covered wagon and dogcarts rode west into the sunset and with them, most of the Portolas. The scent of overturned earth clamored for rain.
Tommy stood atop the hill watching them leave.
Not far off, beneath the swaying shade of an ash tree, he spotted her.
Celeste.
She faced the creek, a cigarette between her lips. The tremor in her hands was visible even from this far away. Her shoulders shook, but no sound escaped her.
Tommy stepped closer.
She didn't turn.
“Oi.”
She quickly wiped her face and glanced over her shoulder.
He tossed her the whiskey flask.
She caught it. Gave him a look that was more tired than suspicious. Then she drank from it, wiped her lips with the back of her wrist, and held out her cigarette.
Tommy took a pull from it.
Neither spoke.
Only the smoke rose between them.
The Tiffany lamp in the office flickered with each gust of wind outside. Rain tapped against the windowpane like pebbles—small, relentless. The room felt like it was holding its breath.
Agent Wynn read the report twice. Folded it with surgical precision.
He reached for the phone, pausing to glance at the overcoat hanging on the peg beside the door. Still damp from the field. Still stinking of horses, of shit, of the poor.
He dialed.
It rang.
“Gorsefield 107,” he told the operator. “Blackbird protocol.”
It rang again.
Then came Churchill's stiff-jawed, clipped reply:
“Yes?”
Wynn skipped the pleasantries. “Black Horse has crossed the river near Kinver. Lame, maybe. Or someone limping in its wake.”
A pause. Long enough to make Wynn wonder if the storm had dropped the line.
“Was it your doing?” Churchill asked.
“No.”
“Good. He's circling something. Let him think he's alone. Do not engage yet.”
Click.
Wynn hung up.
Opened his notebook.
Scribbled a single line:
Kinver. Watch the ridge.
Chapter 7: VI.
Summary:
The camp-wide mourning period continues. During a foraging trip, Celeste discovers something compromising about Tommy. Braulio sends news on the 9th day.
Notes:
Please read the author's note at the end of the chapter.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
By the third day, the mother could no longer hold in the sorrow.
Grief came in like autumnal thunder—loud, inevitable, sending tremors throughout the very earth. It stormed in fits of screaming. In sudden collapse. In the broth and morsels left untouched by bereaved, embittered lips.
Her son, still ill and soaked with sweat, trembled like a twig in a gust. Mercedes hovered over him, spooning him a thin broth made of nothing but root scraps and desperate hope. Glassy, half-lidded little eyes followed the sound of his mother but it was unclear if he knew what was happening, or if he was too far gone from the fever to care.
“Gachó.”
Tommy looked up at Celeste from his post. She had a rifle strapped to her back.
“Was your family always settled?” she asked. “Or did you live on the road as a child?”
He squinted at her.
So, she pressed on. “I'm asking if you know of a place with willows and game nearby.”
Men all had their tells whenever they were cornered. Braulio would clear his throat and pull his beard. Emanuel liked to give a shrug, tilt his head, and change the subject.
But Thomas Shelby…
Tommy just stared at you with those bone-chilling eyes. And what he saw was beyond Celeste. Was he looking at her like a meddling, narrowminded rube? Or…
“The game is for broth,” she said, flat. “Mercedes says the sick need something more substantial and all we have are vegetables.”
“Mhm. And the willows?”
“For fever. The mother refuses to take quinine.”
He rolled those glacial, deep-set eyes of his. “Right.”
At noon, they slipped into the woods. The swaying trees swallowed them whole, whispering secrets among leaves and screeching insects. Somewhere south of camp, a streambed twisted its way through the moss and nettles, half-choked with bramble and fallen willow branches. Tommy carried a rifle. Celeste carried the rest.
They spotted a rabbit within a few minutes. Celeste pointed it out with a finger before kneeling at a fallen tree trunk and aiming her rifle at it.
She squeezed the trigger.
The rabbit fell where it stood.
She fetched it but not before uttering something reverent in Caló.
“Do you really think anyone's listening?” he asked.
“No. But I believe in being grateful,” she replied, stowing the carcass in the satchel. She added, “Two more should do it.”
Stood straight and still, Tommy's frame was that of a soldier's. Ever present. Hypervigilant.
“Aye. Me old man taught us to treat our kills with respect.”
“Did your kin travel a lot? As a child?”
Tommy's head was on a swivel. “Was born on a narrow boat—sixteen of us crammed in, once. Later, we settled in Birmingham.”
“Is it anything like Kinver?”
“No,” he said. His skin glistened with a strange pallor as they trekked through the dell. “Not much green there. It's gray. Dark with smog, even during the daytime. Roaring fires. The soot gets in your teeth. But… it is alive, that place. And it always pulls you back.”
His breathing quickened. Something was wrong with Tommy Shelby.
More than usual, anyway.
“You make it sound haunted,” she said.
Tommy stepped closer to the willow, unsheathing his knife. Stippled sunlight caught in his dark hair, gilding it. He placed his hand against the bark, as if asking permission.
Then his knees buckled.
The knife clattered to the ground.
Celeste turned just to see him do the same as the blade. His jaw clenched, bent limbs jerking like a bucking stallion. His eyes rolled back, and then widened in horror. When she moved closer to kick the knife away from his spasming body, his eyes tracked her in a silent plea for help or perhaps a mercy killing or both.
When the violent tremors in Tommy Shelby's body ceased, the pattern of golden light on the woodland floor had shifted several degrees east. He couldn't distinguish the piercing cries of birdsong, but at least he had control of his hands again. He shifted. Something solid against his spine. A willow. It grounded him in place.
He turned his head to see Celeste kneeling at the stream, rinsing off rabbit carcasses she'd dressed and skinned. Blood flowed down the current in vanishing tendrils.
“You can tell them you caught and dressed them yourself,” she said without looking back.
“Why?”
“The mother won't eat if she finds out I did it,” she stated. “I’m popular here that way.”
He flexed his jaw—bruised, he'd venture from the hot ache—and was met with the sting of a freshly split bottom lip.
“Why the pariah status?”
Instead of answering, Celeste asked, “You have these fits often?”
Tommy squeezed his fingernails against the calloused heel of his palm.
“So that's how you wound up in the creek,” she mused.
He leaned against the trunk with the scant energy he had spent in his aching muscles and hauled himself onto his feet. Stumbled. Caught himself on the trunk.
“Had a friend once,” she said. “He'd just come over to Saintes-Maries from Spain. Only survivor in his family. They'd been surrounded by Francoists. Lined up against a wall and shot like cattle. He was never quite the same after that. Had these fits. The matriarchs said it was a curse or that he was possessed. The elders said he did it for pity. But he was just cracked, like the rest of us. Just…” She sighed. “In a different way, I suppose.”
“They don't need to know about this.”
“I agree, Mr. Shelby. It would do no good. Sympathy doesn't come cheap with this lot. Everyone in this family has a sad story, from the oldest to the youngest.”
He cleared his raspy throat. “You got the bark?”
“No thanks to you, but yes. Just don't tell Mercedes I touched it.”
He leaned forward, supporting his hands on his knees as the world spun around him. He thought of the fairgrounds he frequented as a child, of the ornate carousels with galloping horses going round and round and round. How John would ride one over and over again until he was either caught or puked all over their mother's shoes—and then he'd immediately go for another ride.
“We're heading back to camp whenever you're ready,” she said. “There's bread in one of your satchels. Don't let them see you eating in camp.”
The last thing Tommy needed was something else churning in the waves of nausea.
“I'm not a fucking gorjer. I know the rules.”
“Yes, but you're an outsider, Mr. Shelby. And to them, that is all that matters. They don't know your kind and you don't know ours.”
Tommy chewed on the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper.
“You think it's a curse?” he asked. The sigh of leaves nearly swallowed his voice.
Celeste watched the last traces of blood scurry downstream over the mossy stones.
“When I figure it out myself, I'll let you know.”
On the ninth day, the boy stood by his mother as she lit a candle on the shabby altar—just a few discarded wooden pallets stacked and dressed with an old shawl; a tattered picture of the Black Madonna sat upon the moth-bitten cloth next to a rosary.
From the edge of the treeline, the harsh caw of a crow sliced through the camp. The corvid then hopped down, its wings fluttering with dark elegance, and settled near the mother's bender tent. Tilted its head. Tommy saw his reflection in its beady eyes.
Mercedes gasped and crossed herself.
Inés glanced sharply at Tommy.
From her notebook, Celeste looked up. Her eyes lingered on the crow for a moment too long before she sighed, flicked ash from her cigarette, and resumed sketching something in charcoal.
The boy stared at the crow with sunken eyes glazed over from dwindling illness.
The mother turned. Her scream tore at her throat, voice splintering like old wood. Her trembling finger pointed at Tommy as she yelled in Caló. Then she spat at his boots.
Tommy didn't flinch; he'd faced enemies thrice her size in infinitely more unfavorable circumstances and defeated them with his bare hands. Still, his Adam's apple bobbed. His jaw clicked at the hinges.
One word he did understand, however: mulo.
“Tell me what she said.”
“Are you sure?” Inés asked. “It isn't kind.”
“Well, I gathered she wasn't offering me tea.”
“She says you brought a ghost with you. A spirit of—”
“Yes, I know what a mulo is.”
Inés continued, “She says that your muló brought on the illness that took Our Dead One.”
You are cursed, Tommy.
Mercedes approached the bender tent with a few sprigs of rosemary and then sprinkled salt over the entrance, murmuring something under her breath as the crow took flight anew.
The crow vanished into the trees, its caw echoing once before the woods swallowed the rest.
At the end of the ninth day, the fire was allowed to grow enough for cooking. Tendrils of fragrant vapor—herbs, vegetables, and boiled, oily game—wafted from the pot. The first real meal since mourning began. Inés ladled broth into a bowl and fed the boy. The mother only took a sip of the broth, refusing the rest.
That morning, he found had to tighten his belt another notch. The mirrors were still covered, otherwise he would have noticed how prominent his ribs, clavicle, and cheekbones appeared in comparison to two months ago.
A piercing, rhythmic whistle shattered through the evening's silence.
A lone rider on a black-and-white piebald cob pony galloping from the horizon.
Tommy's hand moved to the rifle and stood.
“Sounds like Mateo,” Celeste murmured from her sketchbook. “Guess it's time to move camp.”
Upon arrival, Mateo led the pony to the post and hitched it. When Tommy approached, he said in a low voice, “El Baró has given the go-ahead.”
“For what?” Tommy asked.
Mateo gave a shrug. “He only said that you would know and that there are conditions.”
Tommy pressed his tongue against his molars. By conditions, Braulio probably meant demands.
Mateo then reached into his vest and handed over a letter sealed with wax. “For La Chele,” he said. “From El Viejo.” And then he began assisting with collapsing the tents and shed.
Tommy turned the letter over in his hands.
Thin paper. Onionskin. Unbroken wax seal embedded with the emblem of Emanuel's ring.
He glanced at Celeste. Still working on something in her sketchbook. She didn't look up.
Behind one of the tents, Tommy carefully broke the seal.
He read the first sentence twice. And then a third time.
Perfect French grammar. Sensible phrasing. But none of it meant anything.
You have done well to endure these recent trials… we look forward to a season of rebuilding… the roses bloom best when pruned by fire.
No mention of the orchard. No reference to a conversation. No names.
He turned the paper over, then back again.
Code.
And not one he recognized, either. Whatever message the letter carried was not meant for the eyes of a stranger.
Tommy folded the letter again and placed it back in the envelope. He used his lighter to reseal the wax to paper.
Then, he scanned the camp for Inés.
Notes:
I will be taking a small break to catch up with the rest of the chapters, so the next post will be on Sept 13th, rather than the expected Sept 6th.
Thank you all for your support on this little passion project of mine. See you in two weeks!
Chapter 8: VII.
Summary:
Tommy probes into the contents of the letter and confronts what he's been avoiding for the past few months.
Braulio and Celeste make separate deals with Tommy.
Notes:
CW: Non-explicit sexual content, period-typical misogyny, arranged marriage, vicarious embarrassment warning, and a brief, non-explicit allusion to breathplay.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Celeste was sharpening a camp knife when Tommy approached, letter in hand. She didn't bother looking up at him until he cleared his throat.
“Post for you,” he said.
She reached out and took it. Opened it. Scanned the contents once.
“It's in code,” he added.
On the second pass, it was there and gone in an instant. The inner corners of her thick, midnight eyebrows pinched together before smoothing into something closer to neutral. But not quite.
Then she burned the letter. Her hand lingered too long in the flames.
Tommy clicked his jaw. “Right.”
The paper curled and the edges singed black instantly, the red wax popping and flaring.
He waited for an explanation or a reaction—something—that would never come, as she returned to her task with the knife.
“Not worth keeping, eh?” Tommy asked.
“It said what it needed to say.”
Her back turned to him, she continued her work, passing the edge of the blackened blade against the whetstone. Once, twice, three times. Then the other side. Once, twice. Thrice. Over and again.
“What did it say?”
Celeste didn't look up. Her blade kissed stone. Again. Again. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
And that was that.
The midday sun had stretched the carts’ shadows into spindly fingers clawing at the grass and heather in the center of camp.
He stood beside the canvas covered wagon as Celeste loaded it with an unnecessary amount of force. Each folded blanket landed with a slap. The cookware clanged much louder than it needed to.
She hadn't looked at him since the fire.
He turned to Inés and Mercedes, who were packing up the healer's tent, organizing smaller crates of herbs, glass jars clinking softly inside.
“She's in a mood,” Tommy said.
Mercedes snorted. “It must be a day ending in ‘y’.”
“It's usually not this bad,” Inés mused. “I bet she got bad news.”
Finally. Tommy willed his shoulders to relax, coaching his expression into his usual deadpanned mien.
“You read it, then?” he asked.
Inés scoffed. “You think she'd let me?”
“We have just known La Chele long enough to know when she is rattled,” Mercedes said.
“She's only said carajo 57 times today,” Inés teased. “So, it can't be that bad.”
Tommy glanced back to the wagon. Celeste dropped a cast-iron pan into a crate with a clang that made the pony tied nearby flinch. It slid off the crate and fell by her foot.
“Carajo!”
“Fifty-eight. Definitely bad,” Inés whispers.
Mercedes stacked one crate of bottles on top of another. “There are few things that could possibly be that bad for her. She's already faced everything that could go wrong in a woman's life.”
Inés paused. Then she looked at Tommy, her sharp, hawk-like features studying him.
Her eyes widened. “Joder… I think I know what it is.”
Tommy stared her down, waiting for her to explain.
“Don't speak foul things into existence, girl,” Mercedes warned, shoving a stack of crates into her arms.
“I'm not, tía! The foul things exist whether I speak them or not.”
“You have been spending too much time with La Chele. You sound just like her.”
“Well, it's true!”
“So, what's your theory?” Tommy pressed, grabbing another stack.
Inés grinned. “Oh, I think you'll find out soon enough.”
He grit his teeth. Then, when Celeste stepped away from the wagon to help Mateo collapse the tents, Tommy loaded the stacked crates into the wagon.
Near sundown, the stragglers joined Mateo in riding toward the new camp. Celeste rode her bay mare close to Mateo's wagon, while the rest trailed behind her.
No one noticed when Tommy broke away from the caravan. No one stopped him.
He rode away from the drowning of the sun in the horizon and over the ridge, as if he could evade the undertow of whatever news awaited him in the new camp—or delay it, at least.
His gray pony's gait was steady beneath him, hooves thudding dully against the moss.
Ahead, the telephone pole jutted out of the earth crooked near a rusted callbox. Its wires had been partially chewed by rodents or weather or time or all of the above. Nevertheless, intact.
The door's hinges shrieked when he opened it and ducked inside where the air was musty and stale. A spider had made a home in a corner, its web wobbling in the breeze.
His fingers hesitated over the rotary dial. If Tommy's instincts were right—and they'd kept him alive thus far—Churchill’s bloodhounds were merely sniffing out, not if, but where.
The rotary dial clicked. Whirred.
The line rang.
Again.
Tommy tugged at his collar. Too tight.
“Number, please?” the operator said.
He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and raked his hands through his hair. “Mayfair 244.”
“One moment.”
The line rang again.
His pulse quivered at his neck, his throat tight. The back of his peaked cap made a poor mop for the sweat dripping from his hairline. Not again. Not now. Through the feathered, bleached edges of his vision, he watched the last of the Portolas melt into the molten bronze horizon.
Then came her voice. “Thorne residence.”
Tommy's lips parted. It’s me, Ada. Is Arthur still alive? But they snapped shut before he could verbalize anything.
“Hello?”
When he could finally speak, his voice was more ragged than he intended. “It's me.”
Ada's breath staggered sharply in disbelief. “...Tommy?”
Is my brother dead?
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
“Ada…”
Her voice was low with fury. “You fucking bastard.”
He squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden sharp ringing of an incoming migraine. “Ada, listen to me.”
“You disappear on us for months without a fucking word—”
“Ada, I need—”
“And I have to find out from my suicidal older brother that you—”
“For fuck's sake, Ada! Listen to me!”
“No, you listen to me! You don't get to throw us away when we no longer suit your purposes!”
Tommy leaned on his forearm against the wall of the booth because he wasn't sure he wouldn't have the strength to keep standing.
“I thought I'd buried you,” she said. “I grieved you, Tommy.”
“I know,” he said.
“Then why? Why did you leave me to pick up the pieces? Why let Arthur think you were—”
“Because I was.” When she didn't respond, he continued, “I wasn't supposed to live.”
“Tommy, don't—”
“I'm telling you that's what I thought. But, things turned out differently.”
He could hear Elizabeth's voice in the distance, on the other side.
Warm bile bubbled in his throat. “Is Arthur…”
“Not that you cared enough to call sooner, but he's been going back to church with Linda again. Went teetotaler.”
Tommy dropped the receiver as a single sob emerged from his throat, and his knees turned liquid. Ada's muffled voice swung on the receiver dangling from its wire like a pendulum before he picked it up again.
“Hello?”
“Ada, I need a favour.”
“Of course you do. Why else would you call?”
“Let's meet. I'll explain everything then.”
“You can't just abandon us for months like this and then suddenly ask for a fucking favour, like you're… Him.”
Even unspoken, his father's name stuck on him like a splinter, and it drew blood.
“I know, Ada… But I wouldn't be asking this if it weren't to put things right.”
“And you think ‘putting things right’ gives you license to manipulate me into doing your bidding again?”
“I'm not… I'm…” His heavy breaths fogged up the glass. “I'm trying to make things right. I know what I have to do now. I see it now, Ada. See it clear as day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Say you'll meet me.”
“Tommy—”
“Ada, please. I just want to make everything right. For you, for the family. I want to make it right. Let me make it right.”
Something clattered on the other end, and for a moment, Tommy thought she had hung up the phone, until she said, “Where?” and then he could breathe again.
Black Horse rode northwest over the ridge, leaving the callbox behind like a confession in a booth.
One quick dial to the exchange. Just enough to sate his curiosity.
He picked up the receiver.
“Number, please?”
“Kitty? It's Wynn. Give me the last number that came through.”
In the dark of dusk, Tommy followed the twin grooves left by wagon wheels until the burnished glow of the fire and the clink of tools told him the camp was near.
He dismounted his horse near the rest and walked past Mateo and toward the camp.
“You are back, Mr. Shelby,” called Emanuel's voice. The campfire reflected in his glasses as he smoked a cigar.
“You sound surprised.”
“A wounded bird flies away when its wing heals.”
“So, you thought I flew.”
“I think,” Emanuel said, tapping ash into the dirt, “you thought about it, no?” He then took out a pocket watch from his jacket, studied it, and then replaced it without looking up. “Braulio wishes to speak with you, Mr. Shelby.”
“Does it have anything to do with your niece's mood lately?”
Emanuel grinned. “I have many nieces.”
“And yet, you know the one I mean.”
“La Chele has many moods, Mr. Shelby. Predicting them would be like guessing the next card in a rigged deck: possible, but rarely wise. I remember such an occasion, you see, when—”
“It changed when she read your letter.”
Emanuel merely smiled that infuriating smile. “And yet you still rode back. How interesting. One may even call it serendipitous.”
Tommy continued his march to the gallows of Braulio's shack without a word.
“Come in, Mr. Shelby,” Braulio said, gesturing to the wooden chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”
Those pale blue eyes darted about, taking in the low ceiling, the rusted corrugated metal walls, the bare cot in the corner. The look of a man who was no stranger to survival. The look of a soldier. Good, Braulio thought. He would need those instincts for the things to come.
The chair creaked under Tommy's weight. “The orchard business is underway. I will have the documents drawn within a fortnight.”
Braulio nodded behind a haze of smoke.
“I gathered you have news for me,” Tommy said.
“Not news. A deal.”
The gachó sat forward. Men of his kind were bloodhounds for opportunity and greyhounds in the race to exploit it.
“I do not trust men easily, Mr. Shelby. Far too many times, I have seen men trade charity for control. But I know this: we will not go into winter as beggars on another man's land.”
As usual, Tommy's face gave nothing away.
“And so, I am offering you something more permanent.” A clump of ashes fell like dead leaves onto the ceramic bowl. “We join families.”
Not a muscle in his face moved. Not so much as a blink. Perhaps Adelina had been right in saying that Braulio had allowed a muló into the family after all.
“Christ,” Tommy said.
“I have done research on the Shelbys. A powerful family.”
“If you know so much, then tell me: what makes you think I'd accept you joining your camp to my name?”
“Because of our reach. Our network,” Braulio said. “We have relatives still in the South of France, in Spain, and in Portugal. Some work horses, others tinwork, and others… in trades that do not require paperwork. We have cousins who carry goods over the Pyrenees, others who trade information across borders.”
And yet, the gachó waited. Watching. Still nothing.
“We have knowledge,” Braulio continued. “Safe routes. Discreet bankers. Men in customs who owe us favors. Officials willing to look the other way.”
Interest flashed like a spark from the forge in the gachó's eyes, although which asset prompted it, Braulio could not tell.
“And yet here you are,” Tommy said. “Half-starved and sick in the wilderness.”
Braulio didn't flinch. The dead lay scattered in a path from Andalusia to South Staffordshire itself. His own daughter, not quite fifteen, lying in a grave near Dover. No insult stung as deeply as that loss.
“Indeed. Which is why having a base of operations would benefit both sides. My point is, Mr. Shelby: if we joined families, it would not be charity. It would be kinship.”
He let the word linger in the tense silence between them.
“Either way, the Portolas will live like peasants on your fiefdom. Not now, not ever.” He went on, “Had my daughter Xana lived, she would have been wed to the Greys, or the Boswells. It was arranged before we ever crossed the Channel.”
Tommy sat back in his chair, crossing his ankle over his knee.
“But she did not,” Braulio continued, turning to face him. “And all I have left is my niece.”
The very niece whose distaste for Tommy was no secret.
“She is not much to look at,” Braulio said, as if reading from his own ledger. “Broad in the hips, plain in the face. Nearly forty. Never smiles. A bit of a wild horse, that one. I doubt she is tamable.”
Tommy’s mouth twitched.
“But a clever one,” Braulio added softly. “And a very good woman. Hard. Loyal to a fault.”
Tommy's fingers tapped impatiently against his ankle. A pale band of skin around his finger confirmed another of Braulio's findings.
“Am I getting a racehorse or a bride?” he asked dryly.
Braulio’s eyes met his without flinching. “Perhaps both.”
After a moment, Tommy cleared his throat. “And what does the bride have to say about it?”
Braulio looked away then.
“Celeste knows what is required of her,” he said simply. “She is no stranger to sacrifice.
Braulio contemplated the irony of Celeste sacrificing herself for the very ones who'd clamoured for her banishment.
Yet to his surprise, Tommy said, “Allow me to sleep on it.”
The cigarette rolled over Tommy's cracked lips exactly three times before he lit it with a match cupped between his rough fingers. Outside his tent, the fire crackled sharply, snapping like bone. He stared at the pitched canvas ceiling where the campfire light painted the dancing shape of a body.
A marriage. A fucking marriage, of all things.
What was marriage but bureaucracy and a set of unrealistic vows?
There was Grace, but there was no one like her and there never would be again. There was Lizzie, but could he really do that to another woman again? Lizzie hadn't known the extent of his darkness, how far the abyss in his heart went. Or, maybe she had and had leaped into it only to learn she would never hit bottom.
But, this marriage would be nothing like either of those.
There would be no veil. No white dress. No vows. No forced smiles through teeth. No declarations of love.
Only a blood pact.
He much doubted someone as bitter as Celeste would ask for much more.
The firelight's shapes swayed against the vaulted canvas ceiling, like a dancer at the Eden Club. Pearls and lace and stockings against creamy thighs.
Grace had worn violet and far too many clothes on their wedding night. Under the banquet table, his hand had lingered on the outside of her thigh, right where her garter belt met her white nylon stocking, haphazardly fastened after their stolen nuptial tryst.
The way her lips had parted in a breathless gasp with the first thrust.
Her perfume.
Tatiana'd had the gall to put it on. To wear Grace's clothes. There were days Tommy wished he had killed her on the spot.
But what a fucking ride.
He'd walked that tightrope between ecstasy and death, and found her waiting: Grace, flickering. Her mouth, her skin, the curve of her thigh against his palm. But then the shape shifted like smoke. Soft skin into cold marble. Spring green gave way to the yawning chasms of greed that were Tatiana's lust-blown eyes. A naked duchess in furs with claws at his throat.
He came like a curse had lifted. But the ghosts remained.
Tommy rubbed at his throat. His thickening distraction pulled at his trousers and at the edges of his chessboard, his pieces and options scattering with each pulse. And so, he unbuckled his belt.
He thought of May's face twisting with pleasure, of Jessie's doe eyes, of Greta's filthy whispers, of Diana's breathless gasps against his shoulder.
Each one a brand. His body remembered all of them.
He gripped himself harder. As if he could fuck out the rot. As if he could carve out Grace's ghost with the silhouette of another woman's moans.
The waitress in Paris. An actress in Montmartre. A nurse in Saintes-Maries. He couldn't remember if the nurse had freckles or if they were someone else's. He never remembered their eyes. Only the vague form of their mouths against his.
Then—footsteps. Voices. Two shadows growing against the canvas.
Tommy shoved himself back into his trousers, yanked the blanket over his lap, and reached for his knife.
Emanuel's head emerged from the tent flap, his face pinched apologetically. In his knobby hands was a leather folio, creased at the spine. “Ach, forgive the intrusion, but—”
“Mr. Shelby,” Celeste said, ducking in after Emanuel. When her eyes landed on him, she tensed up. Then she averted her eyes, taking the documents from Emanuel. “Put it away, Mr. Shelby. We've business to discuss.”
“I will be glad to inform you that I am fully clothed. What can I do for you, Ms. Portola?”
“Reyes Montoya,” she corrected. On the crate next to his cot, she placed a leather folio. “It's how gachó bureaucrats know me.”
Tommy hummed, sat up, took his glasses from the crate and thumbed through the handwritten documents. Not Emanuel's hand, but elegant. The ink had just barely dried.
Neither Celeste nor Emanuel moved to take a seat. “By now, you know what my uncle plans to do.”
Tommy lit another cigarette. “Are you telling me, Ms. Reyes? Or asking?”
“I'm asking what you plan to do.”
“That, I have not decided yet.”
“Brilliant.” She pulled a wooden stool out for Emanuel to sit on. Emanuel then pulled out a second hand-written copy of the documents and put on his bifocals. She held her oil lamp over it. “I've come to discuss the terms laid out in this agreement.”
Tommy scoffed. “You certainly don't waste time, do you?”
“A virtue, in this particular case.” She nodded at the paper. “There is space for your personal terms in the last few pages.”
“Very gracious of you.”
“Grace has nothing to do with it—” and for a second he mistook it to have been his wife's name “—Mr. Shelby. I simply prefer clarity.”
“Chele, perhaps we should do this in the morning, eh?” Emanuel objected.
“Braulio could have Samuelito draw up a contract for himself before then, tío. You know how he is. What do you think I'll get? Because I can tell you.”
“Well, yes, but—” And then they switched to Caló, effectively locking Tommy out.
Celeste crossed her arms and stared at the ground.
Tommy broke away from the conversation he was no longer welcome in and resumed skimming through the agreement, his eyes pausing on the mention of a dowry.
A modest sum of money paid over the course of five years.
Five Andalusian horses: three colts and two fillies. Coat colors not specified.
And a collection of paintings, provenance and value to be assessed.
“I hate to interrupt this sensitive family moment,” Tommy lied, “but… Andalusian horses?”
“Yes, Mr. Shelby! They are magnificent creatures, I tell you—”
“Yes, Mr. Halberstam, I quite recall your fondness for them.”
“Five is as many as I can guarantee at the moment,” Celeste stated. “Spain's now a fortress, thanks to Franco. Too dangerous to smuggle anything that large across the borders. We should have some left in stock with our kin in France.”
If they were indeed as rare as Emanuel made them sound, then perhaps there was coin to be made from them. The orchard had a large enough stable, after all.
“Did you read the rest of the dowry?”
Tommy nodded. “Paintings, eh? You and my sister might get on well.”
“Artist? Or a collector?”
“Collector.”
Her lips curled sardonically. “Ah.”
“And are these paintings you've done?”
“Very few. A lot were gifts. Others were payment for favours. Regardless, Mr. Shelby, I assure you they're quite valuable.”
Tommy looked up from his glasses for a hint on what kind of favours, but she didn't seem to care to explain.
“They'll be paid to you over the course of five years, insofar as the conflicts on the continent permit,” she continued. “And, on the next page, you'll find my terms.”
He read the first clause.
And laughed.
But her expression did not waver.
“I am not so foolish to pretend you will be faithful,” she said. “All I require is that you be discreet. You will not bring your women into our home nor near any children of mine. And you will not come to my bed the same day you go to them.”
Tommy's jaw ached from keeping the slant of amusement away from his mouth.
She turned the page for him. “And this says I reserve the same right for myself.”
Emanuel cleared his throat, crimson creeping under his papery skin as he shuffled through the papers.
“You may review the terms and propose some of your own,” she said. “It is better to speak plainly than pretend.”
The quiet stretched until an owl hooted.
“There are two more matters," she said, her tone as steady as if she were discussing the price of salt.
“Truly, Chele, must you?” Emanuel asked, mopping his forehead with an embroidered handkerchief.
“Please forgive me, uncle. But we must discuss expectations.”
Tommy raised his eyebrows. “Expectations.”
“How often,” she clarified. “Whether we will take contraceptive measures. What you will require.”
Emanuel made a strangled sound low in his throat, nearly dropping his seal.
What he will require.
“Anything?”
“No. Some things are clearly off-limits. But even if you were a fucking degenerate,” she said dryly, “most things can be negotiated.”
Emanuel closed his eyes and whispered a quick blessing under his breath, as if to ward off the entire conversation.
Tommy wondered what the look in her eyes meant. It was too flat for scorn. Too soft for lust. Yes, weariness of wariness. The look of having survived too much to ever trust anyone again, even when the only thing desired is a place to lean his head. Eyes pried open, always looking for exits.
“You think that's what I'd haggle over?”
“Like I said, it's better to be clear than pretend.”
Emanuel sought refuge from the conversation behind the pages of the folio, straightening them.
“I don't plan keeping a woman here,” Tommy said. “As for how often we fuck, I have no expectation you'll be willing straightaway.” Taking a pull, he added, “When you decide you wanna fuck, you can take whatever precautions you wish.”
Celeste pursed her lips in thought. Then nodded once.
Emanuel prayed for the topic to be finished.
“You're right,” Tommy said, leaning forward on his cot, forearms on his knees. “Better to speak of it plainly.”
It was liberating, in a sense, to not have to pretend this was love. And in that brutal liberation, was a burgeoning form of grudging respect.
“One final condition,” she said.
“Right.”
“Elias is to be treated like a Shelby.”
Emanuel looked up at her from his bifocals, then at Tommy.
Celeste kept her eyes tacked on Tommy. “He will not be a servant in his own home. He will have a proper education. A place at the table.”
Without hesitating, Tommy said, “Done.”
Startled, Emanuel fumbled for a pen and turned the folio toward Tommy first.
Tommy flipped a coin. And with a flourish of ink, he signed himself away for leverage. For the routes mapped in her uncle's head. For the horses, for the smuggling contacts, the quiet influence that crossed borders better than guns. A calculated move. Cleaner than bloodshed. And with the way his hands had shaken when he'd held the gun to Holford's head, Tommy no longer knew whether he could stomach bloodshed again.
Celeste's artful signature sprawled beneath his: Eva María Celeste Reyes Montoya.
And what had she sold herself for? A rickety farm and a couple of fields. For the illusion of stability. For her son's future. For a man damaged beyond repair or salvation.
Spit sealed the contract between their clutched palms.
An owl hooted again. Tommy didn't know if it was an omen or a warning. But the deed was done.
Notes:
Don't worry, I'm not planning to make Tommy have a breathplay kink. If it ever comes up again, I will mention it in the opening notes.
Goth_girl101 on Chapter 2 Sun 20 Jul 2025 04:10PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 20 Jul 2025 04:31PM UTC
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Bizu_Campeche on Chapter 2 Sun 20 Jul 2025 09:39PM UTC
Last Edited Sun 20 Jul 2025 09:40PM UTC
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Goth_girl101 on Chapter 2 Sun 20 Jul 2025 10:17PM UTC
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crypticopal on Chapter 2 Mon 21 Jul 2025 02:19AM UTC
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Bizu_Campeche on Chapter 2 Wed 23 Jul 2025 04:24PM UTC
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Goth_girl101 on Chapter 3 Sun 27 Jul 2025 11:19AM UTC
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Bizu_Campeche on Chapter 3 Wed 30 Jul 2025 04:31PM UTC
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mooonlights (Guest) on Chapter 3 Mon 28 Jul 2025 01:42AM UTC
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Bizu_Campeche on Chapter 3 Wed 30 Jul 2025 04:33PM UTC
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Goth_girl101 on Chapter 6 Wed 20 Aug 2025 06:50PM UTC
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mooonlights (Guest) on Chapter 7 Thu 04 Sep 2025 04:24AM UTC
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