The Gypsy's Fiddle

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle By M. King

The Gypsy’s Fiddle

Matthew Lee lit his cigarette and drew thoughtfully on it, holding the smoke until its very bitterness tasted sweet. It was raining again—it had rained so much already this year—and a winter’s iron chill lent something hard and metallic to the day. Matthew let the smoke slip from his lips. He watched it coil lazily into the damp air, and twist through the glistening threads of moisture. He stood beneath the relative shelter of the old yew tree that bordered the west corner of the churchyard. The leather bag of hand-carved pegs he was supposed to be selling lay at his feet, not so much abandoned as postponed. Water dripped from the yew’s arching boughs, sliding down thin, pointed leaves and cascading to the hard, compacted ground below. Already the dirt had grown dark and wet, welling into pockets of sticky mud where the rain thrummed hardest. From here, Matthew could see all the way along the curve of the road to a coaching inn just beyond the edge of the village. Its sign—a boar’s head, painted onto wood in dull, peeling colours—swung in the shallow breeze, and the brewery’s cart stood by the cellar hatch. A pair of old Shire horses, noses deep in their feedbags and one with his off hind foot cocked at rest, lingered idle in the traces, dark flanks matted with the wet. Matthew had scant reason to be here, should anyone happen to ask him. He knew that, and he kept one eye peeled for movement on the road, or for anyone coming through the churchyard. Still...it was worth it, wasn’t it? To catch a glance of him. Roger Laughton. Even the name by itself seemed to make coloured patterns in the air. He was the innkeeper’s son, not three years older than Matthew himself, and grown into a broad, handsome man—and like as not to take over the inn even before his father passed on. He near as damn it ran the place already, and was well-liked by the locals. Well-liked by Matthew, too, although he knew that, given who—and what—he was, his interest counted for less than nothing. Matthew’s family made their home each winter upon a piece of ground at the top of the village, which they leased in a nominal sense from the farmer who owned it. He was a good man, had no qualm about renting to travellers. Of course, as Matthew noted with wry humour, very few of the locals had any qualms of their own when evening drew in, and he and Pa would take out their fiddles and play in the inn as the men drank their beer. Oh, then everybody would be content to laugh and smile, and there would be no ill feeling. As long as, once spring came around again, they moved on. Matthew loosed another coil of smoke from his lips and wiped the rainwater from his brow with the oily, damp sleeve of his coat. Pa wouldn’t be down to play tonight, not with the rheumatics in his hands as bad as they

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M. King were this year. The wetness slicking his black curls dripped into his eyes, and he squinted, trying to ignore the sting. Damn weather. By the back of the cart, the brewery man was unloading barrels, hefting each one across his broad, thick back, and Roger was lending a helping hand. He wasn’t the finest-looking man Matthew had ever seen. Definitely not. His chin was far too determined, for a start, and his nose crooked, as if someone had been ill-disposed to put up with all his arrogance and smug bravado, and had finally given in to the temptation to smack him one. It would be no surprise, in Matthew’s opinion. Men like Roger Laughton were used to opportunity. He rolled his way through the world—with that easy, confident swagger, that expression of nonchalant superiority on his face—eternally expecting his path to be smoothed. The worst of that was that he got it. All the security of a home and a job, and not only the ease of modest privilege, but the comfort of knowing it would last. Matthew wasn’t bitter, he told himself. Nor envious. His cousin, Jesse, who had been brought up as close as a brother to Matthew, had a word for people like Laughton and his kind. It was an old word, and Jesse said it with the venom of years’ worth of hate. Faithless gorgios, with no honour or respect, ’tis all they are. And what they don’t give, they ain’t got no right to receive. He had the right of it, Matthew knew. Neither Roger nor the rest of the village respected their people. There might be a quotient of fear from time to time, should a cow dry up or a child take sick without explanation. There could be hatred too. Should someone start losing more chickens from their coop than could reasonably be attributed to foxes—or a foolish woman misplace a ring, necklace, or some other trinket—the same names always came up, mumbled with suspicion into the froth of men’s beer. Yet those suspicions were easily enough pushed aside, in the lamp-warmed evenings, when there were card games to be played, or if Matthew should take up his fiddle and draw out a song for the drinkers of The Boar’s Head. Aye, he had his strengths. He knew that. Strengths, gifts...the things that kept his truce with the village firm, albeit uneasy. All the same, knowing how they saw him—just simple Matthew Lee, the pikey fiddler—riled him. Matthew hated it, and hated the fact that it did nothing to change how badly he coveted their pretty little lives. Oh, they lacked much, but what they had they didn’t even seem to recognise. He could do a great deal with the things they took for granted. Not that he would have admitted even thinking about it...or thinking about Roger. Matthew had always kept his preferences to himself, mainly out of respect for his mother, who, until the last fair at Stow, had still honestly expected him to marry Sarah, his second cousin on his father’s side. It would never have worked, and Matthew was indebted to the girl for falling in love with another. He had saved great face, on the last day of the fair, by asking both his father and Sarah’s to release them from their promise, and by letting it be

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle known he gave his blessing to the match she chose. His true reasons remained his own, and to Matthew’s mind, he had been extremely lucky. It still left him with a problem. He hated himself—not for what he was, but for who he wanted. Roger bloody Laughton was gorgio through and through: cocky and arrogant, self-absorbed and totally lacking in manners and any kind of traditional respect...yet Matthew couldn’t help himself. He was stood here now in the sallow pall of a yew tree, that unlucky Devil’s wood, wasn’t he? Lurking behind the curtain of rain and watching from afar, watching Roger heft those barrels down from the cart, laughing and joking with the brewery man. Though they couldn’t be seen from this distance, Matthew knew each of the details that graced Roger’s form, lifting his beauty from pleasant to utterly breathtaking. His golden hair and bright blue eyes, wide as cornflowers and deep as storm-clouds...the scar on his brow, the result of a childhood fall from the tall oak at the edge of the village green. Freckles like pale brown confetti sprinkled his fair skin, brought out by the sun that had coloured the backs of his hands, arms and cheeks. Matthew shook himself, crushed his cigarette out underfoot and tried to bury his thoughts with it. He was a fool. Yet knowing that didn’t ease his heart. It still ached more with every beat for that proud, arrogant bastard, and Roger Laughton’s powerful frame nightly haunted Matthew’s dreams, taunting him with every wanton imagining. It was ridiculous. Matthew had known other men. He was no child, no innocent—so why could he not quell this desire? It would have been much better to do so. So much better to push it away, to choke it and let it die...but he could not. If he tried to void himself from all sight or thought of the innkeeper’s son, Laughton simply showed up in his dreams, every visible inch as clear as day—and those inches that Matthew had never seen were the ones most vividly conjured by his imagination. No matter what he did, he still dreamed. They were just about finished lifting the barrels down now. Roger, his golden hair darkened by the rain and flattened to his head, hefted the last weight across those broad shoulders. His dampened shirt clung to his body, tracing the outlines of greater promises, and drawing Matthew’s mind back to thoughts he didn’t want to have. He couldn’t bear to see the planes of Roger’s chest every time he closed his eyes, to imagine how his skin would feel, the balance between soft and hard where tender flesh yielded to muscle. Matthew had lost too many nights to picturing the hidden maps of freckles, the as yet unseen places of that body which only a lover could know. The crease of an eye at the peak of a smile, the arch of a foot bent in pleasure…the taste of his seed, and the sounds that left him along with it. They were pretty fantasies, but they beat against Matthew like moths when he knew they could never come true. He had drunk in The Boar’s Head often enough, and given Roger ample time to return his smile or hold his gaze, but the bastard never had. Never would. Even so, Matthew returned.

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M. King Night after night—and he would again, this very evening, despite his better judgement—as if he craved the disappointment. He was a fool and a masochist. He should admit defeat, rid himself of this stupid hope and start anew, free from a need that blackened him this way. He’d always been able to do so before, hadn’t he? Matthew’s situation had often left him hankering after a fine form or a winsome face belonging to a man who did not return his interest. Occasionally, the prolonged ballet, the courtship dance of eyes and subtle gestures had landed him in the strange predicament of finding one who took his favours and yet claimed no enjoyment. He thought them odd, those men who would fuck him, yet call him disgusting, swearing blind they had no interest in their own sex. With all his cocky self-assurance, Matthew had supposed Roger Laughton might be such a one, yet there had been no indication of it. Or, perhaps, he was inclined to such pleasure…and just didn’t find Matthew to his taste. Matthew wrinkled his nose at that thought. Not fair. Not when he could give Roger gifts of such beauty, and so unstintingly. Oh, the things he would give…! Matthew curled his lip mirthlessly. Behind the thrum of the rain, he could just make out the sound of Roger’s voice as he invited the brewery man in for a sup of ale and a dry towel before he set off again. Wet, and chilled from the relentlessness both of the rain and his frustration, Matthew stooped to snatch up his bag of pegs and turned to go. He would be back soon enough...fool that he was. **** The day passed with barely any sales—few of the village’s women had want of pegs with weather such as this, and those who did buy did so with the light of pity in their eyes, which left a sour taste in Matthew’s mouth. He went back to the camp to take supper; a good meal of pease pudding and rabbit, shared with his family. His mother and father, aunts and uncles, cousins and the sprawling complications of children and dogs scattered in front of the fire. Matthew sat on the ground, close as he could get to the warmth of the flames, knee to knee with his cousin, Jesse. The weather was starting to turn colder now, the winter bearing down on them in earnest. It would be a wet, bone-gnawing one, it seemed. A mild argument broke out between Matthew’s pa and his Uncle Charlie as to whether seeing brighter red holly berries than usual signalled a mild winter or a harsh one. Jesse shot his cousin a glance and they both grinned. “Drink, Matt?” he asked, low-voiced. Matthew nodded. “Aye. Sounds good to me.” It did—he enjoyed the solace of a quiet pint in Jesse’s company—but the prospect was tinged with a little shame. Matthew’s mind had already drifted back to The Boar’s Head, his patience whittling away at the hours until he

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle could respectably make his way down there. Jesse provided not just the invitation, but the excuse. They walked slowly in the darkness, the chilly night air nipping at every inch of exposed flesh, and Matthew was grateful for the silk scarf he wore knotted at his throat, and for his worn old jerkin, which still had the majority of its thick cloth lining. He carried his fiddle in its beaten-up leather case— both a distraction and an opportunity for extra coin—and swung it leisurely at his side. Jesse, a little younger than he, and slighter in build, shivered against the chill but tried not to show it, and Matthew was happy to walk closer to him, lending a portion of his body warmth to his cousin. The pub was already about half-full, an island of light and noise. The lanterns burned bright, and the sounds of laughter and chatter seared a path through the darkness. They edged inside, and Matthew’s gaze lit immediately on the figure behind the bar, as if drawn by some invisible cord, some secret, gleaming spark. Roger moved effortlessly, pulling pints and mopping splashes, smiling and bouncing his attention between the punters with a curiously masculine, easy grace. A lick of hair—already grown frizzy with the heat and closeness of the inn—hung across his brow, and an attractive warm colour had worked itself into his cheeks. The lines of his body were clearly visible through his white shirt, and Matthew marvelled at the way the man seemed to glow from within. No-one should look so tempting...it must be a sin. Roger glanced up then, and looked straight at Matthew. His smile widened, and he raised a hand in greeting. “Ah, ’tis our fiddler, boys! Come, lads, have yourselves a drink.” Matthew’s mouth worked around a few loose words—nothing like the things he wanted to say—and he meekly followed Jesse to the bar, annoyed with himself for being such a fool to lust. At the far end of the bar, Tom Wheeler, the local apothecary’s boy, was making sheep’s eyes at Mary the barmaid and drawing his friends’ laughter for it. Rightly so, Matthew thought, that fools have their weaknesses shown them; and what kind of fool was he, to keep returning to this humiliation? He set his fiddle case down on the bar with care, taking a deep breath and hoping to catch a trace of Roger’s scent among the warm, musky smells of sweat, hops, and ale. Either he did, or he imagined it...which wouldn’t, he supposed, be hard to do. Roger smelled of dry straw and heather, of a dark kind of spice that sharpened the senses and spoke straight to, if not the heart, then an organ equally as sensitive, if somewhat lower. Christ, I want him. The tips of Matthew’s fingers flexed upon the pitted surface of the bar, their very ends turning white. He ground his teeth together, and the surge of desire was quelled, at least for now, though the ache that lay behind it was far from so easily cured. Jesse swung himself up onto the stool beside Matthew, sparing a cheerful nod for the men who surrounded them. He was like that—always a ready smile and a friendly word. He played the cheeky lad for those prepared to see

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M. King no further than the veneer, and it served him well. Matthew envied him that, and wished he was better at dissembling himself. He caught his breath as Roger stood the beers down before them, so close and so terribly beguiling. Their eyes met, and Matthew was certain he saw, in that tiny, fleeting instant, the imprint of a wanton hope that mirrored his own. A familiarity, a recognition...he hadn’t imagined that, had he? Roger’s gaze seemed to hold him witness to it, but then laughter erupted from further along the bar, and his fingers left the glass, his head already turning towards Mary and whatever ruckus she had inadvertently caused among the lads. Inwardly, Matthew cursed the bitch, cursed the missed moment, the lost seconds in which that beautiful, runaway connection drowned. He’d felt it, he was certain. Roger must have felt it too...and if not, Matthew was more of a damn fool than he’d ever been prepared to believe. He wished he’d never come, that he could find the strength to stay away, and to let this poisonous desire die. He curled his fingers around the glass, trying to squeeze his flesh into the prints Roger had left, as if he could find some residual trace of him lingering there, some union they might make in spirit if not in flesh. The first sip was sweet, but the fantasy didn’t last, and the sounds of the pub soon drifted back in to cloud the words in Matthew’s mind. “Come on, lad! Give us a tune!” The grinning, red faces of men thronged Matthew’s vision, their whiskers bristling and their yellow teeth leering at him from crowded mouths. The square, meaty hand of John Turnbull, a farmhand known as well for his womanising as his prowess with a ploughshare, landed between Matthew’s shoulders. “Ain’t’a gonna play, fiddler? G’arn!” Matthew smiled, nodded, and pretended he hadn’t almost choked on the last mouthful of his beer. Jesse nudged his elbow. “G’arn, Matt. Play a bit, won’t you?” Still coughing, Matthew made to shake his head, but his cousin leaned closer, lowering his voice. “Go on. Prince Charming ain’t any surer to confess his undying love t’you this evening than he is any other.” He glared at Jesse, but the sharp reprimand was completely lost on him, and he just grinned, dark eyes shining with mischief. Matthew had never asked how his cousin knew, though he trusted Jesse to keep his secrets. He supposed it was the price of living so close together that Jesse should understand him this well. They had never spoken of it in certain terms—what he was, what he wanted—and Matthew had no intention of doing so now. It wasn’t the way things were done. It wasn’t...right, somehow. Yet the fact that he had no wish to lay himself so bare to Jesse was partly traditional morals and partly caution, he told himself. Good sense. It would be foolish to share the things he didn’t want perpetuated, to reveal them and let them put out roots beyond his own heart—and even fools must have limits to their folly.

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle So Matthew just unclasped the leather case that he’d left upon the bar and, slowly, he drew out his fiddle. It was an old, plain instrument, left to him by his grandfather on his mother’s side. The mellow wood held strange, intricate patterns in its grain, polished with the melodies and memories of generations, and Matthew had always loved the thing for the way it fitted so well beneath his fingers. It fell there so naturally, and seemed to offer up the notes for him, smooth and easy as a river’s timeless flow. “Play!” The cry had taken hold, gone up throughout the crowd, and Matthew relented, rising to his feet with his fiddle in hand. This was what he was known for, after all. Half the people in here, he swore, looked at him and saw not a man, but just a red neckerchief and a bright smile, a cascade of glittering notes in the evening’s shadowed glow. He tapped his foot—one, two, three—and launched into a fast, syncopated hornpipe, each note singing through the fiddle’s bright-burnished body, vibrating up the bone of Matthew’s jaw and bursting out into world, a twirling blaze of glee. The men clapped or tapped their feet along to the tune. Some nodded their heads and, when Matthew struck up The White Petticoat, a fair few began to sing along, so he changed his playing to accommodate them, his music threading alongside the voices. For a while, Matthew could lose himself in it. He did not cease to exist, nor cease to feel, but what he felt seemed different. Bigger, perhaps. As if he had risen above himself, become a part of something greater, something that reached further into the night...and he was not afraid. Yet his gaze still sought Roger and found him right at the back of the crowd, a ceaseless figure working away behind the bar. Once or twice, he glanced up and smiled at Matthew—or at his playing, it was hard to be sure which—and that simple gesture set light to a quick-burning fire that scorched Matthew’s nerves and nearly made his fingers stumble. It angered him, in a violent but irrational way, that Roger should have the power to do that. It didn’t seem fair, as if he, with his careless charm and arrogant beauty, trampled upon something holy, something too pure and fragile to be tainted with the things that he made Matthew feel. Unwarranted, stupid things...and yet they fuelled the spiralling, coruscating notes that poured from his bow as he played on into the night. They walked back to the camp many hours later, knowing well that at least one of the women would give them the sharp edge of her tongue but— for that moment, at least—not caring. It was the pattern often repeated during the dark months, when there was little else to do for leisure, and a scarce few places to take respite from the cold. Next to that, what did a woman’s chidings matter? Besides, for all the contradictions—all the intricate complexities, the paradoxes and stupid, foolish sentiments—Matthew cherished his evenings at The Boar’s Head. He enjoyed feeling that, just for a little while, he was accepted and he belonged. The extent of that acceptance might not run as deep as he would like but, as far as Matthew judged it,

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M. King where dreams might not be granted, only a churl could refuse the traces of their proximity. So, he and Jesse visited the pub often, and often Matthew played. It was his identity, his role—the sum of everything people expected from him. Just the gypsy fiddler, with his dark curls and wild tunes. What more had he the right to be in their place, in their world? “You play like a demon for him,” Jesse said as they trudged up the damp path, back towards the huddled shapes of wagons parked beneath the trees. The sounds of horses’ snorts drifted down on the air. Jesse slipped a sidelong glance at Matthew, his expression strangely cold. Matthew looked away, scuffing a foot at the dewy grass. “Just music. T’ain’t nothing more than playing for pennies.” For emphasis, he jangled the coins in his pocket, the material gratitude of The Boar’s happy drinkers. Jesse scoffed and shook his head, pace speeding as he walked on, away from Matthew. The pale, clouded moonlight picked at his cousin’s outline, making him seem thinner, younger, and frailer than Matthew knew him to be. He stopped and stared after Jesse, a frown lodged between his brows. He supposed Jesse might have a point. Music is very rarely just music. Still, it was no cause to be angry, was it? His mistakes and his follies were his alone and, in his vanity, Matthew found it easy to be angry with Jesse for wanting to interfere. They didn’t argue over it. Not properly. There were no grand fireworks, no shouted insults nor angry words. It just came to be, by a perfectly civil though somewhat frosty agreement—reached without any effort on either part—that Matthew and Jesse no longer went to The Boar’s Head together. Matthew would walk down there, fiddle in hand, and not miss him. He was sure Jesse felt no lack of his presence, either, and hoped he enjoyed his new-found den at The Rose & Crown, out to the other side of the village, where Matthew’s pa occasionally sat to take a drink and play dominoes with the silent old men who’d aged past their time in the fields. He could read futures in the tiles, and in the poetry of their numbers, could Pa, though such as those who drank at that place very rarely asked for them to be told. **** It was through this subtle change of habit Matthew came to be drinking alone on the night the stranger arrived. He sat at a table by the far wall—away from the bar and the sight of Roger flirting with the barmaid—the leather case containing his fiddle at his elbow, and a pint in his hand. Matthew scowled at the surface of the beer and the depleted head that rimed it, froth clinging to the sides of the glass. The place was genial enough tonight—the regulars had asked him to play, and play he would. It was what he did. He set down the glass and, unlatching the case, took up his bow. There were ragged cheers, a chorus of voices calling out the names of tunes they wanted, and the fine-honed notes of Matthew’s fiddle soon paid heed to them

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle all. He played the songs they liked—the stories of pretty maids and country loves, of dainty ankles and rich harvests—and augmented them with his own touches, the trills and flourishes, double-stops and delicate runs of notes that made the music his own. They were sweet hours. For their duration, Matthew didn’t feel the seconds pass, nor the shadows that climbed up the walls, spilling out of the dark corners and creeping gradually closer, leaving the light behind them. He saw only the ranks of smiling, laughing faces, and the lamp-flames dancing against the rough, whitewashed plaster, glimmering on the horse brasses that hung on the dark oaken beams. The pub grew hotter as the night wore on, and it seemed to draw in on itself, the music and the laughter pulling the air down so that it became thick and cloying, choked with warmth and intense self-focus. Finally, Matthew broke as the time bell approached, his fingers sore and his neck aching. The crowd—thinner now, with many of the regulars having already headed for home—began to disperse, leaving behind the clink of coins and the clap of hands upon Matthew’s shoulder. Their approval, a sense of acceptance that warmed him, began to fade into the yawning silence, and he frowned, casting his gaze around a place that now seemed so unfamiliar. The stranger sat not four feet away from him, on a wooden chair close to the great fireplace. Below the broad oaken mantel, which bore centuries’ worth of insignia scratched by former generations of drinkers, flames smouldered in the stone hearth. The dancing orange light painted peculiar planes over the man’s face. He was not tall, though he gave the impression of it with his bearing and slightly upward tilted chin, as if he perpetually looked down on a world he considered lacking. Despite that supercilious cast, Matthew still thought him handsome…though perhaps in a lordly way, like a statue or a painting. Wellformed, but something to be looked at and admired, not touched or held. No earthly possession, but a thing somehow other. Certainly, Matthew couldn’t imagine the stranger sharing a tender moment with anyone. He seemed too cold, too proud and, when his gaze lit on Matthew, it was a sharp interrogation of a stare, uncompromising and intimidating. Behind the bar, Roger was clearing up, readying to ring the time bell and send the last stragglers home. Matthew was infuriated with himself for glancing at him, as if he needed Roger’s approval, his validation before even looking at another man. Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid... There was no time to waste chastising himself over it for, before Matthew even managed to finish laying his fiddle to rest again in its case, the stranger left his seat and came to join him at the table. “You play a fine tune, friend,” the man said. He dressed well—better than the average punter here, though by no means to seem obviously wealthy—and projected an air of determined authority that made him impossible to ignore. The oddest thing was that, as Matthew glanced surreptitiously around the pub, he seemed to be the only

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M. King person taking any real notice of the stranger. He swallowed nervously, rasping his tongue across his lower lip. “Thank you, sir.” “Please....” The man’s long, well-manicured fingers rubbed along the worn table’s wooden edge, and he smiled. “Call me Luc.” He didn’t sound foreign, though Matthew recognised it as a French name; he wondered how the devil the stranger had found his way here. He didn’t dare ask, so he just nodded brusquely and focused on packing away his fiddle. “It’s a beautiful instrument.” “Thank you, sir. Luc,” Matthew corrected, peering warily at the man. Such striking faces were rarely to be trusted, in his experience. “It belonged to my grandfather.” “I see. Would you trade it?” Matthew’s fingers tensed protectively on the fiddle’s neck. What sort of a question was that? The stranger’s face gave away no hint of an ulterior motive, or even of understanding the import of what he had said. He just continued to smile at Matthew, as polished and hard as a mirror. “Trade?” Matthew heard himself say, his lips clumsily framing the word. “Mm. A natural mechanic of the world, my friend. Commerce oils the wheels of society, or so they say. I ask simply out of interest.” He genuinely seemed to mean it, yet Matthew couldn’t stop himself raising a wary eyebrow. Luc leaned forward a fraction, and the finely flared nostrils of his chiselled, narrow nose twitched, like a dog scenting prey. “Every man has a price, Mr. Lee.” Matthew didn’t ask how the stranger knew his name. It would have been easy enough to glean that information from anyone here tonight…and there need not be anything suspicious in it, need there? A thin prickle of sweat began to bead on his lower back, and Matthew turned his head, conscious of wanting to look away from those curiously pale blue eyes. Luc’s gaze held him in an uncomfortable thrall, kept him off-balance and cloth-headed, the way strong beer hits an empty stomach. “Perhaps. But what could you give me for it?” Matthew asked, not particularly wanting to know. The fiddle lay nestled in its case, the warm fingers of lamp-glow and firelight caressing the wood. The strings seemed, for a moment, to sing a little in warning before Matthew closed the lid, latching it firmly against prying eyes. He’d never trade his fiddle. Not in this lifetime. “What would you have, rather than anything? Hm? Riches? Fame?” Matthew made to shake his head, still staring down at the battered leather case, but he heard Luc’s breathing change—just a subtle shift, an intake of air that sounded almost like a realisation—and he shifted his gaze to the stranger. The time bell rang, and Matthew saw Luc staring across the inn to where Roger Laughton stood behind his bar, his white shirt rumpled with the heat and sweat of the evening, his golden hair haloing his head.

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle “Time, gentlemen, please! ’Tis late, and your beds should be calling you.” The usual groans and reluctant heaving of the last few bodies out of the last few seats were met with Roger’s landlordly wit and good humour. “Aye, and you, Robert Hunter…I know you. G’arn and git home! I don’t care if your old lady won’t let you in—you can’t stay here!” Laughter rippled into the encroaching night, and Matthew felt rather than heard Luc’s voice. It seemed to bubble just under the surface of his skin; low, soft words that taunted and tempted him just beyond the limit of his endurance. “Perhaps your price is something else? Something money can’t buy?” Warning bells clanged in Matthew’s head—the sound of the brass time bell multiplying back on itself and tolling a dozen different alarms—but he tried hard not to hear them. “I don’t understand,” he lied. “It’s quite simple.” That same dark, devilish voice. When the stranger spoke, it was simple. “You want him, don’t you? I know it’s true. I can smell how much you desire him. I can taste it. And I could give you that power. Just give me the power you have. Your fiddle.” Matthew’s attention was still fixed on Roger, on every graceful movement of his arms, his hands. That smile, that laugh…. “Take it.” He heard the words, but barely understood that they had come from him. It couldn’t be real. It must be some trick, some dream, some— Matthew glanced down at the table. His fiddle had gone, as had the man who called himself Luc. All that remained was a thin piece of red cord, vivid against the scarred wood. It was tied into a knot that Matthew knew well. A lovers’ knot—the same at the back as the front, two symmetrical halves joining to make one piece. He shook his head in disbelief, then picked up the cord, turning it slowly in his fingers. This was old magic. Matthew stuffed the cord into his pocket, knocked back the last of his pint, and stood hurriedly, readying to leave the inn. **** Nothing much happened for the first few days. After his strange meeting, Matthew returned to the camp and endured the nagging of his mother for his late nights and the smell of beer...she seemed not to notice he didn’t have his fiddle with him. Had Jesse really been talking to him, Matthew supposed he would have spotted the instrument’s absence, but he still wasn’t seeing much of his cousin. Jesse did not appear to be so much avoiding him—which would have implied real and identifiable effort on his part—but he never seemed to be in the same places as Matthew. He supposed Jesse could be busy and told himself he had no right to demand attention, or friendship, if the other man chose to withdraw it.

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M. King Matthew suspected he had given Jesse more than enough reason to do so over the years. He had always been the one to initiate the scrapes they’d managed to get into, hadn’t he? There had been the time they were almost caught poaching in the woods near the local manor. He’d swum clean across the river before realising he’d left Jesse behind though, to his credit, he’d managed to take care of himself. Having been a good couple of years younger at the time, Jesse had been able to use the naïveté of his looks to convince the gamekeeper he honestly was just searching for his dog. The fact he had a lurcher trained to run home as soon as it heard a whistle and the shout ‘come here, boy!’ was beside the point. Matthew smiled at the memory and found it tainted with a sudden sadness. He should find a way to make up this quarrel, whatever had started it. Surely they could still patch things up between them. If Jesse could forgive him for the way he was—for all his foolishness over the innkeeper’s son, and all the other follies that marred him—then perhaps it wasn’t too late. “I’m drunk,” he muttered, a mirthless smile on his lips. He groped in his pocket for his cigarettes and matches, hunching his shoulders against the dark chill that filled the streets. Stood outside The Boar’s Head, the sliver of a crescent moon glinted in the velvet sky. The pub didn’t feel so welcoming without his fiddle Matthew had left early, disillusioned and frustrated by the chatter of the locals and their jollity, a sense of freedom that he just couldn’t dredge up in himself. He walked almost as far as the churchyard, and the lights of The Boar’s Head faded behind him. Fingers brushed against the red cord, still languishing, crumpled in his pocket, and Matthew frowned in the darkness. He knew what he’d done; a black deal that should not have been made. There had been no sign of Luc. If he still had his fiddle, Matthew would have doubted the stranger had ever existed at all. He pulled the cord from his pocket and looked at it. The ends had already begun to fray. Love knots were supposed to be used as tokens, favours to show devotion. It was a tradition for hopeful suitors to leave them on the step of a prospective beloved’s vardo, a symbol that would be understood, even if the identity of the one who had left it was unclear. Matthew didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Yes, he could leave this token for Roger, but the innkeeper’s son wouldn’t understand what it meant. It wasn’t a language he knew, a culture that he respected. Matthew scrunched the cord up in his hand, intending to toss it away. He wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t, why the thing still clung so obstinately to his palm. The frayed ends seemed to wrap themselves around his fingers, as if the cord was a live thing, capable of withstanding his anger, his intention to shake it off. “Wait!” He looked up sharply, not aware of company in the gloomy street, but there was no mistaking the sound of that voice. The shape, too, was strikingly familiar, even in shadows.

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle Matthew thrust the red cord back into his pocket, readied to turn his head away and move on, shying from the reminder of his failure, the impossibility of his foolish hopes, but Roger’s voice rang out again, a strained, hoarse cry. “Wait!” One last time, Matthew’s fingers traced the outline of the knotted cord. It seemed to quiver beneath his touch, like an animal, and then it lay still. He shivered. Rapid footfalls sounded on the damp earth and, before he turned, Matthew looked up at the silhouette of the great yew tree that bounded the churchyard’s westerly corner. Roger caught up with him, and he stepped from the shadows, his coat hunched about him, one hand clasping it tight at his neck. His face was oddly pale and drawn. His eyes glittered in the gloom, too bright and too wide, his lips slightly parted. “Thank God! It is you.” “Me?” Matthew stood awkward and uncomfortable as the innkeeper’s son came towards him, familiar as an old friend. “Yes! I’d begun to think I missed you.” “Missed?” Matthew echoed, aware of how stupid he sounded. “For…I mean, what did you—?” All he could think of was the bright, noisy island of the bar. Would Roger not be wanted there? And what could possibly have brought him rushing out into the night like this? He glanced across the gloomy dirt road, seeing the shapes of the village’s furthermost houses outlined against the sky. “You left,” Roger said, though there was no trace of reproach to his words. Matthew frowned, confused. “Yes.” “I was worried for you. Usually you stay late. You’re not ill?” He shook his head. Close up and in the darkness, Roger Laughton did not seem so golden, so sun-kissed, or so impossibly confident. His words echoed with a strange brittleness that Matthew couldn’t fathom and, before he had a chance to protest, Roger grabbed his arm, pulling him across the road, away from the dark yet dangerous eyes of the unlit houses and into the shadowy churchyard. “Come. It’s not safe to talk here. Why don’t we go somewhere more…private? Hm?” His proximity befuddled Matthew, left him unsure and wrong-footed, with only certain parts of his brain—and other, lower anatomies—unclouded. He would follow wherever Roger wished it, and the reason wouldn’t matter. A part of Matthew’s mind screamed insanity. That this wasn’t real, it was wrong, and he should run. Run now, and not look back. He didn’t run. The churchyard looked peculiar in the darkness, the headstones nothing but crooked, jagged blocks of shadow, and the long shanks of grass just spidery threads that criss-crossed the gloom. The trees framed the scene, the upper edges of their leaves gilded by thin moonlight that filtered down weakly to skim the mossy ground. Roger turned to look at him, his face shining with that same odd eagerness. “Tell me your name. Your full name. Please. I’ve only ever known

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M. King you as the fiddler...it’s Matthew, isn’t it? I heard your friend call you that, I thought.” The memory of happy hours in Jesse’s company flitted briefly through Matthew’s mind, but faded next to all this improbable insanity. Roger bloody Laughton... “Matthew Lee,” he said, his voice rough with the effort of not shaking. Names give power…Matthew knew that, yet he’d answered without hesitation. Madness, surely? Roger smiled. “Matthew…it suits you. I’ve watched you night after night—I always wondered. Wished I had the courage to speak to you.” He edged closer as he spoke, unblinking and seeming so honest. “I-I wanted to tell you…how very much I wanted to.... How much I—” His voice rose in pitch a little, still tinkling with that brittle, sharp tone. Matthew didn’t want to listen, didn’t want to hear the untruths, and yet he couldn’t stop his heart swelling at the sound of that voice and the sweet words he’d so longed to hear. He reached out, his fingertips grazing the rough cloth of Roger’s lapel, eagerly beginning to pry the fabric aside. Would this last beyond the moonlight? Would Roger even remember it? “I love you,” Matthew murmured. “I’ve loved you for years.” He tightened his grip, pulled the object of his desire near. Closing the distance between them seemed to take an age, yet the last few inches collapsed into an awkward tumult. Roger’s mouth pressed against his, a sudden and unexpected fruit bursting with sweetness, all the richer for so many long years of waiting. When they finally broke, Roger rested his forehead against Matthew’s cheek, his breathing low and ragged. “Hold me…let me know it’s real, Matthew. So long I’ve fought against this—I was a fool to try. I knew you were like me, that you felt what I did when I looked ’pon you. Didn’t you?” His body pressed closer, its hardness and muscular strength eroding the last of Matthew’s defences. He no longer cared if it was real or not. If it was, then a miracle had happened. If not…well, dreams are made to be enjoyed. The hard swell of Roger’s cock rubbed his thigh through the layers of cloth that separated them, and Matthew grabbed the other man’s face in his hands, dragging that hot, wide mouth back for another hungry kiss. He would feel, enjoy, and believe. A small gasp broke from Roger’s lips, and the last remnants of Matthew’s will faded in the heat of the kiss, the admission of everything he’d so long desired. Roger tasted just as sweet—perhaps sweeter—than he’d pictured, and not even the clammy night air could dampen the moment. “You’ll have to show me,” Roger murmured, mouth still crushed against his. He drew back a little, looking tousled and delightfully self-conscious, his uncertainty unbelievably attractive. “I’ve no notion of how...” His mouth quirked as he tried to express his innocence, his fingers still curled on the front of Matthew’s shirt, and his arousal evident through both their pairs of breeches.

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle Matthew fought to stay focused, to sort the dreams from reality in his mind, but Roger’s hands kept smoothing his shirt, paddling against his chest, and it grew difficult to know anything but his presence. “Show me?” Roger repeated between kisses, pulling at Matthew’s shirt. It was impossible to deny him. Matthew nodded, but his fingers faltered as he glanced around the shadowed churchyard. A light breeze flickered through the trees and, for the first time, Matthew had the sense of something being somehow wrong. “Here? I....” He didn’t know what to say. It was just that this didn’t seem the place for it. Not for Roger, not for his first time. There should have been clean sheets, a warm bed...all real, honest, true things. Matthew turned his head, looking towards the road and the moonlight, and that strange, dry breeze rustled in the grass once more. “I’ll wait no longer,” Roger murmured. “I’ll die if I do. D’you not know how long I’ve ached for you? How hard I’ve fought it? The pastor calls it a sin, and for so long I thought it nothing more. Devilry, wickedness...a sickness in me, that I should yearn for other men like this. But I can’t believe God would form us this way, only to set us against our own nature—can you?” Matthew, still lost in the rough stream of words, shook his head dumbly. Roger kissed his lips, and the heat was sudden, strong...all too brief. “Then love me, Matthew. Yes?” He just nodded. There was nothing else he could do. The reality of this thing no longer mattered, nor how it had come to happen, just that it was happening. If he tried, he could convince himself that was enough. With trembling hands, Matthew fumbled his way into Roger’s nether garments, the darkness making it difficult to navigate his path. Roger gave a small moan, and Matthew felt the stiffness of his yard spring forth, stout and heavy against his palm. He stifled a murmur of admiration, unwilling to let on how he’d dreamed of this—though he doubted Roger would have cared or even noticed. Splayed upon the cold grass, dishevelled and entranced with his pleasure, the moonlight silvering his skin, he had never looked more tempting. Matthew clasped his rod tight and began to pump the shaft, reaching urgently to his own crotch, squeezing his hardness through his breeches. Clumsily, he knelt across Roger, needing closer contact. It was more difficult than he imagined to get down there, to juggle with the tails of shirts and the bulky gatherings of clothes pushed aside, and to find that most sacred spot. Roger’s shaft responded to the attention, and a harsh breath skimmed between his teeth. Matthew glanced nervously at him, sure he must have done something wrong. Roger’s closed eyes and curved lips belied that notion, and Matthew began to wonder if the innkeeper’s son was quite the innocent he’d claimed to be. He certainly seemed to lack any fear of the sin they were—to hear the pastor talk—surely committing, yet Matthew knew to his cost that such God-fearing principles were not easily laid aside. Still, he

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M. King supposed that if he’d misjudged Roger Laughton’s Christian virtue, it would be the least of the misjudgements he’d made about the man. The object of Matthew’s affections smiled wantonly at him, and thrust that stiff prick deeper into his palm. Matthew gripped him tight, using what he knew pleased his own flesh as a guide. Moved by an impulse whose existence he barely registered before it became irresistible—the need to give him more, to feel a closer connection between them—Matthew bent lower over his shaft. Very gradually, he brought his mouth to Roger’s prick, tentatively folding his lips around the tender rod. Roger sighed and threaded his fingers into Matthew’s hair, pulling him closer, forcing him down onto the turgid flesh. It was easy to take his direction, to accept every demand he made, even when the action was uncomfortable. Matthew didn’t mind. Vision restricted to the few square inches of Roger’s groin and his bunched-up shirt tails, he began to paint glorious fantasies on the inside of his eyelids. In the theatre of his mind, he was the willing sacrifice on the altar of his love’s pleasure, and Matthew could articulate those words over and over—my lover. There was a charge to them. A thrill of possession. The thing he’d wanted for so long, the thing he’d dreamed of…it was true at last. He had Roger Laughton. The full enormity of that knowledge hit Matthew at approximately the same moment as Roger’s climax. He choked, backed off and tried not to retch, the suddenness of it overwhelming the eroticism, and immediately giving way to a terrible, yawning sense of disappointment. It somehow wasn’t quite what he’d imagined, what he’d pictured it to be. Roger made very little sound as he spent, barely anything more than a dry gasp and a curse word. Matthew peered down at him in the gloom—still the same drawn look to his face, his shirt half-open and his softening cock gracing the pale band of flesh visible through his unfastened breeches. He looked sated, but perhaps not content. Matthew shivered, remembering where they were. All the uncleanliness he’d been taught to associate with death marked this place. Maybe their clumsy grappling really had been witnessed by appalled souls, and now they would forever be tainted by it. Cursed. He shook himself, trying to dislodge such foolish visions from his mind. He wished Roger would hold him again, kiss him once more. Instead, the innkeeper’s son dragged himself into a sitting position and fumbled with his breeches, jetting a breath of air through pursed lips as he fastened his lacings. “Cold night, isn’t it? Or it will be, at any rate. Moon’ll be up soon.” He glanced at Matthew, his eyes bright in the darkness. “’Ere, you know what they say? If you come here of a night and stand beneath the old yew, you’re sure to see the Devil himself. Well, I wonder what ol’ Lucifer would have to say to watchin’ us, eh?” He elbowed Matthew in the ribs, laughed that full, cocky laugh that he’d so often loosed before, and scrambled to his feet, brushing bits of moss and clumps of mud from his seat. Matthew sat dumbly and watched him, unable

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle to form either response or protest. He just felt an overwhelming sense of loss, of loneliness...nothing quite as sharp as regret, but a succession of things that were heading that way. “I should get back,” Roger said, glancing over his shoulder towards the distant light of the pub. “They’ll miss me afore long.” He waited until Matthew rose, still trying to tidy himself up, then patted his shoulder awkwardly and smiled. “I’ll see you again.” A statement, not a question. An assurance, not a request for permission. In the space of the few seconds it took for Matthew to nod and force a smile, he saw the course of one entire future sweep out before him. There would be trysts—damp, hurried meetings like this one, coated with words of love and hidden behind veils of secrecy. Roger would have him, whenever and wherever he chose, and Matthew wouldn’t care because, to him, each condescension would be an act of kindness. He saw it so clearly, and part of him didn’t object. Part of him felt almost prepared to embrace the servitude, to lay himself at Roger’s feet whatever the cost, but his mind protested. After everything he’d dreamed of, if he could expect nothing more than subservience—waiting for the few crumbs Roger deigned to drop from his table—could it ever be enough? Matthew stood, watching Roger Laughton walk—shoulders loose and legs swinging with that easy, striding gait—back to The Boar’s Head, and he felt a little of his love die. It sickened him at first, this inconstancy of his, but then he wondered if it truly was that. Was this a faint heart, or one clear in its purpose for the first time in an age? He had what he’d dreamed of, Matthew supposed, but it hadn’t been quite what he wanted. And more fool him. He shoved his hand in his pocket, searching out the love knot and all the lies it symbolised, but even as he pulled the red cord out, Matthew felt it changing. He stared down at his palm, watching the cord crumble to nothing more than fine flakes of ash…a promise fulfilled, in the cheapest way it could have been. “Cheeky, conniving bastard!” he said to the world at large, and spat on the ground beneath the old yew tree. A light, silvery breeze whispered through the grass. Matthew spun around but saw no-one there. **** Two days after his night with Roger, Jesse accosted Matthew. He came upon his cousin up at the camp, beside the low-banked glow of the fire, kept burning through the day to ward off the chill. The noonday sun hung thin and pale, and the children were playing beside one of the wagons, chasing each other with stick-swords, breath misting on the cold air. “Where’s your fiddle?” Jesse demanded. Brows drawn low and hands thrust deep in his pockets, he showed no sign of apology, nor even acknowledgement of the rift that had been between

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M. King them. Matthew wondered if he could have imagined it...if it had only been his stupid self-absorption, his failing to pay much attention to anything besides his own fancies that had stood in the way. He’d seen Roger once since the churchyard. He had dared to go back to The Boar’s Head, bitten down on all the fears of how he might be received. Roger barely acknowledged him. Matthew didn’t know why, and there was no chance that night to get him alone, so he’d left after half a pint and walked home in quiet contemplation, aware of the bare trees rustling above him. “I said, where’s your fiddle?” Jesse repeated. “I heard you sold it. Solomon Tanner, he said you’d sold it. Well, have you?” Matthew looked deep into his cousin’s sharp, worried face. Jesse glared at him, hostile as a badger dug from its sett and put to dogs, and Matthew supposed he would much rather have bitten and clawed at him than restricted himself to the false civility of speech. It surprised him—what had he truly done for Jesse to feel so ill towards him? What possible element of their quarrels could have made so deep a hurt? He shook his head. “I...well, I traded it.” “What the bloody hell for?” Jesse snapped. “I can see it on you. It’s something...something not right. Isn’t it?” His eyes narrowed, and Matthew defences collapsed. He hung his head, breakwaters crumbling and shameful regrets flooding through him. “Aye,” he whispered. “I made a fool’s bargain, Jesse. I shouldn’t have done it.” The admission was all it took. Foolish, desperate tears stung his eyes, and he squeezed his lids shut, hard, willing them away. Jesse’s hand closed on his sleeve, and Matthew felt himself being drawn away, pulled over behind one of the wagons. Jesse sat him down on the wooden steps, knelt before him, and it should never have been so easy to tell anyone the truth, yet the words poured out all the same. He told Jesse about the passion—the great, ghastly, gnawing want—that had driven him, that had made it impossible to think outside of its existence, and about the stranger who had come to him. Matthew confessed the choice he had made, the knowing with which he’d entered into the bargain...for he had known. He told of the stranger who called himself Luc, of the temptations he had brought with him, and the terrible offerings he had laid out for show. Matthew didn’t dare look at Jesse as he spoke, just kept his head lowered and his voice even as he revealed his sins. He didn’t understand why Jesse was helping him, why he cared, or why he made it so easy to tell the truth. Eventually, when the tears came, Jesse rested his hand on Matthew’s knee...and that seemed the strangest thing of all. “What have I done, Jesse?” He bent over, hands covering his face, hiding his shame until Jesse touched him. His fingertips skimmed Matthew’s knuckles so lightly, so

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle gently, then ran up the length of his hands, taking careful hold and drawing them away, forcing him to face the light. Matthew stared at his cousin through bleary, stinging eyes, and felt the beginnings of realisation beat at his brain. Jesse looked angrier than he could see reason for, but Matthew wasn’t about to argue with him or ask why. He let Jesse pull him close, and knew he’d slipped his own arms around him, though he’d had no intention of doing so. Jesse held him, and it was easy for Matthew to bury his face in the comfortable, warm hollow between his neck and shoulder. He smelled of dust and leather, of wood and beeswax polish, and Matthew couldn’t imagine how he’d been so stupidly blind. “You’re a fool, you know,” Jesse murmured into his hair. “You do know y’are, don’t you?” “I know,” he whispered. “I know I am. I’m sorry.” Jesse rocked him slowly, arms wrapped around him with all the strength and warmth of the man Matthew hadn’t notice him become. He hadn’t noticed—not truly, and he should have done. He should have seen all of it, shouldn’t he? He’d been so very, very foolish. “What did you ever see in that fat-headed gorgio bastard anyway?” Jesse demanded. “Hm? Enough to die for? To lose your soul over?” Matthew shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut, and inhaled his cousin’s warm, homely scent. He dug his fingers into Jesse’s back and hung on, breathing deep until the weight of tears left him and he felt himself calm, as if the violence of a malicious storm had somehow ceased and left him in its eye. “I didn’t mean to make the bargain,” he murmured. “I didn’t think that—” “You never do, Mattie,” Jesse chided softly. “Do you? You don’t think, and you don’t see what’s right in front of your damn face. You….” He seemed to catch his breath, biting the ends off words he didn’t want to say. Matthew hugged him tighter. “How long?” he asked gently, not breaking their embrace. “Long enough,” Jesse said, still clasped tight to him, his fingers digging into Matthew’s back. “I always thought you’d see.” “I’m a fool.” Jesse chuckled, his damp breath grazing Matthew’s cheek. “Aye. Y’are.” “Your fool, though. If you want me.” Slowly, reluctantly, Jesse pulled back, sitting back on his haunches, a little apart from him, hands trailing down Matthew’s arms, as if he was loath to relinquish him entirely. He frowned, that pinched, dark face tweaked into an expression of wary distrust. “You don’t owe me that.” Matthew smiled, full of affection and admiration for his cousin. Even now, so honourable. His knight in muddy boots. He dipped in, pressed a kiss to Jesse’s cheek, and felt him tighten at the contact, the breath catching in his throat. “T’ain’t a debt. ’Tis a gift.” Matthew stayed close, just breathing in Jesse’s scent and giving him time to adjust. After a few short seconds that stretched into eternity, he seemed to

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M. King relax, and he shifted, bringing his mouth to Matthew’s. It was barely a kiss; just a grazing of lips and a proof of existence, of gratitude and of honesty...and of love. Matthew felt that keener than anything, and it burned through the words that Jesse murmured against his mouth. “I’ll help you. We’ll have your fiddle back, and he’ll hold no more power over you. Not if I can stop it.” Matthew blinked, his understanding snagged up in the thickets of confusion. So much had changed in the space of a few short days—he wasn’t sure what was real anymore, and what was his own imagining. Jesse talked, laid out plans and realisations, spoke of how they would trap the one who called himself Luc...how they would win back everything that Matthew had traded. “You know the old yew tree in the churchyard?” Matthew blinked. There still remained parts of the story he hadn’t had the heart to tell Jesse. He nodded. “I know it.” “We’ll go there, and we’ll call him.” “Jesse...it’s a risk. It isn’t—” He stopped, unwilling to frame the words. Jesse just smiled mirthlessly and touched his hand to Matthew’s sleeve. “And what do I care for that? I’ve loved you since we were but children, Mattie. I’d risk anything for you.” Matthew pressed his lips tight together and bent his head, shamed by all that he saw in those dark eyes. **** A full moon hung high above the churchyard, suspended in a smooth sheet of darkness pricked through with the glittering light of bright, winter stars. Matthew and Jesse crept along the shadowed road, breath misting in the air and faces pale against the gloom. Matthew wanted to tell him how thankful he was, how much it all meant to him—and not just this fine show of bravery and strength, but every kindness, every act of faith by which Jesse had tried to show him how he felt. He wished he’d seen it before. The old yew tree stood proud against the black crags of the church’s outline. No glint of light or hint of warmth touched the building, and Matthew wondered how the house of God could be so tightly barred. They didn’t go often, for it seemed to make people uncomfortable and, as his pa was wont to say, what grace had they in stone that they did not have ’pon the road? It wasn’t the way things were done. Matthew wrinkled his nose as those words echoed through his mind. What regard had he ever felt for that? Still, there was no time to dwell on it. Beside him, Jesse cleared his throat and pulled back his shoulders, shielding his obvious nervousness with a frail bravado. He glanced at Matthew. “You ready?”

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle Matthew nodded. He wasn’t, but he couldn’t say that. Memories of Roger Laughton, of empty pleasures taken beneath the black fingers of skeletal trees, trickled past his eyes. Matthew reached out a hand as he passed the low stone wall that circled the churchyard, his fingers brushing the greasy, damp, stagnant moss that grew there. It felt cold, colder even than the stone, and he shuddered. They stood before the yew tree, and he peered nervously at Jesse, not sure what they were supposed to do next, or how any of this was meant to work. Jesse reached into his pocket and drew out a handful of something white and powdery. He rubbed a little between his forefinger and thumb, and a thin trail of the stuff dropped to the spongy ground, glinting for a moment in the moonlight. Salt? Matthew wanted to ask what he was doing, but he had no time. “Come on,” Jesse said, the clearness of his voice belying his nerves. “Out you come, you old bugger.” The silence seemed to thicken, as if something in the night wanted to resist them, and Matthew clenched his toes within the confines of his worn leather boots. Cold seeped through the hide, mud oozed around their soles, and he bit his tongue, willing himself to stay calm and strong. “There’s no call to be vulgar.” He closed his eyes. The voice could have come from behind them or ahead, by the yew tree, but it sounded more as if it had rippled from the very fabric of the air itself. Matthew’s gut tightened at the memory of how he’d once found it almost alluring, how he’d thought Luc a handsome, suave individual. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. He should look, he knew. It was wrong to be such a coward, to leave Jesse alone to face…whatever it was they were facing. “Won’t you look at me, Matthew?” That low, smooth voice—outwardly charming, yet prickling with a sense of dark menace—passed right through his ears and into his chest. His eyes opened of their own accord, and Matthew stared at the vision before him. The old yew tree still stood, gnarled and black against the shadows, its knotted boughs clenched knuckles, bark flaking from them like the sloughing of dead skin. Only the heart of the tree had changed. A dull red glow lit it, bursting forth from the wood’s tangled centre, wrapping the figure before them in a grainy aura. The one who had called himself Luc—red velvet cloak on his back and gold rings on his fingers—turned his gaze on Matthew, and the heat of an unseen fire licked at his heart. “You have come for this, I assume?” He held the fiddle in those long, elegant hands, and a thousand flames danced, deep in the surface of the wood. Matthew stepped forward, already beginning to reach for the instrument, before Jesse’s arm shot out and he grabbed his cousin’s sleeve. “Don’t!”

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M. King Matthew blinked, shook his head, confused and disoriented by things he couldn’t quite see playing at the edges of his vision. Words just past hearing whispered past his ears, and he swallowed, dry tongue rasping the roof of his mouth. Luc smiled, and it was a feral, vicious thing. His fingers rubbed at the fiddle’s neck, caressing the length of the wood, its smoothness and its gentle arch. “You’d have it back, yes? I must admit it that it doesn’t work as well for me as it did for you. I fear I lack the power to turn men’s souls the way you do, my friend.” That dark, glittering gaze passed briefly over Jesse, who bristled indignantly, and Matthew had to think through fog to understand what the old devil had meant. Who was he to turn anything? He’d had no command over anyone, and precious little over himself, since he made the trade. His lip twitched as he readied a reply—how could Luc have said that, when he must have known what had happened with Roger Laughton? It had been his plan all along, hadn’t it? The dry husk of a memory came back to him. This place. This cold ground. All that passion, all that desire, withered away to nothing. As if Matthew hadn’t had his heart in it, as if his soul had somehow been lacking. He stared at the fiddle. His fiddle. The wood, silken-smooth and glowing, and the fire dancing in its glimmering grain. The strings seemed to quiver without being touched, singing out to him in soft, silvery tones. Matthew ran his tongue over his lower lip, his breath misting in the cold air. “Perhaps I’m just missing a part of it,” Luc said, and the fiddle’s silent tune mirrored his voice, swooping and bowing through the sleek, warm words. “Perhaps all I need is the player. Would you play, Matthew?” He was leaning forward before he realised it, bending like a tree in the wind, but Jesse moved faster. The salt flashed blue in a flame that by rights should not have been there, and a horrible sound split the night. Part screech, part agonised yell, and part wordless howl of fury, it could not have come from human lips, and it shocked Matthew from his trance. Luc’s face had changed, his whole form somehow stretched and contorted; a man no longer, he was twisted like a flame, a ragged length of bitter fire. “Aye, you see it now, don’t you?” Jesse put himself between Matthew and the old yew tree, and he glared triumphantly at that fine, proud face. “You talk of turning souls, talk of the things Mattie did when he played…t’ain’t no surprise it won’t work for you, sir. You made a deal for the fiddle, not the heart—an’ he didn’t give you that willingly, for it wasn’t his to give. And music that has no heart, no soul…no love to it, well, that’s not worth the time of day. Not as clever as you think, are you, my lord?” The creature drew itself up to its full height—still at first glance a proud, handsome man, but blurred at the edges, as the light might dance upon the sides of a glass held up to the fire. The brocade on his cloak seemed to shiver, and for a brief, foolish moment, Matthew thought he was struggling to hold his shape. His legs tensed beneath him, ready to flee, but Jesse refused to

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle budge, and Matthew would have burned to a cinder right there rather than leave him alone. “I see you,” Jesse said, his voice strong and clear, no hint of fear quaking in it. “I know thee, and name thee devil. Now take thy pretty toys and go from this place.” The last of the salt flew from his fingers, and a sheet of flame flashed up before them, a yard broad and brighter than a noonday sun. Matthew’s first instinct was to throw an arm in front of his eyes, but instead he found himself reaching for Jesse, pulling him back…pulling him close. They tumbled, fell, and hit the cold, soft ground, the stench of sulphur and smoke in their noses. The silence felt eerie; so sudden, so thick. Matthew wasn’t sure he dared to breathe. He swallowed experimentally, wincing at the foul, grimy taste of smoke and filth. Jesse was beneath him, he realised, awkwardly bent against the grass, a tangle of elbows and knees, and that thought overrode everything else. Matthew pushed himself up, fumbling in the blue-spotted, half-blind darkness for his cousin. His fingers rimed with greasy churchyard mud, he located and patted Jesse’s cold, clammy cheek until he opened his eyes and proved he was still alive. His lips framed Matthew’s name, though there seemed to be no sound to it. For a moment, Matthew thought he’d gone deaf, but then Jesse lowered his gaze, and what he’d taken for sickness showed itself as bashfulness. He acted without thought, moved purely by gratitude and relief. Jesse’s mouth was as cold and clammy as the rest of him, but Matthew found an indelible warmth in his kiss. He clung on tight, regretting every opportunity he’d wasted in the past, every time he’d failed to see what Jesse had wanted to give him. He gave it now, unstinting and washed with cathartic joy. When they broke, Jesse pulled back with a low gasp, as if he couldn’t believe it, and buried his face in Matthew’s shoulder. It seemed strange that he should do that to Matthew; he’d been so strong, so brave. He didn’t cry, even when Matthew held him and rubbed his back, kissed his temple. He just tightened his grip, like he’d never let go again. Matthew glanced over at the old yew tree—empty and black once more, as if nothing had ever been strange about it—and decided that never letting go was probably a good thing or, at the very least, nothing he was going to argue with. Alone on the grass, abandoned at the tree’s dark, knotted roots, lay a beaten-up old leather case. His fiddle, just the way he’d left it. No changes, nothing forced where it shouldn’t have happened, and no lingering evil. Matthew smiled. At least now, when he played, he’d know exactly what his tunes were worth.

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M. King

About The Author M. King lives and works in a damp, verdant corner of South West England, where she may usually be found behind a keyboard and a vat of coffee. She has a deep and wide-ranging interest in folklore, and the Travellers’ Tales series is inspired by her long-time affection for Romany stories. She writes a wide range of fiction, often with a strong GLBT focus, and her other titles with loveyoudivine include f/f and gay BDSM stories. You can find more about M. King, and all the people she is, at www.flippedfrogcollective.com – where authors, and worlds, collide!

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The Gypsy’s Fiddle

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