With Julian installed in his cage once more – not that it could hold
him if he had decided to leave it – Holger and Birgitta pushed northward. They shared a single thought. Put as much distance between their pathetic,
trundling caravan and Larressingle as possible.
They stopped only briefly for rest, food and water, emptying a
stranger’s rabbit snare, stealing a chicken, eating roadside nuts and
berries. Holger was in a black mood for
the entire length of their journey, nurturing a plan that felt like a knife
twisting in his gut. He daren’t speak
for fear of revealing the nightmarish thoughts that tumbled around inside his
head: leave the shores of France, find passage to England, help his son slip
beneath the waves.
By the time they stopped in the lively little port of Regnaville on
the north coast of France, speech had left Julian forever. He rarely looked anyone in the eye now,
unable to concentrate on what was said to him.
It was a blessing. For the narrow
slits of his pupils, the putrid green of each iris, surrounded by wispy lines
of blood, made his stare so intense, you believed that he might set fire to
your own retina.
It was Birgitta, unaware of what lurked behind Holger’s troubled
expression, who insisted that Julian was still capable of performing in front of
the variety of market traders and their customers. Regnaville attracted merchants and travellers
from both England and the lands of the Norsemen as well as the Mediterranean
and the shores of North Africa. It was a
colourful, welcoming town where cultures met and happily rubbed shoulders. A performers’ town.
Neither knew that this would be where Julian would meet his saviour –
an unexpected saviour. An impossible
crossing of paths. From the slopes of
Austria, a young man disfigured by ancestral blood, and, from 21st C
England, an unlikely, teenage reptile-slayer.
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