Ella Violo - Chapter 2

Ella liked autumn.  The sun didn't rise too early or too late, and the air was still warm while gaining an air of crispness.  She rose on the morning of the thirteenth with an enormous yawn.  A mouse in the corner echoed her sentiment.

"Good morning," she said to the little creature.  The mouse skittered back into its home in an old holey chest against the wall.  "Gotta get a cat," muttered Ella as she threw off her blankets and poked Tomas and Alejandro awake.

Maria was already up and about, frying eggs in the kitchen.  She was only two years older than Ella, but she already looked like a mother.  Her brown hair was tied up in a messy knot at the base of her head, and smile lines were appearing around her red lips.  The smallest thief, a four-year-old boy with quick fingers, clung to Maria's apron as she swept around the room, stirring bubbling pots of porridge and soup.

"Up already, Ella?  Must be a big day.  The church clock rang eight a while back."

"Never trust a church clock," Ella answered, sitting in a wooden chair and pouring herself a glass of cool water from the well.

"Well, you and your little disciples can run to the market and get me a chicken, some fruit, some bread…

"And a bottle of milk," Ella said, finishing the list for her friend.  "We'll be back in an hour, Maria.  Don't go legit on us while we're gone."  She gulped down her milk, picked up her shopping sack and the guilder coin, and called for the boys to get themselves ready for an adventure.

Tomas ran ahead as they walked the short path to the open market.  Alejandro followed.  Ella watched them go into the crowd as she tied a scarf around her hair and headed for the poultry cart.  They can take care of themselves, she said to herself.  Hopefully they would find something to take care of the other residents as well.

A round man stood behind the chickens today, one Ella had not seen before.  She smiled wryly and approached her new mark.  As she walked forward, she noted that the fruit vendor was to his left, and a young Knight of the Rose and Cross to his right.  The first made the job easy; the second might make it more difficult

"Good morrow, my good man," she said in a singsong voice as she came up to the display of chickens, ducks, and other, more gamy fare.

"And to yourself, my good woman," he answered.

She set a hand to her cheek wearily and sang, "I need an excellent chicken to accompany this afternoon's rice.  What have you today?"

"Ah!  I have just the thing!"  He picked up a large roaster by the legs and held it out to her like a bottle of fine wine in a fancy inn.  "It's fit for a king."

"For a king!" Ella exclaimed.  "That may be a bit rich for my blood."  The fruit vendor, an older man who wheezed when he laughed, began to chuckle.  His eyes wandered away from his wares and onto the conversation beside him.

"My dear, you cannot get better meat in this city.  In my hand I hold the queen of chickens!"

"Noble poultry, eh?" she laughed.  "Do you not have anything a bit…lower class?  Perhaps a merchant chicken?"

The portly man began to sputter.  "A merchant chicken?!" he muttered in surprise, his face growing red.  At the next stall, the fruit vendor doubled up and laughed aloud at his fellow's bemusement.  Without looking away from the shocked farmer's expression, Ella watched the boys take oranges from the far end of the fruit cart and stuff them in their own burlap satchels.  "To think that I would…would possibly bring inferior goods to market…!"

"Now, now, sir," Ella said, adding a hint of anxiety to her voice, "there's nothing wrong with a smaller hen.  I personally feel that the merchant class is often more noble than the nobility."  At this, she noticed the knight crack a smile.  "I can certainly take the stringier meat off your hands and leave the better to my betters."

Still flustered, the farmer wrapped the chicken in brown paper and handed it to Ella.  "Sixty cents," he spluttered.  Ella reached into her sack for the coin, but before she could give it to the merchant, the knight had set money on the cart.

"You've earned a free meal, young lady," he laughed, smiling at Ella.

She did not smile back.  "I don't get it," she said.  Free things, she knew well, were never truly free.

"Why, your wit, girl!" he exclaimed.  "I have not heard its equal in my travels."

"You don't get off the farm much, then," she muttered, putting her own coin on the cart's edge.  "Change please," she said to the merchant, who looked more confused than ever.  While he shuffled about looking for forty cents, Ella looked the knight in the eye.  He was a good foot taller than her, certainly stronger, but perhaps not as quick… "What do you want?" she snapped at him.

"My lady-" he began, but Ella cut him off.

"I'm not a lady.  Do I look noble to you?"  Her breath was coming faster now.  She took her change from the merchant and put it in her coin purse.

"Well… a little, yes," the knight said.  "But every member of the fairer sex is a lady to a proper knight.  May I escort you home?"

Ella could stand it no further.  She pulled a small knife from inside the scarf at her waist, pointed it at the knight and murmured, "I'm no lady and don't you forget it.  Take your money and buy a real whore."

Tomas had picked up on his friend's distress just in time, appearing out of nowhere to save the day.  "Sister," he said, tugging on the shawl tied around her waist, "Mama will want the chicken soon.  We should…"

"Go.  Yes, brother.  Let's leave this knight to find a better quest, shall we?"  She tossed her false curls and turned sharply toward the fountain at the center of the marketplace.  "Still need bread and milk.  Are the Sisters out today?"

"When are they not?" asked Alejandro with a smile as he joined them.  Each boy took one of Ella's furiously shaking hands and led her to the Francescans' stall in the corner garden.  The elderly Sisters Anna and Elena saw the trio approaching and waved kindly.  Sister Elena, plainly the elder by a fair few years, pulled a hearty dark loaf from one of her overflowing baskets and held it out to Alejandro.

"Blessings, dears," Sister Anna sang as the skinny boy took the bread and squirreled it away in his bag.  "When are you going to fatten that boy up?" she asked Ella, raising her eyebrows until they disappeared into her wimple.

"I keep trying to, but he's growing so quickly that the stew can't keep up with him," Ella replied.  She relaxed slightly; the Sisters of St. Francesca's Monastery were always kind to her little band of wretches.

"Luckily for you, dear," Sister Elena said in her soft, motherly voice, "I have a little extra butter today."  She handed a small pot to Alejandro, and then poured milk from a giant pitcher into a clay bottle for Ella.  "Now, before you take this and run home, Señorita Violo, do tell what that commotion on the other side of the square was about."

"Which commotion?" Ella asked warily.

Sister Anna shook her head with a smile.  "There was a small amount of shouting and screeching about a gypsy girl with a knife.  You didn't hear it?"

"No," Ella said truthfully.  She hadn't heard anything but the beating of her enraged heart…  "It must have been me.  There was a jackass knight with a little more than chivalry on his mind…"

"Tread carefully, sister," advised the older nun.  "You'll need a different disguise for a week or two, unless you want the guards throwing you in jail for the night."

"Yes, Sister."  Ella curtseyed gracefully to the nuns and dropped her own guilder in their collecting basket.  It was twenty times the worth of the bread and milk, but a thousand times less than what she owed them.

"You'll be at mass tomorrow?" asked Sister Elena.

"Wouldn't miss it."  The three young scoundrels headed back into the crowd toward their humble home.

* * *

It had been a true stroke of luck when this house was cleared out the previous year.  Julian had picked up a number of young followers at the time, and camping outside San Cristobal was no longer a safe possibility.  One day in Corantine, while away from the thieves' camp and searching for easy marks, Ella had spotted the empty building on Prophet's Street.  It had looked in need of repair; must have been unoccupied for at least a week.

She had watched the house for three hours.  No one came or went from the place.  No smoke rose from the chimney.  The shutters clattered in the breeze.  When two chattering old women passed by, Ella had leaned against the opposite building, a moneylender's office, eating an apple in her most nonchalantly nonchalant fashion and listening carefully.

One of them shook her head.  "Too bad about those young men," she said.

"Isa, they were heretics!" whispered the other with her eyes wide open in horror.  "Think of it, Objectionists hiding in our city!"

"But there was no need to throw them out so unceremoniously," sighed the first.

The second scoffed.  "They were shown great mercy.  Allowed to leave on their own ship!  The Church is going soft."

"Oh Lin, they were so handsome."

"Yes," agreed Lin.  "Too bad about those young men."

When they had gone, Ella slipped across the empty street and pushed against the red door.  It splintered slightly under her hand, but swung open easily.  Inside was a dusty open room with a door (to the kitchen, she soon discovered) and a staircase to several dusty upper rooms.  A back door opened onto a small parcel of land with a well and room for a garden.  She searched the place for any sign of residents, but they seemed to have left in a hurry some time ago.  Ella had grinned broadly and skipped back to the thieves' camp to announce the news: they had a home at last.