Free Roman by Heather Grothaus Page A

back on his sandals, as if considering her question. “The day I am afraid of her is the day she shall kill me. So, no, lady, I am not afraid. That is the way with tigers. You must always face them. Always command them. The moment you allow yourself to believe the tiger cares for you, the tiger is your friend, you have tamed the tiger, that is when the tiger loses all respect for you. They kill animals they feel are lesser than them, weaker than them. Sometimes, too, they eat those animals.” The monk sniffed.
    â€œHow do you come to know so much about the creatures?” Isra asked, slightly unnerved at the man’s outlining of the bloodthirstiness of the animal lounging not thirty feet from them.
    Wynn glanced at her, a frown creasing his forehead over invisible eyebrows. “God has given me this knowledge. It is my holy mission. Why else would I be here?”
    â€œThank you for allowing me to see her,” Isra said, dropping her eyes to the stones for a moment. When she raised her face it was to find Roman’s eyes again. “I would prefer to return to my cell now, if it will not disturb Brother Wynn’s charges.”
    â€œNot at all,” Wynn said, already sliding his whip from his cincture. “She needs to exercise her limbs, any matter. She lies about enough.” The monk moved away from them and around the fountain toward the tiger, who watched the albino over one shoulder and flashed her teeth. Wynn cracked his whip and raised both arms in response. “Hie now, you great sloth. Come! Up with you!”
    â€œI think it best we go now, before Wynn becomes more enthusiastic about exercise, don’t you?”
    She smiled her agreement and let him lead her back to the safety of her own cage. Unlike the tiger, Isra felt afraid of the open, of the unknown. Princess was fierce, fearless, a man-eater.
    Then the thought of the man she had killed in Damascus came charging through her memories; the worst of all the things she had seen and done and been forced to do in the past three years swirled in her mind, causing her face to flush with blood and her heart to pound.
    And she wondered if, even though it was Roman Berg who pulled her into the cell, it was she who was leading him to damnation.
    * * *
    Roman shut the door behind Isra. There was no bolt on the inside, but he was confident enough in Wynn’s rule over his subjects that there was nothing to fear from the creatures milling about the gallery beyond the wooden barrier. He went to the table near the cot and unrolled the map he’d brought earlier. The table’s surface was not wide enough for the chart, so he spread it on the clean, rough stone floor, tucking one curling side under the legs of the table. He placed the toe of his right sandal on the other end of the map. Isra came to sit above him on the pallet, her feet tucked to the side and one slender arm holding her while she leaned over the diagram.
    â€œWe are here,” Roman said, pressing the index finger of his left hand in approximately the middle of the continent. Then he reached up to the tabletop, breaking off a long, curling piece of cooled yellow wax from the base of the metal candleholder. He snapped it in half and placed one piece on the area he’d indicated.
    â€œHere is where we must go.” He dropped the other piece of wax east of the Mediterranean, west of Damascus. Then he looked up at Isra, who was frowning at the map. “What way did you come?”
    She only continued staring at the map, her eyes becoming a little wider, her face a little pale under her olive complexion. “Where is Constantinople?” she asked, her voice carrying a heavier hint of rasp than it had since she’d first awakened.
    Roman pointed to the little spit of land between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
    Isra’s lips parted and she was as still as one of the statues in the abbey’s bailey for a moment. Then she turned wide,