CHAPTER 14
ERCHOMAI
❝ I am coming. ❞
Staring out of the window, Rose could barely see anything beyond the dense curtain of rain falling down on the gravel. Droplets hit the glass like hail in the French Alps and the wind gusted against the shutters in strong bursts, making them rattle dangerously.
Rose stepped closer. Her sisters used to dance through the raindrops; she used to run away from them. She didn't like the idea of a sky who cried. Now she couldn't stand the idea of a sky who didn't.
"Are you staying for dinner, miss?" In the vast, bleak hall of the Arrow house, Frances' kind eyes and expectant smile comforted her more than hot chocolate by the fireplace. "Charles would like that very much. He's been trying to play violin with the bubbles in the bath."
Rose smiled. Over the past few weeks she had juggled between violin lessons with Charlie, business deals with Thomas, and heated arguments with the Kissers to convince them such thing was a good idea.
Nicolas had been present in the first negotiations, but since it was obvious the two men rather strangle each other's necks than shake hands, Rose had soon found herself alone with Thomas Shelby and his indecipherable eyes, but sometimes, one had to do sacrifices for the cause.
So between shared drinks and back-and-forth repartee, the French Kisser and the Peaky Blinder finally came to an agreement. He would sell her absinthe and liqueur in his pubs and ship them to America, where the Prohibition would make her drinks even more profitable, and in exchange, she would sell his whiskey in her bars and give him access to the ports in the Northern French coast so he could smuggle car spares and single malt Scotch into France.
It came as a shock to her, how easy it was doing business with him, how well her goals and plans aligned with his. The image she had painted of him was dissipating from enemy to ally.
"No, I should go before this downpour turns into a storm."
Lightning streaked across the skies, lighting up the world for mere seconds. Rose saw the wet grass, the beginning of evening. That night the sky was made of hefty clouds, not stars. Then thunder spoke at the same time as him, just not as loudly.
"Too late for that. I think you should stay."
"Stay..." Rose turned around, and the world fell back into its place when their eyes met like they always did, like something in outer space was happening at the same time as them. "Until the storm passes?"
Standing against the large staircase, Thomas let the cigarette say no for him. The smoke tumbled from it with no hurry, dropping a veil between them. "It won't pass until the morning."
Rose snorted. "How convenient. I wouldn't be surprised if it were you ordering this rainfall. Does your monopoly also extend to the weather now?"
He brought the cigarette to his mouth, and the flash of lightning crossed his eyes at the same time as the sky. "I'm not God."
She chuckled. "Not yet."
He leaned away from the stairs, closer to her. Suddenly the smoke between them was not so much a veil as it was a bridge.
"Stay the night, Rose. The storm won't go away anytime soon. And you're not driving in these conditions."
She took a step towards him, striding from one danger to one even greater. Frances was gone. Even if she were there, Rose would not have seen her.
"Says who?"
"Says the insomnia I will have if ya go out that door now."
"Blackmail doesn't work with me, Thomas."
He took a hand out of his pocket, the shadows in the house suddenly pulled into his high cheekbones, to the long curves of his lashes. The rain outside seemed to fall directly on her heart, flooding it with something she didn't want to feel. That she couldn't feel.
"Not blackmail. The truth."
Thunder broke between them, charging the air with electricity.
"I'll stay," she said. "I don't want my business partner sleep deprived. But you should know there's a greater chance you're hit by that lightning than fucked by me."
He gestured with the burnt cigarette towards her, and she felt the burn at the end of his stare.
"I'm a bookmaker, Rose. Don't talk about odds with me."
***
The lamps were lit, but the light was flickering as if it was going to die out at any second. Outside, thunder was getting closer to lightning, and the portrait of Thomas hanging on the wall, next to a majestic white horse with a golden frame around it, looked as sacred and unattainable as the altar in a church.
"Don't you feel like he's watching you?" Rose asked Charles. The smooth skin of his brow was wrinkled as he looked down. The thunderstorm outside was nothing compared to the peas in his plate. "Makes you want to eat all your greens, doesn't it?"
Charles moved his eyes from the peas to the picture, but the frown simply deepened. Thomas had stayed at the table for about five minutes before getting up and returning to his office, the cold food on his plate left untouched. Charlie had more than Rose and all the other kids from her village had had growing up, except for a home. Rose had never had a silent home; her family's laughter was as much a part of the foundation of her house as the roof or the walls.
"No." The toddler pouted, pushing the plate away as if it had a frog on it. "They taste bad."
"Sometimes, the things that are good for you do." Rose brought the plate back to him. Charlie looked at her, sighed and then picked up his fork with a very reluctant hand.
"If I eat this, will me eyes be as green as yours?"
"Even greener." She smiled. "Now what do you say we play a game after dinner, eh? Hide and seek?"
His eyes shimmered like marbles in the sun, and he nodded and took a mouthful of peas. That night the mansion woke up from its silence as Rose chased Charles around the house, spinning him around and tickling him every time she found him. His giggles got carved in the walls and reached the kitchen, where Frances and the other servants stopped to hear him. The opium bottle in Thomas's desk remained unopened and even nature seemed to calm down at the sound of the boy whose house finally became a home.
***
Everyone had long gone to bed when Thomas left his office, but there was light sneaking out of a room when he set foot on the hall. Lightning and thunder had quieted down and only rain spoke now, thudding against the roof in an incessant murmur.
Thomas stopped by the door. It was the music room where Rose and Charles had their lessons, and he rarely went there. He grasped the knob; the door creaked as it opened. Rose was sitting on the windowsill, the moonlight falling down her back and turning the gold in her hair into silver.
She looked over her shoulder and smiled, and for a second Thomas thought he might be dreaming. She didn't look real. More like the angels Jeremiah and other priests preached about.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, voice low and hoarse due to the lack of use. He closed the door and wondered how many more would he have to open on his way to her.
Rose nodded. One of her hands was stretched out towards the violin, fingers scarcely touching it. "I hope you don't mind me wandering around the house. This was the only place I could find that put my thoughts to sleep and gave me some peace."
Thomas sat on the leather couch, reaching for his pocket in an instinctive gesture. He didn't have his case with him, but there were other bad habits. Things that killed just as much as healed.
"When was the last time you played?"
She bit her lip and crossed her arms, hands retreating from the violin like a rabbit fleeing to the burrow.
"Before I was shot. I'm afraid my arm will fail me. Or that the music will no longer be there when I try to make it."
Thomas didn't know anything about recovery. It wasn't a word men like him could experience or give to others. But there was a gloom in her tone he needed to get rid of. "Try."
"What?"
"Pick it up and try."
Her curls shook along with her head. "Do you want the employees to hate me when I wake up the entire house? Or Charles?"
"They work hard. People who work hard are heavy sleepers. And you can't wake me boy up even if you put a trumpet next to his ear."
She quirked a brow at him, her lips reacting to his words with a graceful curve. "Don't tell me you've tried that."
He crossed his legs, the white shirt and the burgundy vest tightening around him as he did. "Play, Rose. It's just me."
She looked from the violin to him. Her eyes said things her mouth never would. "With you, it's never just you."
She got off the windowsill and snatched the violin from the stand, holding it as if it were a weapon. He took the bullets when she spoke.
"Thomas, who do you see when you look at me? If I play, who are you going to hear?"
There were not many things that could surprise him, and even less that always did. But Rose was Rose. He could spend the rest of his life trying to decipher her, but he couldn't complete a puzzle whose pieces changed every day. Maybe her pieces didn't match with one another. Maybe they only matched with his.
"Grace wasn't a violinist."
"But she sang." Rose looked down. The shadows beneath her lashes seemed to leave tears on her cheeks. "I told you. I'm not here to fill the void she left in you. I have one myself. And two voids do not make a whole."
Thomas didn't hold much regard for anything, but he appreciated someone that could be both brutal and soft in their honesty. He crossed his hands in his lap, back resting against the couch. "If you play, I'll hear ya. No one else."
She nodded. Her next words were a decibel softer.
"You still think about her, don't you?"
"Yes," he said. They were not just talking about Grace. There was a man that even far still kept her awake. And Thomas still didn't have a name.
"All the time, I suppose?"
"No. I never think about her when I'm with you."
Rose sighed, the kind of sigh a warrior would give before marching to war. She tucked the violin between her shoulder and neck and played. Played like she was drinking from it. Like it was the violin beating and not her heart.
And he listened, like a man in a desert who sees the oasis but can't reach it. Rose was as much of a mirage. She was staring at the window, into the night. Maybe she was seeing him, the man of the tattoo on her back. But then she looked at him, and when their eyes locked, Thomas felt something violently tugging at his chest - something he thought he had buried alongside his wife.
***
Rose woke up early that morning. Thomas was nowhere to be seen, and she went to the kitchen to help Frances prepare breakfast, only for the housekeeper to chase her out saying her violinist hands weren't made for knives. If only she knew.
She searched for Charles, finding him surrounded by horse toys in the living room. But Charles had his head down, and when Charles had his head down, the world did too. There couldn't be happiness if he weren't happy. Children made the rules.
Rose kneeled on the floor next to him, moving a black horse closer to him.
"Do you want to go see the horses? The real ones?"
Charlie shook his head as he clutched the toy. "My dada wanted to work with them when he was little. But he's not little anymore."
"No, he isn't." She stroked his head gently; his hair was the color of the sand when it joined the sea. Maybe she could take him to the beach someday. Frances had told her he had never been there. "Are you sad, Charlie?"
"Yeah." So simple, so honest. People grew up when they learned how to lie.
"Was it your dad?"
"No." He looked up at her, big blue eyes teary and distant. Somewhere in the past. "I miss me mama."
His words hit her as if someone had fired a cannon ball straight at her chest. Now he was not the only one in the past.
"I miss my mama too."
His hands wrapped around the fur of the carpet. "Why did me mama leave?"
Rose tried to speak over the lump in her throat. She needed to say something that wouldn't shatter this boy's world even more. His heart was still made of glass. Only when he got older could he make it of steel. Like she and Thomas had done.
"Do you like gardens?"
Charlie nodded. He was tugging at the little horse now, like it could give him some part of his mother back.
"I have one in my house, I'll take you there one day. It's full of pretty flowers, you know? But one stands out for its beauty. So if you go there, which one do you pick first?"
"The beautiful!"
"That's what God does from above, you see? He watches over us and picks the best of us first to keep him company, for he himself feels terribly alone."
If the nuns she had worked with and raged against could hear her now. Rose didn't have any faith left in her but that wouldn't stop her from giving it to others.
"So we're all flowers?"
"Yes, we're all flowers."
His stare got foggier. The pout in his mouth seemed to carry the world.
"So God... he will pick you up next?"
Rose found no words inside her. No answer was good enough for that question.
"No, he won't." Her head snapped towards the doorway. Thomas was leaning against the doorframe, staring at them. Then he walked in and picked his son up. His voice was made of the firmest material when he spoke again. "I won't let him."
"But it's God - Aunt Polly says you can't beat him."
"She says the same about me. And God will understand." He looked at Charles, tapping the tip of his nose. "That I feel very lonely down here as well, and that he can't take all the flowers away from me."
"So Rose will stay?" Charlie asked, too hopeful. She got up, eyes pushing against Thomas over his son's shoulder. Don't. Don't promise him a life you can't give him.
But Thomas ignored her eyes and nodded. "Rose will stay."
***
Below the somber clouds, seagulls drew circles in the air. The sea crashed against the rocks, rolling over the sand in a languid kiss. And the breeze brought the scent of salt back to Rose as foam washed over her feet.
She gazed into the skyline. If she stretched out her hand, maybe she could catch the horizon. France was on the other side. Even if everything else was different, the ocean was the same.
Charles was running around them, following the seagulls and catching seashells. His footprints in the sand were the smallest Rose had seen. She turned her head to Thomas. His mouth was on the verge of a smile.
"So... will you finally admit this was a good idea?"
"No."
Rose chuckled. "Your lips say otherwise."
It had taken all of her persuasive power, but he had come. And now she was left trying to ignore the way his Henley shirt clung to his body, or how his glacial eyes trailed over her red swimsuit and dropped chills on her skin.
She turned around and ran into the cold water without so much as a flinch. Charlie stumbled over to follow her, small hands waving in the air, and Rose picked him up and spun him around. Soon enough they were chasing one another on the shoreline, splashing each other with water while waves enveloped Rose's ankles like a lover that came and went but never stayed.
Rose stopped, her figure cut out against the horizon like a mermaid enchanting sailors to the sea.
"Come on, Thomas." She tilted her head, the bow of her lips curving in a challenge. "When was the last time you lived?"
He shook his head, and Rose rolled her eyes and grabbed Charlie by the hand, bringing him back to his father.
"Your dad doesn't know how to have fun, does he?"
"No!" Charlie agreed, sticking his tongue out before racing to the dunes.
"You're rubbing off on him," Thomas said when Rose slumped down next to him. His hair was ruffled by the wind, and he looked like the ideal of beauty painters always aimed to achieve. Art and war were the same, perhaps – they both made people bleed. "All week he's been answering questions with only 'oui' or 'non'. Mostly 'non'. It's makin' me servants crazy."
Rose beamed. "That's my boy." She felt winter arrive earlier to her spine and paused. "I didn't mean..."
"I know what you meant. In a certain way, he is. More yours than mine, that is."
She glanced at him. "That will never be possible. That boy loves you. And you love him, but you don't show it. You shouldn't be afraid of what's in your heart. He needs his father. But you need your son even more."
She let the cool breeze take the words away from her, into him.
"Dad! Rosie!" Charlie came back with a dandelion, nose shoved into the petals as he fell on the sand.
"If you blow the florets, you can make a wish. Like this." Rose picked one up and blew on it. Charles giggled before doing the same. They watched the seeds fly away, and Rose searched for another and handed it to Thomas.
"Want to make a wish?"
"I don't wish for things," he said over the sound of the ocean. If there was something out there that resembled him, it was this. A calm surface over a deep sea. "I make them happen."
***
Small Heath, Birmingham
His polished black shoes didn't make a sound when he stepped out of the Cadillac. He kicked a stone away. The grimace that escorted him the entire trip only intensified when he glanced around the desolate streets. It was a dark and gloomy place, that smelled too much of horses and mud. But he supposed someone like Thomas Shelby, who had risen so high, could only come from a slum like this. Only men who came from nothing had the ambition to have everything.
Still, he would have preferred a more pleasant place. His shoes were new, after all.
"Jesus Christ, Tavish, where did ye brin' us to?" The man on the other side of the car slammed the door shut and spat on the ground. His Chesterfield coat fluttered in the wind. Even the lion on his neck seemed to roar in contempt. "Ah thought ye said she's in London."
"She is." Tavish waited for the other men to join them. Some had already arrived to prepare the ground. But this was the cavalry. And he was the general. "But why catch a fly whan ye can catch two."
Callan spat again. His eyes were two blocks of ice, and yet the gun in his holster would keep burning him until he could snatch it. "Ah hope she's worth it. Jail is paradise compared tae this shithole."
"Come on." Tavish said. "Let's drink."
No sound was heard except for the clatter of their boots on the stone as they headed for the pub. The Garrison, it read on the sign. Tavish snickered. Everything was war for these men. As sacred as religion. But for him there was only one thing that was sacred, one thing he had come all this way for. The sweet blood of a rose.
He opened the doors wide, claiming the stares of all the customers inside. The pub was well lit, and there was no dust on the cabinets. Even far away, Mr. Shelby still had a reputation to maintain.
Tavish sat on the stool, and Callan followed. The other men stood behind them, covering their back.
"Whiskey," he said without glancing at the bartender. "Neat."
The man on the other side of the counter nodded, throwing the towel over his shoulder. "Irish or Scotch?"
Rowdy curses rose from the men behind him. Callan snorted, as loud as an elephant's trunk. His hand was on the gun. He had a light finger, especially when it came to his ego. But Tavish smiled. It was a slow, cynical smile, like a leopard before throwing itself onto its prey.
"Scotch."
"I've never seen ya 'round 'ere. Where ya from?" The bartender reached for a bottle before pouring it down on a row of glasses.
"Isn't it obvious, ye fuckin' eejit?" Callan sniggered. His accent was thicker than Tavish's. Wherever he went, he could never leave his country behind.
"A land where all th' whiskey is Scotch and the bartenders know not tae ask questions." Tavish placed the glass down. He hadn't taken a sip.
"Aye!" Callan and the others raised their glasses. But Tavish kept his eyes on the bartender, like an animal that would lay in wait for hours on end just to catch his prey. There was no rush. The thrill was in the chase.
"Where can ah find the owner?" He spun the rings in his fingers slowly. A red scar ran the length of his middle one. At his side, Callan kept tapping his foot on the floor.
"Arthur Shelby?" The bartender scratched his head. "Last time I heard, in Winson Green."
"The prison." Tavish nodded. "Ah meant his brother."
The Brit moved his eyes between the men. He reminded Tavish of a mouse that only knew it was in danger after falling into the trap. "Thomas? Hasn't been 'round 'ere in ages. I think he spends most days in Warwickshire. If I had a mansion like that, I would too."
"And London?"
"Aye. I think there's a lady there he fancies."
"Is that so?" Tavish got up, dropping some pounds on the counter. Callan moved the finger away from the trigger.
"Why do you ask, sir?"
"To give him a head start." Tavish turned around and walked away. There was nothing Scottish about his voice anymore. Revenge had no accent. "You'll call him, and he'll know that I'm coming. Hunting is always more fun that way."
***
Later that night, alone in his office, Tommy was still seeing Rose sprinkling Charles with water. He was seeing her talking about gardens and God, making him laugh when he had been about to cry. Seeing her give his son all the joy he never could whenever she smiled at him.
He thought back to those memories, to how his heart seemed about to burst in his chest. Rose didn't belong there, in his heart. It was too small for her. Even the world was too small for her. And Tommy thought that if God really existed, it was only in her.
But every god had its Lucifer, and in her case, he was coming.
But no telephone rang that night.
Callan had a very light finger indeed.
author's note.
I'm so excited to finally introduce these guys!! What are your first thoughts on them? I'll try to keep the Scottish slang to a minimum, but if you have any doubts just ask <3 And I hope you've enjoyed these past few moments of fluff because here comes drama :')
This chapter is dedicated to LovePanda10 for these amazing graphics!! Tysm ♡