Double Dealing: A Menage Romance(61)

I looked around the room, noting that even with the passage of a few years, I was still the youngest family leader in the room. The men looking back at me were all in their forties and fifties, and all of them had children of their own already.

"As I said yesterday, I understand your concerns and have thought long and hard about them," I said in Romani. "To that end, I spoke with my mother and her sister. They have agreed to act as my counselors and advisors, in a role similar to what they did for my brother."

I looked around the room and continued. "For the past few years, since my grandfather became too ill, my brother acted first unofficially and then later officially as the leader of our tribe. And in those years, despite the challenges to our home nations, our tribe has flourished. We're in a more secure position economically, politically, and even culturally than we were when Felix took over."

The discussion lasted for another few hours, but as time passed, I could tell I'd made the proper points. It was time. “Gentlemen, it’s time to make your decision. If you want me to be your leader, then take the oath."

The oath is perhaps the only thing that really separates a Gypsy King from any other respected family leader. We don't carry a crown, we don't have security details or Secret Service or anything like that. There’s no money to it, my grandfather had a few years where he was as poor as any other member of the family.

The oath, on the other hand . . . that was special. It was a blood oath, the strongest there is in Romani culture, that the family leader, and, therefore, the family, would agree to the decisions of the King. It was irrevocable, with dire consequences if broken. The only way an oath could be nullified was if the King died or was deposed, and that had never happened in the history of our tribe.

The room was silent, each man looking to the other, wondering who would stand first, if any would stand at all.

Finally, one brave man stood. "I will take the oath."

With the dam broken, one by one all of the other family members stood, until I was the only one left seated. After giving anyone who wanted a chance to change their minds, I stood as well. "I accept."





Chapter 28





Jordan




"But why the markings?" I asked that night after Francois had gone to the barn to mentally prepare himself. His coronation, which would be another public declaration of loyalty, would take place at dawn the next day. Before swearing the oath, each family leader would be allowed four very carefully placed blows with a whip or a rod on Francois's back. "Why the need for the pain?"

"In the old days, there was no concept of jail in our culture," Charani said, sitting quietly, pensive. She knew what faced her son the next morning, having seen it once before. "There were three forms of punishment. You could warn, a scolding if you would. The next was corporal punishment. The third, of course, was banishment or death. The marks are to show that Francois has already paid for the mistakes he’ll make when he is King."

I nodded. An interesting concept. "I wonder how many people would sign up to be politicians if we did that in the United States."

"You mean Canada?" Charani chided in good humor. She had regained a small sense of it, using it to keep me and Syeira out of the worst of the black depths of our depression.

“On a more serious note, though, Francois is going to have a difficult next few days. He’s going to need you for support. Not only does he have the stress of becoming our new leader, but we have the ceremony for Felix."

I felt the tightening in my chest seize for second before unclenching. "I know. I’m thinking of how I will memorialize him."

Charani nodded. She brushed off her pants and stood up, stretching her arms over her head. "Then I will let you think. Good night, Jordan."



* * *



The ceremony itself took place in the backyard of the house. Two ropes had been strung from the post above the door to the barn, and two of the family leaders tied Francois up, his arms out at an angle to create a gigantic Y-shape. I winced when they lifted him into the air until his body hung two feet off the ground, his back muscles stretched painfully as he waited for his coronation gift.

Each of the leaders, sixteen in all, lined up in two lines of eight. One by one they approached and said something I couldn't understand in Romani before taking long wooden rods, maybe four feet long and about as thick around as two of my fingers. They then hit Francois across the back, taking turns to create the X-shape that I knew so well from Felix's back. Tears came to my eyes and I wanted to reach for him, but Charani laid a hand on my shoulder, shaking her head. There would be no interruption.

Francois's skin resisted the blows until the third pair, not rupturing until the man on his left swung so hard that his rod cracked in half with his blow. The ceremony didn't pause, but intensified, with each of the following pairs of men striving to open those wounds wider, the blood sheeting down Francois's back and staining his pants by the end. Tears rolled down my cheeks just as much, but still his head was held high, his eyes turned toward the sky, and I could see his eyes open and looking into the dimness of the barn.

Finally, the last blow was struck, and all sixteen men stood back, surveying their handiwork. One of them raised his hand, and in a single voice, they said something else in Romani. The man lowered his hand, and two more men ran forward, lowering Francois to the waiting arms of two more of the men. They carried him into the house, where one of them checked his wounds. He turned to Charani and spoke in Romani, her face impassive the whole time. She whispered out of the side of her mouth as the man took a bottle from what looked like an old-fashioned doctor's bag and started daubing fluid on the wounds. "He says that the wounds are deep, but that they’re just in the skin. The underlying muscles weren’t torn. For the Romani, this is good, as the scars will be wide and strong, unbroken. They’ll be a good sign of his position and the respect he deserves.”