The Gilded Madonna by Garrick Jones (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

known about my da, when his eyes glazed and he slumped in the chair.

“Luka?” his sister sprang from her chair. “Quickly, Mr. Smith. Over there in the corner, there’s a cushion on the chair, help me lay him on the floor.”

Stretched out on his back, he quivered for a bit, moaning, and then a small trickle of blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and pressed it to the edge of his lips.

“Should I …?”

She shook her head. “He’s bitten his tongue, that’s all. He doesn’t get these attacks often, Mr. Smith. It’s not epilepsy, we’ve been to doctors all his life. It’s as if whatever thoughts he’s had have overwhelmed him.”

“What should I do?”

“Nothing. Just wait. It means he has a message for you.”

*****

“The Bishop children, is that what this is all about?”

We were on our second cup of coffee. I’d had to ask for a glass of water. Although I loved it, it was thick and rich and very sweet. I’d carried Luka to his bedroom upstairs at the back of the house and had laid him on his bed and undone the top few buttons of his shirt and loosened his belt.

“Everything we’ve received has indicated that you and your brother have something to do with the case.”

She shrugged. “There’s nothing we can help you with—I’ve heard about it on the wireless, that’s all. No one has come to me for a reading and mentioned it, if that’s what you’re thinking. If you believed, and there was something that belonged to the person who took the children, perhaps Luka … I can see from your face you’re confused, Mr. Smith. He can’t tell the future, only the past, and perhaps the present from something the owner has worn or touched over time. No one can predict the future, no one.”

She was right, I was confused. “Perhaps I’ve read too many stories about gypsies, fortune telling, and precognition. I’m sorry. I did tell you I’d brought my preconceptions with me.”

She smiled softly. “Telling the future? That’s carnival business. Real Romany people would have nothing to do with that sort of nonsense. Me? Well, as I told you, I’m a healer and a helper. Luka? Well, he’s something altogether different. No one knows or understands, but it’s the rarest of gifts. He likes you—that’s unusual in itself. Don’t worry, I can see that you have your iron in another fire, and if I can see it, so can he. He’s lonely. He extended a hand of friendship. That cigarette? I’ve only seen that once before, offering a stranger something that’s been close to his body—even though it was in a packet in his pocket.”

I took a business card from my pocket and scribbled on the back. “This is my home number. Normally, I wouldn’t hand it out. But when he wakes up, I might be able to give him some information where he might find … friends.”

She laughed and then held out her hand. I shook it. “Finding those sorts of … friends has never been hard for my brother, Mr. Smith. He needs what you men call a mate, a man’s shoulder to lean on every so often, as do most men in this world. At least that’s been my experience. We women, we’re open to sharing our secrets, baring our souls with close friends. But men? Phht, I don’t know how you cope being so strong and stoic all the time.”

“Not all of us are as strong and stoic as you might believe, Gălbenele.”

“I think that’s why he likes you, to be perfectly honest.”

“I’ll get your statue back to you as soon as I can,” I said, staring at the empty plinth on the wall.

“Her face and hands are covered in gilt so not to alarm those who come for readings. Saint Sarah is the patron saint of the Romany people. She’s black, did you know that?”

“Black?”

“Yes, the colour of her skin.”

“Everyone’s pink inside.”

She smiled at me. “I think I might grow to like you too, Mr. Smith.”

“Are you—?”

“Yes, we are alone. That’s what you were going to ask, isn’t it?”

I nodded and then smiled at her from under my eyebrows. I’d been playing with my tiepin.

“How did you know I was going to ask that?”

“Brother and sister living together, newly arrived from a town that forced us to leave. It’s obvious isn’t it? Where are our parents?”

“I’ve learned not to ask about missing parents, Gălbenele. The war isn’t that long ago. They could have been left back there, at home, wherever they came from. I know first-hand what went on to people of your race.”

“They went back, you know.”

“Your parents?”

She nodded. “In 1938, when we knew things were going to get bad, they went to convince my grandparents to come to Australia. I was eighteen and Luka was sixteen. They never came home.”

“I could find out what happened for you?”

“No. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I’d prefer not to know. Had they survived they would have written. They were terrible times …”

“Yes,” I said. “I lived through them … over there, in Europe.”

She was about to say something when she tilted her head towards the ceiling. “He’s awake. You should see what he has to say.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“So, men who aren’t strong and stoic can also be fearful of words?”

I raised an eyebrow at her and sighed.

He’d taken off his shirt and singlet by the time I entered his bedroom, after knocking lightly at the door first. I stood in the doorway and watched him sitting on the edge of his bed, wiping his neck and chest with a flannel. There was a sink in the corner of the room and a jug on a night stand.

“Are you all right?”

He nodded but didn’t look at me. “I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry.”

“The shoelace, Clyde. Speak with the man it belongs to. Listen to him. His story is as deep and as painful as yours. He’s