Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A fine mist drifted in, across the valley, carried on the wind. Ross tacked a sheet over the open side of the folly, which helped to bar the moisture's approach. The cat returned, slipping in by the corner of the wall. She meowed her hello and Dem leaned out of the daybed at a precarious angle, nearly upside down to reach out and scritch her head, something the cat seemed to enjoy. "Hello! Did you find a nice mouse?" The cat meowed again, scrutinized Dem's face, pawing at the loose curls of her hair on the floor, as if debating whether to climb up Dem's hair like the prince in Rapunzel, then turned away to walk further into the room and leaped to sit on the second lowest shelf. Ross imagined the cat had actually answered Dem because Demelza had an uncanny ability to communicate with just about anyone. Her torso stretched back in a finely wrought network of ribs, her navel yawning as she remained over the side of the bed watching the cat. He ran his finger from her navel to lower and she gave a yip of surprise and shivered from the tickliness of it as she pulled herself back up. "That tickled!" complained Dem. Ross grinned. "I couldn't resist." "Humph! I might have fallen off," she said snuggling next to his side. "I'd grab your legs and hold you..." whispered Ross, lips warm at the place where her neck and shoulder met. Dem giggled. "We'd be stuck! Maybe we'd both fall off then." Ross nestled his head near hers. "It's not far to fall. We could just lay there," suggested Ross. Dem put the tapestry back over them. "It's warmer here..." Ross snuggled closer in agreement. The grey day was chilly as April waned. Warm spring days had been plentiful up here when it was sunny but the overcast day made for cooler weather. The sharp, animal smell of not having washed in the river for three days, the overcast days too chilly to bear the river water, was like a guilty secret. Ross and Dem, rather than finding the scent unpleasant relished the secret of knowing that they were wallowing in each other's musk like wild beasts. A unkempt decadence between them. The heat of their bodies, the smell of sex and the oils of their hair assembled themselves into a sort of perfume. The Poldarks had known true squalor on the street at times. When they first had cause to live on the street they had passed beyond giving offense or noticable whiffiness. Ross and Demelza had been truly filthy and lice ridden. They knew what it was to be so dirty that cafe proprietors and shop keepers denied them entry. This was different. Subtle and a naughty sort of enjoyment in their body's own scent. They were basking in each other's pheromones, the warmth of each other so near and turning the daybed into a nest or a den. Marking each other and the place where they lay in a signature scent they could recognize as their mate's. They drowsed. The chill air made the sheet at the open side of the house rise and fall at times. A sheen of mist entered then. It did not penetrate as far as the daybed but moisture and the wet smell of the forest, the moist scent from wet rock and the surroundings of the canyon blew in and they smelled nature around them in the April rain.

But as relaxing and pleasant as this laziness was nature can also call. Ross rolled away to lay on his back, rested his head over his arm even as he had the other one still around Dem. "I must away, I need to go..." he sighed. Dem nodded, curled on her side to lay near him a shade longer. "Me too. We should probably get water too..." Ross nodded. They rose to leave and took a bucket each at the mouth of the folly. They did not dress. Ross pushed the sheet aside to let Dem exit first. A lift of her eyebrow rather than speech. A gesture to the river's direction, a movement of Demelza's wrist that was barely perceptible. Ross nodded.

'Leave the buckets by the river and come back to gather water...?'

'Yes, we'll take care of things nearer to the river and then bring the water back.'

That Ross and Dem understood the exchange in such brief, silent communication was a testament to the bond they had developed after Ross, living on the street as a busker and bound for France as a stowaway, broke Dem out of a Magdalene Laundry and they began their life on the road. Ross and Demelza had been at each other's side for years. They learned a potent form of silent communication as well as using key words in many different languages along with pantomime to talk to others in the shadows of the straight world. Even now Ross and Dem did not reside in the "straight world", the workaday, ordinary life of the society they skulked around the edges of. The townspeople here saw them for what they were, vagrants, and looked to Ross and Dem with suspicion. Too young, long hairs, foreign and no obvious employment. The townspeople had cause to be wary, vagrants could be troublesome. Being a vagabond was disreputable but there was knowledge to be had in the vagabond life; rules, rituals and skills that assist in the world on the street. The Poldarks came to learn these lessons well and never truly stopped using them even when they later resumed living a "normal" life. That they could decide things like the direction they should go, agreeing to leave the buckets at the river's edge and where to relieve themselves without speaking was second nature. In later years these effortless exchanges between them amused the Paynters and their children able to see, at first hand and in close quarters, Ross and Dem communicate this way in a natural, unaffected manner. They grew up on the streets and it marked them, never left them and gave them both an uncanny grace and wisdom together that was strange and wonderful to witness.

Ross followed Dem out and they strode naked down the hill in fine clouds of mist in which droplets of water floated on the air rather than fell. The rich green of the grass was made silvered by small drops clinging to the blades and catching the light. Their footsteps remained dark behind them as the warmth of their feet pressed the grass of this dew. The small birds found shelter this day. Only the larger ravens and hawks wheeled through the sky on this wet day. Dem watched Ross walk with the bucket at his side, his hair moist enough to clump in loose ringlets by itself in a way that some girls despaired over getting their hair to behave by styling it intentionally. Dem admired his legs, the hair of his body, his easy gait and his beauty. Ross was beautiful and she watched him as he made his way down the hill. He slid a little, bobbled to keep his balance on the wet grass and laughed to himself, goodnaturedly. He turned, much like a tightrope walker, balancing the bucket, keeping himself upright and turned to smile at Dem, amused that he kept his balance.

Ross slid on the grass and giggled over it. He didn't fall and turned to Dem to smile his triumph as she must have seen. Far enough down the hill towards the meadow that she was framed by the green grass. She placed the bucket handle further up her arm and applauded with a merry grin. Her eyes shone with a reflection of the grass around her, more green than blue. Her red hair was vibrant, at her groin, on her head. It was growing out, longer than she kept it ordinarily. She was ever herself but the lengthening of her hair was bringing a more obvious femininity to her features. He watched her clapping, gazed at her pretty breasts and shapely legs, the look of amusement over Ross keeping his balance, the dark marks of their footsteps in a arcing trail behind her on the grass. Dem was a pretty girl. She dressed as a boy on the street. It took their landlady, Madame Albaret, two days to realize Dem was a girl. Sometimes people see what is easiest to see. A kid dressed like a boy is most likely a boy. That was to Dem's advantage. For Ross, even in their life on the street when needs meant he call her "Tom", he always saw the girl at his side, a pretty girl... She caught him up and they continued to the river. They were slender and stalky kids. Tall and long limbed. They had not suffered in growing as street rats. Even surviving lean times and sparse meals on the street they managed the luck of attaining a good height and being well grown children. The good fortune of steady, ample meals in the growers compound, in their winter's lodgings with Brose and their inherent sense of self preservation on the street helped them. Some street rats drank coffee and cheap wine to keep them going. Ross and Dem, so used to grown ups around them who insisted they drink milk at meals kept that habit on their own. Cocoa over coffee, milk over spirits, enough busking takings to meet a plate of sausage or an omelet or a croque madame; a toasted sandwich of ham, cheese and a fried egg with frites, fried potatoes, on the side in the cafes now and again, and there were always pastries to keep them going. They were so often seen eating treats from the patisseries the other street kids nicknamed Ross and Dem "Palmier" after the puff pastry who's two sides curled inward. Always together, and maintaining an innocence about them with their friendly talk, cheerful music and enjoyment of pastries and milk. Together they walked to the river. They left the buckets at the river's edge and went to relieve themselves in the woods, disappearing into the trees Dem to the left, Ross to the right. They met up again at the river's edge. "Do we dare?" laughed Ross. The water was most likely cold but they had been three days without a wash. Dem scrunched her eyes shut. Being thin meant feeling that cold water that much more. "If we dip in and out quick!" They smiled agreement. They both had fine droplets resting in their hair from the mist itself. They glittered like diamonds. They grinned, daring the other to go first. Dem extended her hand and Ross held it. "One, two, three!" yelled Dem and they ran forward, hand in hand, and plunged in. The sudden chill made them shriek and start laughing. Dem disappeared under the water and Ross let go her hand and followed suit. A fast scrubing, Dem stood up once more, leaned forward to scratch water into her scalp and wash up her hair. Ross did the same and they climbed back out to get the buckets. They filled the buckets and made their way back up the hill, hair streaming wet and the sensation of warmth now that they left the cold river water, eager to return indoors for it was not warmth enough to keep from shivering. Up the hill, slow enough to avoid water sloshing over the buckets' side, shivering as they made their way back. Straining not to slip and fall with the extra weight of the heavy buckets on the wet ground. "Oh!" Dem lost her footing and lost a fair bit of her buckets worth of water trying to right herself. Ross' concerned comment, "Are you alright?", was lost in a veil of Demelza's giggles and he stood admiring his wife, spindly but still upright, a wave of water left her bucket in an arch over the ground in a loud splash and she laughed. "Hahahahahaha! I'll get some more!" Dem went back to try again. He watched her. Watched her using the same careful lift they learned at the growers compound, turning slowly and coming towards him, head down watching her step and the bucket. She was as pretty as a nymph in one of the Symbolism paintings in some of Brose's art books. A gorgeous waterbearer that happened to be his best friend, companion and wife and smiled up at him suddenly. She tilted her chin up look at him and he could feel that she had the same thought. She looked at him lovingly and he could tell she had the same satisfaction in knowing Ross to be her best friend, companion and husband. Two wet, skinny kids who turned to return to the strange little house on the hill.

They entered at the edge of sheet tacked over the opening. They were still damp but enough time had elapsed to give their towel less work to do. Ross and Dem set the buckets down on the floor by the stove. They took turns drying off and Ross stoked the iron stove. They bought a newspaper in town for the sole purpose of starting fires going. He placed a crumple of it at the wood and lay a match there. As he knelt by the stove Dem came behind him and rubbed his hair once more with the towel. He smiled up at her in gratitude. "Tea?" asked Ross. She kissed his forehead. "Yes please!" said Dem. Ross nodded and closed up the stove. "We'll give it some time to heat up..." He stood. Ross turned to Dem and crinkled his eyes, pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes and teased, "In the meantime, you are charged with the task of warming our bed, my good woman!" Dem laughed. "Oh?" asked Dem. Ross nodded. They climbed into the daybed and settled under the tapestry, burrowed down under it and arranged themselves in a curled up, intricate tangle of limbs and hair, to kiss deeply and await the stove's readiness to provide tea.

Chapter Text

Je vais vous montrer les bijoux.

Pouvez-vous me les donner?

Celui-ci va bien.

Je vais vous montrer quelques
afin que vous puissiez faire un choix.

Très gentil, tu ne trouves pas?
Je vais prendre celui-là aussi.

Et c'est le fameux collier
avec les diamants.

Je vais prendre ça aussi.

Mettez-les dans un écrin
pour Lord Shelton.

The cinema was, in all honesty, half full of sleeping rats. A scent of wet clothes, wet shoes, lingered in the air. Ross watched Fantômas slouched and slunk in his seat with one leg up one the back of the empty seat in front of him and one around his guitar case at the floor, the neck of the guitar case tilted at his lap and the dim room flashing with the light of screened motion picture in front of him. Dem was asleep to his right, laying her head at his shoulder. His arm was starting to fall asleep and get that pins and needles feeling so he wiggled his right hand gently at his knee to combat it. It was a comedy, action picture and an easy plot to follow for all it was in French. Ross stared on, half interested, mostly guarding Dem and the guitar. Ross had his sleep earlier in a warehouse with Dem keeping watch. They might try that pitch again tomorrow. It was nominally guarded but the man had a weakness for drink, not so serious at his post. Tonight Crazy Ace; a kid who had seen Ross and Dem around the ordinary haunts of the Left Bank, seen them busking as well as flitting about the cafes, watched them earn their place and become part of the daytime street scene, had come to like both of them, invited them to join the rats for nighttime fun. He told Palmier they should come with them and check out L' Escale, a nightspot where African immigrants hung out and dancing went on until the wee, small hours of the morning. The place had a late night license that allowed them to be open until four in the morning. This was good because the kids had a place to stay in on the weekend nights and the dancing was fun. These places were working men's boîtes featuring drinks and dancing but the grown ups didn't turn the street rats away. They were laid back and wanted the place packed as it made for a better atmosphere. The young kids felt safety in numbers as a gang together but also safe among the grown ups in this scene. Some "homegrown", French working class bars featured dancing but drinking prevailed as the main occupation. Arguments, fights and assaults were common in those places and kids were leery of them. In these late night clubs; L' Escale, Rose Rouge, Bal Négre, Tabou, so often sneered at and avoided by French born locals who did not want to mix with the immigrants, dance was the heart of the matter and soft drinks and water were just as sought after as liquor to quench the thirst that the overheated dance floor brought on for no one wanted to be too drunk to dance and one sweated and moved enough to need to drink often. They danced hour after hour and liked a good time. There were no violent scenes among the Africans and they didn't mind the ragged kids joining in their fun, didn't seek to exploit them or kick them out. They would serve kids alcohol with a nod and a wink if they bought at the bar but kept them to punch more often than not. The fruit punch was mixed on the premises, a concoction of fruit juice and liquor that was never the same color twice even in the same night and had a kick like a mule so both parties were content. The establishment cut the youngsters drinks with juice and those drinks still smacked one across the face with the sweet taste of fruit punctured with rum or cognac or lord alone knows what. The street rats came to learn that you could not get through a night's dancing on hard drink alone and soon kept the same balanced habits of the grown ups -enough liquor to be merry, enough water and soft drinks so as not to faint, from the exertions, from the close heat of so many dancers dancing nearly non-stop. There were many dance clubs to choose from and the independent kids,(the preferred term, not to say "homeless" or "vagrant"), made a point of frequenting them all, as part of the scene as the 'true' denizens, immigrants from Senegal, Nigeria, Cameroon, Algeria, and other far flung places where the men tried their luck with employment much as Ross and Dem had done coming from England but with the fluent French of their colonial ties to France under their belt as well. Ross looked on, watching the images on the screen as the light and shadow from the film flashed over him in the dark room, killing time, letting Dem get her sleep. Rainy days were more difficult on the street but theater owners did not care if you slept in your seat during afternoon showings so long as snoring wasn't egregious and you paid for your ticket. On rainy days enterprising kids sometimes let other friends sneak in by a back entrance but they were careful not to do it in fair weather. They did not want to kill the golden goose by doing it too often and getting caught. On rainy days the guards played cards with little attention to their job and the projectionist didn't give a damn what went on after the lights went down. The usher flashed his torch in Ross' direction. He saw a red headed boy passed out asleep next to his dark haired friend who was watching the movie. The light bobbed away. Ross smirked. He and Dem were 'good' patrons. They would wait out the movie and go back to leave the guitar at Madame Albaret's building, help Jinny tidy up on alternate floors of the building and then use their busking takings to buy a meal, then hang out among the other street kids in the cafe until the clubs opened up. They had gotten two hours of busking in before the sky opened up and started to pour with rain. Enough takings to get two cinema tickets to escape the weather and share a plate of something at a cafe tonight. Dem had a trick of blinking her eyes in a winsome manner that often netted extra fried potatoes from indulgent wait staff. They shared and shared alike. Dem and Ross pooled their money but always considered it split as an even take. His. Hers. Ross knew Dem singing doubled and sometimes near tripled the takings compared to the early days when he busked alone, never grudging Dem's share. She was wonderful. The movie continued. Dem sighed and snugged a little more at Ross' side. He lay his head nearer to hers with a satisfied smile and kept watch over the movie, the guitar and his pal.

Ross was propped up in the corner of the booth, sleeping. Extra kip never hurt and they paid for their meal. The facing side of the table had wrought iron chairs with spindly legs and some kids dragged chairs from the adjoing table to converse with the gang. Occasionally one of their friends would kick Ross' leg under the table to wake him up enough to satisfy the cafe owner. The owner did have the right to eject sleeping customers. Within a crowd of friends, one or two sleepers were often overlooked but the kids never trusted it to hold, always poked their companions awake if only briefly if the owner looked their way. As much as a nuisance the street kids could be, taking forever to turn tables, sometimes taking over a whole corner, it was insured repeat business. The balancing act of having street rats and vagrants rely on being able to come back but not so many at a time to gain the reputation as a sort of flophouse full of shady ne'er do wells was a delicate dance. Luckily many students and intellectuals considered the vagrant kids "authentic local color" and smoothed the cafe owners' frayed nerves over the rats. The students and artistic types were repeat customers too and good spenders. The worst of all worlds would be to have the street rats shun your cafe for tourists would then multiply and the student/philosopher crowd would turn their noses up and go away too, looking for a "authentic cafe" not wanting to be seen in a square tourist trap. Dem was drawing. Ross and Dem shared the same black bound sketchbook. Even though it was filled with excellent drawings and very important to both of them as a possession, Ross and Dem were extremely casual with it. It was often passed about and filled with the doodles and writings drawn and scribbled by their friends and they often left it to be looked after by bar keeps and counter attendants when dancing became their favored weekend pastime, collecting it back afterwards. This day they were new to the idea of dancing in the clubs and willing to see what it was about. Ross caught a bit more sleep in the corner where the banquet and the wall met. Dem drew him next to the mirrored wall by his head and among the odds and ends, photos and paintings, hung on the wall at his back. She drew the reflection of Ross' hair, his sleeping form near other kids chattering at a table littered with their café cremès, glasses of water and plates of food. Dem smiled as Ross perked back up awake in a sudden jerk of his body, eyes open wide and then settling back to normal size. He yawned. Ross, somewhat angelic looking because he woke, somewhat grouchy looking over being kicked on his shin, charmed the others at the table. A girl near tittered, "Ah! What a shame Palmier don't have his guitar! He could play "Rock a Bye Bebé!" Dem grinned as the table burst into laughter. Ross' smile was bashful. Not only because he had been kicked awake but because he liked having a street name. The kids on the street they came to know in Paris rarely went by their given names and he and Dem were named together. They answered to "Palmier" singly and as a pair and Ross felt very proud and happy over this. He and Dem were a team. Ross could not speak fluent French but "Palmier", "guitare" and "Rock a Bye Baby" were enough of a handhold for Ross to understand her meaning and answer her. "Ha, ha!" said Ross drily, arms crossed, jutting his chin a bit. "Hanging on to my guitar tonight would keep me from cutting a rug!" The girl frowned. "Quai?" Through a bit of give and take the English idiom "to cut a rug" was explained in French as "dancing". The mixture of various languages, slang, true French and pantomime among the rats of the left bank was a wonder to behold. The talk never ended, there was fun and jokes to be enjoyed even as many at the table had a mother tongue that was different to everyone else's. That Ross and Dem would come to the nightclub amused the others. The others were old hands at dancing in the clubs. Palmier were teased for being "Trop de rosbif", too English to dance well among the other kids who knew the place and the grown up regulars who really knew how to dance. Ross and Dem took it in good grace but resolved to prove the other kids wrong. They could dance as well as anyone, thought Ross and Dem. How much different can this dancehall be?

L' Escale was a no nonsense sort of place. The only concession to ambiance were fishnets draped from different parts of the ceiling. Records and live music, both, set the scene in a large dancehall with a saloon like bar down one wall near the restrooms. Rigid metal chairs, black legs and backs with red vinyl seats sat in a loose crowd at the sides of the room for spectators to watch and dancers to rest. Dem leaned in to ask the barman to watch their sketchbook and Crazy Ace spoke in proper French, behind her, touching her shoulder as if to tell the barman, 'this kid's with me' warning the barman not to lose it. "Merci!" said Demelza, brightly. Her friendliness as genuine with him as anyone. "De rien chérie..." He smiled at her before they nodded his departure, moving on, him making eye contact and greeting someone else across the crowded room and struggling through the people to get there. Ross looked askance, watched him make his way to an older kid across the room. Crazy Ace was not exactly flirting with Dem but his smile as he enjoyed being thanked for his chivalry looked a bit smitten, or at least interested. Ross knew he was near Ross' age but split his his day to day time with the young rats and a fast set of older kids. Crazy Ace hung out on the street with the young rats and was a fun person to be around. He spoke English too and had a quick wit as well as a penchant for organizing good times. He orchestrated huge games of tag or Capture the Flag in the streets of the Left Bank, had a kind word for everyone and a wicked sarcasm that could keep you in stitches. Crazy Ace was a cool, streetwise kid. He also dealt hashish and was a sort of mascot for the older kids that were more risk taking and considered the younger rats, well, younger. They were too grown up to play games in the streets. They had other fish to fry and Crazy Ace was like a disciple to them. He wanted money and wanted to learn from the older kids how to get it. He knew Dem was a girl from the first because Ross noticed Crazy Ace addressed her as male and called her Palmier in the group settings but used female pronouns when he spoke to her directly. Ross did not know quite what to do with what he was feeling. Dem was not his possession or girlfriend. She was as independent as any other rat, her own agent as it were. Ross had no claim on Dem but hadn't considered how he would feel if she made good friends with a different boy. That was her right of course but... "Ross!" Dem blinked in his eyes. He blinked back in surprise. He had sunk in his own head that much. "Come on!" she said grinning. "Stop your dreaming! Come to the floor and dance!" Dem dragged Ross by the hand and he laughed as he followed her. 'Let Sweetness have all the friends in the world,' thought Ross. 'She's still my pal, always...' The rhythms of the music were fast and punctuated with drums and a syncopated dovetail of guitar and horns. The instruments all fell in with the drums. Standing still was impossible. At the very least tap your toe! Bob your head to the beat! Even those drinking even those watching were behaving as if they were hypnotized and moving in time to the music. Ross and Demelza were outclassed, by their friends and certainly by the grown ups. Men out numbered women but they didn't vie to dance with women alone, nor the women wait about for men to partner with. They danced in pairs and groups facing off each other and dancing with each other in a provocative way. They crouched down, nearly to the floor but had their arms raised and moving everywhere. They bent backwards with their heads behind them, smiling nose to nose at others behind their backs, they flipped back up and dancing forehead to forehead with others, legs stationary but their hips and arms moving incessantly then dancing about, legs everywhere! They danced alone and then swung around to face whoever was nearest, a look of serious combat in a fellow grown up, a grin of friendly competition when it was a rat. 'O.K. son! O.K. girly! Let’s see what you can do!' And faced them down giving no quarter. Many of the other kids from the street had moves. Serious. Moves. Ross and Dem were not dancing with the sort of ease and grace as the others. They did try. It was fun to try. Ross and Dem smiled into each others eyes, forehead to forehead in a stiff, clumsy mimic of the others around them that all in the club thought endearing. Two very young kids in jeans, in men's shirts too big for them trying to dance. They were as cute infant foals trying to use their legs for the first time to the dyed in the wool clubbers. They had the will but not the way. "Palmier!" Crazy Ace, knowing that Ross and Dem were too young looking for the barman to look the other way and let them have punch brought them his, holding the cup up over his head like a beacon and dancing his way over to them. Dem waved and Ross swallowed down what he was starting to realize was jealousy watching them share a smile as he moved with confidence among the dancers. "Drink up! You two dance like the rusty Tin Man! I have brought the oil!" Dem laughed and drank deeply, she passed the cup to Ross. She froze a little. Ross didn't look happy. Was he disapproving over her taking the alcohol? Ross realized he was still sulking over Crazy Ace, and shook free of it. He smiled at Dem, took the cup and lifted it towards Crazy Ace to thank him before taking a drought. It was delicious. It was certainly heavily laced with liquor though the taste fruit predominated. Ross scrunched his eyes, opened them wide and went "Whoo!" blinking himself in line after such a strong drink. Crazy Ace slapped Ross on the back with a grin. "That will loosen you up! Come on, drink up!" Ross and Dem finished it down, shared it half and half. Their friends started shrieking and yelling. Palmier were out on the town!

Crazy Ace remained near them on the dance floor. The liquor did its job. Ross and Dem were laughing in a wonderful, tipsy daze of music and movement. They swung their limbs with more ease, they charmed their friends by trying their best to dance like the others, not there yet but improving. Many of the men cheered them on and danced with them in an amusement over the young people having fun and helping their friends become adept. Crazy Ace faced off Ross more often than Dem and Ross began to lose some of his misgivings. The dancing was sensual rather than sexual. The rats faced off each other with the girls and boys giving as good as they got whatever the gender of the other, no holding back. Ross and Crazy Ace danced forehead to forehead swiveled their hips near the other in a scandalous manner but blameless too. The music demanded it. Boys danced boys, boys danced with men, men danced with men, men danced with girls, girls danced with girls and all switched to others in the room in the same way. Ross laughed with Crazy Ace and turned back to Dem who looked at him with sparkling eyes. Eyes that only shined their truest, brightest starlight at her Palmier. Crazy Ace smiled after Palmier in their enthusiastic dancing, their friendship so clear and pure and, in a tactful retreat, stepped some partners away. Stepped back, dancing his way back towards the bar. He sat at the bar with an Orangina watching his friends learning to dance in the dimly lit, undulating mass of dancers. Palmier were grinning at each other, dancing and getting the hang of things. Crazy Ace had no doubt they'd be as good as anyone after a few more party nights in the Paris boîtes. He grinned over his soft drink. He wasn't blind. Palmier were not lovers. You could see they had no intimacies that way. They loved each other though. One could see that just as much. Ross was chafing each time he paid Dem attention. Crazy Ace thought Dem was a knock out, in a few years time she would make men faint in the street, and no mistake. And he liked her. Palmier was a cheeky kid and liked a good time. She had a good sense of humor and a friendly word for everyone. But he knew his place. Ross and Dem were on the street together. They never called each other Palmier, though they answered to it and Ross often called Dem "sweetness". Crazy Ace would be a friend, wanted to be a friend but he also knew his place. Every boy among the Left Bank rats knew Dem was off limits. Palmier was so named because her other half was always near. Ross was her man. She didn't know it yet. Ross probably didn't know it either but a inkling was starting to form in him. Crazy Ace could see it when he brought the drink over. Ross was nervous that he was making a play for her. Ross was sixteen but Palmier were very young and sweet. They were clever on the street, not foolish but they had the open hearts and a lack of hardness, street hardness, that made Crazy Ace want to wrap them up in a duvet. Let them stay young and good forever... A hand on his shoulder. Crazy Ace clasped hands and chatted briskly with the older boy. Work called. One of the older kids knew a new supplier of hashish and Crazy Ace could get in on the ground floor with a generous cut he could keep for himself. He looked out at the dancefloor. He had been that carefree. He had lived for freedom and play and an independent life but he was ready to try his hand in the bigger arena. The kids he hung out with were seventeen, eighteen. They were one foot out of their days as rats. At eighteen you got an adult record. The stakes were high. Crazy Ace was fifteen, dealing hashish for six months now. Learning. Watching. The older kids knew a lot but many were messy. They used the drugs they were selling. They were getting sloppy because they were users as well as dealers. Crazy Ace would be smart. He would make the money young, avoid getting nabbed as an adult. Make a packet young and not taste the merchandise. He wouldn't end up like the kid who was introducing him to the supplier. He would be clever.

Ross and Dem danced until four in the morning fueled on the smiles of their friends and soft drinks. They bid their friends goodbye and Ross took first watch in the warehouse they found recently. Dem slept on a wooden crate and Ross sat next to her. He had fun tonight and Crazy Ace was as friendly to him as Dem. Maybe he was feeling too possessive of Dem. She was as friendly with everyone and Ross might do well to relax a bit. She had a personality that anyone would be drawn to. He felt it when he met her through an iron fence. She was pretty, of course, but it was not that alone. Her sense of fun, her love of art and reading books and ideas, her lovely voice. Ross also had cause to witness her cleverness, her bravery, the spark in her that made her special. Dem was special and knowing she liked being his friend made Ross feel special too. Dem was too full of life to share that sort of power with only one person. Dem made friends with nearly everyone she met. Ross would learn to manage. To accept it. There might come a time when Dem might meet the boy she would come to love and want to marry. The road would not last forever. They might part someday. Ross turned to watch her sleeping, listened for trouble, movement or voices. He heard nothing. They were still safe. He might meet a girl and settle down... Someday... For now he had a pal. Ross had a companion on the road and she was as independent as he was. He would be her friend and she would be his, even when it came time to be grown ups.

Dem woke and turned over with a yawn. "Thanks, Ross..." She crawled off the crate and they switched places. She sat up, blinking herself awake to take second watch. "I liked dancing tonight." said Dem. She looked timid. "You didn't mind me drinking that punch, Ross...?" His eyes opened. He tilted his head to look at her. "I didn't mind, I liked it too! It was delicious!" They stayed quiet. Dem knew Ross had been pensive when she first handed him the drink. Ross knew that she knew he was deep in thought but could not bring himself to explain. To suggest to Dem he was jealous of Crazy Ace would be admitting a sense of ownership over her that wasn't fair and in truth a bit embarrassing. She wouldn't begrudge him a friend, he should be as sensible, thought Ross. They blinked a sort of agreement to end the conversation. The wood of the crate creaked as Ross turned on his side to get comfortable. Dem watched him ready for sleep. Ross was moody sometimes. Perhaps that sour look had nothing to do with her at all, thought Dem. "Night, Dem," said Ross. "Night, Ross." said Dem.

Chapter Text

It wasn't so much chores as tidiness. Dem and Ross had their breakfast and made a point of airing the sheets and making up the mattress in the tucked away storage area of Brose's garret studio like a proper bed. They might be rats or even cats but they had a bit of pride in having a proper bed to sleep in and looked after it with dignity. Dem insured exactness with the firm fold and tuck at the bottom edge that was demanded of her at the Home. The girls at the Home were not permitted breakfast until the beds were inspected and all of the sheets and dull grey coverlets were crisp and correct. One did not want to fall afoul of the matrons or risk the displeasure of the other girls who were, to a person, sick to their back teeth of tepid, gloopy, porridge with a wan thin edge of milk pooled where the mass of it met the side of the shallow plate but wanted to eat. Dem had learned to make her bed with precision after a couple of days. Having been made an example of by having to wear a sign that said "Slattern" hung around her neck from a string and bore the disappointed stares of the other hungry girls who stood quietly, made to watch as the matron railed a shrewish explanation over her head telling Demelza where she had erred as she darted to the various portions of the bed that were offensive and fixed them, the sign waggling forward on its string and getting in her way as she strove to obey and flapped about between her arms was not something she cared to repeat. Brose did not demand the bed to be made before they ate. He did demand things of Ross and Dem though. Brose had a way of speaking that was abrupt, one suspected, from English being a third language for him. He said "you should, you must, you will, do this..." Brose spoke in stern sounding directives. But unlike the matrons of the Home his decrees and instructions held niceties rather than toil and reprimand. He would say, "Eet ze! Come eat!" as he offered them no choice in feasting on fresh baked croissants with as much scrumptious jam as they liked, no skimping, vibrant and glossy with berries stewed with sugar on old plates that bloomed with flowers at their rims. Brose gave them hot soup in mugs and hot cocoa in bowls! A turnabout Ross and Dem found fascinating... How odd... Brose would say, "You must have a coat! How you expect to sit out in all weathers with no coat?! I will buy it for you!" telling them in no uncertain terms that they must explore Paris like a treasure box and submit themselves to a fun afternoon being supplied with everything two young boys might require especially if one was a girl. Tagging along beside him in a halo of propriety, not looked at with disdain or mistrust as shifty street kids. Ross and Dem were in the company of a proper grown up. Walking with their new friend like the other kids in the street who had parents and grandparents to purchase to stuff of life on a weekend's errands. Brose would say, "Buy a tarte au citron, they are very good here..." demanding Dem pop into the patisserie like a favored child, entrusted with money, a little bell jingled as the door opened and a lovely scent of pastry and confections wafted forward, to be smiled upon as a good child by the owner instead of eyed with suspicion, nodding through the glass at Brose as if to say, "Oui, monsieur, and what a fine young man..." and even get two sweets as an extra treat from the baker, one for Dem and one "pour ton frère" since he could see Ross next to Brose through the window. He would say, "Kandinsky is a genius! You will like him!" and provide them new ideas, new visions, new joys in old books as if they might be grown ups too. And even that seemed to leave enough room for Ross and Dem to decide whether they did like Kandinsky's work, or this poet, or that painter or not. They often did. Brose sounded stern but he was not a ill tempered person. It was a subtle thing. His face in repose was very serious but he was not grudging with smiles. He often smiled. Sometimes they were a brief twitch at the corners of his mouth. Sometimes they were modest and held a sense of satisfaction. And sometimes they were broad, heralded by a bark of a laugh, sustained in a sort of admiration. His voice was interesting. His English sounded melodic in its Dutch cloak. He often spoke to himself and his cat in Dutch and it was a mysterious sounding language. Ross and Dem learned small phrases when Brose would call them to the table or wish them 'Goedemorgen' but they both liked to listen to him putter about talking to himself or to Mimi, the cat, in Dutch. When they lay in their bed, just coming to the surface, warm in a cocoon of each others closeness, Ross and Dem felt Mimi climb across the blankets, walk over them, a paw stubbing at Dem's hip, poking at Ross' thigh, listened to her plodding footsteps as she left them, leaping the short flight of steps and landing, walking forward to greet her friend. The light of a Paris sky over them, be it blue or grey, growing stronger and glowing from the skylight, the mattress so wonderfully soft. The quiet start to the day they looked forward to and would pause to enjoy before they indulged in their own conversation. He spoke French with confidence and one suspected he held no accent from his Dutch in it*. He was very learned, very different to other grown ups. In the life of their host, art and ideas were as necessary as jam and coats and good pastries from the baker.

Brose was amused at the Ross and Dem taking pains to make the mattress on the floor like a proper bed. As he cleared away the dishes, as he gathered various paints and brushes and organized himself to begin his work, he would glance now and again at their progress. Ross and Dem scurried about on their knees and tucked the sheets around it, smoothing them into place and taking the time to admire their handiwork. They seemed proud to have a modest mattress on a wooden floor to call their own. From where he stood Dem looked quite like a boy too and he had to remind himself he was hosting a girl. They had their breakfast and would disappear into the town to play their music for a chance at a generous passerby's spare change. They always came back by seven without being late. The children did not distract him over much as he worked and when they threatened to were easily placated with books. It had, very quickly, become a good arrangement. Brose left money for them on the cleared table and bade them to eat on those funds, go to one of the cafes and have a proper meal. They would take the money, sometimes Ross, sometimes Dem but they would both say, "Thank you, Brose!" with gratitude and enthusiasm. Ross and Dem were grateful. They could save their busking takings in truth, build up their money. They ate a plate of lunch each each instead of having to share one between them and often had enough left over to have a pastry for afters. Luxury!

"They would fold the paper, so one did not see the other person's drawing. Once they all finished it was unfolded and all the different drawings became one and strange looking because each person drew without knowing what the rest looked like." Ross considered this, this artist's game. He tilted his chin up to try the name as Brose had said. Ross looked to some vista that lay beyond view as he said, "Exquisite cadaver..." Dem leaned forward past Brose with the book in his lap and admired Ross' reverie. He spoke as if it was a marvelous, magical phrase, like Abracadabra, and settled himself around it like a butterfly enjoying a tasty flower. She caught his eye and he grinned. "That sounds more grand than exquisite corpse somehow!" sighed Ross. Brose chuckled. "One finds the French have away of bringing any thing to the apex of chic!" Dem turned to him in a bright happiness. "Can we draw an exquisite cadaver?!" Brose then looked between them as Ross and Dem kept saying 'exquisite cadaver' working each other into hysterics as they vied to out do each other in dramatic, romantic Dutch tinged French. Brose said, dryly, "You are playing with fire! If you chant that much longer you might summon a witch or a troll with a bad temper!" Dem and Ross laughed harder. Brose looked between them once more. "You laugh but it will be difficult to rid ourselves of a witch! You would have to say exquisite cadaver backwards and hope for the best!" The fact that Brose spoke in a pretense of seriousness made his young friends drunk with laughter. Ross' sides started to ache. "We would say! We would say, rev...! Hahahaha 'rev a dac'! How would you say it Brose?!" Brose knit his brows. It was beyond him. "Wait..." he said and turned to reach for a pencil from a jumble at the short bookcase behind the sofa. He wrote in the margin of the book "revadac etisiuqxe". Dem howled with a fresh bout of laughing, shrieking "Revadac! Etis! Etis!..." Ross and Dem laughed harder. Brose strained to remain circumspect. He squinted at it on the page."It would be revadac etisiu...?" Brose stopped, not only because he could not figure out how to say 'qxe' but Ross' head bonked into his arm seized with more giggles as he tried to apologize. Ross looked up at Brose who's face brimmed with amusement. "Sor...sorry!" Ross watched him nod his assent that the apology was accepted. His eyes crinkled with good humor and Ross could see Brose was having entertainment from this spectacle of silliness. Brose still held firm. He did not laugh but looked upon the page at 'exquisite cadaver' backwards in his same calmness as he mused, "You would probably summon a witch faster saying it that way..." "Ahahahahaha!" Dem stamped her foot on the floor and held her sides in an agony of laughing. Her sides hurt. At length Ross and Dem sat about panting a recovery on the comfy sofa with their friend maintaining an amused silence. "I am almost afraid to draw an exquisite cadaver with you fellows," Brose shared a very warm smile with Dem. "But we shall have to see what we can see..." Mimi, who was wary of the children in their strange fits crept nearer and, satisfied that the worst had passed leapt next to Dem and allowed the human to stroke her fur. Brose stood to retrieve a piece of paper. "We must take turns and leave lines on the next blank part to join the drawings together." Since two would have to wait while one drew, Ross played guitar and Dem was given the first blank part. Brose continued to read. When Dem pronounced her drawing finished Brose took his turn, drawing on his lap, as Dem sat cuddling Mimi and Ross continued playing. Ross was compelled to have his turn seated at the table as Brose warmed soup in a pot on the hot plate. Dem sat by Ross and giggled as he curled his arm around the paper to secret his drawing. "Well! It's meant to be a surprise!" complained Ross. Brose lay plates with small loaves of bread, too big to be a roll, to small to be a proper loaf. But in truth a proper loaf, a demi baguette. It had a sooty, wonderful scent on the bottom from being browned on the bottom of the baker's oven, scattered with a scant handful of grain to keep them from sticking as they baked and a crisp outside. It broke apart into an airy interior of delicious soft bread, a bone white series of caverns and strands, webs and fluff in an airy network that magically became bread, like finding a whole universe in an acorn or locket. Not like ordinary, sliced bread at all. You couldn't use it for a fry up, it would not behave. A demi baguette was its own grammar, its own mode of being and Ross and Demelza liked them very much. The crust stayed chewy even when it was dipped in soup and the bread carried the taste of the soup like a dot on an i or a ribbon on a present. It made soup a feast. Brose set mugs of hot soup on the table. "You eat that up..." Ross looked up from his tented arm. "I'm finished!" Brose smiled. "Turn it face down. You have your soup and we shall see it after. There is marzipan..." They grinned. Brose, in their short acquaintance, had shown a partiality to chocolate covered marzipan as a Friday treat. A shade larger than a chocolate bar, one suspected he wasn't above eating the entire little log of it unobserved in his solitary habits but chose to cut it into three for his petit chats to partake of it with him. It became a happy symbol. Ambrose had a proper home elsewhere but he made a point of spending time with Ross and Dem on the weekend. Saturday and Sunday Brose brought them a slap up meal for their dinner, not just soup. He would buy hot made meals from different shops and pastry too. They would share a good meal and would look at books. Brose would help them if they weren't in English, translate parts they could not read for themselves. Any book at all was theirs to explore. Brose did not work on assignments on the weekend. Brose took time to tidy his studio on Saturday, to sweep the floors, round up rags to wash clean in one of the metal tubs, sort his supplies, clean tubes of paint of grease or errant blots of paint and consider what he needed to replenish. The work was lightened by the enthusiastic assistance of his little cats who joined in with a spirit of camaraderie as they had a stake in the good upkeep of the place. He brought their sheets and clothes to the laundrette on Saturday morning and helped shampoo their hair at the slop sink on Saturday night. Sundays were a day of rest. Sometimes this meant they were sunk in their own reading all together in good fellowship. He coaxed them into entertaining themselves with water paints, or velvety smooth dark pencils that spread across the page with ease and a bold dark line. Brose suggested that sometimes just playing with paint, drawing for its own sake was as satisfying as rendering images in a formal way. He counseled them that informal enjoyment strengthened one's coordination. The hand trained the eye and vice versa. Bit by bit Ross and Dem came to love sitting with paper and pencils and paint, talking of this and that or quiet together in a contented companionship filling the blank spaces with flights of fancy and timid attempts at drawing "properly" Brose praised their efforts and they were pleased with their results too. In the evening they sat all together on the sofa and Brose conducted a sort of salon, talking about art and ideas and letting Ross and Dem have a window into the world of the mind that led them through previous centuries in books or the modernity of some of the recent magazines that talked of the latest contributions to the art world. At night Brose tidied the plates, glasses and cutlery in a plastic dish pan set in the slop sink as Ross and Dem bathed behind a screen and dressed for bed in jeans and old shirts of Brose's. The dishes settled, the children brushed their teeth and wished Brose good night. He bid them good night and wished them pleasant dreams. It was not a idle phrase. The first night they arrived he stayed with them, laying on the sofa instead of going home. They both seemed to dream distressing things and murmur in fear in the night.

Having portioned the log of marzipan into three pieces, Brose gave the children their milk and brought his coffee to the table. With a the flourish of a magician Brose unfolded the paper to unveil the exquisite cadaver. Ross and Dem had a hearty laugh. It was an exciting sort of monster. A frilled headed bird wearing a regal crown full of gems and fine metalwork, a middle that looked like a bridge. This animal had a hole in its tummy that allowed cars to drive in and out of it with arms at its side like lion's paws. Ross, having surmised correctly that his contribution would be the creature's feet, had drawn his old school shoes on stick like legs like a stork and standing next to a cat quite like Mimi. They were all very pleased with the result. They finished their marzipan and drank up their milk, his coffee. They helped wipe the table clean. They prepared for bed. Brose sat with Mimi and seemed to converse in a Dutch the cat could understand. He put on his coat and readied to leave. The weather was turning. The petite chats would soon be indoors for the cold weather. Brose looked at the place. Warm enough. Clean. Certainly better than them running about on their own. He would look for a nice warm blanket, a few more towels. This studio was not meant to live in but he would make do. They would not suffer for it, being in an artist's garret...

"Good night!" said Ross and Dem as Mimi padded towards them in the darkened studio.

"Good night." said Ambrose. As he left he smiled for they could be heard giggling, "Exquisite cadaver!" in their bed as he shut and locked the door.

*Ross and Dem never learned fluent French. Brose did speak in Dutch accented French.

Chapter Text

Not like Dante

discovering a commedia upon the slopes of heaven

I would paint a different kind of Paradiso

in which the people would be naked

as they always are in scenes like that

because it is supposed to be a painting of their souls

but there would be no anxious angels telling them

how heaven is the perfect picture of

a monarchy

and there would be no fires burning

in the hellish holes below in which I might have stepped

nor any altars in the sky except

fountains of imagination

In the warmth of the sun, in a quiet contentment, Ross and Dem sat on a pretty printed tapestry from the outdoor market in the town below them, laid upon the grass, in the meadow with Garrick farther down the hill chasing rabbits with enthusiasm. The grass dotted with flowers, tiny purple violets, floppy yellow buttercups and dandelions, white blooms of every sort, frothy like lace in puffs, standing at attention in small spiky clumps, winking like stars at their stalks. Green leaves of every size and shape in all the wonderful variety of nature mixed amongst the sweet smelling meadow. Ross and Dem sat in a necessary task. At certain intervals ones long hair had a mind of its own and rolled about on itself until it tangled. Dressed as each other's inverse, Ross shirtless in his jeans, Dem in one of Ross' shirts in just her knickers (proper girl's panties that Ross was charmed to see her in), Ross sat cross legged and read poems aloud as Dem knelt on her knees behind him, carefully combing tangles from Ross' dark hair. In the full light of the strong Italian sun a copper sheen could be seen in his hair when it so often just looked brown near to black. She worked over his head slowly and held locks between her fingers so as not to tug too hard at his scalp. He read with everything that was so wonderful about Ross' voice these days. The chirpy, bright youthfulness he had when they met had slowly shifted. Ross' voice became deeper, sonorous and more masculine. It still held his lightness, his feelings, his bright optimism, but it was deeper now. When he spoke to the clerk at the town hall the man did a double take, looking up from his papers, surprised that such a grown up English voice could stem forth from a scrapy looking kid without a hint of facial hair and the wild long hair of kids these days... Long hair that occasionally tangled. Some strands came away in the teeth of the comb. Dem tossed them aside in the grass and they both laughed to see a bird make off with it, swoop near and pick it up with its beak, fly off but not before turning its head this way and that, looking as if it sought permission to take it. The Poldarks giggled at the bird as it hopped a bit at the edge of the tapestry and flew off with a scraggled lock of Ross' hair. "I hope he finds it useful!" laughed Dem. And they switched places, Demelza sat, legs askew, one stretched forward, one bent near, the hem of Ross' linen shirt scant coverage as she gave her hair over to Ross' care and assistance. She fumbled about their paperback book of William Blake to find something nice.

Twas was on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean 

The children walking two & two in red & blue & green 

Grey-headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow,

Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow 

Chapter Text

In town, Ross and Dem often bought their provisions in a little grocery just beyond the last stall of the outdoor market. When Dem had purchased enough clothes to dress as a girl on a regular basis the shopkeeper was startled to see the ruffian who accompanied the dark haired vagrant he'd often seen about transform into a startlingly pretty young lady and found an entertainment in watching the couple shop. They seemed to putter about looking at his wares, scrutinized with care for they could not read Italian. Looking for clues that they were buying the correct items.The pale green angel suggested baking powder as it balanced en pointe at the top of a sugar dusted cake. The happy woman preparing a hearty meal for her unseen family, in her apron and beatific smile showed which bag of flour was which. The blonde with her pasta, the brunette with her bread. The lady of mouse brown hair holding her cake aloft told of the flour's purpose. They would part to meander, look at things on their own and then spend time watching the other shop as if they could not believe their good fortune. That this dark haired lad looking at verdant, green bottles of olive oil could be her man. That this girl with a hair clip sparkling at her red hair as bright as her eyes surveying a packet of dried figs, pressed together in a circle like a secret, beige cloaked, cabal round a campfire, could be his woman. Then they would return to the other, meeting up like two birds on a tree, heads close to look at what they fancied. They had stars tattooed on their ring fingers like a pledge. That was strangely romantic. They winked at the eye as they pointed or held objects and when they payed for their choices. They were quiet in their movements and seemed to speak without talking at all. The boy would raise an eyebrow, the girl would nod agreement. The girl fluttered her wrist like a ballerina and the boy would retrieve what she had gestured to. They bought staple foods with the poetry of a prince and princess choosing magical tokens from a fairy's lair. They were fascinating to watch.

Ross and Dem were overjoyed to find a delicatessen in Truro with many imported goods from Italy they recognized from their time in Postiano. Dem carried high and did not waddle like an old duck quite yet, walking erect and animated scanning the shelves and wicker baskets of products and produce. Ross exclaimed to find the same cellophane wrapped blood oranges they'd enjoyed in Italy sitting dotted among a mass of unwrapped ones; the red printed wrappers marked with a clown in a carnival mask, the white, a fanciful scene one would want to walk through the wrapper and visit. A paradise of water fountains decorated with flowing haired maidens and mountains in the distance like the Poldarks' beloved valley and a plucky little swallow swooping across in a merry greeting. A third sort with a glamorous woman primly seated sideways on a Vespa scooter in her off the shoulder dress reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe and a repeat of oranges and lemons made ghostly in a strange halo of images off center, colours off center in a printing error. An register error that made the picture that much more interesting, a hyperreality in colours that were not real. Ross filled their basket with eight, taking happy care in only choosing wrapped ones. Dem added torrone, a slender package of almond candy and box of Ameretti biscuits, the pale, crisp cookies made with apricot kernels she came to enjoy at Lord Falmouth's villa. Mineral water was procured. Looking over the bottles of tomato sauce with care they chose the one that seemed to have the most visible evidence of basil leaves strewn through it and, with glee, secured a paper wrapped packet of spaghetti.

"Well ee should break un! They's too long! It'd be like tryin' t'eat shoelaces!"

Prudie was not well versed in Italian cuisine. Her suggestion, while duly noted was gently turned aside. "It IS a bit like trying to eat shoelaces!" laughed Dem, "but it works! You'll see. We learnt in Italy! You wind it round your fork!" Jud came to peer into the pot, the pasta just starting to bend in the boiling water, turning edible by degrees. It had been wrapped in glossy printed paper and kept the brace of it held firm as Dem pulled the end of it open and the stiff rods all slid into the stew pot, the largest pot of the Nampara kitchen. Now impressed upon by the boiling water and turning soft by degrees like a boat starting to take on water and sink. "Tha d'look like broom straws!" said Jud. "T'ain't right! It be droopin' in thur like it be meltin'!" Dem turned to smile at him as they viewed the bubbling pot. She blinked a cheerful encouragement to the older man. "You'll love it Jud! The taste is wonderful!" He eyed it warily. "I ain't learned 'bout them continental vittles! Don't look proper t'me! What be wrong wi' a good Cornish pie?" Ross entered having heard Jud's complaint. "Nothing at all Jud! But I'll not stand in the way of Dem's craving." Ross crinkled his eyes as he smiled. "The baby might want a taste of home!" Jud crossed his arms. "Yur missus be a British maid wi' a Cornish babby! Ee should be feedin' un starry gazy pie an' currant buns!" Ross and Dem laughed as Ross stood by her to give his missus and their friend a squeeze. Jud stepped back to give the lad room and he and Prudie admired the young couple standing at the stove. Dem with a proper bump beneath a light cotton dress embroidered in the Mexican style; blue and ringed with pretty flowers at the sleeves and around the neckline. Her hair was put up in a bun spiked in its place with a jaunty pencil and her face was a shade fuller making her as dear as a doll as she smiled near Ross' face. Ross in his perpetual garb of jeans and a tee shirt. He had been broken of his habit of prancing about half dressed with no shirt on like a bloomin' wrastler. Prudie, scandalized at Ross and Dem wandering about half dressed, "gadding about like them Tarzan films", put her foot down and demanded that the master of the house wear his shirts and lady of the house not putter about in naught but a blouse. She had brought the young couple into a greater daily formality than they often enjoyed in Positano and learned them to conduct themselves in a fitty manner. At this moment they looked as cute as could be, Master Ross with a happy smile at his wife's shoulder as they giggled over Jud's prescription. "There will be time enough for that, Jud. Time enough for that..." smiled Ross as he and Dem looked into to bubbling pot with anticipation. Ross lay the table with plates and cutlery and placed bottles of mineral water they'd bought in Truro along with the other Italian provisions and placed lit candles on the table like they used to at the folly. Dem and Ross were particularly goo goo eyed over this addition to their supper and Jud found it charming. He had not considered candles for ambience sake. They were useful when a power cut happened in emergencies. Prudie eyes glittered in the candlelight the soft flickering light made Jud's face seem a mite younger and reminded Prudie of the young man who courted her that many years back.

"It do smell nice!" said Prudie, surprised that it should be so. Jud could admit the scent of the spaghetti, in a steaming tangle, swathed in tomato sauce perfumed with basil on his plate did whet the appetite. The Paynter's were still a bit leery of just how to get the droopy long things into one's mouth without making a mess of one's self. To this end all four had napkins tucked beneath their chins; the Paynters in the anxious desire not to make a right mess of themselves, Dem because her bump was interfering with her capacity to lean forward at her plate and Ross in a sense of camaraderie and to make Jud and Prudie feel more at ease. As an authority on pasta eating Ross and Dem would demonstrate the technique of twirling one's fork. Jud looked askance at the bottles of water. "I ain't never thought I'd see the day when them grocers 'ad the cheek t'sell water in a bottle! Of all the foolish... Why'd ee pay good money fer water! Ee got a tap t'drink from!" said Jud looking at the mineral water disdainfully. Dem smiled a sunny grin. The candlelight flickered bright shadows through the water bottles, just like their meals at the folly. "When in Rome..." began Dem. Ross laughed. "Or Paris!" he chuckled. "Or Positano!" smiled Dem. Prudie looked between them. "We ought t'get one o them maps wi' the bitty flags ee stick in 'em! You lot be like Christopher Columbus!" Jud slapped his knee and they all had a right good laugh. Ross held his fork aloft, as if he were a magician proving he had no tricks up his sleeve and placed it upright in a tangle of spaghetti. Jud and Prudie watched carefully as Ross twirled the fork's handle and were struck with wonder that a perfectly sensible bite of the impossibly long spaghetti was wound round Ross' fork as pretty as you please, lifted neatly up for all to see. Dem smiled. "See! It behaves itself!" crowed Ross. At this the Paynters gave it a go. Timid, a bit of flopping, but a tidy bite of spaghetti was secured by both of them. It glistened with sauce and did smell quite tasty. Ross and Dem awaited Jud and Prudie's first taste of spaghetti with baited breath, looking encouraged and almost excited that Ross' dyed in the wool Cornish servants try their Italian dinner. Jud lifted his fork and waited for his wife. They would try this newfangled food together in the soft flickering candlelight that brought a shadow of their younger selves to each other somehow. The maid who made all the fellows wish she'd look their way and the lad who's smile was jaunty and confident that he would be the boy who dared to ask her out to the pictures. Old now, but that young lad and that young maid were still there, inside, in the candlelight. They smiled agreement, in for a penny... They ate their fork full of pasta. Ross and Dem tucked into theirs awaiting the Paynters' verdict. Was it too foreign for their older friends? "Oh!" said Prudie. "Tha do 'ave fine flavor!" She looked to her husband to see if he agreed. Jud chewed in a thoughtful way. "Aye, tha's good vittles... Different! But a good'un..." They looked surprised that it should be so but the Paynters did find spaghetti to be fitty. The Poldarks smiled their victory and they persuaded their friends to enjoy sliced bread toasted with butter melted upon it, flecks of bright green parsley and specks of proper garlic and the crisp freshness of the scandalous bottled mineral water.

It was a success. The Paynters enjoyed the meal and if the garlic bread was sharp enough to linger on the breath everyone else ate it too so there was no embarrassment in it. In a happy domesticity Prudie and Ross cleared the table of the plates and glasses, leaving the candles to give their light. Dem sat in a dreamy stupor of having had the food she most wanted with a satisfied hand resting on her bump and Jud, loath to put on proper light when he might have ordinarily perused his newspaper as a digestive, not wanting to lose to ambiance of the candlelight, watched Prudie wash and Ross dry the dishes as the candles made a mystical confused replica of their movements on the ceiling and along the wall. Dem watched Jud watching Prudie. Admiring his wife. 'We shall be old one day,' thought Dem. 'I hope Ross still looks at me like that when we're old...' Jud was still smitten with his wife. They had not managed children but it was not such a hardship when they had a settled position within the Poldark home. The Mistress d'pass away an' young Master Claude. Joshua were a handful as a widower. Ross had been a tearaway, running about with them rascal Vigus boys. It had been a household shot with misfortune in truth. But Ross had come home and shed his wild ways, found a good maid to wed. Made good friends of people who chose to help them and their animals come home from their roaming ways. And proper titled personages an' all! Lord Falmouth's nephew ate Prudie's pie right in this kitchen, an' no airs on 'im! It was a pleasant night to watch Ross' wife sated with her continental supper, their babby set in 'er an' cute as a bug's ear. It was pleasant to watch Prudie washing up with young Master Ross talking of Italy. Talking of the other places in this wide world. He and Prudie weren't the traveling sort and that was not a hardship. Jud was pleased that Ross and his wife had seen a bit of the world and glad they were now in his beloved Cornwall. The place where he was born, where he would meet his reward, when the time came and the place he loved best for he ever had his Prudie by his side.

‘My sweetheart, come along! Don’t you hear the fond song, The sweet notes of the nightingale flow? Don’t you hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below?So be not afraid To walk in the shade, Nor yet in those valleys below, Nor yet in those valleys below.

‘Pretty Prudence, don’t fail, For I’ll carry your pail, Safe home to your cot as we go; You shall hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below.’ But she was afraid To walk in the shade, To walk in those valleys below, To walk in those valleys below.

‘Pray let me alone, I have hands of my own; Along with you I will not go, To hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below; For I am afraid To walk in the shade, To walk in those valleys below, To walk in those valleys below.’

‘Pray sit yourself down With me on the ground, On this bank where sweet primroses grow; You shall hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sings in those valleys below; So be not afraid To walk in the shade, Nor yet in those valleys below, Nor yet in those valleys below.’

This couple agreed; They were married with speed, And soon to the church they did go. She was no more afraid For to walk in the shade, Nor yet in those valleys below: Nor to hear the fond tale Of the sweet nightingale, As she sung in those valleys below, As she sung in those valleys below.

Jud sang, in the candlelit kitchen as Prudie and Ross finished the dishes. Ross watched Prudie smile over her chore as Jud sang her given name within the old Cornish tune. Ross and Dem were too young to recognize the lyrics for what they were for all they were fond of poetry. Jud was teasing Prudie as any young man of their generation might. The girl was not being asked to listen to the nightingale's birdsong, the young man was asking to be her lover. Jud and Prudie had been those young lovers, retained the feelings of those two younger people but better somehow for the years had given their love a strength that brought them happiness to think upon. Ross dried the dish in his hand, charmed at Prudie's smile. A knowing smile that held a love for Jud made that much stronger by time. Ross smiled. He hoped Dem could smile so, when Dem sat pretty as a picture with a happy passel of children round her knees blinking up at her as Mama and him as Papa and later when they were quite old. Ross hoped Dem could still look as smitten at him as Prudie looked now, happy to be Jud's wife.

Ross caused a bit of mirth struggling to open the box of torrone. They flung out at the table like champagne flying free of its cork and skittered individually wrapped candies on the table like confetti at a party. The Paynters having taken the plunge to try spaghetti and garlic bread were less nervous to try the odd looking sweets with their tea. The brittle, rounded biscuits faced in pairs, two halves of a tiny globe, wrapped in their pastel, printed tissue paper, ends twisted in tufts like bon bons and a soft almond nougat, each cloaked in a grand little rectangular box of its own with portraits of lords and ladies printed upon them like a fairy story. The strange smoothness to the touch. The candies were poured on a wafer, smooth as window glass once it set, chalky white and sweet with sugared nougat studded with chunks of almond for hint of crunch. They littered the table with the easy scatter of a children's feast and they drank their tea and ate their sweets and admired one another in the candlelight. They had reached a balance this night. Ross and Dem were older, Jud and Prudie were younger and sitting in quiet companionship. Not master and servant, not age and beauty. They were men and women with no inequality between them for they were lovers and that love was evident, among them all. The Paynters in the shadow of their younger selves and the Poldarks at the start of things but dwelling in a second sight that they should grow older year by year in the security of their love.

A good meal in happy companionship. A cup of tea and a bite of something sweet. Having enjoyed both Ross offered the final refreshment of a blood orange to end the night. They all found amusement in unwrapping them like party favors. "My blessed Parliament! Will ee look at tha, Jud Paynter! It be red as the devil inside!" Jud's eyebrows raised to see hers, broken apart in her hands, then pulled apart his own. "Well I'll be!" said Jud looking at them all around the table with a sense of wonder. "I ain't never seen a red orange! An' these was in Truro?" asked Jud. Ross nodded, happily. The Paynters ate their blood oranges and were impressed at how they were like oranges dressed up for best in their vivid crimson, in their richer taste. The perfect end to the meal. A meal so nice one didn't mind a touch of garlic on one's breath or a faint scent of citrus lingering on ones fingertips. Nampara's kitchen had transformed itself into a candlelit cavern of wonders and a pleasant, beautiful night. The Paynters took their leave and the Poldarks watched them go from the window, Prudie on Jud's arm and a sweet peck of a kiss between them as he opened the car door for his wife and she thanked her husband for his chivalry. Ross put an arm around Dem. "I should hope to still be in love like that when we are old..." sighed Ross. Dem smiled. "I will if you will!" Ross laughed and kissed her nose. "It's a deal!" smiled Ross.

Chapter Text

Mimi luxuriated in Ross’ attention, purring in a happy daze as they sat on the mattress as he petted her, lit by the flat grey daylight that filtered through the skylight. Dem was puttering among Brose’s props. Looking at the intricate trims and decorations on costume coats and hats, the tarnished buttons on old clothes, some she recognized in finished work that the artist had showed them. They lay lifeless in trunks and piles but came not only to life in Brose’s pictures but told stories too. The same gilt edged military hat that sat to the side, so unassuming, had become an aggressive looking soldier in one picture and a cherub cheeked little drummer boy in another. Two entirely different ideas from the same hat. Brose had cleared the table of breakfast and set about preparing the paints and supplies he would need near his easel. Dem came to sit by Ross, shared a smile with him as Mimi rolled about on her back to demand Dem’s affection, purring even more and secure in her right to more fuss to be made of her. Brose poured out small amounts of linseed oil and turpentine, pooled upon the bottoms of empty tins. He used a metal palette knife, as dainty as a toy, to mix pigments and paints on a wooden palette to keep them moist as he worked. The canvas was blank and that was always an exciting prospect. Bending a blank tableau into a new reality. He inhaled his mediums, a habit akin to drug use, but not truly so. A ritual. Brose was not seeking to achieve a brain addled state. He was becoming one with his environment. At a certain point he would enter a divine state where the effort, the medium and the image would all align. He wore a loose brown smock over his clothes, marked with paint and stains and so different to his tidy clothes. The guardian of his tidy clothes. He retrieved a tincan stuffed full of paintbrushes and turning back to the easel, remembered himself. Across the way, in the small loft at the back, beyond the short flight of steps that led to his storage space sat two young “boys”. A boy and a girl sat close in their little nest, a mattress he kept for models to pose on should he need them posed on the floor. In blue dungarees and second hand shirts, playing with his cat, Mimi. Heads bent together, charmed by the cat and talking in quiet voices, the intimate talk of two good friends. Two street children who tumbled their way into his studio, so vulnerable looking in their bruised looking filthiness, so angelic looking once they were restored to cleanliness, Brose asked them to remain, to stay in his studio overnight rather than skulk about on the streets. Two kids who lived on their wits and made what money they could performing songs on the street. Ambrose had watched them from afar, out of their view, after Ross had repaired the broken string on his guitar, Ross handing back the change from buying guitar strings the day before with a charming show of gratitude. Ross and Demelza drank down their cocoa, fueled on oranges and jam and croissants. They put on their coats and admired each other as Ross clutched his guitar. They were “back in business”. Their trusted breadwinner, Ross’ guitar, was restored and, having thanked Brose as their benefactor, they were excited to start to rebuild the nest egg that had been taken from them by thieves, stomping down the steps much like children setting off to school. Brose hesitated but then followed, opened the entry door and peered up the pavement, watching them bound away, the guitar case swinging at the boy’s side and nearly a skip in both their steps, so happy to resume their way of making a living. Ambrose ducked back in to grab his coat and followed, locking the door and trailing through the streets, keeping sight of them ahead among the workaday Paris streets. Ambrose was curious to see these young people at their work. He could not quite credit the idea that they could do this sensibly. They looked so young. Ambrose shadowed his guests, melted into the background at the edge of the market square and watched Ross put the guitar strap over his shoulder and stood near Dem presiding over the empty case at her feet, her hair secreted up in a floppy cap. They discussed possible songs and nodded quite at the same time over one. Dem stood a bit apart and looked to the sky. People were going to and fro, not paying that much mind until a clear voice rang out, “Bluebirds...” Dem sang and looked about at the sky as if trying to search for a bird and Ross strummed a chord to match. Some looked to see who had sung as she repeated it, “Bluebirds...”, a note higher, shading her eyes with her hand to scan for birds as Ross grinned, strumming the matching chord. “Bluebirds...” She sang again, a note higher, sustained and gaining more attention to them as Ross played that chord too. Brose could see she was fully accepted by people on the street as a boy. She seemed like a choir boy, still young enough to sing sweetly. A older man passed by, tossing a coin into the case, in a busy nonchalance. These two were busking and he had a coin to spare, a trifle as he went wherever he was going. “Merci, monsieur!” smiled Dem, saluting in his direction with a grin. A strange French. Even Brose, who spoke with a Dutch accent was charmed at Dem thanking the passerby. The lilt of Cornish in her voice bringing a joyful sound to the ears of all, a smirk to the man’s face as he hurried onward, amused at the cheeky English boy. Ross’ playing of the melody rushed in behind her thanks as he played an upbeat accompaniment in a cheerful performance,

Dem sang in English and that lent a glamour to them, a chestnut of a song, known from the cinema and the dancehalls of an earlier time. Ross played his guitar to accompany her and in the middle by himself. It was sprightly and intricate. Brose began to smile in spite of himself. Leaned at the wall of a nearby shop and watched, grudgingly impressed. It was “jazzy”. It was very good. Brose thought of some of the old cafes in Amsterdam and later when he came to Paris in private, hole in the wall clubs where guitarists sat at the corner of the place and kept up an ambiance, paid in drinks and tips. The boy could play guitar with verve and his own style, Ross knew his instrument intimately, knew what he was able to do. The confidence shone from Ross as well as his talent and he took time to nod and smile at the people who tossed them change, not needing to look so closely at his playing. The instrumental break allowed many of the passersby a chance to toss coins in the guitar case as Ross and Dem nodded their thanks and then she continued to sing. At the end she bowed, to all the world, a cheeky young lad and his guitar playing friend, thanking all in the street not just those who contributed funds. There was a smattering of applause and Brose chuckled to watch them set upon the case, plucking out almost all the coins to fill their pockets and begin again, leaving just enough coins scattered to look down on their luck once more for a new set of punters, in deep discussion over what song they should play next. Heads near, at work. Happy in each other’s company and appreciative of each other’s talents. A team. Brose chuckled. It was a canny trick, reducing the money in the case. It was charming. They were far too young to be living this way but they were making the most of the hand they were dealt. Brose returned to his studio with an amused shake of his head and in a contemplative acceptance of the children’s conception of themselves. That they were competent in their means to survive was a pleasant shock of surprise to him. He could see they were good musicians with a sense of craft and showmanship and old hands at it for all they were kids. But the weather was getting cold. Those two would busk in all weathers if it was up to them but Brose told them they must stay indoors once winter came. Stay in the warm. They’d not lose out on it, not balk over losing opportunities to earn money. He could offer them modeling, keep them indoors under the guise of a job. He had insisted in any case, the idea that they amble about singing on street corners, eating heaven knows what and sleep on the street or whatever hidden crevices they could manage to find for themselves seemed absurd. Brose was hard pressed to believe they could manage at all in the state he found them to be in; lice ridden, dirty, robbed of their money and what little belongings they could carry in a bag, clinging to the guitar and each other for dear life. It was absurd. Brose was astonished that kids this young were left to their own devices, though he was glad to see Ross and Dem were better at their busking than he had given them credit for initially.

Ambrose stood holding his tin of brushes in contemplation.The children would not be out busking. They were indoors. He was being remiss. They must have a task. He had given them sketchbooks and started them drawing from life, as much to keep them occupied while he worked as learning. They both showed promise, a knack, however primitive their first attempts. They both had a good eye, the ability to see, not just look. They could do with a more involved task. He set the brushes down and came walking towards the back. Mimi was on the verge of sleep on Dem’s lap. “You two must work,” Ross and Dem perked up. Brose had bought them each a sketchbook and was intent on teaching them how to draw. He preparing to do his own work but had no intention of letting them be idle. It was flattering to have such diligence demanded of them. He felt they could learn and wanted it to be so. Brose smiled. They looked eager to be commanded. “What will we draw today, Brose?” asked Dem. He stepped over the stairs, planted his foot right at the top and bounded into the space and forward with the swiftness and ease of a younger man. They felt a breeze from the folds of his smock as he passed them and smelled the paint and solvents upon it, even as it had been laundered. He felt their eyes upon him, looking up at him as he walked to the corner behind them and started rummaging in a closet, the door creaking loudly as Brose opened it. It was strange to be watched, he went through his studio days so used to being solitary when there were no models to work with. So strange to have kids blinking up at him as if he was a schoolmaster. “Bring your books to the table,” said Brose, “I will be with you directly,” The stark instruction, muffled in the closet with his Dutch inflected English made Ross and Dem grin, at the bent over form of their host riffling through boxes in the closet, the hem of his smock draping at the floor, then to each other in a merry agreement. Agreeing that having a grownup to look out for them was nice. It was strange, to be independent for so long and now follow the orders of a grownup. It was a nice novelty, having a grownup pay them attention. To greet them good morning and wish them goodnight. To give them breakfast and supper and money enough for lunch when they went out to busk. A grownup who shared his books and listened to what they had to say; gave them the present of a stetchbook each and wanted to teach them to draw... It was nice, having a grownup... Gently lifting Mimi from Dem’s lap and laying her in the warmth of where they had been sitting, she followed close behind Ross as the children scampered to obey. The thud of their bare feet on the wooden floor, sounding loud as they stamped down the little flight of steps and further into the studio, lessening, quieter, amused Brose as he surveyed various plaster cast objects poking them free of their muslin wrappings to find a suitable subject. Serious. Challenging, but not so difficult. To stretch them, not frustrate them. By listening to the sounds in the room he could sense them retrieving their books from the sofa and making their way to the table like a herd of miniature elephants. The pitter patter of children’s feet but children who were nearly grown. Older children. Ambrose heard them murmuring an anticipation of what they would be taught, both voices somewhat genderless, bright, a boy, a girl but not quite discernible, which was him, which was her as to tone. The boy had English, upper class inflections in his speech and that made the difference between them to Brose’s ear. Ross’ voice went lower, sometimes, but the boy more often sounded like a child for all he was nearly of age. Older children but slow to age. That anyone gave them a proper job picking fruit was a miracle. No one could think they were old enough on sight with a straight face! These young, optimistic adventurers who fell through his skylight. Ambrose found what he had been hunting for in the boxes of plaster casts each wrapped in cloth, mummy like, to keep them in good order and unbroken, and considered them as he stood up from his task. They looked younger than they were and, with only each other for company, Ross and Dem remained “little”. Young. Ambrose had taken to calling Dem “my little” so taken by the girl’s gamine charm in her boys disguise. But Ross and Dem both still held the tender edge of their childhood within them and he valued that in the pair. They both retained the enthusiasm of youth, not jaded. For all their life on the streets of Paris had pummeled them, dragged them, nearly took them under -what would have happened to them had they not found him?- they had not become hard or cynical. The promise of a drawing assignment made them happy. That they had each other to share it with made them happy. And perhaps it pleased Brose enough in their enthusiasm over this that he felt happy too.

Sat side by side at the table with their books open, pencils at the ready. Used to being pressed by Brose to draw oranges and wooden geometric shapes like cones, cubes and pyramids, they had learned about shadow and perspective in gentle exercises they had come to look forward to. Ross and Dem watched Brose place a plaster cast of a man’s foot on the table. Their eyebrows raised in unison. How on earth could they be expected to draw a foot! With toes! That seemed very difficult. Brose looked from one to the other. “Here is a foot. Draw the foot as you see it.” His face was neutral. Ross and Dem stared at the cast foot, real looking enough to have been lopped off a person, and looked fearful. He pursed his lips to stave a smile, but then let himself smile. Brose had frightened his charges with the plaster foot but he would not coddle them. “Ah, feet are hard?” asked Brose. They nodded. He angled it so it sat at three quarters. No gambit to simply draw it from the side in profile. No escape from toes. Ross and Dem looked to each other in a quaking fear. To draw this plaster foot, to make it look in anyway real? They had breezed through their other tasks, drew objects with flat planes and easy shapes but worked at it too. Worked to get the shadows correct, the shapes. Worked and learned from it. When they drew live models with Brose as he worked, costumed, semi clad and even nude, it was much harder. Making people look like people, proportioned so they didn’t look like stick insects or dwarves, faces that looked proper and not stretched or scrunched, was very hard. Now Brose was bringing that difficulty into their table exercises. It seemed sadistic. They sat with their sketchbooks with a looking to Brose in a wide eyed, desperate wish for a reprieve from their taskmaster. Brose spoke calmly. “They are ever with us. You see them at the ends of your legs every day,” They looked at him. Ross said, timidly, “Feet are easy to look at, I’m not sure they are easy to draw...” Brose coughed an attempt not to laugh. He looked at them sternly. “Should life be easy? Should one only attempt what is easy? Would Claudel have sculpted at all if she had shrugged and said, ‘Too hard! That’s too hard!’?” Dem perked up. “She?!” Brose nodded. “Camille Claudel did not let people tell her what she could and could not do! She wanted to be a sculptor. She was stubborn and took instruction at the Académie Colarossi, on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière because the École des Beaux-Arts did not admit women at that time...”
Dem and Ross looked up from their fearful gaze at the plaster foot, interested to hear of a woman trying to make her way in a profession closed to her. Brose continued. “She wanted to be the best, learn from the best. She wanted to work Rodin’s studio, wanting to be his pupil, wanting to learn with the best! His assistants tried to trick her!” Dem’s eyes widened. “How?” Ross chimed in a beat behind her. “Why? Why did they want to trick her?!” They were drawn into the story, offended that the assistants would seek to undermine her. Brose told them the story with the drama of a storyteller at a feast day market. “They saw a pretty girl! They did not believe her to be serious. They told her she must carve a sample out of marble to show Rodin her abilities, this was true. They told her what she must do to be considered for work in the studio,” Dem and Ross leaned towards Brose as they sat at the table wide eyed to hear of the treachery. “They gave her a block of marble with a fault in it! A fissure in it that a novice could not hope to carve! One wrong tap and it would fall to pieces!” Brose’s eyes widened, his eyebrows punctuated the hard hearted cruelty of the studio assistants. Ross and Dem hung on his words open mouthed. “They tricked her!” cried Ross, shocked. “They wanted her to fail!?” asked Dem, upset that they would sabotage a woman who wanted to prove herself. Brose nodded “They laughed and told her to come back when she had carved her sample.” Brose crossed his arms in judgment. “They had fun at her expense! To laugh, to joke! They wanted to see her return in disgrace to request another marble block or not return at all, too embarrassed!” Brose remained serious but, inwardly, was charmed to see the youngsters feel so incensed at the assistants’ attitude and protective towards the ambitions a young woman so determined to shine. They stared at him in dismay but also righteous indignation at the wicked plot against her. They sat enrapt and frozen at their sketchbooks and turned to stare at each other, both agreeing that Rodin’s assistants were villains and concerned over Claudel’s chances. Could she carve the marble block without breaking it? Not told of the danger? “She brought the block away with her,” said Brose. “She did not falter. She would show her work, show him what she could do!” Brose’s eyebrows were strange in that white hairs speckled within them grew longer than their darker fellows. They seemed like whiskers or antennas, jutting out at odd directions. They knit in a frown as he regaled them with the persistence and hard, physical work needed to turn a block of marble into a work of sculpture. To plan, to plot, to view it as a block, to consider the striations and patterns within it. To bend it to her will and prove herself worthy. Ross and Dem might have been pulled by a string, both sitting up that much more looking beyond the studio altogether and seeing the 19th century woman toil over a piece of marble that might break at the slightest mischance, hair askew, dust everywhere, the voluminous smock that covered her gown as she sought to make her mark. “What happened?” asked Dem. Ross nodded, anxious to know too, both looking intently at Brose, wanting to know Camille Claudel’s fate. Brose smiled upon them, fondly. He would not explain Camille Claudel’s hardships, her love affair with Rodin that forever cast her in the unfortunate position of being seen as his muse rather than an artist in her own right. The fact that Rodin never left his wife and Claudel’s retaliatory sculpture,The Age of Maturity -a nude woman on her knees beseeching a man who walks forward with another woman to return to her- so shocked and angered Rodin he suddenly stopped his support for Claudel’s work completely. Brose would not explain that distaste and disapproval of her sensual, sexually charged subject matter, seen as too provocative by conservative backers, left her without patrons to fund her projects. He’d not tell of her own family cutting off her funds as homeless and reduced to a beggary no less than these two kids in their own homeless rambles, committed to an asylum and buried in a pauper’s grave with some of her work later misidentified as Rodin’s. Brose spared his listeners these dark realities and expected they’d not hear of the rest themselves. No one wrote about female artists in any great depth. Brose kept to this one moment in time, valorized her. He made Claudel the hero, for in her own way she was. “She marched right back to Rodin’s studio and gave them a man’s foot so realistic and perfect she became a specialist at hands and feet. Rodin was so impressed she was his assistant on many important works. Some still cannot be sure if some of his works were actually her’s so close was their working together.” Ross’ eyes widened. “It didn’t break!?” Brose smiled, warmly. “It did not. She carved the block successfully and proved her mettle to them all. And one day people will watch you draw, they will look at your work and say, ‘mijn God! How you draw like that? You draw so good!’” Ross and Dem laughed but with admiration between the three of them. Brose charmed them out of their fear, persuading them to learn and grow. Believing they would learn and grow. “You must not fear rigor, for that is how you learn,” said Brose wandering towards his easel in the preparation of working at his own tasks. He chose a brush, discarded it and chose another. He picked up the palette knife and resumed mixing paints, talking to them but already starting to sink into his own creativity. They could see he was entering his own relationship with the canvas in front of him. “You will learn. Learn by doing. Learn and improve. The hand trains the eye and vice versa.” Ross and Dem watched Brose reviewing sketches as he began to work and shared a look before taking a good look at the plaster foot. Pencils at the ready all three worked at their tasks.

Chapter Text

They woke sharing bashful, knowing sorts of smiles. Dem, for in her loins, in her back, there was pain. A dull, fading proof of a new status. Ross, for he was erect at once in a way that was not the chance flowing of the bodily humors of the morning. Early morning, the approach of daylight brought a wan brightness to the room. "Good morning, Sweetness," sighed Ross. "Good morning, Ross," said Dem. A pause. They were staring at each other in the dim light. Ross with a faint crust of sleep at the corners of his eyes. Dem's hair rumpled and falling across the pillow. Staring intently at the first vision of the day. Each other's love. Ross rubbed his eyes and Dem tucked back her hair. A kiss. There was a pause. Heads at their pillows and watching the other. Decisions. Throw caution to the wind and be decadent? Stay in bed. Be responsible? Keep the roof over their head by working in Les Halles. Dem smiled. It was cold and the work to be had in the food stalls slackened now that Christmas had passed, but only money bought you a living. Ross smiled a dare. Stay in bed? Dem smiled a compromise. "We could work a half day...” offered Dem. A better idea anyway as winter brought less work after Christmas season at the market stalls. Ross nodded. “We’ll get a bit of work and come back early...” he agreed. They paused. She looked at him. He looked at her. She reached to touch him as Ross suddenly put his hands at either side of Dem’s head. His forehead was placed at her chin and she smiled there suspended in a position of power. Ross could do nothing at this moment even as he sought to kiss her. She had stunned him to inaction and a breathy excitement. “Ahhh...” Ross closed his eyes focusing on Dem stroking his cock, sighing and breathing an appreciation of her attentions. She ducked her chin and watched him, face near, Ross practically grimacing from her hand feeling so good upon him. Dem giggled. How had they turned so quickly from being too shy to being this bold? Ross heard Dem giggling and struggled to open his eyes, struggled with smiling too as the pleasures of Dem’s attentions made a havoc of his facial expressions. A smile. A stuttered, Oh, oh, oh... A grin. A sigh. He stared, set his own face back to look at Dem, lips parted and struck with wonder at her face as if he had never seen it before, eyes darting from her chin to her lips, all about her face and Dem just registered Ross staring into her eyes as she closed hers and Ross sought a kiss. A fervent collapsing into each other, her legs around him, his arms around her and the creaky, chiming sound of their bed springs, incessant throughout the previous night rang out again.

“We’ll get the poorer pickings if we don’t get a move on,” said Ross in a luxuriously sleepy voice that did not express haste. But Ross and Dem would have to get up and get going to secure work at the start of the morning, loitering out front of the market to be chosen for odd jobs that paid cash in hand. As the day progressed the jobs offered were harder graft, heavier objects, dirty scut work behind the stalls, clearing stamped upon broken ends and waste. One had better choice in the early morning, easier jobs snapped up by the early birds. Warm in their bed Dem almost decided to lump it, skip a day and stay in, but even a little money each day made the difference. Madame Albaret was kind and patient but Ross and Dem had seen her accept no excuses for arrears from other tenants from time to time. She would wait as a curtesy, wait to see the sum put right, but she had no qualms of ejecting people behind in their rent. Dem kept two weeks rent as an emergency fund in their bureau drawer. They should not deplete it out of laziness however nice sex was. Sex was nice. Ross lay on his back, trying to will himself out of Dem’s arms. He shifted and rose, left the bed and Dem watched him stand. “No rest for the wicked!” smiled Ross. Dem nodded. They shared a happy, knowing look. Ross felt a renewed vigor to get out to work for he had a certain wish to bring to bear in their new found love and the return of Ross and Dem's companionship. A half a day’s work would still mean getting cleaned up afterwards. They would work at Les Halles and he would suggest his request of her when they returned to their room."Oh!" exclaimed Dem as she sat up to leave the bed. "What...?" asked Ross. Dem ducked her chin, a bit bashful, and pointed to the stubby little mirror on top of the chest of drawers. Ross turned to look at himself. There was a love bite, a bruised mark on his neck where Dem had lavished attention upon him at some point in the night. "Hahahahaha!” Ross laughed and shared a smile with Dem, admiring her seated on the bed, her breasts, her shy embarrassment at the mark on his neck. Admiring the prettiness of her. Ross loved a pretty girl and she loved him back. He turned back to the small mirror at the top of the bureau. Dem giggled as she watched Ross preen and twist to look at the bruise with a self satisfied smile. “I shall wear it with pride!" said Ross.

Outside the market were all of the things that needed to be inside the market. Cabbages as small as grapefruits or larger than footballs. Crates of endive, of leeks, potatoes in sacks, fruits and beans, teeny baskets of cress set in huge flats that often held sleeping snails in their roots, hitched along for the ride. Herbs and rhubarb. Lettuces and onions. Bounty from the land and food of every description all stacked in impossibly tall piles upon the ancient cobblestone streets in crates and baskets and cardboard pallets. If one had not enough strapping sons or nephews to help, if one needed their produce to go from point A to point B within the gigantic labyrinth of food stalls in the sprawling indoor market, transporting these wares fell to industrious ne’er do wells who had little other means of employment. They stood about waiting for work and were paid a bit for their trouble. Ross and Dem were English cousins who had become a fixture at the morning call, able to spirit away crates and baskets of produce with efficiency for all they were young and thin. They walked past the men who were already trudging past, wheeling flat barrows of vegetables into the covered, cavernous market to stand about with others for what work was to be had. Other rats turned their nose up at carting. It seemed like killing yourself for a pittance, lugging crates around. But Palmier had learned how to do it properly somewhere, in London? They knew how to pick up heavy baskets and crates without hurting themselves and even knew which sort of vegetables were more work to carry or less from previous experience. They worked at Les Halles and played music on the street and earned enough to rent a room to stay in during the wintertime. Today it was leeks. Piles and piles of leeks. Dem kept a bandanna to tie over her shoulder as an extra padding and hoisted the slim, flat crates on her shoulder, one after the other and changing shoulders mid way. She used to carry them like Ross did, holding them at their chests but her breasts had grown too big for that. It had the added effect of making her look more masculine, not less. She looked like a tall lad in a flat cap and a roomy overcoat, working to be muscle bound. Some of the men teased her saying all she needed to be a man’s man was have a cigarette dangling from her mouth like the sailors at the docks, a rich joke because the English cousins were so baby faced but a compliment too. ‘Ross et Dem’ were seen as ‘dead end kids’ to the older men who also relied on the piecemeal, casual work in the market to make ends meet. Kids like they had been, on the outs with the respectable society. The outsiders. But these English kids were hard working lads and might yet find the trick that escaped the older guys, they might find the way to a better path. That Dem might grow to be a like cool dock worker was a sentimental wish for the boy and salt over the shoulder for them all. Maybe the youngsters will get by better than we did, thought the older ones. They might all have to gravitate to the docks before long. Les Halles was slated for demolition and a huge new, modern complex put in its place. No more need for outdated hands like theirs... Ross and Dem worked the morning into the afternoon and rather than hunt up more work from different stall holders they took their pay and had a croque madame and frites in a cafe. The scent of leeks hovered around them and were hungry from working but time moved slowly for Ross and Dem ate slowly, staring at each other in a dreamy contentment.

They walked back to Rue Des Cannettes, a wafting halo of oniony, leeks around them and feeling as if the cold dreary day had become a wonderland of beauty and enchantment. The drear of the cloudy weather became a pretty backdrop to admire ones lover. The frosted steams of their breath in the cold left their mouths curled like incense about each other’s face and dissipated to reveal the kaleidoscope hues of Ross’ eyes, brown and gold and shards of dark light that shone brightly. Curled away in arabesques that revealed the green and blue and flecks of starlight that sparkled in Dem’s eyes. They said hello to Madame Albaret who nodded her greeting and smiled after them. She left them to their own business and declined to mention the complaint of their neighbor who tersely scolded the proprietress for renting to “loud degenerates and people of a criminal element”. Madame would not correct Dem’s gender to a stranger without the girl’s permission. After letting him speak his grievances, Madame Albaret simply told him she would have a word with his neighbors. She would do, but in their current state it might well go through one ear and out the other. They looked close to floating up the stairs of their own accord rather than taking the steps in a walk.

Ross closed his eyes, holding Sweetness in a strange atmosphere. Warm and sweaty in some respects, dry and chilled in others. The room was cold for the radiator had not turned back on yet so the air at his face was cool. His toes, poked free of the sheets at the foot of the bed were cold too as were Dem’s toes as his rubbed against hers. They had showered themselves clean but recently exerted themselves back into light perspiration. Where their bodies touched, under the covers, they were damp. Ross had asked to shower with Dem when they returned from work, a habit they had fallen away from. This was agreed to but the pastime that ensued was not the utilitarian cleanliness of two who showered side by side out of expediency. It became a slippery, wet paradise of mouths and soap and; aware of the hallway beyond the bathroom door, trafficked at all hours by other tenants, careful quiet expressions of pleasure. They dried themselves, dressed, peeked around the door into the hall to leave the bathroom and return to their room unseen. Now they were drowsy and pressed against each other in their bed. Ross curled up to tuck his feet back under the sheets. Dem shifted to put her arm around him and pull the sheets over them both, warm and surrounded in a soft, moistened fug of sex between them. They were just visible under the covers, just able to see each other and kiss each other to their rest. There was a sort of miracle in being in love. Ross could stare at Sweetness and feel that love surround them, enter him, enter her and flow between them. “I want to stay in tomorrow, Dem...” Ross whispered at Dem’s neck. “We’ll pick up work at Les Halles the next day... Stay with me Dem,” sighed Ross, dreamily, speaking earnestly. Ross could not bear the idea of leaving their bed. Sweetness fit in his arms so well... “I don’t want to go out tomorrow... Please?!” said Ross. Dem opened her eyes in the dark, the sheets tented over both of them. A glint from Ross’ eyes as he looked at her caught what little light there was. She brought her arm around to sink her fingers into his hair, draw herself nearer and closed her eyes. Ross asked her to leave the Home and come away to France. He helped her escape by covering the spiked metal fence with a thick book, laid the book over the top of the spikes so she could climb over the side without being stabbed by them. He helped Dem by letting her wear his extra clothes, helped her survive on the street looking like a boy. Ross never left her side. He stayed true to their partnership and now was pleading with her to remain in bed with him and explore this new world they had entered together. No rest for the wicked. No rest when you lived as a rat. No rest on the streets. Each day they worked to earn the money and good will to keep this room. Each day they worked to survive and survived to meet the next day, and the next. Ross had given her freedom and friendship, loyalty and now love too. Surely they could spare one day? She felt Ross snuggling against her, felt his skin upon hers and his heartbeat, a murmured joy as if he was trying to pass through her skin and merge together, wanting to never part from her. So happy in her arms... Ross gave her so much, she could give him something in return... Dem wrapped her leg around him and smiled at the way Ross sighed into the enjoyment of their new configuration. A sigh with an extra happiness in it. Within his sigh, he anticipated her saying, ’Yes, Ross’ and be lovers together and spend the day being happy. She could sense that from a sigh that wasn’t even proper words because she felt it too. She would be his lover and the same hands that helped her out of the Home, earned their daily bread playing guitar, cleaned and scrubbed the rooming house to maintain the roof over their head and were occasionally grimed from carting produce at Les Halles would claim her. She would remain with him and stop time for a spell. In this bed.

”Yes, Ross...”

Chapter Text

The sun was glorious. It shone like a diamond and coaxed the scent of wildflowers into the air like a warm, hovering perfume. Specks of pollen and little insects caught the sunlight and glittered over the plants like haze of fairy dust. Small, white cabbage butterflies dotted the grass and the air, fluttering a frail, lacey dance over the meadow. Their brethren, larger butterflies dressed in dark plum and flame orange, chocolate brown and blue, velvet black speckled with crimson and yellow darted games of chase and luxuriated in nectar and pollen, going from flower to flower. The trumpet flowers bloomed in festoons of red blossoms and deep green leaves along the surrounding cliffs of the swimming hole, draped about like nature’s bunting. The valley dressed with the splendor of all its summer beauty. Garrick barked happily, further afield in his own play. There was laughter on the breeze. Ross had shed his clothes. He dragged off his jeans by the folly with a dark chuckle, stripped off his tee shirt with no ceremony and ran down the hill after Dem. Dem whooped a shriek of glee as she tossed her own pink tee shirt over her shoulder and flung it in an elegant arc to the ground as she ran forward in her skirt alone. Ross running after her in swift pursuit. Dem giggling her way forward, in only a skirt, as she ran across the meadow. She held the hem of the skirt up out of the way, teasing her husband with glimpses of her legs, strong and fast and turning her into a vision of loveliness. Long legged and laughing in a paradise of summer. Red curls flying, bright with joy. The strong light of full sun silvered the scars on Dem’s back, made them look white against her skin, but she hadn’t a care. She was playing in their meadow and her intimacy and trust in Ross was absolute. She had no shyness with him. Ross watched her, running ahead. She was beautiful. She was his Sweetness and the spidery marks that remained from her father’s cruelty held no shame between them. She romped through the meadow free and happy and framed by the garlanded cliffs as they drew nearer. Red flowers. Red hair. A quick backwards glance to see Ross running after her with a huge grin on his face and his eyes scrunched in glee. The dark hair of his body stark against his skin. In pursuit. Their wedding rings on their chains bopped about as they ran. The absurdity of human form. The silliness of it made them laugh, the humorous characteristics of the human anatomy, her breasts, his genitals, that wobbled and bobbled and blushed pink with blood as they bounded across the grass and drew closer to the swimming hole. Ross caught up to Dem and grasped her in his arms. “I’ve got you...!” Tumbling to the ground in a happy wrestling, a squeal of delight from Demelza who had little regret in being caught. The strange enticement of leaving the skirt on. Ross found it to be so, found a sharpened excitement in drawing the fabric away and revealing his wife, red hair glittering gold in the sunlight at her groin and the skirt bunched at her hips, that much more arousing. Squeals and giggles. Grunts of exertion. Cries of pleasure and happiness.

The sun was hot and made the dirt of the path glitter with specks of minerals, packed hard and baking in the full sun. Insects and animals wandered about paying him little mind. The valley was so remote the creatures were not particularly fearful of a huffing and puffing middle aged man making his way through the wild canyon of Il Porto. Tankard had little reason to return. His map and notes had been sufficient and Mr. Warleggan had not requested more from him in terms of a hands on survey of the valley. It was prurience, really. The kids up here were oversexed and inattentive. Two of the long haired sort that didn’t even bother wearing knickers in their haste to rut like beasts at a moment’s notice. This day was no exception. He could hear his own panting from the steep climb as he approached the whitewashed wall. He knew to skirt the wall and continue off to the side, secret himself in the trees as they went to bathe. They went frolicking about in the river and made a point of having it off beforehand. He drew close enough for a better view, sticking close to the trees for camouflage. The boy was running after her, naked as a jay, and the girl tossed her shirt away as she rushed forward in a pretense of a chase. The slut had no intention of escaping capture. Tankard watched them fall to the ground and carry on. He saw the boy’s back rise from the grass as he mounted her and his dark head of hair rise and fall, rise to thrust and fall kissing her, his backside moving between her knees just visible in the grass.

Desdemona was grazing closer to the folly this day. The horse had strayed towards the hayfield. There was nothing but space, really. She and the horse had the run of the place as the only hooved animals up here. Other than a cat, a dog and three chickens it was only the human children up here. They had run off somewhere. The dog was chasing rabbits further down the hill. The cat had been attending her grooming at the back of the house but came nearer at this moment. At first, Desdemona had thought her a rabbit but the cat came stalking through the grass straight for her. The cow found that peculiar. The cat moused by the stables frequently but coming this far into pasture was rare. Odd. The cat stopped in front of her, weaved her head in the cow’s direction and Desdemona was at a loss to decide what this meant.

Tabitha Bethia was at a disadvantage. The man had returned and she had no way of communicating this to the humans who had left their nest some time earlier. Ordinary, the dog would have been the herald of an intruder but he was a simple soul, often abroad at play chasing what was left of his tail or harassing rabbits. The height of the grass made it difficult for her to see where he had gone. She had no way of talking to the cow either but reasoned that, being a female of her species, the cow might have some ability to understand an attempt to communicate a breach to their home. The cat approached the cow. Tabitha Bethia saw at once that the cow had noticed her. The dog barked in the distance. Desdemona saw the cat look to the direction where the dog had barked. The dog... The cat stared at her once more and it seemed to cement the idea that the dog should be summoned back to the house. That the cat was short of stature meant a disadvantage in performing the task herself. Desdemona was skeptical. The dog was not without intelligence but retrieving him when a rabbit might cross his path and distract him away would be a difficulty. Desdemona walked closer to the cat. Tabitha Bethia was torn. With no way to speak to the creature and little idea where the dog was, the man might creep off again. She stepped back. Desdemona came closer. Tabitha Bethia retreated once more and stopped. The cow took another step forward, thoughtful, curious. The cat wanted her to follow, not find the dog. In the exchange of gazes, the stark slice of pupil bisecting Tabitha Bethia’s yellow eyes, the soft shiny brown of Desdemona’s eyes fringed with long dark lashes, it was agreed that the cow should follow the cat. Desdemona walked behind the cat, back across the grazing land, towards the stables and the house.

Seamus watched the cow walking to the stables with interest. Usually she waited to be collected by the humans. He tracked her progress as the dog came nearer to him in a gambit to chase a rabbit. The horse nickered but the dog had no way of understanding him. Seamus watched the cow disappear behind the stable’s edge. His vantage point left Tabitha Bethia unseen so the horse was left to ponder why the cow should return to the stable in haste. Unsure, the horse walked forward. She was the only other hooved creature here. He decided to follow, to see what was happening. If there was no true urgency he could simply return to graze.

Garrick loved days like this, so different to living in town. Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love stopped the fight that might have ended his life and Ross had magic paper that let them bring him away. Up here, in their home, he could play every day and eat without having to scavenge. His friends played with him too and the other animals were very friendly. The horse usually had his head down, snacking, but he was walking away now. Walking towards the house. Garrick lost sight of the rabbit he had been chasing as he watched the horse walk back to the house. He tried to ask, ”Where are you going?”, but to no avail. He barked and followed, staying clear of the hind legs and panting an accompaniment as they made their way to the folly.

Seamus had the advantage of height so it was he who spied Tankard first even as Desdemona followed Tabitha Bethia ahead of him. Garrick trotted along side the horse, too short to see and not close enough to smell. A human was standing in the trees in the distance and starting to retreat away. That was a dog’s job, thought Seamus. That’s what dogs did. Humans had dogs about for this very reason. He looked at the dog. The dog was still eagerly bounding around him, panting and pacing about, not in any way attending his duties. It would not do. Seamus knelt his head down and pushed Garrick forward with his snout, knocking him a bit off balance. Seamus meant it as a correction, trying to make the dog perform his task but he was not able to tell the dog what to do. Garrick barked in confusion. The horse had pushed him, shoved him forward, but it did not seem like a game. Garrick railed a complaint at the horse for it was undignified, pushing him around! Desdemona saw the man startle at the sound of the dog barking. It was closer by now, louder. She crossed the grass, past the stables, past the firepit with its collection of grates and buckets and metal tubs to keep the man in sight. The dog was more nimble but still some distance away. Tabitha Bethia quickened her pace, intending to swipe at the man’s ankle at the very least.

A dog barked. Tankard was startled by that. He had seen chickens. The knew there was a cow and a horse but he had not seen a dog or a cat in his previous visits. He hurried back to get around the wall and leave, hoping the dog would not harm him. At the point that he ambled past the fountain bed to hurry back down the trail a mangey looking dog started running straight for him, barking. Tankard turned to look at the dog, standing at the center of the fountain bed. It seemed content to stand there, barking in his direction, which relieved him. It was the sort of dog that plunked itself at the edge of its territory grumbling rather than attacking. No sooner had he relaxed over the dog not being truly aggressive he saw the cow walking towards him. The dog still barked. Tankard stared at the cow as he kept on making his departure. It watched him and that was more disquieting than the dog barking. The cow seemed to stare at him. Tankard made to turn behind the whitewashed wall as Tabitha Bethia balanced upon its top, took a running leap and landed squarely on Tankard’s head, grasping the sides of his head with her paws and scrabbling at his neck with her hind legs. He could not see. A cat was hissing and crawling around on his face. He stumbled forward, reaching blindly to feel for the wall with one arm and trying to bat off the cat with the other as the dog kept barking, the cat kept hissing and scratching the top of his head and a sudden force catapulted him sideways to the ground.

The man turned the corner as the cat made an attack. Seamus had chosen to stand at the opposite side of the wall since the cow was positioned on the other side by the dog. The man stumbled past, upright, and it took little effort for Seamus to kick him as he struggled with the cat clamped upon his head. Tabitha Bethia shrieked in surprise as she fell off in the sudden jolt. Tankard was sent flying, flung across the uneven, bracken covered ground, arse over elbow. He sat up groggily to see a dog, a cat, a tall black horse and a stout, tan cow, standing by the whitewashed wall, all staring at him quietly. Even the dog had stopped barking and stared at him. Tankard gingerly tested his limbs, satisfied that nothing was broken even as his right hip was killing him. The brunt of Seamus’ horseshoe caught him there. He backed away slowly and escaped back down the trail.

Tabitha Bethia recovered her dignity after her unceremonious fall and stared after the man leaving. She turned to her companions in a sense of victory and, while the language barrier did persist, each animal felt the satisfaction of having seen off the intruder and respected each other’s contributions. Even Garrick could admit, in hindsight, the horse was simply rousing him to action rather than bapping him around for no reason and was impressed by Seamus’ aim in dispatching the intruder. Desdemona, content that order was restored, wandered back to pasture as did Seamus. Garrick turned to the cat and barked excitedly, impressed to see the cat run along the top of the wall and take on the villain in a flying leap, the sort of elegant balletics of which cats were so adept. Tabitha Bethia stood listening. It was plain that the dog was being complimentary and she accepted it with politeness. She retreated to the folly, for grooming. After such exertion, she had no doubt that she must look a fright. Garrick stepped forward to make certain the man was on his way. He skirted the wall and returned to the meadow, leaping about from place to place in the grass pretending to drop upon intruders’ heads in a stirring show of heroics, rabbits having not the same appeal at this moment.

Ross and Dem lay in the grass a while, dreamily sated, restful and not in a hurry to wash. Making a study of each other’s eyes. Kissing passionately, trading them back and forth, kissing her neck, his forehead, rolling about in each other’s arms in a veil of sighs. Lying close surrounded by the scents and sights of the meadow, watching the bees and butterflies taste the flowers around them and play as the clouds drifted slowly in a brilliant blue sky. At length, they swam. Ross closed his eyes, floating at the surface of the water, happy to feel the gentle brush of Dem’s fingers at his. Not holding hands but connected and feeling the sun warm him and the happiness of having his wife at his side. They swam and then lay upon the rocks. They combed their hair for Dem had the comb in the pocket of her skirt. She lay her long skirt on a flat plane of rock and they both sat upon it. The day was warm and beautiful. Dem curled in the crook of Ross’ arm as they sat quietly and enjoyed the beauty of the valley around them, kissing now and again, singing together to pass the time as they dried in the sun and the pretty breeze that made the trumpet flowers sway at the cliffs. A dark haired Adam and a red headed Eve. Enjoying love in eden.

Chapter Text

“More?” asked Dem, licking her fingers.

“No more, I beg you,” chuckled Ross. “I shall fall asleep like a bear!”

Dem scrunched her eyes with mirth as she continued to lick her fingers clean. They’d found honey pooled at the bottom of a tree trunk and spent a decadent half hour knelt close at its base, scooping tastes of it out with their fingers. Ross sucked at his forefinger marveling at how sticky his fingers had become and how the taste and scent of honey remained even as he licked them “clean”. The leaves chattered overhead and birdsong was constant. Dark spots of honey glistened on Dem’s vest and her skirt clad knees, blots had fallen on Ross’ chest and knees for he only had cut off jeans and his plimsolls on. It had been a messy enterprise. Leaning into the hollow and swiping their fingertips through the amber honey, clinging down the inside of the trunk, drowning small insects in its wake and pooled at the base. Occasionally they had to wipe small bugs away at the sides of the tree to try for a cleaner sample. It clung to their hands but dripped off as well and some of their hair had become sugared in the effort too, stiffened at the tips as the honey soaked into the curls of hair like a wick. “We need a wash...” grinned Dem, looking Ross up and down affectionately. Bare chested in cut off shorts, straggling a froth of uneven fringe where the hem unraveled, a dark hint of the hair at his groin showing at the inside edge of his thigh. They were that short, one could argue Ross was barely dressed at all. He set back on his knees, working to suck clean his thumb, blots of honey shone on the hair on his chest and knees. “Athhhu shouwod...” he took his thumb out of his mouth. “I shoud not even want supper at this rate!” laughed Ross. “Honey for starter,” he licked his palm. “Honey as main course,” he pulled at his three fingers, sucking at his fingers, pinky and thumb splayed apart at the sides of his mouth. “...and honey for pudding!” Taking on his pinky finger like dessert with a wide smile. He watched Dem laugh. “Hahahahahaha...!” She dipped into the tree trunk, one last go and brought her fingers to her lips in a delightful barbarism. Clots of honey had caught at the tips of her hair and speckled her clothes and her unconcerned casualness over feasting upon it was glorious. She mashed her own fingers into her mouth in a race against stray drops and closed her eyes at the taste. A taste of honey, rich and sweet, a true treat for they did not have a lot of sweets at the folly. A treat because watching Dem rapturously gorging on wild honey was a sight to sigh over. Ross admired her lips and her cheeks, rounded and pretty as her smile fought a war with her intention to lick her fingers clean. She wriggled away from the tree trunk and plunked herself closer to Ross with her hand still very much in her mouth and coated. He admired her as she laughed and ate and offered him her fingers to taste even as he had declined more. Dem felt the honey dripping a slow drizzle down her hand and offered Ross first refusal of it even as he had plead his fill. He licked at the side of her hand, to catch the falling honey, nibbled a path to her thumb that made her giggle more. Scaling her hand with his lips like a mountain climber attempting the summit. He bit at her thumb, gently, closed his eyes and let it rest in his mouth. Still. Dem felt Ross suck at the tip of her thumb to soothe the cheeky bite he’d given her and he opened his eyes slowly, staring at her like Sleeping Beauty awakening in a storybook. Smattered with blots of honey in an enchanted wood and visibly in love with her. Dem looked on in a sudden swell of feeling. Ross loved her. As much as she loved him, as plain as the nose on his face and the sticky blots of honey on his skin and hair, honey on their very breath. His lips parted to release her thumb. It slipped away. She let her hand rest on his knee, not a hardship as they were sticky anyway. They stared at each other, caught in each other’s gaze and sweet breath, grubby and sticky from foraging around the tree trunk, sweet smelling from such a sugared feast. Ross stared at Dem. His wife... He spoke as if he’d woken from a dream. “You’re my wife, Dem...” He stared, and the weight within his eyes, the gravity of the idea. That fact astounded him, she could see this in him. Dem saw Ross struck by his sense of wonder, of astonishment. They had friendship and music and art but their life on the streets had not been easy. Danger, filth, abuse, occasional hunger and peril. Surviving in the shadows of the “straight world”, ducking and diving from the authorities, running from their demons and the cruelty they’d faced down in Marseilles. They had known a great deal of pain, together and individually. These things had happened but now, in this moment, they had five years lease to claim a home in this majestic valley, and sat on the forest floor eating honey discovered like gold at the end of a rainbow. Eating it up with their hands until they were fit to burst. The sky over them as blue as a sapphire in the Italian sunlight. The trees shivering that sunlight through the shadows and chatter of the leaves moving in the breeze and the birds singing. And Demelza Carne was a Poldark. Ross’ eyes were bright with emotion. Dem’s were soft with emotion. It was the same emotion between them but Dem had a sentimentality to hers. Ross had given her his name. They had been a loyal pair of friends ever since they met. But now they were truly family. Dem blinked rapidly and brought a sticky hand to Ross’ cheek. Ross’ eyes widened and closed. Closed upon a honeyed kiss that stopped time. The tiny pivot at their chins that they could feel a resistance from, feel the honey, peeling gently away and sticking back as he kissed her with all his might. Dem kissed her husband. It answered him better than any words could say for she might have burst into tears to try and answer back. She knew what he meant.

They walked back to the folly, their hands felt suctioned cupped together with the stickiness of the honey still clinging to their fingers. Swinging gently between them, sauntering without haste to the river. They tried to wash their hands before bathing in truth. The river water was not helping. Even with soap the honey that stuck upon them was tenacious. “We should heat water,” said Dem. “We’ll stick to the bed tonight if we don’t!” Ross nodded. “Yes,” then he laughed. “Yes! We’re too big to fit in the washtubs but we should probably use them,” Dem grinned. Brose had given them water to wash with in the washtubs he had about his studio. He had given them proper toiletries later but when they had first crouched down in them, they washed with pumice soap meant for paint removal and were so dirty the water turned slate grey. The bucket handles felt tacky as they brought water to heat on the fire. What ever they touched felt sticky and perfumed. Ross tested the temperature with his hand at regular intervals, waiting to have it properly hot. Dem brought rags to scrub themselves with. They poured out hot water, careful to hold the bucket with stout cloths to keep from burning themselves. Ross and Dem undressed and knelt at one tub, sharing the water, washing themselves free of honey in their hair, on their bodies, with the minute sort of careful attention that Tabitha Bethia might have employed. Using the soaked hot rag to coax the stickiness away a bit at a time until they could stand and give themselves a last once over. Looking down in chagrin at giving themselves muddy knees from kneeling on the grass and having to clean that too. Helping each other with their hair. Dem sighed as if she was melting. Ross poured hot water over her scalp and it was a luxurious sensation after so often washing in the river. She heard it falling back into the tub as it ran down her hair and Ross’ fingertips loosening honeyed strands and rubbing her scalp. “Nice?” smiled Ross. Dem looked like she might melt into a puddle. “Judas,” said Dem, dreamily. “You won’t believe it, Ross! It’s that good!” They switched places. “Ahhhhh...” The hot water dribbled back into the tub as Dem rinsed his hair and it felt gorgeous. She rubbed her fingertips upon his scalp as he had done for her and Ross thought he might float off into space from the sensation. Ross blinked his eyes open to see Dem, smile shining as they agreed that hot water was marvelous. He scrunched his eyes. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing! How will we go back to the river after this?!” They laughed. They adored hot water and showers and baths so hot the surface steamed. They washed off a hard days graft at Les Halles at Madame Albaret’s when they lived in. That was heavenly. The folly was not equipped with modern conveniences. They had no electricity or running water. They washed in the river and made peace with the chill of the water. It was as much an excuse to play as to be clean. They knew they would return to their spartan ways until the weather changed. Wash in the river and then manage their hygiene indoors with water heated on the stove once the weather turned cold. They would look forward to returning to the civilization of proper bathrooms once more, someday. Ross and Dem made peace with their way of life. It was not an easy life in the valley but it was theirs.

The sky blazed with red and gold and purple when the sun was going down, burnishing the clouds in flame like brightness. The folly caught the last afternoon light, a golden hour before the day faded into dusk. Ross and Dem burned candles day and night but Ross went about blowing them out. “Phuuuu!” A rush of breath, “Phuuu!” From one to the next, leaving the one by the Madonna statue burning but putting out the rest. Dem watched him. Her man blowing out the candles as the suns rays fell gold in one last slant across the room and a suggestion of all the ways the sun could bronze the earth, in red, in gold, in purple brought a weight and heft to the light. They climbed into bed, curtain aside. They would not truly sleep because Seamus and Desdemona needed tending soon. Ross followed Dem into bed and lay close, watching the light drift away from one side of the house to shrink smaller and smaller in a gold as deep and rich as the honey they’d eaten, and they would rise as it became tinged red in the sort of passion they inspired in each other, on his back, in her mouth, on his knees, at her peak, in his release, mouth to mouth, skin so close they’d ceased to truly know who was who. They enjoyed their bed for a golden hour and then, glowing gold themselves, resumed their folly chores, their folly life.

Chapter Text

"Good Night!" said Brose as he locked up.

"Night, Brose!" said Dem

"Good night!" said Ross.

Brose tromped down the stairs and the faint sounds of him leaving the studio could be heard in the silent space. Brose opened his umbrella, pulled his scarf tighter at his neck and walked out into the chill of the weather, leaving the quiet street, shops shut for the night, turning into the busyness of the main avenue, still alive with restaurants, bars and people getting where they were going even on this frigid, wet night. He walked the wet pavement homeward, to the accompanying sound of falling rain and the fresh cold air that tried its damnedest to sneak into any crevice of his clothes it could find. Brose admired the lights from the street lamps and bistro windows reflecting in puddles and glittered smears of light in a sheen, here, there. He considered how such reflected light could be conveyed to a viewer in paints. How to capture that nighttime, bohemian promise from the Paris streets with brushstrokes. He sheltered under his umbrella, thinking of all the different hues one could combine to resemble not just light upon wet streets, but the modernity and glamour of the denizens of the night as well. He was walking home, one of many umbrella wielding Parisians darting past each other in an urbane choreography of umbrella spines just missing contact, sharing cast off drops of rain, brief clouds of frosted breath, perfume and cigarette smoke but not colliding, passing in a scent of wet wool and snatches of conversation, to get to their destinations and out of the rain. Ambrose had stayed in his studio, working late, and hurried home to get into the warm. He was not in a position to see a light turn back on in the upper floor of the building that housed his studio.

Rain could be heard falling on the panes of the skylight above. Ross turned to Dem in their bed with an amused huff and a giggle. She could feel the covers drag across her as they got tangled in Ross’ legs, pulled them over with is movement. A cool edge of air touched her feet. It was dark in the loft but they could see each other's eyes, crinkled in an agreed upon mischief. 'Yes?', nodded Ross at his pillow. 'Yes!' nodded Dem. They got up, left their mattress. Mimi, content on her corner of the mattress, even as the sheets moved slightly, raised her chin and weaved her head back and forth as she squinted confusion at her companions in the dark. The children had left their nest, disappearing further into the dark studio. Ross always thumped about in that human manner as he walked across the wooden floors and Dem managed a bit of noise too even as she was a lighter framed. What street lamps there were could only lighten the tarps that hung for curtains at the tall bank of windows at the far wall, not penatrate the room. It was very dark. The outlines of things could be seen, the bathroom door, painted white, ghostly at the wall, catching what light there was more than the darker walls. Mimi watched Ross’ silhouette pass it. Dem went to the bookshelf behind the sofa and turned on the lamp. The lamp base, the bust of a woman dreaming, was lit starkly for it was the only light. A beacon that gave a hint of the furthest edges of the room in dark hues and made the floor and the space near the bookcase very golden. An X of light, beaming from the top and bottom of the lampshade. Dem sat on the floor under the lamp light watching Ross cross further past, to the far wall by the entrance door and pull a large book down from the top shelf of a wall of tall bookcases, tall enough that he had to strain on tiptoe to reach. It was large and stout, hardbound in dark blue cloth, the spine a shade over an inch thick. Ross brought his other hand round to guard against dropping the book in its ungainly size over his head and clutched it to his chest, hugging it in his arms like a thief with a grin. He came round the sofa and knelt to join her in the light of the lamp of the shorter bookcase, laying it flat between them on the wooden floor. They shared a giggle for it was a sort of heist. Brose had stopped Ross perusing this book this afternoon. Brose had never given any suggestion that any of his books were off limits up to this point. He turned from his work at his easel, in a general sort of interest, to see Dem, tucked knees up, comfortable in the chair, contented looking at Kandinsky, Ross, was balancing on his knee to pull a tall book, about eighteen inches high, from the lower bookcase behind the sofa. He slid it out, sitting back down on the floor near Dem, about to settle it across his lap, about to start looking through it. Dem heard a little cough, a clearing of Brose’s throat and turned her glance from her book in time to see Brose's eyebrows go back to normal having raised them on sight of Ross’ choice. “Ah..." said Brose. He put down his palette, laid it and his paintbrush on the small side table near his easel. "Let me have that," Brose crossed the room and retrieved it, plucked it away from Ross who blinked a confusion at him as Brose held the book under his arm at his side and smiled, warmly, upon him. "That is a different sort of "old master..." said Brose quietly as he crossed the room and placed it at the top of the bookcases that faced the windows, full of books and magazines, prints and photographs of masterworks, of sculpture, of paintings, stacked in stout card boxes with lids that fit over their tops like a candy box, papers, here and there, in tidy piles. Brose put the book away and made no further comment. Ross stared after him lips parted to protest but stayed quiet. He shut closed his mouth and then chose something else. They were Brose’s books after all. He had the right to decide which ones he wanted allow. Brose went back to his work as Ross and Dem stared at their host. They turned their gaze to the book now tucked up out of easy reach and then to each other. Brose was painting once more, seemingly unconcerned by what ever else they might choose. That book had been denied to them. That was interesting.

Mimi approached from the dark edges of the room to stand beside them, meowed a greeting and leapt up to sit on the chair nearby, watching the children intently from a height for they were sitting on the floor. She looked at them with piercing green eyes, flashing an extra, neon-ish glow from the lamp light. Her face, so much as one could attribute emotion to a cat, was stern. 'Naughty...' she might have said, though whether she was chiding them for leaving their bed or sneaking a peek at the forbidden book one could not be sure. Mimi might have been annoyed to be bereft of her customary bedwarmers at this moment. They laughed as the cat stared at them, a green eyed warden. "Don't tell on us, Mimi!" laughed Ross, brightly. Dem grinned. "We'll put it back! Brose will be none the wiser!" The cat blinked. If Mimi had intended to bring them a scolding it became lost in the feline capacity for instantaneous sleep. Mimi yawned with a sudden scrunch shut of her eyes and settled to rest, curled upon the seat of the chair. The stark reproach of her green eyes removed.

"Geronimus...?" said Dem in uncertainty. The book was in Dutch. "Jheronimus Bosch" stamped in thin, gothic lettering with a flaked, gilded paint that might have been opaque and crisply defined whenever this tome had been new. "Jh" did not suggest an 'h' sound upon sight. "I suppose..." said Ross, uncertain. "Geronimus Boss-ch...?" tried Ross. They sat close, heads together, near. The hems of their jeans had shredded a bit, a fringe at their bony ankles, bare feet, denim blue in a tired pale hue from overuse. Brose gave them shirts of his to wear for night clothes. They were slim fitting, had less volume about them than the mens shirts they wore to secret Dem's gender mirrored by Ross wearing similar, two long haired boys together in second hand shirts. They sat on the floor in a small pool of lamp light, hair falling at a drape near each other's cheeks and trying to figure out the name, sharing a thrill of anticipation to see what Brose intended them not to see. What might it be? Their friend was blasé over having models in his studio pose unclothed in their presence without any embarrassment. He showed Ross and Dem all manner of art, from antiquity to modernity; statues, of marble, of clay, of nude or half draped women, men standing in their heroic pursuits with their bollocks out for all to see, paintings of nude women lounging across chaises and beds. And abstract art, paintings and drawings with spiky angles and some of them holding a hint of menace within the nude forms but Brose never suggested nudity to be anything other than the way all folk were made and the natural order of things. One had clothes or one did not, if not, one was nude. No sense of shame, prurience or provocation. Never a suggestion that Ross and Dem were too young to approach fine art and the human form as a grown up would. Ross and Dem were used to nudity anyway. They showered, day in and day out, in a huge communal room with drains in the floor at the growers compound in Marseilles. They were young and skinny, performing ordinary hygiene in a work a day normalcy among grown women of every possible body type. Brose had not take pains to remove access to any other books before. That Brose spirited this book away from them, without further explanation, was intriguing.

It was an older book, text in Dutch, and had colour plates. They were pasted in their places within the book because they were printed separately, the height of technology in its time. This artist was an Old Master indeed. There was an atmospheric image of the creation of the world, a hollow globe that seethed with mysterious promise. It looked very much like other old paintings. Ross and Demelza did admire it, but it served to confuse them. Nothing untoward was evident. Dem turned the page. A very pretty image of Jesus introducing Adam to Eve in a verdant Eden, jewel like blues and greens, a pink tower of eccentric design, half plant life, half fountain sat in a pool of water. Mountains lay in the distance as did another pink structure surrounded by a whisped cloud of flying birds. A tremendous amount of birds swirling a spiral into the air. The slender nudity of Adam and Eve in their innocence and Jesus clad in robes of pink, again, looked traditional in their rendering. A hint of what was to come lay in the strange architecture and lovingly rendered animals of every type sharing paradise with the first humans. This painter, Bosch, filled the picture with animals that were real; an elephant, giraffe, rabbits; so many birds! There were also fantasy beasts like unicorns and strange amalgams of different parts of different animals fused together in strange configurations. It was fascinating. Ross looked at it with a sense of wonder. There were endless versions of biblical events in art books but this Adam and Eve was like a fairy tale, not the handsome but staid renderings they had seen from other artist’s works. “It’s marvelous! Isn’t it marvelous!” said Ross, impressed. “Yes!” agreed Dem, not only because it was well painted but this artist had not kept to reality. The fountain was a strange creation, a pink plant that had gone mad and became a fountain. Huge crowds of birds marched about around a giant eggshell like a cave. There was a lovely sort of realism in it too, though. Eve’s long hair shone with light and a rippled texture as if her hair had braided tight and then released of the plaits. And Adam and Eve were as thin as Ross and Dem were! That was a bit different to other old master paintings too. They nodded agreement that they both liked this painting very much. Ross turned the page. They gasped, eyes widening. The next painting was an entire page and frantic hive of activity. Masses of animals and giant plants, masses of people swarmed as one might see insects if you turned over a rock, exposing a writhing secret world to light. Ross looked at Dem. Dem looked at Ross. They recognized each other’s befuddlement. The painting was gorgeous and strange and teeming with naked people. They crowded around giant berries, they clutched at individual ones, blackberries and raspberries larger than their heads. They ate red currants the size of apples, out of hand, fed open mouthed beneath giant birds as if the humans were their babies. They packed themselves into plant forms, giant eggshells, giant seashells, a cornucopia hoisted upon a deal of folk marching it somewhere that was really a hollow scorpion and bubbles, strange huts. People rode upon animals in great crowds, They worshiped giant fish. They swam and wrestled. One man knelt in the grass with his backside in the air as another contentedly stuffed long stemmed flowers up his anus. An realistic owl looked out in calm countenance sitting on an upturned flower in which two people danced. Their head and torso were swallowed up, only their legs and their arms, shaking giant red currants like rattles could be seen. Everywhere naked people were cavorting with other people and animals and feasting on giant fruits in an insane bacchanal. They tittered a laugh. Dem frowned. It was silly. The painting was silly looking. Ross knit his brows, his mouth halfway between a smile and astonishment. “It’s... weird, isn’t it?” said Ross in a stilted confusion. Dem nodded. “It’s so pretty though...” Ross nodded. That was just as true. The image seemed indefatigable! Where ever you laid an eye there was something else to see and even the tiniest figures in the distance were well rendered and ornate. Teeny backsides everywhere, knots of dozens of people crouched and kneeling together. People embracing animals of all kinds as if they were desperate for their love. Couples in various places who telegraphed their intimacy by standing close, staring into each other’s eyes, feeding each other fruit and looking for places to tryst among the throngs of others. There were no depictions of sexual intercourse but Ross and Dem only knew this by looking intently for evidence of it. There was no sex in it but the painting exuded a bizarre sensuality. They looked closely, faces near the book and each other. They turned to stare at each other. “It’s very strange! I can see why Brose put it by!” said Dem. Ross sat up from the book and blushed a little. He scrutinized the picture looking for more scandal than had actually existed. Dem grinned. She had too... They put the book back and turned in for the night.

It became a secret. A pastime that Ross and Dem enjoyed and came to treasure. One or two times a week, left to their rest in the airy, silent studio and Brose gone for the night. They smiled a pact to leave their bed to scrutinize the images in the banned book, crouched beneath the light of the dreaming lady. The center panel of Garden Of Earthly Delights invited multiple viewings, it’s flora and fauna and population of innocent people graced with a fairylike, psychedelic strangeness was... so strange... so... It was sexual and not. These late night viewings possessed a hint of the forbidden. Knowing Brose removed the book from their sight let Ross and Dem have an amusing secret between them in sating the compulsion to return to see it again and again, together. They discussed the strange happenings, they shared quiet contemplation over it too, sitting quiet heads close over the book looking at the giant fruits, fanciful animals, masses of birds and the mad frolicking of these naked people. Ross, a boy and Dem, a girl did understand why Brose had misgivings over allowing them this book in the same free way as the others. There had been an episode between the three of them that remained unspoken afterwards. After the evening their friend had returned to let them into the studio for the night having drunk too much liquor in a sadness. Ross had been helping him to sit on the sofa. In truth Brose would have fumbled and stumbled his way to the door, up the stairs and to his sofa without aid but Ross, so alarmed to see Brose in such a state handed the guitar case to Dem and made a point of accompanying him, holding him upright as they walked up the pavement, guarding his balance up the stairs, helping him to sit down in the studio. Their friend could have managed by himself but they were his friends too and would help him as he so often helped them. Brose was sad, grateful, wistful. He looked upon Ross from his seated position and brought his hand to his cheek. Brose sighed and complimented Ross’ lips, ran a tender thumb across Ross’ mouth and then warned him in seriousness not to waste his kisses on people who didn’t deserve them. It was a surprise akin to fear when it happened, Ross had a list as long as his arm of men trying to seduce and proposition him in his street life, in England, in France. Ross felt Brose’s thumb cross over his lips as he lauded him for having “a pretty little mouth”. The soft pad his thumb swiped across with a lingered appraisal. A come on. Ross did not mistake it for anything else in that moment, he knew with clarity what Brose meant the same way he knew what those others had meant, strangers who threatened him, tried to ingratiate themselves with false concerns over Ross’ homelessness, sinister offers of a place to stay, or bold attempts to touch him, promising money for favors. Men in toilets who hissed all things they might do to a boy like him under their breath. The men who played cards in Marseilles and bragged openly over their intentions to have their way with Ross and Dem, promised to kill them both afterwards. The man Dem shot as he tried to strangle him... Ross knew in that moment Brose was like those men and yet not at all like those men. Not at all... Brose looked at Ross the way one might admire a baby or a kitten or a foal. Brose saw Ross in his youth and beauty, knowing him to be at the beginnings of things and wanted him to avoid the mistakes of an older man. Brose flashed a signal between them and both could see clearly for what it was but he also offered no harm in that moment and Ross swallowed down the jangle of his nerves, that fight or flight prickle of fear, when you can feel the sweat prickle forth under your arms and your stomach feels sickly and you might leap out of your own skin from the terror. Ross steeled his nerves and waited. Brose looked at Ross and told them both not to be afraid. He warned Ross to be “a good, true man” to the person he loved. Warned him to save his pretty lips for a deserving person. A person like Dem, a girl, but he had called those who were undeserving “bitches and bastards”. Female and male. Brose had confessed a confidential truth about himself in this warning and even extended a balm to them both should it be needed. He would not presume their attitudes, a long haired boy, a girl dressed as a boy. Who ever you love... They must be worthy of you whoever they are... Brose wanted Ross to find his joy and be a loyal partner to whomever Ross felt deserved his heart. Should that person be a boy, so be it. Brose then turned to Demelza. It seemed he could not look at Dem in the eye in shame over his drunkenness. He turned his head along the sofa in her direction, eyes closed, and begged her pardon for his condition. Brose felt he disappointed her, for she looked at him so wide eyed and sad. Dem had been saddened but it was for Brose’s pain, not judgement over his drunken state so much as he got himself that way trying to drown his sorrows. Ross and Demelza, both, had understood Brose in that moment and it hinted at the misgivings he held over showing them this fantastical eden, so pretty and strange. The romping little people were almost funny. It could have been hand waved away as a hallucinatory silliness, all these nude little people enjoying strange delights, but Ross and Dem could see that this work might hold an embarrassment for their friend in a way other works of art did not. Brose had no qualms over Ross and Dem viewing his models at their work or art from every century nudity be damned. But Brose drew a line at “Geronimus Boss-ch”. He would not sit between them viewing multitudes of clusters of bare assed and naked people clinging to each other in strange configurations. Brose’s sense of honour demanded that he would not be said to be a bad influence. He would not be an older man with “unnatural proclivities” showing this painting to two young runaways sleeping overnight in his studio against the terms of his lease. Whether he might have given them permission to look at this book if they had not been in a position to see him drunk, had he not touched and praised Ross’ lips in a melancholy, they could not know. One suspected he still might have put the book by, not sanctioned it. The beauty of this eden in its strange symbolism and the eccentric conviction of the artist’s vision, creating this peculiar world and it’s inhabitants like insisting himself a deity, perhaps held more importance for Brose than for other people. They each could admit a furtive enjoyment over viewing this painting that they would not want to parse in front of Brose and declined to share with each other too. Secret considerations Ross and Dem kept to themselves even as they tittered and laughed and discussed the goings on in good humor. They remained young at heart, they had bad and frightening experiences with adults who wished them harm. But they had a dreamlike pause as well, for a moment, in this place, upon Brose’s mattress. They had a soft bed and the slithering silk of the Japanese robes they’d been given for their clothes had been too dirty to continue to wear. They lay close under a clean tarp and the kimonos fell away to reveal each other’s nakedness. And Ross was warm. And Dem was warm. Held in a motionless comfort, feeling warm at the other’s skin. They kissed each other’s forehead and knew themselves to be in a different state. Friends, of course, but a small acknowledgement that it was very nice to lie so close with nothing between them. In this painting people rendezvoused inside plants and flowers, seed pods, inside hollow fruits. They played in the water, snuggled tight in packs upon the grass. They stared longingly at each other. They wandered about, talked to their companions in an enjoyment of each other’s company and the beauty around them. Some touched themselves. Some touched others. The painting promised the sort of pleasures one might like to try, someday. With someone like Ross. With someone like Dem. They looked at the book and took care to set it in the same place on the bookcase when they finished looking at it. Satisfying their curiosity and respecting Brose’s intentions. They would let him believe it was out of sight and out of mind. This strange painting brought a sense of awe and fantastical wonder but it also brought both of them a frisson of sexual interest. They would not admit that fact to Brose or each other. Brose was right to set it aside. It was not explicit but it also was not the sort of work they could view at the sofa together as they did with others. Even as a pair certain aspects of the thoughts Ross and Demelza were having as they looked at it together remained privately held.

As weeks went by, Brose noticed that, while the book was always at the top of the bookcase where he had left it "Jheronimus Bosch", stamped on the spine, was upside down some days and right side up on others. Ambrose made no mention of this but he came to understand a truth all who shared quarters with cats came to realize. Cats were independent. They come and go as they please and went their own way in most things. Cats looked upon this sovereignty as their right and due and believed it a tactic acknowledgement on the part of their owners that this should be so. Brose did not make mention of it. He would think sometimes that it would even be nice to sit with them, a magnifying glass in hand, and watch them marvel at all the small details and wonders of Garden Of Earthly Delights in the same manner they so often enjoyed many other books art and poetry they'd explored together. Brose looked forward to their weekend salon. He sat on the sofa, discussing art and ideas, watching Ross and Dem bring these new ideas and visions into their world. But Bosch’s triptych was too much of a potent dream fodder and Ambrose felt himself too wedded to his own fancies that sprung from it. A world of pleasure in which he was free. Free to indulge with no judgment or shame. Free to explore with one or many. Free. In someways the third panel, a shadowy darkness, punishment and tortured souls, “Hell” was closer to Brose’s actual lived experience than the sparkling brightness and natural paradise of the central Garden in its provocative innocence. His relationship to the Garden Of Earthly Delights was so personal and fraught he could not openly sanction it alongside them but he smiled over Ross and Dem's curiosity and careful perusal; setting it back in the same spot to appease his sensibilities even as they had forgotten to consider the direction of the spine. Brose had been leery of the potency of Bosch's imagery, unable to see the work detached from his relationship to it. Not wanting to taint his young charges with his own eccentricity. Not wanting to introduce impropriety to their interactions. Bosch's paradise was fascinating though so Brose was satisfied that they were able to find their own relationship to it and it would serve them in their growth without him being some sinister influence upon them.

“Brose?” asked Dem. She looked up from her sketchbook to look to Brose working at his easel. He did not turn but did answer.

“Yes, have you finished, my little?” Brose was painting fine lines of light, reflected light on wet streets. He tasked Ross and Demelza to draw a small pile of mushrooms, showing their smooth domed tops as well as the spines under the caps and gnarled stems. Brose would cook them, chopped up, with their fellows in butter for them in a pan on the hot plate later. Salt and pepper lived next to the cocoa and sugar these days. Brose would give them hot buttered mushrooms, a demi baguette each and a mug each of hot beef broth to wash it down on a cold day.

“No, but that book, the one you put away, the blue one,” Ross’ head did not move but he looked to her in surprise. Surprised that she would mention it. His eyebrows raised, his eyes widened a reprimand. ‘Dem!’ Dem blinked back a retort, ‘I’m just asking...’ Ross nodded assent, still curious over what Dem would say.

“Yes?” said Brose, his brush slowing upon the canvas.

“How do you say that name? The title?” asked Dem. Brose resumed his painting, nonchalantly.

“Hieronymus Bosch.” said Brose.

“Hieronymus Bosch,” said Dem, dreamily.
Ross smiled at her over his sketchbook. She was right to ask. They had mangled the artist’s name heartily and they had come to love his work so much it was only right to insure they could say his name properly.

All three continued their work.

Chapter Text

"If thur be seven days in a week then why thur only be two pairs o Master Ross' britches in 'ere?!"

Prudie stood, fists on her hips surveying the wash line in consternation. Jud gave a snort of a laugh. Master Ross and his bride kept strange habits in these foreign places, these foreign adventures. Prudie and Jud noticed at once that the two youngsters had little sense of decorum. Dem often wore just a shirt of her husband's, legs for all to see and a nervewracking threat of seeing her knickers that made Jud blush to the roots of his hair when she wandered through the house as the Paynters left for the day. Ross though nothing of tromping about in grimy plimsolls or boots, doing chores; working with the horse, tending the cow out of doors in naught but his dungarees. Prudie had no cause to believe that was literally so, but the state of the laundry basket after their first week back left little doubt. "If'n I thought ee'd 'ave t'tell a grown lad to dress proper like 'e be tacker I'd not 'ave believed it!" Jud looked to his wife in a dry humor. "Young Dem be 'alf dressed an' all..." Prudie gave a sniff of offended propriety. "Well they's actin' 'alf saved! Wha if some folk come t'call? They'd be gettin' a right eyeful! You'd hear tell of it from one side o the county to the other!"

Ross entered the kitchen to see a batch of Prudie’s fairy cakes cooling on a rack. Having sampled the breadth of Parisian patisseries in his travels Ross could admit there was genuine pleasure to be had in a modest portion of vanilla sponge with a frosted layer of icing that still held swoops and imprints from Prudie using a butter knife to apply it. "Fairy cakes!" said Ross with a grin. Prudie could hear the grin in his voice as she turned from the sink. She frowned. Ross had no shirt on and, having reviewed the laundry basket, quite possibly had no drawers on under his dungarees either. "ROSSVENNORPOLDARK!" Ross froze in surprise, arm poised to lift a cake from the wire cooling rack as Prudie looked at him scornfully. Ross startled and stilled, waiting for explanation of her displeasure, whatever it was. Prudie only used all three of his names at once when Ross was in some sort of disgrace. She glowered over the cozy kitchenalia of a farmhouse wooden table, laden with a wire rack of cooling cakes, a bowl of icing still in use, earthenware bowls, brown egg shells lay broken apart in a small Cornishware bowl, a measuring cup in the same yellow and white, striped style, vanilla essence in a tiny bottle, like perfume, the sugar canister, the implements and tools of lovingly baked, homemade treats; like an enchanted forest across the tabletop, and said, "Ee can march yerself straight upstairs an’ dress proper!" Ross let his arm fall at his side, stood up straighter and blinked his eyes open and shut. He looked at Prudie in suprise and then took stock of himself, looked down at his attire. He had kicked off his plimsolls when he returned from being out of doors working with Seamus and Desdemona, barefoot without a shirt and, in truth, simply clad in blue jeans alone, so worn in and over laundered, they were pale blue, straggled with unraveled hems at the cuffs and the denim soft as velvet. Ross looked up again at Prudie somewhere between a deer caught in the headlights and a confusion upon his face that brought to mind his younger self, years gone, before he went all rebellious and wayward. His blinking look of sudden befuddlement made Prudie want to laugh; she'd missed sight of that little scamp, but she maintained a stern demeanor. Master Ross weren't even nineteen yet, let alone twenty-one, but he was a married man and Master for all he was young and had a responsibility to be respectable. "You be master of the 'ouse!" scolded Prudie. "Ee needs t’dress proper an' put a shirt on of a morn 'stead a runnin' about like ee be Tarzan!" She lowered her voice, scandalized. "An ee needs t'wear yer britches proper, fer pity's sake!" Ross' mouth fell open and closed back up. "Thur weren't no more but two in the wash!" said Prudie explaining how she sussed him out. "Wha DO ee be thinkin'!? It ain't fitty!" hissed Prudie. Ross smiled. "It spared laundry, it was convenient. We had no running water, up in the folly. It's easier to clean yourself than your clothes, if you only have river water..." He nodded a casual truth, "Besides, I got used to it, really. It's not uncomforta..." Prudie crossed her arms, interrupting him. "Tha's daft! If'n ee be that idle t'not wash yer clothes ee might as well go about in the altogether!" Ross smiled a sunny smile. "We very often did!" laughed Ross. Prudie's face was a picture. "Well ee's 'ome now, wi' a brand new washer an' all!" said Prudie with a shiver of distaste. "You ain't livin' like Robinson Cruso no more! Ee can dress like gentlefolk should do! What yer mothur would say I surely dunno! I 'spect she wouldn't want no child a hers wanderin' the earth wi' no britches on, let alone wi'out a stitch o clothes!" Ross gave a wry smile. "Yes, Prudie." said Ross. "Every day, mind!" said Prudie in a tart command. "Thur be seven days in a week!! Thur should be six pair o drawers leastways! An' six shirts an' all!" Ross nodded. "Yes, Prudie." Ross smiled, making no move to correct his attire. "Prudie?" asked Ross in an ingratiating manner. "Wha?" asked Prudie. Ross batted his eyelashes in an innocence. "Could I have a fairy cake now if I told you, you were my favourite Prudie ever?" She crossed her arms once more but found difficult to be stern. She looked him up and down. Barefoot wi' a tattoo on 'is 'and, hair long as a maid's, in naught but his trousers on, trying it on, plying her with endearments like he did as a child. She was irritated with herself because it was working. Prudie steeled herself. Someone had to keep standards fitty round here. "Ee can 'ave a cake when ee be dressed proper an' not before! You think you can get around me tha easy?" Ross smiled a circumspect 'yes'. She twisted her mouth in a wry humour. "I ain't feedin' no barbarians, be off wi' ee an' put yer clothes on right!" Ross laughed out loud. "Yes, Prudie."

The library was quiet save for the tinkling sound of Dem's pen nibs and paint brushes being swished clean in a glass jar half full of water. The handles of the brushes and the nib holder sounded like a clapper in a bell. The gentle puttering of the tiny Ross or Dem inside her would flutter now and again and the sensation made Dem smile. A little person becoming itself as she sat at the desk and drew a fanciful picture of a fox with a crown of flowers on its head. Thick vegetation grew around the face, as if it had poked out from being hidden and within it small insects were tucked here and there. They looked to be able to crawl off the page. They were very well rendered because Demelza had close looks at many at their time in Positano. Dem used to lie in the grass, and watch them, learn that even the plants that looked alone had a miniature world around them. Sometimes even she and Ross lay still enough that a spider or ant might choose to utilize them as a bridge on the way to somewhere else. She had opened her eyes once, as Ross raised above her, his squeezed eyes shut, his lips parted in the pleasure, and the quick movement of a spider scurrying up his arm, hurrying over Ross' shoulder and disappearing down his back. The spider got where it was going, minding its own its errands on a summer's day, not troubled by two humans making love in its path. Ross and Dem were as much a part of the natural world as the grass... "We's leavin' maid. I left ee rabbit stew, oh fer pity's..." Dem stood from the desk to greet Prudie as the Paynters were set to leave. Smiling a greeting with her belly plumped forward a little from settin' a babby and plain to see for her legs poked out of the bottom of a linen shirt that was the lad's, perhaps too big for them both, maybe a man's shirt, second hand. It might have been like those mini skirts girls wore these days, a length that covered but only just and lord help us all if'n she bent over... A shirt too big, not fit right for two skinny stripplings like Ross and Dem but not big enough to cover the maid up decent. Decent. Were they really prancing about naked as a jay up in Italy? Dem smiled. "Thank you, Prudie," Prudie tsked. "I told Ross an' all! Ee needs t'dress decent! T'ain't right t'be quaddlin' about like tha! You be mistress o Nampara, an' a lady! You's a growed lady! Ee needs t'act like a lady not lookin' like a cheil, clutchin' 'er mothur's apron, tryin' t'learn t'use the pot!" "Ahahahahaha!" Dem braced herself at the desk, laughing. Prudie said Dem looked like a toddler who's mother kept her half dressed to spare accidents with toilet training. Dem's eyes sparkled with mirth and Prudie could see the spark in the girl that made her the lad's love. "Oh, aye! Ee can laugh but ee needs t'listen m'girl!" continued Prudie shaking her head at the silliness of them both. "You lot are gonna raise tha babby an' tha mite needs it's folks t'act proper! Dress proper! You ain't playin' about like Adam an' Eve no more! You's in England now! Adam an' Eve didn't 'ave no clothes 'cause them two didn't know no better! Ee needs t'act like you know!" Dem nodded. Prudie would have not been amused to know how free they had been in the valley. This grandad shirt was more coverage than they allowed themselves even in spring's days, still holding a chill in the air, let alone the warm, pretty days of summer; in the meadow, in the river, the swimming hole. Even if they began the day dressed Ross and Dem lost garments until they were clad by the sky alone and happy in it too. But they were Mr. and Mrs. Ross Poldark, Esquire, now. Perhaps being scantily clad was not seemly. Prudie certainly argued it wasn't. "Yes, Prudie." said Dem.

The next day, upon rising, Dem giggled to see Ross dutifully donning his underwear first thing in the morning. Dem had come to like watching Ross' bare backside disappear into his jeans as he dressed. And liked the easy access to her husband too if she was being honest... "She spoke to you, didn't she?" asked Dem. Ross turned with a big grin on his face. "Prudie? Haha! Yes. She did have a word," He stood in his underwear and admired her. Ross looked round the room, the familiar room with its familiar well-used furniture. His parents' and now his. Theirs. He picked up his shirt for the day but didn't put it on and looked at Demelza who was sitting propped up with a pillow, one arm behind her head, bare where the nightdress sleeve had fallen back. It was her right arm, and she was a very right-handed person, but there seemed to be no sign of muscle development other than was necessary to give it an elegant shape. She was pretty, lying there in bed. Before he might have dove back in to love her awhile and perhaps sharpen his appetite for breakfast with a bit of sport. But the baby was growing and he felt afraid of upsetting the apple cart, so to speak. Not wanting to risk the pregnancy going smoothly by over indulgence. Her taut little belly was noticeable. Ross half feared he might spout a leak in the baby's home from over enthusiasm, pop the membrane inside Dem like a balloon! Not at all scientific but Ross did worry. Dem sensed this but in her way fretted that she was too matronly to be attractive to him. He told her it wasn't so. Any glance at any medical text would plainly disabuse Ross of his morbid fear of punching a hole in the baby's serenity with his cock. It was a tension between them they could not correct, even years hence and five children later, but there you are... "What are you looking at?" she asked. "You." smiled Ross. She gave a half-smile. "Well, if you don’t mind my size it is not yet too late. Prudie shouldn't scold us to eat for another half hour..." Ross laughed. "Oh yes, it is. And besides, there are risks we have to take and risks we need not." They smiled a companionship that had spanned times so hard they remained side by side under a bridge for days; damp, miserable, hungry and crowned with crawlers to boot, but together. To have the luxury of being in a proper home deciding the order of their days, safe and warm with breakfast so assured they could let it wait was a strange turn on the one hand and heaven on the other. Ross and Dem lived their street life with no shame or disgrace but life in the straight world had distinct advantages. Dem grinned. "Well, I’m sorry. And yet I’m glad." Ross knit his brows. "Both?" Dem nodded. "Yes, both. Sorry because I’d like it too. Glad because you still fancy me." Ross rolled his eyes. Dem was being silly. How could he not fancy his Sweetness? "I fancy you." said Ross. "Hm." She looked at him, head on one side. "Yet sight is so large a part of desire. Isn’t it? To be ungainly," She patted her tummy. "That’s not ungainliness, that’s natural." complained Ross, pulling his shirt over his head. "You’re too sensitive about it." They shared a look. Sometimes they spoke with just a look, a gesture. They were at a stalemate here. You say I'm pretty, but I don't believe you. You say I don't think you're pretty. If you don't believe me by now, what could I possibly say to convince you?! She blinked out of it first. There was no winning down that road. "Maybe." She lowered her arm and drew the nightdress sleeve down. "Go and have your breakfast, my lover. I shall lie abed with our friend like the Queen of Sheba and have a tray brought up! That's a genteel way of doing things, since you and I are gentle folk now," chuckled Dem. Ross laughed out loud, putting his jeans on. "I expect so! I shall be fitty and not fret poor Prudie over the wash basket! She had been offended at my habits," He looked to her suddenly, still bent at the waist. Her fiddling with the nightgown sleeve made him realize she had gone to bed clothed. Dem had worn a nightgown to bed! He hadn't given it a thought, Ross had snuggled up to her just as nude as he ever had been. "She spoke to you too! You're in a nightgown!" laughed Ross. "Our habits," corrected Dem. "Yes, she reminded me to 'dress proper' too!" Ross stood, dressed proper, and smiled. "Then so we shall! We shall be Master and Mistress! When in Rome, after all..." he turned at the door. "Do you want a tray? I could bring it to you?" Dem shook her head. "No, I was only joking. I'll be down. I want to get a bit more shading on the leaves today..." Ross grinned. "All right then. And you've held up your end admirably! Prudie didn't quibble over your knickers, I'm sure you came away brave in the laundry basket tally!" Dem smiled. "Oh I wear my knickers alright, she reminded me not to go about with no skirt. Prudie's lucky she didn't know us earlier," "Why?" asked Ross. Dem answered with a sunny smile. "I'm sure she wouldn't mind if we wore underwear every day but I don't think she would have found it 'fitty' when we were both wearing y fronts!" "Hahahahaha!" Ross laughed. When they were rats they used to share a packet of boys underwear between them. "I'll meet you in the kitchen, Sweetness!" chuckled Ross. Dem nodded. "Yes, just let me get dressed." said Dem.

Chapter Text

The sun warmed everything. The scent of plants in Demelza's garden had a rich perfume of nightshade plants, aubergines with dark purple skins that shone like patent leather, courgettes riddled in places with fine, pale, beige streaks on their deep green surfaces, tomatoes, some morphing from green to red, some red in themselves ready for harvest, wafting up in the summer air. Sharp scents of herbs, and pungent onion, of the stems of the plants themselves green and strong and tenacious in their determination to grow, weeds. Some were pretty, wildflower that had lost their way. Some were rank, spindly tufts of hardy grass that wanted dominance, possessing no qualms over muscling in on the territory of the vegetables Demelza wanted to exist. Dem knelt in her garden and pulled out the weeds so her garden may grow strong and free of intruders, clad in a pink tee shirt, a long, cotton skirt and a brimmed straw hat. The acute curve of her figure, small firm buttocks and thighs, the soles of her bare feet, grubby with dirt, kneeling on a sack or a cast off piece of cloth to keep her skirt clean, were the first things Caroline, Dwight and Hugh noticed as they approached. At their foot fall, of the leaves and plants of the wooded floor of the mountainside crushed under foot, she turned with a smile and the image of Dem in the midst of her sun soaked garden became a potent memory of the mind's eye. Imprinted there for Dwight said in a cheerful command, "Watch the birdie!" And took a picture with his camera. That photo later became the image which held the memory and lay safe in their minds as she stood to greet them. The skirt's hem strove to meet her ankles and showed crinkles where she had rested her weight on it from being crimped and gathered at the backs of her knees as the skirt unraveled itself back down. The shade of the hat's brim did serve to protect Dem from the strong sun and heightened what light sparkled at her eyes, inherently. "Hello! Ross is by the river. Oooh! What have you brought!?" asked Dem happy to see their new acquaintances again, curiosity peaked by the hint of a green glass wine bottle neck poking from Caroline's basket. "Hello, Dem! An honest loaf of bread, some cheese and a bottle of wine. I expect the tomatoes to shine their own magic and not be in need of frippery!" grinned Caroline. Hugh walked forward, taking a deep breath of sun soaked plants and each of their scents becoming a dreamy perfume. Eyes closed, chin lifted in a sort of reverie as he spoke, "Little flower, but if I could understand, what you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is..." He blinked his eyes open with a warm smile, mirrored by all in an admiration of his penchant for verse. "Good day, Mrs. Poldark," smiled Hugh. "Each time I visit the folly I feel that much closer to nature!" Dem giggled. "There's surely enough nature about! You'll find Ross by the river," She extended her hand to Caroline who met her to take it with the eager happiness of a friend, stepping into the soft soil of Dem's garden plot. It was a difference in texture she could feel through the sole of her canvas shoe. "We can choose our tomatoes while Dwight and Hugh collect Ross. We'll lay the table and have a feast!" said Dem, happily. This was agreed to and pressed into service with some extra buckets the gentleman went to find Ross, walking down the slope of meadow behind the folly and Garrick joined them with a friendly bark and the contentment of having more humans to play with.

Ross was at the tail end of the very serious and hot business of boiling clean their household rags. Having boiled the cloths they used to clean and dry dishes as well as the stout cloths that aided their chores, he turned to the ones they used to wipe clean Desdemona's udders and rub down Seamus. There was another fire pit closer to the folly but the fire by the river allowed them to boil and scald things clean with less water carrying, working at the source so to speak. He turned at Garrick's barking and then waved to see Dwight and Hugh close at heel to the excitable dog. "Hello!" cried Ross, still some yards from them. The fire was strong in its pit under a metal grate that held a blacked pot not unlike a witch's cauldron in a storybook. The tree nearest to Ross was strewn with drying towels and cloths that had been pulled from the boiling water with tongs. Having cooled enough to handle, Ross was wringing them free of excess water at the river's edge and flapping them out as he walked back to the tree festooned with their fellows, to unfurl them, hang them, to dry properly along branches and a proper clothesline strung between two trees. Ross approached the tree. He was grinning and sweaty and a bit shy, apologetic. "I'm skivvying at the moment, you may want to keep a wide berth!" joked Ross. "Do you need a hand, Ross?" asked Dwight. Ross' grin remained unchanged as he put more effort into readying the towel in his hands for drying, as if he was trying to flag down a car for a ride. "I'm nearly done but I have to have a dip! I'd not greet Caroline in this condition!" He gestured to himself, top to toe, clad in jeans alone but referring to his perspiring, grubby state rather than his state of dress. Ross did have the sharp odor of the unwashed about him. It was hot work and dealing with the fire and boiling water was more safely accomplished with his legs covered in denim and in grungy looking plimsolls. "I need a wash!" smiled Ross. Hugh put the bucket he was holding down and pulled his shirt off, speaking in a muffle as it went over his face. "We've towels and the ladies are gardening! We'll not be missed for a dip!" Dwight set his bucket down and left his camera hanging safe and out of the way, by its strap, on another branch away from the wet things and kicked off his shoes. The river was more bracing than the placid, sun soaked swimming hole. The energetic flow of the water promised a vigorous, dousing refreshment and a bit of challenge at the same time. Ross nodded, eagerly. "It's deeper further on! Jump in! I have to put out the fire and bathe, I'll catch you up!"

Upon close inspection, the prettiest three tomatoes were procured. One bright red, one with a tender edge of green still evident on one side and one a strange heirloom, archaic and regal, colours of deep maroon to purple/black burnishing its underside. Caroline marveled not only at the visual differences between them but the warmth of the sun that emanated from the one she held, like a beacon in her hand and the scent of a fresh, ripe tomato so far removed from a wan, pale red slice that might garnish a fresh salad plate in England where even the best establishments had produce nowhere near this quality. Dem, an avid gardener, smiled like a proud parent. "They're something else aren't they!" said Dem. "I never saw tomatoes like that before! Wait til you taste it!" Caroline nodded eagerly in the strange position of being the older of the two but in the thrall of Dem's superior talents within the mysterious world of her garden and home. Dem, so relaxed and happy, possessed skills that were arcane to Caroline. The girl was so at ease with her plants and her life up here with her animals and her husband. Ross was a scant year older than Dem. The pair were so young, not only in their age but their attitude. The contented way they worked at their chores and conducted the life they seemed so happy to lead up here; such hard, physical work in a modest shelter with no modern conveniences, was born of an optimism that was pure. All the things that gave the grownups pause in this rustic life were absorbed by Ross and Dem in a spirit of adventure, a rightness in their way of living performed with a verve that commended it as nearly perfect to the outsider's eye. Two kids surviving rough on the streets of Europe finding solace in embracing a stringent life of what seemed like difficulties in modernity's promise of ease, but a cherished paradise for the Poldarks; two dollhouse dolls in their portion of Eden. So happy to have a home, a roof over their head, the home itself so modest yet a palace of pleasure. A disused fountain bed, marred here and there with cracked tiles, was a stately courtyard. The river, their lifeline in providing them water, their boon, the place where the could manage their life with their animals, wash their belongings and themselves. The land itself, vast and wild, fed them and their animals and gave them joy. Joy in the freedom to be, simply be. Safe and sheltered in such a natural beauty. Eating the vegetables that Dem grew herself, eggs from the three chickens who clucked and puttered about by their homely wooden coop, fruit that grew wild here abouts, augmented from trips to town for groceries to aid their meals. Two who had gone back to the land and were so happy in it, so genuinely able to make a go of it! Thrive upon the land. Caroline could admit she'd not have the skill to feed herself in the midst of a wild canyon. The tomato felt warm in her hand and smelled delicious in this pretty place where even a trio of tomatoes was a promise of happiness.

The dim, cool interior of the folly felt lovely this summer's day. The Poldarks had mused aloud that they initially looked to shelter themselves in a cave. The folly had the suggestion of such in its protection from the summer sun as one left the bright outdoors and entered the shaded cool of the structure, catching what breezes were there to enjoy from the windows, even one glowing light at the edges of the velvet curtain that secreted their bed. Candles in their sturdy glass columns burned a flickering romance in various parts of the little house. Caroline paused to allow Tabitha Bethia to rub at her ankles in greeting and release their guest forward towards the cast iron stove that denoted the kitchen as the cat leaped to a shelf and made herself comfortable among small piles of paperbacks. A table, low to the floor in the oriental manner, dark stained, glossy wood was the place where the Poldarks' dined. Dem and Caroline moved it a bit from the daybed that they may all sit round it at the floor and eat. Caroline was again struck by the delight of laying the table in beautiful, antique plate and cutlery in this rustic little dreamworld. Thick walled wine glasses with sturdy squat stems and a wide pedestal foot, able to withstand casual use and yet be so elegant. Gilt edged plates that glimmered in the candlelight. Linen napkins that were soft as gauze from being strong enough to be washed in the river and tempered by it too, old effects of high quality gracing the Poldarks' home in a rightness here. Dem and Ross swept their little house clean each day and the windows aired the home with a fresh breeze that teased the candles constantly but rarely blew them out. Sunlight aimed its slanting rays through the window in a wedge of light, a bright concentration that was golden where it fell but still left the far edges of the folly dim. The candles shone as winking stars and the shadows through the glass gave a hushed calm like a church as the birds beyond sang and the leaves rattled in the wind. They lay the table for five, sliced the bread, the cheese. They stood side by side at a small table by the stove, preparing the rustic meal in cheerful conversation. Choosing the plates from the wardrobe, wielding knives upon the sturdy wooden table among the modest shelves of kitchenware and pots and pans hanging from hooks, pegs to hold item, clusters of needful things on the shelves like salt and pepper, onions and garlic, Caroline really did feel like she was in a play house and a real one simultaneously. Dem sliced the tomatoes and lay them, thick and glistening on a platter then Caroline put them in a pride of place at the center of the dining table with all the importance and grandeur of a Sunday roast. Bright green basil lay in a tossed pile in a shallow terra cotta dish, the cheese and bread lay on platters of their own, encircled in floral motifs, scalloped gilt edges. The bottle of wine and its attendant corkscrew, and the wine glasses standing sentry at each plate reflected the light of the candles, static and unmoving in themselves but alive with light and shadow. Five bright cushions inviting a comfortable seat in a casual scatter on the floor. Dem and Caroline took time to admire their handiwork and then considered the fact that the gentlemen had yet to return. "They can't have gotten lost..." said Caroline. Dem lay linen napkins over the food and they left the folly in search of their gentlemen.

Ross, having retrieved the soap and gotten himself a good scrubbing, put it back in its crevice and joined Hugh and Dwight who were further on in deeper waters where they could swim rather than simply stand waist deep where it was shallow. Garrick, secure that his friends were entertained had gone off to play as Desdemona hovered equidistant to the river and the folly munching on grass. She could just be seen through the trees. Caroline laughed to see them at play having quite forgotten their meal. Dwight and Hugh had come prepared with their swimming trunks but Ross was stripped bare. From a distance he looked like a flash of light, the water pierced by his nude form, the same way as the colours of Hugh and Dwight's shorts could be seen in the river's rippled distortion. She then noticed Dwight's camera hanging from a tree branch and went to take it for her own stab at photography. Dem noted Ross' cut offs, waiting on a tree branch, his jeans soaking wet at the clothesline. They had probably gotten the worse for wear from the heat of the fire as well as the sun. Caroline put the camera strap around her neck and walked along the bank. "Tread water!" Caroline called out. "I want a picture!" Ross turned at her voice and laughed. The change of direction, flapping arms and the suggestion of moving legs and flesh beneath the water. He waved to them both. "We needn't tread water! Look!" said Ross. They had been swimming in the river but the riverbed was not so deep they couldn't stand up. Ross stood, water rushing past, just beneath his shoulders, and Dwight swam to meet him smiling at Caroline at the bank with Hugh making up the rear. "Steady now! No jostling the camera about!" teased Dwight. Caroline rolled her eyes. "That was only the once! My hand is steady as anything now!" she complained in mock annoyance. Hugh, struck with silliness, did a head stand so the first picture featured two feet sticking out of the water between Ross and Dwight who were turned laughing at them. After Hugh emerged properly, shaking his head and hair enough like Garrick to make Dem laugh, Caroline snapped her intended holiday snap and felt happy for the drollery of the first attempt. They walked back to the folly, the men having dried themselves and piqued Garrick's interest, returning to the riverbank to have a tremendous, fast moving game of fetch shaded by 'Keep Away'. A bracing challenge in darting to and fro to catch a stick, tossed from person to person as they all made their way back to the folly; to Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love in her pretty skirt, stamping through the meadow in her bare feet with the hardy confidence of one being very used to wearing no shoes, flicked to Dwight with a towel round his neck, restored to his proper trousers but his shirt still in hand, onward to Caroline who twirled in her sundress like a ropewalker at a circus as she pranced about the meadow with the stick poised over her head raising Garrick to the highest excitement before she tossed it to Hugh who dried himself in truth (save his damp hair) and was restored to a crisp white polo shirt and green trousers, his leather sole loafers poor climbing gear but, thankfully, not so slippy to cause injury, standing still in the grass as the others walked forward cheering the dog on as Garrick leaped around Hugh, waiting to see where the stick would go. And on to Ross, in clean cut off jeans and down at heel sneakers, tidy and smelling of poppy flowers rather than toil over a bubbling pot and a hot fire. He threw it forward and it landed on the grass to applause as Garrick picked it up with his teeth and trotted back to Ross like a conquering hero. "Good boy, Garrick!" said Ross with a heartfelt wack on the flanks. They made their way to the folly. Dwight caught Caroline up from behind and swung her a merry swirl, of smiles and floral print dress, and set her back down in the sort of tangled fingers and close embrace of two who were intimate, walking on with his arm round her shoulders and a kiss stolen for good measure. Garrick made up ground and Caroline found herself escorted back to the folly by two admirers. Content that their guests had been restored to the house, Garrick fell back to pace about the others and run back down the meadow to see what other adventures might be had this afternoon. Ross chuckled at the sight. "I have to think the rabbits have sussed Garrick out by now! I think they engage him under the thrill of sport rather than, oh!" he exclaimed. They all turned to look at him. "We've forgotten the buckets! We shall need water..." said Ross in dismay. The gents looked among themselves with chagrin. They had a fine romp in the river and left the buckets quite abandoned by the clothesline. Gracing the three of them with a half smile of reprimand, Dem made a despairing gesture with her hand. "That's true, but if we send you out again you must promise to return, the poor tomatoes are lonesome!" Charged with the responsibility of returning in a timely manner, Ross led Dwight and Hugh back to get the buckets. Dem and Caroline awaited their return with Tabitha Bethia who had preferred to nap in their absence. A wet outline of tomato slices soaked into the linen napkin that covered them. "I hope they are alright! Maybe we should have waited to slice them..." Caroline nodded sagely. "Not to worry, Dem. I'm sure they'll be lovely."

"Use your hips, Hugh! Not your back!" said Ross amused to be the teacher in this enterprise. Hugh knit his brows. "What?" Hugh regarded his body as if his hips should know to be independent. Dwight chuckled. "He means you're bent forward. You have to stand to pick it up, from the knees to your hips. Not pull up from your back" There was a short demonstration on both Dwight and Ross' part and Hugh pouted an annoyance as he worked to mimic them. "How is it you know how to pick up water buckets?" ask Hugh doing his best to lead with his hips without succumbing to the tempting relief of meeting the weight by leaning over. Dwight shrugged. "I don't, really, but lifting anything your back should not bear the brunt of the weight, you lift with your legs," he said with a medical authority. "Or hips!" Ross chimed in with a sunny smile. Dwight knit his brows much as Hugh had done as they each slowly carried a bucket of water back to the folly. "I admit I've not heard it expressed that way before." said Dwight thoughtfully. "Where did you learn this, Ross? Who taught it to you?" Ross, watching his step as they made their way back seemed to look even younger, smiling from one to the other of his friends. "We were fruit pickers," explained Ross with an unthinking mention of Dem in answer to hearing Dwight say 'you'. Not registering it as singular, the casual proof of their couplehood far predating their marriage. "Well, not just fruit," continued Ross. "A bit of everything really! The others told us to use our hips to stand, bring your whole self up as your knees brought you up. Not to bend at the waist, not to use your back..." Dwight listened and pondered it a bit. 'Use your hips...' The command taught the same careful lift he had come to know, guarding one's back even as the knees assisted by not placing the emphasis there, at the knees, as he had heard it told. Dwight brightened in a sudden epiphany. "Were they women?" he asked. Ross looked to Dwight in surprise as he realized that was so. "Yes!" They were nearly at their destination. "You were given very good training, Ross" said Dwight. "It certainly served you even as you are male! I don't think men would think to explain it that way but, physically, it is the same instructions."

Water secured, and the amusement of finding a minnow along for the ride in Dwight's bucket, Hugh and Dwight joined Caroline at the table as Ross and Dem poured portions out among various basins to allow their guests to wash their hands; to allow for tidying up after. Ross managed to pour the rest of Dwight's contribution, minnow and all, into a glass jar to restore the fish to the river later and came to the table as Ross sat upon a cushion near Hugh with an unceremonious plunk and Dem presided over the table, kneeling forward to catch up all the linen napkins, one after the other like a conjurer. "Ahhhhh..." At once, the aroma of tomato, basil, the sharp scent of cheese, the bread bringing forth its fresh baked glory. A meal to tempt the eye and the palate as Dem smiled at everyone's anticipation. The lady of the house poured wine, having helpfully been opened with a corkscrew by Hugh, who took pains to remind the group that he had bore the weight of the task with his hips to much merriment. The bread became a versatile conduit for many different taste sensations. The soft flesh of the tomato; acid yet sweet. Pulp but a fibrous feeling in it as one chewed, a webbing of wet jell that held small seeds in their places and crunched. The taste of Positano sunlight darkened red and maroon and freshened by the bare edge of light green, against sharp cheese, in harmonious bliss with leaves of fresh basil, crowning fresh bread and paired with a wine who's rustic charm and rich flavour commended it as regal. Among flickering candles and lively talk, the Poldarks entertained their friends on a summer's afternoon and they ate up everything in an unhurried enjoyment. They washed their hands and walked the feast off to visit the raspberry canes beyond the meadow and plucked their afters from the plants themselves, walking back with a handful each and taking their time. Time to feel the sun upon them, and feel it hazed by moving shadow by the cover of trees overhead. To hear birds sing, to admire the distant vista of Seamus grazing further on near a hayfield that still shivered tall, fringe tipped, green stalks to meet the sun. To hear Desdemona low a 'mooooo', as if she had reminded herself of something in her ruminations. And see Garrick content in his play in the meadow, as happy among humans, wildlife or entertaining himself. "I do think Garrick may be the most cheerful dog I've had the pleasure to meet!" mused Hugh. Dem smiled a cryptic comment. "It's not in his nature to go under..." said Dem.

Ross and Dem walked their friends back to the folly. They promised to dine with the Enyses the next night and Hugh promised to bring the latest issue of 'Du' with him, a Swiss arts magazine with many articles of both contemporary topics and antiquities. The grownups had come to enjoy the Poldarks' opinions about art and culture in general for even topics and artists they were unfamiliar with brought forth from the young couple very reasoned critique and ideas. The sun, still golden but a softer heat than the height of the late morning set their guests on their way, accompanied not only by Ross, Demelza and Garrick but foxes and deer and birds and tiny voles, butterflies and serene, fat, furry bumblebees humming their absent minded commentary as they supped at their flowers, hovered from place to place in a languid amble. Slender honeybees, deft and quick at their pollen gathering in a more sophisticated silence. All of nature seemed to absorb Hugh and Dwight and Caroline as nature too. An idea so close to the touch, so nearly real here, that man in the need for progress could still claim nature as a birthright, if they could only find the will to loosen grasp upon needing to be engines of a threatening modernity. For every war machine, there was a poet. For every sorrow, there was a song. The balance between man and nature was fraught, fought for and dearly bought, in perpetual flux but somehow, walking this trail, surrounded by trees and cliffs in a majesty, among animals living within their world, realizing it to be interconnected, our world, gave the Enyses and Hugh an awed sense of themselves as tiny cogs in a magnificent apparatus that might have even been dreamt up by an omnipresent god but even if it was simply a cosmic accident the reality of nature all around them was a wonder to behold.

The car was visible through the trees. The basket, holding the empty wine bottle, a small clutch of kitchen knives and two beautiful tomatoes each for the Enyses and Hugh to take away with them. The modest garden produced enough that the Poldarks had no hesitation in giving some to their friends. The grownups met them half way. Ross and Dem were tucked away by themselves in a valley surrounded by the beauty of nature but very much alone. They felt their hosts' generosity did them credit but the Poldarks should keep hold of as much as they had for themselves. All their worldly wealth lay in a beaten up guitar case, funds quietly being depleted. The golden summer would turn to autumn and then winter. The garden would lay dormant until spring and Ross and Dem would have to rely on what they could put up on their own, the continued survival of their chickens and what foodstuffs they purchased in the town below. That struck Caroline in particular as a precarious situation for the couple, more so after Hugh mentioned his concern that the Poldarks not be in the folly at all in the cold weather. Four tomatoes were little enough and well regarded after having tasted the others but it seemed to emphasize the fact Ross and Dem had very little to begin with. They were hard working and enjoyed their home but how was the wintertime to be borne? Hugh, having experienced bringing one bucket of water up the hill found it distressing to consider the two of them performing that vital chore in wintertime. They had no way of storing water for themselves let alone their animals. However difficult the weather they would have to haul water back from the river each day for their very survival. As they took their leave, with smiles and chattering plans for more fun as the summer continued Hugh and the Enyses kept that worm of discontent at bay, pushed it to one side, quieted its serious questions. There was time enough to meet the Poldarks where they lived, quite literally. To join them in their own world so unstintingly shared in a spirit of friendship. To let them have the Eden as the Poldarks had contrived it from the sweat of their brow and the creativity of their artistic sensibilities, untarnished by doubt and cold reason. Let the golden summer spool forward and let the conservative modes of living and doing stay out of it for a time. They would discuss those concerns and work out solutions for their young friends, later...

Hand in hand, the Poldarks returned up the trail to their homestead. Feeling loose and easy in the delicious feeling of having drunk just enough wine but not too much. Bouyed by the happiness of being able to host their friends, a strong impetus and priority in those who dwelled on the street. Friendship was currency when you had little else that was tangible. As modest as one may be there was always a way to share something and help build connections with others in a very often wicked world. Ross and Dem had found respite from the hard edges of life up here in their own home, five years theirs by lease and safe together in their dear little house and could share it with good friends too. What a blessing. Ross brought Seamus back to the stable and whistled as he worked. Dem led Desdemona back from grazing with Garrick telling them both of this days exploits as he panted and barked and seemed to make himself well understood to a human and a cow who appreciated having a friend in the dog. Shadows began to lengthen. The chores were performed. One final chore, before they returned to the folly for the night. Dwight's minnow was restored to the river. Dem set the glass jar into the river and the little fish was drawn back into its natural surroundings, back where it belonged and resuming its part in the web of connection that bound creatures as disparate as a minnow, inadvertently snared in a bucket, a cow perceived to be at the end of her use, a dog perceived to be expendable, a horse who found itself compelled to live a life of leisure among them and the two humans who might well be as disregarded as cast offs too. Two who made their own rules and then created their own world, a safety within their own edenic dreamworld, safe from the true outer world other people were so content to live in as "real" and had failed them both repeatedly. The Poldarks made their way back to the folly, Dem holding a glass jar, now empty, Ross holding her free hand in a contentment. Back to their own world in which the life of a minnow was as precious as a stray dog, a cow, a horse, three chickens and a cat who didn't mind sharing her lodgings with all of them in her funny little "house" on a hill. On the trailing edge of a summer's evening in Positano, as the sun began to set among gilded clouds of orange/purple/pink as a midnight blue shot bright with starlight loomed. Over a quiet place that was theirs.

Chapter Text

"There was a calendar hanging in the grocery store today. It's the 23rd. It would be bonfire night tonight..." murmured Ross, sleepily. Dem turned her head towards him in surprised confusion. "That's November, not June! Guy Fawkes is," A shaking of the bed indicated that Ross was laughing. "There's a Bonfire Night for Guy Fawkes, and that is in November. In June it's for St. John, but maybe that's a farm tradition, country tradition..." he yawned and snuggled a bit closer, talking at her collarbone. "Midsummer is between planting and harvest..." said Ross, absently. Dem blinked in the dim light. There were only a couple candles in their glass columns burning overnight, and the one illuminating the Madonna statue. Enough light to see but not strong. She knit her brows. "I know of May Day, we marched in it for school, but I never heard of midsummer." Ross kissed her shoulder. "We had May Day too." said Ross. "Midsummer wouldn't make sense in a town, in a city. It's probably a way of getting rid of scrub and plants, waste from clearing wood away and burning it. Rural. But there were fireworks too." he added. Dem giggled. "You're a farm boy!" teased Dem. Ross grinned, "You're a city slicker," teased Ross. "But you certainly manage a garden better than ever I could!" They lay quiet for a time. "Was it one big fire or did all the farms have their own?" asked Dem. "It was one big one. Jud said they used to burn them so you could see the lights on the cliffs for miles. Each one for their area. He said if you were on the sea you even could see Kit Hill, tiny, like a matchhead but it was there, and that's practically Devon! We had a good sized one near Wheal Maiden. That was the highest point." Dem frowned again. "Wheel Maiden? Did they drive carts?" Ross smiled. "That's a mine. You had 'wheal' and then whatever the mine's name was. Papa had said he knew Mama was 'the one' right when they met because he danced with her and then asked her name and it was Grace. Our house was built out from our ancestor's copper mine, Wheal Grace." Ross seemed to look past the walls of the room. "Papa took it for a sign. She was beautiful and she danced with him and when she said her name was Grace he said he knew it was meant to be." Dem looked at him sharply. Ross' eyes had softened, past the walls of the folly. He was seeing some other vision or memory, or the love of his parents writ large in his mind's eye. He felt the change in her, looking at him. "What?" asked Ross. Dem smiled. "You are the most romantic boy in the world." she said with conviction. Ross chuckled a bit, looked a bit bashful. He ducked his chin, happy to be declared 'the most romantic boy in the world'. Papa had chided him in one of Ross' more disgruntled moods, telling his son, in the sort of amused show of being older and therefore wiser that so often irritated the young, that cynics were actually disappointed romantics trying to guard their own heart. Ross had rolled his eyes and stamped off away. But Papa had clocked him then, seen him, understanding the shadow in his son's discontent, perhaps because it mirrored his own. Finding the soft underbelly of Ross' grumpy rebellion, and told him so, half teasing, half sympathy. Even Papa's sympathy held a tart bite of vinegar in it but he had pronounced Ross a romantic too. That two such different people who loomed so large in his heart came to a similar conclusion made Ross feel humble. Dem let her hand rest at his hair very smitten with her husband at this moment, the gilt sparkle of the chain that held his wedding ring glinting in the candles bobbling light beneath his neck. The wandering musician who enticed her away to what many people might, even rightly, condemn as a life of squalor, vagabondage and living hand to mouth.They had known hard times and danger together but there was happiness too. There were happinesses in her life she had not understood until they were on her. Of music and companionship. Of art and ideas. Of someone to share with and be friends with and know that she could trust someone in this big wide world. To love and trust and be understood, to say things and be heard, understood in a look, in a gesture. To make music and sing. To know what it is to be a true partner, to have a true partner. To be asked, "Will you come?" through an iron fence and the blinking eye watching her, through the fence and weeds and the forelock of hair that forever seemed to claim its home over Ross' eye. To be asked, "Will you marry me?" on a cold winter's day among painted swans on a merry go round. This gentle boy who promised to remain at her side. Their life on the road gave Dem so many joys. Her soul had blossomed under them. How much happiness did she owe solely to this dark eyed boy in her arms with his smiles and friendship and kind ways? She could never count them all. He felt for her hand and held her hand up to the side of his face. After a few moments she said, "Are you listening for something?" He smiled drowsily. "Yes. I am listening for something," said Ross. "The beat of your heart." She grinned. A current of air toyed with the votive nearest the bed as the other two burned on. The flicker could be seen upon her face. "That’s not the best place to listen." said Dem. He bent slowly and put his head under her left breast. "It’s still there." Ross said quietly. He released her hand and took her breast in his fingers. Dem's heartbeat. It pulsed in time with his, if not in reality in spirit. Ross felt the sleepy feeling of calm turn to an alertness of their bodies. Her breast near, his forefinger near. His tongue darted out to tease her, taste her. He might never get enough. Never be sated. Dem was endlessly fascinating. "The candle’s going out," she said. Ross toyed with her nipple, traced it with his forefinger, licked at it gently with a pointed tongue. She murmured an approval and the drowsiness sharpened to a lazy desire. "I know. Does it matter?" She captured his legs with her own to a sigh of pleasure, coaxing pleasure from the sensitive, secretive places that they rendered up to each other in trust and love and anticipation. The flame fluttered and went out. Now the light of the Madonna and the candle on the far side of the room valiantly lit a wan outline of their bodies. "Nothing matters but you," she said.

"Was it just everybody's trimming and things? Did they build it up at once, on purpose, or let it pile up over time?" asked Dem. She was watering her garden, ladling water from the red plastic bucket that had been a housewarming gift from their friends, stopping here and there to pull away snails, to scrutinize under leaves looking to pluck away ones harbouring mysterious little crowds of perfectly spherical teeny eggs, left underneath by enterprising insects. "Let what pile up?" asked Ross washing the breakfast things between two basins in the grass as Tabitha Bethia sunned herself between them, at the edge of the fountain bed, sated by a plump mouse and lazing like the Queen of Sheba. Dem lifted her chin a bit, looking up from her work. "The bonfire, the midsummer one." Ross chuckled. "When I was little I think they did just carry the stuff and leave it to get dry but one year they turned the edges of it, so it would stay dry, not rot, and they found scores of mice! After that they kept closer to the day itself so it wouldn't get vermin. Tabitha Bethia would have been in clover, it was awful!" Dem looked up again. "You saw them find the mice?" Ross set another plate aside. "Yes, I never heard Jud swear so! The ground was moving with them. Papa called over two more neighbors to help," "Help?" asked Dem. Ross wrung water out of his rag over the basin to make it less wet to scrub another dish. "They had to get rid of them or else they'd've roasted mice!" He shuddered at the memory, being shorter and closer to the ground, as it were. With his dislike of killing he had quickly absented himself, going back to the house and plying homemade biscuits from Prudie in the kitchen as a consoling restorative. "They put potatoes in the embers at the end, after the fire sank in, burned down, but they didn't do it that year!" chuckled Ross. "We should do that!" said Dem in a sudden inspiration. Ross perked up at that. "Potatoes?!" Ross just about licked his lips at the thought. Dem laughed. "A bonfire!" Ross, stodgy in some of his thinking sometimes said, "But that was yesterday!" Dem crinkled her eyes in amusement. "Well, it's still sort of Midsummer! We have the fire pit anyway," Ross thought it through. "Either pit is too near trees to have a proper big one," he mused. Dem shrugged, unconcerned, a plastic bucket dangling from her hand and a tin ladle in the other, standing barefoot in her garden. Ross smiled, anticipating her wanting a little fire if a big one wouldn't do. Not backing down, wanting a fire of some sort. She was a darling. "So we'll have a baby bonfire! And potatoes at least!" said Dem. Ross grinned. "Is that a 'yes'?" asked Dem, not understanding Ross' amusement. "Yes! It's a 'yes'," smiled Ross. "We shall have our own midsummer and you shall be my Lady of Flowers!" Dem grinned the sort of smile when joy is infectious but you don't quite know why. "What's that?" asked Dem stepping out of her plot. Ross disappeared around the whitewashed wall and flung the used basin of dishwater away, out among the clump of trees that would soon absorb it. He returned and set the basin on its edge at the wall to dry. He crouched over Tabitha Bethia and compelled her to purr by stroking her neck and she stretched her enjoyment. He smiled over the success of his attention to her as he explained. "As the fire got going a lady would throw herbs and things in the fire, and chant and the fire would get going higher. Dem was enchanted. "It was magic?" she asked, eagerly. Ross shrugged. "It was a bonfire. It felt like magic, though. I think it was for luck. Prudie and Mama said good and bad plants were burnt. Burnt together. There had to be light and dark." Dem blinked a comprehension. "Like life..." Ross nodded. "Like life. The smooth and the rough," said Ross standing up leaving the cat in a blissful stupor. "You shall be the Lady and wear a crown of flowers!" decreed Ross. Dem laughed. "That's easier to wear than a crown of potatoes!" Ross bent double. "Hahahahaha!"

The dusk was tinged purple and a streak of red this night not orange. The glow of the setting sun and necessary for they did not have the benefit of artificial light in the valley. Starlight was enough to see by, a wondrous blue glow that was bright. They needed the edge of the sun to complete their work. The chickens were given a handful of almond meal, scattered with their corn, for a treat. Seamus had a holiday meal of oatmeal mash and Garrick was supplied with a meaty bone from the butcher. Tabitha Bethia kept to mice as a symmetry to past Midsummers but was given the present of some l’erba gatta for her recreation. Desdemona was given a garnish of as many buttercups to her hay as Ross and Dem could gather. She was grateful, and greedy for she lurched forward and tried to nibble Dem's flower crown to much merriment. With some quick repairs the crown was restored and Dem put a cornflower over her husband's ear. If it was she who was Lady of the Flowers, the Lady had chosen her consort. They brought out a lantern, to keep by them at the fire. They set white votive candles in washtubs, here and there. They held the light like beacons, like a path, to the fire pit. They flickered light and insured that a stiff wind or inadvertent accident would keep them from setting the grass alight and help them back to the folly in the dark of night. Garrick joined them for a bit but knowing their mating habits, noticing the distraction between them, seeing them stare at each other that way, Garrick took his leave after Ross lay his guitar to the side. They watched him trot back to the folly.

"Garrick's gone to bed..." said Ross, the firelight showing the cornflower so blue at his ear. Dem poked her potato with a stick. "How long do they stay, Ross? It doesn't feel soft," Ross shrugged. "I'm not sure but they have to get soft. Plenty of people hopped about with a gasp or a cry about getting a burnt mouth for their trouble and their potato was still half raw!" She giggled. Ross stared. Dem's flower crown and bright eyes. She looked so beautiful. "What?" asked Dem gently. Ross shook his head in admiration. "You." She giggled. "It must be the fire," she teased. Ross grinned. "It must..." She blinked affection. "The firelight makes you pretty too," said Dem. They agreed that they were in possession of a pretty spouse and then looked at the fire. It was not particularly different from their regular one but the both felt it to be special. Magical. With Garrick sitting near as a spectator, Ross and Dem tossed meadow flowers for "good" ivy, brambles and nettles for "bad" and they smoked and burnt up quickly. Ross mumbled a bit of doggerel that was half remembered and not quite proper but sounded magical and authoritative and Cornish. The fire died down to a modest glow and the potatoes were set in the embers. They sang as the waited for them to cook. Ross played guitar and Dem harmonized with him as they watched each other in the firelight, under the stars side by side by their magical fire. Garrick returned to the folly. The potatoes were prodded and poked and stubborn in their resistance to getting themselves toothsome. Dem looked to the folly. The washtubs glowed their path. The trees rustled. Owls could be heard. The stars were endless. It was pretty tonight. They had made it so. The glamour of light and flowers that were ever present in their life but so bewitching at this moment. Dem lay back in the grass and felt her crown slide off of her head. "Oops," Ross turned to look at her in the firelight, slender legged and a man's shirt, sleeves rolled up at the elbow and her pretty arms. The flowers sliding off her head. She reached for it, the pretty rise and fall of the light at her neck as she turned to restore her wreath. "No, leave it," he said. He pounced upon her in the firelight, under the stars, he made love to his wife. Consort to the Lady of the Flowers; soft and yielding, her mouth, her sex, taut and hard, his lust, his sex, they joined within a magic spell and Ross had a moment of unspoiled satisfaction. He received love and gave it in equal and generous measure.

They dozed and then woke. An ache from lying upon the bent back zipper of Ross' jeans, straggled half off, one leg dragged out, annoyed him enough to remove them entirely. He rubbed at the impression the teeth of the zipper's edge had pressed into his skin for an attempt at relief from feeling it peel away, grimacing at the indignity of it, trying to make it feel better after being so lodged against his skin in his sleep but it so resembled masturbation in the firelight and the light of the lantern, Dem laughed like a drain. "Here, let me help you," Ross' eyes turned to her, head turned the barest bit, surprised she was awake, watching her rise on her knees to kneel by him. Ross lay on his back feeling Dem experimentally test the impression of the zipper. She ran a finger at his hip, near enough to his groin to tease. A chain of little divots, pressed in a waning line. "Ahhh!" Her hand grazed him and coaxed his cry of anticipation. She watched him in the fire light at his side. Yellow. Orange. The lantern light as a pale yellow edge at his hair. The bluish starlight across them both. He lay his forearm across his eyes, lips parted, the consort and at her mercy. The Lady of the Flowers. Her crown lay in the grass nearby, glowing in the half light of the fire. The cornflower was still tucked at Ross' ear but hidden behind his elbow now. "Dem... Oh, Dem..." It was play. It was power. He awaited her attention, suddenly pulling his arm aside, staring at himself. Dem's half smile of amazement as they watched his erection strain towards her. Was it a trick of the firelight or was he at the highest state of excitement they had ever seen? Was this the magic of Midsummer? The unlocked will of all those pagan spirits that snickered a mischief behind the attempts of the Christian church to obscure them? The flash of a smile, lit by the fire as she bent down and tasted him, already scented from her. Iron in a velvet glove. A jolt of pleasure from it that made Ross shudder and beg. "Oh Dem... Oh god, Dem... That's so good!" Wet and hot and driving him mad. "So good! Oh god! Ride me, Sweetness! Ahhh!" Dem needed no more inducement. She situated herself so quickly upon Ross they both gasped. Birds call in the night and meet for assignations, fireflies fuck in the meadow. They wink their lights and entertain their lovers. Toads croak and call and the males leap upon the females in a grip of passion so desperate they sometimes risk drowning in shallow water. Foxes cry. Wild animals climb upon each other's backs as they all come on heat in a desperation. To struggle in a reverie of need. Needing. To feel that release leave them and know they were that close to death from the pleasure of it, unthinking animals ruled by nature. Overtaken. Irrepressible. Blameless. It could not be stopped, halted or helped. Humans try to tame it, through rules, through taboos, through laws, through shame. Animals are closer to natural. Humans, through ritual, they tried to control that power but even humans have their limits. What was Midsummer? Hidden behind the thin excuse of Saint John the Baptist? A bonfire? Yes. Potatoes? Yes. Fireworks? Yes. Food and drink, dancing. Yes. But also the implicit permission of a pagan rite. To cast away the skin of civilization and become animals, in the hay, in the water, any useful bed. Down on the grass, upon this grass, was a gripping, all encompassing lust that shivered a rising bliss from every blood cell heeding that call. Could anything stop it once it started? Who would dare stop it once it started? How could you when two were speared through as one, tingling from throbbing excitement and a rocking delight, subsumed by scents they know to be theirs, the incense of lust wafting up from sliding glans, slickened and thickened, shivering and shaking from the promise of releasing the power surging through every pore, reduced to unintelligible grunts and fervent oaths. To him. To her. Grasping. Thrusting. Harder. Faster. Lifted from the grass. Pressed into the ground. Knees. Feet. Hands. Mouths. Breath. Twist. Turn. Jolt. A jagged race disintegrating. Nearly crying from the need, almost angry over it, that it, it's nearly there, nearly, nearly there but not there. So close... So close... The soft tip over that Halts. All. Your wife. Your husband. Ross gasped and cried out like a dying man. Maybe his blood raced forth so hard, so hard, he had brought on his own demise and all of his life's source was leaving him. Apply direct pressure to external wounds, maintain pressure until bleeding stops. So close to nature you come in her and on her and all over the grass. Wet skin or wet surfaces can greatly increase the chance of electrocution when electricity is present. So close to god you come upon his cock sliding that last friction in a sudden danger, too wet and not grounded, electrocuted, like being impaled by a Seraphim, wings blazing fire and covered with eyes that all stare at you as your own roll up in your head and you both freeze from every synapse screaming ROSS! SWEETNESS! JUDAS! JESUS! OH LOVE! OH GOD! OH DEM...

It was over. They did not move.

The candles, designed to burn as devotional offerings, were still alight as the sun rose. Garrick darted out into the fresh morning air, grass damp with dew. He sniffed the wash tub and watched the flame. Drew nearer to the fire, gone entirely out. He saw Ross and Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love laying by the firepit. It was clear they were not awake. He skirted them and sniffed the flower crown. Strange goings on last night. The cat was stumbling around as if her legs didn't work right anymore and she slept right in the middle of the floor. Couldn't even get herself to the shelves. Ross had been in an arch sort of heat if the smell of them now was any indication. The chickens were still abed too. Maybe it was a holiday... That bone was like Sunday dinner! Garrick continued to the meadow.

They woke with knowing looks. No strangers to freedom in their valley, often choosing to wander about undressed and take their pleasure wherever the mood struck them, they could both admit it had never been quite like that. Ross, in retrospect, considering things he'd seen and noticed too young to know them for what they were, smiled to realize there had most likely been goings on such as they had enjoyed. Mama and Papa, even Jud and Prudie shared knowing looks throughout the next day that were most likely happy remembrance of goings on. Ross turned in the damp grass to hold Dem in his arms and wish her good morning, roll over her and greet the morning with goings on. Wonderful, but mortal. They could accept that were no longer the silk-mouthed strange gods they had imagined through the Midsummer night but that was probably healthier... They separated after to relieve themselves. They washed their hands at the basin by the firepit. They agreed with a look that they had passed beyond naughty deliciousness and need a wash. They walked to the river, discussing the order of the chores and looking forward to breakfasting upon the potatoes they never managed to eat last night. Their voices were low and warm and confidential. This was the intimacy of pure companionship surrounded by the bright chatter of birds and the happy sight of Garrick in the distance already playing in the meadow. A new morning, a new day, the secret of midsummer between them. His summer queen, her summer consort and their wedding rings shining in the morning light.

Chapter Text

Candles flickered in various parts of the room. The Poldarks purchased oil lamps, hurricane lanterns that gave a steadier light and two were burning on this overcast day. Rain could be heard falling, out in the fountain bed, thruming a rhythm as the raindrops pattered past the trees. Garrick lay on the floor near the wood pile, chewing and wrestling with a length of thick rope. It was nautical rope, two inches thick, knotted in its middle and at each end, a toy of endless possibility for entertainment and an outlet to expend his energy indoors. Tabitha Bethia looked upon this frenzied activity with morbid fascination. Clearly the dog was in heaven but it struck the cat as far too much exertion and rolling about. Indoors on a rainy day was more suited to batting ribbons with ones paw if the humans were of a mind to provide the pastime or contemplation in dignified repose. She turned to watch the humans in the smaller of their two nests, the female working at her drawing, the male in repose with the dignity that so mirrored that of a cat; stillness very like a cat, in a quiet concentration that commended them both to being of a more feline attitude. After a wide mouthed yawn, she left the dog to his own amusement and the humans to their work. Tabitha Bethia turned round twice, to get comfortable, and settled herself for a nap watching the flickering candlelight illuminate the surfaces of the folly until she fell asleep.

Dem had been drawing Ross, lying nude across the daybed in a twist, one hipbone jutting forth and his genitals in repose; shadowed under the hip at the crux of his legs, his long legs. Half hidden, a hairy, crinkled, soft bulge spread beneath, that darkness, of hair, of shadow, accenting what light there was at his cock as it sat forward from that shadow, lit in a plump, retracted modesty. Ross remained still and quiet. He and Dem had learned to hold their pose in an absolute stillness. Even their breath seemed obscured. Ross and Dem, by watching the models Brose hired in his studio, by scrutinizing them as they strove to draw them too, marvelled at the utter stillness some of them were able to bring to their posing as well as effortlessly returning to it after a break, sometimes only needing the barest correction against orienting themselves to Brose's drawing when they resumed. The models were often dancers, actors, artists, students making ends meet from the extra money artists paid for their services. They were never just models, they always had some other iron on the fire, some other goal. Theatrical, talkative people. Brassy Parisians. French born and foreign, male and female, people from the countryside, from far flung places, other countries, like Ross and Dem really, all trying their luck in the City of Light. The transmutation of this ancient place had taken hold within them. The girl from a no account village had become a jaded sophisticate, the tender places within the young man from Algeria, even the very stars in his eyes, had been hardened for battle, lessons learned in the urban labyrinth that hardened his shell by degrees. They were city folk in a way that Ross and Dem were only just on the verge of learning become themselves. They had fallen through a skylight into a sort of incubator. The buskers, no strangers to the perils of the street, had their street education turn away from the trajectory that awaited them under a damp bridge. They could have entered the street at that point and learned the some the hard lessons of survival that some of the models had learned; that money was simple to come by if you closed your eyes, closed off your heart, and let the more nefarious denizens of the world have their wicked way with you. Ross and Dem had been given a reprieve from those harsher lessons of Paris. An apprenticeship of a kind. The commercial artist, when presented with two pieces of flotsam who appeared quite by surprise as he had prepared to leave his studio for the day, only to hear a broad metallic squeak at the back storage room followed by an almighty thump, an "Ow!", hissed whispers as well as shoving objects and murmured instruction as Brose doubled back to turn on the lamp, kept the burglars he'd feared to find when they turned out to be a pair of filthy urchins with a guitar as their only possession. He kept these little cats. He initially dismissed the noise at the skylight as the stray cats that occasionally called to Mimi through the glass panes on their way to wherever on the rooftops of Paris. He looked after them and let them stay with a mind to train them up in their draftsmanship as something to keep them occupied as he worked. Because Ambrose balked at the suggestion that two children roam about the streets as autumn turned to winter, he insisted they not busk in the cold weather but stay in the studio with him instead. To sweeten the incentive, Brose persuaded them they'd not lose income indoors. He would pay them to model as they had come to see others do repeatedly. They would have money to squirrel away for springtime and rent a room when he left this place and his apartment elsewhere to go back to Holland.

Dem sat near, at the floor, leafing through one of Brose's books, lit from above by the lamp that looked like a dreaming lady and Mimi sitting in the seat of the nearby armchair stretched out as elegant as Ingres' concubine both enjoying the warmth of the electric heater Brose had brought nearer to keep Ross warm as he posed. As a tender and soft eyed flower bearer, Ross stood, bent forward a bit at the waist, right hand resting on the little wooden table Brose often used to hold his paints or leave his palette while he was working and the left arm, elbow bent, extended over the back of a wooden chair with a thick blanket draped over it to cushion his wrist. Ross had watched and even drew models Brose paid to hold poses for his assignments and exercises. Now he would try his hand at posing himself. After promising they would remain indoors in the cold weather Ross and Dem had fretted over losing their ongoing busking takings. Ross knew from knocking around on his own before he met Dem that cold weather was feast or famine. Some days people just did not want to take their hands out of their pockets even if they liked the music. Some days they tossed a coin in respect for the tenacity of anyone trying their luck in the cold weather -Well! The poor devil deserves some money for his trouble! They thought. Whether a lot or a little, every bit helped in rebuilding their funds after having their pay from the growers compound stolen in Marseilles. They couldn't hope to make the full sum of money back by busking on street corners but they had to try. Brose suggested they could model for him and he would pay them like any of the other models who came tromping up the stairwell, smelling of cigarettes, of perfume or cologne, full of easy talk, in French, to Brose and able to turn themselves into whatever Brose needed. This day, Ross stood in his y fronts, obedient, behind the screen he and Dem used to dress and bathe as Brose draped and pinned a plain white sheet at his waist. Brose worked carefully not to prick Ross with pins. His hands were dexterous, sure of themselves and scritched a bit where they brushed Ross' skin. Brose had dry and callused fingers that were nimble. He would stop and start, hem and haw, consider how things looked, to arrange the sheet in swooping gathers that mimicked the sort of blousey pantaloons of a clown or an Arabian Nights storybook. By twisting it taut at his waist, by the addition of a shawl, Ross was subtly turning into someone else, a figure of fantasy made real. That was his job. To stand still and allow Brose to turn him into someone else. His head was bent near and Ross could see the grey in the rest of Brose's hair, one here and one there, like random dandelions in a field. Stray hairs that were easy to miss because the greying at his temples was more noticeable. The scent of paints and solvents was a constant, in the fabric of his smock and even his regular clothes. Here, on the far side of the studio, nearer to the windows, rain could be heard falling, wetting the Paris streets. Ross straightened up a little as Brose added ornaments to hang at his waist, a pendent of Venetian glass, like a Christmas bauble, twisted silk tassels and cords, an artificial camellia, things that made little sense apart but altogether looked very beautiful and made for a handsome decoration. A rolling thunder clap sounded in the distance. Ross and Dem had sheltered under a bridge in rain like this, more for the sake of Ross' guitar's safety than even their own. Now the chill of the cold weather hovered at the window glass. It was cold at the window glass if one touched it, looking out at the cobbled alleys, warehouses, odds and ends repair shops, small grocers and buildings with storage to let, to artists, to wholesalers that dwelled in this part of the city, but the dusty, dry heat of the radiators rose up to meet it and Ross, Dem and the guitar were safe in an airy, large room with a closet toilet, doorjamb choked with the slapped upon white paint of multiple decades, a wide bin of a sink speckled with all the colours of the rainbow, the ledge above it holding dish soap alongside shampoo, paint splattered jars and cans jammed with a motley assortment of used paintbrushes alongside a pristine drinking glass that held two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste. A loft, off to the side, apart from the rest and graced with a soft, warm bed under a skylight and surrounded by a treasure trove of odd props and supplies. A welcoming table full of mismatched chairs, comfy armchairs and a sofa of gnarled textured upholstery that was squishy and nice. Bookcases everywhere filled with wonderful books and magazines and paper and pencils and candy and cigar boxes filled with strange oddments. Pegs and hooks, for coats, for smocks. A hot plate that might rival a restaurant stove for the ingenuity Brose brought to feeding them from it. The pedestrian reheating of soup and milk and broth giving way to sauted omelettes and vegetables. A shelf of a pantry, holding cocoa and coffee, small glass jars of salt and pepper, pearly white dried shallots, green specked mixed herbs. A tin that held petty cash that Brose trusted them over -he never once showed any misgivings or secrecy over it and gave them lunch money in the morning from it before they left to busk, like a papa sending his children to school each day. They were safe and warm here. Snug as a bug in a rug. Ross lifted his arms to let Brose give the final tweaks to the costume, down on one knee, his breath at Ross' navel as he worked. At close quarters and respectful of not being untoward. Brose dressed his models with the same brisk efficiency, each acknowledging the intimate nature of the work as necessary to art. It was difficult to trust grownups. That was true even before their abduction in Marseilles. Ross had as many scrapes as any of the other rats with grownups when he left home. Brose left them each night, locked up and went back to the home where he lived. The first week, both of them frightened to have slept through their intended watch that first night redoubled their efforts after, afraid that the man who had allowed them to stay here, for all his air of niceness and kind eyes, had some Evil Design, that as soon as they went off to sleep he would creep into the room with a knife or a whip—or merely creep into the room to plan some sort of wickedness. Ross and Dem learned to trust Brose by degrees, one of the only people they had ever met on the road who took pains to tell them "I will not hurt you." "No one will harm you here." They found they could let their guard down and sleep in truth, waking gently to the scent of coffee in the air and Mimi stomping about them to leap the loft steps and greet her friend, unlocking the door each morning. Ross looked to Brose in a confusion. Absent mindedly speaking in French as he stood up. Most of Brose's models communicated in French even if it was not their mother tongue.

"You look like a Beardsley drawing, come to life," explained Brose in English.

"Who is Beardsley?" asked Ross. If the artist's pictures looked like this they might be quite fun to look at. "He was English and quite famous. He worked in ink. Pen and ink," Brose thought through what he might find to use as an example. His book of drawings, at his apartment not here, contained the Lysistrata drawings which Ambrose would not think to show a child. "I am sure I can turn up some pictures," said Brose. "But now we must produce a picture of our own..." Ross and Brose shared a smile. They had a job to do and Ross was gainfully employed to boot! As Ross emerged from behind the screen, Dem gasped aloud and applauded merrily over the book she was reading. "Oh Ross! You look like Ali Baba!" He giggled. The sheet made for strange, drafty trousers. In truth Ross was standing about in his drawers, a handful of drapery decorations and a bedsheet, held together by pins and a prayer. He came to stand a the small table and blanket covered chair that existed to help hold the pose in real life but would be magicked into a basket of flowers and made to disappear in the case of the chair. Ross would offer a flower to some gracious lady in a pretty courtyard. Beardsley's stark graphics transformed closer to something like Maxfield Parrish. With gentle guidance Brose draped his wrist at the blanket and persuaded Ross bent forward. "You are beckoning a young lady to accept a flower," said Brose handing Ross a plastic rose. "She is beautiful and you want to give her a flower from your basket." Ross grinned at the table at his hip. It did not look like a basket at all but Brose would correct that. "Chin up," said Brose in a command. "Look to the lady. Ten minutes..."

"Rest,"

Dem felt very grown up saying, "Rest," like Brose would do, to allow the model to relax their pose. Ross sat up, cross legged, with a grin. "Can I see!?" Dem passed the book to him "Oh! Dem, that's lovely!" She smiled contentedly. She was proud of her work and Ross, looking at the book, was pretty in the lantern light as shadows flickered from the candles too. She wore a man's shirt and knickers and felt the happy intimacy of knowing this lean, handsome model was actually her husband. "We still have torrone," said Dem, coming to sit alongside him on the daybed. "Good! Shall have tea?" asked Ross. Dem nodded. He returned the book to her and she went between adding to the shading, here and there, and watching Ross putter about the folly. She watched him dress, sliding his jeans on, measuring out water and putting the kettle on, scratching Garrick's neck now that the dog had tuckered himself out and stared beyond the open door at the rain falling. Ross stood in the doorway, now a silhouette even as she could still see him, leaning at the door by Garrick, staring at the rain. She left the daybed and put her arms around his waist. He put an arm around her with a smile. They did not speak but they knew each other to be thinking the same sorts of things. That they'd cowered under bridges in this sort of weather, waited the rain out in cafes and matinee movies that stank of other wet people in the same straits and now they had a snug home with tea and candy and each other. Her cheek at his shoulder, his arm round her. The rain falling and they could admire it rather than look on in bleak impatience, not even wishing for shelter, just wanting the respite of a dry day. All the animals snug in their nests and boltholes across the valley, just like them. Ross kissed Dem's forehead as the kettle started singing, a shrill whistle through the little hinged cap that fit over the spout. With the little squeeze of acknowledging they were very, very happy before leaving the doorway, Ross went to spoon tea in the pot and Dem retrieved the torrone, pieces of almond nougat that were sweet and soft, crunchy and chewy, smooth on the one hand and studded with crunchy nuts on the other. The subtle pas de deux, the dance of choosing plates from the wardrobe and preparing tea, stepping over sleeping pets, laying the table in their little house gave them joy. The skills they'd honed at close quarters on the street now served them in a home perfect for four. A happy dog, a contented cat and two who had been rats and cats and now man and wife like proper grownups with a house and land, a horse and a cow snug in their stables as well. They set the table and had tea and sweets on a rainy day, candles burning, warmth, tea, friendship, love. Ross watched, with quiet graditude, Sweetness, a curl rakishly over one eye, as poured herself a second cup of tea. She looked up to offer him some and caught Ross staring. "What?" "I'd dearly love to go on doing this for ever," he said, offering his cup for more. "Drinking tea?" giggled Dem as she poured. She set the pot down with a grin. "You’d find it incommoding after a while… But why?" Ross brought the cup to sit by his plate and admired it, a torrone with two bites removed, a second one awaited on the delicate antique china that was their everyday service, nothing kept for "best", used each day as what was. The lamp burning clear, the votive candles flickering their light, the Madonna staring above her, crowned with a star and looking out for them with three frosted crystal teardrops sewn to her dark blue velvet skirts -for their mothers and Claude- Tabitha Bethia and Garrick having a nap, sketchbooks full of good drawings and books full of poems to read. Chickens that gave them eggs, Desdemona giving them milk, a horse all for their very own and Dem. Who could ask for more? Ross smiled up from his tea and torrone. "It is the homely thing. It's you and me," he said, "in our own house; nothing between us, no interruption." He began to blink rapidly at the thought. "We aren't looking over our shoulders, we don't split the night anymore, we don't have to anymore. We just go to bed." He sat up in a sudden thought. "We have a bed!" exclaimed Ross. Dem's eyes glistened from the weight of what Ross was saying. They did not sleep in shifts anymore, guarding each other from harm. The Poldarks, who had even known the squalor of sleeping propped up next to the guitar case in pissed upon doorways among other unfortunate places, slept in their own bed every night. They were off the street and safe in a beautiful valley in their own little house. She watched a tear leave Ross' eye and then his hand leave his teacup to thrust it impatiently across his own nose and eyes with a sniff. "We're home, Sweetness." smiled Ross, a broken, blinky eyed, teary sort of happy smile; all they had suffered rising to the surface, briefly, then falling back, safely away. Hidden back away... "We have a home for five whole years!" said Ross wth a shadow of astonishment in his voice. Dem sniffed back a tear of her own. Ross' wedding ring glittered at his chest. She felt hers under her shirt. "Shall we wear our rings...?" asked Dem. Ross swallowed. Closed his eyes. Was it time? Was it truly? He opened them again. "I've been thinking, Sweetness. I think we should wear our rings when spring comes." They watched each other, she nodded, listening, agreeing. Ross continued. "Winter will come and we'll hunker down. When spring comes," he stopped. His throat wouldn't let him say it. The gravity of it froze him. He swallowed and reached for her hand across the table. She squeezed it back. "We'll wear our rings when winter ends," said Ross, more authority and conviction returning to his voice. "Come spring, we shall be Mr. and Mrs. Poldark of Il Porto! For the valley and the folly will be our proper home. After the first winter, no one could deny it! It's ours, for five whole years!" said Ross with excitement and pride. Dem nodded, not trusting her voice. They had survived leaving their sad days in England, survived their ordeal in Marseilles, survived Paris as the intricacies of the street began to press upon all the rats. They left the street. They lived in Positano in the prettiest valley there could be and a house of their very own with a notarized lease and a copy at the town hall to prove it. They held hands across their own table, in the lamplight, the candlelight, laid with tea and sweets, as the rain continued to fall and the Poldarks continued to dream.

Chapter Text

"Rest, dropje..."

Lord Falmouth's posture did not change. Straight of back and regal, he lifted the ceremonial chain of office from his shoulders, holding it in both hands and with a grateful sigh to be rid of the weight of the thing in a slow, reverent movement that made him look majestic. He brought it over his head as the Lord of the Fal, charged with ancient responsibilities. It never started out heavy, but the longer it sat there it did weigh one down. With care he laid it over the back of one of the wing backed armchairs, bright with the gold links and ornate segments of metalwork of a representative of the Crown. Posed in his dress uniform with the look of might and responsibility befitting a Lord, in a blink, through Brose's permission to relax, he became George once more. "I don't know how the deputies stand it! I've not worn that in years..." sighed George. Brose raised a sardonic eyebrow at his sharply dressed companion. "Let it not be said that the Lord Lieutenant does not 'clean up nice...'" the Dutch accent adding to his teasing. They exchanged an amused look. "They bear the brunt more than I do," said Lord Falmouth in a wry humour, "but it shall be me hanging on the wall..." he chuckled. The Deputy Lieutenants met the needs of these formal duties far more often than he did. George had exercised his right to leave the area served by deputies in his stead. They were community leaders and often high born in their own right, performing an important civic role in Lord Falmouth's stead. It was a plum assignment and an honour for those in the role. The deputies themselves were content. Occasional tittering that the Lord of the Fal was in absentia, holding the Lord Lieutenant post by heredity and didn't much care about the responsibility to perform it by living in Cornwall happened from time to time. A bland accusation that he was a bit like the eighteenth century power brokers who maintained power holding rotten boroughs as he lived apart in his Italian villa. Dry drawing room talk old enough to be old but never stale, perpetual enough to pass time with a gentle tut tut without true malice in it (but never spoken in Lady Armitage's presence) But it was his right to deputize the role. With his ancient name, he could, of course, have gone into society and paid violent court to some daughter of the new rich and have settled down to a life of uncomfortable duty and pretense; it was expected, but he couldn’t see such an adventure seriously. Not able to see through chaining some poor woman to a marriage of convenience, and the district being so small and gossipy, even pretending to be a stolid family man might not be proof against whisper and rumour. Leaving the deputies to it made sense. Better to cultivate dull talk of being laissez-faire and abroad than risk scandalous speculation of his private life. And there wasn't that much quibbling over him being in Italy, especially when his brother had been alive, with a handsome wife and son. Lord Falmouth could be absorbed as the eccentric bachelor heir abroad with his brother's budding young family in residence at Tregothan. After his brother's death, Lady Armitage's widowhood seemed to subsume the question of her brother in law, the Lord Lieutenant, being at large on the Continent. Her busy social schedule and close proximity to royal circles filled a space in the community so large and the deputies were so content in their role, the matter of Lord Falmouth's absence was quite often an accepted after thought. And, of course, as he grew older it was less and less likely that he would marry and claim that role in truth. A catch that hadn't been caught... It was in recent years that the call of duty seemed to draw him back to ceremonial responsibility and take up some of the duties he'd long left to his deputies a couple times a year, always involving them in a balanced show of acknowledgement of their years of service. He always invited a deputy as a formal retainer at these events, given their due as the next highest ranking official at the proceeding, in their turn without showing favouritism. In this way he did them honour and allowed them the right to share the spotlight rather than wrest it for himself when they had filled the lion share of this work for decades. It was suggested by the Council when he was last in Cornwall that he should have his portrait painted to hang alongside his illustrious predecessors. "It's a bit of a liberty, I admit." George sighed. "I skulked off to Italy barely a backwards glance," he began to undo his sash by lifting the epaulette to remove it. The jacket could not be removed with it still in place across him. He lay it with the the chain of office on the chair back. "They need a portrait to remember what I look like!" he chuckled. Brose came near to assist in extricating Lord Falmouth from his dress uniform, a seemingly endless amount of buttons and badges, ceremonial cords, tassels and belts. "I am pleased to provide the portrait," joked Brose. He put the jacket on a hanger, still bristling with all its ornaments and hung it on a nearby garment rack. He returned with a wry smile. "I'd not trust that nose to anyone else!" Being so near and unobserved, he gave Lord Falmouth's distinctive, hawk like nose an affectionate peck. George smiled through half-closed lids, having enjoyed it very much. "I am pleased to be in good hands" said George as a distant kerfuffle sounded in the high ceilings and along the walls of Tregothan, of deep voices and lyrical voices and young voices, voices of culture as Lady Armitage's voice wound through the tromping, chattering rumpus like a ribbon and the echoing cacophony rang past ceramic ornaments, glowing old wood, broad oil paintings and mirrors and the muted footsteps upon elegant carpets still audible in their enthusiasm, herding the elephants into the orangerie for afternoon tea. Brose smiled wistfully as he tidied his pencils and brought a cloth over his easel to cover the ongoing work. He was involved in these tasks but listening as the Poldarks arrived for tea. Brose occasionally reminisced over Ross and Dem thumping about the wooden floors his studio, likening them to miniature elephants, adolescent children, but young and gentle. It was a happiness to think upon now that Ross and Dem had children of their own pattering about. It was an extra halo of a good mood glowing over his clearing up. George could see it in him and it was charming.

"Brose!" said Julia in an excitable squeal, seeing them both approach as she was about to enter the orangerie. "Ah, Julia, my little," Dem's face came round the stained glass door of the orangerie at her daughter's exclamation. "Hello Brose! Hello, George!" They walked quite in tandem, well built older men of a height, Brose slightly shorter. Neither man had grown overly stout in the intervening years, a slight thickening of the waist perhaps in each. Ambrose, always slender, complimented Lord Falmouth's larger boned frame. They had very different faces but one could imagine a similarity in their smiles, as if they had rubbed off on each other to mirror the other in their close proximity or that close proximity engendered more frequent reasons to smile. Jeremy turned to greet them at the teatable, already being helped into a chair by a footman who deftly stepped back to make way for Lord Falmouth and Brose as they came near. "Jeremy boasts another tooth, I believe." said Lord Falmouth in a good natured appraisal. Jeremy's smile blossomed wider as he was patted gently on the head by Uncle George and felt Brose's hand at his shoulder as he looked between them. "I fancy there were only three last time I looked." Jeremy grinned, crowing, "More n' that!" Ross helped Dem at her seat and waited for Lady Armitage to return to the table, letting her songbird free from its cage before sitting himself. "Seven!" said Ross. "You’re on dangerous ground." They laughed and settled themselves to their monthly tea and a good visit.

The early part of tea Jeremy made sure was devoted to him, Julia had a magnanimity over this because her younger brother was very entertaining and when engaged in the interactions with grownups there was always another grownup who made a point of doting on her as well as the milk and various fancy cakes being a delicious distraction. Also, Lady Armitage's songbird flew about the room and was always a pleasure to look at as it darted and perched and often took grain to eat from MayMay's hand turning his head this way and that to look at everyone round the tea table before flying away again. Julia and Jeremy were special guests and as such were permitted to call Uncle Hugh's Mama 'MayMay' a play between Mama and Mary, her given name. Uncle George was 'Uncle George'. Mama and Papa never called MayMay anything other than 'Lady Armitage'. The formality did not cloy between them. It was very natural sounding and ordinary. They called Uncle George 'George' when they spoke to him and Lord Falmouth when they spoke of him to others or mentioning him between themselves at home. Uncle Brose was Brose. Mama and Papa always marvelled at Brose drinking tea in the orangerie as they drove back to Nampara when tea was finished and they'd all had their hugs; which was a long leave taking and enterprise, to trade hugs at teatime -it elongated exponentially on holidays when the Enyses and Hugh were there too for everyone must hug everyone and saying goodbye often sparked more conversation as the hugs were dispensed. Mama and Papa would muse over it because Brose ever drank coffee, seemed to prefer it, but held the peace at teatime, probably because Lady Armitage found the aroma of coffee too strong in the orangerie and a threat to enjoying the subtlety of fragrant plants in the room and the tea at the table. They smiled at it and joked that it was true love if Brose chose to forgo coffee. This made little sense to Julia for if Brose had true love for his coffee then drinking tea was necessarily strange, but Mama and Papa were grownups and grownups were often mysterious.

The orangerie was Lady Armitage's domain and as such coffee was too obnoxious an odor to countenance at tea. Brose acquiesced without complaint. Afternoon tea once a month was not a hardship, little enough to keep the peace, and George was sympathetic. The conservatory, filled with ferns and many interesting plants was his domain. A small antechamber, to the left of the room, housed two woven basket chairs flanking an antique Javanese carved table with an onyx black marble top and what had come to be their monthly 'koffietijd'. After the Poldarks went home and Lady Armitage retired to her escritoire to review her letters and write her correspondence, Lord Falmouth rang for coffee in a tall, ornate silver pot on a silver tray with two porcelain cups and a small, gold rimmed, oblong, Limoges dish tumbled with a generous serving of chocolate covered marzipan. George ordered the confections from London and they were reserved for this purpose alone, not offered to other guests. He poured for his friend and himself. They shared the marzipan between them. They talked of this and that. They were silent sometimes. Occasionally they played chess. They were well matched in their play. After their coffee, with dinner being some hours off they retired to Lord Falmouth's rooms. At dinner, there was no lack of talk between Lady Armitage, Lord Falmouth and Brose. Their wide array of interests, travel and friends in common left plenty to discuss as courses were served and in pleasant visiting afterwards. Brose usually returned to the Gatehouse on the Poldarks' property after the meal to return at week's end for a visit but Brose was commissioned to paint Lord Falmouth's portrait so he was a guest in the house for the length of the project until George returned to Italy. A convenient arrangement. It allowed artist and subject close proximity and make careful study of each other at leisure.

Chapter Text

Let me call you sweetheart
I'm in love with you
Let me hear you whisper
That you love me too
Keep the love light glowing
In your eyes so true
Let me call you sweetheart
I'm in love with you
Keep the love light glowing
In your eyes so true
Let me call you sweetheart
I'm in love with you

It was chilly this day, but Sweetness did not care one whit, she just about danced in her place declaring to every listening ear in the street that she was in love with someone, clouds of steam floating forward and her teeth cold as she stood by the open guitar case, not even concerned over the state of ther modest takings as people hurried themselves past to get indoors, into the warm. It was chilly, but Ross' fingerless gloves and his sprightly playing kept his fingers warm, or perhaps the glow of his smile sent forth enough heat to make that so. Warmth enough for both of them. The grey light of the post holiday atmosphere, not yet spring, and dour, damp, cold Paris did not matter at this bracing performance on the edge of the park. Ross and Dem were affianced. He asked Sweetness to marry him and Dem said 'yes'. Two so perfectly content to busk with gusto in cold weather to the indifference of so many people going past to and fro was quite darling if one was of a mind to watch. Many who might have wanted to extend the pair funds -children buttoned up in warm coats alongside their nurses, students as strapped for cash as anyone, old pensioners who had secured their supper or their supply of drink- those had the will but not the way, settled for staring in wonder at the chipper pair who sang and played guitar on a cold day and as the song ended looked upon each other in a goo goo eyed reverie. In that moment it did not seem to matter that some walking past had the means to entertain tossing them a bit of money but not the will, or some looking on had the will only. Ross and Dem were content. They had enough for a plate of something or another to eat, between the two of them, and a cocoa each to warm them up. They packed up and, hand in hand, walked to the café, Ross swinging his guitar case at his side as they walked through the grey winter streets of Paris with a bit of pep in his step, proud and happy. Walking up the street with his woman and his guitar, a trusted friend at each hand.

Pont Neuf Cafe was a sprawling café and the place the street rats favored from time back. None of the current set had any link to the young bohemians that patronized the place in the 1950s but year after year the rats gravitated to this place. Large enough to let the owner overlook the odd sleeper, good food at fair prices and not so stingy that they would demand more than a cup of coffee to sit down a spell. Students ate and argued, old eccentrics who muttered their own philosophy to all who would listen sat at the bar with an elegant melancholia and the busyness of the place somehow also conveyed a timelessness. It could be ten minutes or two hours but you would feel inserted into the bosom of the Latin Quarter. All the students, writers, independent kids, the mirrored walls, the chalkboard menus with their hand scrawled prices, wise cracking waitstaff, thick china plates and the proprietor, lord of his castle, all of them a legitimate pillar of France.

Ross let Dem enter first. A different attitude to stomping through the door together one after the other as pals, her first or him first with the other close at hand. Ross gave his fiancée the curtesy of entering first, blinking a chivalrous acknowledgement of her status, hanging at the door with his guitar case watching her in a hightened sense of admiration. Her red hair caught up under her flat cap and her eyelashes as bright. Were there ever such wondrous eyelashes? Ever? Dem inclined her head, to turn slightly and hold the edge of the door to let Ross through. He paused, grinned at her consideration and swung his guitar case forward, holding it between them at the edge of the door, neck upwards, so much a part of Ross' life it was nearly an extension of his arm. His oldest companion and their literal breadwinner. They fed themselves by busking in the streets and being clever with what money they were able to earn from it. Pooled as a resource but implicitly 50/50. They stood half on the tile floor inside, half on the pavement outside, chalk on a blackboard seen through the sheen of glass that had the dishes on offer chalked in white, wood and mirrors, diners at their tables, drinkers at the bar, waiters managing food. All that hummed and moved in a Paris café fell away as Ross and Dem watched each other. They were a team and a pair and now they were a couple of lovers. Once they took their vows they would be man and wife. Dem batted her eyes at him. Ross seemed to have his chin float towards her like a helium balloon, returning Dem's gaze with a heavy lidded, knowing look of his own. They slept and woke and slept and woke, all last night. Slept because they had exhausted themselves exploring each other's bodies. Woke refreshed and determined to begin again. The same pastime in a general sense but each new configuration a revelation, a new twist, new discovery. It was an elastic and changeable activity. There were only a handful of components to it but the combinations seemed inexhaustible and Ross and Sweetness did their utmost to try to perfect the various ways one might know love and be loved in return. They smiled at the door.

"Ooh la la! Les gars, sortez du chemin!"

Ross and Dem startled out of admiring each other in the entrance to the café as a group of students jammed up behind them, thinking Dem to be male, and demanded they move in or get out of the way. They recovered themselves enough to enter and fell swiftly back into their own universe. They chose a table for two, not their ordinary gambit. Usually the earliest rats would claim tables at the back 'pour mes amis', as an anchor, and then more would join them in a shifting, elastic group of eaters, drinkers, talkers and spectators; the odd argument or two, a crowd enough to protect the odd sleeper getting some kip and not get ejected by the owner in their midst. Ross and Dem ordered a cocoa each in a distracted, halting French, less because they were English and more because they were not attending their surroundings and the impatient waiter. It was provided with a flourish, they only realized the thick ceramic cups were there when the steam wafted up at their chins with the scent of chocolate. They thanked the waiter still staring at each other, slowly moving their hands, warming their fingers at the walls of the cups and lifting them for a restorative sip, taking in the sweet flavour, tempered by the faint bitter edge of cocoa that the French preferred, sweet but not too sweet. The warm drink, the cozy warmth of their coats around them supported by the heat of the restaurant. Cozy. The remembrance of the previous night. The anticipation of returning to Rue des Cannettes and the mattress in their brass frame bed they had not known to be so sqeaky until they put it through its paces, to the test. They will return to their room and put it to the test...

“Palmier! Oi! Cloth ears!”

Ross startled. Dem looked about. Crazy Ace and a smattering of his older crowd of friends entered the cafe, taking over tables near the back. He called to Palmier but they weren't listening. Crazy Ace came across the room, dodging waiters, skirting round tables to get their table. “Palmier! Come sit with us! You...” He stood up straighter, stared. He looked from one to the other. They were looking at each other dreamily before they snapped out of their reverie to look at him. His mouth fell open. Had they made it? At last?! Ross and Dem smiled a bashful mischief at him. “Merde!” cried Crazy Ace, loud enough other diners turned, students and the older kids who knew them on sight if not personally as rats. “You did it!?” asked their friend. He stood over them, arms crossed in a smart looking, Belgian army coat, drab wool that wanted to be golden in a way rather than green, straight cut with notched lapels, round brass buttons, and not too big on him, as they sat at their table for two, astonished at their lovestruck look. Palmier nodded, Ross smiled a mischief. Dem ducked her chin smiling too. “Fucking Hell!” cried Crazy Ace, shouting for all to hear. “Palmier popped their cherry!” Dem covered her face with her hands, giggling as Ross grinned a bashful nod, meeting Crazy Ace’s look of admiration with a blush at his cheeks but also a wry twist at his mouth that suggested they had advanced apace since their initial blooding. Whistling and pounding on tables ensued. Some guy sat up straighter in surprise and said, incredulous, in French, “Palmier are queers?” A girl who knew Crazy Ace and his younger set of friends turned to smack him across the back of his head with the flat of her hand. “Non! You fool! Don’t you know Dem’s a girl?!” Shrieks of laughter followed as the guy looked astonished. Those two ran the streets as musicians and rats for ages. He had no idea that Dem, in her shapeless clothes always at long haired Ross' side, was female and those in the know howled with laughter. "And," announced Ross, struck by a giddy pride as he stood to join Crazy Ace's friends by lifting his guitar case in one hand, taking Dem's hand in the other, looking about the café, back to Dem and grinning like a fool to Crazy Ace. "Dem's going to marry me!" Crazy Ace gasped as all the girls in the place screamed their approval and all the boys, students and rats alike, looked as shocked as Crazy Ace. Married! Like grownups! They thumped their backs and kissed them and had a huge hullabaloo over the news as Palmier approached the back of the restaurant to sit like conquering heroes. Palmier had been on the street for donkey's years perhaps even in their native England. True blue. They'd been in prison round ups and on the scene dancing in the nightclubs, right in the thick of things and now they were going to be married! Crazy Ace slammed the flat of his hand on the table to gain everyone's attention. "When Palmier weds," he said in French, "We're gonna have the wedding feast right here! You've been warned! Save up now or you'll be licking the window!" He repeated it in English and they all had a good laugh. Any rat was a welcome guest but each rat must meet the price of their own plate and save money against the day if they wanted food otherwise they'd be "feasting" by nursing a drink while everyone else ate up. The kids were beside themselves, more raucous and loud than usual, excited to have a party, excited that two of their own were tying the knot. Ross and Dem shared a plate of ham and eggs and accepted the good wishes of the kids around them, old'uns, the kids who were old hands on the street and in and out of more intricate trouble now that arrest meant an adult record. They lauded Crazy Ace's baby faced pals and their romantic triumph. What a wonder! Two rats bound for the altar!

Chapter Text

It was quiet in the kitchen. Bella had finished with maths and sought biscuits as a restorative. Prudie was paring apples for a crumble. "Ee'll spoil yer supper. T'ain't right 'avin' two elevenses! Ee's lookin' t'be a right rolly poly if'n ee act like tha!" Barred from snacking and not enthused to begin toiling away at grammar, Bella wandered into the parlor where Mama was drawing the stark, black ink outlines that would house the extravagant amount of colour she would paint all over it with watercolours. Mama spoke even as she did not look up. "Hello, my lover," Bella flopped on the sofa. Homework was tedious, Jeremy was away on a school trip and Julia had gone to Gstaad with MayMay. Clowance was in her room doing her own homework in the insufferable "goody goody" way she managed to do everything; bringing untroubled vigor and responsibility to boring work that made Bella want to shriek. Papa was in Truro and Mama working at her drawing heavily pregnant with their new sibling. Grammar books loomed but perhaps a story would take up some time before Bella had to resume. "How did you really meet Uncle Brose, Mama?" "You're welcome to ask Brose," said Dem, not yet pulling herself out of her concentration on the drawing. "He said to ask you!" said Bella with a tone of exasperation in her voice. Casting a careful look upon her pen nib as she continued to follow the light pencil marks on the page, Mama began what had become the family catechism. "We fell through a sky..." Bella rolled her eyes. "No, Mama! Not the made up story! How did you meet him really! You and Papa were in France..." Dem looked up from her paper then. "You know that much, sweetheart. We were pickers in Marseilles and buskers in Paris, you know that..." said Dem uncertainly. Bella rolled her head at her neck along the back of the sofa, stared at the ceiling in annoyance. She felt lazy and grumpy and not young anymore. Mama and Papa and Brose spoke of themselves meeting like a fairy story, a tale where two cats fell through a skylight in Brose's studio and stayed to take tea. Julia heard it, Jeremy heard it, Clowance and Bella heard it as surely the new baby would too. 'It was a dark and stormy night...' They could recite it word for word! It was charming but also for babies. And her older siblings were no help. They teased her with the baby story, refused to budge from it but with the leading sort of hint in their manner that suggested they knew more than they were telling. Brose, who when pressed would not deviate from, 'they fell through the skylight and I asked them to stay', finally told Isabella Rose to 'ask your moeder'. Bella frowned. "Are you always going to treat me like a child?!" groused Bella. Dem giggled a little. Her youngest was grumpy and tetchy and likely on the verge of menses judging by her grouchy mood and ongoing mania for snacks. Prudie had scolded Isabella Rose most of this week to stop skulking about eating biscuits out of turn. It was the likely cause of her mood for she was correct, Bella was not as much a child as she had been. Where did the time go? Bella had it in her to resent Mama's laughing at her but she was cute over her drawing, her features filled out from her pregnancy, bright eyed and affectionate even as she was laughing. "You will always be my child," teased Dem. "Even when you’re old and stooped and wheeling me about in a basket chair!" Bella smiled then. Dem smiled back. Bella asked, "How did you meet Brose?" The look of query, the look of near apology for her grumpiness, the look of true interest. Dem set her pen down, thought better of it and washed it clean. It would not be a glib answer, Bella's personality wouldn't allow it. Sometimes, faced by Bella's probing questions, Demelza felt as if she were in a trap. Bella was much too quick in her conclusions; her thoughts raced ahead and met one on the rebound. Greater clarification was always demanded by Bella, and for small aspects others might overlook out of politeness if not tact. While the children all knew of Ross and Dem's European life in a general sense, what all their young boarders on the farm knew, mentioned in the articles occasionally written of them about two commercial artists at their farm scheme for at risk youth; two who busked and worked odd jobs in Les Halles to pay for a modest room on Rue Des Cannettes, and Jinny, and Madame Albaret and all the colourful characters and twists of fate in their European adventure -Salvador Dali bought their wedding rings! While these stories were told to all in an unstinting manner, only their oldest, Julia, had some idea of the darker layers of the tale and even then Dem refused to speak of life before the Home. Ross and Dem never discussed the abduction and shooting in Marseilles. Brose directed the children to their mother when they needled him to give a proper account. Julia, Jeremy and Clowance all reached a point were the family legend was deemed too babyish and wanted proper answers. There were lines in the narrative Ross and Demelza would not cross but there was a demand for answers from their children and some clarification was provided. Now Bella's curiosity had peaked. Dem explained, "Your father and I were robbed of our money when we got to Paris. It was autumn and raining. We had to shelter under a bridge to stay dry. Bella's mouth fell open. "You and Papa lived on Rue Des Cannettes!" Dem gave a warm smile to her daughter. It occurred to her that each of her children hit that same point of curiosity at near the same age, asking about the deeper matters of things and, apparently, much like keeping faith with Father Christmas, each sibling kept their own counsel afterwards and refused to inform the next youngest. "That came later." said Dem. She retrieved the pen and dipped the pen nib in ink, hand poised to continue her work. The small contortions of surprise and pity in Bella's face were hard to watch. "We were skint, bug ridden, and homeless. The money we had earned to rent a room was gone." Bella stared at her mother, drawing away in an unconcerned manner while letting slip a small portion of their trials. "Bug ridden?" Dem looked up, smiled a modesty, and began drawing again. "We hadn't a bean, no roof over our heads and no way to wash." said Dem. "We could not play music for money then," Dem, who knew Ross was a clever guitarist, knew he could have played around a broken string had he been his regular self, knew that she might have sung had they not been traumatized by their abduction and escape from their captors in Marseilles and knew Bella would suss out that truth, kept to the not untrue explanation that poor weather kept them from busking. "The guitar had a broken string and it rained and rained. We lived hand to mouth and stayed under a bridge to keep the guitar dry," she swished the pen nib clean in water and patted it on a cloth, gently, so as not to splay the tip. She dipped it in ink once more. "Your father and I became so dirty no cafes or shops would let us come in. We had crawlers." said Dem. Bella looked astonished. "Crawlers?" she asked. Dem nodded scanning the drawing in front of her. "Lice." said Mama. "We were lousy. He said it in Dutch though!" she laughed a little more. "'You two have looozzzen bad!' Brose had to put turpentine from his art supplies on our heads to kill the lice before he washed our hair." She giggled again at an aside Bella found no humour in. "It wasn't shampoo! Brose had to use washing up liquid!" Mama recovered from her giggling with a sigh. "It was all he had. He used what he had to help us. We washed ourselves with his pumice soap too." Bella's mouth fell open. She knew the bar of soap at the sink in the Gatehouse was grainy and horrible, gritted throughout with pumice to get paint off one's hands. Mama shrugged apologetically. "He couldn't have us stay in his studio as we were, we were too dirty." Dem, watching her pen point follow the pencil line, drawing with a confident hand. She lifted her pen and looked up from the work, looked to see how Bella had digested that snippet. "He saw you under the bridge?" asked Bella. Dem shook her head 'no' with a warm smile. "We climbed up the side of a building during a break in the weather, to try to find a building to stay out of the rain. Brose had his lights out because he was about to go home for the night. We thought it was empty and broke into his studio by opening the skylight," Bella's features had frozen into a sort of shocked disbelief. Dem nodded. "Your father lost hold of the edge and fell in. I passed the guitar down and came in through the skylight too." She hadn't considered that the romantic bohemianism of her parents' youth, buskers in Europe, reared up as fine artists at Uncle Brose's knee, the story she'd taken at face value up to this point had been sanitized. The revised reality was a surprise. They had fallen through a skylight but her youthful imagination had not been quite up to the task of picturing her beautiful mother or her handsome father in such squalid straights. She had seen her parents disheveled, even dirty and unkempt from taking some nasty job out of the servants' or the boarders' hands, but her conception of her parents Parisian life was always one of hard work and cleanliness. Cleanliness in their person because they had been live in staff to Madame Albaret, keeping the place clean. Papa and Mama worked in the vegetable stalls of the old market carting produce to and fro, busked as musicians and lived in a shared room with a bathroom down the hall. Two pals with a plucky sense of adventure and Papa's guitar. "Mama..." said Bella in an astonished sympathy. Dem smiled. "We fell through his skylight, from the roof, and then lived with Brose and his cat Mimi because he let us stay. He asked us to stay and we were that grateful. We were homeless, slept under a bridge and had nothing left but your father's guitar in its case." Bella watched Mama loosen her fingers holding the pen, not see the page anymore, remembering. "Your Uncle Brose let us wash and cleaned our hair. He fed us hot broth." Bella watched her mother see these things in her mind's eye as she spoke. "He made up a bed for us, let us sleep. He didn't go home. He said," it was the barest pause but one Bella could hear in Mama's voice was of importance. "He said 'No one will hurt you here,' and he didn't go home. He stayed in the studio and then went out first thing in the morning to the laundrette to wash our clothes. He gave us cocoa and croissants and jam. We hadn't eaten like that since we left the growers compound..." She looked as if she was searching for a far off star. "We ate scraps from the back bins of restaurants when we could..." Then she blinked herself back to the present, watching her daughter's sympathetic horror at what little of that time Dem explained. Mama smiled but it was a tired sort of a smile. "You have to take the smooth with the rough in life, Bella. Your father and I had our share of rough too." Bella closed her mouth, for once speechless. Demelza cleaned the ink from her pen nib once more. Dem rubbed her bump and stood. She moved to round the edge of the table and swayed. "Mama, are you ill?" asked Bella sitting up in a sudden fright. "No!" she said, "Of course I'm not ill. But I believe this baby must be a little lop-sided within me and weighs me over from time to time. Small wonder with such a family possing around him." sighed Dem. "Him?" squeaked Bella in an offended startle. "Shouldn’t that be?" asked Dem, sway backed in the effort to right herself and knead her lower back, resigned to what little relief that provided. "On average. We've had three girls and only one boy." shrugged Dem. Isabella Rose pouted. "I shall be jealous if it's another boy. I prefer Jeremy to be outnumbered," Dem looked perplexed. "But it's two to three if this ones a boy," said Mama. Bella rolled her eyes. "Yes but Papa will make another one and then we'll be even!" she groused. Demelza laughed prettily as she waddled around the table and Ross returned upon the edge of the conversation. "Make another one of what?" asked Ross. Dem grinned. "A baby! Bella says you will grace me with another baby after this one and then it will be boys against girls" "Ahahahahahahaha!" Bella was salved of some of her irritation in her parent's show of humour. Papa laughed, which made Mama laugh, which made Bella produce a grudging smile as Ross bent to kiss her cheek on the way to assist Mama walking by taking her hand. "I wouldn't worry about that," said Papa. He shrugged a modesty. "Though I am rather good at making babies..." and Mama's smile was very sweet as she gave a derisive snort. They admired each other in the space between them and it was hard for Bella to imagine Mama and Papa when they were very young. They were ever grownups. Papa looked to Mama's bump. "Let's greet this one first. And besides, Our Friend might be a girl too!" said Papa. He lead Dem by the hand like a beau at a ball. "Where are we going?" asked Ross with a light teasing look over her hand, knowing Dem disliked being coddled in her pregnancies. Dem shook her head with resignation. "Honestly, all this fuss," Ross gave her a frank look of reprimand. 'You've been looking tired from this one,' Dem rolled her eyes. 'I'm fine! Better if you'd stop fussing like a mother hen!' There was a brief duel of frowning, each of them feeling themselves to be correct. Bella watched her parents bicker without speaking. They could talk without saying anything and it had been a common pastime of the Poldark children to try and decipher these conversations when they happened, be it an argument, or simply deciding what tea would be, or active parenting under the strange codes and gestures that they conversed in intimately, so wonderfully strange to watch. "You two have a secret language which defeats me even yet," sighed Bella. Ross walked Dem to the wooden settee, sturdier support than the soft sofa. "We weren't rats all that time without learning a thing or two," said Ross. Dem smiled a wan, cryptic blandness towards her husband. "Or cats. Bella demanded a full account of our meeting Brose just now," Bella saw a look pass between her parents that seemed to suggest she had not been given a full account. Papa turned to smile at his fourth child and Bella could see a world weariness in her Papa that she might have been too young to parse correctly any earlier. "We were cats who fell through his skylight," said Papa quietly. The pains he took to maintain the smile were visible, his eyes warring with the smile. The smile had not reached his eyes. Bella could see this in him. Keeping the smile for her sake. A teasing lightness in it that still seemed to weigh heavy on Papa's heart. "Or have you reached the 'age of not believing', my dear?" asked Papa. Mama, so youthful looking, plump and slender quite at the same time, Papa so tall and strong and serious but asking so wistful a question, still bent near having helped his wife to sit as she rested her hand over her belly, Papa's hand at the back of the settee, looking at Bella, both caught in a melancholy that wasn't quite melancholy but signaled a pact between them all in the rumination over them compelled of Bella as she watched her parents' faces. Mama and Papa had been young once, robbed and lived destitute in the streets of France, not much older than Bella was now. The Poldark children had all heard snatches of idle talk of their grandfather, Papa's Papa -one can't live in a small community without gossip, people dearly love a gossip and their grandfather left plenty of notoriety behind him- Papa had been breaking into cars and getting into trouble. Mama's childhood was a mystery. They left homes that can't have been anything like the one they gave Bella and her siblings. How did they come to be buskers? Her parents awaited Bella's answer. As they ever were, listening, loving. Bella watched them realizing she had taken her upbringing very much for granted and her parents had contrived it all from scratch. They were not parenting by their parents' examples. They made the life for their children they'd wished they had. That Papa wished for Mama to have and Mama wanted for Papa. She could ask them and they would do their best to answer her. She could ask and they would answer but Bella saw her own part to play in this pact. Now she understood Julia and Jeremy and Clowance's strict adherence to 'It was a dark and stormy night'. It had not solely been a leg pull of older sibling teasing younger. She understood Uncle Brose's tender command to 'ask your moeder'. They knew the other side of the tale was difficult and none of them wanted to be the one to demand that explanation from them. There were other tales that her parents possessed but she did not want to be the one to bring forth the sadness hovering in the back of their eyes to the front. Her siblings had not. Brose would not talk out of turn. Don't ask. thought Bella. Mama and Papa were honest and begrudged their children nothing but it was clear that the darker parts of the tale should not out. As each young Poldark met that moment there were no more words. They watched their parents, awaiting their child's answer. They did not speak but there was much to be understood in their parents' quiet patience and the determination of Papa to still smile. The work it took for Papa to magic away the effort it took and still fail. One saw the strain in him and Mama's lips tightly pressed together. Waiting. Only afterwards, in a slow retrospect, did they each realize they had conversed with both parents the way they had so often been charmed by watching their silent conversations, day to day on the outside of it. The Poldark children; who were brought up gentle in a snug warm home by two dear parents with so much love in them to spare they invited kids who hadn't the same good fortune as Bella and her siblings to board at the farm, had a crash course in how to 'talk' without saying a word and parse what their parents were saying. 'We will tell just enough, not more. We can deny you nothing but...' The children, one by one in their turns, learned a small tuition in how to be a rat. How to talk without speaking. How to stand by your friend and be loyal. How to see the pain, and then pass over that pain to keep going, to keep moving forward. To learn that the street rats who were their parents were raising them well somewhat in spite of themselves. They had been given love and safety, things their parents might have found hard to come by and some good portion of it had been provided to Mama and Papa by Uncle Brose. The Poldarks' churchgoing had been irregular and not of great conviction, but somehow the commandments had come to mean something to Ross and Dem's children. Since Mama and Papa pledged to avoid breaking the ninth it was only right that they avoid breaking the fifth. It was a potent lesson in which each of them became older, wiser and chose to honour their father and mother for having bestowed that privilege. They learned to be as rats and chose to give Mama and Papa the right to remain silent.

"No, Papa." said Bella.

Chapter Text

It was like living within a dream. Seamus walked forward, flanked on either side by Ross and Dem keeping the edges of the mattress they'd bought and the slats of metal frame that would support it once they screwed the pieces together from moving too much as they swayed a slow, careful journey alongside the road, up the trail, into the valley, back to the folly. Seamus was a 1%er, a beautiful horse who deserved not to be worked like a draft animal, but he assisted his new owners with their burdens with good grace. The boy was careful to pad his back with blankets, the girl was deceptively strong and kept the metal slats on her side as balanced as the boy did; guarded against them shifting about. They went slowly with their eyes trained for any sign of his discomfort. They sang songs as they went along, establishing a slow rhythm to take their paces by, and even tempered their human pace to match his exertion. Making progress along cliffs that showed startling drops beyond them, down canyons that appeared and disappeared through a veil of trees, widened and thinned then released back to a more ample terra firma, back to woodland even as the cliff faces beyond them at each side kissed the sky like the walls of cathedrals, green with trees and soaring imposing stone by turns. They made their way back to the folly, back the very nice accommodation prepared for him in a stable near the cow that lived there too. The children worked carefully to remove the various objects from his back. Seamus stood stock still, waiting patiently and somewhat relieved that the metal slats were taken away with no injury to his hide. The horse could admit nervousness at the objects on his back for he had more than a little pride, not to say vanity, over his coat remaining unblemished. They were borne away into the strange little building that housed the children as the sun dappled shadows of breeze blown trees shivered over the grass and garden, over a wide circle of tile, a strange courtyard in the middle of nowhere with a weathered, whitewashed wall beyond it. Seamus watched a grey cat dart back into the house as the dog that lived here paced around the children at their work. He was underfoot, darting to and fro and made them laugh. The boy had a rich deep chortle that belied his young face. The girl's laughter sounded like a nightingale and her talk to the dog as they managed around him sounded like a wondrous song of its own. The horse watched them disappear into the building, the clank of metal just heard from the open door. The chickens clucked and scratched in the obviousness to their surroundings that chickens so often showed at the meadow's edge, gorging on bugs. Who would want to eat bugs on purpose? If they got in the feed here or ambled about on the grass, or hay, or grain that could be borne because the taste of the food would take the curse off of it but eating insects by themselves? It seemed a hideous meal. Chickens could eat bugs to their heart's delight, and did, bless them. Seamus left them to it and was happy to be equine.

After bringing their wares indoors, the boy returned to pat his back and then went to fetch a bucket of tools from the stable. He returned, smiling, with a wool blanket over his shoulder, the bucket handle over his arm and led Seamus to open meadow near a motley assortment of buckets, basins and pots sat upon rigid metal grates at a firepit. They walked a bit further away to a trough, a metal bin in the grass. The boy rubbed Seamus down, rubbed the blanket all over him which felt wonderful after so much exertion. "Up, up Seamus..." These children did not speak Italian. The horse sensed that the boy was ready to clean his hoof as he said, "Uhp, Uhp, Shame us!" nudging his right front leg with his hands. Seamus relinquished his feet, one hoof at a time to have his hooves checked for dirt and debris, for pebbles that might have gotten stuck and have them dislodged from the shoes. The boy returned to his small collection of objects and produced a curry comb. Seamus stood patiently in a relaxing tending of his coat and whinnied an enjoyment of a brief tickle as he worked at his tummy. "Hahaha! Are you ticklish, Seamus? I'll not plague you, almost done!" The horse closed his eyes. The soft weather was here and the day was warm. It was clear these humans were not fully grown. The boy was well versed in horsecare. Yearlings. Not grown but not entirely children as he had thought. They both seemed younger at first glance. He still wondered if some proper human was yet to appear, someone who looked after them. The comb swiped its work, the boy talked of this and that in his strange tongue. It did not have the melodic cadence of his previous owners. It was mysterious and held one's interest. He opened his eyes to the beauty of the valley up here and looked forward to roaming about this place. The boy chattered like a long time companion and now checked his tail, combed it free of tangle. "There's a hero! I am in your debt, my boy! We've wanted a bed for some time..." The boy led him to the trough and the most delicious water, really tasty and thirst quenching. The girl went to the firepit and brought another bucket of it. She poured in more so he could drink his fill and not lap it entirely away. The boy and girl went to and fro, with pails, into the house, out of the house, down the hill out of view, back again. They left him to drink his fill, poured more water into a pot over the fire and when he raised his head once more, stood up straight and tall, the two children came near to pat him and pet him and the boy pressed his lips upon his forehead, a tender hand rest at his mane, before leading him to the far side of their land. So much land! Onward to graze where there were grasses of every description dotted with flowers. A banquet of rye and yarrow, fescue and flowers. Such an array... Every mouthful delicious and the children tidied his droppings and that of the cow so frequently you might believe they had as many farm hands as his old home. He was cared for with devotion. At first wondering if he was entering a life of hard physical work, the horse was amused to be damned to reside in perpetual paradise. As the days went by Seamus realized that these yearlings had only one request of him as a beast of burden. The progress forward, carrying those things on his back when he arrived had been their only demand. They let him run free and the boy exercised him in the human manner, with reins and a saddle, but bareback too, more often than not. For a time the children were absent for long stretches of the days. Bit by bit he saw them out and about more often. They had been happy to let the animals putter about their own enjoyment for a time but they returned more often and soon the ongoing outdoor care of both the land and the animals became what was. There were points when Seamus wondered if they'd gone, left their land all together, but they always returned. He was led back to his stable at day's end and had a tasty salt block all his own as well as the flies kept down with sticky paper and a roof over his head as sun bronzed clouds floated a serenity in the distance and dusk turned to night.

It was like living in a dream. Ross fed Dem grapes like he had seen lovers do in some of the old paintings in Brose's books. He dangled them at her mouth as she bit them away from the stalk gently and he brought the bunch to his own mouth for his own triumphant nibble, both chewing them up in a dreamy contentment. They disappeared into the folly, into their brand new bed. It was like having a second honeymoon. They loved and slept. They slept and loved. Ross played his guitar without a stitch of clothing on for they had no reason to dress. They were guided by the sun for they had to rouse themselves when the daylight at the windows went golden in a sideways slant, to complete their chores before nightfall, and then resumed their play in candlelight and shadow. Garrick and Tabitha Bethia were indoors too after dark, falling asleep by degrees on the floor, at the shelves of the bookcase. The Poldarks and Garrick shared their quarters at the cat's benevolence for it was she who had claimed the folly first. As inhabitants of the folly they got along well. Ross and Dem had the forbearance of the two animals in their intimacies. There was nothing for it, really. They were all grouped together in this home and there was little place else to look, the new bed and the daybed were in plain view. After so long in the valley, hidden away, cossetted in the bed they had bought, meant for one person but perfect for two who slept close, it was time to enter civilization once more. Washed and dressed, canvas shoes that had seen better days laced tight, the Poldarks went into the town below.

There were groceries to replenish; a small bag of flour, pasta, passata, which was somewhat like tomato sauce and somewhat like tomato paste, in a slender glass bottle. Coffee was more popular than tea in the area but there was tea to be had and they replenished their stock. The Poldarks remained partial to tea for all Brose and the Parisians adored coffee when they were in France. They had a stove but no oven for baking so a crusty, fresh loaf of bread was a treat for them. An orange each rounded out their purchases. They did not want to be too loaded down with things to carry. The excess of lovemaking that ensued recently made them both feel sort of floaty and delicate. They went into town as much to jog them back into reality as buy food. Baby steps back into the real world. Dem maintained her femininity even as she wore blue jeans. Her tee shirt was more form fitting than the shapeless shirts she wore before. Her hair lay loose at her shoulders with no hat or scarf to cover it. Since they left Paris, she had not kept it clipped but had let it grow, and the sudden luxuriance of her surroundings; as Ross' wife, as a child of nature in their Positano valley, had seemed to give great richness to it. It fairly gleamed with colour and now there was less need to secret it up in a cap. They explored the town, a gallant husband carrying their modest shopping as his pretty wife looked all about at his side. Locals viewed the pair as just kids, foreign, and disreputable looking ones at that for all one was a girl. They ambled about up to no good it seemed. They skulked around so near the town's limits they might as well be in the Roma encampment. They poked around abandoned buildings. They were suspicious. Why seek empty ruins like the old theater? Up to no good, most likely...

"It hasn't been used in a while, you can tell..." said Ross peering into the gap in one of the slats nailed to the front door. This area was past the market and the bulk of the town businesses, where the town fizzled out and became barren. Further even than this point a portion of wasteland and scrub housed a wide paddock that served the gypsy encampment, their horses, their caravans and even a few of the old time wooden wagons, bright with painted decoration and like a bitty house inside. That was the true end of the line, the place the outcasts were given to stay. Close enough to get the benefit of cheap labour from 'those people', their horsecraft and herbcraft and even fortune telling, as an entertaining novelty of course, from time to time. They were shown their standing in this community by shoving them beyond the dilapidated buildings that were no longer the town's priority. The others. The outcasts. Where Ross and Dem explored was not in sight of the Roma camp, they did not see it this day. But Ross and Dem had been outcasts too, still were by the dark looks of skepticism they received from many townspeople and shop owners when they arrived in Positano. They took the smooth with the rough. It was no more than many places in Europe. They exuded a hint of 'other', in their youth, in their vagrancy. It was too strong to hide. They looked to see what could be seen. They did not fear or avoid the forlorn places that told of the forgotten hopes and quiet decay of a lost portion of the town's stature. For Ross and Demelza there were no memories or loss, only discoveries. Dem wandered around the side of the place. The neighbouring building was also abandoned, perhaps it had been a store or a place for theater goers to have refreshments. The place was boarded up beyond recognition.  She could go no further because the alley between them had been used as a community tip for refuse. Piles of broken furniture, busted crates, a sharp smell of sun baked urine, from cats, from rats, just about hovered a visible haze over it all. A filthy jumble of unloved wrecked objects. Even an upper half of a store mannequin, no hips, no legs, arms ending in stiff looking hands, lay forlorn within the pile, looking out at nothing beneath a matted nest of synthetic hair like a saint beseeching Providence. No entry there. The place had been important in some long ago day. The architecture set it apart from the rest of the humble buildings in this portion of the town. That it was covered in columns and fancy designs suggested this had been a show place once. All that had gravitated to the better part of town where holidaymakers and rich folk dwelled. At some point the workaday men and women of the area had a theater to enjoy some entertainment but that was long gone now. "That side is blocked off." said Dem. The fresh air and freedom of their new life made the same scents of unkempt alleys, places Ross and Dem were no strangers to; to the point of even sleeping in such places, crinkle Dem's nose in distaste. Ross had an absurd sort of pride over watching her face when it happened. He'd not disavow his time as a rat on the street but that time was over and he'd given his wife a home. That Dem was put off by the smell of the alley made him feel Ross had kept his promise to look after her like a proper husband. Ross and Dem did not have to settle for cowering in corners and sleeping rough. They had a home of their own and even a bed! "Let's go round the back," suggested Ross. Something about the place tempted their curiosity. They had not spoken the intention aloud but they both were curious to see what the inside of the once splendid place had been.

At the back, also scattered with discarded broken crates and debris, at a lesser density than the side, they looked about the boarded up portions of the windows and two back doors. The nearer one was tight as a drum but there was a larger gap between wooden slats meant to bar entry at the second. It was not difficult for Dem to pull a slat off. The nails were smooth and they slid out of their holes with only a bit of resistance. She grinned a triumph, looking a bit dangerous, holding a board of wood with nails bristling like spikes out from the edge, gleaming menace like teeny daggers. She put it aside. It fell to the ground with a hollow sounding clatter. She smiled a dare and Ross raised an eyebrow of amusement over the bag of groceries in his arms.

'Well?' Dem might have said as her eyes scrunched a mischief.

'I'm game if you are!" Ross might have answered as his eyes scrunched to meet hers.

With the faith of two who had gotten in and out of boats, warehouses, abandoned buildings and other clandestine places in their street adventures, Ross and Dem eyeballed a quick calculus that the gap was wide enough to suit. Ross left their bag of groceries on a ledge of the building's wall in a sort of optimism that their shopping would remain unmolested by pests or spirited away by thieves. Other than bringing refuse to discard as a dump, this place was left very much alone. The twisting crouch necessary to get in the place made bringing the bag with them impossible. Ross watched Dem winch her way in with the cautious, searching scan of an old hand who guarded against happening upon someone else's pitch. She looked about for sleeping forms or recent effects of habitation like bags of belongings or makeshift contraptions for heating food. "It looks empty..." Dem whispered as she slithered in. Ross followed. Once the contortions to get through the gap were complete standing upright was easy. This back entrance was a decrepit corridor, dank smelling from damp, dim and mysterious. They walked through it, past what had been the backstage area, onward to a further cramped hallway. They could see that they were skirting the width of the place and Ross blinked an excited look of adventure when he paused before a series of doors, they walked a bit further and Ross poised his hand to push open one. Dem grinned in the dark hall, the shimmer of what light their was in her eyes. Ross pushed open the door with a loud groaning creak. They found themselves in a rustic conception of a Beaux Arts operetta house, an entrance from the side let them stand at the bank of seats where the patrons would have watched the performances, quite in the middle, the back of the theater to their left, the stage to their right. It was dank smelling from being rained upon and strong slants of sunlight shone in bands scintillating with motes of dust that sparkled as they rode their suspension in the air and winked a reflective glamour in their fall as a psychedelic snow of miniscule, grated diamonds. Rows of rotted seats that had been stuffed with horsehair sat idle. Burst seams of ruined velvet lolling from brass cast seats that smiled the faces of bored Medusas at their sides. Seats trailing filthy matted stuffing, shingles of gnarled mushrooms bristled trailing towers from many of the seat backs. In their heyday they would have served a raucus audience clamouring for Arlecchino and Colombina, the romance of the Innamorati and the madcap and music of a more down to earth sort of theatrical experience. The colour and song of the troupes who brought lively fun to far flung villages and local entertainers who held the space between traveling players with sing songs and clever tales. Ross walked further in to stand by Dem as they looked all around. There was clearly no street culture here. This town was for passing through or staying but the place was absolutely hostile to vagrants. Even busking was swiftly denied to them by the police. They were told off for begging and that strict attitude showed here. No one sheltered in this clearly abandoned place. No sign of it. The place was unloved now, untouched. No graffiti or grungy piles of discarded debris from people sheltering here. Some of the mouldings were stripped but it was mother nature that dealt the most vandalism to this place. The ceiling was still covered in constellations of gold painted stars and baby angels romping over fluffy clouds but huge pieces had fallen in and exposed this once beautiful showplace to the elements and other holes aimed the sun like floodlights beaming their twinkly light. The skitter of rats could be heard and birds were startled upwards and their wings flapped loudly in this place, taking to the balconies to roost or flying out of the broken out portions of the roof. Ross took Dem's hand and they gingerly made their way further in. They passed through sun and shadow, felt places were the floor threatened to give in a spongey soft bending. Saw where rain had pooled even as the brilliant blue sky let its soft clouds drift over the gaping hole in the ceiling. Red velvet curtains draped in a gold frayed spider's web of torn away satin fringe bowed from year after decade of water damage. The faded glory of an antiquated stage that still had painted scenery of a verdant forest dotted with peacocks and stags, bluebirds and flowers on a backdrop. The painting remained fanciful and beautiful even though it was water damaged in various places and the pipe threaded through the bottom to hold it taut bloomed orange/brown rust at the hem. Dem sighed. The decreptitude of this place made the stage scenery more beautiful somehow. Ross watched her stare at the stage, in profile, her hair freed at her shoulders as a pretty halo around her face. The slants of sunlight beyond her might have pronounced her an angel or a princess. A girl, a pretty girl. His girl. Sweetness.

"All in a garden green, two lovers sat at ease," began Ross, singing an old, old ballad with a bit of mischief in it. Dem giggled. He bowed. "M'lady," he said. Dem curtsied. "Your servant, M'lord," she said. Ross extended his hand and she took it. They picked their way to the front among grotty rubble and dicey portions of the flooring to mount the stage. They ceased to be modern. Now they were a fair maiden and a brave hero in an enchanted forest with a strong band of sunlight warming their faces and standing rainwater a scant few feet away making a brook or a shimmering pond seem real in midst of the painted forest. Ross kissed Dem's hand and smiled over it as he sang,

All in a garden green, two lovers sat at ease,
As they could scarce be seen above the leafy trees.
They lovèd lofty full, and no wronger than truly,
In the time of the year cam betwixt May and July

He stood and held her hand aloft, as if he were Tristan or Abelard admiring Isolde or Heloise,

Quoth he, "Most lovely maid, my troth shall ay endure,
And be not thou afraid, but rest thee still secure
That I will love thee, long as life in me shall last:
Now I am strong and young and when my youth is past.

"When I am grey and old, and then must stoop to age,
I'le love thee twenty-fold, my troth I here engage.
My love shall be the same, it never shall decay,
But shine without all blame, though body turn to clay."

Dem blinked a winsome appreciation of Ross' plea and sang,

She listen'd to his song, and heard it with a smile,
And innocent as young, she dreamèd not of guile.
No guile was meant by Will, for he was true as steel,
As was there aught deceit when she made him a will.

Ross stepped nearer, whispered a close serenade,

"Full soon both two were wed..."

He sang it, lips near hers and then kissed her. Dem brought her body nearer to his and lay her hand at Ross' hair. She was an enchanted nymph and he a brave prince. She was a young girl who got broken out of a Magdalene Laundry by a wandering troubadour. She was a wife and he was a husband. They were two long haired kids in their jeans and tee shirts, their ragged canvas shoes, soft lipped and silent as the painted animals, rich greenery and regal destruction of the weather beaten velvet drapes held a spell of glamour over a ruined theater's rough magic.

They continued past the stage, exploring the backstage areas. The small dressing rooms were mostly destroyed. Many had planks of the floor fallen in, one could not hope to stand in those rooms. Broken mirrors threatened their bad luck, posters so corrupted by mold and discoloured pigments flecked with fine black spots they lost what communication they might have offered. Cosmetics still littered some of the furnishings that bowed and sat at weird angles from the uneven, broken floors; small tin pans of waxy ungents, lids askew or long gone,  pooled with water or overgrown furry growths of mold. Thumps of rats leaving in fear of intruders made what few noises their were in here. Birds wings fluttered at times. "Ross! Look!" Dem picked her way forward to crouch by an old trunk. Black leather and brass bound, it was dusty but quite intact. Ross made up the space between them. "Is it locked?" wondered Ross, aloud. She jiggled the top and it did not lift but after a bit of experimental prodding she found that it was not really locked but only held by a trick clasp. She lifted the lid and found the box to be full of clothing. Costumes from another era and quite old. "Ohhh..." They sighed. Dem looked to Ross who was also struck with amazement at these items sang with colour and long ago days. Gaudy and cheap, dry rot decay in places but they must have looked so fantastic when they were in their prime. With care Ross and Dem poked about the trunk. There were dresses and scarves, three-cornered hats and fur-lined gloves, a periwig and red and blue stockings, a pair of lady's green lace slippers with blue heels. There was a muslin neck scarf and an ostrich feather, straggling wilted pieces of its plume. They were in poor condition but so like the random props Brose used to keep in his studio they were charmed and couldn't help but explore what lay inside. Dem lifted out the ostrich feather. She sniffed at it, pressed it against her cheek. Then she tried it round her neck with a giggle as Ross took up one of the tricorn hats. It was black felt, stiff and triangular from the edges of a round brim folded up, cocked and secured to the crown in three places. He put it on his head. "What do you think, Sweetness?" He lifted his chin in a haughty vanity. There remained a lack of light but the glow of daylight from a breach in the ceiling some yards away, showed the hat to good effect and the sharp planes of his face. The youthfulness held in Ross' face but the hat accentuated how much he had grown and changed since the day she met him properly. Not just a pair of eyes, one of which often disappearing behind a forelock of hair, through a veil of plants behind an iron fence. When she fell over the last portion of fence to escape the girls home, she looked up into his face. Ross had a rounded plumpness to his cheeks, as did she really for all the Home underfed its inmates. Ross was fifteen then, with honest brown eyes and his youth firmly in evidence. Their life on the road, on the run, as they grew out of childhood, had changed them. Ross had a self satisfied look, a proud jut forward to his chin, his hair falling at his shoulders under the tricorn hat, eyes heavy lidded in his teasing show of vanity. His cheekbones were more pronounced, his neck and shoulders seemed more broad. No facial hair had claimed him yet, still baby faced that way. An 'old child', one foot firmly in his maturity but still Ross. Lovely Ross. "You look made for it, Ross! Like a gent!" said Dem. And his giggle made him seem younger again. They felt about and rummaged through the trunk. What they suspicioned would be a tremendous costume of some sort -a grand wizard cape or some huge ball gown- was folded at the bottom of the trunk but it turned out to be a velvet drapery, wrapped around itself. It had a broad trim of gold fringe and lay well preserved at the beneath the other objects. They examined it with care, stroking it and shaking out the crumbs of dry lavender that were placed in the trunk as an archaic solution to repelling moths. Dem smoothed it with her hand, felt the silken nap of the velvet move with her hand and wipe a frosted evidence of where she touched it. A brief flick of the wrist in the opposite direction brought the deeper blue back. "Ross! It's that lovely..." she admired it more, liking the softness. "It seems a shame to leave such pretty thing here rotting away in an old trunk," Ross smiled. "Do you want it? We could bring it away with us if you want, Sweetness." She nodded 'yes' happily. "We could hang it by the bed," said Dem. Ross grinned. "We shall be very grand," He lowered his voice and drew his face nearer to hers over the open trunk and spill of rich, blue velvet. "It's only right to give Garrick and Tabitha Bethia privacy." They shared a knowing look.

With a bit of twisting, watching to avoid snagging the material against the wooden slats they climbed through, Dem being handed through a little at a time by Ross, both careful not to let it drag at the ground. Bit by bit they threaded the velvet drapery out of the crevice. They moved it through as Dem piled the excess over her shoulder, and Ross swung himself out last of all, looking to their bag of groceries with his chin lifted and a sunny grin at the of pleasure in seeing it remained just as they left it. Dem watched her husband, over a mass of blue velvet in her arms, with fondness. There was a glow of optimism to Ross that rebounded when something pleased him, a small proof that life could go your way sometimes, not take that moment to smack you down. A win; their shopping was still there and now they had a pretty curtain to make an opulent nest of their new bed. This place had been valued and then declined in its abandoned state, became a dumping ground where people cast away junk they no longer used. The building was left to the mercy of time and nature's elements. It still held treasures, however old and worn, and now the Poldarks spirited away the nicest one for themselves. Ross was pleased and that made Dem pleased as they bore the results of their adventure away. A boy with a stout paper bag, a girl holding a wide, blue bale of material half over her shoulder and in her arms like a pirate making off with pickings from a wrecked ship. The two foreign kids that showed up and wangled the right to live up in the valley with the permission from the town hall. Not exactly vagrants but not proper, not proper at all. Some townspeople cast a jaundiced eye at two ruffians who made off with something or another from the abandoned theatre. Two who disappeared back out of town back up into the valley.

Chapter Text

"Good boy, good boy, Garrick," Ross greeted their cheerful, four legged friend who turned round the corner of the whitewashed wall to say 'hello' in rapid fire barking and a pleasant hop from place to place before trotting to Ross' side. Ross set down a string bag of provisions and gave him a good wack on the flanks. In a quick manoeuvre Ross changed tack, dragging the bag aside so Garrick was deprived of sniffing the contents and prevented from poking the food with his nose through the string netting. "Ah! No boy, no. I'm sure it smells delicious but humans only, I'm afraid." Ross cooed a sympathy. He waggled a rich, garlicky cured sausage in front of the dog and couldn't blame him for wanting to investigate further. He slung the groceries over his shoulder and both gents entered the folly to the surprise of a sharp smell of black pepper. Ross squinted his eyes in a recoil from breathing it in nearly at once, unprepared for the assault. Garrick snuffled and exited with a loud sneeze, whimpering displeasure as he escaped to the meadow. Ross opened his mouth to complain but all that came forth was,

"ACHOO!"

Dem giggled. "Ross I didn't expect you back so soon!" "Exploring the town isn't as fun without you, I just went to the market and back," Ross wriggled his nose and risked looking at her and around the folly as the sting of the pepper hung in the air. Tabitha Bethia was nowhere to been seen and most likely beat a hasty retreat too. "Sweetness? What are you doing?" He looked at the metal dish of pepper she was crushing with the bottom of an iron skillet. Ross frowned. "What are you doing?! That's all our pepper, surely?" asked Ross.

"ACHOO!"

Demelza sneezed. "We have lice in our poultry." she explained to the rhythmic crunch of the tiny wrinkled peppercorns breaking under the pressure of her forcing her weight down upon the pans. Ross felt the sharp oils and scent of the spice getting stronger as each little peppercorn unleashed a new salvo in being crushed apart. He shrugged. "Does it matter? They seem happy enough and pleased to putter about like always. It's a common condition." said Ross, squinting once more. Dem kept at it. "Well, it doesn't at all please me. I'm beating up these black peppercorns. When they are small enough I shall mix 'em with warm water and wash the hens with it." Ross knit his brows. "I thought that was what the Epsom salt was for. They use it for feet here, I guess," Ross pulled out a box with a photograph of manicured pair of feet in a tub of water and 'Sali Tonificanti' printed on it. "That's to wash them clean after." answered Dem.

"ACHOO!" sneezed Ross.

"Bless you," smiled Dem, still crushing away. Ross smiled, half perturbed by the pepper, half contented to receive a 'bless you' from his Sweetness because it always sounded off hand but so loving. It seemed more than simple politeness when Dem said it. "And 'bless you' too, Dem, I suspect you'll need it more! I've never heard of bathing chickens in pepper, even if you were going to roast them!" laughed Ross. "Will it get rid of the crawlers? he asked. "It'll kill all kinds of vermin," said Dem, blowing a strand of hair out of her eye as she worked. "How do you know?" asked Ross, genuinely curious. She stopped to peer at her progress in the metal pan then started bashing them once more. "Doesn't this stand to reason, what I'm doing now? The lice won't like it." said Dem. "They won't, I surely wouldn't! Will the chickens?" She grinned over her chore at a remembrance. "We'll soon find out! It won't kill 'em." Explained Dem, sagely, adding, "I wouldn't put turpentine on a chicken!" Ross chuckled. "I expect they wouldn't like Fairy Liquid either," Ross and Dem shared a smile. They had been deloused by Brose in Paris and he used turpentine for thinning oil paints on their heads before scrubbing their hair clean with washing up liquid. There was silence.

"ACHOO!"

Ross sneezed. "That damned pepper! Why are you doing it in here? The air is on fire! You should do that outside, Dem, the place might not air out in time," complained Ross. "Oh! I hadn't thought!" said Dem. Ross sneezed again. "We can sit on the roof," said Dem, thinking aloud. "They haven't been up on the roof yet," Ross grinned, at first from the pleasure of hosting their friends in the quazi parlor/patio that was their roof and then a grimace from another sneeze forming.

"ACHOO!"

Ross made to wipe his nose on his sleeve. "Ross! Get a tissue!" said Dem. He set the string bag down and felt about his jeans pockets, sniffing wetly. "I must have lost the one you gave me." "You always do." sighed Dem. "Get one from the box, if I hand it to you it will get pepper on it!" Ross rolled his eyes. "I'll use my sleeve," argued Ross. "No!" scolded Dem. He sniffed offense in a watery eyed humour as he crossed the room. "Don't be so high and mighty, Palmier!" he called over his shoulder. "You've used your sleeve, more than once, when it suited you!" Dem smirked to be reminded of the sometimes questionable hygiene of the street they'd been pressed to in their adventures but lifted her chin in a prideful retort. "We've got a proper house now!" With a bark of a laugh he retrieved a tufted paper tissue from the box on a shelf and blew his nose in the sort of relief you can only have from a vigorous blow. "I never sneeze from one year's end to the next. And I don't expect this sort of assault in my own house." said Ross. She giggled. "I'll take this pan outside. They'll get dealt with out there anyway," said Dem. Ross made to follow her. "You've compelled me to be polite in my habits, I suppose you will do me the kindness to allow a little of the pleasure of catching and washing the hens. It'll be quicker with two and we'll have to wash ourselves up too before Hugh, Dwight and Caroline get here anyway..." Ross sneezed as he went out.

Ross dropped his tissue into the fire and began to tip hot water into a metal basin with a ladle, to cool a bit before it became Dem's slurry bath of pepper for the chickens. She continued beating on the peppercorns. "I'm going to shovel up a bit," said Ross. "Give a shout when we need to round up the chickens," "O.K!" said Dem. Ross went to carry away Desdemona and Seamus' dung from the stables and what there was to come across in the grazing land. They were both deep into dirty chores before their guests would arrive but a quick wash in the river would put them right and a leisurely visit with their friends would feel that much nicer at the end of their labours. Dem mixed the crushed pepper into a wet paste with a spoon and then went to the meadow to find Ross who was walking back from the compost pen. He waved. She waved. Ross watched her stand on the crest of the hill with Desdemona in the distance, contented at her grazing, Seamus proud and elegant further on, and the blue sky framing the meadow flowers and the trees and and his wife like a pretty dream. That was a calm respite before the hideous effort to hold the chickens still as Dem rubbed pepper water on them in a sneezy, wheezy wrestling that made the chickens rebellious, loose boweled and ill tempered. One after the other they wrestled pepper onto the chickens, having to corner them to catch them up because the others could see the situation with their companion and were disturbed to be next. Ross held them still as they flapped and clucked complaint, Dem got her hands as deep into their feathers as she could getting the paste everywhere. They soon had their jeans and hands and forearms plastered in pepper, chicken shit and bits of feather. The birds ran about in a confused offense at the paste drying on them and Ross and Dem watched them in a fatigued despondency as they steeled themselves to round them up again and wash their feathers clean after they washed up. Ross and Demelza stayed in their dirty clothes but scrubbed their arms and hands clean at the firepit for the next go round. This was less taxing for all involved. The chickens luxuriated in their warm Epsom salt baths and, having shat vigorously in their peppered distress, were now calm and relaxed with no more fouling themselves, the water or their owners. The Poldarks washed their chickens clean, hard pressed to differentiate between the pepper and the bugs in the grainy stuff that came away in the water. Satisfied that the feathers were divested of lice and removed the stubborn dark haze of lice eggs at the pin feathers, they rinsed them in new, clean water. The warm temperature pleased the hens and their better temperament pleased Ross and Dem as they murmured complements to their birds much as Brose cooed an affectionate patter in Dutch over their heads as they took turns getting their heads cleaned. The washing helped and their dust baths later would keep the crawlers down after such a deep cleansing. "I am grateful we only need soap!" laughed Dem as the chickens resumed their regular pecking and scratching as if butter wouldn't melt. "Yes," agreed Ross. "A soapy wash and a sit down! We'll get clean and get more water. We won't have to lift a finger until Seamus and Desdemona come in from grazing." Dem sighed. They could not shirk chores but she felt exhausted. "Let's do that now." said Dem. Ross looked to her sharply, to complain for he was bone tired and they still had to haul water for extra, for their guests, but then he saw Dem's logic. If their horse and cow were stabled early they could simply check on them after Hugh and the Enyses left rather than meet another round of intricate chores. They could have their visit and rest sooner in truth afterwards. He blinked and his protest and sudden acceptance flickered between them in a look. She understood. They agreed.

"I think we're early!" laughed Caroline. "There's no one about,"

"ACHOO!"

"Bless you," said Dwight. Caroline sniffed and then smiled. "Thank you, my dear." They exited the folly. Hugh looked round, standing in the fountain bed holding a bottle of wine by the neck as Tabitha Bethia appeared and rubbed against his leg. He bent down to pet her. "Where have your friends gotten to, eh?" he murmured. Hugh looked into the trees in the distance. No sign of Ross or Dem. Dwight walked around to the stables. "Seamus and Desdemona are here." he called out. "Maybe they went to get water," offered Dwight as he returned.

"Hello!" said Dem.

Hugh, Dwight and Caroline turned as one to see Ross and Dem arrive from the back of their property, redolent in poppy perfumed scent from washing themselves in the river, dressed in clean clothes and Garrick alongside them. Their damp hair clumped in loose curls and both Ross and Dem looked wild and magical from it; bright eyed and barefoot and smiling in their element. He wore a linen shirt and the black trousers they had come to know as Ross' 'better' clothes. Dem wore the green vest trimmed with cream lace and the long brown skirt they had first seen her in. They were calm, and smiling and happy to see them. They walked to meet them, standing side by side and close in the way couples often did; not touching but clearly within each other's force field. One could believe they were children of nature rather than modern people, part of the natural world, at peace in a beautiful valley with their animals content and cared for, and all that they had; from the garden to the land, their courtyard -a dry fountain bed, their house -an eccentric daydream someone had made real centuries earlier, freely shared. The newness had waned quickly. Hugh and Caroline and Dwight felt themselves to be accepted and pass into the valley as friends rather than curious onlookers. The smiles that passed between them were so genuine and warming as the leaves rustled overhead and the sun shone so bright in the late afternoon. "Hello!" they answered. Caroline stepped forward. "We peeked inside, looking for you both. I hope you don't mind," Dem and Ross smiled wider in tandem. "Oh no," said Dem. "Not at all." Ross nodded, looked between them. "I only hope the pepper died down. We had a bit of fun cleaning the chickens and Dem broke up peppercorns to wash them up!" Dwight laughed. "There was some sneezing!" Hugh lifted the bottle. "We've come bearing Chianti!" Dem clapped her hands lightly. "We've sausage and bread," "And figs!" Ross added. "If you don't mind climbing a ladder we can eat on the roof." Dwight sounded surprised. "The roof?" Caroline giggled her agreement and Hugh grinned. The sight of Dem watching him, head upside down over the edge of the rooftop, hair cascading and the light in her eyes, when he first came to collect the Poldarks for dinner with the Enyses was a fetching vision. "Wonderful!" crowed Hugh. "We must brave the indoors to gather the food," said Dem. They followed her in. "Oh! It's better now!" said Ross. "Is it? ACHOO!" asked Dwight. "Bless you, my dear." grinned Caroline. "Yes," chuckled Ross. "When Dem was pounding upon them it was masses more; five, ten, fiftyfold!" said Ross as he tumbled beautiful green and purple skinned figs into the hollow of a delicate soup plate rimmed in gold and Palladian designs. Dem procured a knife and a wooden board. Caroline brought the sausage. Dwight and Hugh brought plates from the wondrous choice of antiques to be had in the Poldarks' cupboard, a huge formal armoire, one of a pair on either side of the daybed. One wondered how they had been brought up the mountain.

Next to the onion shaped dome, a modest area to picnic lay, swept clean and already laid with a cotton tapestry. The Poldarks bade their guests to sit as they continued, up and down the ladder, to bring glasses and bottles of mineral water, linen napkins and a packet of sweets as well as Ross' guitar. With all required for the meal accounted for, they supped upon their feast and chatted about this and that, had a sing song, or three, and even a few hands of whist for Dwight had a pack of cards on his person. The sun glowed red and gold. The sky glowed purple and pink. It was time to go before the sun set in truth. They walked down the trail to the car with Garrick balancing his attention between them all and standing on his haunches by Dem, waiting as they hugged Caroline goodbye and Ross shook Dwight and Hugh's hands with the fraternal joshing and chatter that extends leavetaking in pleasant ways. Caroline asked them to stay the night again at the villa she and Dwight were renting and the Poldarks accepted. Ross and Dem waved their friends away as Garrick snuffed and puffed and said,

"CHOO!" followed by a snort.

"Awww," said Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love. "Bless you, Garrick." She knelt to give him a cuddle, then stood and held Ross' hand. "Come on, Garrick, let's go home." And they made the climb back to the folly.

Chapter Text

The sun was warm and made the velvet laying on Dem's arms feel a little moist from perspiration. Ross assisted by having the back of the material draped over his shoulder, walking behind her still holding a paper bag of food as they walked on the shoulder of the road. It made for a strange parade. The occasional onlooker in their vehicles or farmer directing a draft animal where they were bound, on foot, at the side of the road looked on in interest at these two foreign kids enveloped in a curtain of blue velvet, the middle section bowed between them in a swooping arc as they carrying heaps of it their arms, the boy as long haired as the girl. The trudging journey into the higher cliffs of these strange youngsters, spiriting away rich looking cloth in their grotty sort of attire was amusing. Why would two kids need such a thing in the wilderness of Il Porto?

Ross felt his armpit run freely with sweat under the humped velvet that tented the heat of one side of his body like a blanket. They made their way up the cliff. He held the groceries under the material in a sort of covenant with fate that his grip would not give. His arms were so rigid around the bag, his knuckles beginning to ache as he clutched a portion of the curtain tightly, the sensation of fatigue kept growing. For all Ross had the intention of keeping the bag in his arms his elbows felt tired, his wrists ached and he feared it might drop. The bottle of tomato passata seemed to gain more weight, like an anchor, as he continued up the path behind Dem. There was still a ways to go and rearranging the cloth or stopping to better his grip on the groceries would be tricky because they both were anxious not to have the cloth fall or drag along the ground. Dem realized they had not spoken at all since they mounted the trail. She was hot with the fabric in her arms and Ross had hold of the velvet too, their shopping as well. She was hard pressed to be able to turn to look at Ross for fear of losing hold of the droopy curtain and risking it to the dirt of the canyon. It was a point of pride that they not admit their discomfort. A bravado they'd cultivated from being on their own since they were young. When Brose queried over them in an examination of skepticism; over their ages and intentions in traveling from England to France, underage with no identification and unable to speak French, Ross and Dem bristled to suggest that they were in any way unfit for the challenges they faced even as the bruising from the abduction and assault in Marseilles was vivid at their necks and the evidence of their homelessness so pronounced by the state of their poor hygiene when they first arrived, breaking into his studio to shelter from the rain. When challenged at their insistence they were both sixteen, they admitted the falsehood, girded by their sense of being temporarily disadvantaged but able to bounce back. Traumatized to the point Ambrose could hear them murmur their nightmares in their sleep, they held to their sense of unassailable rightness in the waking light of day. Ross and Demelza shrugged away their lack of papers, lack of language and lack of a fixed address in the wake of being robbed of their money and the loss of their bag of clothes as unimportant. They still had a guitar, with a missing string, and their own initiative. They'd not admit defeat even in such stark proof of the trouble they'd been in and that attitude still moved them. Being hot and sweaty, feeling the groceries weigh one down was certainly less unpleasantness than many previous situations Ross and Dem found themselves in and that fact gave them both the pique of pride to persevere. The valley shone in the sun, the trees, the craggy walls of rock that looked so imposing, the dapple and shadow of sunlight shivering at the ground through the leaves upon the kinetic busyness of insects hurrying about, birds overhead in flight or congregating on branches in the trees or hopping to and fro among small animals rustling through the brush, crunch and rattle of the forest floor. The path held little shadow. Ross remembered Mama telling him and Claude of the wind and the sun arguing over which one was stronger and decided to settle the dispute as they watched a traveler making his journey, wearing a cloak. They decided whichever of them could get the man to take off his cloak was the strongest. The wind blew, to blow the cloak away from the traveller and the man grasped the edges of his cloak to pull it tighter round his body. The sun warmed the air, shone true and hot and the traveller took off his cloak because he felt over warm in it. Ross felt over warm but the sun was blameless, really. The sun shone over the valley with such prettiness Ross could not fault it or the heft grand curtain they now had in their possession. This was the outcome of hoisting a huge, thick drapery and a bag of provisions up a mountainside on a warm, sun soaked day in a wild canyon. They would bear their treasure away with care and, later, have a cool dip in the swimming hole. They would work at chores, getting as dirty as they would do in one go, and then refresh themselves. Ross looked forward to it. He looked forward at Dem, trudging onward. Dem made a little noise of effort in her throat, Ross could hear it even as someone else might disregard it. He was very in tune with Sweetness. Aligned. Their close partnership on the street lent an extra ability to understand each other. "Nearly there," said Ross in a chipper tone of voice. Dem smiled. Ross rallied even as it was plain the bag of their groceries was weighing down his arms and he must be as sweaty as she was under all this heaped up pile of velvet. The honour of a rat. He'd not complain, not suggest the discomfort of the effort was getting the better of him. For his sake and for hers. She answered. "Yes, not long now," The huff of her exertions sounded in her voice. They knew they were struggling. They knew they would not let the curtain drag the ground or give a bottle of passata and its fellows advantage over them. They knew they were a team. They continued up the trail. They were nearing the whitewashed wall and would soon lay their burdens down -and none too soon for they were both hot and Ross' arms ached terribly. Barking was heard. The trees grew tall and dense now and covered much appreciated shade over them, cooling and welcoming with little pools of the sun glowing and hovering between the shadows of the leaves at the ground. Welcome home... Garrick rushing forward to meet them, that Tabitha Bethia would meow her acknowledgement of their return from her queenly vantage point at the shelves or windowsill of the folly, beyond the tiled fountain bed and Dem's garden plot. Three hens puttering about at their scratching, Desdemona and Seamus grazing further onward upon the flower laden meadow framed by the ancient woods they knew to be their very own for five years was a warm welcome home for Mr. and Mrs. Poldark.

Garrick trotted towards his friends. Ross and Dem smiled their greeting. The generosity of this boy and girl, the openess they showed was so different to the humans in town. They saw him. They didn't shrink away, or aim a kick in his direction or screw up their faces in distaste. They looked to him with the anticipation of greeting a friend. He had friends and a name. When they called him 'Garrick' he stood with a bit more pride in himself, a bit more self respect. Garrick barked his hello and they were happy to see him. They were carrying a heap of material, dry and aged in its scent, a musty wisp of dank places was noticeable from the pile of cloth they carried as well as Ross and Dem giving off the marking scent humans often scrubbed away with water and covered up with mysterious perfumes. Garrick found them to be more of a four legged temperament even as they were human and kept two legged habits. What was wild in them smelled of the street, a way of being he had lived and recognized. In some ways the humans were much like him, a bit like the cat too. What was domesticated in all four of them could not entirely overtake what was feral in their natures. The cat was as at peace in her house as she was roaming about for her prey. Garrick had been living on his wits as a scavenger, relieved to escape death in a dog fight and live here with his rescuers. The human children were betwixt and between, clearly as able to live on the street as one could in a house. The cat was wise when she chose them. They were polite, and hard working, always deferential in their interactions with her; never deviating from using her full name, Tabitha Bethia, a show of respect in her position as owner of the house. That Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love did not demand her name recited in full by Ross showed the store they both set in giving the cat her just due. They were diligent in the day to day chores; helping the cat in the needful work of keeping the place -work that she could not manage herself, work they did well for they were so nimble with their hands and able to cover a great deal of ground on two feet; caring for the cow and horse and chickens, tending house and the fires, bringing them all water; when they worked at length Garrick could smell their commonality. They hadn't fur but they emitted musk at each other frequently. They smelt more like animals even now, even humans are animals thought Garrick. Ross and Dem Demelza Sweetess My Love had two nests in the house and little inhibition to lay in the grass together quite a lot. The cat had no issues with this habit for it never got in the way of their chores and seemed to be the human way. Garrick was also unphased by this. That they mated so frequently made sense. The humans seemed to be in perpetual heat to the point they had to scrub off their musk with water each day to get anything done! He breathed in the almost meaty haze around Ross and the sharp scent of perspiration that hinted much the same from Dem. Garrick kept hold of it, the smell of his humans. He was careful to take the time to remember it when it was strong from them as they constantly reduced their scent in the river. They were distinct from others and part of his life now, he sought to bind his memory and their scent together; what was of them, what made them Ross and Dem Demelza Sweetness My Love and different to other people. Garrick committed it so to memory he could later discern the distinct notes of it underneath that of their pups. They forever obscured it with soap and water but Garrick persevered and learned the scent of his friends by heart.

"Hello, Garrick!" grinned Dem through the effort of being that much nearer to the end of the journey, but not quite. He paced about sniffing them, looking up at them in a cheerful pant and weaving from one to the other, criss crossing under the drape between them and then following alongside Ross. "Good boy," said Ross. "We've got a stunner of a curtain, Garrick!" said Ross, half pride, half fatigue. "It'll be that grand!" chimed Dem relieved to make it to the front door. With Garrick at their heels they plunked the drapery and the groceries onto the daybed with a "Phew!" in tandem. They stood up and got their bearings, stretched their limbs, Ross rubbed his wrists and the insides of his upper arms, scrunched his fingers open and shut, bringing them back to feeling normal after strain, giving the bottle of tomato paste visible in the opening of the bag a satisfied, side long glance of victory. They watched the inert objects laying on the day bed and knew that they had won the day in getting it all home and the curtain had not dragged the ground. Marks of sweat showed darker, here and there, in places where the curtain laid against them. They shared sheepish grins. They were sweaty and the smell of this it hummed forward from them with vigor, strong enough to smell themselves in the room as a breeze blew gently from the window. "Well," sighed Dem. "We aren't fit for much except more chores," Ross nodded. They accepted the small sweat stains on their new curtain as unavoidable, understood that they might discolour the fabric once they evaporated and then admired the rest of the rich, sapphire bright velvet, catching the light, frosted and gleaming dark in jagged folds and haphazard drape, its gold trim glistening as nice as it might have been when it was new where it peeked out of the jumble. The stains wouldn't show terribly because the luster of the velvet was so beautiful. Ross scanned the side of the room that held the single bed that served for two. "We can string a rope at the walls, near the ceiling." he said half to Dem, half to himself aloud. "We could draw it open and shut that way." She nodded agreement and secure in this plan, Dem went outdoors to work in the garden, weeding and watering and gathering what might be nice for supper and Ross to the stables to muck them out and spread fresh hay. Dem left her garden to sweep the fountain bed clean and help bring more straw to the stables. Ross and Dem had to carry the waste a ways away to keep the smell down. They kept the compost pen at the edge of the hay field. It was hard work that kept the land near the folly sweet smelling and bucolic. It was pragmatic since they needed to retrieve more hay for the stables in any case. When the cold weather came they would have to use part of the meadow closer by, then get rid of the waste by degrees.

Afterwards they hauled water. Brought buckets of water up the hill in the strong sun, denying themselves a cool dip until they got as much of the hard graft out of the way. Once that was done, they went to the river's edge and scrubbed their tee shirts and jeans clean by rubbing one side of the garments against the other like its own washboard, working the smell of sweat out of the fabric and sniffing them now and again to judge the progress of this. It was a long process but Ross and Dem laundered the their clothes successfully and helped each other wring the water out of the stiff denim fabric by him twisting them one way and her the other, pressing out the water in a tight squeeze and then laying them over the wash line they strung between trees. In this work they ambled about nude in a forthright need to clean clothes and once this was done they washed themselves clean in the river, climbed out and then walked to the swimming hole.

They enjoyed the buoyancy of the water after so much effort. Ross and Dem swam a lazy circuit in water that glittered in the sun, floated at the surface, tread water watching their spouse in a tender exchange of gaze. They draped themselves upon the flat wide sheafs of rock at the edge near the cliffs, vines of deep, glossy green swaying in the breeze festooned with red and orange trumpet flowers. They lay in a portion of shade from the sun, long legs, long arms, long hair, two water nymphs in nude repose. They watched the bees and hummingbirds hovering from blossom to blossom gathering pollen and sipping the sweets to be sampled from their nectar at the cliffs. Watched the clouds overhead float slowly away into the distance, frothy puffs of white suspended in the dazzle of a blue Italian sky. Dem closed her eyes. The surface of the plane of rock beneath them was smoothed by time and a forgiving bed at this moment. The sounds of nature surrounded them in a quiet pause away from the rest of the world and she could focus on them with closed eyes. Ross lay near, their hair and bodies streaming water back to the source, draining over the rock back to the pool. The cooling water, the refreshment of shade over her, the tired feeling in her limbs waning felt delicious as Dem felt sleep overtake her, felt the moment between awake and asleep; welcomed sleep in the space between the reality of hearing bird call and the river and Ross' breathing near her as the pleasant promise of sweet dreams on a warm afternoon overtook Dem. Sweet dreams as Ross drawled a sleepy benediction over her in the placid sigh of his own crossover into sleep.

"I love you, Sweetness,"

They rested for an hour and then returned to the folly. Ross pulled on a pair of cutoff jeans and Dem wore a man's button down shirt with length enough to be nominal coverage. Tabitha Bethia leapt from a bookshelf to greet them and Ross gathered her up in his arms as Dem scritched her head and they asked her about the cat's day in a close council of purring cat and the nearness of their bodies, heads together in cheerful whispers and a peck of a kiss over Tabitha Bethia's head. The cat watched, blinking an interest near the humans' chins, the brief press their mouths together, a pause so brief it did not halt the flow of their talking to her. She admired this, the casualness of it. The humans had a strong territorial attitude, a zeal in their dominance play as mates but seemed so well matched, so equal, as to be a draw most of the time. The female was quite at a level with the male, the press of their lips as they spoke was a casual afterthought and a dominance move quite at the same time. Tabitha Bethia was impressed at the feline qualities of the humans, the streak of independence in both of them that was much like that of a cat. She could admit a bit of their human attitudes were rubbing off on her. She had no qualms over her solitary existence before they appeared but enjoyed being petted to the point of purring, having the day to day hunting and grooming interspersed with the coming and goings of these humans was pleasant. It was nice to have humans, even the addition of the dog adding novelty to one's days, the horse and cow, there were chickens about too. Tabitha Bethia weaved her head between them and took the time to rub against their legs when Ross set her back down on the floor, curling herself about their ankles in a figure eight and felt their regard as she did so, looked up and saw them frozen in a dreamy looking happiness. That they smiled, watched her with a widening of their lips, a softening of their gaze, showed that she had managed to please them -humans did not purr it seemed. She went back to her shelf content that the draw was achieved three ways now, the feline propensity for independence existed in them and the human temperament for the communal had impressed itself on her too. The boy, the girl, the cat; they had achieved an understanding and her desire to succor her humans with affection had come forth quite in tandem with the humans' gentle friendship to her. It was subtle but unmistakable and Tabitha Bethia could admit it was nice.

Ross brought Seamus and Desdemona back from grazing, checked their hooves, brushed him clean, washed her clean. Talked of the new curtain they'd found and used the endearments they were learning to recognize in the strange tongue the children used. Desdemona looked forward to being 'my girl'. Seamus had come to like being 'Seamus' and recognized it as his name rather than 'Oscuro', the name in his previous home. They both looked forward to morning when the boy would press his lips at their head. They saw the humans also gave each other this greeting and felt it charming that he extended this to them as well. It was a strange custom but it did feel nice. Dem helped bring the water that had been boiled and cooled to their troughs and set another pot on the fire to boil more for later. Ross brought another two buckets up for their evening needs and breathed in the scent of their supper cooking in content and an enjoyment of watching Dem's legs go on forever below the hem of her shirt tails. Onions and their green tops, courgettes sliced fine and crumbles of resiny oregano were cooked in olive oil and moistened with the passata to make fine accompaniment to the pasta bubbling in its pot behind the skillet on the stove. She smiled up from her work to watch Ross, standing leaned against the door having kicked off his canvas shoes and the light from out of doors bringing definition to his body in the sharp relief of light and shadow, his wirey strength even as slender as he was. The straggling bits of string that hung from the cutoffs' hem tangled a bleached looking fringe, a provocative camouflage over the shadowed suggestion of his groin -they were extremely short shorts... They watched each other, grateful to have a good meal, grateful to have a good friend. They ate at their table as Garrick enjoyed his meal by the door and Tabitha Bethia disappeared under the daybed with her captured supper. They washed the dishes, easy to do for they had wiped them clear of much of the sauce and oils with their bites of bread as they ate. When Dem stretched up to nail the rope secure to the wall near the ceiling, the shirt followed the movement of her arms and rose. It revealed what was shapely and alluring as she balanced on the bed upon pretty tiptoe, and then draped back down as she brought her arms down and admired her work, back on terra firma. Ross stood at his side of the bed. He made no comment but he wasted no time in securing the other side of the velvet curtain to the wall and turned back to strip out of the cutoff jeans, tossing them aside with no ceremony, no miscommunication in his intent as he remained standing as God made him upon the single bed, staring Dem down as he dropped to his knees, kneeling upright in a smooth movement as the pregnant pause of Dem watching Ross suplicate himself; on his knees, lips parted in his awe of her and decree a demand of her simultaneously in his dark stare and the state of his arousal held them frozen. He could see the change come over her, the heightened tension as her eyes widened, she watched him and Ross was proud to see Dem's gaze at him in a hunger of her own. Dem smiled an approval of her husband at the final suspension of movement before it collapsed and she launched forward to mount his lap; a flash of her quim as the shirt tails turned aside in her haste, their mouths opening in tandem and joined together at once, the growl of her husband's pleasure in his throat, the sigh that left her as they broke free of the kiss and he sought the flesh at the opening of her shirt and they clutched at the other in a writhing embrace. They had a room of their own in a way, a hidden place to lay their heads at night, awake in the morning and cleave and be of one flesh in what time lay between. The curtain retained the scent of the damp ridden theater and even their sweat in places should one put their nose near at first but the transference of becoming part of the folly, and thus the valley, did not take long. Before long the velvet drape was embued with mellow scent of candle wax and the fresh air of the valley all round them. The musty smells dissipated and that portion of the far side of the folly became an opulent wall and a secret sanctuary at one with its surroundings.

Garrick and Tabitha Bethia watched the humans disappear, into their other nest, behind the drapery. What was alien in the smell of the curtain was strong this night but it lessened over time. The dank odor of the abandoned theater waned away. The humans had managed to make a proper den for themselves, in truth, at the far end of the house. The votive candles shone brighter against the curtain and it harmonized well with the Madonna figure, dressed in blue velvet, on the shelf. Tabitha Bethia turned round on her shelf, to get comfortable. Garrick yawned and curled upon the floor. The murmur and love play of the humans in their den nearby could be heard but that was absorbed by both animals as the way of things from the first. The owls called out in the night. The stars sparkled a white speckled infinity in the sky and lent a gentle blue glow to the sleeping valley that backlit its ink black ridges of spiky forest and magestic cliff faces in silhouette. The birds and the bees, the small creatures, the large, the humans as their moans and sighs gave way to rhythmic breath and snoring, Garrick asleep at the floor, Tabitha Bethia at the higher of the two shelves she favoured in her repose, blinking into light of the candle flame's halo hovering at the floor, illuminating the carved flora of the frame of the daybed, the shadow of the shelf above her a stark dark horizon beneath an arc of flickering light from its place in front of the Madonna statue. The Lady in her lace and velvet finery, three teardrop crystals glowing upon her skirts like mournful stars. The lady of the manor at her shelf, yellow eyes blinking slowly. Slowly. The slim slice of pupil the inverse of a flame, black illuminating the yellow eyes of a cat. The night's darkness in this house kept at bay by candlelight as Tabitha Bethia fell asleep beneath it's light in a nocturnal stillness that fell upon even the spiders dreaming in their webs as night embraced the folly, the folly embraced its inhabitants, embraced in turn by the land, the wild and the wilderness in its night's repose.

Chapter Text

They'd completed their morning chores and, as Dem finished sweeping the fountain bed free of stray leaves, Ross caught her eye with a 'come hither' spark in his eyes and turned round the side of the folly to the back. She smiled a mischief over her broom and set it aside, leaning the handle at the wall, as she turned to follow him. She turned the corner and saw the ladder bowing a bit then spring back in the fast retreat of Ross' feet, just seen, from scaling it and reaching the roof where a tapestry was laid to cover the flat area by the decorative dome of the folly and contrive a comfortable place to sit. Ross, reclined on the cotton sheet, head propped up as he leaned on his elbow, watched the tops of either side of the ladder shiver from use and then a bright pair of blue/green eyes rise over the edge of the roof and under a curled mop of red hair. He met Dem's gaze with an open hearted smile, no sly look of seduction now. Their eyes met and recognized a friend, the commonplace of having seen the same eyes up close, year after year and never lose the sense of happiness in having each other's companionship. The quick appearance of her face after the moment's pause to blink, as she climbed onto the roof made him smile and laugh in spite of himself. "What's so funny?" asked Dem in mock annoyance. "You!" grinned Ross. He extended his arm to embrace Dem as she knelt to lay next to him. "Why?" asked Dem, snuggling nearer, faces quite close together. "Should there be a reason? You make me happy and so I laugh!" said Ross. She gave him a gentle peck on the lips. "It's not nice to laugh at people," scolded Dem, lightly. Ross looked to her in a merry mood. "You should stop being so cute then! When I saw your eyes over the rim of the roof just now you looked like mischief itself!" She hugged him tight in a sudden movement. "What's that for?" smiled Ross in an amused befuddlement. He closed his eyes and listened to her answer, warm breath by his neck, her arms around him. "I first saw your eyes through the fence at the Home!" said Dem and the affection in her voice was audible. He smiled, eyes closed. He used to lay in the scrub grass near the dreary concrete culvert behind the Magdalene Laundry and listen to Dem sing. Ross kept a pitch back there because it was out of the way and ignored even by the staff of the place. He didn't turn the corner to peer through the plant obscured iron fence until a week later. He might not have dared had it not been for a broken laundry van left parked and abandoned. That van and the overgrown plants hid him from view. "Well that might have been mischief too," sighed Ross. "You enticed me with sweets!" accused Dem, recalling the penny sweets Ross would leave for the second gardener in the grass at the base of the wrought iron fence. "Sweets for Sweetness!" joked Ross. He opened his eyes, tilted his chin and looked reproachful. "You put me under your spell!" continued Ross in retort. "Your singing drew me near. I used to lie by the fence and listen," Dem looked at him sharply, having not known this. "Did you? I thought you wanted a carrot!" said Dem, astonished. Ross lay on his side more solidly, to face her. He brushed back a stray curl of hair from her forehead in a tender motion of his fingers, let his hand rest at her head. "That came later, I hadn't known there was a garden in there! I just knew every other day there was a girl singing and I finally tried to see you, I wanted to know who was singing. The carrot was an added bonus!" said Ross. "She brushed Ross forelock of hair back with a tender smile. "More often it was just one eye through the fence! Your hair makes more mischief than we two combined!"

"Hahahaha!"

They laughed. Desdemona lowed a 'moooooo' in the distance. The leaves quieted down as the breeze waned. It was a soft, pretty day with the sun shining a gentle kiss upon them rather than too much heat. A cotton tapestry at their cheek, bright eyes near, hair in a rumple and laughing. "You seduced me like a siren!" said Ross. "Seduced?!" said Dem in a mock offense. "What would we know about that then? We were two for the road then, a team!" Ross grinned "Still are!" he smiled, adding, "A team and no mistake!" Dem nodded. "No mistake, Ross. I think we were meant to be." Ross blinked a startle at how confident Dem sounded in her assesment and how he could feel his heart swell bigger in the wake of such a pronouncement. He sought her hand and kissed the star tattooed on her finger. Dem watched Ross carefully, watched his dark eyes over her fingers. She could see her offhand remark had touched him deeply, that touched her but she covered the emotion in a light comment. "It's good there's no mistake because this star won't wash off!" said Dem. His eyes scrunched tight, the push of Ross' cheeks widening in his grin brought this to be. She cherished this face. Dem knew every pore of Ross Poldark's face. Knew it like the back of her own hand and his smile now was Ross at the height of his happiness. "Blue stars... Always and forever, Palmier," whispered Ross. She smiled. Ross called her by their street nickname far more often now, after the fact, than they ever did on the street. They answered to 'Palmier' on the street to others but did not use it between themselves. It held nostalgia and a great deal of love whether he was teasing or times like now when he was quite serious. His eyes relaxed. "Papa used to call Mama his North Star," They linked their fingers more. A bit rueful, he added. "Folk said Papa was a wastrel and they weren't wrong," his head shook the barest bit recalling Joshua's antics. "After Mama's death he was rabid. For women, I mean." Dem nodded, understood. Ross sighed. "But while Mama lived she kept him steady. He set his course by her." Dem toyed with the gold chain at Ross' neck with her fingertip, brought her hand round to rest at the back of his head. "Then I'll set my course by you." said Dem. Ross blinked suddenly, contrite. "Even when I get things wrong...?" he asked quietly. Dem watched Ross. She saw the change in his face and the fear that showed there. Ross watched her face and knew she understood his change of mood. She smiled. A bit happy, a bit sad too. It was not his fault, said Dem's happy/sad smile. Not Ross' fault that he agreed to have a free meal from a stranger. Wasn't his fault that they had been too young and trusting and got ensnared by the wicked policemen in Marseilles. Not his fault or hers. They were a team. Ross and Dem promised, on the outset of their adventures, to look after each other. Dem shot a man. It was traumatic but she'd have done it again if someone tried to harm her friend, her dearest friend. They stared at each other and Dem could see Ross' sense of doubt. They knew what the other was thinking. They would not discuss their abduction in Marseilles but they knew without speaking that, in some ways, he felt guilty for bringing Dem away to live on the road like a boy and bear the hard times they'd had like the rest of the 'rats', the street children who lived by their wits in a world filled with dangers. There had been danger and hard times but there had been Brose and Mimi, music and cafés, patisseries and bookstores, dance clubs and party nights, Madame Albaret and Jinny and all of Paris connected to all of Europe, full of friends and fun and two good friends for the road with a guitar and a sketchbook and the love that crept upon them both by small degrees. They witnessed the darker portions of the big wide world, but they had gotten to the other side too. All those yesterdays led them here. They lay together on the roof of the house they called home, knew it to be their home because they had a lease for five years like proper grownups. "Even then, Ross." nodded Dem, earnestly, and then trilling a grand, lyrical French, "Non, Je ne regrette rien!" and they giggled. Dem sighed out of her giggle. "I wish it was that again. I'd wish for all my life over again from the moment you brought me out of the Home and fall through Brose's skylight again as a dirty urchin!" Ross' smile became tender. Dem felt Ross slide his toe along the side of her foot. Barefoot and the soles of their feet so grubby by the end of the day they had to wash them clean in a basin before they went to bed. "We still get grubby," teased Ross. "Even now, you could live it over but you'd have to take the rough with the smooth." and his voice was very warm. Dem's mischief returned, the sparkle in her eyes. "But there was lots of smooth too, wasn't there. You must admit there was lots of smooth, Ross." She drawled the word. She was in one of her provocative moods this afternoon. Ross knit his brows and grinned a triumph. "See! I was right from the first. Mischief for days in you, Sweetness, clear as a coin! That look in your eyes was there from the first!" Dem giggled again "What sort of a look?" Ross stroked her knee, let his hand trail beneath her skirt and stroked her knee with his fingers, smiling in her eyes. "You ought to know! Difficult. Hard to handle," said Ross cheerfully. Demelza withdrew her knee. "I knew there was some ill word coming!" teased Dem. She feigned offense but it was hard to maintain. Her smile defeated her look of being aggrieved because Ross, undeterred, put his hand on her other knee. "I prefer this one." he said in a crisp haughty tone. "And I think prefer skirts since its easier to chose one or the other." smiled Ross. "Why is that knee better?" asked Dem. He brought his hand up to her thigh, and they shared a grin. Her sought higher, letting his hand rest on her bum, bringing up and away the hem of her skirt so high her legs were exposed. She curled a bare leg over his jeans clad one and they shared a laugh. "I was fibbing," said Ross. "I think every part of you is wonderful Dem." They let their foreheads touch, eyes so close and they closed them upon that image, his eyes, her eyes. They lay quiet for a time. The sun felt nice. Ross and Dem lying immobile with his hand on her backside, her leg over his, felt nice. The chickens were clucking their ordinary patter. Tabitha Bethia's lighter footfall could be heard rustling the grass as she returned from her hunting. Garrick, further in the meadow with a bright bark of triumph over some rabbit or another, Seamus just heard, nickering. A pretty day. A lazy portion of day. The later chores were hours away. They dozed, woke, then lay idle kissing each other in a lazy afternoon idyll, no rush to lovemaking or a sharper lust. Just two, at peace, with the freedom and opportunity to explore each others mouths at leisure, small shifts of their bodies and the pleasurable touch of petting and stroking each other in slow, tender ways, writhing upon the roof, away from the rest of the world. What mischief lay within it, the love that lay within it had a balanced equality. Ross, wandering troubadour and sometime thief of carrots; Dem, in faultless possession of a siren song of friendship, were child and man, adolescent and woman. Old children. Betwixt and between and even now had little understanding of the limits to their claim to maturity. Ross and Dem felt themselves to be quite grown up, thank you very much. They had a house of their own and a woman in his arms, a man in her arms. His woman, her man and the finger stroked tempo of pleasure at their bodies, a garland of luscious kisses on a long afternoon.

Chapter Text

Ross laughed, watching Dem galloping across the meadow on Seamus with her long hair flying. She had taken to riding like a duck to water even as she began learning frightened of falling off and very timid. Seamus was a champion, a 'one percenter', a horse of such quality Ross could imagine Uncle Charles being envious if he saw Seamus, want him for himself, so often impressed by good horses. He was a beauty but that also made him seem imposing as Dem began to push through her nervousness and learn to ride with Ross' enthusiasm and Seamus' sense of discipline and patience. Day after day, Seamus was patient with Dem as she learned how to groom him and the necessary stable chores with Ross as a cheerful conduit between her learning and Seamus getting his proper care. Ross explained the bridle and bit, how to put the saddle on properly even as he taught her to sit bareback at first. At first Ross held the reins. Dem had an involuntary tight grip with her legs that worried Seamus, telegraphed checks to his movement that made little sense and made for stilted pauses in his gait that made Dem squeeze her legs more. Dem was petrified of falling off. Together, man and horse let Dem gain confidence in her seat, riding on Seamus as he walked, learning to stay upright and balanced. Ross reminded her to relax the rigidity in her legs and cooed encouragement to the horse to bring him and Dem into better alignment. Ross and Dem rode together, Dem in front as Ross held the reins, and explained how to sit and use ones legs as well as the reins to instruct the horse. Then Dem held the reins and Ross walked alongside, holding an extra rope as a lunge line but still alongside both closely, explaining how to guide a horse's direction, counseling how to hold the reins properly and practice turns, how her legs and reins should work in tandem, casual and easy, walking along, talking. Dem stood in the meadow and watched Ross ride round her as he explained what he was doing. It was working. They had acres of time and space to work together and Dem's skill blossomed apace. Dem learned to walk Seamus and trot, working round and round in a circle with Seamus acting as a proper gent, obedient, knowing he had a good gallop coming when Ross took a turn afterwards, not chafing to go faster. Ross stood center, holding the rope as Dem rode in a wide circle. Ross turned as one with Dem and Seamus, watching, full of praise, gentle correction and smiles. The rope was slack enough that it was truly Dem's ride even as Ross gave her extra insurance of holding Seamus too. Dem smiled and blushed and frowned in concentration at various intervals and learned well in Ross' careful aid and monitoring of her. She gained confidence for Ross behaved as if her mastery should be inevitable and Seamus seemed to agree with him. Dem began to get used to riding and more relaxed on Seamus' back in the saddle and bare back. She pleased herself heartily cantering, riding apace a bit faster and enjoying it. Now you couldn't know she'd ever been nervous, Dem and Seamus' joy in their brisk ride was mirrored in his sprightly gait and her merry smile. Dem's smile flashed as she rode, erect in the saddle, curls springing up and down at her shoulders from the movement and flowing behind her in the rush of air from the speed of their progress. She cantered to begin to slow down. Taking the curve at speed and then wound down Seamus' energy by degrees rather than force a stop. She rode in a wide circle and her giggle as she passed Ross, quite near, might have been a gentle hand at Ross' cheek. The affection in it, acknowledging the fun she was having, the happiness of catching her husband's eye in the brief exchange and sail away made Ross seem to swoon; his head followed her movement with a wide grin and his gaze after her shone with admiration and love. It was palpable to see. Hugh watched the tender moment and knew Ross Poldark to be very lucky. Ross was eighteen, just a kid really, but he had happened upon the love of a lifetime and he knew this. Standing near the stables, watching before announcing his arrival to bring them to the Enyses, Hugh could very nearly envy Ross. The Poldarks adored each other and it was, plainly, a 'true love match' for all they were still in their teenaged years. That they were married had surprised both Hugh and the Enyses but it had not taken long to accept the rightness of the youngsters marital status. When two were so aligned, so very right for each other, who could shrug away their relationship as youthful exuberance? Hugh was aware some might, some cynics might look at the couple with a wry smile and warn, 'Young love. Well, wait a few years and then see where they end up...' Marriage could destroy a romance, or dull it down, it very often happened. Hugh did not have so sour a view of marriage though he knew friends bound in unions they found tedious and restricting -not uncommon in the high circles of gentry life. He did not take a sour view of love, Hugh only wished he could happen upon a love he could call his own and know it to be true the way so many myths and legends suggested the highest heights of love existed. Pined a bit for the overwhelming love of an Heloise, a Chloe, an Isolde that had yet to materialize... Hugh met many women who Mama would approve of as a suitable match; charming and poised, from 'good' families, families as well placed as his own. One could accept a match like that but shouldn't love be more than that? To bind yourself for life to someone who's charms might fade into complacent humdrum was more likely than finding a love for the ages. Marrying for one's position in society was common. Uncle kicked against that. He occasionally joked that he had been a catch that hadn't been caught. Hugh respected Uncle for not bowing to the pressures of his position in something so personal. Plenty of men of his uncle's stature had yoked themselves to blue blooded ladies, and often arranged over the head of both bride and groom! Parents made alliances like medieval days even now sometimes, and particularly in Uncle's day. Hugh's uncle shrugged off such pressures. Uncle could have married, he only needed to crook his finger for a hundred girls to run. Such is the lure of a title, responsiblity in a title too. Uncle 'should' have married, to have an heir and continue his line. He resisted. No one had caught his heart. Uncle could not approach marriage with the cynicism often present in their social position. Hugh thought that was very romantic even as it threw him into the hereditary seat after his father died. In truth, Uncle could still wed and sire an heir, if the wife was younger. But Lord Falmouth and Hugh's father had agreed to let the Viscountcy pass to him, in his stead as a steward and then in truth, believing the younger brother would not predecease the elder. That had not come to pass so the Lord of the Fal had an heir in his nephew and in that he was still content to remain a bachelor. Hugh treasured his visits to Italy and the attention and affection Uncle showed him. Losing his father had been devastating but Mama knew duty and family went hand in hand. She sent Hugh to stay with his uncle as often as possible both in Rome and Positano, to have an older male relative in his life as well as be directly tutored in his legacy by Lord Falmouth now that her husband was no longer with them. Hugh adored Italy and thrived under Uncle's care, explaining the duties and the traditions of the position and family responsibilities Hugh was destined to uphold for his father and uncle's sake. For the sake of Hugh's own honour and that of The West. Uncle explained the network of deputies he relied upon in his absentee control of the title. Who was who, their family's history in relationship to government and social position. He explained their work and the respect they were due as stewards of the position on his behalf. Uncle made it plain that he expected Hugh would take his place, properly, in Cornwall rather than administer from abroad as he chose to do. Tregothan was technically Uncle's but Papa and Mama lived there as the shadow heir presumptive. Now that his father was gone, Hugh would be liege lord in his stead, after Uncle, and support Cornwall in the West of England for The Crown; if only he had a true love to share that fate with... People marry like a contract to be signed and sealed and could even find companionship from it, sometimes. Sometimes love can grow but true love, from the first... In true love you keep company with the gods. Wouldn't that be wonderful? To have a wife that was your dream and your reality, to love and be loved in return. There has been always a small core of real marriages existing amongst the rest; marriages in which love and fidelity and truth have maintained their importance. Dwight and Caroline had such a one, as did the young Poldarks. One could envy Dwight or envy Ross, one could admire Uncle for not being willing to settle (though Hugh often hoped, in a world full of older, sophisticated and interesting women, Uncle might yet find a love to call his own). Hugh watched Ross Poldark's dream girl ride past on a handsome horse. One could almost view it in the mind's eye slow motion, like a film or a costume drama, a painting or a piece of a beautiful dream. One could be jealous or envious but Hugh felt blessed because he could acknowledge those fleeting negative emotions and come away from them feeling inspired instead. The Poldarks, in their shining young love gave Hugh hope. One could have faith a love so true would make itself known to him because he had seen evidence that love that pure was real.

Hugh considered these things as he watched Dem riding Seamus past Ross, in the meadow, in a tension of being so struck by Dem's otherworldly beauty, by Ross' open hearted love for his wife. He also thought of the impending conversation Hugh would need to broach with them. The impromptu excursion to meet the hippie squatters they heard tell of, a novelty adventure during a visit by Dwight and Caroline, had blossomed into something else entirely. A gorgeous summer filled with happiness and friendship. Happiness in entering the Poldarks enchanted world of sun laden days in the valley and evenings of talk and merry companionship at the Enyses villa. They had become friends nearly at once, friendship enough to want to see the Ross and Dem safe indoors when the weather changed. To see them now, Ross watching, so content as Demelza rode their horse, their love so visible, one could believe that paradise could truly last forever. Hugh sighed. From the first, before he came to know and befriend the Poldarks, Hugh was disturbed to think young people would be up in the valley in the old, abandoned hunting lodge; one side open to the elements, no running water, no electricity, in the dead of winter. They had gotten the folly enclosed, hired workers to do it properly, but the fact remained; two kids, a horse, a cow, a smattering of chickens, a dog and a cat, all holed up in this place in the dead of winter was not to be contemplated. Their situation with water was a serious problem. Ross and Dem had no plumbing, no running water. They would have to continue to haul water up from the river in the cold weather for themselves and all the animals each day. What snow might fall would not be enough to melt for their needs and would imperil them getting up and down the hill with heavy buckets. They might slip and fall on icy ground. The house had a fortress of cut firewood piled at the back wall of the extension but what if it ran out? Seamus and Desdemona would need their stables cleaned and be tended, fed and watered every day. How was the waste to be dealt with, the animals and their own? They could all fall ill and no one to help them and the trail from the base dangerous to climb, in or out, in the winter. They'd likely be trapped until spring...

"Good day, Ross," said Hugh in a conversational tone, not wanting to startle Seamus even as he and Dem were some distance off. Ross turned to smile, made a up the bit of distance and shook Hugh's hand. Their grasp held a beat. "Hello, Hugh." said Ross, and a smile in it. Hugh returned it. It was subtle, they were very different sorts of people but the touch points of culture, of an artistic temperament within each of them called out and found answer in the other. Hugh and Dwight and Caroline were proper grownups but their sense of fun and generosity of spirit contained a wisp of the bohemian. Ross and Dem had found steadfast friends in them nearly at once, Ross and Hugh could acknowledge that in their looks of admiration, so pleased to see each other again. "Poetry in motion," said Hugh, admiringly. Ross turned to watch Dem and Seamus slow to a walk, having seen Hugh's arrival. "Indeed," said Ross with a great deal of satisfaction in his voice. He turned back to Hugh. "We have to settle Seamus and Desdemona but it won't take to long." "No need to rush. Hello, Mrs. Poldark!" Hugh called to her as she approached. Dem smiled down at them both from her superior position as Seamus nickered. "And Seamus, my fine fellow," Hugh bowed slightly towards the horse. "Hello, Hugh. We'll be with you shortly." Dem dismounted and Hugh, kissed her hand like a beau. Ross watched Dem flutter her eyelashes at Hugh over the gallant gesture and smiled a wry chagrin as she made blinky eyes at the reflection in his sunglasses under the brim of his sharp looking Panama hat. "You might like to play some records while you wait Hugh, the Victrola is out by the fountain bed." said Dem, slow to remove her hand. Hugh perked up at that. The folly had many useful items left behind in the floor to ceiling wardrobes that flanked the daybed. Hugh thought the wind up record player was terrific. It remained in working order with piles of old records and more extra needles, stored in a hinged lid tin, than anyone could possibly get through, laying safe in the wardrobe until the Ross and Dem took up residence, blessing the valley with old time music. "Thank you, I will!" And suddenly the dreamy pause between Mr. Armitage and Mrs. Poldark evaporated. They released hands and Hugh grinned between Ross and Dem before he disappeared round the corner of the stables back to the fountain bed as Dem giggled. "Hugh lives in dreams," mused Dem holding her hand as if guarding where the kiss had been. Ross harrumphed. "Well, he has good taste I suppose," Dem looked at Ross sharply and with a mischief in it. "Ross!" whispered Dem. "Well," he shrugged, suddenly sheepish over the flare of pique at Dem's enjoyment over having her hand kissed like a lady in olden times. 'How Ya Gonna Keep Em Down on the Farm(After They've Seen Paree)' started up from the Victrola. Ross smiled. Hugh was a friend to them both and patiently awaiting their chores to finish so they could all have a good visit with the Enyses. There was no true threat from that quarter but now and then you do not have all the control of your feelings that you should have. Ross occasionally felt pinpricks of defensiveness when Dem enjoyed the attention of other men. It was disconcerting to catch a glimpse of Dem looking at other guys as she often did at him. It was silly because Dem was simply being Dem and someone like Hugh or boys on the street like Crazy Ace were never actual rivals. Ross laughed it off, could laugh it off. Dem was his wife. She wore his ring and they had matching tattoos on their ring fingers. Ross won. "With Hugh and Seamus I'm fighting for your affection on two fronts," he chuckled. "Three if you count Garrick!" laughed Ross. Dem kissed his cheek, sweetly. "You don't need to fight anyone, Ross." cooed Dem. "And besides," said Dem starting to lead Seamus to his trough, "I have to share you with Tabitha Bethia and Desdemona" Ross laughed. Dem blinked a modesty, teasing. "You laugh but you never kiss me the way you kiss Desdemona!" Ross sidled up behind Dem at Seamus' side and huffed a laugh at her neck. He caught up the reins, her fingers, held her fingers in his tangled up in the reins to slow Seamus to a stop and, with great reverence, Ross closed his eyes and kissed Dem's forehead with a gentle pause in it that temporarily froze all of Dem's thoughts and suspended her in bliss like a spell. Ross stepped back to look her in the face, pleased to see the dreamy look of surprise on her face. Ross raised a cheeky eyebrow. In the kissing stakes, his kiss on the forehead trumped Hugh's kiss on the hand. Dem's smile and pretty blink of acknowledging this made Ross happy. They tended Seamus.

Hugh played records on the Victrola, Seamus, Desdemona, Garrick and Tabitha Bethia were all fed and tended, the chickens snug in their crooked little coop. Hugh helped pour water that had been boiled earlier and cooled into the cow's trough as Ross and Dem tidied up to leave and stay overnight with Dwight and Caroline. This chore made Hugh decide to broach the subject of winter as they hiked down to the base of the cliff. It was better discussed out in the open air, not trap Ross and Dem into being a captive audience in the car on the way to dinner or make them uncomfortable mentioning it at the Enyses when they were meant to stay the night. A brief word. A private word. The Poldarks, dressed in their 'going out clothes' walked with Hugh accompanied by Garrick as far as the first turn of the path for Dem turned back to lead him back to the folly. This made a fortunate opportunity to speak to Ross without Dem present, a rare opportunity for they were rarely apart. "Ross?" began Hugh. "Yes?" said Ross affably. Hugh looked over his shoulder at the shivering tree branches, overgrowth of plants, the mica speckled glimmer of the hard packed soil of the path behind them, hovering insects and floating motes of pollen in the air, birds fluttering and Dem not yet returned. Ross knit his brows. Hugh was looking to see if Dem returned. "What is it, Hugh?" Hugh looked to Ross. "I had meant to ask after your plans for wintering over, Ross. Autumn would cause little hardship but I don't believe remaining in the folly during the winter is wise." Ross stopped walking. Hugh stopped too and they watched each other. Ross frowned. "The folly's enclosed now, Hugh. We shall come to no harm. The stove will serve." said Ross. Hugh stepped a bit closer, talking quietly. "It isn't just staying out of the elements, Ross. You've no plumbing," Ross smiled serenely. He and Dem had been proper rats and no strangers the hygiene of the street. "We'll manage, we have before." smiled Ross. "Manage what?" Dem returned. She looked between the boys and back to Ross. "Garrick and Tabitha Bethia are inside with their water," Ross nodded. Hugh cleared his throat. "I was mentioning that staying in the folly during the winter is not," Ross cut him off. "Hugh thinks we're soft," grumbled Ross. "Soft?!" Dem recoiled, blinked surprise and even offense. Hugh could see Ross had weaponized some sort of fighting words in their street culture to suggest Hugh's concerns were insulting. Ross crossed his arms, irritated. Dem looked aghast and defensive. Hugh felt an almost absurd need to placate them. Truly absurd, they were out of their depth. They should not be in the valley in the cold weather. He wouldn't be a responsible adult if he let them have their way. He rushed to defend his point. "I did not suggest you to be 'soft'," said Hugh alarmed at how bitter they looked. Thank God he had better sense than to bring this up in the car. The Poldarks clearly would need the length of the drive to Dwight and Caroline to shake off their sense of grievance. They continued to walk to the base of the cliff Hugh tight lipped beneath his dark glasses, Ross and Dem glowering in a shifty eyed wariness. "I mentioned to Ross that the folly is not proper shelter during the cold weather," Dem looked disturbed. "It's our home! We shall be here for five years, and four winters at least!" said Dem. Ross agreed. "Don't worry, Hugh. We'll be fine." They walked along. Hugh was not willing to discuss it in the car so he made his arguments now. "You are both very resourceful but this trail will be impassable at times once the cold sets in. You two will not be able to get to town like you do now. You will have to haul all of the water you need for yourselves and the animals every day. The hay field will be too wet to cut and store extra hay if its needed and you won't be able to get to town to purchase more feed. You won't be able to get help if you fall ill or have an accident," Ross and Dem listened with the same wary looks on their faces. Hugh was worrying needlessly. They were strong kids, and besides, they wouldn't have the money to buy feed anyway by winter. The funds in the guitar case were starting to wane. "We can store hay in the stables," said Ross. "Yes!" piped up Dem. "We'll cut more while the weather's fair!" Ross nodded earnestly and with that Hugh sighed and said his peace, wanting to gain some equilibrium before they reached the Enyses. "Perhaps I've expressed myself badly, I want you to understand," he looked between them still walking, still wary. "I don't say this to offend you," he said. "Nor to patronize you. You've made yourselves a wonderful home, it's marvelous and you should take pride in it but pride goes before a fall," They all halted. Ross and Dem stared at Hugh as he removed his sunglasses and looked upon them both in seriousness. "I apologize if I've caused you offense but I do not revise my opinion. Staying in the valley is not safe for you or your animals in the winter." There was silence, or there was no talk. There was never actual silence in Il Porto. The trees sang in the breeze, the birds, beasts and insects murmured and called, the rush of the river could be heard in the stillness. Hugh watched Ross and Demelza speak entire conversations in their sidelong glances, clearly deciding if they'd harboured a traitor in their midst. Hugh waited. You cannot tame wild creatures. Hugh might have forfeited the Poldarks' trust. They might march back to the folly in a temper and banish him from their paradise. But there was nothing for it, it was plain staying in the winter was unwise. Ross and Dem were disturbed at Hugh's attitude. They would winter over and be in their home, look after Seamus and Desdemona and Garrick and the chickens, Tabitha Bethia was no stranger to winter and she didn't have the benefit of an enclosed house or a tended stove. They had a stove! And a bed! And they could lay in provisions from town, a bit at a time... They could not bathe in the river during the winter but they could bear being a bit unkempt at times and they could have stand up baths at the stove! With hot water! Hot water! Did Hugh even know what a luxury hot water was? The folly was a palace compared to some of the places they'd sheltered in. Ross and Dem had been out on the street in all weathers... They pursed their lips in a bit of defiance and then relaxed their faces. Hugh watched them, curious to see them relax themselves back to their ordinary mood of gentle optimism and seemingly giving him absolution in his lack of faith. "Don't fret for us, Hugh," said Dem. Ross nodded as she said. "I can see you are worried but we'll be fine." Hugh looked between them once more and put his sunglasses back on. "Come," Hugh gestured to continue to the car. "Dwight and Caroline have promised tiramisu for afters and I've got the new Du in the post, let's away." smiled Hugh. The Poldarks nodded. In Hugh's sharp Panama hat, in Ross' tall leather boots, in the swish of the hem of Dem's blue dress, they walked the rest of the journey to the car, talking of art and museums and finding cause to laugh and enjoy each other's companionship. Ross and Dem had left their ill temper and Hugh did not further press the matter of winter. The Poldarks did not fault Hugh or even Dwight and Caroline who they suspected might agree Hugh's attitude too. They were grownups and not well versed in the ways rats survive.

Chapter Text

"Bring her to bed, Dem," said Ross, sitting up in their bed sleepily.

Dem was pacing about the bedroom, trying to calm Julia who was quite irate, red faced from crying in her arms. "She's not settled yet..." sighed Dem.

"Well, if it's sleep for one of us or none of us we might as well all lay down," shrugged Ross. "Maybe she'll tucker herself out,"

With consternation at the incessant pin pick jolts of pain in her mouth, Julia wriggled on her back still weeping inconsolably with her parents bleary eyed faces hovering warmth near her face. Her extravagant crying forced her eyes shut so warmth from them was what Julia could register in her present mood and was appreciated by her for all she was grumpy. "Poor Julia!" sighed Dem. "I'm sure it's her teeth coming in," "Ssssssh, my love!" whispered Ross. He rubbed her tummy in small repetitive circles as she squirmed with a shade less vigor from this pleasant distraction. "Oh, little girl," cooed Ross, "Do your teeth have you fretful? It's difficult now," reasoned Papa, "But think how nice it will be to have teeth! Let's think of something else, shall we?"

"Waaaaah!" was Julia's reply, accompanied by kicking feet and shaky arms, tiny scrunched eyes and a wide open, cameo pink wavering mouth that punctuated her unhappiness.

She gasped a breath to continue her displeasure and at that moment an owl could be heard hooting outside. Her crying became lessened but not entirely stopped in pitiful cries that continued affectionate concern from her parents with smiles that much wider as they also began to see a light to the end of this sleepless tunnel. "Julia!" Dem murmured in a sing song voice of sympathy, watching as Ross smiled at the baby starting to hiccup little sobs, beginning to slow the full on crying she had been doing up to this point. They shared an optimistic look, Julia was becoming more calm. Sometimes, in their own tiredness, so tired the bed itself seemed to mock them, Ross and Dem felt like they would never coax Julia to fall asleep but it was only a matter of persistence. Ross continued to try to talk his daughter round from her tears and onward to sleep. "Did you hear that, Julia? That owl was calling to his sweetheart, sweetheart!" Ross looked to Dem as she laughed a little, calling Julia sweetheart too. "Was he?" asked Dem. "Was it a 'he'? What if it was a girl owl?" asked Dem. Ross shook his head as Julia looked up at them both in a quieting wonder. "No, a fine gentleman is our owl with a good little sail boat." said Papa. "He's calling to the prettiest cat in Sawle to come away with him and be his bride." Dem and Ross shared a look, that of two who lived a variation of this tale they could recognize. It glowed between them as Julia began to blink sleepily and find more interest in these near to her faces whose mouths moved, these people who appeared so readily all the time, to cuddle and tidy and feed her. To speak and sing. Though she was too young to understand what they were saying Julia really did understand what she was feeling as she listened. She and the rest of the Poldark children yet to be born learned, from their infancy, that one could use words to tell stories, to make music, and to be close to one another. Sometimes words were more magical, held more weight, are genuinely powerful when they fell from the lips of the people one loved. She felt that the jumble of sounds like 'owl' and 'boat', 'the prettiest cat' in themselves meant little to her but Papa's voice, Mama's laugh, the talk between them and progression to song was as soft as a tender kiss might be, as warm as an embrace. As the sharp agony of these things in her mouth wending their way upwards through her poor, tender, pretty pink gums, attacked from the inside by intruders, like moles clawing and scraping their way up to the light and hurting her grew less, these happy faces spoke and sang of some sort of soft happiness that made the troubles she faced less of a cross to bear. "The owl is bound for France and he wants the kitty cat who sings so sweetly to come live with him and be his wife." said Papa.

Ross watched Julia with an indulgent, crinkle eyed smile as he told her of their sea voyage and how the owl told his sweetheart how wonderful she was. This wise feathered friend knew the best way to convey one's feelings because Mr. Owl was an accomplished guitarist. A tiny heart kept time as Ross let his hand drape gently over her, the plump little swell of her tummy, felt the rise and fall of her breath as Julia stopped crying and watched his face with slow blinking eyes as he sang a whispered song,

Chapter Text

Tabitha Bethia darted under the daybed with a tender morsel still flapping its death throes in her snapped tight jaw. The scent of pancakes having been fried still hung in the air. Garrick was out on his own ramble. Dem was gathering up their plates to wash them up and Ross had already gone outside to check on Seamus and Desdemona and muck out the stables; shovel dung, rake out old hay and lay new. They did not have a wheelbarrow but Ross found an old, wide piece of metal punctured with two holes and realized whoever had used the place before them made a sort of sleigh to drag off more refuse than the shovel could hold. This apparatus made bearing the old straw bedding away easier. It was too pissed upon to reuse, too saturated to burn well; when they tried to rid themselves of it that way it stank acrid smoke across the meadow to high heaven! That waste and what droppings would be too much and overwhelm their compost pile was tipped over the edge a ravene. Out of sight, out of mind. It was so desolate and so far down the sun baked it dry or the rain turned it to a slimy muck in turns but it harmed no one, was away from the river and, most importantly, only the edge of the cliff where they dumped it bore any scent of the enterprise. Because some areas around them had such stark drops Ross and Dem constructed a haphazard mesh of ropes, threaded and wrapped between tree trunks as makeshift fences to keep the animals as well as themselves from going over the side and stay safe. Ross was grateful for this barrier as he shoved the refuse over, tipped it over side in a slow moving clump that suddenly gained speed and disappeared off the wide piece of metal sheeting in a sudden jolt. Ross had to steel himself not to follow in the heft of its weight pulling him forward followed by the jolt of its swift absence. He kept hold of the rope fence firmly to steady himself as he pulled the waggley, unwieldy apparatus back up. Steadied at the ropes in a careful pause of his own, Ross then pulled it back up empty by its rope handles. Ross went back and forth at this work as Dem washed the breakfast dishes and had begun to feed the chickens as he finished. He washed his arms and hands at a basin near the fire pit and then pulled the boiled water off the fire to cool before hauling another bucket to boil in its place. The Poldarks were as cautious about giving Seamus and Desdemona boiled water in their troughs as they were about boiling their own water for cooking and drinking. Managing their water needs was relentless work and even building a second fire pit by the water's edge did little to relieve the efforts as useful as that was. Ross was at it for a while. When he returned to the folly the sun was higher in the sky, blessing their valley with light and warmth, the energy that buoyed the plants to grow -and making Ross even more sweaty, over and above what his chores had done. Dem had finished with the chickens and plunked her straw hat on her head to work in her garden. She had the Victrola out but the records had stopped because she was deep in her weeding and ceased to crank the machine. "I must have a wash," said Ross, stretching his arms, pulling his back and liking the feeling of his muscles stretched taut in their fatigue. "Will you be finished soon?" he asked. Dem nodded, still weeding. He smiled to see her hat bob up and down in answer. "Yes, just let me finish up," Ross came nearer. The smell of his exertions and the chores he'd been engaged in was strong. "I think I might start now I'm the worse for wear at the moment." said Ross sheepishly. Dem grinned. They knew each other in all states, good or ill, dirty and clean. They shared a smile of acknowledging this. She paused to pick a snail from under a leaf. She held it distastefully between her finger and thumb. "I never know what’s best to do with 'em." she sighed. Ross smiled, Sweetness was so gentle. "You do know, really, but too soft hearted to do it," he said sympathetically. She looked up at him sheepishly but also grateful as he understood the contradictions of her reluctance. Dem was an arch executioner of all manner of insects and their laid eggs without a backwards glance but snails were somewhat 'cute' even as they were as destructive as any other pest. Ross knew this interloper must be dispatched. "Drop it on that stone," With an elegant toss of her arm she did so and turned away while he crushed it. "Poor little bull-horn." lamented Dem, shaking her head as the shame she felt it was. "But they're so greedy; I shouldn't mind if they were content with a leaf or two…" Even that small exertion, dispatching a snail, let a strong whiff of Ross' mucking out hover forward from him. He smelt strongly of his stablework for all he'd made quick repairs at the firepit. He smiled a wry smile, a bit shamefaced. "I smell little better than a swineherd at the moment!" he joked. "You go, Ross," smiled Dem. "I'll catch up in a bit."

Dem pulled out more of the tenacious grasses that seemed to sprout up whenever her back was turned in different crevices in her modest queendom of well tended vegetable plants. As the sun warmed the ground and the insects in the soil went about their own day she put what were weeds in a metal pan to toss in the firepit and went into the folly to fetch a basket and knife to collect the things they would eat today. With no intentional design Demelza laid a beautiful, bountiful still life of glistening purple aubergines, pale beige globes of large well formed onions still festooned with their bright green tops, the richer dark green of slender courgettes, the ombre shades of red to maroon on the heirloom tomatoes, misshapen to the modern eye but filled with elegant mystery in their bulbous edges within the natural world Ross and Dem inhabited. As she stood with her wicker basket on her arm, stout little knife lain across her bounty and walking into the cool dim interior of the candlelit folly to set the makings of their supper in the small area by the old cast iron stove they knew to be their kitchen, Dem was as regal as any queen, if those of royal blood wore stretchy vests and long skirts. Feet bare and her forehead and fingers smudged with earth rather than cosmetics, a straw hat over wild red curls for a crown. She took time to sigh a contentment over her pretty basket of food, the wire basket of pale brown eggs from their chickens, the cream risen in the pail of Desdemona's milk on the floor and the hot milk kept low on the back of the stove in a cooking pot, to drink and to keep from spoiling too quickly. Dem was happy. She was going to start making cheese too. They would have cheese to eat in the wintertime... She looked all about herself. She was the lady of this place. She opened the large wooden wardrobe that was their pantry, lovingly gazing at their modest collection of baking ingredients, pasta, glass bottles and jars. Beautiful plates and utensils. Dem laid her table with these lovely things and they ate well every day. Desdemona was not producing milk the way a dairyman would wish but her amount of milk was just right for their household. The chickens laid eggs to the point they had more than she and Ross could get through! She closed the door, carved as prettily as the daybed frame with a happy sigh. They were self sufficient, not beholden to the rise and fall of the state of their busking change to pay patisseries and cafe owners to feed themselves, nor rummaging through discarded food in the bins behind such establishments to scavenge and eat what wasn't too far gone. Ross and Dem had fed themselves that way too sometimes...

Ross picked his way forward through a shallow portion of the river to reach the crevice where they stored a plastic soap dish with a lid. When he first entered, Ross shed his clothes where he stood, leaving them to soak before they did the washing. He lay a rock on them so they would stay put in the current. He was unconcerned about having brought no clothes to change into. They often went about nude as they were so far removed from other people and he didn't relish collecting clean clothes when he was so sweaty and smelly and grubby; he'd be back to square one before he even started! He heard running and saw Sweetness' approach, already undressed and barreling towards him, hair flying behind her like an orange sun; it was so long now. Hair at her groin in a tuft of orange flame. Greenery of nature all round her, flecked with the many colours of wildflowers and butterflies. The blue of the sky overhead holding the sparkling heat of the sun, making the air itself a perfume from the scent of the warmed meadow rising. The rush of the water in his ears, this vision in his eyes. Ross stood in the river, wan wet suds, frosted white bubbles sliding down his body as he stood gazing at his wife as reality and a dream simultaneously. She was beautiful. With a whoop of joy she leapt into the water with a splash. To the casual eye, Ross' delicate entrance and Dem's bold splash would seem incongruous; that the boy seem dainty and 'feminine' that the girl seem brash and 'masculine'. Ostensibly true if one had little imagination. Ross and Dem had no need to cleave to such limiting prescriptions, they were the inverse of each other as well as themselves. They were subtle possessors of everything humanity had to offer them because they lived their own way and closer to the natural world than many modern folk. Dem submerged herself and reappeared, laughed, and made her way to a smiling Ross. "Hello!" she crowed. "Hello," said Ross, offering a peck at her mouth as he handed her their bar of soap. She held it in her palm as she drew him near, soapy and all with her free arm and kissed him in his small, sweet greeting and then demanded a proper one. A proper kiss. Ross sighed into her mouth and let his arms surround her, closed his eyes and fell forward into a pair of soft lips and his Sweetness kissing him into oblivion, all while holding their soap aloft. A storybook couple, a prince and princess with their magic token in her hand. Two kids and their only bar of bath soap. They'd be hard pressed to retrieve it from the clutches of the river if it dropped.

They washed themselves and Ross climbed out to get a towel from the criss cross of laundry lines they'd strung near, tree to tree. Garrick was leaping about in his own play further up the slope of the meadow. Seamus was grazing and Desdemona nearby somewhere but not in view where Ross stood. One could hear her low a 'moooo', now and then. Dem was exiting the river, stepping out from flat stone to flat sheaf of rock like hopscotch, emerging with her hair in loose pretty waves from being wet, as was Ross'. She made up the difference between them striding forward with her long legs and her bright smile. Ross brought the sides of the towel up like a cape and draped both it and his arms round her shoulders in reunion as she came near. They were clean and sweet smelling from their fine milled bar of poppy flower soap, refreshed from their labours by the cool river and naked as the day they were born. Two in a meadow, heads dovetailed near in smiles of contentment and an affectionate embrace, four stalky legs beneath a towel. Ross stepped back to pull the towel off and draped it round Dem's shoulders. He took her by the hand up the hill, a queen now robed in a drooped wetted towel, her king and consort leading her up the meadow in his most humble garment, clad by the sky alone. Two thin things; with long arms, long legs, long hair, retreating to the strange building at the crest of the hill and the start of the wooded area ahead, wandering up through riot of sweet smelling grasses and flowers in the private kingdom of Mr. and Mrs. Poldark, well traveled vagabonds, late of Il Porto. They went back to the house.

The candles indoors flickered higher briefly, as if greeting their master's return when they came through the door. The sun's position gave the rooms more light from the windows. The bright cushions and bedpreads, the deep blue velvet curtain swathed in a deep fringe of gold all greeted the eye with good cheer. Slim volumes of poetry lying on the daybed, sitting on the wall of wooden shelves that glowed as lit caverns, bouncing back light in their crevices from votives set there, announced their titles in the unadorned black fonts of the underground press, City Lights... the serif elegance of the mainstream, Faber and Faber... even as they remained mute objects. Black sketchbooks laying about were more noticeable for being so starkly neutral compared to the rest of the decor as was the guitar case, just as black though a shade lighter in colour from being so careworn. The carved Madonna stood primly above the light of her private votive candle. The crystal tears of her gown glowed pools of light at the blue velvet. Through air as they walked and a judicious use of an over wet towel Ross and Dem dried themselves and went to bed. Now. In the day. Some might look askance at this, tut tut and accuse them of laziness but they'd worked as physically hard as anyone this morning, moreso perhaps. There would be more work for them soon enough too, more chores to complete later for Ross and Dem's life in the valley was bereft of many modern conveniences, quite primitive. There was something to be said for primativism. It eschewed artifice, it brought one closer to nature. The chores would be done, there would be food prepared and eaten. The animals would be tended and fed. Their cat would return to inspect her house and greet the two humans who took up residence with her. Objects must be cleansed, set to dry, put away. Water must be procured. There would be time to read or draw. Their dog would accompany Ross and Dem later, when they went out to gorge on raspberries, grown wild on their canes in juicy fat clusters wreathed in saw edged, bright green pointed leaves; sweets from the woods with no limits so long as you did not prick yourself on their prickles, some thorns being as obvious as roses, some so fine they could be mistaken for hairs in a pale fuzzy cloud. Garrick would run and chase, for his friends would do the same, laying the small bowl of berries they would breakfast upon the next morning to the side in the grass for a time. There would be music making for the fire would be banked at the end of the night but its last true flames would illuminate Dem's smile and Ross' guitar for a time and when he set it to the side, the lazy kisses and lovemaking that greeted night's dusk, there, out of doors as any other wild creatures would. Quite unremarkable to the birds and beasts they shared this grand cathedral of stone and timber that soared around them to touch the tips of a starlit sky in a majesty. Private and wonderful. An ardor kept as an open secret among the natural world and the skeleton of nature in which Ross and Dem curled themselves up into its heart.

Chapter Text

"Caroline, come look at this!"

"What?" said Caroline looking across the room from her escritoire; she at her letter writing, Dwight perusing his photo journal and Sarah and Sophie playing with Horace at the hearth. An attractive family scene, family in more ways than one since Caroline was pregnant with their third child. He lifted the magazine in question to show her his intent. "You must bring it here! Traversing back and forth at the moment is not to be contemplated, I'm quite comfortable here thank you." sniffed Caroline. Dwight grinned as he stood to bring his magazine to her. "What is it, Papa?" Sophie asked, rushing to stand at his side and trot over to Mama at her desk. Sarah looked up, followed her father with her eyes. He looked absolutely delighted with whatever was in the magazine. "Yes," asked Sarah getting on her feet to see too, Horace at her heels, not wanting to be left out. "What is it?" Dwight grinned at Caroline, magazine open in his hands and he lay it on the desk. A two page spread of a photographer's photo essay. "Look at that!" crowed Dwight. Caroline, knowing the amateur photographer in her husband to find excitement over the composition of a random pile of rocks or wax sublime over the light and shade of something as inconsequential as a fruit bowl, gazed where his finger lay preparing to be underwhelmed. She saw a montage of black and white photos of Paris street scenes, a crowded square full of students and tourists and pigeons, outdoor market stalls, chic people smoking and sipping coffees at the outdoor tables of cafés, people doing their errands among the shops and parked cars and the energy that busy places had, all the charm of France in the 1960s. "I'm looking," said Caroline dryly. "What of it? It's..." she gasped with a wide smile and the girls hurried to see. Caroline recovered herself and pointed at one of the photos for her daughters' benefit. She shared a smile of astonishment with Dwight as she announced "There's your Uncle Ross and Aunt Dem!" They peered at the picture. It was dense with almost to much to see at once; pedestrians holding their shopping, spindly trees growing out of decorative iron grates at the pavement, shop fronts with the charm of hand painted signs and the staid correctness of the window displays of goods. One would be hard pressed to identify them at first glance but Aunt Dem, looking to all the world as a boy in a flat cap and a man's shirt over her jeans, sleeves rolled up and large on her, a bit like a smock, had just left a patisserie clutching a paper wrapped pastry in one hand, calling out to an actual boy further away on the pavement and Uncle Ross, just seen, about to exit the shop behind her, guitar case in one hand, a sidelong glance of amusement on his face in Dem's direction. It was an accident of fate that they'd come out of the bakery right at that moment; right when the photographer was taking a picture of a busy street scene. Ross' face captured just at the point where the dim interior of the shop gave way to the bright outdoors. Dem's stance, her eyes hooded in some sort of taunt towards the other boy, chin jutted forward from his own salvo and both happy to greet each other. It was part of the tapestry of capturing a random Paris afternoon, Ross and Dem tucked in with the rest. And their friend, as lanky and thin as they were, if his skinny wrists at the sleeves of his army coat were any indication. He wore no hat, hair trimmed short and was somewhat mysterious in his features, a strong gallic nose with a slender face but a vague suggestion of other to him... It was a black and white picture and the boy seemed fair skinned but... Algeria? Caroline scrutinized the picture. Dem's merry look of teasing the other boy, hailing a friend, Ross' wry amusement at them both, guitar case in hand, showed all of the friendliness she had seen in the Poldarks from the first time they met. At first they startled to see strangers arrive at their rustic home, hidden away among the stark cliffs, verdant meadow and dense woods of Il Porto but Garrick, their dog, seemed to vouch for their good character. Ross and Dem quickly became consummate hosts who's enthusiasm for art and poetry and chocolate biscuits won Caroline over quite at once. "Surely that's the boy they spoke of so often, the one that turned on the merry go round for their wedding," Dwight turned his attention to the friend. "I wonder if it is," mused Dwight, adding "They certainly had many compatriots in that world," Sophie frowned over the photo and said, "Aunt Dem doesn't look like Jeremy! She looks like Julia! Why did people think she was a boy? She looks," she paused puzzled over the image as Dwight nodded sagely. "We know she is female." said Papa. "Strangers in the street, people taking a brief notice of her, wouldn't see her as a girl right away. Dem was wearing boys clothes so people didn't think much past that." Sarah looked at the photo, this way and that. Uncle Ross looking so young it was hard to credit it as even being him, his perpetually stubble coated chin and strong features were worlds away from this picture, but one could see the grownup he became hovering in his smile. He'd looked that amused and wry over things and it was the same expression, his hair was far longer then than it was now. Aunt Dem's hair was tucked up out of sight. It was true she didn't look particularly like a boy in her face and resembled her daughter but the stance, the cheekiness of her attitude mirrored the other boy for all it was a still picture. Aunt Dem looked as sassy and unruly as the other boy compared to the other random, conservatively dressed people in the picture. "She looks a bit like a boy," she looked among them all. "With that hat," They all admired the photo once more.

"Gimme that, Palmier! Don't pretend you just can't just buy another! You two make a packet! Vous deux êtes plein aux!"

Dem taunted Crazy Ace with a shrewd glance of having the upper hand, a pastry in her grasp and the glamour of the other street kids thinking she and Ross made more money busking than they really did. What she and Ross earned busking did feed them, what money they made from odd jobs went entirely to Madame Albaret. Sometimes she and Ross were very precarious in their funds and their food, saving against the winter and their room on Rue Des Cannettes. She waggled the paper wrapped cake and teased her friend as the last of the bell's jangle over the door from them leaving sounded with Ross making enough room in the doorway for himself and the guitar case to leave.

"Don't make me laugh! You say that as if you couldn't buy out the shop yourself! Aces indeed!"

Ross stepped out onto the pavement from the patisserie and hailed their friend with a handshake after Dem and Crazy Ace thumped each others backs continuing their volley of teasing. They fell into step, Ross and Crazy Ace on either side of Dem as she broke up the small loaf of pain d'épice into three. She handed one piece to Crazy Ace, one piece to Ross and then bit into the remaining part as hers. They ate and walked and talked. While some would look askance at the idea that such a small cake, a loaf that fit in her palm, could be satisfying split between three people, because it was made with lots of butter and rye flour, these modest portions did sate them. In truth, an empty belly could happily seize upon even a cup of coffee as being a feast if it filled you up for a time... In their talk, breezy and good natured, it was unsaid that they all suffered precarities with food for all they eeked out their livings in their comings and goings. It was left unsaid the state in which any of the three of them had eaten previously or would eat later. For now, they all had their bit of cake to eat. They were winning. They, all three, knew that most all in life on the street was catch as catch can and sharing what little you had was good policy, it made the bonds of friendship deeper. Crazy Ace had means to reciprocate Ross and Dem's generosity nearly at once. There was a guy he knew at the Sorbonne. Students like to slum it and hang out with the independent kids in the cafes. Some had money from their parents, some were often genuinely in straitened circumstances, hand to mouth in their student life but there would be a big birthday party for one of the rich kids in one of old underground wine cellars turned into a club, and the apartments above it. "University kids near Rue Lacépède! A crazy bash! Plenty of food! Plenty of drinks! Dancing! And cake!" Crazy Ace knew sweets were a good lure for Palmier. Ross and Dem looked skeptical. "But we don't know them," said Dem. "Why would they want us there?" Crazy Ace pointed to Ross' guitar. "You are musicians!" shrugged Crazy Ace in a self evident wisdom. "They'll love having real music, not just records! Real music from the streets! Bohemian! That's what they say! That's what the students call us in the cafés! You sing for your supper on the boulevard! Come with me tonight and bring your guitar! Play at this party, like I know you can, and they'll fall at your feet! You don't have to know them, you know me! They'll be at it til dawn! So many kids will be there it won't matter who's doing what, who's drinking or eating what! Her father is a rich bastard! Come out tonight! It'll be all you can eat!"

Crazy Ace was as good as his word. A sprawling party over three floors and the cellar underneath, too many people to care who was who, all students having a good time and willing to hail Palmier as good companions as obvious musicians with Ross' guitar in hand and vouched for by Crazy Ace who was a known quantity; well liked as a wise cracking character among many of these party goers and doing a roaring trade selling discreet amounts of kif this evening too. Crazy Ace was so young and carefree seeming in his Paris street life he was admired by the university kids who wanted to be bohemian to the fullest within the confines of student life. For these students there was every expectation that the young men would slot themselves into good jobs and the young ladies would marry good boys so circumstanced and they'd matriculate into an ordinary life once their schooling was done. Young people wanted to have their fun while they could and who better to emulate than the true Parisian rats who lived to dance and roam the city as if life was a grand adventure? Ross and Dem looked very young too; two kids who made their own life and their own rules. That was very attractive to the college students who lived it up at their parties to salve the increasing unhappiness with university life. In some way the students wished to be more like the rats even as they had markedly more respect and advantages in the eyes of grownups and the law. The overcrowded classes and strict dormitory rules felt oppressive and the feeling that, for all they were getting an education, the march towards the staid life of their parents was inevitable, like marching themselves into a gilded prison. The freedom of the street rats was like a dream for these students and having some in their midst was an elation for them. They were like celebrities! The dark haired one really knew how to play guitar! Crazy Ace and his friends were proof that they might be on the trajectory for a humdrum respectability but in their students days they kicked against it, lived the freedom of bohemia, until classes resumed anyway...

I'm so glad that she's my little girl!
She's so glad, she's telling all the world!

Dem was singing at the top of her lungs while dancing among the mass of kids who turned the cellar meant to store wine long ago into a dance floor. Ross scanned the room, walls made of stone, from one side to the other. He couldn't see Dem but her voice floated above the others like a siren, almost louder than speakers strung at the walls snaking electrical cords along the corners from the record player balanced on top of a wooden barrel at the far end of the place. The joy in her mood could be heard as she sang. That she sang like a girl, looked like a boy and had a real English accent, (Just like The Beatles!), made the party goers around her excitable and Ross appearing, guitar in hand after wowing them all on the upper floors with his playing gave him an unassailable coolness particularly as Crazy Ace brought up the rear. He stood at the kid's back and whispered a joke in his ear. He turned to look his friend in the face and laugh together heartily in a scrunch eyed glee. The students practically swooned at how hip their party was progressing! Street rats having a good time among them was as good a vetting for their own coolness as could be!

Ross and Dem had a wonderful time! They ate like kings and danced to good records. They met interesting people who liked art and poetry, argued politics and liked a good time. Ross played his guitar, delighting the guests on the top floor as they sat about on floor in rooms without much real furniture, walls scribbled upon in pen and paint with heroic slogans, discussing worldly things, smoking and drinking and the candles drizzling melted wax in humped stalactites down old wine jugs about the place made a mystical replica of their movements on the ceiling and a bohemian dream made real. Dem disappeared into the party and Ross performed his way back to the ground floor, not denying any who asked a song but wanting to find Dem in the crush of people. He set his guitar back in the case and looked for Dem. He could hear her sing and as he looked to find her amongst the dancers he felt someone lean in close at his back and knew from the press of scratchy Belgian wool at his neck it was Crazy Ace. "Vite, Palmier! Grab Palmier! I've got jambon under my coat and a baguette up my sleeve!" hissed Crazy Ace, leaning in close enough for Ross to feel the edge of a cured ham push at his back beneath Crazy Ace's army coat.

"Hahahahahahaha!"

Ross turned to laugh and see his friend grin a triumph. They began the day with a meager piece of cake apiece, had a good meal at this party. Now Crazy Ace had insured a feast!

Dem heard Ross laughing. She turned to look about and saw Ross and Crazy Ace near the door. Ross waved her forward and she slithered through the packed dance floor, dancing to reach them, giddy and happy, feeling kids pat her on the back, kiss her cheeks, shake her hand and even just try to touch her clothes as she made her way out like pilgrims' veneration of a saint, claiming a bit of her glamour for themselves as they hailed such a cool kid, gracing the party with street cred and style anglais. Crazy Ace darted out first, careful to elude the same enthusiasm of the students wanting shake his hand or embrace him for one arm was constricted by a long, slender loaf of bread shoved up his sleeve and the other was cradling an entire joint of ham under his coat like a bébé! Rather than looking like an escaping smuggler, Crazy Ace gave the party goers the idea that he was an important person with other things to do, a man on the move! Perhaps to replenish his stock and return because they were such good customers. Maybe he would tell his other friends that the students were having the swingingest party and return with more cool kids! Ross and Dem departed too, hindered in their progress by tipsy, happy people who wished them well and the birthday girl catching them before they could get to the door in her pretty light blue dress, clutching a Picardie of wine that she knocked back in one gulp, blinked the swallow down revealing her pupils shining black, twice their ordinary size, slurring, "Merci, mes amies!" with a sloppy la bise for them both. Dem smiled indulgently as she worked to extricate herself from the weight of a hug that compelled her to help hold their inebriated hostess upright as she stood herself back up again in the camaraderie of party goers who were firm friends within the confines of the event. Ross, ever the showman, made the sudden decision to take his guitar out of its case once more to serenade her with "Happy Birthday" in English. They had enjoyed a good time and Crazy Ace had just made off with part of her buffet, it was only right to give their hostess and her guests one last performance. The kids wooped and clapped as Ross put the strap over his shoulder and strummed with vigor to hold everyone's attention, as if a guitar could be a drum roll. As he bowed to the birthday girl the room as one sighed, "Ahhhhhhhh..." at the tribute of a long haired troubadour for the woman of the hour. With a cheeky grin Ross nodded to Dem and they sang,

"Happyyyyy birrrrrrth-day toooooo yoooooooou..."

Drawn out enough to let those in the room sing along too.

The girl grinned like the Cheshire Cat as all the onlookers howled and brayed and sang along with Ross and Dem, as her other girlfriends rushed forward to hug and kiss her, all drinks at hand raised in her honour, all of them knowing that it was her birthday and they were the moment. This was not just a party, it was the party; it would be the talk of the town by Monday and anyone who missed it would be green with envy. Anyone who had been here, vachement chouette! It brought the house down and delayed Palmier's departure a full twenty minutes from the cheers and so many kids wanting to say their goodbyes in person after Ross put his guitar away. By the time Ross and Dem made their way out of the building Crazy Ace was nowhere to be seen. Ross and Dem left the carousing students and walked further up the dark streets, some bars had small crowds of grown ups loitering out front but a great deal of the street was empty. The faint noise of records and talk from the students' party could still be heard but lessening as they got further forward. A sharp whistle pierced the night. Like a magician appearing in a powder flash, Crazy Ace was stood beneath a street lamp and beckoned Palmier over with a flap of his arm, still braced in an awkward stiffness by the baguette.

"Merde! You two took your time! I started to worry they ate you!" he said in a consternation.

Dem giggled hurrying forward as she helped the bread out of his coat sleeve, sliding it out as Crazy Ace let the last end of it out with a flick of his wrist. Ross made up the distance between them clutching the handle of his guitar case with casual ease, like an extension of his body as Dem brandished the baugette like an honour guard bearing a flag and Crazy Ace brought the ham from beneath his coat, cradled in his arms, wrapped in a piece of newspaper. Together, they tromped a victory parade to L' Escale where the real action was; a dancehall with a 'late nite' license and a barman who wasn't above slipping underage rats punch with a wink or letting three of them share an impromptu feast of bread and ham with their fellows before dancing until four in the morning. They didn't even mind a bunch of rats sitting slouched in the squishy red vinyl, black metal chairs about the place, watching the scene of dancers enjoying le weekend, loggy from eating too much at once to dance right away, smiling contenedness like cats that got the cream, cross eyed from gorging themselves a full belly of salty delicious ham, left picked clean and slain as a greasy denuded bone in a crumple of newsprint on the bar once the gang got through with it, and a hunk of fresh bread from a baugette pulled apart and shared out like the loaves and fishes, washed down with fruity punch. Crazy Ace always ordered punch for Palmier to drink because he got served with no trouble and Palmier were so baby faced the barman couldn't pretend not to know they were underage. It was share and share alike on the street. After reviving themselves from eating up Crazy Ace's largesse the Left Bank rats danced until dawn, Ross' guitar minded and safe behind the bar the same way the barman often looked after Palmier's sketchbook for these kids were deemed regulars.

"Judas!" gasped Dem. Ross turned to look at her as she said,

"Ross! It's Crazy Ace! Look!"

When Dwight and Caroline were next at Nampara, they made sure to bring Dwight's magazine with them and grinned at the beginning of a smile on Ross face that brimmed into fullness as he came to stand at Dem's side in the parlor and looked at the photograph. "My ivers! Of all the... Amazing...! That they caught us coming out of the shop like that!" They stood admiring their former selves. "And a patisserie at that! Proof!" crowed Ross. "If proof were needed," he chuckled. "That we were ever 'Palmier', Dem!" Dem grinned scrutinizing the paper wrapped cake in her hand and smiling over the jolly sort of teasing she was indulging in with Crazy Ace, frozen in time in a black and white photograph. "That was a pain d'épice! Gosh," she patted her belly, thickened forward with child. "I can still taste it if I think about it," she sighed. Ross put his arm round Dem's shoulder and watched this frozen Dem sassing Crazy Ace, striding towards them with his broad smile and cheerful teasing. He looked heartbreakingly young in an army coat too big on him. That's something one could only understand in retrospect. In a way Ross and Dem could not quite see the same in themselves but saw it in their long lost friend very clearly. Now that they were proper grownups the wish to want to hold that young man and whisk him away from the ducking and diving of the street was strong. A life he lived more precariously than they had in his embrace of petty crime. They'd all gotten 'Association' charges tacked on to their records from being pals rounded up off the street by the flic with Crazy Ace. What happened to him?

"Thank you for showing this to us, Dwight!" said Ross struggling himself back into the present day, overcome with memories; some good, some not so good but part of his life and and part of what made Ross who he was today. "Keep it!" said Dwight affably. "It will just end up with the other issues in a box if I hang on to it. You have it, it was a treat enough to see you two in it." "Three!" corrected Caroline. "I had an inkling that was your Crazy Ace!" And they all nodded the fact that the young man was their good street pal. "You tell your stories so vividly I feel like I was watching over your shoulder," Dem and Ross smiled fondly over the photograph, a random moment caught when they were unaware and a documentation of a distant time and place only a select group of people knew intimately; the Parisian street rats...

Chapter Text

Summer in Positano brought poppies growing in battalions throughout the meadow and wild roses flourished at the transition where meadow turned to bramble and then on to woodland. Smaller flowers that were five petaled and closer to buttercups in their shape than the larger sort of roses that unfurled a blousier configuration of bloom in formal gardens. Delicate roses that mimicked apple blossom, white with a bare pink blush at the tips, fine thorns and a scent from them that was rich and sugary and Dem clipped away many to arrange in glass jars and beautify the folly. Red flaming poppies that dotted the wild grasses among a rainbow's worth of wildflowers. Pinky-white dogwood roses with heart shaped petals surrounding an effervescent starburst of golden stamens crowned with vibrant yellow anthers. Dem even dressed her largest floral arrangement this day with raspberry stems, making a wondrous still life of the land's bounty, as well as a convenient snack. They could eat up the fat clumps of fruit before they started to spoil, leaving the saw edged bright green leaves at contrast to their darker rose leaf breathern; rose leaves, glossy and broad with just the barest saw edge compared to the dainty frilled raspberry leaves. She placed a wide mouth glass jar full of flowers and raspberries at the center of their table and sat watching it in a quiet contemplation. The stems were magnified beneath the waterline, some of them singed from Dem burning the cut ends of poppies to extend their life and bloom as cut flowers. The flowers were fascinating, shapes so uniform and yet no two alike. Minuscule fairy shrimp milled about the plant stems, from time to time. One had to look carefully to see them and other little beasties, pale translucent specks with little fast moving legs. Funny little things ambulating in a self important busy manner of coming and going within this tiny circuit of blown glass universe because the water had been taken straight from the river, not boiled first as Ross and Dem faithfully did for the water meant for drinking. Ross came in from outdoor chores to find Dem sitting on the floor at the low table where they took their meals, Garrick's head resting near her lap, Tabitha Bethia curled up quiet and contented at her skirts. She was staring dreamily at the flowers and watching the impromptu aquarium within in her rustic jar of flowers. Candlelight flickered at her face even as the light of day penetrated the folly through its windows. The gloss and near regal darkness of the table's finish reflected light up at Demelza's face and made a tableux of homelife, their life, that made Ross' heart glad. He paused holding the basket of eggs and took in this domestic scene with a great deal of satisfaction. The lady of the manner at her leisure; not on the run in bustling cities, earning her keep singing. A woman. Not secreting that fact in loose clothes and the loud, devil may care attitudes of the rest of the boys running rough and tumble on the street. No longer dressing like a boy at his side. Dem was a beautiful girl who made her own life of beauty and found happiness honest toil in her garden, growing the food they ate in delicious meals she prepared in their little house. At peace in the meadow as she gathered flowers and sang for joy alone. A songbird freed to live in peace and seclusion. The song bird he'd freed; asking her to leave the girl's home and try her luck on the road with him after hearing her sing through the other side of the fence, near the back of the place where Ross kept his pitch, waiting for the ship bound for France. She turned her gaze from the water in the jar, the flowers, to Ross and the soft look of, Hello... My husband... swaled his heart. The earnest look of love on Ross' face, Hello... Wife... swaled hers.

He placed the eggs on the counter by the stove turned to look at Dem. Dem was admiring Ross, eyes lit with affection in a silent pause. Tabitha Bethia rose and made a point of rubbing herself on Ross' ankles. Sleek and lean from a life of hunting, living a country life in her country home, wound her way round the slim ankles of her human, over his bare feet that were free of the canvas shoes he wore in his outdoor work. Long legged in denim trousers cut to next to nothing, quite short, his tee shirt showing sweat under his arms, hair a bit limp from exertion, framing his face, dark eyebrows as he admired her. His body was humming with a different energy even as he was smiling down at the cat. He bent down to allow Tabitha Bethia to wind herself round, leaving his hand to rest at her back and in this way pet her. He knelt further and Tabitha Bethia preened and purred as Ross stroked her head and neck, murmuring compliments to her. Dem liked to see Ross pay their cat attention. You could see the affection between them. Dem lay a hand on Garrick's back, at one with their dog at rest, as Ross looked to her from their cat from his crouched position. "Chores are settled. I have to wash up," said in Ross a quiet modesty, a subtle invitation.

"As do I," smiled Dem. "Got the garden sorted earlier," she said.

Ross looked her up and down in a manner that was both worshipful and cheeky. He took in his Sweetness from her pretty face to her grubby toes and smiled.

"I'll meet you at the river." said Ross. He made a point of scratching between Garrick's ears as the dog lay quiet, near to napping close to Dem. With a small peck of a kiss for Dem's lips Ross stood and strode out of the folly.

Dem moved slowly to the side, to let Garrick remain in repose. Tabitha Bethia walked forward and leapt up to sit on one of the windowsills. Dem stood and closed the door behind her as she left the folly and went to follow Ross to the river, the ever flowing place that supplied water for their drinking and cooking, used for the household chores and garden. They had a motley assortment of large pots and tubs to boil the river water over open fires, clotheslines strung amongst the trees. Ross and Dem laundered their clothes, bathed Garrick and washed themselves in the river. They frolicked in the meadow in sight of the river and the cliffs on the opposite bank. They often made love outdoors; by the riverbank, in the water itself. The river bore the same witness to the Poldarks couplings as any other wildlife here, animals of all kinds mating with the primitive carelessness of being thoroughly lost to the urges of their bodies and unconcerned over predators. Up in the valley, nature reigned. Ross and Demelza ceased to be urban creatures living on the streets of human modernity. Up and away from the town below, they relished being part of the land; at one with their horse when they rode Seamus, a loving friend to their cow, Desdemona, grateful for her milk and cream, proud owners of their trio of chickens. Loyal companions to Garrick and Tabitha Bethia; friendly dog, elegant cat. The Poldarks became creatures of this place themselves, wild children. Ross slowed his gait to turn and watch Sweetness walking towards the river, towards him. Her hair shone like red gold in the sun and a queenly elegance shone from Dem as small insects and butterflies hovered over the grasses and flowers of the meadow at their pollen gathering, nectar sipping tasks, like puffs of fairy dust heralding her approach.

Dem watched Ross remove his clothes as she came nearer. Long and lean, dark hair like a fine fleece upon his body, a knowing smile that beckoned her closer. She made up the space between them and enfolded him in an embrace as Ross kissed her and wasted little time finding the fastenings of Dem's skirt, pulling them apart. A pivot of their heads as the kiss deepened. Dem's skirt fallen away to the grass. Dem's smile at this broke the kiss. She beamed at him as she stepped apart and removed her clothes. The teasing jut of Ross' chin as he watched her, nude himself, his cock straining forward in his intentions. Showed his agreement that it was Dem's ardor that would take the fore, that he would submit himself to her, that the grass would soften at Ross' back and his only vision before he closed his eyes and felt himself pierce her body would be his Sweetness, bright eyed and giggling but quite serious too. Eyes closed, the scent of the meadow, the warmth of the sun, the smell of their bodies, the sounds of their sighs became Ross' passageway to a different plane. At each soft plunge of Dem rising and falling, her body so wet and soft around him, Ross felt reality shrink to the confines of the blood in his veins surging to find the place Dem's vision sought when she sang. The dreamy, unfocused look in her eye that promised hope and love and all the answers that lay on a horizon just out of reach. As Ross felt the pleasure build his throat opened and his sighs became more guttural and urgent, desperate and yet it was not desperation. Getting closer to the crescendo that would see Ross touch the veil of that hidden place brought him excitement; his body poised to feel that energy, his reason blown apart in its wake and suspend him in all the answers in an instant epiphany but fading just as fast, losing hold of that ecstasy as he fell back to earth. Ross had his answer. Sweetness was his girl and she unlocked all that was good within him as the pent up energy inside Ross burst. He came in a fierce pleasure that flared forth and subsumed him as Dem gasped and rode on, finding her own joy some heartbeats behind him as Ross became louder in his cries and further insensible from her continuing, the lack of respite driving him crazy, her sudden pause and shiver shuddered through both of them making Ross smile at the last; close enough to feel it, feel her, close enough they might as well be sharing one body. Beyond him the river surged onwards, a ceaseless noise of rushing water that was also a calming sound. A proof of permanence. A sound of home.

The clouds moved slowly. The sky was a brilliant blue. They had not been in a hurry to wash. Dem woke from what felt like a deep sleep for all it was short and turned her face to watch Ross, fast asleep next to her, hair cascading across his face, butterflies fluttering quite near in the grass. She continued to watch his face, lay her hand at his back and he breathed a sigh as if he enjoyed the contact even as he did not wake. A butterfly alighted upon her hand. Dem rose on her other elbow slowly to watch from a better vantage point and not scare it away. It was a tiny thing, dusty purple and orange with a furry, fuzzy back that shimmered pale blue over its black body. In a meadow so dotted with blossoms the butterfly might have stopped to rest, having gorged upon too much choice of sweet tasting flowers. It stood on her hand and she barely felt it at all.

Ross opened his eyes, one draped with hair. The slope of Dem's breasts were very attractive as she sat propped up by her elbow looking past him at something intently. Her eyes turned from what she was looking at.

"Stay still, Ross," whispered Dem.

Ross obeyed and felt Dem's hand side across his back in a slow steady movement. With patience, Dem removed her hand to let it lay on the grass, slow enough that the butterfly was not spooked away. Ross' eyes widened to see it and they admired its colour and the iridescence of its wings in the strong sunlight. Ross watched it fly away, turned to lay on his back and keep sight of it until it flew out of view. He turned to see Dem, her eyes following it further through the meadow since she was already perched up on her elbow. Rumpled hair and her eyes reflecting the green of the grass. She was so beautiful.

"He found the sweetest flower in the meadow," said Ross, looking up at Sweetness with a doting gaze. Dem smiled.

Ross and Dem left their clothes where they lay and walked to the river to wash themselves, a playful chore as they shared their bar of soap. They couldn't help but steal kisses and slippery caresses as they did so and the swift moving water bore the suds away. Tidy again, they walked to the swimming hole, accessible from sun warmed sloping tiers of stone and the cliffs soaring upward around it festooned with flowering vines. Hand in hand, hair wetted and draped about their shoulders in romantic waves of golden red and copper lark brown, like merpeople, the river released the resident wildlife back to the land and flowed on.

Chapter Text

Autumn lingered on as if fond of its own perfection and reluctant to put finis to a warm and kindly story. The November gales did not develop, and leaves of the tall elms were drifting down yellow, red and crimson. Life at Nampara drifted on with the same undisturbed calm. There was no darting about behind produce vendors at Les Halles lugging crates. No performances on the boulevard, in the market square, playing guitar while drawing in deep breaths of brisk cold air, singing as the weather turned nippy. No calculations were to be parsed, decisions to be made over how much Ross and Dem could afford to eat in the cafés and still put funds by for a rainy day and stay in Madame Albaret's good graces to remain in their rented room at Rue Des Cannettes. Seamus, Desdemona, Tabitha Bethia and Garrick were all in the pleasant position of enjoying Autumn and the approach of winter in Cornwall with very little change to their lifestyle. There were ample fields of pasture and snug stables, there were mice to eat aplenty and there were rabbits to make chase with too. Rather than the rushing river of Positano, the ever moving sea of Nampara Cove was near. Much like Positano, pretty woodland lay beyond and the hedgerows that grew at the edges of Poldark land were as rich with autumn brambles as the woods near the folly had been with summer raspberries. Prudie, who set store by keeping both Nampara's larder and her own well provisioned reminded Ross that, with a babe on the way, rosehip syrup would be advantageous for mother and child. Now that the apple harvest nearly dealt with and the first frost come and gone rosehips would be ready to pick.

Ross and Jud made their slow way through many a wild rose bush along Nampara's property, filling grey metal pails and a couple of tin pudding basins, enameled white on the inside and blue on the outside, with plump flame orange-rose reddish rosehips; bright with colour in a manner the white and pink blushed petals of the roses in the warmer weather could have hardly hinted at. Before they returned indoors and with a great ceremony of a reverential slowness to Ross' movements he augmented the wild rose hips they'd collected with the ripe bright red ones from the rosebush nearest the house, part of his late mother's garden. Jud stood near at hand in a quiet air of feeling proud at the rightness of the young mistress and the newest little Poldark having their restoring cordial comprised of the bounty of both Nampara's wild hedgerows and an ornamental rose Mistress Grace had planted herself. Young Ross, Master of Nampara, twisted rosehips away from his mother's rosebush with the level eyed gaze of knowing this addition to be an important one, a direct link of one Poldark woman, long gone, to their two newest family members. Ross looked to his pail, brimful of happiness. The fruit from Mama's rosebush were a redder colour and more cylindrical than those of the wild grown hedges and stood out against them where they lay. One could see the difference between them. He smiled down at his pail.

"I think Prudie can make a go of these," chirped Master Ross.

Jud smiled. As if siring a child had somehow brought new maturity to the lad, the faintest prickle of facial hair could be seen trying to take hold upon his Master's chin. Young Ross had grown while he had been away these last few years but he did not quite look it. One could almost believe time hadn't passed too much and Joshua's son had simply reappeared, though a good deal taller... He were still just a lad, still bright eyed and young and soon to be a father. He was slow to age. Time would mark him as the years progressed, thought Jud, but the lad might retain that fey youthfulness in some way even when he got to be an old'un. Nampara's caretaker was charmed and pleased that Nampara's heir had returned to claim his birthright, safe from his wandering about, happy to be home.

"Aye." agreed Jud as they tromped forward into the house and onward to the kitchen.

In the kitchen Prudie was in the midst of applesauce making and Dem, with her bump growing apace with the little person's progress inside her, was at hand helping to pare apples. She looked up to the entrance from her work as Ross and Jud came in bearing the fruits of their labour. Prudie turned from the stove and nodded her satisfaction with them. "Tha be a good 'aul!" said Prudie. "Aye!" agreed Jud. "An' thur's a fair bit that ain't turned quite yet. Reckon t'be a deal more t'pick afore they go wrinkled." "We've some of Mama's too!" crowed Ross. Dem blinked a surprised confusion. "Your mother, Ross?" He nodded, smiling. "Yes! These ones are from her rose bush in the garden." He brought the pail over for Dem to see them, fingering the bobble of the reddest examples teeter tottering among the more orangey ones to make an example of their difference. She looked at them, smiling over Ross' enthusiasm. "I think those are the prettiest ones!" declared Dem, a remark that pleased him. Prudie came nearer, to see for herself and smiled over them all, at the tiny fruits, and the young'uns, and the mound of babby at the maid's lap. Nampara blooming anew as the harvest days were upon them and the days shortening towards winter. With a bit of cooking, a careful straining and a touch of sugar, the maid would be guarded from winter sniffles and keep the babby growin' fitty. It wouldn't hurt none t'dose Master Ross wi' a hot drink of rosehips now and then, of a cold winter's day, him outside tendin' t'things lookin' after the animals an' tha; 'aving a cow back on the premises the way Master Joshua an' Mistress Grace had Lovely, time back, a horse now too an' all... Keep the Master an' Mistress fitty as their little'un be growin', bless. "We'll get these apples sorted an' then I'll get them lot goin' on the boil," said Prudie, gesturing to the table and the rosehips. "They'll make a right good syrup."

Ross continued to assist Jud in outdoor work and then they both returned indoors for tea.

"Sweetness?"

Ross put his head round the library door but Dem was not seated at the desk working on her drawings. She had not been in the parlor. He went on to the kitchen to find that Dem was upstairs resting. The kitchen was full of the heavenly scents of apples, nutmeg and cinnamon with the tart counterpoint of the rosehips boiling on the hob. Jud sat at the table, talking with Prudie of the chores they'd accomplished. Ross hailed Prudie, sat at the table and helped himself to a piece of blackberry tart. The crust was stout enough he could meet the wedge of fruit laden tart by picking it up with his fingers, crumbly enough as he took his first bite to be a pleasure to eat, full of buttery goodness and stewed blackberries whose tart lovely flavour made a bright poem of the sugar it was cooked with rather than being too cloying. It was a taste of autumn Ross relished and had not met its like on the road, except perhaps, the blop of jam Brose had served with the croissants he had given him and Sweetness the first morning. It had not been blackberry or even particularly special as jams went but after scavenging what little they were able to eat from restaurant scraps after their flight from Marseilles, that first taste of it alongside a freshly baked croissant and washing it all down with a bowl of hot cocoa might as well have been manna from heaven. That humble repast, seated in the mismatched chairs of an artist's studio held the same sense of coming to the table, and being fed, and being cared for and a joyful memory of what you ate long ago meeting the taste presently in your mouth in a happy symmetry. Ross enjoyed his first bite of blackberry tart with an admiring mmmmmmm...

"Mmmmmmm," He chewed and swallowed. "Oh Prudie, how I've missed your tarts! This is delicious!" sighed Ross.

Prudie nodded a sage acknowledgment that her baking was That. Good. while still conveying the modesty of a servant and holding a small motherly joy over 'feeding up little'uns', even as master Ross weren't exactly a child no more. She poured tea and the rosehips bubbled in a pot on the hob during a pleasant afternoon in Nampara's kitchen, in the warm, perfumed with cooking fruit as time passed peacefully and as Demelza took her rest upstairs.

"Sweetness?"

Dem rolled on to her other side, slowly, to face the doorway. Increasingly, her growing belly did not allow for quick, spontaneous moments. "Hello, Ross," she yawned. Ross entered bearing a mug of sweet steaming red liquid. "Prudie strained those rosehips." said Ross approaching the bed as she sat up. "She's cooking down the rest to make cordial, to have it through the winter, but this is a bit like tea. She said its good to drink too," said Ross, adding, "Prudie says it's the freshest it can be this way. She put sugar in," Ross handed Dem the mug, smiling in his assurance as he grew up having drunk this himself at times, secure in its deliciousness and Prudie's scrupulous care over straining out the seeds and fibrous matter so there were no scratchy or itchy surprises from those irritants inside the rosehips to mar the drink. Dem accepted the drink with thanks and sipped at it experimentally. It was not too hot and had a taste of a tart berry, not the way roses smelled at all. The sugar helped the flavour and one could believe that it was bringing lots and lots of vitamins and goodness into her at each sip. Ross sat next to her on the bed and watched Dem drink it, glad to still have the Paynters in the house and know he and Dem and even their child on the way had the benefit of their wise ways. Grateful that Mama's rosebush had become part of the very fibre of the child's being in giving it and Dem sustenance. He put an arm round his Sweetness and Demelza sank into Ross' cozy cuddle. She was warm, plump soft pillows at her back, held by her man and drinking a sweet hot drink Mrs. Paynter said was chock full of healthful abundance and an added addition of Ross' mother's love from the rosebush by their door. They sat, Ross enjoying cosseting, Dem enjoying being cosseted and both of them warmed by the contented pleasure of loving someone dearly, being loved in return and being happy to be home.