They raised me as one of their own, taught me Latin, grammar, logic, how to read and write. But most of all, they taught me how to perform. We traveled the large cathedral towns, Nîmes, Cluny Le Puy reciting our irreverent songs, tumbling, and juggling for the crowds. Each summer, we passed through Veille du Père. I saw Sophie there at her father’s inn, her shy blue eyes unable to hide from mine. And later, I noticed her peeking at a rehearsal. I was sure, at me … I swiped a sunflower and went up to her. “What goes in all stiff and stout, but when it comes out it’s flopping about?”

[21] She widened her eyes and blushed. “How could anyone but a devil have such bright red hair?” she said. Then she ran away.

A cabbage, I was about to say.

Each year when we returned, I came bearing a sunflower, until Sophie had grown from a gangly girl into the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She had a song for me, a teasing rhyme:

A maiden met a wandering man

In the light of the moon’s pure cheer,

And though they fell in love at that first sight,

It was a love that was born for tears.

I called her my princess, and she said that I probably had one in every town. But in truth, I did not. Each year I promised I would come back, and I always did. One year, I stayed.

The three years we’d been married had been the happiest I had known. I felt connected for the first time in my life. And deeply in love.

But as I held Sophie that night, something told me I could no longer live like this. The rage that burned in my heart from the day’s horror was killing me. There would always be another Norcross, another tax levied upon us. Or another Alo… One day, the boy strung up on that wheel could be our own.

Until we were free.