And besides, she’d picked up a bit of the Travellers’ cant once when they’d been children and it hadn’t been much appreciated by the Travellers who’d heard her doing it.
Jasper, apparently, did not remember that Shelta was not for them to understand and repeated some of it back, anyway. “Shay joug,” he echoed. “‘Coppers,’ innit?”
He won a few sleepy nods in return, making him grin in triumph and bite into another crisp pickle.
“Are you going back to Paris this year?” Libba asked them. “Now that the war is over? I remember that was always your route when I was little.”
There were some grumbles and shrugs around the table.
“Remains to be seen,” said Persephone Boswell, a member of the caravan who had befriended Libba in childhood who was just now studying one of the bumpy pickle exteriors with the edge of her fingernail. “It’s been a long time since it was safe, you know.”
“Long time,” agreed Libba. “Would you go? If they do?”
Seph grimaced, her eyes snapping up from her pickle examination. “Shush,” she said, though a few heads had already turned to listen to her answer.
Libba pressed her lips together in apology.
She had been in London for so many years that she had evidently forgotten her manners, and the likely attitude that the caravan had toward Seph opening a permanent storefront here in Brighton, her cabinet of curiosities on the wharf.
Libba glanced at Jasper.
He was cross that Malcolm and Libba had gone from here.
Seph’s people were cross that she might stay.
There was no pleasing anyone, was there?
“That woman in your troupe who played Aphrodite,” Seph said, sounding anxious to change the subject. “She had a French accent. I spoke to her a bit before she took off tonight. Didn’t expect her to be almost bald under the goddess’s wig.”
“Is that who that was?!” Jasper said, frowning. “First the sculptor dandy and now the goddess too?”
“Acting,” Libba said to him again, enunciating through her tipple, in the hopes of aggravating him, then turned to Seph. “She keeps it shorn because of her vows.”
“Her… Her ‘vows’?” Seph repeated, blinking. “What vows are those?”
“Carmelite ones,” said Libba with a shrug. “Her convent was knocked over during the unrest and she fled to England. Her family were nobles, so she didn’t fancy a rendezvous with Madame Guillotine or a dark oubliette, like poor Princess Thérèse.”
“A nun!” Jasper exclaimed, golden eyes sparkling in delight. “And now she plays a Hellenic goddess on stage?”
“War does strange things to us all,” said Libba with a shrug and a broad yawn. “Oh. I think that was my last pickle.”
“They should put it on the sign,” Seph agreed, mirroring the yawn. “‘Pickles and tipples at the Coin and Cauldron.’”
“Drop o’ tea,” the old man muttered mournfully.
Privately, Libba thought that wouldn’t pair half so well.
“Are you going to walk back to the Rest?” Jasper asked her as she stood and shook out her skirt. “I’ll come with. I can sleep in the parlor. Closer than going back to the other side of town, I think.”
“Fine,” she said. “Seph?”
The other young woman shook her blonde head. “I’ve a bed over my shop. And Rhys Caradoc doesn’t live in the building.”
“Fair enough,” Libba said, jerking her head toward the door. “Good night, all!”
“Night,” some echoed back, while a few opted for, “Nos da.”
On the way out the door, Libba dropped a handful of coins from the night’s ticket takings for the barman.
