Rosa and the Veil of Gold Read Online Free

down a less well-lit street, then right again, then paused on the corner.
    Dark. The noise of the main street echoed in the distance, muffled by stone buildings. The bitter-earth wet-metal scent of the city was acute here, and puddles gathered on the uneven flagstones. A drainpipe dripped and sputtered. She saw the glow of a cigarette and heard voices. Focused her sight down a long alley between two buildings. Two men stood smoking in the dark; shadows clung to their faces. No light reached the alley. No crowds of people or zooming cars belching exhaust traversed it. It was perfectly dangerous. Rosa could taste it.
    She turned and ambled towards the two men. They murmured. She was certain they had noticed her. The kick of adrenalin was mild, but she relished it. They paused in their conversation as she approached.
    “May I have a cigarette?” she said.
    The larger man reached for his packet, the other for his lighter. Within seconds she was inhaling.
    “Thanks,” she said, smiling, then continued down the alley, vulnerable and alone.
    They did nothing. Rosa emerged at the other end in a public garden where lovers pressed their bodies against each other and rubbish gathered around picnic benches. She crossed between the trees and joined the traffic and bright lights again, feeling strangely deflated.
    She slumped on the stone windowsill of a closed bakery, thinking about what the babooshka had said to her. Chaos , confusion , darkness descending. It was the truth, and Rosa already knew it.
    But nobody else did. Not yet.

TWO
    At mealtimes, it was apparent how comprehensively Crazy Adelina’s guesthouse had been colonised by the English. Apart from a hapless family of German tourists, every other body in the room wore a Great Medieval Cities T-shirt. They queued at the buffet for blinis and fried eggs, complained loudly in English about the lack of good food in Russia, and sat muttering together at the tiny round tables about the weather and the football. Twenty-one men and two women, Megan and Lesley, clinging to each other at a table in the corner. Em was nowhere in sight. Daniel loaded up his plate and sat at the spare corner of a long wooden table.
    Daniel glanced around the room while he ate. At his table, a group of five men were heads-together in conversation, organising the work for the day at the archaeology site. He didn’t join in. The series had been in production for years, and the company had been filming at other locations for nearly eighteen months, but Daniel was only employed for research on the episode about Novgorod. While the rest of the crew knew each other well and would continue their friendships after Russia, he knew he would remain an outsider, soon forgotten.
    Aaron slid into the seat next to him and reached across for the salt. “Glad I got you on your own,” he said. “Frank phoned last night. I need to talk to you.”
    Daniel tensed, immediately assuming he’d done something wrong.
    “Hey, relax,” Aaron said, laughing. “It’s good news. A colleague of his is putting together some travel-based language videos.They’re starting with French and Russian. You do both, don’t you?”
    Daniel shrugged. “My French is rusty.”
    “They’re keen as mustard to have you on board,” Aaron said through a mouthful of fried egg. “I put in a good word. Could be an ongoing position as research co-ordinator if you impress them. How’s that? A permanent job? Ever had one of those?”
    Daniel felt a moment of alarm. “No, I haven’t.” So what had he done with his twenties? He scratched at a piece of dried food stuck to the red-and-white plastic tablecloth. A half-finished Masters in Russian history, two half-finished novels and a half-finished screenplay, a backpacking tour around Australia, three well-paid but casual television jobs, countless bar jobs, and that was pretty much it.
    “You do want a permanent job, don’t you?”
    The men at the table were getting rowdy. Somebody was