In The Name Of Love

Chapter 18

I was more glad than I cared to admit when we got to the town centre. Mircea got off the horse and then lifted me down too. I let out a shaky breath and leaned against him for a moment.

“Ok?” he asked.

“Better now,” I said.

“We’re supposed to ride to the inn. You ok with that?”

I nodded. We visited a couple of shops, Mircea bought me a pastry from the confectioner because they had my favourite – apple and cinnamon pastry slices – and then we made our way on foot over to the homeless shelter.

It was in what had been a derelict warehouse, had been derelict before the war too, and then a British couple who were loaded had it restored, turned into a shelter and got some paid staff in and got other people to volunteer for the less glamorous kitchen duties like potato peeling, washing the dishes, and cleaning the floors as well as serving the food.

The manager was a Londoner called Martin Chapman, a thirty year old with hair as ginger as mine. I grinned when I saw him, glad that I wasn’t the only one. Elisabeta was already saying hello to him when Mircea and I walked over after saying hello to some people in the crowd.

“Sorry we’re running a little behind,” Mircea said to him.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Martin said and I let his thick London accent wrap around me. London was close to home which I suddenly missed a lot. When he shook my hand he grinned too. “Nice to know I’m not the only one,” he said looking at my hair. “Shall we?” he asked and gestured to the door.

We walked up a few more steps and into a big lobby.

“Well,” Martin said. “This place was up and running about three months after the war, I came over a little before that to oversee the works and start telling people when we’d be opening. We were over full to begin with. Had people sleeping in here. It didn’t last too long though after the other one opened across town. We’ve both got fewer people than we used to thankfully. As we’ve been able to we’ve been turning the rooms into single family units.”

We entered a corridor and he knocked on the first door. A tall man a little older than me and wearing a high vis’ jacket and workers trousers opened the door with a smile and a bow. He gestured us all into the room.

There were four other people in there, all men and one of them not long out of the shower. Judging by their clothes I guessed they were all builders. Mircea and Elisabeta talked to them at length and then we got up to leave.

“Princess?” one of them asked as I was walking out the door.

Still not sure I liked being called princess I turned around putting a smile on. “Nikolae?”

“I know Prince Mircea tell you in minutes. But… We builders. We make houses for everyone here, but work is taking long time. Material run out soon and we not finish houses. Can England help us?” he asked hopefully not at all concerned about his broken English.

The other men in the room were looking earnestly at me too. One of them was actually wringing a cloth hat. I wanted to say yes, that England and the rest of the UK would help. I wanted to tell him that soon all the charities in the world were going to be banging on their doors asking of they could help. But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know much of anything. I really wanted to lie and let him down easily, but found that I couldn’t.  

“I don’t know. I’d like to think so, but… Nikolae, I’m a farmer. I don’t really know anything about relief efforts.”

“Oh,” he said and looked away.