Our Beloved Tyrants Scene 5

That aside, only the locks of long, wavy blonde hair that snaked over her breasts were providing her with any degree of modesty. She seemed either to be dead or sound asleep, to judge from the lack of reaction she gave not only to the new arrival, but to the three men who were standing around her resting-place, furiously debating in the Roma tongue. They were dressed in dull peasant garb, with wide-brimmed hats, though one of them wore a velvet cloak that had seen better days (and, no doubt, another owner). Gypsies, then, thought Alexandru, but not quite the cutthroat band he had been expecting. They did not even notice his arrival, and he watched curiously from the entrance of the rotunda while they argued with each other, in a language he knew nothing of, but which seemed to place particular priority on the words beng and mullo.