The Mercy Seller: A Novel (v5)

by Brenda Rickman Vantrease

Anna had not imagined that strange shrieking noise either. It was even louder now.

  “Do you keep birds in your camp?” Anna asked, trying not to shiver, remembering the winged scavengers on the bridge, remembering too how she came to be in the river.

  “No birds. Little Bek. My boy. He cannot talk, so when he wants something he makes that sound. He is impatient. He smells the bacon that Bera brought for you.”

  “Bera?”

  “The Romani king.”

  “But why would he bring bacon for me?”

  “Because he likes pretty women. Or because of the red hair. It is good luck for birthing women to wear an amulet of red hair against their bellies. Bera’s wife, Lela, is almost full to the brim.”

  “He can have a lock of hair for his wife. I have plenty to spare. It is the least I can do to repay him.” The smell of the bacon was stronger. And Anna was hungry. “The meat might burn, if you don’t tend it. I am feeling much better. I will get up and come with you. I can entertain your child while you cook.” Anna pushed back the bright coverlet that covered her, then as quickly snatched it back up.

  She was totally naked underneath the blanket.

  “My clothes! Where are my clothes?”

  “We washed them. They are still drying. We washed you too so that you would not be mahrime. Polluted. By the unclean water from the river.

  She had a vision of the peering eyes that had hovered over her, felt her face flame with sudden heat. “Who undressed me?”

  “Me. And Lela helped.” Jetta removed a red blouson and skirt from a peg. “Bera brought these for you to wear until your clothes are dry.”

  Anna took the strange garments. They looked new and—it wasn’t a matter of fit—loose with a silk girdle of knotted rope to belt the waist, though the skirt exposed her ankles. It was either put them on or remain here under the counterpane, naked. Holding the coverlet in front of her chest with one hand, Anna reached for the shirt with the other. She was thinking that apparently there were to be no undergarments when Jetta produced a shift from a cupboard. It was unbleached linen, wider than Anna needed and too short, but she took it gratefully and slipped it over her head.

  When Anna emerged from the back of the tent, strong arms covered with fine black hairs reached up to help her down. The arms were attached to a torso garbed in a scarlet blouse, not unlike the one she wore. But his was silk, not linen, which she encountered first at eye level, taking in also the red silk sash holding up his breeches. A man of about Martin’s age, though at least five inches shorter, flashed large white teeth. He set her down with a flourish and a sweeping bow.

  “Welcome to our humble camp,” he said. “I am Bera, King of Roma, leader of this band of pilgrims.”

  In spite of his short stature, he was the most striking man she had ever seen: broad in the chest, narrow waist, and eyes as black as his hair, and that as black as any coal.

  “We have come to offer you our hospitality and to celebrate that we saved you from the river.”

  With a graceful sweep, more dance than simple gesture, he indicated a small crowd of men and women gathered around a fire of white ash charcoal. On this fire sat a frying pan of monstrous size. Other barrel-shaped, colorful caravans were clustered in a circle surrounding the cook fire. But a quick survey showed Anna that not everybody in the assemblage wanted to celebrate her presence. One woman, younger than Anna, also short and a little squat looking, though it was really unfair to judge her so because of her slightly protruding belly, eyed Anna suspiciously. She sat a little apart from the others, who wore friendlier but openly curious faces.

  Lela, Bera’s wife, Anna thought, and she was obviously not happy about something. Her stare made Anna aware of the ill-fitting clothes she wore. They were probably Lela’s clothes, her best clothes that she had put away until she could fit in them again. No wonder she looked so resentful. Anna tried to smile at her, but the young woman’s hard-set scowl never changed.

  Bera took Anna’s hand and pulled her into the circle where the others sat cross-legged a cool distance from the fire.

  “We have prepared a feast in your honor.” The broad sweep of his hand indicated not only the sizzling bacon, but also a table with loaves of dark bread and hunks of cheese and onions and a fresh-cut melon with its green rind sweating and its pink flesh oozing juice in the hot midafternoon.

  “You are too kind,” Anna stammered. “How can I—”

  “Good deeds are their own reward,” Bera smiled. “Of course, we are always grateful when kindness is returned with kindness.”

  His meaning was clear. Some token of gratitude was expected. She thought of her own meager resources, the few florins hidden away at home, her little hoard already less than what Ddeek left her. And when it was gone, there would be no more. Then suddenly her heart lurched. Surely they did not think to hold her for ransom!

  “Alas, I am not a wealthy woman, but an orphan with no husband and little more than a few furnishings.” A circle of eyes stared at her, waiting. “I have only a bed, a couple of chairs, and the clothes you see spread out to dry on the bushes behind you.” Though that last was a lie and she blushed when she said it. Ddeek had always clothed her in the best the sumptuary laws would allow.

  Bera shrugged. His disappointment was palpable. The whole little band of them seemed to wilt. Except for Lela. Somehow the fact that they had not netted a rich man’s wife or widow pleased her.

  Bera recovered gracefully. “We expect no payment,” he said. “But perhaps you have some talent that you would like to contribute to our celebration. Do you sing?”

  At the word “sing,” a boy of about seven or eight years—it was hard to guess his age because he was malformed—scooted forward on spindly legs too small for his body and began to hum in a high, sweet voice, a sort of half-melody.

  Bera laughed. “Not you, Bek. We hear enough of your squawking.”

  There was no malice in the tone with which he addressed the boy, and the child nodded his large head as if he understood. The boy and the other faces in the circle turned toward her expectantly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, embarrassed. “I have no talent for singing, and my voice is hoarse from coughing.”

  Bera smiled and did a little half-twirl and a leap, scissoring his well-shaped legs.

  “Or dancing either, I’m afraid,” she said. “And I can’t play an instrument,” Anna said, eyeing a stringed dulcimer lying next to the bread and cheese.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Lela smile for the first time. It was not a smile that warmed. Anna cast about for some way to please them, some way to thank them. Then she remembered.

  “You said you were Christian pilgrims. I have something you might want to see.”

  “A holy relic?” Bera smiled politely, revealing startling white teeth, but the twitching at the corner of his mouth showed the smile was forced.

  She suspected he’d seen enough of relics and knew how easily they were manufactured. Perhaps he’d even hawked a few false ones himself. Martin had said they were a strange group who lived by their wits.

  “It is not exactly a relic,” she said. “It’s better. It is a book.”

  He laughed. “But the Romani does not read. We do not value—a book, you say?”

  Too late, she could almost see his mind whirling.

  “It is not a book I could ever sell,” she added hastily. “But it is a very special book. It is the written Word of our Lord, and it is very beautiful. The next time I come, I will bring it, and you can see it.”

  “But if you have such a book, why can’t you sell it? Then you would no longer be poor.”

  Because my grandfather told me not to. It is all of him I have left.

  “It is very precious to me. Besides, if the authorities knew of its existence, it would be confiscated and burned. It is against the law to have such a book.”

  Those words coming out of her mouth reminded her of how foolish she had been to mention it in the first place. But he
r grandfather had never kept it a secret. He had shown it to anybody who asked to see it. Anybody who could read the words, you stupid girl, she chided herself.

  Jetta had lifted the pan off the fire and set it on the table. The others were already lining up, dipping chunks of bread in the grease drippings, cutting bites of bacon and cheese. Jetta got a small piece of bacon and crunched it between her fingers until it was broken in tiny bits and began to feed it to Little Bek. Bera broke off a piece of bread and handed it to the boy, who nodded, smiling. His head bobbed like a heavy blossom on a too-fragile stem.

  “When we have finished with our feast,” Bera said, “I will take you to your home, and you can show me this book that has the words of the Lord esus.

  “Now that I think about it, it probably is not something you would care about. It is written in English, not in the language of Bohemia.”

  “Since I do not read, the language is of no importance.” He said it proudly. “It is the Word of the Lord. You can read it to me. I can touch it. It will bring good fortune.”

  Anna heard a noise behind her, some Roma expression that sounded like gadje. Whatever it meant, she knew it was spat in her direction, and it was not a compliment. She turned to see Lela stalk from the circle and heave herself into the gaudiest of the wagons, then draw the curtain across the entrance with a swish.

  It sounded to Anna like a slamming door.

  Anna went no more to the Vltava River, but she still went every day to the grave in Týn Churchyard, where she talked aloud as though her grandfather listened. I remember the name. I do. Sir John Oldcastle. And I know I promised. But how can I go alone? It would not be safe.

  There was never any answer.

  It was mid-August and two weeks had passed since her encounter with the river. She’d not let Bera escort her home but left word with Jetta that she would visit again soon, and truly she’d thought each day she might make the excursion to the little camp downriver to return Lela’s red skirt and blouse, which were already freshly laundered and neatly folded. She had planned for sure to do it today. But during the night it had rained enough to moisten the earth and cool the air and that circumstance suggested another more pressing task.

  Now as she flung more grass seed onto the new grave and glanced at the angle of the sun, she thought it was probably too late to go. This was more important. If she could not keep her promise to him, she could at least tend his grave. The dirt was already less mounded—one day it would sink like the older graves around it, the neglected ones with nobody left to care. She scattered some wildflower seeds and watered them from the little tin pitcher she had brought.

  A month ago I could have watered them with my tears, she thought, but ever since the old Gypsy crone had pulled her from the river, her heart hurt less, as though the waters of the Vltava had indeed offered her a kind of baptism. The ache was still there, a wound knitting, but some of the rage was seeping away, replaced with a duller kind of anger, a simmering deep in the bone.

  Lately she had noticed that whenever she visited her grandfather’s grave, in place of the simmering anger a strange peace settled over her. As though he were still close. And on some days, the peace walked home with her, remaining with her until she ate her solitary meal and readied herself for bed by removing her tunic and folding it neatly the way Ddeek would have liked. Sometimes, she even caught herself talking to him as she brushed and braided her chaos of curls, once laughing out loud as she gleaned bits of hair from the bristles and laid the silver-backed brush he’d given her as a birthday present facedown, exactly as he’d arranged it whenever he came into her room. See, Ddeek. I do remember. All of them. All the lessons that you taught me.

  But today was different. Today, after she had watered the new-sown grass and pulled the weeds from around the stone cross that she had used some of her precious florins to purchase, peace did not walk home with her. And peace was not waiting for her in her little town house.

  A wide-hipped, square-jawed woman with an unsmiling face framed in a white lace cap met her at the door.

  “Mistress Kremensky! Is … is something wrong?” Anna asked, trying to remember if she’d straightened the downstairs rooms before she left for the cemetery.

  The door was open, but Mistress Kremensky’s bulk filled it. She just stood there barring the door, wringing her hands in agitation. “There’s something I …”

  Anna raised herself on tiptoe, to peer over her landlady’s shoulder into the front room, but all she could see was a goose feather floating in the air.

  “Wait … don’t—”

  “I’m afraid I’m not as good a housekeeper since … I promise, I’ll do better.

  Anna tried to go around her, but Mistress Kremensky continued to block her way. She’d stopped wringing her hands but was shaking her head to deny that Anna’s housekeeping was the issue. Anna had never seen her in such a state of frustration. Finally she spoke.

  “I’m sorry, Anna. I could not stop them. They threatened me. They said …” She looked down at her feet, avoiding Anna’s eyes, her voice trailing off.

  Anna touched her landlady’s shoulder, gave it a gentle shake, as if she could shake the words from her lips. “Stop who, Mistress Kremensky? Who did you try to stop? What has you so upset?”

  It was the Gypsies. She should have returned the red skirt, not given them an excuse to come here, and wondering at the same time how they had found her.

  “It was the soldiers. They have just left.”

  “Soldiers!”

  Anna pushed past her into the chaos of the downstairs room.

  She sucked in her breath. Papers were strewn everywhere, the willow chair overturned, its cushion split open. The cushions on her grandfather’s workbench were likewise split. An overturned glass of milk lay on the kitchen table. But it was the sight of her grandfather’s worktable—the worktable she’d tended like a shrine—with her grandfather’s paints, and brushes, and quills all spilled and scattered and broken that made her eyelids sting.

  They had no right.

  A smear of red paint clotted on one of the ruined cushions. Anna dabbed at it with her hand. It had the consistency of blood. Anna just stared at it, then wiped it on her skirt already stained with mud from her grandfather’s grave.

  They had no right!

  She felt the simmering rage pushing its way up from the marrow through the bone, threatening to erupt into that all-consuming flash of anger that Ddeek had spent a lifetime teaching her to control.

  “They shall not get away with this. I will go to the authorities.” She was shouting, unable to control herself, shaking so she feared she would fall. She hugged her arms around her body to stop the trembling. “I will petition the alderman. I will—”

  Her landlady drew her into her arms, half restraining, half supporting her, the flush of her own distress forgotten in the heat of such a great conflagration.

  “Hush, girl. The walls may have ears. Get control of yourself.”

  “I’ll go to the authorities—”

  “Anna, don’t you understand? It’s the authorities who did this. The soldiers were searching for something. They showed me a writ. Else I’d not have let them in.”

  “But there is some mistake. I have nothing—”

  “They said they were searching for the banned writings of the heretic Wycliffe.”

  “But all I have is—”

  Mistress Kremensky laid her hand gently over Anna’s mouth. “I don’t want to know what you have, Anna. I always told your grandfather, I don’t want to know. It was none of my business. But now people have been executed for this offense and the authorities suspect you. Things will have to change. I don’t think they found anything today, so you are safe for the time being. But they will be back. They will keep coming back until they find what they are looking for.”

  Anna was hardly listening to her. Her gaze was quickly searching the room. The lock had been broken on the small chest she kept in the kitchen. Table linens were str
ewn helter-skelter around it, but the false bottom looked to be still intact. That was the place where her grandfather always kept the Wycliffe Bible.

  Mistress Kremensky’s mouth worked with emotion, but she leaned away from Anna as one leans away from a blaze in a gust of wind. “For your own safety, as well as for ours, you must leave. I can no longer afford to have you here,” she said.

  The words had the effect of a slap in the face.

  No. She must have misunderstood. Mistress Kremensky had always been so kind to her, ever since she was a little girl, businesslike in some ways, but always kind. And since her grandfather’s death, she had been especially generous, bringing her food, urging her to rest, even going with her once to visit the grave.

  “What do you mean, I have to leave? Are you putting me out of my home?”

  Anna was not shouting now. The blaze had died as quickly as it flared, leaving a numbing cold behind. Little beads of perspiration were lining Mrs. Kremensky’s forehead. But Anna shivered.

  “You must understand my position, Anna.”

  There was pleading in her voice, in the little gray eyes that had always reminded Anna of shiny little buttons sewn into the cloth face of an overstuffed doll.

  “You must understand. I have no choice. I thought that they would not bother you, now that your grandfather was gone. A woman alone—what danger could you be? But now it seems you have, for some reason, come to their attention, even though the … meetings are no longer held here.”

  Mistress Kremensky was wringing her hands again. She couldn’t look Anna in the face, but looked instead over her shoulder.

  Anna moved to force the woman to face her, trying to control the fear rising inside her. “Mistress Kremensky. If you force me out, I have no place to go.”

  “Surely you have some friend, some relative who can take you in.”

  “My grandfather was my only living relative. And the Church has taken away my friends.”

  Fed their flesh to the birds and burned their bones to ashes. How could she make this woman understand that she could not be separated from this place, this last link to the only family she had ever known?