The River Palace: A Water Wheel Novel #3

by Gilbert, Morris

  “What?” Nadyha said in bewilderment.

  “That’s right. And you still don’t get what I’m thinking, in fact, the kind of production I’ve already gotten about half-written,” Denny went on excitedly. “As I said, it’s loosely based on The Bohemian Girl, it’ll use some of the songs, but mostly I want the real Gypsy music and it must have the dancing. And Anca, and Boldo, and I think we should have your marvelous, showy Tinar and Saz, too! That’s why I wanted you to see the cargo hold, Nadyha, we could have great stables for them, in fact we’ve transported horses and carriages before. This production is going to be sensational! So, there’s a part for each one of you, and you too, Gage.” He grinned like a mischievous boy and went on, “I’ve even thought of a part for me, and I insisted my uncle play the part of Count Arnheim. That could be one reason he’s so enthusiastic. The only thing I don’t know about is the Countess Arline . . . we may have to steal a lady from one of the opera troupes here . . .”

  Cara said something in a voice so low no one could quite hear her.

  Denny stopped striding around and waving his arms. “I beg your pardon, Miss Cogbill? I couldn’t quite catch what you were saying.”

  She cleared her throat and looked up at him with starry blue eyes. “‘I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.’ The most famous aria from The Bohemian Girl. I can sing it.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Denny returned with them to the Gypsy Pavilion. Niçu, Mirella, Nadyha, and Simza gathered their chairs on one side of the campfire brazier, talking excitedly in Romany. Cara hurried into the vardo, where her bag was stored.

  Gage set out three chairs on the other side of the fire. He and Denny sat down to wait for Cara; Gage knew she was packing up her things and was going to try to leave. He was going to try to stop her.

  Denny demanded, “Gage, you have got to tell me about that girl! Who is she? Why’s she wearing those clothes?”

  “You’ve already asked me that about a hundred times,” Gage answered. “And I’m not going to tell you, I’ll let her tell you if she wants to. But listen, Denny, before she comes back out, I have to ask you—again, because when I asked you before all you could say was ‘Who is that? Why’s she wearing those clothes?’ So let’s don’t go through all that again. What I need you to do, if you can, is find out about a captain stationed at Fort Butler in Donaldsonville. His name is Joseph Nettles.”

  “Joseph Nettles,” Denny repeated thoughtfully. “I haven’t heard of him. So you mean, find out what about him? His height, his childhood, his favorite color?”

  “Find out if he’s dead,” Gage said shortly.

  “Huh?”

  Cara came out of the wagon, lugging her canvas sack. Gage hurried to her. “Miss Cogbill, would you please join me and Mr. Wainwright? He would like to speak with you, you know, about the—uh—marble halls thing.”

  “Yes, he’s very excited about his theatrical production, isn’t he?” Cara said, glancing at Denny. He was watching her. “But as you know, Mr. Kennon, I’m in such a—a—predicament right now that I don’t—that is, I’m not sure. Honestly, I think I’d better be going on now.”

  “Yeah, that’s something that I wanted to talk to you about,” Gage said gently. “Anyway, what can it hurt? Denny’s a friend. I would like to be your friend. So, why don’t all of us friends sit down and have a friendly chat?”

  “I suppose it couldn’t hurt . . .” she said reluctantly.

  She and Gage went to the chairs Gage had set out. Denny hopped up to hold the chair when she sat down, his eyes twinkling again with amusement at her elegant drawing-room posture and grace in her tattered boys’ clothing. “Miss Cogbill, I realize that our acquaintance has been very short, and maybe a little unorthodox, but I’m going to be presumptuous anyway and ask you a bunch of impertinent questions.”

  “What a surprise,” Cara said evenly.

  “No, no, ma’am,” Denny said hastily. “Not about your—uh—clothing. What I want to know about is that you said you can sing. Can you sing really well? And have you ever considered being in a theatrical production? Do you think you could perform on the stage?”

  Now she smiled. “I see you did mean a bunch of questions.” Taking a deep breath, she replied, “I’m told I sing very well, yes. And I suppose it would be a sort of false humility to say that I don’t. I believe the Lord has given me a gift for singing, and I also play the piano and the guitar. I have been in—on the stage. In a very small way, of course.”

  Denny sat up straight. “You have? So you already have theatrical experience? Oh, this is too great! Will you sing something for me now? Please?”

  She thought for a moment. “Yes.”

  Gage stood up, grinning. “I’ll go get Baba Simza’s guitar.”

  Denny and Cara stared at each other. Denny looked intrigued and mystified; Cara looked tranquil and secretly amused.

  Gage returned with the guitar, and Cara took it, strummed it, and expertly tuned two strings. Without any preamble she started plucking the strings, and a lovely haunting music filled the air.

  Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

  Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme . . .

  Remember me to the one who lives there.

  He once was a true love of mine.

  She sang the song through, and Gage noticed that the Gypsies had stopped talking and were watching Cara and listening. Nadyha’s eyes shone; it was the kind of song that she loved most.

  When the last soft guitar notes faded out Denny breathed, “Exquisite.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said simply.

  “Will you please be my Countess?” he blurted out.

  “I beg your pardon?” Cara said blankly.

  “I mean—uh—that’s the name of my play, only now since I’ve heard you we can call it an operetta!” Denny said excitedly. “‘The Countess and the Gypsy Queen’. So, will you be Countess—Countess—Cara Czerny of Bohemia?”

  Baffled, Cara looked down at herself, her dirty boy’s shirt, her frayed trousers, her men’s brogans. “Countess?” she repeated. “Look at me!”

  The humor of the picture hit her then, and she started giggling, and then of course Denny started laughing. Even Gage grinned.

  Cara sobered and said, “Mr. Wainwright, I appreciate your offer, I really do. But at this time I’m afraid I can’t—it wouldn’t be—it’s not possible for me to accept it.”

  “At this time,” Denny repeated sharply. “So how about in the morning?”

  Nadyha came over to them then and said to Cara, “That was a good song. We all liked it very much. You sing beautifully, Miss Cogbill.”

  “Thank you, and please call me Cara. I’ll be glad to teach you the song, Nadyha. Mr. Kennon told me that you are an accomplished singer yourself.”

  “Mm,” Nadyha said neutrally, barely glancing at Gage. Then, placing her fists on her hips she turned to Denny. In spite of the pugnacious stance, her eyes were alight, her face glowed. “Dennis, we all want to be in your play, and live on the Queen of Bohemia.”

  Denny got so excited he jumped out of his chair. “Yes, yes, yes! I knew it, I knew it!”

  “Oh, you did not, dilo gajo,” Nadyha said, but with a hint of affection. “So, we’re tired, it’s almost midnight, and we have to get up in a few hours. We’re all going to bed. Miss—I mean, Cara, my puridaia—Baba Simza—would like to speak to you.”

  She turned on her heel and left, leaving Denny standing there dumbly muttering, “But—uh—I wanted to—er—”

  Cara got up and walked over to Baba Simza’s chair. Denny stammered, “But—Miss Cogbill—”

  “It’s happened to me a lot, but I gotta say I’ve never seen so many women walk away from a fellow in such a short period of time,” Gage remarked. “You’re goggling again, Denny. Sit down, you’ve heard their decision, that’s all you’ll get from them tonight. These people just make up their minds and then go to work, haven’t you noticed?”

  “But I want to talk about it!” Denny
complained, sitting down again.

  “I’ll talk about it. I’ll tell you right now that I’m not going to be in any play, or any operetta either,” Gage said firmly. “So whatever idea you had for me bumbling around on a stage, you can just forget it.”

  “Yeah, I kind of figured that,” Denny said. “But I owe you, Gage, and I do want to hereby officially offer you the part of Count Somebody from Poland in ‘The Countess and the Gypsy Queen.’”

  “No thanks.”

  “Good. No, what I mean is, I pretty much already knew you wouldn’t do it, so I kinda wrote the part with someone else in mind.”

  “Uh-huh. And this Count, this would be the Countess Cara Czerny of Bohemia’s love interest?”

  “He would be.”

  Gage leaned back in his chair, stretched his long legs out, and laced his hands across his stomach. “Seems to me like you’d make a good Count Somebody from Poland. You can even sing okay, I know from all those times you warbled ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’ while we were on the road.”

  “You really think so?” Denny said, genuinely pleased. Then he shrugged. “It’s not going to make any difference anyway, we could line up a clothesline full of crows on stage and no one would notice, not when Nadyha’s performing. And maybe now . . . Miss Cogbill . . .” He ruminated for awhile, then brightened up again. “Anyway, Gage, I had something else in mind for you. Actually, for you and Niçu, and there he goes, I can’t even talk about it to him until tomorrow.” Niçu and Mirella were just then going into their vardo.

  “You can’t talk about it to me either,” Gage grumbled. “I’ve never met a man so chock-full of fool ideas.”

  Denny asked with a sly air, “Oh, no? What if I told you this idea is about you shooting a lot, with guns?”

  Gage whipped his head around to look at Denny. “Yeah? Good guns, plenty of ammunition?”

  “You betcha, Johnny Reb.”

  “All right then, Billy Yank,” Gage said expansively, “let’s talk.”

  CARA WENT TO BABA Simza’s chair and asked quietly, “Ma’am? You wanted to speak to me?”

  “Hai, sit down, Cara,” she said, waving. Cara sat cross-legged down by her chair. “You were thinking of leaving tonight?”

  “Well, of course, ma’am. I feel much better, you see, I’m not having the vapors or anything,” Cara said with an attempt at lightness. “You’ve all been very kind, and I’m so grateful. But it’s time I went about my own business.”

  “Is it?” Baba Simza asked. In the dying campfire her dark eyes glittered. “You prayed, today, in the vardo when you were so sick. You’re a Christian?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am. And so I know that the Lord is—He—” Cara swallowed hard. “No matter what happens, I know that He’ll take care of me.”

  “And don’t you think that He already has?” Baba Simza demanded. “You’re here. It just happened that you fell down, boosh, right in front of Gage Kennon? No, no, bitti gaji. Miry deary Dovvel made sure you didn’t fall down over there, over there, over there.” She stabbed the air with a gnarled forefinger in three directions. “You fell down here. I think it’s funny that people keep falling down in front of Gage Kennon, and he thinks it’s funny that I keep having poor hurt gajes show up in my camp. And you are hurt, aren’t you, Cara?”

  Cara tried to answer, but suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and she choked back sobs. Simza laid her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s not always bad to weep, you know. But don’t weep from fear. Miry deary Dovvel has told me, Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. For the Lord shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

  Cara was startled, and Simza went on, “No, Gage has told me nothing of you, nothing at all. This is just the Proverb I thought of while we were talking. Hai. Tonight you sleep in Nadyha’s vardo, I sleep in Niçu’s.”

  Startled, Cara said, “But—Nadyha—?”

  Simza shrugged. “She said this, not me. And that, too, is something that one day you’ll have to thank Gage Kennon for.”

  THE NEXT TWELVE DAYS were the crazy-busiest, but also the most fun Gage Kennon had ever had.

  The Gypsies flatly refused to leave the French Market, because they had many goods left to sell. Also, they worked, selling those goods, all day; and because Market started so early, they went to bed early. It drove Denny lunatic that they wouldn’t start rehearsals on the Queen of Bohemia.

  “We’re steaming out on the twelfth,” Denny pleaded with Baba Simza. “Today is the second. As we discussed, Baba Simza, you’re all going to be making pretty good money. Can’t you just store this stuff you have left and go ahead and move onto the Queen and start rehearsals? Please?”

  “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings; he shall not stand before mean men,” Baba Simza quoted placidly as she wove a tignon. “We sell our goods, then we return to camp to attend to getting everything stored.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Denny said, defeated.

  After Simza’s talk with Cara, she just seemed to become a part of their motley camp, much as Gage and Denny had. She still wore her boy’s clothes and hat, and stayed in the background all day. That afternoon Denny received word about his inquiries about Captain Joseph Nettles at Fort Butler. Gravely he went to talk to Gage, who was sharpening Niçu’s throwing knives. “I found out about that captain you asked me about,” he said, glancing at Cara, who sat on the vardo steps. “The news isn’t very good. And now I finally know why she’s dressed like that.”

  Slowly Gage put down the whetstone and knife. “I guess both of us had better go talk to her. No sense in pretending that you don’t know any more.”

  They went to sit by her and her face filled with dread as she saw their expressions.

  Calmly Gage said, “Miss Cogbill, I had to ask Denny to make inquiries, and he’s had some news. But before we talk about that, I just want to say that I know you’re a good Christian lady, and I believe that the Lord has set you in this place, at this time, for a reason. So I’ll let Denny talk to you about that.”

  “Captain Nettles is dead,” Denny said soberly. “He fell off the stage and broke his neck. It has become known that he was drinking quite a bit that night, and that’s believed to be the cause of his accident.

  “The problem, Miss Cogbill, is that there are questions about that night. It became known that you were the last person to see him alive. The provost marshals have said they’d like to question you.”

  “Is—is there a warrant out for my arrest?” Cara said fearfully.

  “No, it hasn’t really gotten that far,” Denny answered reluctantly. “But right now they are looking for you. Apparently, there is some rumor that you’ve—you’ve become some sort of—disreputable—person, unladylike, I mean, and some ladies have apparently gotten Mrs. Nettles to think that—well, not that you actually intended to kill him, but that you—um—”

  “Got him drunk, tried to seduce him, and then he fell and I ran,” Cara said quietly. “I can see that Mrs. Nettles would want to think that.” Then she looked up at Denny, her eyes round with alarm. “That’s not what happened!”

  Denny grinned; he couldn’t help it, really. It was his natural expression, and she was so innocent, so kittenish. “I know that, Miss Cogbill. After all, if I thought you were a disreputable person, would I have asked you to be Countess Cara Czerny? Certainly not. And I think that’s exactly what you should do for now. It’s eleven days until we leave, and then we’ll be steaming the Mississippi River for two weeks. From what my contact at Fort Butler said, I think there’s a very good chance the whole scandal will be forgotten by then.”

  Cara glanced at Gage, and he nodded encouragingly to her. She took a deep breath, then said, “Mr. Wainwright, I thank you very much for your generous offer of employment, and I accept gladly.”

  “Great! Let’s all go get fitted for costumes!” Denny said, bounding up.

  And so they did;
at least, Denny, Gage, and Cara did. Gage had consented to be the Captain of the Guard because he only had two lines. The Gypsies said they’d wear their own clothes, which was secretly what Denny hoped for anyway. He did, however, get a pile of gold coins and a heavy gold chain for Niçu to make Nadyha a galbé, the traditional necklace worn by Gypsy women. And he bought thick skeins of real gold thread for her to make a diklo.

  As it turned out, the Gypsies did sell just about everything the next Sunday morning, Market’s busiest day, and decided to return to camp that night, and Denny went with them.

  For the next four days they rehearsed The Countess and the Gypsy Queen; Niçu, Mirella, and Gage practiced their show; and they all worked. Niçu made dozens of tin plates, some dinner-size, some saucers, and plenty of the small tin coins. Mirella and Simza made diklos and kishtis, the sashes that Gypsy men wore, for Denny had happily told them that they’d have Gypsy extras, and Wainwright Investments, Limited, would pay them for the costuming.

  Niçu taught Denny to dance, and Nadyha taught Cara to dance. Nadyha had slowly and tenuously made friends with Cara. Their relationship improved quite a bit because of the animals. In the play Cara had some interaction with them, and though she was a little frightened of Anca, she soon got over it. Anca tolerated Cara, as seemed to be her attitude toward everyone except Nadyha and Gage. Also, it was necessary to teach Anca, Boldo, and Tinar and Saz some new tricks, and though it was mostly Nadyha, Cara found that she could also help with training them.

  Five days before the Queen of Bohemia was scheduled to leave, the Gypsies, Cara, Gage, and Denny moved onto the boat. Anca, Boldo, Tinar, Saz, and even Matchko the cat moved onto the Queen with them. They rehearsed from early dawn until late at night, and when the twelfth came they were all ready.