by BJ Hoff
“I am fine,” interrupted the Gypsy, who apparently had not been sleeping after all. “I need no further attention.”
Morgan studied him, feeling torn between reluctance to have a Gypsy in the house and uncertainty as to whether the lad was truly fit to leave. The Gypsy—Jan Martova, he called himself—held the battered violin that had been among his personal effects from the prison, cradling it as if it were a rare and precious instrument.
He looked exceedingly weary, and Morgan decided he was no boy, though he had a youthful appearance, a kind of innocence that was no doubt deceptive. He would be older than Tierney, he figured—perhaps twenty or more.
“There is a room for you here tonight,” he offered impulsively.
He saw Sandemon glance at him with surprise. The Gypsy looked even more startled. His head came up sharply, the dark eyes locking on Morgan’s face.
“You did a kindness for my friend’s son,” Morgan went on. “I would not repay you by putting you at risk. You may stay the night.”
The Gypsy’s dark gaze was direct but unreadable. “I expect no repayment. You have already done me a great service in rescuing me from the prison. I would not impose further on your generosity.”
Taken aback by the youth’s fine manners, Morgan gave a wave of his hand. “It will be no imposition to give you a bed. Tomorrow will be soon enough for you to leave.”
“You are very kind, but I cannot stay.” The Gypsy was polite, but the finality of his tone brooked no argument. “It is forbidden.”
“Forbidden?”
“You are Gorgio. I am Rom.” The Gypsy’s gaze never wavered, but there was a slight hesitation in his voice that Morgan somehow took to be regret. “I cannot stay under your roof, but I am most grateful for your invitation.”
Had he not been curiously insulted, Morgan might have found the youth’s remarks amusing. So strong was the popular aversion to the Romany that he could not help but wonder how most of his contemporaries would react to the idea that a Gypsy considered Nelson Hall “forbidden.”
“The stables then,” he countered. “I’ll see that you have bedding.” Inexplicably, he found himself determined that the Gypsy would stay.
“If he sleeps in the stables, then so do I!” Tierney blurted out.
Suddenly impatient with the both of them, Morgan snapped, “Don’t be foolish! He sleeps in the stables by his own choice. You will sleep in a bed, where you belong—and the sooner we get you there, the better! The rest of the household could do with some sleep, too. I, for one, am exhausted entirely!”
Tierney looked at him, clearly unconvinced. His mouth was set in a hard, thin line, but he said nothing more as he allowed the surgeon to help him shrug into his shirt.
Not for the first time that night, Morgan found himself questioning the wisdom of taking on this most recent responsibility. He glanced again at Jan Martova, who still sat balancing his violin, then at Tierney Burke, who met his gaze with an expression that stopped just short of being sullen.
In the instant of that silent encounter, it suddenly occurred to Morgan that, of the two, the Gypsy might well be the less troublesome to have under his roof.
The small camp was on the edge of the Liberties, in a long-abandoned, dusty lot. When Nanosh slipped in among the wagons, it was late, but the campfires were still high, the voices lively. Most of the men sat, smoking and drinking, around the fires. A number of the women were already asleep, most of them in their wagons because of the unseasonably cold night.
The dogs heralded Nanosh’s approach, and some of the children playing about the wagons called out to him. But he ignored their greetings, stopping only long enough to scan the cluster of men near the fires. Spying his cousin Greco, he started toward him.
As soon as Greco saw him, he leaped to his feet. “What are you doing here? You were told to stand watch over your cousin at the prison!”
Greco’s mouth was tight with anger, his black eyes accusing. Two other men in the circle also stood.
Nanosh stopped short. “Wait, Cousin, you don’t know—I must tell you—” he gasped, out of breath from his run. “Jan passed me a message from the prison, told me to take it to the Big House on the hill, on behalf of his cellmate. I went back, just as soon as I delivered the message, but the guards discovered me, and I had to run away!”
Greco’s stormy expression darkened. “What message? What foolishness is this?”
Nanosh had no wish to feel his older cousin’s wrath. Quickly he rushed to explain about the message written on a piece of cloth, his audience with the big man in the wheelchair at the place called Nelson Hall, and, finally, about his close escape from the prison guards.
“They found me in the brush, soon after the men from the Big House arrived at the prison. They threatened to lock me in a cell, too! One even threatened to disembowel me!”
Anger leaped in Greco’s eyes, but this time, Nanosh knew the anger was directed at the guards, not at him.
“They were large and clumsy…I slipped out of their hands and ran like the wind! I ran all the way here to tell you what happened!”
His cousin’s black gaze raked over him, one long finger tracing the line of his mustache. Finally, he gave a curt nod of approval. “You did well. Go, now, and stay with your mother. I will go to the prison to find out what has happened to Jan.”
“Take me, Cousin! I should go with you!” Nanosh protested.
Greco looked at him. “You cannot go, Nanosh,” he said firmly but not unkindly. “The guards might try to hold you again. You must stay here. But your cousin will be told of your courage this night. Go along now. I will see to Jan.”
Although greatly disappointed, Nanosh knew better than to argue with Greco, and so he reluctantly trudged off to his own campfire.
By two hours past midnight, most of the household had retired. Morgan listened at Finola’s door for a moment, hoping all the confusion had not awakened her. Hearing nothing, he gave a nod to indicate that Sandemon should help him into bed.
“Seanchai,” Sandemon said as he laid out Morgan’s nightclothes, “I have been thinking—”
Morgan slanted a look at him. “You usually are,” he quipped.
Sandemon shrugged off the jibe and continued. “I have been thinking,” he repeated, “of a way we might give you a bit more freedom—an arrangement to allow you to get yourself in and out of your bed.”
Morgan cocked an eyebrow at the bed, which had been lowered to the height of his wheelchair. “You have already cut the legs off my grandfather’s two-hundred-year-old bed,” he said. “What else do you have in mind?”
Sandemon smiled, his dark eyes sparkling. He pointed toward the ceiling.
Morgan looked up at the gloom-shrouded rafters. “So?”
“A meat hook,” Sandemon said. “We fix a meat hook in that rafter directly overhead, attach a chain, and—”
Morgan rolled his eyes. “First you truss me up like a turkey for my own wedding, and now you want to hang me from the rafters like a side of beef!” He let out an exaggerated sigh. “What else—”
A sudden, savage pounding downstairs startled them both. Still in the wheelchair, Morgan instinctively yanked open the draw of the night table by the bed and withdrew his pistol. But Sandemon stopped him with a firm hand on his shoulder. “Let me see to it first,” he said, already starting for the door.
The pounding continued uninterrupted until finally Morgan heard the front doors open. Loud voices ensued, and Morgan wheeled himself out into the hall, the gun in hand.
He stopped at the banister and looked downstairs. To his astonishment, he saw a tall, thick-chested man with black hair and a drooping mustache push roughly by Sandemon and come to stand in the middle of the entryway.
The intruder snarled something unintelligible, and Sandemon, his expression as cold as Morgan had ever seen it, replied in strident tones. “You will have to return tomorrow, at a civilized hour! I cannot disturb the Seanchai at this time of night!”
But Morgan had already wheeled the chair onto the lift. All the way down the stairs, he purposely trained the pistol at the stranger. “Identify yourself.”
The man below stood his ground, his hands splayed on his hips, staring at Morgan with hostile eyes.
“I am Greco Martova, and I will have my brother!”
Martova. Of course! He should have realized the man was a Gypsy at first glance. Rugged and dark, the Romany was an imposing sight. His hair and mustache were thick and raven-black. He wore leather riding boots, numerous gold rings on his fingers, and one thin gold earring. Across his wide chest dangled a chain, on which hung several gold coins. A bright blue silk kerchief was knotted loosely about his neck.
“Jan Martova is your brother?” Morgan finally asked.
“My brother, yes. And I was told by the prison guards that he is here. Is that true?”
Morgan gave a short nod. “He is asleep in the stables.”
“In the stables?” the Gypsy repeated, his tone incredulous. “My brother sleeps in your stables?”
“Only because he would not accept a bed under my roof!” Morgan snapped, exasperated by the man’s rudeness.
The Gypsy gave a short grunt in reply.
“Your brother took a blow on the head from one of the warders,” Morgan went on, determined to ignore the man’s bluster. “A surgeon examined him and suggested that he spend the night here, for his own protection.”
The Gypsy frowned, his concern evident. “He is injured?”
“No,” Morgan quickly assured him. “Not seriously. He will be perfectly fine. The surgeon simply thought it in his best interests to stay the night.”
The Gypsy crossed his arms over his chest. “If he is not injured, then I will take him home. At once.”
Morgan drew a long breath, containing his temper at great effort. “That would not be wise, I think. Not when the surgeon has advised against it.”
“The advice of a Gorgio medicine man is of no account to me! I will take my brother home, where he will receive proper care.”
By now Morgan was at the end of his patience. “That is altogether up to you,” he said caustically. “But if he suffers any ill consequences from your foolishness, that will also be your doing.”
He paused. “You might want to have a look at him, in the stables—to satisfy yourself that he is quite all right and is comfortable. Perhaps then you could let him decide whether he feels strong enough to leave in the middle of the night.”
The Gypsy seemed to consider Morgan’s suggestion for a moment, then shook his head. “He will do as I say. He is my brother. I will take him back to the camp with me tonight.”
Galled by the man’s stubborn resistance to reason, Morgan snapped, “As you wish, then! Sandemon—show him to the stables.”
Back upstairs in his bedroom, Morgan sat seething. He had had quite enough for one day of gaols and Gypsies and hotheaded boys!
Just then, the clock in the downstairs entryway chimed three. Morgan groaned. In less than five hours, he would be expected in the classroom to hear sleepy recitations and stumbling theorems. Any man with half his wits knew that such a task could not be borne with so little sleep.
He was beginning to question the wisdom of agreeing to take in an old friend’s son. There was a great deal to be said, after all, for leading a quiet, uncomplicated life—especially if this night were any example of things to come.
9
Of Friends and Family
Our friends go with us as we go
Down the long path where Beauty wends.
OLIVER ST. JOHN GOGARTY (1878-1957)
In the morning, the Gypsy boy was gone. Sandemon reported to Morgan at breakfast that there was no sign of Jan Martova in the stables, indeed no sign that he had ever been at Nelson Hall.
His thoughts elsewhere, Morgan nodded distractedly. “I expected as much. That brother of his no doubt hauled him out in short order.”
Alone at the long dining room table, he glanced up from his coffee. “Finola did not come down this morning. I wish you would go up and inquire, make certain she is all right. And where is Annie? This is the second time this week she’s been late to breakfast.”
“I am here, Seanchai!”
As always, the girl did not so much enter the room as explode into it. Out of breath, she gave Sandemon a sheepish grin as she squeezed by him through the door.
With weary eyes, Morgan took in his adopted daughter’s uncommonly neat appearance. The heavy dark hair, which ordinarily began its escape from confinement well before breakfast, seemed to have been restrained by extreme force into two thick, heavy braids. The elfin face had been scrubbed to a polish, and the always alert black eyes fairly snapped with restless energy.
He offered his cheek for her quick kiss. “I was beginning to think I was the only one astir this morning.”
“But I would have thought you’d have all sorts of company.” Annie blurted out, her gaze sweeping the room. “Where are the others?”
“The others?”
“Aye, Tierney Burke from America—and the Gypsy.”
She stopped suddenly, biting at her lower lip.
Morgan lifted one eyebrow, exasperated but not surprised that she had evidently been doing a bit of snooping in the night. The imp missed very little. “And how is it that you know about Tierney Burke and the Gypsy?”
Chin up, she thrust her hands behind her back and locked eyes with him. “And wasn’t there enough commotion to rouse the dead? A body could scarcely sleep with such a fuss.”
“Your curiosity will cost you yet,” Morgan said, lacing his words with a perfunctory note of sternness. “I’ll expect you to be alert during recitation today, despite your late-hour eavesdropping.”
“Aren’t they coming down?” she asked bluntly, pulling her chair up to the table. “Tierney Burke and the Gypsy?”
“The Gypsy,” Morgan replied, “has already gone. And Tierney Burke will be abed for a day or so, at Dr. Dunne’s advice. As for you, lassie, you had best be having your pottage.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Pottage again? I’m bored with pottage!”
“You will eat it and be thankful!” Morgan snapped, the previous long night and scant sleep making him unduly short. “There are thousands all across the land who would bless God for even a spoonful!”
Her startled look made him instantly contrite, but he would not have the girl given to whining, and her having so much.
No words were exchanged as she ate. Finally, in a milder tone of voice, Morgan broke the silence between them. “No doubt you will meet Tierney Burke later today, perhaps this evening. But he will be weak, mind you, from his ordeal, so you must not weary him with your chatter.”
She delayed a spoonful of pottage in midair. “Oh, I shan’t! I’m hoping he will tell us all about America, though, when he’s strong enough.” She paused. “And where did the Gypsy go, then, Seanchai? Back to his tribe, I imagine.”
Morgan nodded. “His brother came for him,” he said sourly, recalling the elder Martova’s demands.
Annie suffered one last spoon of pottage, then bounced up from her chair. “More’s the pity,” she said, swiping her mouth with the table napkin. “I had hoped to meet him as well. I’ve never had conversation with a real Gypsy before.”
Morgan looked at her. “Your education will not suffer from the lack, I’ll warrant.”
As he watched her tear out of the room, he could not restrain a fleeting smile. It was a bittersweet feeling this, watching her bloom so quickly from child to young woman. She would be thirteen soon. A little girl no longer.
At times he felt an almost overwhelming urge to stop the clock so that he might have more time to savor her childhood. Admittedly, he entertained a great curiosity about the sort of woman Annie would become, but he cherished these years of her youth, when he could still be a father to the child in her.
She had come to him so late…and had quickly become so dear. It never failed to shake h
im, the realization that he was, at last, a father. Father to a fey, star-chasing child with a quicksilver mind, a child who viewed life as one vast wonder after another and had not allowed even the agony of abuse to dim the light of her soaring spirit.
He reminded himself that soon…frighteningly soon…he would also be father to another child. A wee babe.
Finola’s child. As her time drew near, Morgan grew both eager and anxious. Eager for the waiting to be done, for the child to arrive, but anxious, too, for Finola, for her well-being.
He found himself increasingly fearful that the birthing itself—an act he found nothing short of terrifying—might somehow cause her harm, might even take away from the progress she had made since the attack, the attack which had left her both physically and emotionally shattered.
At times he even worried that the babe might prove harmful to Finola, simply by being an inescapable reminder of the violent assault that had brought her such anguish. And yet she seemed, if not entirely content with her condition, at least accepting of it. She sewed with Sister Louisa and Annie, took part in the planning of the nursery, appeared conscientious of her health. If she seemed reluctant to speak of the impending birth, whether out of respect for convention or her natural shyness, he thought it only to be expected—although in truth he would have welcomed more candor from her.
The candor of a wife who shared her deepest secrets with her husband.…
He forced the thought aside. He already had far more than he could have hoped for. For the first time in his life, he had a home and family: a daughter he cherished, a babe to anticipate, and Finola as his wife.
True, she was his wife in name only, but at least she was here, under his roof. She was close by, ate at his table, shared his hearthfire. And they had become friends—no small blessing in itself.