Makepeace turned to stare at me.
“What did you say?”
“Prey o pani,” I said, growing in confidence, the words pulsing beneath my skin with their own heat.
“What do you recall of your mother?” Makepeace said abruptly, her fingers tangling themselves in her chatelaine, all of it jangling. I turned over to face the wall and let my back speak to her. My memories were my own. I’d not give them up to her because she asked me, they were fragile, thin as gossamer. I myself only looked at them slantwise, as if to reach and touch them front on would make them disappear.
“She was a gypsy,” Makepeace said, “those are Rom words.” All my skin prickled.
“What do you mean?” I said, not wanting to turn over, not wanting to look at her.
“She was a traveller, a Rom,” Makepeace said.
All of me was hot. All of me was angry. “Am I Rom?”
“In blood only,” she said.
My body emptied and filled with water, like a shell on the edge of the sand at the turning tide. I eased myself up in the bed, eager to know more, to be up, but she wouldn’t let me free myself from the covers, her familiar hand steadying my legs.
“Not yet, Eglantine, it’s time to rest,” she said.
“Tell me about my mother,” I demanded and watched her face colour; the heat rushed to my own face, my question a ripple of discomfort between us. I scratched at the birthmark around my neck and it began to sting.
She rubbed her face, wiping the tiredness from her eyes, and I watched her sift through her thoughts. She picked up a glass of water and held it up to my lips and bade me drink, but it wouldn’t extinguish my question.
“Her name was Patrin,” she said, lowering her voice, glancing to the door.
“What does that mean?” I said and Makepeace took a jar of salve and lifted the cork from its top, the smell of it filling the room.
“It means leaf,” she said, scooping the salve from the jar and warming it between her fingers.
“Leaf?” She put her hands on my skin and began to rub the salve in, cold as river mud across the raised and angry marks on my throat. I caught my breath at the relief of the salve and of hearing my mother’s name.
“Leaf. But it means more. A patrin is a special sign for the Romany people, a signpost. Sometimes a bunch of twigs tied to a tree, sometimes a mark etched in bark. A way for us to communicate, a map, a message, a story,” she said, not meeting my eye.
She said so many things I didn’t understand. “Romany?”
“Gypsy. Travellers. Those who prefer to live the life of the road.”
“Are you Romany?” I said. She wiped her hands on her apron and nodded.
“Once,” she said.
“And Father too?”
“I suppose so, yes.” Her voice grew quieter.
“But we live in a house?” I said, more confused than ever. “How so, if we belong on the road?”
“Those times are long gone, Eglantine.”
“But I want to know more,” I said.
Makepeace poured some liquid into a spoon, bid me open my mouth and I swallowed down its bitterness.
“What is there to tell you? What need do you have to know of the life on the road when you live in a house? The seasons no longer dictate, the weather no longer speaks, I’ve nothing to tell you, except that you are better off here,” Makepeace said.
“But my mother never lived in this house, did she?” I asked, struggling to imagine the time before, but nothing came. From somewhere within the house a door slammed.
“Your father has bid me not to speak of her,” she whispered. “I’ve said enough for the time being. Rest now, Eglantine.” Makepeace kissed me on the forehead. Why would he not have anyone speak of her? All of me yearned to know more.
Makepeace found my doll in the bedclothes and brought her up to my arms. It was a familiar exchange, the clockwork of our arms, as Miss Poppet went from Makepeace’s hands to mine, though I was probably too old for such things.
The rain started up again outside and it beat hard on the roof. Pat-rin, Pat-rin. Patrin, my mother’s name. A million little round silverdrops, were they signposts for me?
My fingers kept time with the rain on the counterpane. How small they were compared to my father’s expectations of them.
NINE
Patrin, 1818
The last day of harvest was the day of our wedding. Inside our vardo my mother strung a string with acorns over my head and unloosed my hair, before she crowned me with a wreath of iris. She anointed my wrists, neck and throat with attar of rose and led the way out of the vardo. Each of her gestures was slow and deliberate; I couldn’t tell if it was because she was trying to delay me, or her actions held more meaning than I understood. She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand.
I took one last look at everything familiar – the old Persian rugs that decked the floor; our bedding that was rolled away; the pictures of the Virgin, Saint Sarah and Saint George that my mother kept dust-free even in the driest of summers; the hanging herbs of rosemary, yarrow, foxglove and rosehip all strung up to dry.
Outside on the fire a pig was on the spit, its flesh crackling to the flame; a barrel of scrumpy was open and ready to spill into the cup; and Amberline stood in the distance scuffing his boots and I knew he was nervous.
The other Rom from the camp came and gathered around then someone plucked a few notes on their fiddle and the notes spun around me. I felt disoriented, not being able to see Amberline amongst the throng that parted and clapped as I passed. The blood surged to my face, and I was grateful for the bluish twilight concealing my blush.
In a clear spot my father and Amberline waited and I moved towards the chairs meant for us. My father tore two pieces of bread and placed one on my knee and one on Amberline’s and then drew his knife. Amberline looked at me and my father guffawed, before he took my finger and then Amberline’s to be pierced by the tip of his knife so that a bead of blood ripened, a perfect drop, to be sopped by the bread.
“Now eat,” my father commanded and I bent to Amberline’s knee and ate the bread and he did the same with mine, I felt his face tickle my knee through the weave of my skirt. My father bid us rise then, the necklace of coins jingling, and he tied a scarf over my hair, a diklo, the badge of all married women.
“Welcome, Patrin and Amberline Stark,” my father cried, crushed us in his arms and all around us the other Rom let out a cheer. The firelight struck the world golden – Amberline’s face shining most of all. Someone threw salt over us and it caught in my lip just as Amberline kissed me so it was like swallowing the sea.
Around us the dancing started. We were swept up into it and I danced in and out of so many arms, my face growing hot, until I landed back in Amberline’s arms. As soon as we were near the outskirts of the fire, he pulled my arm and we were off over the fields, our feet hitting puddles and disturbing the songbirds in the hedgerow, skidding in the mud and laughing, but not falling. The sound of the river was like a voice calling and I stopped in my tracks and Amberline followed suit.
“Second thoughts or second sight?” he said and the scrumpy roiled in my stomach, but still I felt the voice of the river in my ears and I tried to quell my dizziness.
“Neither,” I lied, for the river was calling to me, speaking, but I did not understand the language of water. My breath was lost. Amberline clutched me under the arms, then took me towards the water and sat me down on the damp grass. He took the scarf from my hair, dragged it through the water and placed it on my eyes yet I heard the voice louder than before in my own ears, all vowels, before I vomited on the grass.
When I woke, Amberline was resting by my side, one of his arms beneath my head as a pillow, the other thrown over me, his jacket covering us. I sat up, but we were no longer so close by the river and the voice had vanished.
Amberline sat up beside me and his hands moved through his jacket before he extracted something. Light flared in the darkness; he had
a candle and it lit up the green of the tree branches we sheltered under. We sat on a blanket, but beneath that we were cushioned by moss, and he held a skin of water to my lips and I drank deep.
“That scrumpy is rough,” he said and I laughed.
“I’d be glad never to taste it again,” I said and drank once more.
“Come, give us a kiss,” he said and suddenly I was exposed, shy, all the darkness watching. His fingers beneath my chin drew my lips to his and then his hands were on my blouse lifting it over my arms, my head. The cold tip of his finger outlined my breast and I slid his shirt off his shoulders. Gently he pushed me backward and rucked my skirt to my knees. The warmth and sweetness of his skin pressing on mine, all our breath together. Amberline’s hands twined around my back and drew me towards him; my blood hummed like spring sap as the leaves brushed over our faces like fingertips, the putsi around my neck squashed between our chests, a third heart beating between us. “What is this thing you wear?” Amberline said, slight irritation in his voice.
I sat up. “Why are you frightened of a pouch?” I smiled, but he didn’t smile back. “It’s a putsi, to keep herbs and charms in, it can only do good,” I said.
“Why, my love, I’ll be your luck now,” he said as he went to lift the putsi over my head, but I stayed his hand.
We remained in our green canopy until the morning came and pushed at our eyelids and then we straggled back to camp, not knowing if Amberline would come inside my parents’ vardo or if I was expected now to sleep under it. The vardo wagon my father had secured had no roof nor bed yet, it was just bare wood, as unseasoned as I was to life as a married woman.
As we entered camp I saw Jupiter had returned, Amberline’s eyes flicking warily between the dog and my father who had his back to us, the strike of his axe echoing out around us, a sickening thud. Jupiter was drowsing across the threshold of my parents’ vardo, barring the step to anyone who’d dare enter. All his fur was matted and covered with burs and grass, his paws coated in mud. As soon as he saw Amberline he lifted his head, alert, his eyes following Amberline’s every move.
My father strode towards us, his arms outstretched, when I saw it. Beside my parents’ vardo was hitched another with a white horse tied by a rough rope. My father grinned at me and Amberline and I saw all the love in his face and realised that this was a gift for us, my darro, a home for Amberline and me, the wagon base now transformed.
“What do you think?” he said. I threw my arms around his neck and he lifted me off the ground with his strong arms and twirled me as if I was nothing more than a wee girl.
“Thank you, Papa,” I said, all my feelings welling to the surface, an anxiety falling over me so that I didn’t want to let him go.
Amberline’s face was blank, I couldn’t read him. “Thank you, Josiah,” he said, parrot fashion, shaking my father’s hand.
“You’ll see it’s all new. I hope it is to your liking?” my father said, but Amberline just nodded. My mother saw what I saw, but I would not keep her gaze. I stepped up into the vardo and saw how much my father had invested in us, beds and cupboards fixed to the walls, with new fine china just waiting to be used. The little windows had curtains made of calico and there was a small woodstove with cast-iron rail. Amberline followed up behind me and kissed my cheek.
“It is modest,” he said. I looked at him in disbelief at his ingratitude, his hands reaching up to touch the ceiling, stretching out to touch each of the walls, filling all the space with his dissatisfaction.
And so it was that Amberline and I began our married life, wrapped in each other’s arms in our vardo as we travelled across the country with the rest, from farm to farm, bringing the harvest in, Amberline’s body growing more muscular, beneath my touch. After the hops were in it was harvesting time for onions, and come November it was time to bring in the potatoes. When winter came we’d make do with whatever work to be had. For my father, it was rat-season.
My father, Josiah Scamp, came from a long line of royal ratcatchers. It was a title he had bestowed upon himself and no one complained, for it was a job that no one else cared to do. Jupiter sniffed them out or caught them by the tail or throat if the opportunity arose and my father would thwack the rodent across the back of the head with a small club. His father before him used to lay them out one by one, whiskery corpses all in a row upon the fine Turkey carpet, to the horror of the head housekeeper, who would pay him double to remove them quickly; my father didn’t follow his father’s example, however. Instead he placed the dead animals reverentially inside an old hemp sack and sold them to the neighbouring households who kept hounds for the hunt, the rats used as dog feed. Some ratcatchers preferred just to stun the rats and be left with a writhing sack to use for sport – dog versus rat – but at least with my father’s method the rats were out of their misery before the dogs pierced their flesh. He was in demand at all the big houses.
We set off, the horse’s reins in my hands, Amberline’s leg pressing into mine, my mother walking behind to pick meadow herbs to sell as posies, gathering them up in her skirt so as to not damage the petals. Amberline grew bolder when he thought my mother was obscured by the vardo and leaned over and tried to steal a kiss; even though we were husband and wife, I was conscious of my mother being nearby. I turned my head and let him kiss the whip and rein of my hair.
My father had already set off while it was still dark. It was an honour to go to the big houses and my father liked to arrive as soon as the house awoke to take advantage of the last of the lingering darkness to set Jupiter amongst the hallways, the dog’s finely tuned nose on the scent of the rats.
My father had left a patrin on the side of the road, a low-lying branch tied with a red thread, a sign that we were on the outskirts of royal lands and had free passage through the fields. Mother caught up with us and sat inside and tied her simples in ribbon. With a click of my tongue I directed the horse off the track, the low-lying branch tangling satisfyingly in Amberline’s hair.
“What are you doing?” he said, flicking leaves from his hair, the horse easily pulling the vardo through the mud.
“Didn’t you see my father’s signs? His patrin?” I replied as we pushed forward through the woodland, a short cut to the big house where we’d been given permission to camp. Not all were so accommodating to our ways.
“Patrin,” Amberline said, “it’s your name.”
Had his mother taught him nothing of our ways?
“It’s more than that. It means leaf but is also the word for signs, for messages, for our people to communicate the way of the path ahead – my father’s branch tied with string means to turn here, a branch broken in two, notched bark, a rag tied to a stick – all are patrin.”
The horse’s hooves kept a steady strike and I heard my mother whistling behind me. Somewhere in the treetops above me a cuckoo called, a fraudulent orphan for its devoted mother.
Amberline swept my hair off my face and I was compelled to look at him, those eyes that were promises. He cupped my face in his hands and breathed me in with his kiss. My breasts ached beneath my shift with each jolt of the wagon.
“You are my sign, my own patrin,” he whispered, and the sunlight seemed to agree with him for the light burst through the leaf cover, sending tiny diamonds of light dancing across my face and hands.
On seeing my parents’ vardo, we pulled into the field on the other side of the woods and watered the horse, before leading him up to the big house, his brasses polished bright and chiming together, his teeth ready to crop the royal clover. We walked up through the fields, passing a windbreak of elm trees; the house seemed to hide behind them like a blushing lady behind her fan. It was the largest house I’d ever seen. Father usually went up to the big house without us, while we waited out of sight in the woodland and made camp. But the last time we were at this house the maids had begged him to bring Mother, someone who saw a sweetheart’s name written in the tea leaves, a fortune found in a palm, the face of a lost one gesturing
in the surface of a mirror. My mother was only too glad to oblige, any extra money to get us through the winter was a blessing. Not that she didn’t have the gift. She was able to read the signs of the faces of the clouds, the flight of birds, the broken stalks of a wheat field, but what was an art and what was a gift? She’d twine the two skills together. But what had she seen with Amberline? She would never tell me.
The building loomed ahead, solitary as an island. As we neared a low fog concealed our footsteps and rolled thick on the ground but didn’t even touch the first floor of windows. We walked through the silhouetted trees and closer to the building but could not tell which was the front or which was the back, the whole facade grey. My neck strained to see where the building ended and the sky began. The house was leviathan. Our horse paused to snap a dandelion with his teeth before stepping onward. The morning light slashed across the windows of the building, hitting a sea of glass, each window as bright as a jewel, and I heard Amberline count quietly beneath his breath. My mother raised her eyes at me.
“I hope you are not counting how many silver spoons you can cram into your jacket pockets and how many ways you can run,” she said. That stopped Amberline’s counting.
“I’d never do such a thing, I’d never bring shame on your family after all the hospitality you’ve afforded me,” he said, earnestly. But it was our family, he still held himself at one remove, and I saw my mother’s expression: she was already tallying his would-be misdemeanours in her mind.
“Well, what you be counting for?” my mother asked suspiciously, sensing something of the lie in his voice.
“I’m counting windows, Aunt, I’ve never seen so many. They are made of sand and fire, to think of it, and here they all are clearer than a mirror. The marvel of it,” Amberline said, his face lit with the morning sun as if the Lord had special favour for him.
My mother rolled her eyes for my benefit. “Dinneleskoe or diviou.” Foolish or mad. Amberline avoided her eye, he knew a Romany insult when he heard one.
The River Sings Page 8