As we walked around the outskirts of the rest of the building I caught a face looking back at us from the prison of glass. Was it a bavol-engro, a wind fellow, a ghost? A slim hand shielding her eyes against the piercing light proved her human after all. The horse’s ears swivelled and the face disappeared back behind the golden surface.
Father was at the entrance on the other side of the house, retrieving a stunned rat from the confines of Jupiter’s jaw, the white hair around the dog’s mouth starting to stain. My father wrung the rat’s neck and tossed it into the sack. Already two full sacks had been knotted and leaned head to head in condolence. My father gave Jupiter a joyful rub of the ears and wiped his hands upon his apron, before greeting us, his hands covered in fine red-thread scratches. The smell of the rats made my stomach roll and I willed myself not to be sick.
“Come now, Amberline, time to roll up your sleeves.” My father slapped him across the back and Amberline laughed, thinking he had made a joke, but I knew my father. He stood patiently waiting until Amberline’s expression changed from one of humour to one of disgust. Eventually Amberline carefully rolled up his fine shirtsleeves as high as they would go, and I feared Father would find him an unworthy accomplice.
“Patrin, lead your mother around to the door near the kitchen garden, but tie the horse up first, we don’t want him eating his fill of their patch,” my father said and walked off, Amberline following unhappily behind.
I tied the horse with a double knot to a gate and he was happy enough with the plush clover at his hooves, then Mother and I made our way to the kitchen door to find the cook red-faced and hot with a bunch of thyme in her hand.
“Come along, ladies,” she said, standing back to let us through. She smelled of onions and butter, as did the whole kitchen – a whole tribe of women in starched aprons stirring, serving, frying, slicing, more food than I’d seen in a lifetime. She led us through the servants’ dining room where another group of women sat, elbows on tables, hurriedly eating their dinner in a forced silence. All their eyes turned towards Mother and me, and I felt our strangeness in our long red skirts and jackets, our pierced ears, the mud on our boots. I touched my putsi instinctively before I noticed the dirt beneath my fingernails. I hid my hands in my skirts.
A chair was found for Mother and she sat down upon it, her skirts falling over her mud-caked boots. I stood patiently behind her as each servant waited to see who would be the first to thrust a coin in her hand and give their open palm. The herbs of her favours sat upon the table next to a posy grown in a hothouse, the smell of dog-rose scent twining into the air. But before Mother started, all the servants rose up in their chairs at the entrance of the head housekeeper, Mrs Davey, her skirt alive with keys.
“Would the young one please come with me,” she said bluntly and I felt my blood run faster. What did she want with the likes of me? Mother gave her a piercing stare and nodded. I went with the head housekeeper, half expecting her to escort me by the elbow back outside or ask for me to empty my pockets, but she said nothing. And I followed.
The keys about her person jingled like a bit between a horse’s teeth and she kept a steady pace, leading me through a door into a staircase that climbed upwards so that if she were to leave me there I’d have no idea of my way back to the kitchen. Questions flung around my mind but I knew better than to ask.
She led me through a door into a large draughty room, not at all what I imagined a room in a house like this would be like; it looked forgotten, abandoned. An old gilt mirror held the whole room in its reflection; in it I saw the face of the lady in the window. She was lying back against the sofa, her poor swollen feet pushing against the confines of her stockinged toes, stretching towards the small fire, the chimney barely able to suck. The housekeeper coughed and the lady’s eyes snapped open – disoriented, half in the room, half in a dream, the sewing in her lap falling to the floor. The housekeeper had already turned on her heel and tinkled away, leaving us alone.
The lady rubbed her face with her hands, the dark curls gathered at her temples falling over her pale face like a bunch of grapes. She struggled to retrieve her sewing, her cheeks flushed from sitting too close to the fire, but I swooped in and gathered it up for her – a fine little red velvet gown, a pattern of stars picked out in golden thread at the hem. The touch of the fabric beneath my fingers was a revelation – softer than down, the colour richer than wine. Instinctively I touched it to my cheek, forgetting myself and where I was. The lady’s outstretched hand waited patiently for me to return it.
“Wilkommen,” she said and gestured for me to sit upon the stool in front of her. As I sat I saw the cause of her immobility: a baby in her belly, pushing against the fabric of her dress. Propped beside her a small doll, the glimmer of her black hair rippling with the firelight, little feet pointed towards the hearth.
The lady held out her palm to me and it hung in the air heavy between us. I was startled by the fineness of her skin, the diamonds upon her finger, the imploring expression upon her face. With great effort she reached further, and I leaned closer, taking her gentle hand in my calloused one, and touched all the roads, pathways and holloways of a life. I may not have had my mother’s surety but I saw in her face as much as her palm what she wanted to hear.
“You will give birth to a bonny baby,” I said quietly.
“Kind,” she said and nodded. I lay my hands on her belly and felt the smooth tautness, the balloon of flesh and the life it held. Without warning, the unborn baby’s hand struck out at my own and I drew my hand away faster than was polite, afraid, a cold thread of recognition twisting in me. The lady laughed and reached for my hand again and I submitted to the pressure of her soft hand guiding mine. Then I was struck with an image in the corner of my eye – the luminous glow of a golden ring, a crown, burning.
“Madam,” I said hesitantly, “I think your baby will be a queen.”
The lady peered earnestly into my face and, seeing no insincerity there, smiled.
“Königin,” she said quietly to her belly. “My kind, my schoen.” The way she patted her belly, the soft caress of her voice, made me uncomfortable, as though interrupting the enclosed circle of mother and child. The doll and myself were outside of it and together we stared into the distance, the poorer for it. Beside the lady’s sewing was a tiny matching velvet gown the perfect size for the doll’s little wooden limbs. With great effort the lady rose from her chair, taking my proffered hand for support.
“Für gluck,” she said, folding a coin and a small piece of fabric into my hand. Could she tell? Did a life leap inside me like a salmon against the current?
The housekeeper quickly reappeared; perhaps she had been eavesdropping. I left the confines of that once grand chamber and followed the housekeeper down the maze of stairs, touching the softness of the nap of velvet all the way to the bottom where I concealed both coin and cloth in my putsi.
When my father had finished his work we walked back to the vardos, carrying the sacks slung over our shoulders, the sharp smell of them filling my nostrils and making my stomach whirl. Jupiter ran between my legs and barked, excited by the scent. I’d carried such sacks before and never felt such revulsion churn through my stomach. Amberline’s footsteps fell in with mine as my mother and father walked on ahead, eager to get the camp struck before nightfall, the fire laid and roaring.
“Did you see it, Patrin?” he said reverentially.
“See what?” I looked over my shoulder at the night falling, the sky flushed as a baby’s cheek, the first star sweet as a dimple.
“That house, that palace. The rooms, the damask, the silk, the silver plate, the carpets, the marble, the grandeur,” he said breathlessly.
What could I say? All I’d seen was the rabbit warren of the staircase and the shabby interior of a once grand apartment that let in more of a draught than our humble vardo. I rubbed at the piece of rich velvet that the German duchess had given me, afraid.
TEN
Patrin, 18
18
The following morning when I woke, weak light trickled in the window. I was alone in our vardo. Amberline’s bedding was cold to the touch; the bile rose in my throat.
I slipped out of the vardo; my parents still hadn’t stirred from theirs, though a scribble of smoke began to leak out of their flue. Our horse tossed his head at me and I followed the lead of his nose down towards the water.
And there Amberline was, by the stream, his shirt in one hand, a sliver of tallow in the other as he attended to the collar with a dip and a scrub, not surrendering his finely woven shirt to a threshing upon the river stones, not trusting me with his fine clothes.
I watched him from behind the willow, the fronds obscuring me like a waterfall. Dip and scrub, dip and scrub, muttering under his breath all the while, the sound of his words carried away on the water. His coat already lay across the thorny side of a bush, waiting for the morning rays, sending the steam skywards. His boots sat beside him, a scrap of newspaper tucked inside ready for the buff of print.
“You know I can see you skulking there,” he said without looking up. “I’ve the fox’s sight.”
I felt his voice on my skin as he caught me out, but I didn’t move, only stepped closer to the heart of the tree to watch him as he laid his newly washed shirt on the grass. He stood bare-chested before he broke through the green curtains of the willow and wound me into his arms, his lips seeking mine as much as mine sought his. He smelled like the earth, but I pushed him backwards, the blood rushing into my face.
“I thought you’d gone,” I said and he looked at me and laughed.
“Patrin, Patrin,” he said, unwinding my hair from its braid so that it rippled with the willow leaves.
“Is the vardo not good enough for you?” I asked, regretting it immediately the words left my mouth, suddenly ashamed. My father had spent a fortune on our vardo, for Amberline and me. I didn’t tell him the bride usually moves in with the husband’s family, for all Amberline had brought with him were the clothes on his back.
He grabbed my hand and I wanted to extract it, but he held me firm.
“Patrin, listen to me. We could move to London,” he said loudly, the boom of his voice echoing around the canopy, frightening the chorus from the birds. His admiration for the grand house and all its finery had made him covetous.
“Why would I go to London?” I answered. “There’s nowhere to camp, the water comes from a pump and they throw their waste from the windows – it’s hardly an enticing place.”
“There’s that to be sure, but there is also so much more, Patrin. The world doesn’t end at the edge of your camp,” he said and his chiding sent an angry rash of goose flesh across my arms. It was our camp now, my father had extended our hospitality, admitted him into our family and provided us with a home.
“London is the capital of the world, Patrin. If something you are looking for is not in London then it’s nowhere. Why, just imagine if you will the Pleasure Gardens, the trees all lit up, music wafting out across the lawn, the ladies dressed in more silk than a mulberry forest can contain, shimmering like butterflies in and out of the shadows. Then there’s the markets, Patrin; whatever you want you can buy. Imagine it, no more skinned rabbits tossed in stew, no wild onions and fallen fruit, the market makes an emperor of the common man. For a price you can buy anything from a basket of oranges to a pet peacock to enough velvet to make a gown three times over.”
Instinctively I clutched at my putsi and tried to ignore the sparrow that chirped above us in alarm. His little voice resonated in my chest, be-ware, be-ware, but I closed my eyes and just let Amberline’s words paint pictures behind my eyelids.
“And the jewels in the shop windows – why, the tears of angels are not more beautiful set in clusters of gold. I would set such clusters in your hair, Patrin, a crown of them, but they’d be nothing compared to your eyes.”
He kissed me tenderly on the eyelids and that little voice in my head silenced. Whatever signs presented themselves to me, I was blind to reading them. Even my own body spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand. My breasts ached. Everything smelled rotten. Everything I tasted was ash. I was unable to read my namesake patrin, the leaves, sticks and stones that directed my own life. Even a duchess had more insight into the workings of my own womb than I did.
As my belly grew Amberline became more erratic and critical of all the things my father had provided for us. It was not uncommon for me to wake in the night and find him not there. I’d lie awake listening for his return, marked by Jupiter’s low growl followed by a swift whine as Amberline’s boot made its mark in his ribs. He’d enter the vardo and drop down beside me in his clothes and fall fast asleep. Sometimes he smelled of smoke or wine, other times of grass or manure. But in the morning he’d scrubbed his suit clean. Then things started appearing in the vardo unexpectedly, the cupboard filling with china, a ring of gold around the rim, a fine coverlet for the baby to come made with down, and a fine bridle for our horse.
He spent his days over the fire with a bellows, coaxing the flame to grow hotter while he melted down whatever metal he lay his hands on, the coins from my necklace growing fewer as my belly grew. Inside an old iron pan he made the metal surrender to its liquid state and it lapped thin as a puddle from the moon before he poured it into a mould he had made.
“Stand back, Patrin,” he ordered and he didn’t have to ask twice as the heat from the fire roared on my cheeks and made the baby squirm against the confines of my belly as if she too were made of something shiny, something liquid, and was waiting to wrest into her final form.
Once the metal had cooled, Amberline would tap out whatever it was he had made, often a ring or a charm, and toss it into a bucket of river water, a hiss of hot complaint before it was back in his palm. From his pocket he unrolled a cloth where all his fine tools were kept, then gouged the tool’s ready tip into the newly formed metal, and I shivered at the marks he made on the pure surface, scrolls and curlicues and leaves all at his command. Spirals of silver dropped like seed into his cloth and Amberline carefully scooped up the shavings and put them in a small jar, to return to liquid later.
“Where did you learn such things?” I said as a magpie flew close to us with his chittering. Amberline kicked a stone in its direction, so that I didn’t even have time to say, “Good morning, Mr Magpie, and good morning to your family,” for luck.
“Where do you think, Patrin?” he snapped and began the whole process over again, the flames rising at the snap and suck of the bellows. Every question I seemed to ask him had the answer of London. My father was splitting a log nearby with deft heavy strokes.
“Let the man work, Patrin, and come with me up to the field, the farmer’s expecting me,” my father said as he laid down his axe and Jupiter leapt up from his place in the sunlight at my father’s first footsteps. Mother was off selling pegs she’d whittled. I was glad to be clear of Amberline’s mood which grew more mercurial.
My father walked slower than his usual stride, allowing me to keep up, but try as I might I still puffed away like a faulty bellows, my father lending me his arm on the steeper parts of ground. I pulled my shawl closer around me, the wind had the touch of ice.
The farmer was waiting for us in the field, the smoke from his pipe billowing towards us, the smell of the tobacco making me feel as if I would throw up. The field itself was lying fallow, the clods of earth dry and harrowed, thick with clay. He leaned on his shovel and watched us approach. Jupiter roared ahead, his feet kicking up dirt, and the farmer laughed.
“Good lad,” he said and patted Jupiter’s shaggy coat. “You wouldn’t think of selling him to me, would you, Scamp? He’d make a good sheepdog yet,” the farmer said.
“Not on the soul of the Baptist, Richards. If he wasn’t a dog I’d have him baptised and given the family name, I’ll not part with him,” my father said and shook the farmer’s hand. “You remember my daughter Patrin?”
Richards took my hand and shook it gently,
his eyes on my belly. “Good day to you, miss,” he said. “You brought your rod?” he directed to my father and my father took out the dowsing rod from inside his waistcoat, the wood stripped of all bark, and it sat lightly in his hands. “Well let’s to it,” said Richards and my father stood steady with his eyes closed until he jerked forward and we all followed the arrow of wood.
“When are you due, missy?” he asked me, and I knew though this baby was due in the summer she’d be early.
“End of June,” I replied.
“Hard to believe it, I remember your mother carrying you across her front. Time is a fickle mistress.” Jupiter reached up and licked the farmer’s hand before he disappeared off into the hedgerow, his nose sensitive to the scent of a hare or hedgehog. “If he catches anything, we’ll share it,” Richards said. “And let’s hope your father is quick.” He surveyed his fields, the gathering clouds, all swollen with rain.
I think we walked all around the farm for the whole morning, the only water to be found was a light drizzle that barely did anything but net our hair. The farmer’s wells had gone dry and the harvest had not been as plentiful as he’d hoped. To water the animals he’d taken to getting his boy to drive an hour to the river to bring back a barrel full, but that would hardly do once the snows set in.
The rod moved only very slightly in my father’s hands, as if it was straining to hear a piece of far distant music, but try as my father might, he only led us in circles. “Lost the touch, Scamp?” Richards mocked. Jupiter came bounding back, his fur matted with leaves, but he’d found nothing either.
“You try, Patrin,” my father said. The farmer raised his eyebrows at me and I resented it, superstitious and fearful, reminding me we were Rom and we were outsiders.
My father handed me the rod. The tip of the Y poked my belly and the farmer laughed and my father encouraged me with a nod. “I’ll be up at the house, come get me if you find anything,” Richards said with little faith, before giving Jupiter a scratch behind the ears. I watched him walk away towards the buildings in the distance. A cow lowed at us before returning to her grazing; Jupiter started towards her but my father brought him to heel.
The River Sings Page 9