But I saw nothing, no patrin to guide me. There was nothing but myself. All the pain in my arms, all the burn, like a rope pulling me forward.
It was Little Egg who saw them first, the painted vardo tucked out of the way beneath an oak, a horse grazing on the acorns that scattered the ground.
Her feet knew the way, the speed of her, her scrawny attempt at a braid flying made my heart cinch tight as I ran to keep up, but my legs had grown weak from walking, their strength had diminished confined by city ways.
I grabbed Egg’s hand just as a dog snarled at us from the borders of the camp, the Rom sitting around a newly lit fire all staring at us and I saw ourselves through their eyes, just as I had seen Amberline that first time, dressed in his fine clothes – outsider, stranger, trespasser.
A woman stood, her dark patched skirt edged in ribbon, a coin necklace jangling at her chest.
“No fortunes today,” she said and gestured for me to go. I felt heartsick. The smell of the wood burning, the smoke stung my eyes. The woman turned away.
“I’m no gadji, I’m Rom,” I cried.
The two men at the fire looked at me then. One was very old, his beard grizzled to the point of a lightning rod. The other I assumed was his son.
“Where are your people?” asked the younger one.
“I am Rom, daughter of Josiah Scamp,” I said defiantly, my heels pressing into the dirt.
They all shared a glance, the circle of which I could not decipher until their eyes fell on Little Egg. She was oblivious of course, distracted by the horse brasses shining, the gleam spreading across her face. I held her hand tightly, feeling the fear of their displeasure run up my legs, the impulse to run.
“Are you now?” the patriarch said and returned to his mug of tea, wrapping his hands around it for warmth.
“Do you know where my mother is camped?” I said, feeling the need to be gone while the day was still on my side, the daylight enough to guide me.
“Maybe,” the patriarch said, keeping his eyes to the contents of his mug, not meeting my eye.
“Then please tell me,” I pleaded against my better judgment.
“Mama?” Egg said, her arm reaching, keen to touch the horse’s velvet muzzle. I looked down at her bright eyes. What did she know of our ways and traditions? Why would I tell her? We were marime now, tainted. How could a little girl be impure? The ridiculousness of the law struck me and I wanted to strike it back.
“If you’ll tell me where she is, we’ll be gone,” I said, summoning my will to do the thing which I knew would anger them. I twitched my skirt with my spare hand as a warning. I might be an impure outcast, but I knew their ways, though I’d forsaken them. Still they remained silent; with a flick of my wrist I made to pull up my hem, to do so is seen as a curse.
“Try west,” the woman said, “and take this for the little one and be gone.” She threw a windblown apple in the air but I didn’t try to catch it, I let it fall to the ground with a thud and watched it split. A grub squirmed at its heart. I had no need of her charity. Not yet.
The old man spat his tobacco on the ground. “She is dead, girl, dead this last six months. Her heart gone and broke after what your husband did. Ungrateful daughter.”
Dead? Why say west if she was dead? When a tree falls they say it screams, and that before it dies one must cover one’s ears. But I pulled the scarf from my head and listened for the tell of his lie until I walked off in a daze. Wouldn’t I have felt her soul depart this earth, wouldn’t I have felt something? I didn’t believe them.
With night falling we walked into the woods, intertwined branches turning shadows to black lace on the ground. The remaining daylight was fast diminishing, patches of violet peeking through the canopy. Rain was on its way, I smelled it. The bandages on my arms itched and burned, an occasional glare of heat running all the way up to my neck.
“Mama,” Egg whispered, and as she yanked down on my arm I felt a black wave wash over me. “Look.”
In the lower branches of an oak tree’s spotted leaves a barn owl, a ghost of a bird, peered at us, impervious.
“It’s a weshimulo, an owl,” I said to her and she tried the word out in her own mouth, the gush and flight of it.
The owl bobbed his head up and down, talons clutching and reclutching the branch, and Little Egg clapped, the dull percussion of it damped down by the thickness of leaf fall. The sound startled the owl and he took his leave of us, ready for the night hunt.
I made a small fire, gathered up the leaf litter, banked it up close to the roots of an alder and wrapped Egg in my shawl. From my bag I pulled out some bread and cheese and gave Egg a long swig of water from the skin.
She looked up at the tree at the shivering foxtails of the catkins, her little hand reaching.
“They are the tree’s flowers, my love,” and I listened to the happy sound of her eating while I poked the surrounding twigs into the small flames, willing it to pulse out heat. The owl hunting out in the darkness let out a warrior’s screech, talons full of vole or mouse.
Egg nestled into her burrow beside the fire and I scooped my body around hers, watching the smoke wend its way up towards the canopy, as it knotted itself and twisted into shapes and vanished as if it were to signal which direction we should head in. A fox observed us opposite, Egg’s eyes wide in the firelight.
“We call them weshen-juggal, dogs of the wood.” As I spoke my ears were filled with my parents’ voices, the remembrance of them speaking in the Romany tongue as I fell asleep inside the wagon. That wagon would be but ash now, both their bodies in the ground. No Romany would leave any possessions behind lest the spirit take home in it. How would anyone have got word to me, swallowed up by Amberline’s words and the swell of the city? Ungrateful daughter, the patriarch’s words were true. I’d never even said goodbye.
Sleep overtook Egg, and I slowly undid the bandage and looked at the burns on my arms. The smell of them met me before the sight of my skin did, the sour fester caught my breath. The flame showed me what I feared: the yellow crust of infection. A catkin fell into my lap and I rolled the green serpentine shape filled with tiny petals across my palm and felt the delicate tickle of it like Little Egg’s eyelashes against my face and the memory came sharp as a stitch.
Jupiter had been a new pup, my father had picked him, the runt from the farmer’s litter, chosen for his nose, the twitchiest of them all. My father thought he’d be the perfect Romany dog, sure-footed and quick to pick a rabbit’s scent, and he was right. But while Jupiter was learning to become my father’s shadow, he had to learn to compensate for those large dog paws. He pulled the drying washing from the bush, scrambled up the vardo steps and muddied the bedding. My father bundled him and his huge paws out the door, dropping him onto the ground, those large paws holding him in good stead, landing him upright and ready to go again. My mother latched the door against the loving slobber of his tongue and the happy pant in our ears.
But the fire was to be Jupiter’s defeat. In his youth, the smell of my mother’s rabbit stew atop the fire sent Jupiter dancing, trying to reason a way to access the contents. He leapt at the pot and knocked it to the ground, standing on the coals with the tender pads of his feet burning. The sickening sound of his yelp had us running.
With curses under her breath, my mother stripped the nearest alder of its bark, her knife snicking through to the whitest part, and set to boiling it in a small amount of water. I cradled Jupiter’s head in my lap, a high whine puncturing the air, his pink pads blistering black; what was burn and what was soot? When the water had boiled my mother plunged the pot into a bucket, the hiss and spit of it as it cooled suddenly joining the pitch of Jupiter’s cry. Very carefully Mother took each of Jupiter’s paws and soaked them in the lukewarm tincture while I held tight to his neck, his breath turning to a pant.
Father arrived just as we were binding Jupiter’s feet in rags, and my father who like all Roms thought dogs unclean, lifted him into his arms and let him rest ins
ide the vardo that night and my mother permitted it, seeing my father’s concern and knowing Jupiter with his feet bound would be unable to stamp his muddy footprints across our floor, nor his teeth shred our bedding. My father was a soft-hearted soul. He was too kind, too generous. My mother was as strong as the tree I leaned on. How could she be gone too? Amberline’s crime had extinguished all of my family, one by one, yet my skin burned still. I had not enough energy left to cry.
With the catkin in my lap, I carefully eased out of my spot so as to avoid waking Egg. I tried to peel off some of the bark with my own knife, blunt as it was; slivers of it fell into my palm but what had I to boil it in? My makeshift camp was hastily constructed – a flint, a cloak, a skin of water, bread and cheese and a little bit of money that I had to eke out. We had no caravan except my arms and even they were scalded and put us both in danger. If the infection set in and fever struck, who would help us? Would I be able to make it back to the city? The rashness of my decision slapped me afresh with each throb of the infection, little flecks of gold embedded in my skin like fireflies in the night.
Little Egg woke me, her breath hot on my face, her hand whisking the hair from my ear, her words a loving whoosh, although I hardly made them out.
“Mama,” she said and I listened, only hearing my thumping heart at being woken so suddenly. But then there on the wind I heard it, the faint sound of bells.
She clapped her hands and I pressed my finger to my lips, trying to determine what the sound was, fearful it was the bridle of an estate manager or farmer drawn by the fading curlicues of smoke coming from their woods. Without a moment to lose, I threw a handful of dust and dirt over the smouldering fire, threw everything back into the sack and scooped Egg into my arms. We slid through the trees like hunting owls, between the falling slants of downward light that barred our path, the morning song of dawn rising behind us as we fled.
The bells came louder, clearer. A little will-o’-the-wisp of light danced on Little Egg’s face and she tried to catch it but it eluded her and flicked onto the back of her hand. Above our heads were tiny bells strung to a tree, not a bridle at all. I leaned down and breathed in the sweetness that seemed to pool between her neck and her ear with relief.
The lower branches flickered with ribbons, pieces of paper and prayers, a curl of hair, a baby’s shoe. A prayer tree. A clootie well.
I put Little Egg down on the ground and she ran around the tree, the light chasing behind her. I followed. There, surrounded by the mossy roots, was a little blue pool that reflected back the dewy morning. Little Egg leaned at the edge of it, watching her own expressions. “Careful now, don’t lean too close,” I said and hurried to her side to stop her falling in, feeling the pull of the scab on my arms and catching my breath. In the reflection of the water I saw our faces knit together, mother and daughter made of water.
Little Egg skittered out of my arms and ran her hands over pennies studded into the bark, bronze and silver as the light struck. They’d grown into the skin of the tree as the flecks of gold had become stuck in my arm, unexpelled from my body, becoming part of it, becoming part of me. Was this mix of scar and burn and gold to be a blessing too? Now I’d become a glittering thing, would Amberline love me more? Had I done the right thing? Doubt flooded me. With his absence I felt the harshness of my judgment – hadn’t he provided for us, didn’t he care for his child, hadn’t he shown nothing but love for me? Maybe I’d been named Patrin for all the signs I’d never read. Here I was standing beneath a canopy of directions, hope’s signs, but could I read one of them? A sparrow dipped into the pool for his morning bath and at Little Egg’s laughter indignantly fluffed his feathers and flew away.
I took the knife from my sack and bid Egg present herself to me. She looked up at me so trustingly as I sliced a tiny lick of her hair before doing so with my own, two dark paintbrush tips in my palm before I knotted them together, a double twist of darkness.
“Come, Egg,” I said and I took her cool little hand in mine and warmed it as we stepped towards the pool and saw our own pale faces rise in it like moons.
“We give a little something for the Wodna zena, the spirit in the water,” I said and curled Egg into my arms. The weight of her small body pressing in to mine was my tether to this world. Amberline and I had made her, together; the home we had in London was all the home we had left to us in this world. I would twist myself like one of the ribbons to the tree and hope it was enough. I scooped a little water and offered it to the ground before cupping the water to Egg’s lips and mine.
“Make a wish,” I said and watched with a painful delight as she screwed up her face, her eyelashes pinched tight. My heart squeezed with love for her.
“I wish …” she whispered.
“It has to be silent, my darling little kakkaratchi, my little magpie.”
She mouthed words hard to decipher. My wish was all for her. To be safe, to be loved, to have all she needed. We dropped our twined hair into the pool. We peered at the reflection of the ribboned branches, the flickering paper and our hair on the surface of the water floating, before it disappeared suddenly below. And I hoped that Saint Sarah would give me the strength to get us home.
My arms hummed with the burn and the weight of her. London felt so far away. I willed myself to walk: Egg was the last of my family, I’d do everything to protect her. She was all I had.
TWENTY-THREE
Eglantine, 1838
I provided. My fingers were what kept the food on our table. As the years passed, I became more like a shadow that brushed against people without their knowing, as I skimmed from whatever pocket I found. My father’s faith in me was well founded. Money was my chief desire, for it was the thing in itself, it didn’t need to be filtered through a pawnbroker or melted down. I’d not risk myself like my father, I’d not be reckless. I only took what we needed and never too much. If I found a chain or match case, I’d barter it directly with someone at the market for food. My fingers may have had their skill from my father, but I kept my own conscience. I did not want to find my fate at the end of a rope or with a sentence for life. With each theft, my birthmark began to itch. But no matter what I stole, it never seemed enough. The house seemed to long to return to the river.
After the roof was fixed, the floors in the kitchen began to rot, the damp soaking and swelling the boards, the cost to replace more than possible to gather. It was then that Makepeace proposed her plan to accept lodgers for a fee. As reluctant as I was, I saw the sense in Makepeace’s plan. Together we cleaned the house from hearth to hearth – my father’s room, Ada’s room – all were transformed to plain bedrooms for lodgers. The thought of strangers in our home turned my stomach, the staircase and halls would become as ill trod as the open streets, but we both knew without a word passing between us that we had no choice, unless I took the same risks my father had.
Makepeace put an advertisement in the newspaper and waited for our potential house guests to come and fill the rooms, but hardly any did. Those that did come took one look at the damp creeping through the whitewash and pleaded rheumatism, dropsy and the gout, and I was secretly pleased for their rejection of the house and the damp river-laden air the rooms contained. Only one enquirer was undeterred.
I watched him come up the stairs and hesitate at the front door, checking the print of the newspaper, held close to his nose. He stepped back down the stairs and looked up at the house and I stepped back from the window, not wanting to be seen. He was not much older than myself, dressed neatly in the clothes of a countryman, his brown hair curled beneath his cap, and beneath his arm he held a leather case close to his chest, the most valuable of his possessions; across his back was slung a calico bag. I watched him step back into the road to get a better view of the building and felt a sick twist in my stomach as he almost clipped a carriage belting down the street. But he was as nimble on his feet as a pugilist, sidestepped out of the way and looked up at the house once again. The rain began to fall then, silver stran
ds running down over him. When he leapt across the first puddle barring his way, I was already waiting for him as he bounded up the stairs, so that he almost toppled inside as his hand met the knocker.
He brought the rain in with him as he stepped over the threshold, so close I saw it dripping off his eyelashes, running down the flush of his face.
“Morning, miss, it’s a gypsy’s wedding all right.” He looked up at me with smiling eyes and I felt the raw skin around my neck prickle.
“Gypsy wedding?” I repeated, feeling exposed and mocked before I realised he meant the rain.
His boots squeaked as he took another step inside so that I had to stand back, the rain from his clothes dripping onto the floor, dripping onto my skirts and joining us together with a ring of water, the blessing of a puddle like an island.
“I’ve come about the lodgings.” He held the damp newspaper out to me with Makepeace’s advertisement and the words affordable and comfortable before the print had turned to black tears. He clutched his leather case close to his chest.
“What’s in your bag?” I asked, unable to resist speaking my thoughts, realising how rude I was, not letting him further into the house nor exchanging names.
The young man patted the bag affectionately and brushed the remaining raindrops from it so that they turned the leather a darker shade. “This here is my fortune, Miss …” he said and extended his hand towards mine so that I was obliged to take it.
“Stark,” I said. “And yours?”
“Fookes, Francis Fookes,” he said and smiled, his teeth revealed in a broad grin.
Makepeace came up from the kitchen, pulling the apron from around her waist and adjusting her lace cap, her chatelaine all a-jingle at the thought of a lodger, the natural order of the house returning.
“Let the poor fellow in, Eglantine, and close the door, for goodness sake, look at the floor,” she said and I did as I was instructed. I hadn’t noticed while standing with Fookes how much water we’d let in. “Would you care for some tea, Mr Fookes?”
The River Sings Page 18