“Ugh. Putting THAT stuff on your pelt can lead to a fever, witch. Don’t you know anything? Why didn’t you use your dry-cleaning charm?” Ching sounded casual, but if he hadn’t been fairly used to the vagaries of his own mistress he would have been seriously concerned for her granddaughter’s mental health.
“Believe it or not, cat, once in a while it actually feels nice to be wet all over. Particularly on a warm day.” She shrugged. “And I haven’t melted yet. I’m going to the woods again. Stay here and watch the horse, will you, and be prepared for a surprise!”
“Nothing you do any more surprises me,” grumbled the cat, settling down to clean his immaculate white belly.
Without the thin hair necklace mostly concealed by the billows of her hair, the cat would never have recognized Maggie. Even at Amberwine’s wedding she had been too busy flitting hither and yon supervising preparations and yelling at people to bother much with her own appearance. Freed of the dirt and set off by the soft, colorful cloth of her new dress, her skin gleamed in the waning sunlight like freshly-minted copper coins.
The emerald bodice of the gown was trimmed with saffron embroidery, and was cut so low Maggie nearly lost her courage and stuck in a couple more stitches, just to be safe. It was a flattering style, though, as much of it as she could see in the magic mirror, and it made her neck look longer, her bosom fuller, and her cheekbones higher. Her brown hair showed glints of garnet as it flowed across her back, and her eyes looked large, melting and mysterious. She fastened wildflowers above her ear for a finishing touch, but was not quite finished at that. At the nape of her neck she tied a special braided knot, and into this put two small phials from her medicine pouch.
The pouch itself, her kerchief, woolen clothes, and boots, as well as her money, she wrapped in her cloak and hid in a hole beside the stream bed. If she concealed her pack as well, it would be too obvious to possible thieves she was hiding something, and would invite search, so, reluctantly, she left it beside the horse.
“I must admit,” said the cat, who had been watching these preparations in silence. “This time you surprised me. What are you going to do in that get-up?” Ching hated to appear not to know everything, but his feline curiosity was definitely activated, as he could never remember having seen Maggie in anything but the brown skirt and tunic or some variation on the same theme. He had always taken it for granted that it was part of her, as his own fur coat was part of him.
“I have a plan. We are going, old cat, to fight fire with fire because, as people are always telling me, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
“You look like you’ve got more use for that stitch in time that saves nine, if you ask me,” yawned the cat, licking a paw and applying it to his whiskers to acquire his own party polish. “Are you sure your gran wouldn’t want you to put a couple more stitches in the top of that dress?”
“Look, cat, who feeds you on this trip, anyway? Gran or me?”
“Have I mentioned how nice you look?” Ching asked. “You smell good, too…”
“Thank you,” said Maggie, as pleased as if she had not coerced the compliment from him. “It’s a little of the perfume Gran made for some of those ladies at Winnie’s wedding—just enough behind the ears to do the trick.”
“That stuff really works,” the cat conceded. “I’m surprised it didn’t sell any better than it did. Maybe if she’d called it something besides Gramma Brown’s Balm for the Blues—I suggested Heat, myself, but she said I was being a feline chauvinist.”
“Well, in case anyone gets wind of it that shouldn’t, I have the antidote tucked in my hair, and a little more of the love philter for when the perfume wears off.”
“But what are you going to dooo?” mewed Ching in his sweetest wheedling tone. Something told him that his position as moral guardian was about to be challenged.
“You’ll see,” she said, starting down the meadow, her feet brushed by the soft, cool grasses, and her bright skirts swaying.
Ching jumped to his feet and stretched, then padded after her. “And I thought I was the enigmatic one in this outfit.”
* * *
“THAT is why you must help him,” Zorah concluded urgently, brushing the last of the tears with which she had been freely dampening Colin’s best handkerchief for the last half hour.
“Why me?” he asked. “I hardly know the man.” Or have good reason to like what I do know, he added to himself.
“Because you are a kind man, I can tell, and you do not come under the influence of Xenobia.”
“But I explained that I am a gypsy really, you see—”
“Kallanderry? Phooey!”
“I see. Well, I shall discuss this with my friend—” He lost his train of thought momentarily as a flock of birds flew overhead. Where had he heard that peculiar cry before? Oh, yes, the swans… When the birds had passed over, he could hear the first chords of a guitar melody drifting across the circle from the campfire. Zorah hastily gathered her skirts in her hand and crawled out from under the wagon. “I must go now. The show starts soon, and I got to prepare my horse. Help us, mister, please. You’re my last hope.”
“I’ll give it some thought,” he said cautiously, crawling out from under the wagon less cautiously, bumping his head, and then having to dust off his britches, which retained some horsey artifact that had been under the wagon.
A sound less pleasant than the guitars attracted his attention. Many more non-gypsies, distinguishable by both their coloring and their clothing, were milling around the encampment now, and a good number of them were clustered on the far side of the campfire.
From within this cluster came a roaring, growling, and derisive shouts and jeers. Investigating, Colin found a bear baiting in progress. He could have been wrong, of course, and had it backwards, but it seemed to him that the growls and roars came from the bear, and the shouts and jeers from the mixture of gypsies and non-gypsies that taunted the beast. The bear was supposed to be one of the entertainments and was trained to dance. Now he was being merely irritated. Colin wondered that the bear’s trainer allowed it to be so mistreated. An irritated bear was the last dancing partner he himself would prefer, and gypsies, according to the stories he had always heard, were supposed to be good with animals.
Under the circumstances, he felt he could hardly blame the animal if it chose to take a bite out of someone at some time during the evening. Just so it wasn’t him.
He wandered around, looking for Davey. He had to make some excuse for not bringing Maggie after all. After Zorah’s disclosures, it seemed more dangerous than helpful to be there himself.
The best thing for them to do that he could think of would be to remove themselves as gracefully as possible from the vicinity of the camp, and get to Queenston. There, perhaps, they could find where Amberwine had been taken by the peddler, collect her from him, and return to Fort Iceworm.
“Tell your fortune, mister?” The scarlet-dressed woman who had watched the child take his horse stepped out from the shadow of a wagon, causing the preoccupied Colin to jump in his tracks. Without waiting for an answer, the woman sidled forward and grasped the wrist of the hand not employed in carrying the fiddle. “You got no common hand there, mister—” she began.
“Uh—I just visited another practitioner of your art a short time ago—” Colin said, withdrawing his hand.
“Oh?” the woman asked, left staring at the hennaed palm of her own hand. He could see now she also sported a little tattoo beneath her right eye. “Did that fortune teller warn you your horse is about to become the main course for tonight’s feast?”
Colin looked around frantically, trying to see his horse, or rather, the horse he’d borrowed from Rowan. It was not tied among the others belonging to the gypsies’ guests. “No, ma’am—where is he?”
“Really, mister, I can’t just GIVE my professional services away, no matter how handsome you are.” She switched the red skirt a little more and smoldered at him.
&
nbsp; He fumbled in his purse and crossed her palm with too many coins, which disappeared down her dress. “And that boy looked so reliable too,” he mourned.
The woman flashed such a show of great white teeth he almost thought she meant to bite him. “He is reliable—but I’m not. See, by having me tell your fortune; you have changed it! Now your horse is fine—he’s tied up right behind my wagon, where Mateo put him.”
“Oh.”
“You are angry?” she asked with no abatement of the toothy grin.
“Not especially, if the horse really is all right. Relieved actually. He doesn’t belong to me, you see, and I’d hate to have to answer for him.”
“Xenobia thought you would be angry.”
“I beg your pardon? This is really an extraordinary conversation, don’t you think?”
The woman ignored his last remark and went back to switching her skirt, which seemed to be a favorite gesture of hers. “Xenobia says the outsiders are always angry when we outsmart them.”
Colin chuckled. “Yes, I can see where that would probably be true.” He backed away, this time occasionally glancing behind him to make sure he didn’t back into anything or anybody to upset his balance. He darted down for one quick glance under the wagon before leaving the area entirely. Sure enough, there were his horse’s white-stockinged feet and grazing nose placidly chomping the meadow grass.
“Hmph,” said the woman, purposely shoving rudely into him as she passed to the campfire to solicit more business. Colin found it difficult to understand her attitude. She seemed to feel that his money was poor compensation for the absence of the properly stimulating row she had been expecting.
He followed her stiff back and flouncing red skirt through the now flickering shadows cast by the fire. Night had come quickly, and with it a full moon. Taking the place Davey indicated with a wave that he should occupy, Colin hoped the full moon wouldn’t be up to its usual tricks to making people behave bizarrely and complicating things. Even good luck charms frequently failed when the moon was in this bloated phase.
The entertainers were shabby by minstrel standards, or even by good-sized city standards, but the presence of the townspeople, who had turned out in large numbers, testified that entertainment in their own town was even shabbier. Probably almost nonexistent. As a preliminary to the flashier numbers, the woman who had accosted Colin, introduced by Davey as “Runya the All-Seeing,” made the rounds of the farmers, servants, tradesmen, and craft people, mumbling such stock phrases as “Ah, there’s luck in that handsome face of yours, mister,” and “You’re gonna remember for a long time what the gypsy woman tells you today, my friend.” For her finale, she publicly read the palms of the mayor and the local castle’s head butler. What she claimed to read in their pudgy palms was so preposterously flattering and so filled with riches, love, power, and fame as to make the recipients of her attentions fairly blush with pleasure, and the rest of the audience collapse with mirth.
The bear baiting, billed as dancing, continued. Colin concentrated, during this phase of the performance; on a chord progression he thought would go well with gypsy music.
Zorah’s trick riding brought the level of entertainment up somewhat. Astonished murmurs and hand clapping rippled through the audience. Where had a girl learned to do that, whose was that magnificent horse, and from whom do you suppose she stole it, and wasn’t that a crummy trick she should be wearing britches so that when her skirt flew over her head when she somersaulted across the horse’s back— Nevertheless, this exhibition of equestrienne derring-do brought the most applause of any act yet presented.
The musicians played a couple of numbers, one gypsy, one a non-gypsy reel, and the tempo changed to a startling upbeat one, the scurrying of fiddles and the syncopated toc-a-tocing of the hand drums heralding flashing limbs and heaving bosoms as the dancing girls swirled around the campfire. Not all the gypsy girls, or even most, were really beauties, but whatever shortcomings they possessed went unacknowledged by the men, who showered them with coins. Actually, Colin thought, they were not really even very good dancers.
From what he remembered of his instruction in gypsy culture, designed to give him background for the music he was learning, the constant traveling kept them hard at work maintaining a semblance of order to their home life, and left little time for the eternal dancing popularly believed to be their main occupation in life, besides stealing. Consequently, the only time they really danced much was at their entertainments, at festivals and fairs, and whenever they were allowed near enough to a village to interact with its people.
Whatever these dancers lacked in beauty or skill they made up for in sultry appeal and enthusiasm, and in spite of himself Colin found his hands getting quite sore from clapping time to the complex rhythms of their music. He started to dig out his purse to throw a few coins himself, but found someone had been there before him. He hoped Maggie’s resources would be adequate for the rest of the journey. It was, after all, her sister.
As the final dance tune began, the girls grabbed some of the townsmen and pulled them up to dance with them in crude imitation of the folk steps the gypsies had displayed. As the last notes died away, the girls sat down next to their erstwhile partners, in order to relieve them, Colin felt sure, of whatever coins they had not extracted by their performance.
Again the musicians began playing popular songs, and once or twice Colin found himself playing a solo part. It was Davey, apparently flattered, who introduced the song about himself and Lady Rowan.
They were into the second verse when a drunk hollered, “Hey, Gypsy. How about that? What happened to her highfalutin’ ladyship, anyway?”
Davey stilled his strings with one hand and the other musicians stopped playing, as well. He paused, caressing his chin with his fingers, appearing to weigh the question carefully. “Now, you know, I really couldn’t say, boys. That was a nice girl, a beautiful girl, but hardly up to one of our little gypsy temptresses, eh?” He hugged the girl beside him, the same one who had earlier brought him the message from his mother. “No. Really, friends, she was as charming as could be, but we couldn’t keep her here forever. Mum had to run her off, finally. Stole things, if you know what I mean.” He led the crowd in an uproarious laugh. Colin felt nauseated. A tap on his shoulder and a hiss in his ear prevented him from an indelicacy.
“Can you get them to play for me?” It was Maggie who hunched down, unnoticed, in the darkness behind him.
“Sure,” he said, too glad to create a diversion from the present line of discussion to question her more closely.
“Something fast, slow, then fast again, in their type of music,” she said.
Colin raised his bow, tucked his fiddle under his chin, and hesitated only a moment before sweeping into the lead-in of one of the more classical pieces of gypsy dance music. The other musicians seemed as happy to play, and stop discussing Davey’s love life, as he was, and joined in quickly. The hand drum beat rhythmic counterpoint to the whining, interwoven harmonies of the two fiddles and Davey’s guitar.
The opening chords were fast, as Maggie had requested, and she used them to come whirling out before the fire, an emerald and golden dervish casting her own dancing shadows under a pale yellow moon.
Colin was suitably impressed. For the first time since he’d met her, he realized she certainly was very much a witch indeed. As surely as Granny Brown had transformed him into a bird, Maggie had transformed her prosaic assistant scullery maid self into a seductress to be reckoned with.
For only a moment she paced the measured beat with saucy thrusts of her hip, her fingers snapping in time. The lack of the silver finger cymbals worn by the gypsies didn’t trouble her, it seemed, and she made an instrument of her own hands and body. Colin decided she was manifesting musical talent after all. Flowers appeared and disappeared in the tossing dark waves of her hair as she whirled. Her skin was less like the satin, which was the popular conception of ladies’ skin, and more like burnished metal, as it sheened
with her perspiration. Her bosom rose and dropped sharply in time with the drum, while her mid-section did something serpentine and her shapely legs, apparently unhampered by the bright skirts molding against them, pranced and twirled and wove their own patterns in the circle beyond the campfire.
As the music slowed, becoming almost sinister in its insinuation, her arms joined her torso in the undulations and Colin was reminded of the cat having a nice stretch, or so he told himself. He was trying to believe her dancing was a musical interpretation of the cat or a snake or a variation of the folk steps the women had done earlier. Following the sequence she had requested, using his instrument to guide the others, he found it difficult to keep his mind on anything but his friend’s disturbing behavior.
What bothered him most was not the antics she was performing with her body, but the way her eyes first locked on Davey’s to hold his as she executed a turn. Her head and upper body strained backward to maintain the contact as she danced, then, emerging from her turn, she let her eyes slip slyly away. A phantom smile played on her lips, which seemed somehow redder and more lush than Colin remembered, but that might have been a trick of the full moon.
Davey was apparently as enchanted by all of this as anyone, and watched her with a sort of predatory possessiveness while he continued to fondle the girl at his side.
The tempo picked up, and her steps again became more prancing, hips keeping time, fingers clicking, rib cage bobbing to the music. The eye contact changed too, and she gave the gypsy only an occasional smile, then slipped away to bestow a full-blown silent laugh on another member of the audience. It was difficult to tell who was mesmerizing whom, but a glimmer of understanding began to dawn when Colin noticed Davey’s hawklike attentiveness become irritation on the occasions when her attention was elsewhere.
Song of Sorcery Page 13