The Snow Gypsy

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  “I just have to get changed.” Lola turned to Nieve, holding out her hand.

  The child shook her head. “I want to take Rose to say hello to Uncle Cristóbal.”

  Lola glanced across the square. “Where is he? I can’t see him.”

  “He said he was going in there.” Nieve pointed to a door with a metal sign hanging above it. The light from the torches caught the lettering of a brand of beer.

  “I don’t think Rose will want to—”

  “It’s all right,” Rose cut in. “I don’t mind.”

  Lola held her eyes for a moment, as if she were weighing her up. Then, with the slightest movement of her head, she turned away, disappearing into the darkness on the edge of the square.

  “Come on.” Nieve took Rose’s hand. Rose smiled, thinking how strange it was that this little girl had led her to the information she had sought for so long. A child who was the same age that Nathan’s son or daughter would be, if he or she were alive.

  “Uncle Cristóbal’s quite old,” Nieve said as they walked toward the door of the tavern. “Much older than Mama.”

  Rose visualized someone grizzled and possibly toothless, so it came as a surprise when they entered the shadowy room and Nieve pointed to a man who looked no older than midthirties.

  He was handsome—Rose could tell that at once, despite the dim light. She studied him as Nieve babbled away to her uncle. His wavy black hair was slicked back from his face, like the glossy coat of a seal. He had a fine, well-shaped nose and intense eyes. He wore a white shirt with a striped neckerchief loosely knotted at his throat. As he lifted his beer glass, Rose saw that he had a leather thong threaded with glass beads tied around his wrist.

  “¡Encantado!” He took Rose’s hand and lifted it to his lips. Then he hoisted Nieve onto his lap and whispered something in her ear. With a giggle, she went scampering off outside.

  “Will you have a glass of wine?” He pulled out the chair beside him, moving the guitar that was propped against the backrest.

  “Is there time?” Rose glanced toward the door, wondering where Nieve had gone.

  “We don’t start for another half an hour or so. I sent Nieve to check out the competition. There’s a troupe from Portugal on before us.”

  Rose nodded. She hadn’t realized it was a contest.

  “My cousin is very nervous. It’s her first public performance outside Granada.” He motioned to the barman. “You like red wine or white? Or a beer?”

  “Red wine would be lovely.” Rose couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted wine of either color. In London there were still shortages of everything, despite the war having ended eight months ago. There was always beer to be had in the pubs, but wine was not part of the culture in Britain in the way it was in continental Europe. It had been something her parents found strange—there had always been bottles of claret and champagne in the cellar at her childhood home in Cheshire. But that was another life.

  The barman placed a tulip-shaped glass in front of her along with a little dish of black olives.

  “¡Salud!” Cristóbal clinked his glass against hers. “So, Nieve told me you come from England. And you look like one of us, but she says you’re not. Is it true?” He took hold of the earthenware saucer with a stub of candle in it, holding the flame in front of Rose’s face. “Your eyes are gray, aren’t they? Not Gypsy black. But they’re the same shape as ours—and you have the cheekbones.”

  Rose felt like a horse being inspected by a wary buyer. There was something rather too familiar about his manner. But the way he looked at her was disarming. She could feel something inside her melting under his gaze.

  “I think there must be some Gypsy blood in my family,” she said. “On my father’s side, probably. He was Turkish—from the port of Smyrna. My grandfather—his father—used to read my hand when he came to visit us: the dukeripen—you know?”

  Cristóbal smiled, his teeth glinting in the candlelight. “So you know kalo, too?”

  “I know some Romany words,” Rose replied. “That’s what they call the Gypsy language in England. But I’m told they’re quite alike.”

  “How did you learn?”

  She saw him looking at her left hand. He must be wondering if she was married to a Gypsy. She told him about the summer she’d spent on the Sussex marshes, about the Lee family and her mission to find herbal cures for animals.

  “I suppose that’s something I might have inherited from my father’s side of the family,” she said. “I love animals—especially dogs. And my brother, Nathan, has the Gypsy passion for horses.” She checked herself, realizing she was talking about him in the present tense. “That’s why I’ve come here—to try and find out what happened to my brother.” She repeated what she’d told his cousin. “I could hardly believe it when Lola said she knew the village Nathan talked about in his letter.” It suddenly occurred to her that as a relative, Cristóbal might know the place, too. That he might have been one of the Gypsy partisans Nathan had mentioned. He was certainly the right age.

  Before she could ask, he gave her the answer. “Lola lived in that part of Spain until she was fourteen,” he said. “I’ve never been there myself. Her mother was my father’s sister, but he left the mountains before I was born.”

  Rose tried to conceal her disappointment. “I’m going to show her Nathan’s photograph in the morning,” she said.

  He didn’t reply. He was staring into his glass, rubbing his index finger around the rim. His nails were long, for a man. But only on that hand—his guitar-strumming hand, Rose thought. The fingers of the left hand, spread out on the table, had stubby ends.

  “I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much,” she went on. “I mean, it’s enough that I know the name of the village. I can go and talk to the people who still live there.”

  He looked up, his eyes dark slits in the candlelight. “It might not be as easy as that.”

  “Why not?”

  “People in Spain don’t like to talk about the Civil War. It’s like a family secret, best not spoken about, best hidden in the back of the drawer and left there until it can do no more harm.”

  “But it’s seven years since the fighting ended. Surely they—”

  “That may be true,” he cut in. “But the guilt and the shame don’t go away. So many people died. There were atrocities on both sides. And in the villages, it’s worse than in the cities because everyone knows what their neighbor did. It’s like . . .” He paused, his eyes focusing on his glass again. “It’s like waking up with the worst hangover you’ve ever had, thinking that the images in your head are from a bad nightmare—then realizing that it really happened. That you really did those terrible things.”

  I’d like to marry her—but they murdered the priest last summer.

  The sentence from Nathan’s letter flashed through Rose’s mind. Shocking in its matter-of-fact brevity. It conveyed that a line had been crossed, that this was a place where there were no moral boundaries. How long would it take for a community to talk openly about something like that? A decade? A generation?

  “Uncle Cristóbal!” Nieve came charging into the bar like a whirlwind, almost knocking over the table. “They’re not very good, those Portuguese! The woman twirled round so fast her skirt got caught in her knickers! Everyone was laughing!”

  “Hmm.” Cristóbal’s face changed in a heartbeat. With a disarming smile he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet. “We’d better go and show them how it should be done, then, hadn’t we?”

  Rose squeezed through the crowd of onlookers, following in Cristóbal’s wake. She couldn’t help wondering if he had been talking about himself back there in the bar. Had he done terrible things during the Civil War? Or had he been using the word you in a more general sense?

  “Come on.” Nieve had a tight hold of her hand. “You can say that you’re with us.” The child had to raise her voice to make herself heard. “That means you’ll be able to sit down instead of standing up.”


  When they reached the makeshift arena, Rose saw that three bales of straw had been placed at the side of it.

  “Those are for us,” Nieve said. “Mama won’t need hers—you can have that one.”

  “Are you sure?” Rose glanced at Cristóbal, who sank down on one of the bales and began tuning his guitar. He nodded without looking up.

  “Look! Mama’s coming!” Nieve pointed to where the crowd was parting. Lola emerged, as exotic as a tiger lily, in a tight-fitting dress of orange-and-black silk. Her hair was studded with marigolds, and a shawl of black lace was draped over her shoulders.

  A hush fell over the spectators as she took her place on the wooden board. There was a look of intense concentration on her face. She seemed to be completely oblivious to the crowd pressing in around her. With one foot in front of the other, she raised her arms above her head, stretching her body into a sinuous arc. She held the pose, her eyes fiercely proud, her painted lips unsmiling. Then, with a dramatic sweep of her arms, the dance began.

  There was no music for this first sequence. Simply the palmas—the rhythmic clapping of hands performed by Cristóbal and Nieve, which kept perfect time with the staccato beat of Lola’s feet. The way she moved was magnetic. Every watcher was transfixed. Her body transmitted an ethereal beauty, as if possessed by some otherworldly spirit.

  When the dance ended, the applause was thunderous. Nieve flashed a smile at Rose. But other than a slight nod of acknowledgment, Lola remained impassive. She closed her eyes and angled her arms and head, waiting for the next sequence to begin. Cristóbal picked up his guitar, and his fingers rippled across the strings, the notes conjuring a poignant sense of longing. Then, as Lola started to move, he began to sing.

  It was the strangest sound: anguished and yet utterly compelling. As if he were leaving a little piece of his soul in each line. Rose couldn’t discern the words, but it didn’t matter. The song transcended language. It spoke of some primeval pain that drew an echo from the hearts of all who heard it. And Lola gave life to all that emotion. The way she held her head, arched her body, snatched her shawl from her shoulders and whipped the ground—her dancing electrified the air around her.

  Rose felt as if all her pent-up grief was suddenly exposed. It made her feel raw, vulnerable—and yet it was somehow cleansing and cathartic.

  At the end of the sequence, the crowd went wild. Flowers sailed through the air and landed at Lola’s feet. Nieve ran to gather them up, her red ribbons flying out in the breeze as she bobbed up and down. Cristóbal struck up a chord. This time the music was upbeat, not melancholy.

  “This one’s a llamada,” Nieve whispered as she laid down long-stemmed carnations of coral, cream, and scarlet on the seat of straw. “Watch her feet!”

  Lola looked as though she had slipped into a trance. She swept one arm slowly over her head, turning as she did so, surveying the audience through half-closed eyes as she lifted her skirt to knee height with the other hand. Then, with an explosion of sound, her feet took off in a sequence so fast her shoes became a blur of black against the sun-bleached brown of the wooden board.

  Rose watched in awe, wondering how it was possible to keep up such a relentless rhythm. Lola’s feet seemed to have taken on a life of their own, rapping out a storm while her upper body remained almost motionless. The only sign of the physical toll the dance was taking was a faint beading of perspiration on her forehead. She finished with a flourish of her shawl, then plucked marigolds from her hair to throw into the crowd, where they were fought over by enraptured fans. Cristóbal rose from his perch on the straw bale to take a bow beside her. What a handsome pair the cousins made, basking in the applause. For some inexplicable reason, a fragment of Cristóbal’s warning floated into Rose’s head as she watched them:

  It’s like a family secret, best not spoken about . . .

  What had made Lola leave her mountain home at the age of fourteen at the height of the Civil War? Had Nieve been born then? And what had happened to Cristóbal during those years? What dark shadows lurked behind those beaming smiles?

  “Say thank you to your mama for me, will you, Nieve? I have to go now.” Rose bent to kiss the dark curls between the ribbons, then slipped away into the crowd, not wanting to intrude on whatever celebrations were likely to follow such resounding success.

  It wasn’t very late, but she needed to feed Gunesh and let him out for a walk. Perhaps after that she could come back to the square and enjoy more of the sights and sounds of the fiesta.

  The dog was still fast asleep when she undid the tent flap. He lifted his head lazily as she crawled inside. But when he heard the rustle of her rucksack, he was on his feet like a shot, almost demolishing the tent in his eagerness to get at the food she’d packed in a carefully sealed jar.

  When he’d finished eating, she slipped on his collar and lead. They made their way across the field, past the amber glow of dozens of campfires, past faces flushed with heat and the excitement of what the coming night promised. There was music everywhere. Guitars, mandolins, fiddles, flutes. And those who didn’t own an instrument improvised: there were drums made from apple boxes and castanets fashioned from wooden spoons.

  When they reached the square, she saw that it had been transformed into a vast outdoor ballroom. People of all ages were dancing—from wizened grandmothers to children barely able to walk. They danced in couples, in groups—some even on their own. The music was provided by fiddlers who were standing on the bales of straw that Rose, Nieve, and Cristóbal had vacated.

  Rose suddenly spotted a face she recognized. The French Gypsy chief Jean Beau-Marie was dancing near the musicians, executing a complicated routine that involved rapid crossing and uncrossing of the feet. It reminded Rose of the tap-dancing classes she had been sent to as a child. She’d never been able to get the hang of it. If there was any Gypsy blood in her veins, it hadn’t bestowed the gift for dancing.

  “Rose! Viens par ici!” Come over here!

  Jean bounded toward her, his legs thin but powerful, like a grasshopper. He kissed her on both cheeks. She could smell something stronger than wine on his breath. Brandy, possibly, or some homemade brew.

  “I can’t dance with you,” she said. “What would I do with Gunesh?”

  “You can tie him to that fig tree,” Jean replied. “He’ll be quite safe. We’ll be able to watch him while we dance.”

  Rose hesitated. She did love dancing, even though she wasn’t very good at it. “All right,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”

  With Gunesh safely tethered to the tree, she followed Jean into the midst of the dancers. He took her hand in his, raising her arm over her head and twirling her around. Then he lifted her by the waist and spun with her, making her so dizzy she staggered like a drunk when he set her down.

  “Jean! Enough!” She laughed, gasping for breath as she leaned on his arm for support. “Can’t we just do a normal dance?” She glanced at the Gypsy revelers around them. There was no such thing as normal. This was wilder than anything she’d seen in the Sussex marshes—and it was a world away from the sedate waltzes and foxtrots of London ballrooms.

  Jean turned up his hands in a helpless shrug. “Would you like a drink?” He led her back to the tree where Gunesh was tethered, walking a little unsteadily himself. Rose wasn’t sure if the dancing or the alcohol was to blame. “We can get wine over there,” Jean went on, jerking his head at a stall opposite the church. “But I have something stronger back at the field.”

  “Wine is fine, thank you. I’ll get it.” She wasn’t sure what to make of him. He had been so quiet and self-effacing earlier on. The drink had changed him. She wondered if it was his way of blotting out the memories that haunted him. Was the invitation to partake of something stronger a veiled attempt to get her into bed? She hoped not.

  She left him to fuss over Gunesh while she went to the stall. She was handing out the money for the wine when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “¡Rose, pensé que habí
as ido!” I thought you’d gone! Cristóbal looked as if he’d just unearthed buried treasure.

  “I had to go and feed my dog.” She smiled back. “He’s over there.”

  “Looks like someone’s trying to steal him . . .” Cristóbal was off before she could stop him.

  “It’s all right—he’s my friend!” Her shout was drowned by the cacophony around her. Grabbing her bottle of wine, she tried to catch up with him, but her way was blocked by a flower seller with a huge basket of carnations.

  “Vous voulez acheter?”

  “Non, merci.” Rose waved away the peppery blooms thrust under her nose.

  By the time she reached the fig tree, Jean Beau-Marie had vanished.

  “My friend—where did he go?”

  “He said he had to do something.” Cristóbal shrugged.

  Rose scanned the seething mass of people in the square. “But he was going to have some wine.”

  Cristóbal grinned. “I can help you drink that.”

  “Where’s Lola?”

  “She’s taken Nieve off to bed. There’s another competition tomorrow.”

  “Another? I thought you’d won!” She shook her head. “It was breathtaking. You had the whole audience under a spell.”

  “That was just the first round—tomorrow is the final. Mucho parné.”

  Rose frowned, puzzled by the mixture of Spanish and kalo.

  “Dinero. Mucho dinero.”

  “Ah—money!” Rose mimed coins slipping through her fingers.

  Cristóbal nodded. “If we win, we get five thousand francs.”

  Rose did a quick calculation in her head, based on what she’d spent on groceries in Arles. French currency was worth nowhere near as much as before the war, in the days when she’d stayed with her aunt and uncle in Paris. But five thousand francs was still a lot of money. “That’s a big prize,” she said.

  “Yes, it is.”