The Snow Gypsy

by Lindsay Jayne Ashford

  Don’t you believe in heaven, Rose?

  Now it was Bill Lee’s voice she heard. Calm and comforting. She could imagine him walking through a place like this, bending down to pluck a flower with his long brown fingers and threading it through his hatband next to the feather. And he would know the names of all the birds, whose sweet, distant calls drifted across the hillside.

  Did she believe in heaven? If there was such a place, she hoped it would be like this. A place where the spirits of the dead glided over perfumed, sunlit meadows to a symphony of birdsong. Yes, she thought, Nathan would be happy here. Wherever his earthly body had been left, his spirit would find a home on this mountain.

  She raised herself up on one elbow and reached into her bag. Zoltan had given her more cherries as a parting gift, and there were still some left. The juice moistened her parched mouth. She dug a little hole in the ground when she’d finished eating and dropped one of the stones into it. Could a cherry tree grow this high up? She wasn’t sure. But it seemed a fitting way to remember her brother.

  After another hour of walking, she spotted the roofs of houses in the distance. Above them she could see the top of the mountain, still dusted with snow around the peak. It seemed incredible that snow could persist in a landscape so far south in the middle of June. She thought of Lola, who would have had to walk right over the top to get to Granada. It would be a difficult challenge in summer—but Lola had crossed the mountains in early April. It was little short of a miracle that she and Nieve had survived.

  It wasn’t long before Rose passed a wooden sign with pine trees and the name of the village carved into it. Soon she was among people again—women strolling along with shopping bags and men standing on street corners, smoking cigarettes.

  Capileira was a slightly larger version of Pampaneira. It had the same steep cobbled streets, with water running from an abundance of springs. There were more shops and cafés and a freshly painted building that bore a sign saying “Hotel,” as well as a humbler posada. Rose wondered if she’d made a mistake choosing to stay in Pampaneira rather than here. But she wouldn’t have been able to afford hotel prices—and if she had settled on Capileira, she would never have met Zoltan.

  The memory of his face, smiling as he’d waved them goodbye yesterday, produced an unexpected warmth in her belly. She smothered the sensation like a Gypsy throwing sand on a fire. The humiliation of what had happened with Cristóbal was still raw. She didn’t even want to think about getting involved with another man.

  After wandering around for half an hour, she spotted a street sign that led her straight to Lola’s old home. Calle Fragua—Forge Street. Halfway down it, the cobbles gave way to beaten earth peppered with goat droppings. She could hear a hammer striking metal as she approached the building at the far end. There were mules tethered outside and a couple of small naked children kicking up dust as they chased chickens out of an alleyway.

  Calle Fragua was on the northern boundary of the village, with sweeping views of the whole valley—an idyllic place for a child to grow up. Rose thought of Lola running around like these children, with no inkling of the horrors that lay ahead. She tried to imagine what it would have been like when the death squad arrived to drag her grandfather away. Probably he would have been working when they arrived, like the man she could hear hammering away now. And she thought of that morning when Lola had gone out with the goats, little knowing that she would never see her mother and brother alive again.

  It was hard to reconcile the picturesque scene she was looking at now with the atrocities that had taken place here less than a decade ago. She wondered who had taken over the forge when Lola’s family had been killed. She was tempted to go inside and ask questions. But she sensed it would be a fruitless exercise. There was nothing to be gained here by raking up the past.

  She walked back into the village as far as the church, stopping at a spring to refill her water bottle and pouring some into the bowl she carried in her bag for Gunesh. The church had a strange name: Nuestra Señora de la Cabeza—Our Lady of the Head. Rose thought it must mean the head of the valley. But it seemed strangely appropriate in view of the mental turmoil she’d been suffering since finding out about Nathan.

  The church door was open, and she decided to go inside. It was too hot to leave Gunesh out in the sun, and as there didn’t seem to be anyone else around, she told him to lie down on the cool stone floor near the door.

  The whitewashed walls were adorned with life-size plaster statues of saints whose lips were rather too red and complexions a little too pink. But near the altar was a black Madonna—very much like the statue of Saint Sara in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. A plaque on the wall explained that the church was dedicated to the miraculous appearance of the Virgin Mary to a Spanish shepherd at a place called Cerro de la Cabeza. She’d come to tell him where to find a painting of herself that had been made by the gospel writer Luke and was hidden in a mountain cave when the Moors conquered Andalucia. This statue, the plaque went on, was a re-creation of the painting.

  Rose liked the idea of Saint Luke painting Christ’s mother with dark skin. It seemed a much more accurate representation than the innumerable pale-complexioned, blue-eyed images hanging in art galleries. The statue was wearing a white robe embellished with gold thread. The swirls of gold reminded Rose of one of the dresses Lola had worn at the fiesta in Provence. It was strange to think of her coming to this church as a child. Very likely she had been baptized in the stone font by the door. And she would have knelt at the altar to take her first communion, dressed as a little bride like the girls at the Corpus Christi procession in Pampaneira.

  There were candles flickering on a wooden stand to the left of the altar. Rose hadn’t come here with the intention of lighting a candle, but she suddenly felt impelled to do it. Taking one from the box beneath the stand, she held it to a flame. She murmured a prayer as she placed it with the others—for freedom for Lola.

  She hesitated as she delved into her bag for money to put in the box. She could hear Nathan whispering in her ear. What about me?

  Yes, she should light another one for him. And then two more—for Adelita and her baby.

  Have you forgotten us? That was her father. No, of course she hadn’t forgotten. One for him and one for her mother.

  And maybe you should light one for yourself.

  When all seven candles were burning, Rose stood for a while, staring at the flames until they blurred into each other. In that moment the barrage of voices stopped. She felt a calm she hadn’t experienced in months. It was a sense of timelessness, of life going on in this place generation after generation. It made her feel very small and insignificant. But not alone.

  As she made her way back down the nave, she thought of the book she’d carried with her from England, written by the nun Julian of Norwich. She hadn’t picked up the book since the trip from Provence. What had happened with Cristóbal had left her feeling very far away from what she thought of as God. But something in the act of lighting the candles had brought her back.

  She considered what had unfolded since the last time she’d stepped inside a church. In a few short weeks, she had found the answer to the question that had been eating away at her for eight years. And while it wasn’t the answer she would have wished for, there was a kind of peace in knowing it.

  Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. That kind of fear kills you without you realizing. Like bleeding inside.

  She needed to keep those words of Bill Lee’s in her mind. There was still so much she didn’t know. But tomorrow she would make herself go back up the mountain by the other path. The one that led to Maria’s house.

  Chapter 26

  Zoltan had already set up his market stall when Rose and Nieve passed through the village square on their way to school the next day. Nieve ran to say hello. After five minutes Rose literally had to drag her away.

  “Come on—you’ll be late for school!”

  “Will you come and see me dancin
g on Saturday?” Nieve called over her shoulder.

  “Yes, of course!” Zoltan called back. He arched his eyebrows at Rose: a look that said, Are you coming back?

  When she returned to the square, Zoltan was serving a queue of customers. She went to buy some lace for Nieve’s dance costume. Then she went to the place where Zoltan had tethered his mules, pleased to see that the sick one had recovered enough to come to market.

  “It’s healed up completely,” he called to her. “You’d never know there’d been a wound there, would you?” He scooped some cherries into a bag and brought them over to her. “It’s been busy this morning,” he said. “Lots of people getting ready for San Juan. The young men have a custom of hanging cherries on the doors of the girls they’re in love with. These are for you, by the way.” He smiled, cocking his head at the mule. “From him.”

  “Thank you.”

  As she tucked the bag away, he laid his hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length as his eyes searched her face.

  “I was worried about you yesterday,” he said. “I thought you might come—and when you didn’t, I . . .” He hesitated, frown lines creasing his forehead. “Are you okay?”

  Rose nodded. “I’m sorry you were worried. I just needed some time to take it all in. I went for a long walk—up to Capileira—and it did help. I’m going to go and find Maria now.”

  “You don’t want to wait until tomorrow?” He glanced at the baskets of fruit glistening in the sun.

  “It’s kind of you to offer—but I need to go there on my own this time.” She saw the flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “I’m prepared for whatever she can tell me, however bad it is. I just need to know—to get it over. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. “Just remember I’ll be here. If you want to talk.”

  She raised her hand across her chest, feeling for his fingers on her shoulder. “Thank you.” She wanted to kiss his hand but was afraid of sending out the wrong signals. Instead she drew it to her cheek and held it there. His skin felt warm and it smelled of cherries.

  Maria Andorra was milking goats when Rose found her. The pungent, earthy smell of the animals hit the back of Rose’s throat as she pushed open the door of the shed behind the farmhouse. She held Gunesh’s lead tight, afraid that he might break free and cause chaos.

  “I thought you’d be back.” Maria raised herself stiffly from the low milking stool, rubbing her left hip.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Rose said. “But I need to know what happened. Where it happened. And when. Otherwise I . . .”

  “You can’t really believe it?”

  Rose nodded.

  Maria picked up the pail of milk and covered it with a metal plate. “Come with me,” she said.

  Rose followed her through rows of potato plants until they reached the stream that ran through the farmland. Maria set the pail down in the shallow water, picking up stones to lay on top to keep the current from dislodging it. Then she eased herself down onto the grassy bank and patted the space beside her.

  “It was the day after Easter. The eighteenth day of April. As I said, I don’t keep track of the months up here—but that’s one date I do always know, because it’s my birthday.” Maria spread out her hands, turning them over to examine the knotted blue veins that snaked from the wrists to the knuckles. “I turned seventy that year. Your brother brought me a present. Something he’d made himself. A horse, it was.”

  Rose felt the tightness of threatened tears in her throat. She clenched her jaw, fighting them back.

  Maria took a clay pipe from the pocket of her skirt and tapped it against a stone. “It was a lovely thing. He’d carved it out of elder wood.” She stuffed a pinch of tobacco into the pipe and held a match to it, sucking in short, sharp breaths. The smell reminded Rose of sitting on the steps of Bill Lee’s caravan on that May evening, just weeks ago. If she’d known then what lay ahead, would she have set out on this journey?

  Maria took the pipe out of her mouth. “I remember how we laughed when he gave it to me, because he was wearing some old clothes of mine and the sleeves were far too short—you could see his hairy arms. I had to give him a shawl to cover them up. That was how he got away with going to the village in daylight, you see.”

  “Disguised as a woman?” Rose had a fleeting sense of something drifting up from her subconscious, almost within reach—but too fragile to grasp.

  “He told me he had to meet someone in Pampaneira,” Maria went on. “It was to do with getting him and his girl out of Spain.” Maria sucked on the pipe, casting a wary glance at Rose. “Did you know that she was pregnant?”

  “Yes,” Rose whispered. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

  “Such a wicked thing to do.” Maria blew out a wreath of blue smoke. “They killed twenty-five women from the villages around here that day. Dragged them away from their children—even tore a baby from its mother’s breast. The only rule they had—if you can call it that—was that they wouldn’t kill a child that was too young to have taken holy communion. They didn’t care if a woman was pregnant. In their twisted minds that didn’t count.”

  Rose could hear a bird calling from somewhere in the rushes on the other side of the stream. It sounded very far away, as if it inhabited some other realm. She felt as if she had floated out of her body and was looking down on the shell of herself sitting beside Maria.

  “Your brother wasn’t with Adelita when they burst into her house—but he saw them marching her through the village with the others they’d rounded up. He slipped into the line next to her and pulled her into an alleyway when they were going past the church. But someone saw them. The guards handcuffed him. He was taken to the ravine with all the others.”

  Rose was aware of a prickling sensation on her leg. It was a fly crawling over the bare flesh below her knee. She brushed it away. The movement brought her back from the trancelike state that had overcome her. Maria was describing it all in the kind of detail that suggested she had seen it herself. And yet Zoltan had said that she was up here when the shots were fired and had heard only a secondhand account of what happened from the other partisans.

  “How do you know?” Rose turned to look at her. “Who saw it?”

  Maria brushed a wisp of smoke-stained hair away from her furrowed forehead. “The wife of the comandante. I was treating her for pain in her legs. She was sitting in the window of her house the day it happened. And her husband told her the rest.” The dark irises of Maria’s eyes, ringed blue-white with age, flickered this way and that, as if she were watching it unfolding on a cinema screen. “He told his wife that they’d killed the English partisan they called the Shepherdess. The one who’d evaded them for so long by slipping in and out of the villages dressed as a woman. He said your brother had thrown himself in front of his girlfriend when the shooting started. He couldn’t save her, of course. No one survived.”

  The fragment of memory that had been hovering at the edge of Rose’s consciousness suddenly coalesced into a clear image. Bodies in a blizzard. All female, Lola had said, apart from her twin brother. When she had scrambled through the snow, frantically searching for her loved ones, she could have come within inches of Nathan’s corpse and mistaken it for the body of a woman.

  “He would have been a wonderful father.” The lines around Maria’s mouth deepened as she puffed on the pipe. “If only they’d got away a few weeks earlier. But Adelita was not strong. He was afraid she wouldn’t make it through the mountains. He was waiting for the weather to change.”

  Rose stared at her, clinging on to hope. Because Maria couldn’t know, could she, that a baby had been taken, alive, after the massacre? How could anyone but Lola have known that?

  “W . . . what h . . .” She was so choked up she could hardly get the words out. “What happened to their . . . remains?”

  Maria held the pipe above her lap, staring at the smoldering tobacco. “They weren’t given proper burials. People were too afraid, you see. The church s
aid the rojos were so vile that even the earth didn’t want them. One man went there a couple of days after the shooting, when the snow had melted. What he saw affected him so badly he died of a heart attack a week later.”

  “What? What did he see?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Believe me, whatever you tell me can’t be worse than what I’ve imagined.”

  Maria took another lungful of smoke. “He said one of the women must have given birth as she was dying. He saw the cord lying in the snow. But there was no baby. He thought an animal must have taken it.”

  Rose felt as if her heart had stopped beating. “Adelita?”

  Maria shook her head. “Her little one was spared that fate, at least.”

  Tears burned behind Rose’s eyes. With a handful of words, Maria had snatched away the last vestige of hope. Nieve was a stranger’s daughter, not Nathan’s. The child she had fantasized about was gone forever.

  “I’m sorry.” Maria placed her pale chicken-claw fingers on Rose’s sun-browned arm. “It’s such a terrible waste of life.”

  “Who was she?” Rose murmured. “The mother of the baby?”

  “Her name was Heliodora. She was a silk weaver. A Gypsy woman—one of the house-dwelling kind. She was highly skilled—she could create the most amazing patterns in the cloth she made. Her shawls were like paintings, full of flowers, butterflies, and birds.” Maria’s hand returned to her pipe. Pulling it out of her mouth, she tapped out the ashes and stuffed fresh tobacco into the bowl. “She and her husband came here from Morocco. They hadn’t been living in Pampaneira for very long. He was killed in ’37, in the backlash that followed the murder of the local priest.”

  “My brother wrote about that in his letter.”

  “Did he tell you that they paraded the priest through the village with a horse’s bridle round his neck?”

  “No, he didn’t mention that.”

  “It was a terrible business. They treated him like an animal, insulting him and blaspheming him. Then they made him drink vinegar, like Jesus on the cross, before killing him. Things were bad enough before, but what was done that day tore the village apart. Anyone who’d even been out on the streets when it happened was rounded up. Heliodora’s husband had been taking bales of silk to Órgiva that day, and he got caught up in it. Probably she didn’t even know she was pregnant when he died. When she started to show, there were all kinds of rumors flying around. People said the father was the merchant who’d employed her husband. Whether it was true or not, I don’t know. But the merchant’s wife denounced her. That’s why Heliodora was shot.”