by Alan Bradley
“Oh, do stop it!” she said, clutching at my sleeve. “Please desist. My heartstrings are playing Mozart’s Requiem, and a fugitive tear is making its way to my right eye, even as we speak.”
I wandered away with a careless whistle. I’d deal with her insolence later.
“Ow! Leave off, Brookie! You’re ’urtin’ me.”
The whining voice was coming from somewhere behind the shove ha’penny booth and, when I recognized it as belonging to Colin Prout, I stopped to listen.
By flattening myself against the stone wall of the church and keeping well back behind the canvas that draped the raffle booth, I could eavesdrop in safety. Even better, I was pleased to find that I had an unexpectedly clear view of Colin through the gaps in the booth’s raw lumber.
He was dancing at the end of Brookie Harewood’s arm like a great spectacled fish, his thick eyeglasses knocked askew, his dirty blond hair a hayrick, his large, damp mouth hanging open, gasping for air.
“Leave off. I didn’t do nothin’.”
With his other hand, Brookie took hold of the seat of Colin’s baggy trousers and swiveled him round to face the smoking remains of the Gypsy’s tent.
“Who did that, then, eh?” he demanded, shaking the boy to accentuate his words. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fire, there’s matches. And where there’s matches, there’s Colin Prout.”
“ ’Ere,” Colin said, trying to ram a hand into his pocket. “Count ’em! You just count ’em, Brookie. Same number as I had yesterday. Three. I ain’t used a one.”
As Brookie released his grip, Colin fell to the ground, rolled over on his elbows, dug into his trouser pocket, and produced a box of wooden matches, which he waved at his tormentor.
Brookie raised his head and sniffed the air, as if for guidance. His greasy cap and India rubber boots, his long moleskin coat and, in spite of the hot summer weather, a woolen scarf that clung like a scarlet serpent to his bulldog neck made him look like a rat catcher out of Dickens.
Before I could even wonder what to do, Colin had scrambled to his feet, and the two of them had ambled away across the churchyard, Colin dusting himself off and shrugging elaborately, as though he didn’t care.
I suppose I should have stepped out from behind the booth, admitted I was responsible for the fire, and demanded that Brookie release the boy. If he refused, I could easily have run for the vicar, or called for any one of the other able-bodied men who were within earshot. But I didn’t. And the simple reason, I realized with a little chill, was this: I was afraid of Brookie Harewood.
Brookie was Bishop’s Lacey’s riffraff.
“Brookie Harewood?” Feely had sniffed, the day Mrs. Mullet suggested that Brookie be hired to help Dogger with weeding the garden and trimming the hedges at Buckshaw. “But he’s a remittance man, isn’t he? Our lives wouldn’t be worth tuppence with him hanging about the place.”
“What’s a remittance man?” I asked when Feely had flounced from the kitchen.
“I don’t know, luv, I’m sure,” Mrs. M had replied. “His mother’s that lady as paints over in Malden Fenwick.”
“Paints?” I had asked. “Houses?”
“Houses? Bless you! No, it’s pitchers she paints. The gentry on ’orseback and that. P’raps she’ll even paint you someday in your turn. You and Miss Ophelia and Miss Daphne.”
At which I had let out a snort and dashed from the room. If I were to be painted in oils, shellacked, and framed, I would be posed in my chemical laboratory and nowhere else.
Hemmed in by beakers, bell jars, and Erlenmeyer flasks, I would be glancing up impatiently from my microscope in much the same way as my late great-uncle Tarquin de Luce is doing in his portrait, which still hangs in the picture gallery at Buckshaw. Like Uncle Tar, I would be visibly annoyed. No horses and gentry for me, thank you very much.
A light pall of smoke still hung over the churchyard. Now that most of the onlookers had wandered off, the charred and smoldering remains of the Gypsy’s tent were clearly visible beside the path. But it wasn’t so much the scorched circle in the grass that interested me as what had been hidden behind it: a brightly painted Gypsy caravan.
It was butter yellow with crimson shutters, and its lathwork sides, which sloped gently outwards beneath a rounded roof, gave it the look of a loaf of bread that has puffed out beyond the rim of the baking pan. From its spindly yellow wheels to its crooked tin chimney, and from its arched cathedral windows to the intricately carved wooden brackets on each side of the door, it was something that might have come rumbling out of a dream. As if to perfect the scene, an ancient, swaybacked horse was grazing in a picturesque manner among the leaning gravestones at the far corner of the churchyard.
It was a Romany cob. I recognized it at once from photographs I had seen in Country Life. With its feathered feet and tail, and a long mane that overhung its face (from beneath which it peered coyly out like Veronica Lake), the cob looked like a cross between a Clydesdale and a unicorn.
“Flavia, dear,” said a voice behind me. It was Denwyn Richardson, the vicar of St. Tancred’s. “Dr. Darby would be most obliged if you’d run in and fetch a fresh pitcher of lemonade from the ladies in the kitchen.”
My ruffled glance must have made him feel guilty. Why is it that eleven-year-old girls are always treated as servants?
“I’d go for it myself, you see, but the good doctor feels that the poor lady may well be put off by my clerical collar and so forth and, well …”
“Happy to, Vicar,” I said cheerily, and I meant it. Being the Lemonade Bearer would give me access to the St. John’s Ambulance tent.
Before you could say “snap!” I had loped into the parish hall kitchen (“Excuse me. Medical emergency!”), made off with a frosty jug of iced lemonade, and was now in the dim light of the first-aid tent, pouring the stuff into a cracked tumbler.
“I hope you’re all right,” I said, handing it to the Gypsy. “Sorry about the tent. I’ll pay for it, of course.”
“Mmmm,” Dr. Darby said. “No need. She’s already explained that it was an accident.”
The woman’s awful red-rimmed eyes watched me warily as she drank.
“Dr. Darby,” the vicar said, sticking his head through the flaps of the tent like a turtle, so that his dog collar wouldn’t show, “if you can spare a moment … it’s Mrs. Peasley at the skittles pitch. She’s come all over queer, she says.”
“Mmmm,” the doctor said, snapping shut his black bag. “What you need, my old gal,” he said to the Gypsy, “is a good rest.” And to me: “Stay with her. I shan’t be long.
“Never rains,” he remarked to no one in particular on his way out.
For the longest time I stood awkwardly staring at my feet, trying to think of something to say. I dared not look the Gypsy in the eye.
“I’ll pay for the tent,” I repeated. “Even though it was an accident.”
That set her off coughing again and it was evident, even to me, that the fire had taken its toll on her already shaky lungs. I waited, helpless, for the gasping to subside.
When at last it did, there was another long, unnerving silence.
“The woman,” the Gypsy said at last. “The woman on the mountain. Who was she?”
“She was my mother.” I said. “Her name was Harriet de Luce.”
“The mountain?”
“Somewhere in Tibet, I think. She died there ten years ago. We don’t often speak of it at Buckshaw.”
“Buckshaw means nothing to me.”
“It’s where I live. South of the village,” I said with a vague wave of my hand.
“Ah!” she said, fixing me with a piercing look. “The big house. Two wings folded back.”
“Yes, that’s it,” I said. “Not far from where the river loops round.”
“Yes,” the woman said. “I’ve stopped there. Never knew what the place was called.”
Stopped there? I could hardly believe it.
“The lady let my rom
and me camp in a grove by the river. He needed to rest—”
“I know the spot!” I said. “It’s called the Palings. All elder bushes and—”
“Berries,” she added.
“But wait!” I said. “The lady? There’s been no lady at Buckshaw since Harriet died.”
The Gypsy went on as though I’d said nothing.
“A beautiful lady she was, too. Bit like you,” she added, peering at me closely, “now that I see you in the light.”
But then her face darkened. Was it my imagination, or was her voice growing stronger as she spoke.
“Then we got turned out,” she said angrily. “They said we wasn’t wanted there no more. ’Twas the summer Johnny Faa died.”
“Johnny Faa?”
“My rom. My husband. Died in the middle of a dusty road, clutching at his chest, like, and cursing the Gajo—the Englishman—that had turned us out.”
“And who was that?” I asked, already fearing the answer.
“Never asked his name. Straight as a ramrod on two sticks, the devil!”
Father! I was sure of it! It was Father who, after Harriet’s death, had run the Gypsies off his estate.
“And Johnny Faa, your husband … he died because of it, you say?”
The Gypsy nodded, and I could see by the sadness in her eyes that it was true.
“Because he needed to rest?”
“Needed to rest,” she repeated in a whisper, “and so do I.”
And that was when it came to me. Before I could change my mind I had blurted out the words.
“You can come back to Buckshaw. Stay as long as you like. It will be all right … I promise.”
Even as I said it I knew that there would be a great flaming row with Father, but somehow that didn’t matter. Harriet had once given these people refuge and my blood would hardly allow me to do otherwise.
“We’ll park your caravan at the Palings,” I said, “in the bushes. No one even needs to know you’re there.”
Her black eyes scanned my face, darting quickly from side to side. I held out my hand to her for encouragement.
“Mmmm. Go on, old girl. Take her up on it. Spot of rest would do you a world of good.”
It was Dr. Darby, who had slipped quietly back into the tent. He shot me an eighth of a wink. The doctor was one of Father’s oldest friends, and I knew that he, too, could already foresee the coming battle. He had viewed the field and weighed the risks even before he spoke. I wanted to hug him.
He placed his black bag on the table, rummaged in its depths, and extracted a corked bottle.
“Take as required for cough,” he said, handing it to the Gypsy. She stared at it dubiously.
“Go on,” he urged, “take it. It’s wicked bad luck to refuse a licensed practitioner, you know.
“I’ll help with the horse,” he volunteered. “Used to have one meself.”
Now he was putting on the old country doctor routine and I knew that, medically speaking, we were in the clear.
Knots of people stared as the doctor shepherded us towards the caravan. In no time at all he had the Gypsy’s horse in harness and the two of us settled on the wooden ledge that served as both doorstep and driving seat.
The old woman made a clucking noise and the villagers gave way on both sides as the caravan jerked into motion and began to rumble slowly along the churchyard path. From my high vantage point I looked down into the many upturned faces, but Feely’s and Daffy’s were not among them.
Good, I thought. They were most likely in one of the stalls stuffing their stupid faces with scones and clotted cream.
TWO
WE LUMBERED THROUGH THE high street, the sound of the horse’s hooves echoing loudly on the cobbles.
“What’s his name?” I asked, pointing at the ancient animal.
“Gry.”
“Gray?”
“Gry. ‘Horse’ in the Romany tongue.”
I tucked that odd bit of knowledge away for future use, looking forward to the time when I would be able to trot it out in front of my know-it-all sister, Daffy. Of course she would pretend that she knew it all along.
It must have been the loud clatter of our passage that brought Miss Cool, the village postmistress, scurrying to the front of her confectionery shop. When she spotted me seated beside the Gypsy, her eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth. In spite of the heavy plate-glass windows of the shop and the street between us, I could almost hear her gasp. The sight of Colonel Haviland de Luce’s youngest daughter being carried off in a Gypsy caravan, no matter how gaily it was painted, must have been a terrible shock.
I waved my hand like a frantic dust mop, fingers spread ludicrously wide apart as if to say “What jolly fun!” What I wanted to do, actually, was to leap to my feet, strike a pose, and burst into one of those “Yo-ho for the open road!” songs they always play in the cinema musicals, but I stifled the urge and settled for a ghastly grin and an extra twiddle of the fingers.
News of my abduction would soon be flying everywhere, like a bird loose in a cathedral. Villages were like that, and Bishop’s Lacey was no exception.
“We all lives in the same shoe,” Mrs. Mullet was fond of saying, “just like Old Mother ’Ubbard.”
A harsh cough brought me back to reality. The Gypsy woman was now bent over double, hugging her ribs. I took the reins from her hands.
“Did you take the medicine the doctor gave you?” I asked.
She shook her head from side to side, and her eyes were like two red coals. The sooner I could get this wagon to the Palings, and the woman tucked into her own bed, the better it would be.
Now we were passing the Thirteen Drakes and Cow Lane. A little farther east, the road turned south towards Doddingsley. We were still a long way from Buckshaw and the Palings.
Just beyond the last row of cottages, a narrow lane known to locals as the Gully angled off to the right, a sunken stony cutting that skirted the west slope of Goodger Hill and cut more or less directly cross country to the southeast corner of Buckshaw and the Palings. Almost without thinking, I hauled on the reins and turned Gry’s head towards the narrow lane.
After a relatively smooth first quarter mile, the caravan was now lurching alarmingly. As we went on, bumping over sharp stones, the track became more narrow and rutted. High banks pressed in on either side, so steeply mounded with tangled outcroppings of ancient tree roots that the caravan, no matter how much it teetered, could not possibly have overturned.
Just ahead, like the neck of a great green swan, the mossy branch of an ancient beech tree bent down in a huge arc across the road. There was scarcely enough space to pass beneath it.
“Robber’s Roost,” I volunteered. “It’s where the highwaymen used to hold up the mail coaches.”
There was no response from the Gypsy: She seemed uninterested. To me, Robber’s Roost was a fascinating bit of local lore.
In the eighteenth century, the Gully had been the only road between Doddingsley and Bishop’s Lacey. Choked with snow in the winter, flooded by icy runoffs in spring and fall, it had gained the reputation, which it still maintained after two hundred years, of being rather an unsavory, if not downright dangerous, place to hang about.
“Haunted by history,” Daffy had once told me as she was inking it onto a map she was drawing of “Buckshaw & Environs.”
With that sort of recommendation, the Gully should have been one of my favorite spots in all of Bishop’s Lacey, but it was not. Only once had I ventured nearly its whole length on Gladys, my trusty bicycle, before a peculiar and unsettling feeling at the nape of my neck had made me turn back. It had been a dark day of high, gusty winds, cold showers, and low scudding clouds, the kind of day …
The Gypsy snatched the reins from my hands, gave them a sharp tug. “Hatch!” she said gruffly, and pulled the horse up short.
High on the mossy branch a child was perched, its thumb jammed firmly into its mouth.
I could tell by its red hair it was one of th
e Bulls.
The Gypsy woman made the sign of the cross and muttered something that sounded like “Hilda Muir.”
“Ja!” she added, flicking the reins, “Ja!” and Gry jerked the caravan back into motion. As we moved slowly under the branch, the child let down its legs and began pounding with its heels on the caravan’s roof, creating a horrid hollow drumming noise behind us.
If I’d obeyed my instincts, I’d have climbed up and at the very least given the brat a jolly good tongue-lashing. But one look at the Gypsy taught me that there were times to say nothing.
Rough brambles snatched at the caravan as it jolted and lurched from side to side in the lane, but the Gypsy seemed not to notice.
She was hunched over the reins, her watery eyes fixed firmly on some far-off horizon, as if only her shell were in this century, the rest of her escaped to a place far away in some dim and misty land.
The track broadened a little and a moment later we were moving slowly past a decrepit picket fence. Behind the fence were a tumbledown house that seemed to be hammered together from cast-off doors and battered shutters, and a sandy garden littered with trash which included a derelict cooker, a deep old-fashioned pram with two of its wheels missing, a number of fossilized motorcars, and, strewn everywhere, hordes of empty tins. Clustered here and there around the property stood sagging outbuildings—little more than makeshift lean-tos thrown together with rotten, mossy boards and a handful of nails.
Over it all, arising from a number of smoking rubbish heaps, hung a pall of gray acrid smoke which made the place seem like some hellish inferno from the plates of a Victorian illustrated Bible. Sitting in a washtub in the middle of the muddy yard was a small child, which jerked its thumb from its mouth the instant it saw us and broke into a loud and prolonged wailing.
Everything seemed to be coated with rust. Even the child’s red hair added to the impression that we had strayed into a strange, decaying land where oxidation was king.
Oxidation, I never tire of reminding myself, is what happens when oxygen attacks. It was nibbling away at my own skin at this very moment and at the skin of the Gypsy seated beside me, although it was easy to see that she was much further gone than I was.
