I shook off my reverie. A case could be made, but I still did not like it, and I hastened to tell Brisbane so.
“It is the likeliest explanation,” he maintained, but he was clearly thinking the matter over. We said nothing further, for we had come to Granny Bones’ caravan and she beckoned us with a smile. For the rest of the day, we stayed with her, chatting with the constant stream of family who came to pay their respects to Granny and her prodigal grandson. Once more I was put in mind of a royal court, for she gave the impression of granting audiences as the various relations came forward, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, to murmur their greetings and stare openly at Brisbane and his gorgio wife. Some of them were thoroughly friendly, expressing themselves with wide smiles and words of welcome. Some were more restrained, offering the barest courtesies and taking their leave as soon as they could.
Even Rook paid his compliments, bringing me a gift which he dropped onto my lap with wide, unblinking eyes. The little bundle of fur wriggled on my skirts and gave a tiny squeak.
“Rook, what the devil—” I broke off. “Good Lord, it’s a dormouse!”
The tiny creature stared up at me with enormous black teardrop eyes, sooty against the pale gold of its fur. The whole of its little body trembled.
“Poor little thing, you’re quite damp now,” I observed with a repressive look at Rook. He had fairly drowned the poor fellow in his mouth, and I took out my handkerchief to dry it off.
Brisbane looked over my shoulder. “It seems sound enough. I don’t think Rook did any real damage to him. Do you mean to make it a frock?” he asked, arching a brow as I wrapped the pitiful dormouse in my handkerchief.
“No, but it’s had a terrible fright. Can you imagine how awful it must have been with those tremendous teeth coming down over him? It’s a wonder he didn’t die straight off from the horror of it.”
“You do realise once you set him loose, one of the dogs will surely take him before he can make it home again?”
Brisbane nodded towards the pack of lurchers that skulked about the camp. The Roma used them for poaching, and indeed that would have been Rook’s fate had he not been born pure white. No Rom would ever use a white lurcher for poaching, and so Brisbane had acquired the outcast dog; but from the little dormouse on my lap it was quite apparent that although his coat might be less than desirable, Rook lacked nothing in hunting skills.
“That’s why I shall not set him loose,” I said suddenly. “I shall keep him as a pet.”
“Are you quite sure?” Brisbane asked. “Mice bite.”
I put out a fingertip and the dormouse reached up and touched it with a velvety paw, shaking hands as politely as a duchess.
“Quite.”
Whilst Granny brewed tea, I asked Brisbane about the Roma who had been less than friendly as they paid their respects to the grandson of Granny Bones. By way of reply, he lit one of his favourite thin Spanish cigars and shrugged.
“I am not actually welcome here,” he said simply.
“But we have spent the better part of the day being greeted by your family,” I protested.
“Granny’s family,” he corrected. “They will do as Granny wishes and make the proper gestures. Some of them, like Ludo and Lala and Wee Geordie, will actually mean them. But the rest would just as soon see me hang.”
“But why? You are one of them.”
Brisbane’s mouth turned upwards at the corners, but it was not a true smile. He took a deep draught of the pungent smoke. “I am half a Gypsy and half a Scot and neither side really wants to claim me. The Roma respect me a little because they think I spend my time solving the problems of silly gorgios and taking their money and because I am the son of Mariah Young. The rest of them—” He broke off and shrugged again.
“Was it really safe to come here then? If there are Roma who would betray you, perhaps we ought to go else where.”
“Betray me? Not in a thousand years,” he swore. “I am still the grandson of Granny Bones and I am enough of a Rom that any man here would sooner die than give me up to an outsider. But within the camp—” he paused and his smile returned, a genuine one this time “—well, I always watch my back just to be sure.”
“You do an injustice to your brothers,” Granny scolded. She had returned with steaming mugs of wickedly strong tea and she folded herself into a sitting position on the steps of the vardo, as supple as a willow for all her years. She handed round the tea and took a deep draught of the stuff herself. As she did so, I realised my new charge had fallen asleep on my lap. I opened my bodice and tucked him inside, making a little nest of the handkerchief as Brisbane grinned at Granny Bones. “Surely you do not believe anyone here is going to slay the fatted calf for me.”
“No one here would piss on you to put out the flames if you were on fire,” Granny said flatly, “but there is not a body in this camp—man, woman or child—who would harm anything or anyone under my protection.” She gave a decisive nod of the head to punctuate her declaration.
“True enough,” Brisbane acknowledged.
“I am shuvani,” Granny told me. “You know this word?”
“I do. I had the pleasure of meeting Rosalie. She was very kind to me,” I said, remembering the close relationship I had shared, albeit briefly, with Brisbane’s youngest aunt.
Granny Bones gave a little snort. “Rosalie is a good girl, but she has no power. She brews her potions and crafts her love spells, but she does not work with the dark side.”
“The dark side?” I was intrigued and a little frightened.
Granny tipped her head, giving me an appraising look with her bright black eyes. “If a shuvani is to be really powerful, she must learn to work with the dark as well as the light, little one. Granny Bones knows both sides of the coin.”
“I can well imagine it,” I told her.
She rose suddenly and put out her little monkey’s paw of a hand. “Come, child. Granny will show you.”
I flung Brisbane a questioning glance, but he merely sat, smoking his cigar as Granny drew me away.
“There is a child who is overlooked by the evil eye. I am to cleanse him today. You would like to see this.” It was not a question, and Granny did not wait for a reply. She kept hold of me and took me through the camp, calling orders as she strode along. Women scurried in her wake, gathering themselves and their children, and in a very few minutes we were assembled at the edge of the pond. There were no grown men, only women and children. A small boy of perhaps two or three years was brought forward. He did not stir from his mother’s arms and his eyes were those of a sleepwalker, vague and filmy. His mother looked to be no more than seventeen, and she carried herself with painfully erect posture and dry eyes, defiantly, but it was a brittle sort of defiance, and I thought she might break from the strain of it all. Another woman, the child’s grandmother, I expected, stood with the mother, her head bowed and her eyes red from weeping.
Granny gave a series of orders which were instantly carried out. The child was divested of his clothing and made to lie upon the ground. He made no sign of reluctance although the afternoon sun was weak and the breeze cool. It ruffled the trees and raised gooseflesh on the boy, but he lay still as a sacrifice.
Another woman came forward to bring Granny Bones a vessel of water, and as I watched, a quantity of salt was mixed in. Lala came to stand near me, murmuring explanations.
“Salt is cleansing, as is moonlight. If the moon were full, Granny would leave the water under the light of the moon to purify it. White water is life-giving,” she told me. “Why?”
“Because it represents the fluid of the man when he lies with his woman,” she said with a thorough lack of embarrassment.
I coughed so hard I began to choke and she struck me hard upon the back. I peeked in to look at my dormouse, but the blow had not disturbed him.
“Did you not know this?” Lala asked, her expression curious. “It is very good for the pores, as well, to make a woman’s complexion beautiful.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She began to mime the process then, and I touched her hands. “I think I understand now. Thank you.”
She peered at my face. “Your complexion is very good, but you must make use of Nicky if it is ever a problem,” she advised. “His would be good.”
“Oh,” was all the conversation I could manage for the moment.
“Because he is handsome,” she said, speaking as if to a rather backwards child. “You would not want the stuff of an ugly man,” she said, elbowing me with a meaningful nod.
“Of course not,” I agreed.
Thankfully, at that moment, the preparations had concluded and Granny began the ritual. She walked clockwise around the boy, reciting an incantation, and each time she came to the head, she took a deep draught of the salted water and spewed it out in a fine spray over the child’s naked body. Seven times she did this, each time louder and more vehement, until at last, on the seventh she lifted her arms and gave a great shout and the boy sat up with a gasp, his eyes wide. He was entirely himself then, for he looked at his mother and raised his arms and cried out.
Immediately, the women began to celebrate, falling upon the young mother, whose tears fell freely now. She scooped up her boy, wrapping him in a shawl and embracing him as the women praised Granny for removing the evil eye. There was much laughter and tears, and Granny instructed them to feed the child and watch him carefully.
The crowd dispersed then, and Granny Bones took my arm to return to her vardo. She was walking more slowly now, and I wondered what the ritual had taken from her that she seemed suddenly older.
“It requires great effort and energy to cast off the evil eye,” she said before I could ask. “I am not so young anymore.”
“It was remarkable,” I told her truthfully.
“The old ways are the best. Gorgios forget that. They like their science and their fancy new machines and their engines and their houses. But we were not meant to live so far from the mother,” she said, striking the earth with her heel. A little bit of the soil came up around her foot and she bent to take a small piece into her mouth. “Honest soil, the flesh of the mother. And we desecrate her when we forget.”
We walked a moment in silence and to my astonishment, I felt a tremendous calm steal over me. I turned and saw Granny’s lips moving soundlessly.
“Granny,” I said sharply. “What are you doing?”
She made me wait until she came to the end of her recitation, then shrugged. “A little protection for you both. That is all.”
“And you were not going to tell me?”
She paused and turned to me, putting both hands to my face. “You make him as happy as any woman could. I wanted a Roma wife for him, so his babies would be Roma and I could hold them upon my knee and sing them the old cradlesongs. But it was not to be, and I know better than to argue with the wind. It only makes you hoarse and the wind doesn’t care,” she said. “But he wants you and you must be kept safe if he is to be happy.”
“Thank you,” I told her, very moved by her words.
She dropped her hands and shrugged. “No matter. But if you ever make him unhappy, there is no corner of the earth far enough for you to hide from me.”
Her eyes bored into me and it was quite like staring down a hawk. I had no doubt she would curse my very bones if I disappointed her, and in that moment, I was more than a little afraid of her.
“I shall remember it,” I promised her.
“See that you do.”
We walked on, saying nothing for a moment, and it was companionable, the silence that lay between us. But I felt compelled to confide in her, and we were still some distance from her vardo when I spoke.
“I worry for him,” I said in such a low, small voice I was startled when she made me a reply.
“He was an old man even in his cradle,” she said. “He knew what he wanted and he meant to have it. He has always been so.”
I nodded. “I understand what you mean. It’s that determination in him that frightens me sometimes. He will not accept himself for what he is, and the means he takes to forget…”
I broke off, remembering things I would happily have banished from my memory forever. Brisbane, crouching like a wounded animal, shielding his eyes from the light and the pain of the headaches that tormented him.
“I know he does not want the visions, but I wonder if the alternatives are worse,” I burst out. “The things he doses himself with, the absinthe and the hashish and the opium.”
She looked at me sharply. “He touches opium? Keep him away from it. He has had troubles with it in the past.”
I hastened to reassure her. “He does not use it now, but I know he has in the past, and I know it was not good for him.” I did not mention the hypocrisy of my joining him in an occasional languid smoke from the hookah pipe.
Granny Bones was watching me out of the tail of her eye, her attention seemingly fixed upon a little bird pecking at thistle seeds upon the ground.
“Hey, nonny, little bird, peck, peck, peck,” she said softly.
I pursed my lips in impatience. Granny had been sharp as a new pin for the whole of our visit until I had need of her advice.
“Be calm,” she said soothingly, and I realised she was not talking to the bird.
“How am I supposed to be calm? I worry,” I retorted.
She gave a snort. “Then you are more stupid than I supposed. Worry, what is that? A pointless thing is Master Worry—an intruder. He steals into your house and creeps into your bed and what do you do, child? Do you push him away and tell him to be gone and bolt the door fast against him? No, you move over and let him have the good pillow and the best quilt to warm himself.” She flapped a hand in disgust. “Worry never did a man a bit of good. All he does is rob one’s peace and make lines on the face.” She peered at my skin then, scrutinising the corners of my eyes. “Myrrh. Throw a handful onto the fire and bathe your face in the vapours. It will soften those wrinkles.”
“I do not have wrinkles.”
She laughed—a rusty, wheezing sound—and slapped me soundly upon the back. “And now you worry again. Don’t. It is bad for the digestion, too.”
We walked on and I tried once more to make her understand my troubles. “Telling someone not to worry is a rather specious bit of advice, don’t you think?”
She shrugged. “You are not Roma. I give good advice to Roma. You are a gorgio. I do not understand your ways.”
“But I am asking about Brisbane, and he is a Rom,” I pointed out triumphantly.
Granny paused again, crossing her arms over her low breasts and giving me a sigh. “You want an answer to a man who is not a problem to be solved. He is no equation of mathematics, child. He is a man and a complicated one. I will give you a willow-bark tonic that will help with the headaches, but besides this, there is nothing I can do. He chases shadows. He is haunted by what he cannot see, ghosts that are as fleeting as moonlight or smoke. There is nothing to be done for him unless he wishes it,” she added, and as she finished, she set her jaw in a way that I had seen Brisbane do only too often. It meant finality, and I knew better than to press the issue further.
“Very well,” I murmured.
Granny peered at me. “And don’t sulk. It, too, is bad for the complexion. Remind me to give you a tonic.”
The Seventeenth Chapter
I never heard so musical a discord, such sweet thunder.
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream
There was a feast that night, a celebration of sorts for the child recalled to his senses, and much merriment ensued. Flasks of pear brandy were passed from hand to hand, and although I was offered mine in a cup—for my gorgio blood was unclean to them and would taint the shared bottle—it was kept full. There were stories told in a tongue I did not speak, but Brisbane murmured interpretations to me. There was dancing and music, violins scraping as skirts flew and feet stamped. Even the dancing bears came out, for Ludo brought them on gilded leath
er leashes, wearing their scarlet waistcoats and stepping as neatly as opera dancers at his commands. I longed to photograph them, and I was bitterly disappointed that I had come away without my camera. I wanted to capture them all, and I promised myself I would return as soon as possible to take photographs. In the meanwhile, I ate plateful after plateful of delicious things and drank a quantity of very good wine, which I suspected had been pilfered from a rather excellent cellar, and if anyone noticed that I occasionally passed little titbits inside my blouse they were polite enough not to remark upon it. The dormouse took each offering daintily as a princess, wiping each whisker carefully afterwards and blinking those wide black eyes as it stared up at me. Rook sulked a little until I found him another great bone to gnaw upon, and then he settled down happily. At one point, I noticed Brisbane was absent, but it was not out of the ordinary for the men to form groups of their own to gossip and tell stories, so I dismissed the thought and accepted another cup of pear brandy.
After I had eaten, Lala pressed her youngest child upon me, and the infant sat in my lap, clapping its sticky hands until I passed it along to someone else. But the precedent had been set, and from that moment on, I was seldom without a child in my lap or at my feet, particularly the girls, who seemed vastly interested in my pale skin and green eyes. The older girls scrutinised my clothes, which they considered hopelessly drab and dull, and pitied me my jewels. I had come away with few, only my wedding ring and the silver Medusa pendant that I accounted more precious than any of the emeralds and diamonds in my collection. But it was an unworthy thing to these girls, accustomed as they were to the warm seduction of gold. I was a curiosity to them, for although they often moved amongst the English for purposes of commerce, they had seldom if ever held a lengthy conversation with one. They had heard I was rich and that my father had a title, but they had expected better of me, I realised. They wanted pearls and satin and a great carriage with horses trimmed in plumes. Instead, I wore a tweed country suit and had arrived on foot with a carpetbag. I was a sore disappointment, I think, but they asked many questions and I was happy to answer them. They were particularly interested in the plumbing arrangements at our house, and turned shocked faces when I described the water closet.
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