The Gypsy's Curse

by Sara Whitford

  SIGN - Danger will come from afar

  SIGN - My livelihood will suffer

  SIGN - The town will begin to experience terrible trials

  WARNING - Avoid woman in violet dress

  What was that bell on string about? Was it a secret message?

  Once he had written all of those things down, he went back through the list and began adding notes, including scratching out things that seemed so vague they could just as well be said to anyone.

  The 19th of September 1767 Anno Domini, a Saturday.

  This is what the gypsy woman said to me:

  Someone from far away with dark features like my own who is no more - could be my father, but how would she know this unless she guessed?

  Said I have a fear - Everyone has fears. This is not specific and could be true of anyone—not helpful.

  Says I am skeptical—Yes. I am skeptical, but anyone with any sense could have seen that.

  Past is key to future, hidden darkness—Vague. This could apply to anybody about anything.

  Secret thing from past follows me—said it’s like a rate always chasing me (what is that?)—anyone might have something in their past that stays with them. Everyone has some kind of secret.

  Warnings of curse—

  SIGN - Danger will come from afar—this could be about that letter I got months ago, or it could be about a message that is still to come, or it could be she just made this up altogether.

  SIGN - My livelihood will suffer—??? I don’t think Emmanuel can make me stop being his apprentice, and anyway, I am his grandson. Maybe this is just something she concocted, or maybe this is about something that will affect his business.

  SIGN - The town will begin to experience terrible trials. No idea???

  WARNING - Avoid woman in violet dress. No idea ???

  What was that bell on string about? Was it a secret message?—Her daughter might use that to let her know she has someone else waiting for a reading, or maybe she uses it as some kind of signal or code.

  Adam thought about it and thought about it, but as much as he tried to convince himself there was nothing to her warnings, he couldn’t help but worry that there was. He didn’t know if he would talk to his grandfather about it. Right now he just hoped that a good night’s sleep would help him put it all out of his mind. Maybe in the morning he would be able to think more rationally. After all, he’d been tense lately because of the mystery of what was in that letter he’d received. Maybe that was just causing this current issue to seem like more of a problem than it actually was.

  Then again, what if Madame Endora had seen a vision of the letter he had received, and she knew it was a foreboding message? Maybe the letter was from someone connected with Eduardo and that was the secret darkness from the past she had mentioned—the one that was following him even now. And maybe now was when the events the letter warned about would start to come true.

  Chapter Six

  SUNDAY MORNING, ADAM WENT TO church, along with Emmanuel and everyone else who worked at Rogers’s Shipping Company. Some of those men, like Martin Smith for example, would never willingly go to church, but it was a requirement of their employment.

  Adam always marveled at the fact that the most pious person in his life was Emmanuel, and yet Emmanuel also had the most checkered past of anyone he knew. After all, one doesn’t sail in Blackbeard’s crew of rowdy pirates without picking up a few bad habits.

  The Reverend Miller had been slowly preaching through the Book of Acts since January and had come to chapter 16. Usually, the reverend would take two or three weeks to preach through a chapter with his congregation, but he had apparently gotten the message that there were gypsies in town and that there were many in his flock who had gone to their camp seeking the fortune-teller.

  In an effort to stem the tide of parishioners going there, the reverend sped through the first fifteen verses of the chapter until he came to the part about a servant girl who was possessed by a demon and therefore had the power of divination. It had profited her masters, until the Apostle Paul cast the demon out of her, freeing her of it. And of course that angered her masters, because they had lost their prize goose, so they had Paul and his colleague Silas thrown into jail.

  The preacher went on and on about the wickedness of consulting mediums and trying to see the future with things like tarot cards and crystal gazing, bringing up what seemed like every verse in Scripture that dealt with the topic.

  Adam thought it was a bit of a stretch to connect this particular passage of Scripture to the gypsies, even though divination was a common element. The theme of the passage was less about the evils of divination and more about the wickedness of her masters wanting to profit from her demon possession. Nevertheless, the fact that he sat through a nearly hour-long sermon hearing all about the evils of the practice did nothing to calm his nerves from the previous night.

  As soon as church was over, he briefly considered going to the tavern to talk to Valentine about it, just to avoid the inevitable “I told you so” from his grandfather, but he knew if he did, his mother would insist they go back to the camp to try and buy some sort of protective tokens or spells. Instead, he decided he’d talk with his grandfather—not to tell him about his visit with Madame Endora, but mostly to try and find out more about the bad experience he’d had with gypsies in his youth. Maybe something similar happened to him that would be helpful to hear.

  Adam, Emmanuel, and Boaz rode together in Emmanuel’s horse cart back to the warehouse. Adam hoped Boaz would take the rest of the afternoon to go fishing or something so he could have a chance to talk to his grandfather in private, but instead he stayed in the sitting room of the living quarters, working on a large wooden jigsaw puzzle of a map of the world. Emmanuel settled in his chair to read.

  At first Adam reclined on one of the settees. He tried to rest for a while, still hoping that Boaz might get up and go take a nap or something, but then he decided he would go to his room and get his journal and pencil and bring them into the sitting room to scribble in until he thought of something else to do. He decided to look back through the pages to see all that he had written down since he had first received the journal. He noticed that even in the last six months his handwriting had drastically improved. When he flipped past a page with the sketch of the house and garden he hoped to one day have, the thought occurred to him to sketch a satirical picture of Madame Endora. He wondered if a news item about the gypsies would be of interest to readers of the Gazette, as James Davis had suggested. Soon he was quite carried away in drawing her face with an exaggerated nose, heavy dark makeup around her eyes, wild hair, and pointy, bony fingers. He sketched the objects and decor he remembered from inside the tent. As he looked at his drawing, he felt a small sense of relief. Reducing her to this caricature somehow made her seem less threatening.

  Emmanuel evidently noticed Adam intensively working on something, so he asked his grandson what it was. Adam gave a half grin and turned the journal so that his grandfather could see the illustration.

  “That’s an interesting drawing you’ve got there, son,” said Emmanuel, eyes wide.

  “Thank you.” Adam continued sketching. “I’m thinking about sending this to the Gazette, and maybe an article.”

  Emmanuel nodded, seemingly impressed with his grandson’s idea.

  After a few more minutes Adam closed his journal and stood to stretch. He took the journal back to his room, and when he came back into the sitting room he was carrying a towel.

  “Going for a swim?” his grandfather asked him.

  “Eh, maybe not a swim, but it’s just so hot. I think I’ll go down for a walk by the water, maybe drop my feet in for a bit.”

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said Emmanuel. “I think I’ll join you.”

  A few minutes later they were walking along the creek.

  “So… I take it you went out to the gypsy camp last night after all,” Emmanuel said.


  Adam took a deep breath, then sighed. “Well, you know… I told you I just wanted to go out there to see what they were all about. I saw the acrobats. And there was a fortune-teller with her tent set up there.” He held his hands out in front of him, as if motioning to the words on the sign. “Madame Endora, find true love, crystal ball, palm reading, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “Madame Endora, huh?” Emmanuel chuckled and shook his head.

  “Mm-hm. And they were playing some music out there—reminded me of what I’d heard in Havana.”

  Emmanuel nodded. “Oh, well that makes sense. I think there are many gypsies from Spain and across that region. Perhaps even the ones camped out near Town Creek have their origins there.”

  They walked a little more before Adam stopped and said, “I’ve been wondering, what is it that happened that made you hate gypsies so much?”

  “Hate? That’s not what I’ve said, Adam. I don’t hate them. I simply don’t trust them, and I don’t think there’s any benefit to conducting business with those who peddle in divination and profit from deceit.”

  “But you obviously didn’t always feel that way,” Adam respectfully argued. “You said yourself that you got taken in by them once. I’m just curious what happened.”

  All Emmanuel said was, “Hmm.”

  They continued walking.

  “I mean, after seeing that ragtag group last night, I guess I’m just curious what your experience was like.”

  Emmanuel stopped and faced his grandson. “It was a gypsy fortune-teller halfway around the world who told me your grandmother was waiting for me. The woman told me Isabel was still single, brokenhearted, and longing to marry me. You know how that turned out, of course.”

  “Oh, and this was before you went to see her in Havana?”

  Emmanuel nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid so. If I’d have known she was already married, I don’t suppose I’d have gone there and—”

  “But if you hadn’t, my father wouldn’t have been born, and I wouldn’t be here now.”

  Emmanuel put his arm around Adam’s shoulder and patted it. They started walking again. “That is true, son. That is true.”

  “So maybe that gypsy did you a favor all those years ago.”

  “There’s quite a bit that happened between my visit with the fortune-teller and me actually arriving in Havana that could have gotten me killed—on more than one occasion—but those are stories I’ll save for another time. All that it goes to show—and I’ve told you this before—is that the Lord can draw a straight line with a crooked stick.”

  Suddenly, Adam spotted something in the distance out in Taylor Creek. “Look there. What is that?”

  Emmanuel squinted and put his hand over his eyes. “Good heavens! Is that what I think it is?”

  “It looks like the Gypsy.”

  In that moment Adam realized the name of his grandfather’s ship, the Carolina Gypsy, seemed a little ironic, given his clear distaste for the mysterious nomads.

  “Hey… why did you name your ship the Carolina Gypsy?”

  The old man chuckled. “I wondered how long it would take you to think to ask me that. Well, the truth of the matter is I named her that a couple of years before I ever met that gypsy woman. To me, a gypsy was just a traveler, a nomad, someone who didn’t care about putting down roots but who enjoyed seeing the world, going from place to place, doing what they had to do to get by. I still think that is what ‘gypsy’ means when you look at the spirit of the word, but there are characteristics that some of these travelers have that are not admirable. Many of them like to live off of the ignorance and gullibility of others. They profit from others’ hard work. They peddle hopes and dreams that in the end are empty, leaving many feeling even more hopeless than they were before. Compare a gypsy to a pilgrim. The pilgrim travels with nothing, but by sharing the gospel helps make all who receive him rich. A gypsy—like that Madame Endora—travels with all of her possessions, and yet she takes from what little people have and gives them hollow goods in return. It’s very sad.”

  “So why did you never bother changing the name of the sloop?”

  Emmanuel, who wasn’t superstitious at all, looked at Adam with a serious face. “Silly boy, haven’t you heard? It’s bad luck to change the name of a ship.” He grinned teasingly, then gave his grandson a wink.

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER SPOTTING the Carolina Gypsy making its way up Taylor Creek, Emmanuel had returned to the warehouse to notify Boaz of the sloop’s imminent arrival, while Adam was sent to go fetch Martin and the Salter cousins, Elliot and Joe, so they could all help get the vessel unloaded and assist the crew as needed.

  It was always an exciting time when a ship came into port. Aside from the new items on board, the crew had plenty of adventures to share upon their return. Adam knew it would be a welcome diversion from the worries that had been on his mind as of late.

  Once the Gypsy began to approach the dock, Adam and the others were alarmed that Charlie Phillips was leaning over the gunwale, shouting something. At first, no one back on the dock could understand him, but then they were finally near enough to be heard.

  “Y’all just stay back! Don’t anyone come near us!” Charlie shouted. “In fact one of y’all might want to go on and get the doctor. We’ve got some kind of sickness on board and we’ve all got it. We’ve been on a floating hell for a week now.”

  Neither Adam nor anyone else knew what the best thing to do was in that moment, but nevertheless Adam immediately took Emmanuel’s horse cart and rode into town to find Dr. Cotton Taylor, the local physician.

  When they got back to the dock where the ship was moored, Dr. Taylor shouted from the dock up to the men on the vessel, “Ahoy there! Can one of you step forward and tell me the symptoms you all have been suffering?”

  Captain Carl Phillips hobbled forward and leaned over the gunwale and began to describe the symptoms on board. He explained that for the last week the crew had been plagued with a stomach ailment that had them alternating between vomiting and diarrhea, to the point where it took all their strength to limp back into port. Dr. Taylor said it could be anything from some tropical disease to food poisoning. He suggested that the crew disembark and pass around the outside of the warehouse so they wouldn’t have to come into contact with anyone. Then Emmanuel could send a separate crew on board the vessel to disinfect the ship before unloading the cargo.

  The men that would be sent on board would come equipped with jugs of vinegar to splash on surfaces and red-hot irons to create a vinegar vapor to permeate the air in the hold. Sweeping and scrubbing down anything the Gypsy’s crew had come in contact with would hopefully clean away any germs or substances that might risk making anyone else ill.

  Adam and the others stepped back at a distance and watched as Captain Carl and his younger brother Charlie were the first to make their way down the ramp from the ship to the dock. They were soon followed by Fred Canady, Ricky Jones, and Bill Morton, who was a new addition to the crew on this most recent voyage. Like everyone else in Rogers’s Shipping Company, Morton had a family connection to Emmanuel’s piratical past that came through his grandfather. The sailors all looked awful—filthy clothes, greasy hair, and they all seemed as though they’d lost weight. Even worse, the stink from nearly a week’s worth of living in such sickly conditions was so foul it could be smelled in the air as the pitiful crew walked past.

  Once Adam and the others boarded the Gypsy, the stench was unbearable, with putrid odors wafting on the breeze from nearly every inch of the vessel. They all knew the hold would be a nightmare to clean, and the first order of business would be to ventilate it as much as possible and use the hot irons to disperse some herb-scented vapors.

  Emmanuel had instructed them to wear kerchiefs over their faces in hopes that they would help keep them from becoming ill due to the stench.

  After they had opened all of the hatches, the men worked together to rig makeshift canvas ventilators out of the smal
ler foresails and jibs to catch the wind and funnel it below deck, effectively airing out the hold.

  THE MEN WORKED STEADILY AT cleaning up the hold, mopping the filth from the floor into the bilge and unfastening all of the hammocks from the sailors’ berths.

  When Boaz went above deck to drag the hammocks out and boil them clean, Martin asked Adam, “Tell me, what do you think about Madame Endora’s predictions now?”

  It irritated Adam that Martin would bring that up at this particular time.

  “Don’t know. All I know is if she’s right, I won’t be the only one with an unlucky future. Remember, she said my livelihood would suffer, and I would say if this business with the Gypsy is any indication of what that means, we’ll all suffer, won’t we?”

  “I’m suffering now,” said Elliot. “Cleanin up this shite sure ain’t how I planned to spend my Sunday afternoon.”

  “I think we could’ve all found better things to do today,” said Martin.

  “You really went to see that fortune-teller, Fletcher?” Elliot asked.

  Just then Boaz was starting down the ladder into the hold. Adam shot an angry look at Martin, clearly frustrated that his friend had made his visit to the fortune-teller public knowledge.

  “I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about,” Adam answered.

  “And you pissed money away to have this gypsy tell you your future?” Boaz laughed. “You’re an idiot.”

  Adam huffed and tried to ignore his comment.

  “Does your grandfather know?” Boaz asked, clearly intending to needle Adam.

  “I told him I went out there, Bo.”

  Adam didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t think it was any of Boaz’s business what he did in his spare time. He opted to just not tell the whole story.

  “You know, Bo,” said Martin, “Madame Endora’s not an ugly woman, and she looked like she was kind of old—about your age. Maybe you ought to go out and pay her a visit.”