Green eyes locked on his, April danced for Damien. For now, it was enough that they shared a song. He played with increased fervor, the blood hot and surging in his every limb. His mind could do little more than wonder at the fate of seeing this young woman again. Was she the king’s daughter? Her clothing was fine enough, but her fairness made it unlikely. Several others resented her presence, among them the lusty-eyed older woman who had boldly beckoned Damien several times before.
Yet there was nothing lewd about this girl’s look. She simply held him in her direct gaze until he was lost in her, and she in him. Faster and faster she spun, her eyes meeting his every time she whirled around. Her green skirts flew, her jewelry jingled and gleamed. Then as the crescendo came, she curved into a perfect arch and threw back her head, her golden hair trailing along the ground.
His bow quivered to a stop. The young woman dropped to the ground, exhausted, her breast rising and falling rapidly. Then, just as suddenly, she leapt to her feet, looking stunned and horrified at what she’d done. She picked up her skirts and bolted into the darkness. All around him was a murmur of discontent, but Damien did not hear. His eyes were fixed on the spot where she had vanished, and his hand trembled on the neck of the violin as it dropped slowly to his side.
Chapter Five
IN THE MORNING, APRIL awoke from restless dreams to find her mother hunched over the tarot cards in their wagon. Tzigane did not seem to notice her presence, distracted by something she saw in the spread.
“What do you see?” April asked softly.
Startled, Tzigane’s amber eyes rose and fixed on her without wavering. “I want you to lay out the arcana, chavali. One last time if it must be, but it must be now.”
April’s heartbeat quickened at the ominous words. “Will the decision be today? Have you heard something?”
Tzigane nodded. “Jingo came by while you were still sleeping. He has found someone he believes to be a fair judge. The kris will be called today within the hour.”
April rose and sat on the edge of her bed to steady her shaking legs. “Will my fate be decided at the trial?” she whispered.
“Yes, it will be decided today, for better or worse. Now choose your cards.”
This time April did not hesitate. Taking the pack of colorful pictures in her trembling hands, she sorted and shuffled the deck until it fell into the “pattern of her soul,” as Tzigane called it. Then, cautiously, she handed the reassembled cards back to her mother, who looked pale as she laid out the arcana in the form of an inverted cross.
There were ten cards laid out, each representing different aspects of past, present and future. As always, the past was muddled with mystery and intrigue, but the present and future were revealed today with startling clarity.
The first card turned over was the King of Swords. “A dark man,” Tzigane murmured thoughtfully. “A powerful man as well, but he has dangerous secrets.”
April did not speak, but she did wonder. Was it Nicky? Or Damien?
The reading proceeded, shortly revealing April’s own card, but the last one caused Tzigane to let out a little gasp before she could stop it. Both she and the younger woman stared down into the face of Death, an evil grinning skull looming over April’s near future. And though Tzigane tried to be optimistic by pointing out the King of Swords, the dark male soon to be in her daughter’s life, neither woman could tear her eyes away from that awful gloating ghoul.
April’s lips trembled as she said, “So I must expect the worst. I know everyone in camp believes Nicky. Marya is angry enough not to care what is done to me, though she once claimed to be my friend.”
“There are no friends when it comes to a man around here,” Tzigane said. “Too many of the girls are looking for husbands.” Then, as if hitting upon an insight, she mused, “Perhaps you should, too.”
April laughed scornfully. “Who would have me? Already they call me marhime, dishonored. But they themselves act no better than the gaje they scorn. Were the Lowara always this way?”
Tzigane shook her head as she put the cards away, carefully wrapping them in the square of black silk that would protect them from evil influences. “No. When I first married Bal, the tribe was small, and all were close. It did not pay to insult a friend, for you might need them the next day. I think when the tribes intermarried we started having serious trouble. Some of the other Rom who came to us were not good of heart or soul.”
April didn’t need to ask whom her mother referred to; it was obvious enough by the darkening of her amber eyes.
“If the worst happens, I want you to keep the jewel and sell it,” April said firmly, giving Tzigane no chance to protest. “It will do me no good if the worst happens. But whatever you do, don’t let Nicky or his mother find out about it. They would kill you for less than that.”
“Where are you going?” Tzigane looked alarmed as April picked up a shawl to warm her bare shoulders against the early morning breeze.
“I think it’s time. I hear a crowd gathering outside. The kristatora will hear my side of the story too, not just Nicky’s. They will hear the truth whether they like it or not.”
Overcome by a strong sensation of something drastic about to happen, Tzigane reached out to her only child for a fierce hug.
“Let your heritage speak for you, chavali. You are not only Lowara, but also of noble blood of this land. No matter that we know not who your real mother was, it is enough that you are strong and able to endure your fate. Remember, you can survive.”
April smiled sadly over her foster mother’s shoulder. “At this point, there is little else left for me to do.”
IF EVER HE HAD regretted his impulsiveness before, Damien had ample opportunity in the moments before he presided as the judge over a matter which had the entire camp up in arms.
For no sooner had he started for the large tent that had been specially erected for the trial, than gypsies flocked around him, calling out pleas for mercy or vengeance as each believed to be due. He plastered a noncommittal smile on his face, nodding politely to all who confronted him, trying to assure them that he would do his best to resolve the conflict. He dared not promise them anything. He already regretted having accepted Jingo’s anxious request so readily.
As he ducked into the colorful tent, Damien was greeted by a solemn group of faces belonging to a select few older men of the tribe. They had apparently been invited to listen to the testimony.
Nodding respectfully to them, Damien took the space left for him and sat down beside Jingo. The king looked drawn and pale against the bright backdrop of the tent folds, and Damien was sure it wasn’t easy for Jingo to maintain such a calm expression as the trial began.
First to testify would be the aggrieved party, then the defense. Damien wasn’t surprised to see the hard-eyed jade, who had tried for his attentions several times, enter the tent first, though he supposed she was the alleged “attacker.” It wasn’t difficult to imagine this hot-blooded gitana going after any man with a knife, and as he looked at her, he thought what an easy decision this would be after all.
Then to Damien’s surprise, she went to sit away from the center of testimony, and a younger man entered moments after her. Like the woman, his dark eyes were flat and hard, and they passed swiftly over Damien with something close to contempt before he stiffly assumed his position before the kris.
“Vaivoides.” The arrogant young man addressed Jingo curtly, with little genuine respect. “I am ready to tell my tale now.”
“Yes, Nicabar.” The gypsy king sounded weary. He nodded toward the woman, who had assumed a lounging position directly across from Damien and was displaying her bare legs to advantage. “And Belita?”
“My mother is also here to give testimony.”
“I was not aware she was a witness to the incident.”
Nicky’s lips tightened in suppressed anger. “My mother is an important witness. She has proof that Tzigane and her daughter practice black magic.”
Damien lis
tened with interest. Now he saw the resemblance between mother and son, both darkly handsome, but in a hard way. The boy had taken obvious pains to make his facial wound look more dramatic than it was, with a large fresh bandage taped over his entire cheek.
Meanwhile, Damien irritably ignored the obvious efforts of the gypsy woman Belita to draw his eye. First she pretended to fuss with her skirt, exposing bare legs up to her thighs, and then she displayed her ample cleavage as she reached down to readjust a toe ring.
Nicky appealed past Jingo’s inscrutable expression to the other men present. “I have been with the Lowara now for several years. During all of this time, April has thrown herself at me. Sometimes I could not resist her. It was as if something else controlled me. My mother has seen this too, and she knows of the power of which I speak.”
April. That was an odd name for a gypsy, Damien mused. Apparently the mystery woman was one intent on seducing men and then trying to stab them. Still, Damien wanted to hear more of the angry young man’s story before he committed his opinion one way or the other.
“We will let the kristatora decide.” Jingo suddenly gestured to their guest, and Nicky’s dark eyes swung on Damien. “After all, Nicabar, when you asked for this kris, you agreed to any decision made by our visitor.”
Damien said, “I will be fair. I will hear all who wish to speak.”
With a grudging nod, seeing that was the only sensible decision, Jingo also agreed to hear Belita speak.
Nicky told his tale first, with initial calm and then increasing fervor as he detailed April’s coy approach to him in the wood, just after he had told her he would marry Marya instead. Painting a picture of a wanton strumpet that would give a run for the money to any London bawd, Nicky exhorted his story to full effect, gaining sympathetic nods and murmurs from the other five men present.
Damien did not react. In fact, he had lost attention for five full minutes, recalling his own sweet encounter with another young woman earlier. He could not shrug aside memories of her glorious golden hair, her emerald-green eyes and the secretive half-smile when she had danced for him. He longed to be with her now, anywhere but in this stuffy closed tent with sweating bodies and the suggestive squirming of the lewd woman across the aisle.
Nicky’s testimony finally ended, and looking smug, the youth surrendered the floor to his mother.
With a smile at her son that was anything but maternal, Belita rose with a shimmy and a jangle and haughtily took her place directly before Damien. Knowing full well he held Nicky’s fate in his foreign hands, she gave Damien a direct burning look and struck a pose that might have been arousing on any other woman. It inspired only faint disgust in Damien.
“Kristatora. You have heard my son speak. He speaks from his heart, as his mother must do now.” Belita wet her shiny red lips and continued in a husky voice. “This may be difficult for you to believe, but Belita must tell the truth. I have been with the Lowara for over two years. Never have I been brought before a kris myself.” That much was true; she didn’t bother to mention that she’d been banished from her birth band for attacking another woman in a fit of jealousy, and blinding her in one eye.
“I have seen the old witch and her spawn,” Belita continued, her low voice seeming to mesmerize every man but Damien. “At night they practice evil arts, chanting in their wagon and wishing ill upon any who cross them. I never did believe the story of the old woman finding the girl. April sprang to life from Tzigane’s dark cards. Now she is a young witch herself, and that wild horse is her familiar.”
Belita continued like a building storm, until she had carelessly shredded every bit of April’s character, who was not present to defend herself. The language she used was vile, and Damien glanced at Jingo to see the king’s disapproval covering his face like a thundercloud. Such viciousness was unworthy of Rom, a people who needed to band tightly together in a gaje world.
When she was finally through, her chest heaving proudly from the exertion, Belita shot one last seductive look of smoldering promise toward Damien and then followed her son out of the tent.
Jingo was inscrutable. “Next,” he said, “we will hear from the other witnesses.” He called out to have them brought in, and three giggly restless girls were thrust before Damien, blushing and stammering out their stories about how they had seen April throwing herself at Nicky, then slashing him with the knife.
“Do you have any questions for these witnesses?” was all Jingo asked when they were through, as he had with both Nicky and Belita. Damien asked them a few rote questions, still not certain of their credibility, but they seemed too stupid to concoct any fantastic stories that would persist unchanged for so long.
They had obviously witnessed something in the woods, but what? Had the girl offered herself to Nicabar, or had the horse trader attacked her?
Damien mulled over the matter while the three girls left, the one called Marya taking a last angry moment to hurl a curse after April’s name. Then the men were secluded for a time as they awaited the defendant.
Jingo said soberly, “I am sorry that you must see this side of the Lowara. But I am relieved that it will be over soon, and finally put to rest.”
But would it be? Outside Damien heard muttering in the camp, as the people grew restless and anxious for the decision. Then the voices rose and grew, as the defendant apparently passed toward the king’s tent, and Damien heard Belita’s coarse cry trailing after her.
Engrossed in his own thoughts, he could neither speak nor breathe when a slim silhouette of a young woman slipped into the tent, and the lamplight gleamed down the length of her rich golden hair.
Equally startled to see him, April stopped and stared, shaking her head a little in disbelief. Surely the stranger so coldly assessing her now could not be the same man who had leapt naked from a stream, chased, and caught her in the wood.
April could not bear to feel Damien’s blue eyes taking cool measure of her while she stood there waiting for Jingo to begin the questioning. She was furious, imagining what he might be thinking. She knew what Belita and Nicky must have said about her.
At Jingo’s order, she related her defense. She had been so sure of herself earlier, calm and poised, ready to defend to the death. But Damien’s presence unnerved her, and April faltered again and again, until a long silence broke in which he finally spoke briskly.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”
He was needling her for having denied it to him earlier, she knew.
“April,” she said, a brief spark of defiance lighting her green eyes for a moment.
“That is not a romani name, is it, Vaivoides?”
Damien addressed the king with the respect due his station, and Jingo noted the younger man’s curiosity as he replied, “No. April was named for the month in which she was found, a fancy of her foster mother, Tzigane. You may have seen the phuri dai. That is the woman who took April in as a babe, the one that Belita spoke of.”
So, the girl was not true Rom after all. But the mystery in the woods intrigued Damien more. Had April truly attacked Nicabar? The boy had the scar to show for it, exactly as would have resulted from a woman’s strength used in anger. And as Damien already knew, this proud girl had a temper simmering underneath that silky golden skin, though whether it would drive her to kill, he wasn’t sure.
As he questioned April in seeming impartiality, both of them were aware of the undercurrent of tension pulling them together from several feet apart. The intensity of the night before, the playful escapade at the stream, all combined now to make them uneasily aware of each other in the close confines of the tent.
The rapt silence of the others only made the world fall away the easier, and Damien found himself halting at times just to stare into her deep, still green eyes. Surely no lake had ever been so enticing, no sea ever beckoned so strongly to him. And yet there was nothing coy or obvious about April. She was wholly unaware of her power over men, and her few direct gazes at Damien were prou
d and defiant.
He held her very life now. What would Damien do, this stranger from another land, another world? Did her existence mean even less to him than it did to Belita? Would he let Nicky’s cruel mother extract vengeance after all?
April knew that her tale had tumbled out too quickly and too scattered to be believable. Nicky and his friends had had weeks to smooth their stories and accusations. With the deep despair of one who knows she is lost, April at last fell silent and simply stared at the ground.
“Have you nothing more to say?” Jingo prompted her anxiously. It was clear the king was worried she would leave it at that, a confused jumble of words, but April could only gesture helplessly back.
“I submit to the kris,” was all she could manage.
Everyone looked at Damien. His blue eyes never leaving the girl, he said slowly, “I must have time to think on this. At least a day.” Jingo was reluctant to postpone the decision, but he understood their guest’s hesitancy in making a rash ruling. He granted Damien the extra day, with the condition that he be excluded from the influence of any of the gypsies until then.
“You may go now, April,” Jingo told the girl. She had not followed the others out of the tent, but still stood uncertainly before the gripping gaze of the blue-eyed man.
Then suddenly, she turned and rushed out, clearly fighting rising emotions. Jingo looked after her, and said in a low voice to Damien, “There’s an old Rom saying you may have heard, “si khohaimo may patshivalo sar o tshat-shimo … sometimes, there are lies more believable than truth.”
Damien knew that was the closest the king dared come to begging for the life of the beautiful gypsy girl.
Chapter Six
“APRIL! WHAT ARE YOU doing?”
In the darkness a male voice hissed softly behind her, and she jumped and whirled around. Prince Adar snorted and sidestepped the halter she was trying to work over his nose.
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