by Laura London
Chapter Twelve
In my childhood I had had a rare, lovely dream that I would be found by my mother’s tribe and accepted. I had never believed that such a thing might be possible, and yet tonight it was as though I had entered that dream. Logic and time had lost their pretense of importance. The black nightmare of the wolfs cellar melted into the prickling happiness of being led into the camp on the white horse, and being set down into the loving arms of my uncle Pulika.
What a man he was! An immense spirit, with hands so wide that each could have lifted a good fat hen, and yet they held me as with the maternal tenderness of a young mother. His hair was shorter than Trenit’s and more straight; a kerchief pulled it back from his broad, supple-skinned forehead. Best to me were his eyes, for I had seen them for so many years on my grandmother. They were oval, piercing, and incisively humorous, and he shut them frequently, or sometimes opened them wide to add emphasis to things that he said.
Before I even said “Greetings, Uncle,” he had scooped me up and was showing me off to the crowd of gypsy men and women who gathered around us, grinning and exclaiming. My uncle beamed like a proud father displaying his firstborn son and asked everyone, even those too young to remember, if I wasn’t the image of my mother. I caught a glimpse of Brockhaven standing quietly while Trenit translated the turbulent gush of Romany to him. My guardian was smiling, and I wondered if he was thinking that Lady Gwendolyn said so often that I looked exactly like my father.
The wife of my uncle was tall, and important, which is the gypsy way to describe a beloved person’s heaviness of frame. She kissed me, pinched my cheeks, and right away gave me one of her heavy gold bracelets before she made Uncle Pulika set me by the fire so she could cover me in blankets, pour water over my hands to get them clean, and give me food.
I asked her not to trouble herself but was overborne, and my uncle and I talked while a heavy iron cauldron was set on a tripod over the flame, and the air thickened with sizzling fat and the scent of garlic. The noise and the smells awakened the chickens, who came to cluck irritably in the glow of the fire and the old half-lame rooster strutted underfoot, looking as if he were not sure whether or not he should go stand on the wagon tongue and do his duty for the tribe by crowing.
Trenit’s wife was a girl no more than sixteen, with pretty, delicate features, a determined chin, and a well-advanced pregnancy. She came to pat my hand, offer me the use of her own bowl and cup to eat from, and call me sister. She would have sat down at my side, but a cry from her wagon stopped her. Off she went to fetch her son and Trenit’s, plunking the howling toddler on Trenit’s lap with a wink and a smile at her mother-in-law, while she came to help chop onions into the cauldron.
There were so many things to say that I had no time to be shy, and to wonder if I was making a good impression or whether I was talking too much or too little. Lord Brockhaven had told them a great deal, and I was glad I was spared the awful task of telling my uncle that my grandmother had died. We were left with the happier things to discuss—where we had traveled, how we had lived, and the places we had visited. I told about Edgehill, and Lady Gwendolyn and Ellen, the girl who loved gypsies, and everyone agreed that she must be very smart and admirable. Through it all, I had the fun of seeing Trenit, with Lord Brockhaven’s help, trying to keep amused the cross, sleepy baby.
We talked about Vincent too, and I was surprised how much Lord Brockhaven had confided in my uncle, for Brockhaven seemed to have told him even that he had fears for my safety. I learned that it had been the wolf’s howl that had brought Brockhaven and Trenit to the hilltop to investigate. It had been decided that two men, walking quietly, would be less likely than a group to scare away the creature, if it were free, for Brockhaven had been still here at the camp, talking with my uncle.
To eat was a stewed goose, seasoned with sage, thyme, and marjoram, and mixed with apple bits and currants; on the side were cold nutmeg meatballs and paprika on mashed chick peas in sesame oil. Poor Brockhaven! My aunt was too hospitable to let him go unfed, and I saw that he knew too much about gypsy etiquette to do anything so boorish as refuse her, so he had to eat. This couldn’t have been made any the easier for him, because he had surely seen the way Aunt had cleaned out the cauldron before cooking in it—one wipe with a piece of old bread. The baby had been playing horsie on Brockhaven’s knee and the little thing gave an angry shriek when Trenit pulled him away so that Brockhaven could take his food. With amusement, I watched as Brockhaven made the baby happy again, fishing in his pocket and producing for him a pocket watch in a gold case.
After the meal was not such a good time for me, since everyone began to talk of my leg and seeing that it was set. Brockhaven wanted me to have a gorgio doctor; my uncle held that it would be better handled by old, yellow-eyed Santinia Smith, their medicine woman; and I wanted no one to touch it at all. It was my leg, but as you can imagine, it was my opinion that was the least regarded. For ten minutes Brockhaven was firm. I was going to see a doctor, and that was that, though my uncle hollered and railed and said that he wasn’t having a stupid hulk of a gorgio doctor making hocus-pocus over his niece and probably leaving her with one leg shorter than the other in the end. Members of the tribe, began to roll up pantlegs and pull up sleeves to show this arm and that limb that Santinia had treated and see, it was perfect and straight, wasn’t it?
I’m not sure whether it was the drama of this testimony that convinced Brockhaven, but he finally agreed to let the medicine woman fix my leg. With many expressions of pity and concern, I was carried to a thick pile of eiderdowns before a wagon set well off from the cluster. I don’t remember much of the bone-setting except that it was very painful and, while I have always felt sorry for people with broken legs, I could afterward say that my sympathy increased tenfold. When Santinia was satisfied that the bone was laying just as it ought, she bound the leg with knitbone, made me a reassuringly foul-tasting infusion, and left me to rest by a small fire while she went back to report to my uncle and Lord Brockhaven.
I watched sleepily from the distance as people heard the news that I was doing very well, and in twos and threes began to return to their beds. The camp grew quiet, the chickens settled back to roost in the wagon spokes, and Trenit’s wife tenderly picked up her baby son, who had drifted off to sleep on his father’s shoulder. Trenit got wine, and sat with Brockhaven and Pulika and several of the elders by the fire. My eyes shut, and the lullaby of night noises from the forest courted my weary soul into a light sleep.
It was still dark when a gentle pressure on my forehead called me back from slumber.
“I didn’t mean to disturb you.” It was Brockhaven’s voice, and I rolled on my back to see him sitting on the eiderdown beside me, settled as though he’d been there for some time. He said, “You were so restless that I was afraid you might have a fever. Your skin’s cool, though, thank God.”
I blinked and rubbed my eyes. “My uncle?”
“He lay down to try to get an hour or two of sleep.” He drew up his knees, and rested his arms across them. A small fire still glowed in a shallow pit beside us, and reflected in the sensuous curves of Brockhaven’s hair with long red tears.
“I never knew,” I said, “that you owned a pocket watch. A pocket watch. Imagine.”
I could see I had taken him by surprise. “Dear me. What’s wrong with a pocket watch?”
“It seems so—”
He grinned. “Go on. It’s too late to back off.”
I smiled drowsily at him, wishing he was sitting closer. “Middle-aged. Staid. It’s not the kind of thing one thinks of as belonging to a shocking sort of person. Where did you get it?”
“The squire gave it to me when I came into the title. Woe betide me if I forget to carry it too. Every time the man sees me, he asks me peremptorily what the time is—and if I don’t have the watch to pull out, his eyebrows shoot to his hairline. Are you in much pain?”
“Terrible. I think I’m going to have to bite on your handke
rchief.”
“Too late. The baby’s kept it after playing hide the watch.”
My lips curled into a rather silly smile. “Light-fingered lot, we gypsies. We start young too.”
“I’ll say you do. Good Lord, your cousin Trenit and that—child he’s married to. Do you know that your uncle considers you an old maid?”
“I’m sure he’s right. I’m feeling quite past my prime tonight. Is this Santinia’s wagon? Is she asleep inside?”
“Yes and no. It’s her wagon, but she took her eiderdown and a shriveled potato half—”
“That’s a lamp. You take an old cotton bit from an apron and soak it in lard—”
“Well, it wasn’t soaked in rose water, let me tell you.” When I had finished giggling, he said, “Anyway, off Santinia went to sleep in the forest near the ruins. She says she wants to listen for the mandrake.”
I made a wise expression and put up one finger. “For the chest!”
“So she said. Tell me about the mandrake; or is it something too esoteric to convey to the weaker gorgio intellect?”
“No. But would you mind? The position of my leg has become uncomfortable and I’d like to move it over—oh, thank you. That’s much better. You have such a gentle touch, my lord. Let me see. The mandrake.”
“It’s some kind of a root, so I gather.”
“Quite right. On the surface of the ground, mandrake has a small flowering vine but its potency lies in the root. The adult mandrake root has the exact shape of a human body.”
“Really? The exact shape, you say?”
I sighed. “Try to explain anything to a gorgio. I’m not talking off the top of my head, you know. I’ve seen them. Lord Brockhaven, what are you thinking about, whenever you stare at me like that? I’ve wondered about it a lot.”
In a perfectly normal tone of voice he said, “When I stare at you like this, I’m thinking about what a marvelously beautiful girl you are. Don’t heed it a bit. The mandrake?”
It took me a moment to find my tongue and then I stammered, “Y-y-yes. Well. The mandrake root—the male mandrake root, that is—”
“Do they come in sexes? How rash of them. But pray, continue.”
“I’m trying to! The male root sends out tentacles that run vinelike through the ground in search of a female mandrake. It often takes a long time. Years, in fact.”
“Shy creatures, are they, the females?”
“Very shy. When the male does find a female, their vines begin to intertwine, and the male and female move through the ground until they are close together, and then they mate, just as humans do. Sometimes you can dig them out of the ground in that position and… will you stop laughing? It’s the truth! Just because you haven’t any experience in the matter is no reason to—Oh, please don’t! Everyone will wake up! If you think I’m funny, what were you, eating gypsy food? I’ll bet you fed it to the dogs when no one was looking!”
“Not at all,” he retorted genially. “This wasn’t the first time I’ve eaten with your people, you know. You’re probably thinking that I object to the kettle’s only being cleaned with a bread crust? That doesn’t bother me in the least! If I might be permitted one tiny criticism—it would be nice if your uncle hadn’t used that particular cauldron to water the horses.”
Indignantly, yet mindful of keeping my voice low, I said, “Why not! It’s perfectly acceptable for a man to take his food where a horse has drunk, as long as the horse is healthy. It’s not like it was a dog or a cat…! My lord?”
“What is it, sweetheart?” He lifted one of my hands where it lay on the quilt and placed it between his own, his thumb stroking lazily over the curling lines of my palm.
It was not easy to speak with him touching me and calling me sweetheart in just that voice.
“Have you really been wishing Ellen and Robert would marry? Could that be why you invited Ellen and Lady Gwendolyn to come to Edgehill?”
“Partly,” he admitted. “Gwen knew, of course. My brother and Ellen are the kind of headstrong, passionate children who would be ruined by marriage to the wrong partner, and I’m afraid that the wrong partner would be anything less than each other. Robert’s finally begun to fall in love with her, have you noticed? He doesn’t know it yet, perhaps, but soon.”
I gazed into his face, and into the finely shaped eyes that seemed to me the most intelligent and the sanest I had ever seen. There were so many things he cared about—he, a man who had never been taught to care. He gave so much kindness in his own way, though he had received so little when he had been very young and vulnerable. His manhood and the graces of his character had been hard-won in the preying teeth of the corruption and the cruelty that he’d known.
He left me to stir life into the sullen red coals of the fire. Coming back to the blankets, he said thoughtfully, “Let’s send Isabella to Italy. What do you think? She has a pair of great aunts from her mother’s side living in Florence.”
“Do you think she’ll agree to go?”
“She’ll have to after tonight. Santinia left you a—God knows what it is! She said I was to give it to you if you woke. Would you like it?” He stretched out his hand to the wagon steps, half hidden by the high grass, and picked up a tin cup. I heard the splash of a thin liquid as he brought the cup to his own lips, and took a sip. He grinned.
“Brandy. And French, at that.”
He put the cup in my hand and I sat up, turning the cup around in my hands in what I hoped was an inconspicuous movement, so that my lips would rest on the same spot his had. I knew the taste; my grandmother had given it to me whenever I had a cold, and though I hated the flavor, I took two gulps of the burning fluid, and then a third. I gave him back the cup, and said plaintively, “I’m cold.”
He set down the cup and put my arms under the quilt, pulling it high around my neck and tucking it under my shoulders. I waited until he was finished before I said, “I’m still cold.”
He touched my cheek, then started to get to his feet. “I’ll go to your uncle and see if I can find you another quilt.”
“I don’t want another quilt.”
He accepted this calmly enough. “Shall I build up the fire?”
“No.”
He stared at me, and said in a light, pleasant voice, “I’m sure you must be feeling terrible. What a time you’ve had! I’ll fetch Santinia. She can make you something stronger.”
“I don’t want Santinia, I don’t want something stronger. I want you to hold me…” I turned coward and dropped my head to the side, away from him. “Underneath the quilt.”
The silence stretched very long before he said, “Liza, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“I don’t care about good ideas and bad ideas, Alex. I hurt, and feel sick. I’ve felt sick all afternoon and all night, and my leg aches like an anvil’s been dropped on it and—”
“Hush. Hush now. Please don’t exhaust yourself any more by crying. There, Liza. Softly now, darling. My love, please stop crying. Will you stop if I hold you? Here. Move a little. Is that better?”
I was so enamored with his comforting that I might well have forced myself to keep crying if it were not made impossible by the joy I felt as his arms enfolded me, as strong and hard as they were. His hand came up behind, and cradled the back of my head, and pulled me to him, and I felt his warm, moving chest beneath my cheek.
His hair smelled like a gypsy’s, soft scents from the fire smoke and the night forest, and I felt the graceful curves of muscle and bone as his body sought mine. I sighed all over from contentment, but Brockhaven said unromantically. “A very bad idea.”
“Don’t worry, my lord. If we hear anyone coming, you can quickly jump out from under the cover.”
“Oh, I can, can I? Thank you very much. A pretty spectacle I’ll present.”
“Well, if you’re going to get grumpy…”
“I’m not grumpy.” He raised on one elbow, looking down at me with a grin. “What do gypsies do, if they catch young fol
k together like this?”
“Make them get married,” I answered him readily.
“Mmm? As long as I’m not to be ceremonially bisected, or something—” His fingers spread on my forehead, stroking away the wandering strands of my hair.
Daringly, I laid the flat of my hand against his chest. “You were angry…”
“When?”
“Tonight. When you found me with Vincent.”
His smile was crooked, and heart-stoppingly sweet. “Did I seem angry? Lord. Anger is a pallid creature compared to the emotion I felt. Liza, all I could think of at first, was that you had run away from Edgehill because you were afraid of me.”
“You know now that I am not,” I reminded him in a small voice. “Alex, why didn’t you ask me to—to become your wife?”
His arms tightened around me, his lips moving softly on the surface of my cheek. “How could I, dear one? It was bad enough, in honor, to have kissed you with me as your guardian, and you so alone in the world without a single responsible relative to protect you. Liza, I knew that the announcement of our engagement would be the one thing that would make Vincent move to take your life.”
He shifted a little, and my fingers slipped, quite by accident, between the buttons of his shirt and came to rest against the bare skin on his chest. I gasped, and said I beg your pardon, and would have pulled them away, if he had not shook his head and covered my hand with his own.
“You might have told me—that you loved me,” I whispered.
“Yes. I’m sorry. I would have, if I had realized that you didn’t know. It seemed to be pouring out of me by the bucket until I was afraid I would drown you in it. It wasn’t until much later that I knew I should have said the words, and made sure that you understood.” His lips came to mine, and pressed them, and then whispered against my mouth, “I love you, Liza.” My lips parted under his questing kiss, and I felt the leisurely stroke of his hand on the curve of my back.
