A Crowning Mercy 02 Fallen Angels

by Bernard Cornwall

  They lay in the sandhills that stretched inland, the dawn limning the spiky grass, and the sea crashing dully behind them. The gulls cried in the wind over the foam.

  Christopher Skavadale was beside her. He watched the road below them. 'I always knew you'd come.'

  'Why?'

  He smiled. 'It's in the blood. Your father did it, your brother did it, perhaps your children will do it.'

  'I hope not.' She shivered.

  She was dressed as a gypsy with dark heavy skirts, a blouse, a vest, two aprons, and a headscarf that was bright with small gold discs. She felt conspicuous and foolish, yet Geraint Owen, the nervous, quick Welshman had explained why they used the gypsies to travel the dangerous, well guarded coast roads in France. Strangers, he had said, were always suspect in France, yet gypsies were the one kind of stranger that no one was surprised to see.

  She travelled with false papers, though her true protection lay with Skavadale. He had a paper signed by the Committee for Public Safety itself, a paper that would command instant obedience from any French soldier. They could, Skavadale said, have used the paper to commandeer a carriage, yet he preferred the hidden, secret travel of the Rom. It was best, he explained to her, that they did not attract attention. She believed that he preferred, for at least a few days, to show her his own people.

  They waited for vardoes, the gypsy wagons with their bright-painted roofs. When a vardo was built, he explained, the seller would stand inside the wagon at night with a lit candle in his hand. The buyer would prowl about the outside, and if so much as a single chink of light escaped through the narrow, jointed planks, then the vardo was reckoned to be unsound. If light could get through, then so could rain.

  She would travel the autumn roads in a vardo, sharing it with an ancient gypsy woman. Just to be in this country, Campion knew, condemned her to death, but as she waited for the travelling people to come to this rendezvous, she felt oddly happy. This was an adventure and perhaps he was right, perhaps it was in her blood. Beneath her clothes she carried the seals of Lazen; she had debated whether to bring them, but she had thought they might give her strength. She was in France for Lazen, but so much more besides. The heart has reasons that reason does not know, and she travelled with the Gypsy.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Ababina seemed older than Mistress Sarah. She was a tiny, white haired lady with skin wrinkled a thousand, thousand times. She still kept her own horse, fetched her own water, lit her own fires and cooked her own food. There were five vardoes in the group, the other four all driven by Ababina's grandsons. On the second day, as Campion sat beside the old woman on the driving board, and they followed the wagon in front that clanged with buckets and chains and had four dogs tied to its back axle, the old woman tapped her pipe on the footboard and said she had once seen the old King of France.

  'You did?' Campion asked.

  'Yes, rawnie. He was an angel. He rode in a chariot of fire and gold.'

  Later, much later, Campion realized she meant Louis XIV who had died seventy-eight years before.

  'Of course I was only a child,' Ababina explained. 'I'd only had one baby then.'

  Each hour was full of strange stories, yet not all were believable. One of the grandsons, a surly, dark bearded man who earned a living as a blade-sharpener, had a scar on his face that ran from his temple to his chin. Ababina said that he had fetched the scar as a tiny child when the cow that he had been put to suckle trampled on him. She laughed at Campion's disbelief. 'You'll learn, rawnie, you'll learn.' Rawnie meant 'great lady'. Christopher Skavadale, whose single earring marked him as a leader of the Rom, insisted that she was treated with respect.

  Her travelling papers, forged in London, gave her name as Shukar. Skavadale had chosen it.

  She tried to learn some Romani from Ababina, yet there was not time to learn more than a few nouns. Grai was horse, jakel was dog, pal was a friend, and a man who had the tacho rat was a man of true Rom blood. It was not thought fit for such a man to marry a gaje, a non-gypsy.

  At night Christopher Skavadale pointedly slept far from her wagon. It was not the Rom way, Ababina said, for a man and a woman to share a bed before marriage.

  She asked Ababina where the gypsies came from.

  The old woman shrugged. 'Who knows? Our enemies say that Eve lay with Adam when he was dead, and we are the result.'

  There were stories that the gypsies could curse people, could master fire, and that they stole fair-haired children. Ababina laughed at Campion's gold hair. 'They'll think that we stole you.'

  Campion asked the old woman whether Ababina meant anything or was it just a name?

  'It means Sorceress.'

  Campion smiled. 'And Shukar? Does that mean anything?'

  The old woman laughed. 'It's what your man calls you!' Except that Christopher Skavadale was not her man. He was tacho rat, and she was gaje. But at least, as gaje, she was better than the tinkers. Tinkers, to Ababina, were the lowest of the low.

  The Rom, Campion found, were scrupulously clean. She helped Ababina scrub out the vardo, she helped wash clothes in a stream and was surprised to find that the women's clothes were never washed with the men's. To do so was to be unclean. She learned never to put shoes on a table, and never to wear white. White was the colour of death.

  To be unfaithful was to court the punishment of losing an ear or a hand. To be a whore was filthy, unfitting for Rom, to be as bad as the gaje.

  'Why do the gaje hate you?' Campion asked.

  'They say we stole the swaddling clothes from the baby Jesus. They say we made the nails for his cross.'

  Campion laughed.

  Ababina smiled. 'Because we're free, so they envy us. Because we see the future, so they fear us.'

  'And can you see the future?'

  The old woman clicked her tongue at her dogs. 'Anyone who lives can see the future. You just have to trust what you see.' She looked ahead to where a small village straddled the road and she spat at the verge. 'Soldiers.'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  Christopher Skavadale rode a horse borrowed from one of Ababina's grandsons. He dismounted and went into the guardhouse.

  The vardoes stopped in the village street. The villagers surreptitiously crossed themselves, preferring to risk the wrath of a regime that did not like religion than to run the dangers of the gypsies' evil eye.

  The soldiers, less fearful, walked slowly down the line of wagons. They asked for papers. They stole the dead chickens that hung at the wagons' sides, not knowing that the gypsies had stolen the fowls earlier in the day for just that purpose.

  The soldiers carried muskets. They had bayonets sheathed at their belts. Their feet were bare or stuffed into straw filled sabots.

  A soldier stopped beside Ababina's wagon and reached for their papers. He took them, glanced at them, and handed them back. He could not read.

  He looked at Campion. 'You're not a gypsy.'

  'I am.'

  He laughed. Two of his companions joined him, and they called to the other soldiers so that the troops crowded about the vardo and stared at the gypsy who had golden hair showing at her scarf's edge.

  'You want money, gypsy?'

  She said nothing.

  The man reached out with his musket and hooked the muzzle beneath her skirts. He lifted them and the soldiers cheered as they saw her calf. 'Come on, girl! A livre from each of us?'

  She said nothing.

  He pushed the musket higher, jerking her skirts back down over her knee and she twisted away, pushing the skirts down, and the man reached out and caught her wrist. He pulled her down so that her face was close to his and she could smell the onions on his breath. 'I'm offering you money. If you don't say yes, little one, I'll take you for nothing. Now what's it to be?'

  She was terrified. She felt inadequate. She sensed that another girl, more used to the world, would have known how to deflect them with laughter and boldness. She knew they sensed her fear, they had found themselve
s a victim.

  He pulled her further towards him and more hands reached up to take her shoulders to haul her clear of the wagon. She screamed, and they laughed.

  'Come on, beautiful! We'll steal you back from the bastards!'

  She half fell from the wagon seat, both arms held by soldiers, and they began to drag her towards one of the houses. A hand snatched the scarf from her head and a whistle of appreciation sounded as her gold hair spilled in the sunlight.

  The pistol shot froze them.

  She pulled one arm free.

  An officer ran towards the men, his face appalled, while behind him, on the steps of the guardhouse, Skavadale reloaded his pistol.

  'Leave her,' the officer shouted, 'for God's sake! Leave her!'

  The soldiers frowned. She was just a gypsy, a nobody, a girl to rape with the freedom conferred on them by liberty's uniform.

  The man who held her left arm, the man who had lifted her skirts, pulled her towards him. 'We offered the bitch money!'

  'Let her go!'

  The officer's command over his men was tenuous, but behind him Skavadale walked slowly towards the soldiers and they fell back before his air of comfortable confidence. The man let go her right arm.

  Skavadale walked past her. He took the man by the throat and hit him twice over the face. 'Well?'

  'Captain?' The man appealed to his officer.

  Skavadale hit him again, harder. 'Well?'

  The officer's face warned his men to make no trouble.

  Skavadale lifted the soldier by the throat. He did it without apparent effort, his eyes on the man's eyes, and, when he held him six inches above the ground he suddenly dropped him and brought up his right knee.

  The man screamed, fell, and curled on the ground with his hands clutching his loins.

  Skavadale turned. 'My papers, Captain.'

  The officer handed over not a passport or a travel permit, but a folded sheet of paper that bore a red seal.

  The soldiers watched in silence as Skavadale helped her back onto the wagon. They sensed that they had been fortunate. The guillotine, these days, was utterly without discrimination.

  Skavadale rode beside her. 'Are you all right?'

  She nodded. She had been appalled. She was ashamed that she had not behaved better.

  He smiled. 'Next time tell them they're not men enough for you, that you don't ride donkeys, only stallions.' Ababina laughed. 'You'll learn, Shukar, you'll learn.'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  They parted from the gypsies to the west of Paris. The sky was smeared with the city's smoke. There was a chill in the air, the hint of autumn's ending. The birds had been flocking south for three days now, flying over the vardoes and gathering in great swarms in the golden trees.

  Ababina was the last to say farewell. She kissed Campion on both cheeks. 'Ja develesa, shukar.'

  Campion smiled. 'Which means?'

  'Go with God.'

  'And shukar? What does that mean?'

  The old woman laughed. 'It means beautiful. Remember one thing.'

  'What?'

  The old woman looked at Skavadale who had relinquished the horse and now waited for her. 'He's frightened of you.'

  'He's not frightened of anything!'

  The old woman laughed. 'He chose the gaje world, Shukar. Do you think it doesn't frighten him? He won't show it, but in your world he feels as strange as you in ours.' She shrugged. 'It's his choice.'

  She kissed the old woman. 'Thank you for everything.'

  'Ja develesa, rawnie, and I think you do.'

  —«»—«»—«»—

  The greatest change Campion could see in Paris was in the clothes of the people. It was dangerous, Skavadale said, to be seen flaunting wealth, and so the inhabitants, even those who had money, adopted a protective costume of dirty rags. Most wore rosettes of red, white and blue, similar to the one that Skavadale pinned on Campion's shawl.

  The houses were festooned with patriotic banners, the colours bright, the slogans preferring death to loss of liberty. Yet the houses also had the names of their inhabitants painted on the doors so that the soldiers could search to find those who slept without permission in Paris.

  Skavadale took her to the Section Bonnet Rouge and sent her upstairs to the Revolutionary Committee. 'Ask for a permit to sleep in the Section.'

  'You're not coming?'

  'I'll be a moment.' He smiled. 'You'll be safe.'

  Eight men sat at the table. They seemed to spend all day in the room that was smothered with posters exhorting the world to revolution. The table was littered with half-eaten food, wine bottles, dice, and playing cards. Women cooked in a kitchen next door, their laughter loud, their heads bright with red caps of liberty.

  The men stared at her.

  One man took her papers. He glanced at her passport, but frowned for a long time at her forged Certificat de civisme that guaranteed, in this age of liberty, that her political views were acceptable to the revolutionaries. He sniffed. The room buzzed with flies.

  One man looked her up and down. 'Why are you in Paris?'

  'To seek work.'

  That made them laugh. 'You could earn a fortune without leaving your bed, ma poule!'

  She smiled.

  Skavadale had paused to buy a bottle of apple brandy. Now he stood in the deep shadow outside the Committee room. His voice startled her. 'She's not a gypsy.'

  She felt panic sear through her.

  The men, who ruled this section of Paris, stared at her.

  Skavadale spoke again. 'She's an English aristocrat.'

  They looked at the shadows by the door. She felt her stomach turn into churning, liquid fear.

  One of the men suddenly roared a great welcome. 'Gitan!' There was an explosion of laughter.

  Skavadale shook their hands one by one. 'You're getting fat, Michel.' He punched a friendly fist into the man's stomach. He had a word for everyone in the room, knew their nicknames, and happily sat with them and offered them his gift of brandy. He jerked his head at Campion. 'My woman. We need an inn.'

  'Just one room, eh?' One of the men laughed. 'You're a lucky bastard, Gitan!'

  Skavadale grinned. He patted the chair beside him and Campion sat. They scribbled the permit she needed and pushed it to her.

  The man called Michel grinned at her. 'You'll prefer me, gypsy girl! I'm a man of substance!'

  She took the brandy that Skavadale gave her. She was still liquid with terror inside, but she forced a smile onto her face. 'I never ride donkeys, only stallions.'

  They laughed. She was in Paris.

  —«»—«»—«»—

  That night she lay beneath an open window and watched the clouds and smoke skein before a crescent moon.

  She had never travelled without a horde of servants. She had never been in an inn where the innkeeper was not solicitous for her comfort. She had never been in such danger.

  There had been times since she had landed in France when she had felt lost, lonely and frightened, yet those times were few. She had hated it when the soldiers grabbed her, but even then she had known that Skavadale was near, that he would come for her, that she was safe. Just as now, lying alone in her narrow bed, she felt safe because he was downstairs.

  Tomorrow they would take a coach for Bellechasse, and from Bellechasse they would cross the mountains to Auxigny. And at Auxigny, she knew, all the answers would be found. Not just to Lucifer and the Fallen Ones, but to the questions that had mocked her these twelve months. Love, her uncle had said, was an illusion. Nothing more.

  Then this, too, was an illusion. This journey, this madness, this adventure.

  He had told her once that the roads never end, yet it seemed to her that they would end, not in sadness, but in the mysteries at Auxigny. After that, she told herself, the old roads would be gone. She smiled. She was in France and she was happy.

  She knew that the machine stood in the Place de la Revolution, yet somehow it was a surprise to see the twin s
hafts rising above the crowd's heads. She stopped, frowning.

  'What's the matter?' Skavadale was carrying their bags towards the stage terminal. 'Oh, that!'

  'Dear God!'

  'Don't use English.'

  'Did I?'

  He smiled. 'Yes.'

  But it was a shock, like finding that the Green Man really did live in the woods or that witches circled the moon on broomsticks. It was there, sticking into the sky like nothing she had ever seen, but was oddly familiar all the same. It was close by the great plaster statue of Justice that loomed over its own victims' deaths.

  She suddenly gasped. They're using it!'

  'Of course! They do every day!'

  She took his arm. 'Come on!'

  She had seen the crowd there, but had somehow not thought that they watched an execution. The sight of people walking through the huge square had convinced her that nothing was happening, and it was only the flicker of the blade climbing the twin shafts that had told her that Paris had become so used to this sight that most passers-by did not even stop to watch. Death was a commonplace now. She wrinkled her face. 'It smells!'

  'They want to build a "sangueduct".'

  'A what?'

  'A gutter to carry the blood to the Seine.' He smiled down at her. 'So much blood has soaked into the square that it stinks.'

  She heard a thump and a cheer. She tried to ignore it, but Skavadale stopped and she had to stop with him. She looked up at him. 'Can't we go on?'

  'Look at it.'

  She looked. A woman was climbing the steps. Even at this distance Campion could see how her hair had been chopped short. Paris, with rough humour, called the haircut that was given to every prisoner 'La Toilette'.

  One man took her right elbow, the red-aproned executioner her left, and the third man her legs. The third man held a rose between his teeth. The woman was thrown forward, face to the plank, and, while the man with the rose in his teeth pulled a strap over her back, so the executioner brought the neck brace down.

  He stepped to one side, jerked the rope, and she heard the scraping rattle, the thump, and the cheer of the crowd.

  'You can open your eyes now.'

  'Oh God!' She could see the headless body being heaved off the platform. 'I'm going to be sick.'