The River Sings

by Sandra Leigh Price

  “I wish I could say the same thing,” she said and adjusted her headscarf then bent again and set her back to the task. She cut another switch and said no more.

  “What do you mean?” I said, knowing nothing more than I did before my frustration prickled.

  “Least said best mended,” she said, her hands not even pausing in their work.

  “Mend what?” I was like a fly after the salt of her sweat, I wouldn’t be waved off.

  My mother stopped then, walked over to the bundle of twigs and bound them with a rag, before strapping them to her back. “Amberline Stark’s father was a thief and his mother turned her back on our ways to live the life of a gadji,” she said vehemently. “And let that be an end to it,” she added before striding off down the hill.

  I skipped to keep up with her. “So how is he kin?” I persisted.

  “He’s kin enough. But as soon as we meet the rest at the fair, he’ll be finding other kin to belong to and we’ll have no more to do with him,” she said and spat on the ground.

  My mother’s version of events only made me more curious, but I knew better than to keep pushing at her.

  By the time we arrived back at camp, Amberline was dressed, his fine clothes all dry, the horse blanket folded neatly on a log and my father by his side inspecting the contents of a handkerchief. My mother cast a cursory glance but I stopped to see. Amberline smiled up at me expectantly but I couldn’t meet his eyes, the light hit them brightly but he didn’t squint.

  Inside his palm sat several little trinkets made of silver, each little hearts, their tips all touching like a flower.

  “And you made these?” my father said, so delicate he only touched with his thumb.

  “Yes, these and other things,” Amberline said, “but they are in London.”

  “They are fine, are they not?” my father said and I nodded.

  “That they are,” I replied, feeling my mother’s eyes on my back as she sat on the vardo step cutting the leaves off the branches, getting reading for weaving.

  “Love tokens,” Amberline said, “or witches’ hearts, symbolising one’s heart has been bewitched.” I chanced to look at him and already found him staring into my face.

  “They’ll be worth a pretty penny at the fair, if you’re willing to sell them,” my father suggested. But Amberline shook his head and closed his fist around his handkerchief, all the bright hearts disappearing from the sunshine with an eclipse of his hand.

  “With respect, sir, I’ll not be selling them,” Amberline said and my father stroked his beard and then regarded Amberline quizzically.

  “Well, boy …” my father began but my mother interrupted him.

  “You’ll have to earn your keep somehow. You can’t eat silver unless you want to turn as blue as the river with the poison of it.”

  Amberline looked up at her, blinking as if he just woke up, the sunshine bathing his face.

  “You better come and learn how to make baskets then to earn your keep.”

  All afternoon my mother, Amberline and I sat under a nearby yew and my mother and I watched as Amberline fumbled with the strands of dogweed and hazel, and though his frustrations mounted he kept them to himself and only released them with a muffled sigh. We didn’t talk as my mother and I usually did, but kept to our own thoughts, having Amberline amongst us. My mother with quiet instruction made him undo any mistakes and he like an obedient student learned his lesson quickly, and soon a basket took shape beneath his fingers, his hand nicked and bloodied by the whipping of the dogwood. When he finally had finished one, each strand braided around the top, my mother and I had completed several baskets each, but my mother’s instruction had softened as the day wore on. She took his finished basket in her hands and held it up to the light and, noticing the gaps between the weave, said nothing but pushed them down with her nail.

  That night a light rain fell, the rhythmic pattering on the vardo roof sending both my parents to sleep quickly, but I lay awake listening to the sound of Amberline speaking in his dreams. I leaned closer to the floor to try to make out what he was saying, but the rain veiled his words. A drip started through the vardo roof, so I got up and placed the bowl we used to wash our utensils in beneath it and stood a moment and listened to each raindrop ring, a tiny bell. We had a bowl for everything – one for washing our faces, one for our meat, one for our towels, one for Jupiter, one for the washing of men’s faces, one for the washing of ours. All the parts of our lives portioned into the size of a bowl, as constant as the curve of the stars above our heads. I lifted a finger and let a raindrop hit it, beading on the tip of it like a ball of mercury, precious as a pearl, before it dissolved and ran down my arm.

  Amberline cried out and I froze. Jupiter whined beneath us, unhappily taking shelter from the rain with our guest. My father stirred and I leapt back into my bed and watched between lowered lids as he sat up and listened out through the rain but seemed to think nothing of it.

  Before dawn we were up preparing to strike camp. The sky was as dark as the inside of a sleeper’s eyelid, but I saw Amberline’s fine boots just beneath the vardo, protected from the night-time rain. He lay quietly sleeping as we struck camp, our footsteps around him busy, Jupiter dancing around my father’s feet as he secured the vardo to the horse, the horse whinnying in complaint. Amberline woke up.

  “Come along, lad,” my father said and offered his hand to help him out from beneath the vardo, dirt brushing the elbows of his coat jacket, Jupiter’s hair clinging to his trousers. “It’s time for us to be going.”

  My father stepped up to the vardo driver’s seat and Jupiter ambled up behind him, ready for the fresh morning air to blow against his fur, his tongue dangling to taste the disappearing raindrops. Amberline rubbed his face, the sound his new beard made making him frown. He reached over and pulled on his immaculate boots, the one clean thing on him.

  “We should have left you sleeping and driven right over you,” my mother said, uncharacteristically sharp, “and you’d never have noticed, Amberline Stark.” She turned to look at me, before saying to him: “And maybe that would have been a good thing, to leave you behind.” She didn’t spare him a second glance as she stepped up to the front of the vardo, taking her place beside my father and picking up the reins. She gestured for me to follow suit and I did, sitting beside her and feeling her frustration come off her in waves.

  “My apologies, is there anything I can do?” Amberline said, stretching up to his full height, dusting off his trousers.

  “No, you just take your time and make yourself presentable,” she said and clicked her tongue, sending our horse stepping forward. The pots and pans, the horse brasses, my mother’s earrings, all jangled and Amberline hurried forward, my father reaching out to him to hoist him up.

  SIX

  Patrin, 1818

  When the sun rose it seemed that the rain had made the countryside a jewel box – all the greens of the fields were emerald, the horse’s dappled back all tiger’s eye and quartz, the sky turquoise. We stopped when the sun was at its highest and broke our fast, apples and bread and cheese, and water for the horse, before we travelled on, my father occasionally whistling or calling Jupiter, a black and white streak, back from bounding after a rabbit in the undergrowth. All the while the horse brasses jingled against each other and I felt Amberline’s proximity and listened to the music of his voice as my father asked him of London, but Amberline was rather short on any answer that held much information.

  We heard it before we reached it, the whistles and shouts, someone playing a fiddle, it rose up to our ears and my father didn’t need to coax our horse to go faster, she’d already made up her own mind, knowing there was the promise of oats. Her feet struck out off the road and pulled the wagon faster than she had the whole journey, making my father laugh his deep bass.

  From all across the country a hundred or so Rom had arrived with their horses, all groomed and hooves blacked. Their vardos dotted the field and several fires were al
ready burning; the smell of meat cooking made Amberline’s stomach growl and my mother raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “Father,” a voice called and out strode my brother, a good ten years older than I, his hair pulled behind his head with a leather tie, a fine waistcoat embroidered all over by his wife’s fine fingers. My other brother had been delayed, his wife approaching labour.

  “Balthazar!” my father said, stepping over Amberline and handing him the reins, before he jumped down and embraced my brother. The reins sat like straps of liquorice in Amberline’s hands and he stared at them, unsure what to do. My mother snatched them up and stepped over me, placing them in my hands, so that Amberline and I were left sitting on the bench together. He shuffled closer, I felt the heat coming from his leg, and he leaned towards me.

  “What is this place?” he whispered, his eyes scanning the fair in front of him. I tried to see it through his outsider eyes and was surprised what chaos it appeared – all the saddleless riders racing down the stream, sending splashes every which way. A group of shoeless children kicking a ball made of bound rags. Old Grandma Lee, sitting on the step of her vardo, a hundred years in the shade, a corncob pipe between her teeth and surveying all her kin. Seeing things through his eyes, it all seemed strange. All of us were tatterdemalion compared to the likes of him.

  “It’s a horse fair is all,” I said, my blood rising, stealing a glimpse at his face and expecting to find his smile pulled to a sneer, but he was just wide-eyed, curious. “Where Rom come to trade horses.”

  “But you’ve only one horse,” he said and I couldn’t suppress my laughter.

  “We’re not selling our horse, we just come to meet with family, for news, for trade. You say you are Rom, but you are not much of one.”

  “Oh, you are cruel, Patrin, cruel indeed,” he said, smiling, and I took in his grinning face, his white teeth.

  “You’ll learn quick enough,” I said, feeling my brother’s eyes on me.

  “Who is this you’re talking to, Patrin?” my brother asked as I jumped down with Amberline following behind me. My father introduced them and my brother clasped his hand so hard that I saw the flicker of a wince on Amberline’s face.

  “Welcome, Cousin Stark,” my brother said, then stood back and took in Amberline as we all had, frowning at his fine clothes and his city air and wondering how he fit in with us at all. Amberline looked at my brother, robust but not tall, like my father, but with a clean-shaven face, his wrists bound in leather cuffs, his waistcoat sewn with buttons made of coin, fine gold loops in his ears, his boots muddied up to his ankle. Amberline glanced down at his own boots, now blessed with mud also, and my brother and father led him off into the campground and I lost sight of them. My mother and I were left to strike camp by ourselves.

  We spent the afternoon catching up on the news from the surrounding camp – a Heron girl had given birth to twins, a Boswell man had been arrested for horse theft, Old Grandma Lee had the ague but cured herself, for her knowledge of simples was unsurpassed by any of us – this we all learned, but all the women wanted to know was of Amberline, but Mother wouldn’t answer their questions in front of me. She sent me down to the river with the bucket to gather water and I had no option than to dutifully do as I was asked, all their eyes stuck to my back like mayflies, waiting until I was out of earshot. The heat rose into my face, what was there to say that I wasn’t allowed to hear? Why so secretive if he was allowed to sleep beneath our vardo a hand span and a few planks of wood between us each night, his breath co-mingling with ours?

  The entire riverbank was muddied by the stamp of horses and had made the silt on the bottom rise, turning the water brown. My foot slipped and I almost landed on my rear, but I grabbed at the long grass and righted myself and made my way further downstream towards the willows. I was half tempted to circle around to the back of the camp to eavesdrop, but I knew it would be mostly speculation and gossip. I looked to the water and was startled by a pair of eyes watching me. A cloud passed over the sun, the water squelched through a hole in one of my boots as I stepped closer. It was an otter, his head above the water, and I laughed at my own fancies and he dipped his head below the surface, leaving the softest of ripples.

  “I hope you are not laughing at me,” a voice slurred from the curtain of willow branches and out stepped Amberline, his suit crumpled, his boots now as muddied as mine.

  “I just saw an otter, that’s all,” I said and Amberline walked over to me, his breath smelling like a barrel of spilled ale. But the otter was long gone, only the V of his swim remained.

  “I can’t see it, but then I’m quite drunk as you can probably tell. Your father and brother filled my glass quicker than I was able to refuse them,” he said and I knew that my brother would have wanted to test his mettle and to bring him down a notch. He stumbled trying to stand in one spot beside me.

  “Come sit for a bit,” I said. “Here, let me take your arm.” And I curled my fingers around his arm and felt the solid warmth of him. I led him beneath the curtain of the willows and held his arm as he tripped on the roots and sat down, then a rich boom of laughter made the tree shed its birds. I ducked beneath the willow with my bucket and came back from the river with it full. Amberline’s eyes were closed when I returned and he was beautiful. His lips were partly open, red as the berry from the yew. His eyes opened and took in the bucket.

  “You’re not going to tip that all over me again, are you?” he said and it was my turn to laugh. I scooped my hand into the bucket and held it to his lips and he drank and drank again, his lips remaining on my skin when the water had all gone. I did not want to pull my hand away.

  He awkwardly took off his jacket and spread it beside him. “Come sit with me, Patrin, here, right here,” he said, his hand outstretched, and I was self-conscious of my own dry and work-hardened hands next to his fine fingers.

  “You are causing quite a stir, you know that?”

  “How so?” he replied, his head lolling back against the trunk.

  “No one can quite work out how you fit in, if you fit in at all.”

  He smiled. “Is that right?”

  “That is right, so how about you tell me, since no one else will, I …” But before I continued he pulled me to him and sealed up my mouth with his, engulfed in a kiss. The ground beneath me seemed to swirl. I pulled back and looked at him, wiping the kiss with the back of my hand.

  “We are cousins,” he said.

  “How?” I said, startled, for I knew all my aunts and uncles and all my cousins, all my kin.

  He looked at me, a soberness rising in him. “No one has told you?”

  “Told me what?”

  He took me in with those eyes that I couldn’t recall anyone in our family having, blue as the summer sky reflected in a puddle, and he wavered, unsure of what to tell me. A strange feeling surged in my chest, it uncurled inside me like a green thing seeking the light, seeking his lips again on mine.

  “Our mothers are sisters,” he said and went to kiss me again, but I pulled away and scrutinised his face to catch him in the net of his lie, but there was no guile there, or if there was I didn’t detect it.

  I picked up the bucket and ducked my head beneath the willow’s rippling branches and started to walk back to camp, my skirts kicking as wide as I could make them to create a distance between him and me, but he skipped to catch me up.

  My cousin? Why would my parents conceal it? All my life I’d not heard a word, and now my mother was set against him, treating him worse than a gadjo.

  “How can I believe you? My mother has never mentioned her sister, never mentioned you. Why is that, do you think?” I said, my frustration rising as the water overlapped the rim of the bucket and hit my feet, the cold water seeping right through.

  Amberline clutched my spare hand earnestly. “That, you’ll have to ask her about, for it happened all before I was born.”

  All the way back to the camp I drew a map in my mind of all the things my mot
her had ever told me about our family, but I saw no path that led to a sister and her son.

  The others had dispersed by the time I got back to our camp and my mother was at the fire, coaxing a flame, waiting for me. She looked at the half-full bucket and looked at me, but I wasn’t going to tell her what had happened beneath a roof made of willow wands.

  “So tell me about my aunt,” I said matter-of-factly and put the bucket down on the ground, not caring if I was rough and more water splashed over the edge, I would be the one to go and fill it again anyway.

  My mother blew at the embers and the fire leapt up and licked the kindling, sending a thin spiral of smoke wending up between us. “You know all your aunts, Patrin, spread across the country as they are, married into their husbands’ families.” She fed a few twigs onto the fire and, seeing the flames consume them, added the pieces of a branch.

  “Even in London?”

  She wiped her face with her hand and left a smudge.

  “So you’ve spoken to my nephew, I see. What lies did he fill your head with?”

  “No more than what your silence has,” I said, and immediately regretted it for she began to cry, her tears hot and angry. The more she wiped them away the more smudge she made on her face. Her tears frightened me, I’d never seen her cry. I put my hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” I said, “but he didn’t tell me anything other than we were cousins and that his mother is your sister. The rest he knew nothing about.” My mother spat on the ground then, all her tears drying up.

  “If you believe that, then you are more a fool than I thought you were, Patrin.”

  “Well is it true?” I asked. I don’t think I’d ever seen her so fierce.

  “The day my sister left was the day she died for me. Let that be an end,” my mother said.