The Musician's Daughter

by Susanne Dunlap

  By the time I reached the carriage stand, I was beginning to have serious doubts that I could get back to the Gypsy camp without creating so much of a fuss that the entire world would know I had gone. But I’d come this far. Now I just had to find the driver who would take me. I didn’t recognize any of them from the day before. It was entirely possible that the one we’d had was out with another passenger.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I said to the first fellow I came upon, leaning one elbow against the flank of one of his horses. He was older than the others, so I thought it would seem less odd for me to approach him. He stared at me as if to say, “Get out of my way, little girl, I’m waiting for business.” “Excuse me,” I repeated, not to be put off, “but I’m looking to engage a carriage.”

  “Oh, you are? And where might you want this carriage to take you?”

  “I—” I couldn’t continue. Where did I want him to go? I hadn’t been able to watch the direction. All I had was the vaguest description. “There’s a camp, of the Romany people, by the river,” I whispered.

  The driver almost sent me tumbling back on the ground with the force of his laughter. “You want to go to the Gypsy camp, alone? Don’t you have a mother to tell you such things are dangerous, Fräulein?”

  By now all the drivers were looking in our direction. Some had even drawn closer to hear the dispute. “I can pay good money,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “Nein,” he said. “There’s no money good enough to make me take such a risk.” He turned to his mates. “Here, lads, she wants to go run off to the Gypsies! Maybe she thinks she can swallow fire, or tell fortunes.”

  Right at that moment, I just wanted to run away, to find Zoltán and ask him to come with me. I looked down at the ground. The drivers all went back to their carriages, laughing and joking at my expense. I turned and started to walk away. Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked around to see that one of the younger carriage drivers had followed me.

  “I know where the camp is, Fräulein.”

  “And will you take me there?”

  “Cost ye,” he said quietly.

  “How much?” I whispered.

  “Five Gulden.”

  I almost exclaimed aloud. That was half the money I had left. “That is too much! I shall give you one Thaler.”

  “In advance.”

  I paused for a moment, then remembered that Zoltán had paid the driver first yesterday, and so I fished out the coin from my reticule. He examined it carefully, tucked it in his pocket, then walked off in the direction of the carriage stand. I assumed I was to follow him.

  His was the most dilapidated-looking vehicle of all. One of the wheels was missing a spoke, and as I climbed in, it creaked so that I feared a deep rut would shatter the entire thing to pieces. I crossed myself and said a quick prayer to St. Christopher. As we drew away from the main street and into the countryside, my heart began to pound. How did I know this fellow would take me where I wanted to go? He could simply drive me out to the deepest part of the woods, rob me, and leave me to starve or be eaten by wolves or wild boar. Why had I been so foolish! Why could I not have trusted Zoltán to help me? Because he did not believe, as I did, that the Gypsies had killed and robbed my father. If not for money, then for his violin. And how exactly would I find it? Would I walk up to that Danior fellow and demand to search his wagon?

  By the time my driver reined in his horse, I had worked myself into quite a state, and was trying to figure out how to tell him just to turn around and take us back to Vienna.

  “We’ve arrived, Fräulein,” he called down, making no move to get off the box. Clearly he was not going to hand me out of the carriage. I’m here, I thought. This was what I wanted, to look for answers. I couldn’t just back away at the first sign of difficulty. I opened the door and climbed down. There was the camp, a few hundred paces away. Although he’d stopped under cover of the woods, he had brought me where I’d asked him to. I started to walk toward the huts and wagons when I heard the driver say, “Get up now!” and turned around to see him starting up at a brisk trot, heading away from me.

  “Where are you going?” I yelled. “How shall I get back?”

  “Half the money, half the trip!” he called back. I swore he was laughing.

  Now what was I to do? A look at the sky told me that I had only a couple of hours before the short winter day would end. I thought about abandoning my quest and simply walking eastward down the river until I reached Vienna. But I had taken such a risk already, and would not be likely to dare such a thing again. I didn’t have enough money to squander another Thaler, for one thing. And it would be a shame to leave without at least trying to find out something, see if any of the Romany had heard or seen anything that night. I smoothed my cloak and wrapped it around me tightly, then walked with determination toward the Gypsy camp.

  CHAPTER 10

  At first only a few children looked up at me. Although they were fully clothed, the way their garments were distributed among them gave the effect that they had shared a single outfit. One had scarlet breeches, patched at the knees with blue. Another wore a waistcoat of the same deep red with multicolored buttons. An older girl who looked to be about my age wore a black dress, but had tied an apron of the scarlet material around her waist and wrapped a scarf of bright red silk around her neck. They paused in their game that amounted to tossing stones into piles and ran toward some women who were clustered around an open fire roasting what looked like squirrels. The women looked up at me with expressions that held more curiosity than suspicion. One of them walked over to a group of five men. The men’s eyes turned to me one by one as she spoke, and then, as if by some silent signal, in a group they started to walk toward me. I continued in their direction with my chin held high. My stomach was flipping over inside of me, and I could feel sweat trickle down my sides from under my arms, although my hands, face, and feet were icy cold. What was it I wanted to say? I thought to myself, my mind suddenly a complete blank. Oh, yes. The violin. My father.

  We stopped a few paces apart from one another. They said nothing, obviously waiting for some explanation from me. I dipped a quick curtsy. Perhaps politeness was called for. “I humbly beg your pardon,” I said in a voice that sounded pinched and shaky to me, and that I hoped did not sound too fearful to them, “but I am looking for something of my father’s that was lost.”

  The largest of the men folded his arms emphatically and flared his nostrils at me. Still no word from any of them, but I could hear the children whispering behind me.

  “He was found here—murdered, I’m afraid …” Murdered. I had thought the word so many times in the last few days, but this was the first time I had allowed it to pass my lips. And here I was, standing alone in front of this group of hostile Roma men, each of whom appeared strong enough to strangle me with one hand. I felt my eyes fill with tears. I tried to say something more, but my throat was squeezed and I could not draw breath without making a great, raw scraping that sounded like the sob of a wild animal. I doubled over.

  All at once I felt myself lifted off my feet. For a moment, I flailed my arms and kicked. But then a deep voice said, “Hush.” I don’t know why, but the voice calmed me and I started to cry. The man carried me and placed me on an animal skin inside a hut or a wagon, I did not know which. By then, I was giving full vent to my despair, not caring who saw or heard me. I had forced myself to be strong until now, locking my grief inside me as long as I was within my own world and trying to be brave for Toby and Mama. I don’t know why the curious, blank faces of strangers had made me suddenly crumble.

  “Here. Taste this.”

  The woman’s voice was gentle but insistent. When I took the cup of fragrant tea that she thrust under my nose, I noticed that the skin on her hands was dark, and that she had long fingernails that had been filed to sharp points at their ends and painted bright red.

  “It won’t hurt you, kushti.”

  I sipped. The tea was hot. I sipped again. Somethi
ng in the tea soothed me. I sat up and looked around.

  I had been brought inside a hut made of stout sticks with heavy cloth stretched over them. A fire burned in the middle, its smoke drawn out a small hole that had been left directly above it. The floor of the hut was covered in brightly colored blankets and animal skins, and a silver samovar sat in the corner, gleaming and ready for use. Despite its apparent impermanence, the atmosphere inside the hut was warm and welcoming.

  “You had better tell me what it is you want,” said the woman.

  “I’m so sorry. You must think me foolish and weak.”

  “A young Viennese girl finds her own way out to the wicked Gypsy camp and addresses all the elders—without even carrying a weapon. Foolish, yes. Weak, no.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “I came because my father’s body was found here, by the river. He was a musician. I don’t understand why he was murdered—he did no harm to anyone. I need to find his violin. It disappeared the night he was killed.”

  “A fiddler, you say?” Her eyes grew distant, as if she was thinking of something. “Yes, I think I remember.”

  “Our friend—Zoltán—brought me here the other day. He said my father knew of this place and came here to listen to the music.”

  “Your father. What was his name?”

  “Antonius Schurman. Violinist at Prince Nicholas Esterhazy’s court.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it.

  “Do you—did you know him?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Never.”

  I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t know how to ask again without insulting her. I drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out in a sigh. “I just want to know what happened to him, and why someone would take his violin.”

  “This violin—it is important to you?”

  “Yes. It could be,” I said. I was beginning to hope that some of my questions might actually be answered.

  “Danior will know something. Wait here.” The woman stood. She lifted the flap of carpet that served as a door and vanished through it, letting in a short shock of cold air. I pulled my cloak around me more tightly.

  Danior! I thought. The very person I had hoped to see. At least one part of this strange adventure was going as planned. I didn’t have to wait long. The woman returned almost immediately with a young man whom I presumed was the fellow Zoltán had mentioned the day before. The flap opened again, and behind the man and the woman I thought I saw the older girl I had noticed before, peering in to try to get a look at me.

  “Kon se rani?” the man said as soon as he caught sight of me. I had no idea what he meant, but his voice held a challenge in it.

  “This is Danior,” the woman said to me. Then, turning to him, she said, “She is the daughter of a musician, a violinist, she says, in the court of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy.”

  “What brings you here?” Danior asked, fixing me with his penetrating gaze.

  I tried to meet his eyes, but I could not. I don’t recall noticing their color. I had the impression of deep darkness then, but it was dim inside the hut.

  “She says her father came here. And that his body was found by the river.”

  Until that point, Danior had stood staring down at me where I sat on the ground, feeling small and vulnerable in my quilted petticoat and my plain, fustian dress. But after the lady spoke, he crouched down, squatting quite comfortably next to me as he examined my face. “Yes. I have seen her. She resembles her father.”

  He knew my father! But where had he seen me? He must have noticed me with Zoltán the day before. I had removed my mask while we were down at the river’s edge. The idea of being observed unknowingly by this fellow with his dark skin and deep eyes disturbed me.

  I summoned up my courage and spoke. “I once heard a Gypsy violinist, and I know my father was fascinated by the music. If he came here from time to time to hear you play perhaps you might know why someone would have—harmed him?”

  Immediately I regretted the implication of my words. Both the lady and Danior drew back visibly. “You believe that, because we roam the world, no land to call our own, we must therefore be thieves and murderers?” Danior said.

  Yes, I thought, that was precisely what I had permitted myself to think. It was what everyone said, everyone who was fearful of the Roma ways. “Forgive me,” I said. “Zoltán said no one here was involved, but I am at such a loss to understand how it could have happened. My father was well liked. We were a respected family. He was only a musician.”

  “Zoltán?” Danior said, picking out the one name I had uttered.

  “He is also a musician, and my friend.”

  “He brought you here. I saw him, too. What did he say to you?”

  “He told me where they had found my father’s body. And he said you would not have the violin. Yet why else was my papa murdered? Who can have wanted to harm him, unless it was someone who wanted his beautiful violin?”

  Danior rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Are you certain theft is the only possible reason for his murder? Perhaps you did not know your father so well as you thought.”

  I gave him a skeptical look. My father did not seem the sort to have mysteries. Then again, I would not have expected him to make a habit of coming to a Gypsy camp for entertainment, nor to own a gold medallion I had never seen before. Least of all would I have expected him to suffer a violent death.

  The idea that he might have secrets gave me a horrible thought. I looked up at the Gypsy woman, who stared back at me with not unfriendly eyes. These Roma women were said to be fascinating to men, with their smoldering looks and wild ways. Could my father have taken a mistress from among them? Perhaps the medallion was a love token. My mind leapt to the idea of revenge as a possible motive for murder. A father, perhaps, or a brother. Or a spurned lover. Were there children? I immediately formed the idea that my father could have had an entire family I did not know about. He spent much time away from home, performing.

  But a moment’s reflection made me realize that my father’s busy life would make such a thing difficult if not impossible. And we moved like Gypsies ourselves every year, to Esterhaza from Vienna and back again. Yet the Roma wandered, too, and this band of Gypsies could be the same as the one that spent its summers not far from Esterhaza, and whose members the prince’s cook would blame for every little thing that went wrong on the estate.

  “You should stay and break bread with us,” the lady said.

  “I’m not hungry, but thank you.”

  “It is not polite to refuse food when you are a guest of the Romany,” Danior said sternly.

  All at once I realized that, however well I’d been treated so far, I was entirely at the mercy of my hosts. I surreptitiously felt my reticule. It still contained coins—I had not been unwittingly robbed. Then I blushed again that I would have expected to be. “Thank you, of course. You are very generous.”

  Danior stood and reached his hand down to me. I took it and he pulled me to my feet. His grip was wiry. He had calluses on his fingertips. “You are a fiddler!” I said.

  At that moment, a wide smile lit his face, revealing two rows of small, straight teeth. I noticed only then that he was quite a young man, and that his features had that balance that make expressions look alive, his nose straight until its end, where delicately flared nostrils softened the slight downward hook. He was clean shaven except for a thin mustache, revealing the perfect symmetry of his face. He wasn’t quite as handsome as Zoltán, but there was something fascinating about his looks.

  When we emerged, I saw with dismay that the twilight had already started to draw in. How would I get back to Vienna now? Mother would be worried. And Toby? Had he found his way home all right? Would he be punished for my actions?

  We sat with the others on mats of carpet woven with fanciful pictures of animals and flowers, positioned around a large fire with a cauldron hung over it on a makeshift frame. No sooner had I settled in my place tha
n the girl, the one who seemed to be my age and who I had seen peering in when the flap of the hut opened, came and sat down next to me.

  “I am Mirela,” she said. “You are Theresa. I know. I speak German. I can tell you what they say.” She swept her arm to indicate the entire camp. At that moment, everyone chattered noisily in that odd language I had heard before. Mirela spoke with a strong accent, but I could understand her. And the accent had a kind of music in it.

  “Thank you,” I said, and asked about the woman whose hut I had been in.

  “That’s Maya, and Danior is her cousin.”

  A toothless woman with skin so wrinkled and tanned it looked like tough leather ladled out portions of stew into wooden bowls and broke hunks of brown bread off the loaves on a table at her side. A very small girl child brought me the first bowl. I thanked her. There were no spoons, I observed. Once all had been served, they stared at me.

  Mirela whispered in my ear. “They will not eat until you do. It’s polite.” I turned to her, and she made a gesture as of lifting a bowl to her lips.

  I did as she indicated and drank the broth. It seemed to be what was required, because immediately after I finished, everyone else did the same and the assembled crowd resumed chattering in their language with a few words of German sprinkled in.

  Mirela proved a useful source of information about everyone in the camp. She pointed out the elders, the ones who resolved all disputes and dispensed justice, and then she arranged the assorted children into family groupings. These numbered around five.