by Jess Smith
Megan nodded in agreement, then tried once more to reach the water can, but was again hindered by the thin-faced policeman. ‘Can I fetch some water for the old woman’s breakfast, arse with moustache?’ she asked.
‘Impudent bitch,’ retorted the man, then, ‘That’s no English accent. If I’m not mistaken you’re a Scot. Why are you here with this lot?’
‘Leave the girl alone, she’s the daughter of a cousin. He married a Scot. I’m looking after her for a while, Mr Martin, sir.’
Why did her old friend need to lie? After all, she’d no knowledge of last night. But it dawned on her that here was a wise old woman who’d been around a long time. Maybe she sensed something.
The detective accepted her reasons for Megan’s presence, then warned everyone they’d be back the next day, so his parting words were ‘Nobody move on’.
A fearful silence settled on the campsite, it was stifling. The gypsies held their breath, watching as one by one the policemen piled into two charabanc-type motors, that looked like square tin cans on wheels.
Detective Martin had a car, which spurted and spat into life, taking him and the thin-faced constable off down the road. They had not travelled fifty yards when a young man almost threw himself in front of the vehicle. He was in a terrible state, panting and sweating as if he brought news so awful it would shock trees from their roots.
‘A young lass! There’s the body of a girl on the far east side of Bleak Fell.’
Megan’s heart froze. ‘Lucy! He’s murdered Lucy!’ she cried out. Visions of last night’s mist-shrouded events flashed vividly on her mind’s eye. She dropped onto her knees, remembering the scream she’d blamed on an owl. The one she thought had taken a heavy rabbit. It hadn’t been a rabbit, but poor, sad Lucy, and her killer had two legs, not wings.
‘What’s that?’ shouted Martin, hearing what she said from the open window of his car.
Megan ignored him and ran towards the gypsies. ‘That beast Buckley, the one you cowards gave ground to fight and kill another man, I saw the fiend kill Mr Newton, and order Hawen to get Lucy. You let him come and never lifted a finger to stop him. Bloody cowards you are!’
Every one of the gypsies turned their backs to her, older children joined their dogs beneath the wagons, while little ones clung to their mothers’ skirts.
Detective Martin caught up with Megan and held her tightly by both arms. Here was a witness, a gypsy willing to expose another gypsy, unheard of. He wasn’t letting her go. ‘Constable,’ he summoned the thin-faced one, ‘take this young lady into custody.’
Mother Foy hobbled up and called to the eager detective, ‘A word in your ear if you please.’
Beady-eyed Martin, impatient to get Megan away from the gypsies, said, ‘What is it, old woman? Can’t you see I’ve a crime needing solved?’
‘Now, everyone in these parts knows you to be an expert policeman, a real clever fella, a solver o’ crimes. Would you agree with me?’
He pushed out his chest, swallowing her compliment as she continued.
‘I’ve seen you come and go onto sites ever since you had the brain of a babe and the face to go with it. I’ve watched you find wisdom dealing with us gypsies. Now tell us, have you ever come across a single gypsy who’d say anything agin another?’
‘Can’t say as I have, but there’s always a first.’ He’d found the first one, as far as he was concerned, and needed to find out what she had to say further. The old woman raised her voice so that all could hear, including the police.
‘She’s not fit in the head, my poor little niece; she’ll only fill your good selves with nonsense. She thinks Bull Buckley was the killer. Bull came here last night for a bare-knuckle fight, no one denies it. He fought well he did, won a few rounds, but I picked him up from the gutter and washed his wounds. That man, well, let’s say he was out for the count; the end of the fight saw both of his eyes closed with bruises. If he killed anybody, then it must have been with eyes shut.”
Megan could hardly believe that her friend was defending a killer. She broke away and ran over to Lucy’s distraught mother, who was donning her coat to go and identify her daughter’s body.
‘She was going away with Mr Newton. Buckley was blackmailing him. He killed him and Hawen killed Lucy. I’m willing to be whipped for saying it, but if it puts that devil from hell behind bars, then I’ll gladly tell all I know, because Lucy told me herself.’
Lucy’s mother pushed her aside abruptly. ‘Shut your mouth. My girl didn’t fall by his or any other’s hand, and she took her own life. I begged her not to fret over a boy she’d met during the war. We heard recently that he was dead. She warned me she couldn’t live without him, foolish girl, and now she’s dead because of it.’
The policemen stood around, watching and waiting.
Megan’s head was spinning with all kinds of dark thoughts, ‘How could a mother distraught about her daughter’s murder tell such lies,’ she thought. Her mind was in turmoil; drastic measures were called for. ‘Take me into jail. I did it,’ she screamed. ‘Come on, get the bloody handcuffs on me.’
Mother Foy lifted her stick and brought it hard down across her back ‘She’s a gowpie, don’t take any notice. She sees demons everywhere.’
She fixed her gaze deep into Martin’s eyes, and summoned him close to her so that only he could hear. ‘Now, she may be telling truth or she might not, but what would folks say if they were to discover that Mr Newton, the finest gentleman around these parts, had been dipping into gypsy flesh? What would that do to his family’s standing among the nobility? And what about his dear wife and innocent children—what of their reputations?’ She lowered her eyes to the ground and waited for his response.
Mother Foy’s words made crystal clear sense to him. He knew that his hands were tightly bound by the need to protect the aristocracy of the land. He summoned his troops.
‘Come on boys, let’s go. She’s just a stupid gypsy gowpie, with nothing between her ears.’
Megan, powerless to persuade a living soul of the truth of her story, watched until all that was left of the law officers was a cloud of thin wheel dust.
‘What the hell got into you just now?’ asked Mother Foy. ‘We know who killed Newton and Lucy, but we gypsies never, ever, bring the law into our affairs.’
‘How the hell are you going to punish Buckley? He’ll chew you all into little balls and spit you out. Bloody cowards, that’s what you are. And what’s a gowpie anyroad?’
‘There are ways to sort Buckley, gypsy ways. Now, maybe we haven’t got a fixer here in the quarry, but word’s out now and soon others will tighten a noose for his neck. You take a look at the face on Lucy’s mother and tell me she’s not planning revenge. If the law get to him first she’ll rot with anger for not having avenged her girl. No, his days are numbered. And a gowpie is simple.’
‘Simple what?’
‘Touched.’
Ruth and Anna, who had stayed silent through out the commotion approached her and said, ‘We are going onto the moor to fetch Lucy’s body, will you help us?’
‘Of course, but surely the police will be watching over Lucy’s remains, seeing as a murder has taken place?’
‘They don’t care about my Lucy, only the Honourable Mr Newton,’ the dead girl’s mother called across, thanking her for caring about her dear daughter. She then added that other women from the camp were going to fetch her girl’s remains, and she was welcome to come.
Thoughts about all that had happened, and what was going to take place now, teemed in Megan’s aching head. “They might be strange people, but they are certainly not cowards,” she thought. It had been to protect the gypsy code of secrecy that Lucy’s mother had remained so composed while the police were present.
Megan planned to leave the encampment that very hour, and for sure that was what she wanted to do, but somehow the pain that Buckley and his evil ways was spreading over her hosts was also penetrating her heart, so how could she go now? ‘Tomorr
ow, then,’ she thought, ‘I’ll take to the road in the morning, get right away. Find Bruar without gypsy help.’
As the women walked up and over the quarry edge, no one spoke. They just followed the youngster who knew where a young girl, with so much to live for, lay cold and motionless on the rough purple heather. A breeze swirled around them, who numbered a dozen or so. The wind prompted one to say solemnly, ‘She be round the corner, she be.’
Megan asked Ruth what that meant.
‘Winter,’ came the reply.
A small form could be seen ahead on the ground. It was Lucy, covered by a dirty blanket. ‘Oh God in heaven,’ screamed Lucy’s mother, ‘Look at my innocent baby, my beautiful babba, lying in the heather like a lurcher’s discarded prey.’ She broke free from Ruth and Anna who were supporting her, falling and stumbling until she stood trembling over her daughter’s lifeless body. ‘My little, sweet flower. Why did you give yourself to the master of the moors? Plenty good gypsy boys, but oh no, you had to pick him. Now look where it got you.’
She threw herself on top of the dead girl, sobbing uncontrollably. Then gently she lifted the lifeless body by the shoulders and cried with such depth of sorrow as only a mother can feel. It was pitiful. Megan remembered her own mother, Annie. Thinking of her lying in the woods of Kirriemor brought tears. She sat down gently and began to mumble. The gypsy women were silenced by astonishment; they’d never heard this before. Ruth sat down on a rock. Anna joined her. Then one by one the rest sat in the coarse heather and listened as Megan chanted the call of death. When, after several minutes, she lowered her head, the others asked her what it was she was chanting. ‘It is a simple call to Mother Nature. I asked that Lucy be at one with the earth, the wind, rain and sun; to be free to join her ancestors.’ She turned to Lucy’s mother with outstretched hands and said, ‘Now that she has climbed the highest mountain, she can dance the dance of freedom.’
‘Freedom from what?’ whispered Ruth.
‘From her limbs,’ came the simple reply.
Anna, who had brought Lucy’s shroud, called out, ‘see what took the life from her!’ She was pointing at a cravat around the neck; a green and red scarf. ‘We all know who that belongs to.’
Everyone nodded except Megan, who asked if it was Buckley.
‘That piece of silk belonged to Hawen Collins. He killed my girl, and for that his fate is well and truly sealed.’
Soon the women with their burden of grief were back at the quarry campsite. Once they had all returned, Mother Foy called for Thamas. All eyes turned toward a wagon at the far end of the quarry, as the door slowly creaked open. A big man, wearing only an undervest and trousers, stepped down. He sat on the bottom step and retrieved boots from beneath the wagon, slipped them on and walked over to the women. ‘Thamas,’ said Mother Foy in her sternest voice, ‘Hawen Collins did strangle Lucy. Find and kill him stone dead. You know if the muskries find him before us, then he’ll escape his punishment.’ She went inside her wagon and came out brandishing a small, shiny dagger. ‘Stick it to the heart, one to the left side, then one to the right. Before he breathes his last, whisper young Lucy’s name to him three times. Now find Hawen Collins and kushti bok [good luck].’
Thamas went to Lucy’s mother, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Tis the grave that waits for him, not a muskrie cell in a warm, “eat-yer-fill” prison. Take it for truth, he’s a dead man.’ Then, after a shave and donning a coat, he walked silently off down the road. His eyes were fixed ahead.
Megan watched in silence, as did everyone until Thamas turned the bend of the quarry road and was gone. She wondered what the words of the old woman meant, and asked her.
‘Hawen took a gypsy life, therefore only another true blood can take his. We believe that when first born, our heart turns in our bodies to meet the rising sun first to the left, then towards the right; to the setting sun. To whisper the victim’s name means that God hears it and will not allow the murderer entrance into heaven. So between the sun’s lights he is bound to wander the earth, never finding peace.’
Megan walked away, and found solace by the peaceful water of the pool. She thought seriously on all that had taken place over a few short days. She’d not changed her mind about leaving, but wondered how the old woman would respond. ‘Probably pleased to see the back of me, after that episode with the muskries, I don’t doubt.’ How long she sat there in her quiet spot she’d no idea, but soon the sound of a stranger’s voice made her go and find out who had come among them. As she went into the site she saw a tall, chestnut horse tethered to a fence post. A handsome, slender woman was talking to Lucy’s mother. Megan sat down beside Mother Foy, and Ruth and Anna joined them. ‘It’s Mrs Newton. She wanted to pay her respects, and she needs to speak with you, Megan,’ the old woman told her, then whispered, ‘I knew those rumours would bring her here. She knows you were the last to see Lucy.’
‘But why me? I can’t help her. I never set eyes on her man. Surely you all knew him?’
‘Yes, that we did. But who told the muskries about Lucy being murdered? You did, and I bet they went up to Burnstall Hall and mentioned to her what the gowpie said.’
Megan turned and said to her host, who was sucking away on her familiar broken-stemmed pipe, ‘Mother Foy, I am forever in your debt, but in the morning I will leave. My man is somewhere and I can’t wait until next year to find him.’
‘You are frightened by the murders and the bare knuckling; to be truthful, girlie, I am too. But while you were away down by the pool we had a talk.’ She gathered Ruth and Anna into a circle. ‘I am taking to the road meself. There’s further down the way a nice bit of land known to gypsies as “the gorse field”. Now there comes a time when a gypsy head has to stand down. My time has come. The girls here will tell you I’ve been getting a mite pained in this ’ere chest.’
‘That you have Mother, that you have,’ said Ruth. Anna added, ‘She wants you to look after her, Megan.’
‘I was getting round to that,’ the old woman scolded the two girls and said, ‘I’m going to speak to Megan.’ They both nodded.
Megan stayed quiet, then asked, ‘Is the group breaking up? Because Lucy told me that Mr Newton was arranging things with his lawyer. The quarry will be free to live in, so there is no need to concern yourselves over that.’
Ruth spoke next, ‘His widow has already told us we can stay, so that’s not the problem; it’s Bull Buckley! He’s caused so much worry that we are all splitting up to avoid him bringing his fights and whatever else to darken our doors. We leave tomorrow after resting Lucy. Now, you better go and speak with the widow, see what she wants.’
Megan, who once again found her tie with the gypsies twisting and turning, threw a glance at her old friend. She’d been a source of kindness and wisdom. What harm could be done by spending a quiet winter seeing to her needs?
‘Alright, I’ll look after you for the winter. We’ll set off tomorrow. Now I’d better see what the lady wants.’
She saw Mrs Newton chatting quietly with Lucy’s mother, and so not wishing to interfere in the shared mourning of the two women who’d recently lost so much, she walked down toward the chestnut mare and stroked her nose. ‘You’re a beauty, aren’t you?’ she whispered.
When as a child her father took her up on the hills to bring down the deer, she loved leading and riding the garrons, sturdy, thick-set little hill ponies. Although seldom with horses since, she always felt close to them, the few times she was. Doctor Mackenzie’s horse was old and short-tempered, yet never like that with Megan; she could do what she liked with that animal. Gazing into the black and brown eyes of this regal beast brought floods of emotions, and for the second time that day her heart ached for Scotland. ‘Will I ever be there again?’ she thought.
‘Hello, are you the gowpie your friends have told me not to listen to?’ It was the grieving lady.
‘I’m no gowpie, but they want me to keep quiet about a certain man, so don’t waste your time, be
cause I’m doing just that.’
‘You seem to have a way with my horse,’ the lady said, changing the subject and watching her animal nudge Megan’s face.
‘She’s beautiful, you must give her plenty attention, with the shine of her coat. Fed well too, by the feel of these flanks.’ She stroked the horse and it nudged her even more.
‘All credit goes to Sam, my stable hand; he’s a delightful boy and a natural with horses. Walk with me a little and tell me about the part of Scotland you come from. My husband and I...’ Mention of him brought tears. She pulled a silk handkerchief from a black-sleeved velvet jacket with cuffs of leather, ‘we spent many happy times hunting deer in the north.’
Here was a person who had been to her Scotland. She had seen and breathed the air of her moors. She was keen to walk in this woman’s company. ‘Yes, I’ll walk with you. Where in the north did you hunt?’ They began to stroll along, leading the horse by its bridle.
The old woman, watching her with the lady, raised a hand in concern and called to her not to go away from the site.
‘I’m alright, don’t worry.’ Megan hoped that all the gypsies, who were silently watching her every move, would hear and know that, as far as Buckley was concerned, she’d make no mention of him.
Ruth joined her and drew her back from the lady. ‘Tonight,’ she told her seriously, ‘no one goes to sleep. It’s our custom that everybody stays up the night before a funeral. I’ll wait up by the quarry lip till you and the good lady have finished walking.’
Megan could see how worried Ruth and all the gypsies had become in case she mentioned Buckley.
‘Mrs Newton and I are talking about my Scotland, that’s all. I’ll see you later.’
Soon the expanse of moorland stretched out before them, and late autumnal breezes spread amongst heather and rock. What was recently to her a place of wild beauty was now a desolate region of murder and whistling, haunting winds. She was glad she’d put on her coat.
It was plain to see her companion was a mistress of horses. ‘Move on, pretty girl,’ she ordered the mare, taking off the halter. ‘I like to give her freedom now and again,’ she said, patting the horse’s flanks. Megan was astonished at how dutiful the tall horse was, as it circled and galloped, then fell in and walked behind her mistress.
