The Wolfman (13 page)

Gypsy music.

He jerked the reins and picked his way through the woods to a distant point where fairy lights danced. The lights grew larger and resolved into torches and lanterns and cook-fires around which a dozen
vardos
were set. The sides and doors of the brightly colored wagons were carved with horses, birds, lions, griffins, flowers and vines interlaced with elaborate scrollwork. The vardos formed a loose circle around the camp and at its center was a dirt ring edged by a hand-packed rim of raised mud. Men and women sat on wooden folding chairs or sprawled on wildly patterned woven blankets. Children wrestled and played on the fringes or sat in the shadows of their parents to watch the entertainment. Lawrence sat on his mount and watched, too.

A handful of musicians played a rolling, hypnotic tune as a dark-haired, red-lipped, olive-skinned woman danced with erotic abandon in the center of the ring. As she whirled her many skirts floated high enough to show the sleek and muscular curves of her naked legs; sweat pasted her sheer half-blouse to her full breasts,
and her eyes flashed dark fire as she moved. She moved like a snake. She had complete control over every muscle and her body rippled and twisted into impossibly erotic shapes as the firelight caressed her flesh.

Lawrence swallowed a throatful of dust and had to shake his head to clear it of her seductive magic. He dismounted and led the horse into a space between two wagons, watching the woman twist and turn and leap and undulate.

“ ’Chavaia!”
cried a harsh voice and Lawrence turned to see a burly Gypsy emerged from the shadows, a rifle in his hands. The barrel was not pointed at Lawrence, but the man held it with professional competence and there was no smile of welcome on his dark face.

“I—” Lawrence began, but the man fired off a long string of incomprehensible words in Romany. Before Lawrence could protest his ignorance a boy slipped from behind the man and held up a warning hand. The boy wore baggy trousers that were gathered at his waist with a red sash, a white shirt and a black vest stitched with vines.

The boy listened to what the man said, and then looked up at Lawrence. “He says you must come into the camp and stay with us now.”

“What?” Lawrence said, surprised.

“The woods are not safe.”

It was then that Lawrence noticed that the man with the rifle was not looking at him, but was instead glaring into the shadows of the forest behind him.

“Take your horse, your honor?”

The boy could not have been more than eight or nine, but he already had a smile that was on the unctuous side of earnest. The double entrendre of his question was not lost on Lawrence.
Take your horse, indeed.

Lawrence fished a coin from his pocket and made sure that he jingled the coins so that the child could hear the promise of others. He handed a coin to the boy along with the reins and watched as the boy expertly tied the gelding to a young tree. As the horse turned in place the boy caught sight of the rifle in its sturdy leather scabbard. It made the child pause and flick an uncertain look at Lawrence, who returned the look with a knowing smile.

Lawrence showed a second coin to the boy, producing it with a sleight of hand he’d learned long ago in his earliest days in the theater.

“Here’s a second so you don’t touch that,” he said and then magically produced another. “And a third to take me to whomever sells these . . .”

With his other hand he drew Ben’s medallion from his vest pocket and held it up so that it caught sparks from the campfires.

The boy paused halfway to taking the coins and the sight of the medal wiped the smile from the child’s face. He looked at the image of St. Columbanus and the wolves as it turned slowly in the fire light, then back at the guard with the rifle, who gave a terse nod, and then up at Lawrence. He accepted the coins solemnly, all traces of Artful Dodger impishness gone from his face. Several seconds drifted past before he decided to accept that third coin.

“You want to talk to Maleva,” he said softly and with grim reverence.

“I expect so,” agreed Lawrence. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

The boy did not ask who “MacDuff” was, figuring it for some foreign phrase. He pocketed the coins and gestured for Lawrence to follow him into the camp. As they passed by, the Gypsies watched him with calculated interest.
There were fifty or more of them, many of them tinkering away on pots and sham jewelry, a few stringing beads and others engrossed in embroidering flowers on clothing. Cooking pots charmed him with rare spices and a roasted pig sizzled with juices as it was turned on a slow spit. A few of the more dangerous-looking men appraised him for whatever threat he might pose, or risk he might bring, while others calculated his value as a well-heeled customer. Everyone in the camp looked at Lawrence as he passed by, and he knew that each of them, from the youngest child to the oldest crone, could value his clothing and accoutrements to the last halfpenny.

Just beyond the dancing circle Lawrence saw a big cage on wheels in which a lumpy animal squatted dispiritedly behind the stout bars: the dancing bear the publican had mentioned. But Lawrence sneered inwardly, knowing that this mangy old beast could not have caught his brother, let alone killed him. The poor creature looked more than halfway into its own grave.

The boy led him to one vardo that sat apart from the others, tucked farther back under the boughs of a diseased maple whose leaves had been chewed to lace by moths. A pair of lanterns hung from posts beside the short stairs that led up to the colorful door of the wagon, and tapestries of almost regal beauty were hung on lines to create a palatial setting. Whoever this Maleva was, he thought, she must be of great importance.

The boy stopped just outside the spill of lantern light from the wagon. He pointed to a figure seated on a stool outside of the vardo and then, without a further word, he retreated back to the music and noise of the main camp. The boy wasted no time in leaving the vicinity of the figure seated in the shadows.

Lawrence had no such reservations and he strode
straight toward the figure. From twenty feet away he could tell that it was a woman, but as he drew close it was clear that the woman was ancient. Maleva sat hunched over, a colorful shawl pulled close around her bony shoulders. A thin cigarillo bobbed between her lips as she hummed along with the distant music. She heard Lawrence approach but without even turning her head she said, “You wish to have your fortune told?”

He stopped a few feet away and held out the medal of St. Columbanus. He stood silent, waiting for Maleva to turn. As she did the bored expression on the old woman’s face darkened and when she raised her eyes from the medal to meet Lawrence’s gaze she gave him a look of mingled dread and sadness. Maleva slowly reached out a thin and wrinkled hand to take the medal.

She held it for a moment, then closed her eyes and pressed the medallion to her chest. Maleva bowed her head, nodding to herself as if confirming a dreaded suspicion.

“You had better come inside,” she murmured.

T
he vardo looked like a junk shop to Lawrence. Strings of cheap beads hung from the rafters, dozens of bad imitations of holy relics overflowed from drawers and chests, and a pot of “good luck” coins had cracked and spilled its contents onto the floor. But past this debris there was another layer to the décor made up entirely of boxes of herbs and pots of compounds made from roots and exotic flowers. Strings of wrinkled plants and strange fruit hung drying in the corners, and streamers of animal hide were nailed to the wooden walls. Maleva waved Lawrence to a three-legged chair and he had to move aside several bolts of beautiful fabric to give himself leg room on the other side of a small divination table.

Maleva laid the medallion on the tabletop, and after studying it for a few moments leaned back in her chair and puffed her cigarillo. The flare of the coal showed her face: wizened, pinched, filled with age and pain, but Lawrence was long practiced in looking at actors and actresses made up to look old. He could easily imagine the face she had once worn many decades ago. She was probably beauti ful once, perhaps arrestingly so. The bone structure was there, and there was still some fire in her old and rheumy eyes.

She handed Lawrence a deck of old tarot cards and
asked him shuffle, then she took the cards, cut them and began laying individual cards in a row. She rambled on for a few moments about pain, dark omens and the pain Lawrence felt for his dead mother. Lawrence wasn’t impressed. Everyone in this county knew that Sir John was a widower.

“. . . and you try to find solace in the women who pass you by, but this pain never goes away. It gnaws deeper—”

He placed his hand on hers, stopping the flow of meaningless words.

“That’s not why I came here,” he said. “And you know it.”

The look in her eyes was sly and careful.

“Tell me about my brother.”

Maleva lowered her eyes to study the back of Lawrence’s hand. She took it in both of hers and turned it over to study the palm.

“There is a picture in your mind,” she said, and this time her voice lacked artifice. “A terrible picture. It cannot be erased. It hides from you, but you know it’s there. Which makes it more terrible . . .”

“The medallion I showed you. It was found on my brother’s body.”

“But he was not wearing it.” She said it as a statement rather than a question.

Lawrence narrowed his eyes. “How do you know this?”

She said nothing.

“Your caravan showed up two weeks before three men were killed. I don’t think it’s a coincidence.”

Maleva smiled thinly. “There are no coincidences. Only Fate. But she plays a hidden hand. What part we have in this we won’t know till the game’s up.”

“What exactly is ‘this’?” he said, irritated by the parlor mystic performance. He wasn’t a believer and this felt like more Gypsy nonsense to him. But then he narrowed his eyes as another thought occurred to him and he leaned forward, placing his palm on the table. In a low and dangerous voice he demanded, “Did someone here kill my brother?”

If Maleva was intimidated by Lawrence’s tone or words no flicker of it showed on her face.

“Darkness comes for you. You must leave Talbot Hall,” she said in a voice as soft as a midnight whisper. “You must flee Blackmoor.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve only just arrived.”

Outside there were shouts and screams.

“And you have come too late. . . .”

L
awrence leaped to his feet and dashed outside, expecting the worst and hoping for it. He wanted the killer to be there . . . to be
here.
He wanted to catch the bastard in the middle of one of his murderous attacks; he wanted him red-handed so that no one could say that he was innocent. Lawrence was hungry for blood, he wanted—
needed
—to be face to face with Ben’s killer.

He kicked open the door and stared at a scene of confused activity that was not at all what he expected, and it stopped him in his tracks.

Tableau.

A Gypsy lay on the ground, his face a mask of blood, hands pressed to a jaw that was clearly shattered. Broken bits of teeth were stuck against his lips and chin. A billy club on a thong dangled from his wrist. A woman knelt over him, using her body to shield him from four big men who stood in the center of the dancing circle. They were not Gypsies—these were clearly men from Blackmoor, and each of them carried a heavy shotgun and it was clear from the looks on their faces that they were willing to use either end of their weapons. One man wiped blood from the stock of his weapon, a cruel grin of satisfaction etched onto his heavy features. Lawrence recognized him. Kirk, the publican who owned the tavern.

Kirk pointed his shotgun across the clearing where the bear cage stood. A Gypsy man stood between him and the cage. He had a ball python curled around his neck and his rough hand rested on the hilt of a curved dagger in a sheath angled to allow a quick pull. Other Gypsies—men and women—appeared out of the shadows. They were angry, some snarling curses in Romany, their dark faces clouding with confusion and rage.

“Go away,” he growled in a heavily accented voice. “You have no business here. Not tonight. Go away.”

“Give us the bloody bear, you old snake handler, or you’ll get what I gave your friend.” Kirk kicked the fallen man in the leg. The other men kept turning to cover the gathering crowd with their guns.

The Gypsy with the python pulled the knife halfway from its sheath, but Kirk leveled the shotgun at him and thumbed back the hammer with an audible
click!

“Pull that pig-sticker and I’ll shorten you by a head.” Kirk was enjoying himself and wore a vicious smile as he bullied his way through the crowd and threw open the drop-bolt on the bear cage. He and the other men stepped back as the bear moved forward; it shouldered open the barred door and stepped down onto the hard-packed ground.

“There’s your killer, lads,” declared Kirk.

“Nonsense!” cried the Gypsy. “He dances. That’s all.”