Thunder and Roses (54 page)

He saw Clare and started toward her, but made a detour when he saw the old woman. “
Keja
!” he called. She gave a gap-toothed smile and the two began talking in Romany.

As Clare finished her coffee, a boy ran into the camp. “Men are coming this way,” he panted. “Carrying rifles.”

Clare’s heart leaped into her throat. Perhaps they were simply hunters, but it seemed more likely that they were last night’s attackers, looking for the prey that had eluded them.

“This way!” Ani made sweeping gestures toward the wagon.

Clare and Nicholas both clambered inside. “Lie down,” he said, suiting his actions to his words.

As Clare obeyed, Ani brought an armful of feather quilts that had been airing outside. One by one, she spread them over Clare and Nicholas until they were completely covered by layers of quilts. Then a weight plopped down on top. A weight that wiggled.

Feeling Clare start, Nicholas took her hand in a warm clasp. “Ani has put her four-year-old son on top of the
dunhas
. Even if someone is searching for us, they won’t look beyond little
Yojo
. He’s usually quite sticky.”

Though she felt half-suffocated, Clare forced herself to lie still, her hand gripping Nicholas’s. A few minutes later, she heard a hard voice just outside the wagon, speaking in English. “Have you seen a man and woman, traveling on foot? We’re worried. They … they have fever and wandered off from our camp.”

One of the Rom said, “No Gorgios today but you, sirs.”

“Tell your fortune, honored sir?” a female voice said. “A beautiful woman lies in your future, with hands as graceful as birds. Only cross my palm …”

Ani chimed in, “No, honored sir, for
dukkerin
, I am the best. I have the true Gypsy sight.”
                    

Next a child’s voice, “A penny for the guy, good sirs!”

A shrill chorus of children’s voices rose. “A penny, sir, or a
ha’penny
.” “A penny, please!” “Penny for the guy, sir.”

“For God’s sake,” the visitor snarled, “Guy
Fawkes
Day is six months away. Get away from me, you brats.”

The door to the wagon opened with a squeal. Clare’s fingers clamped so hard on Nicholas’s that she must have stopped the blood. A preternatural sense of danger warned her that one of the attackers was looking into the end of the wagon only two feet from their heads.

The child above them suddenly began squirming. “Penny, penny!”
Yojo
demanded.

Another English voice said, “Anything inside?”

“Just another filthy little brat,” the first voice said in disgust. “They must be born knowing how to beg.”

The door slammed shut and the voices faded as they walked away. Clare let out the breath she had been holding. Nicholas had known what he was doing when he sought refuge with his kin.

It was a long, stuffy wait beneath the feather beds.
Yojo
soon wandered off in search of more congenial pursuits, but they stayed where they were until a male voice said, “You can come out now, Nikki. The Gorgios are gone. Maybe you should stay inside wagons when we are on the road, but I think you’re safe now.”

Nicholas pushed aside the quilts and they both sat up with relief. Squatting outside on the wagon’s ledge was
Kore
, a handsome, stocky man who was
Ani’s
husband and the leader of the group. Nicholas asked, “Was the green-eyed man I described one of the Gorgio?”

Kore
shook his head. “There were four men, but not the one you spoke of.” He lifted a stone jug. “The boys are back from searching the ground around the burned hut. Not much was found. Your things were all destroyed and the horses taken. Nearby was this empty jug of whiskey, and this.” He handed over a flat silver case.

Clare’s heart twisted when she saw that it was a card case, the kind a gentleman carried. His face like stone Nicholas opened it. The cards inside were damp but perfectly legible.

Lord Michael Kenyon.
         

Seeing Nicholas’s expression,
Kore
politely turned away and jumped from the wagon.

Clare whispered, “I’m sorry, Nicholas.”

His hand clenched to a fist, snapping the case shut. “But it makes no sense,” he said, stark pain in his voice. “Even assuming that Michael has gone mad and decided to hunt me down, why here in the mountains? Why hire men to help him do what he is quite capable of doing himself? And if he was looking for me, he would have known that a Gypsy kumpania would have to be searched more thoroughly.”

“But he wasn’t with the men—he may have wanted to be sure that no suspicion could fall on him,” she said quietly. “This far from Penreith, our deaths might have been thought accidental. If there was an investigation, bandits would have been blamed when it was seen that several men were involved.” She hesitated, then added, “It may not make sense, but it’s likely that he isn’t fully rational.”

It was all perfectly plausible. Yet as she took Nicholas’s hand, she wished with all her heart that it wasn’t.

30

 
Though Clare was within sixty miles of her home, traveling with the Gypsies was like visiting a foreign country. Many of their customs were British, and all spoke at least some English and Welsh as well as Romany. Yet in other ways, they were totally alien. As Nicholas’s wife, she was able to see them as few Gorgios ever did, for they accepted her with charming casualness, as if she were a kitten that had wandered in. Though she could not approve of some of their attitudes, neither could she resist their warmth and immense vitality.

Seeing the Rom gave her a better understanding of Nicholas. Their ability to live in the moment, as if there were no past or future; their cheerful fatalism; the graceful freedom of their movements—all of those traits were part of her husband’s heritage from the Rom.

Yet though he blended in easily and was very popular, gradually she realized that he was not truly a member of the group; there were parts of his mind and spirit that had grown beyond the narrow world of the Rom. She wondered if he would have been happier

if he had never left the Gypsies. Perhaps someday she would ask him, but not now. When they reached Aberdare, Michael would have to be dealt with, and she felt the grief of that inside Nicholas.

On their final night, the promised feast was held, with lavish amounts of food and drink and laughter. The
centerpiece
was a suckling pig stuffed with apples and roasted over the open fire. As Clare finished her portion, daintily nibbling the roast meat from a bone in her hands, she remarked, “I hope this piglet was honestly come by, but I’m afraid to ask.”

Nicholas grinned. This evening he had buried his concerns and was enjoying himself with Gypsy gusto. “It’s legitimate. By luck, I happened to have a guinea in my breeches when we escaped. I gave it to
Kore
as my contribution to our expenses. I saw him pay for this little porker myself.”

Ani approached the log where they sat. “Since this is a feast in honor of your marriage, we will have a little ritual, yes? Not the abduction, nor the lament, but a little something to symbolize your union.”

Clare said doubtfully, “I don’t know your customs.”

“This will be simple,” Ani said briskly. “You will have no trouble. I will ask
Milosh
to take up his fiddle now. Later, Nikki, you will play the harp for us.”

As Ani bustled away, Clare said, bemused, “Lament?”

“Usually the bride sings a song to her mother, bewailing the fact that she has been sold into marriage and wishing she were dead,” Nicholas explained.

Clare stared at him. “Not very festive.”

“It’s considered very moving. That and the ritual abduction paint an interesting picture of Romany history.”

She licked the last traces of grease from her fingers. “Where did the Rom come from originally?”

He took a swig of wine from a jug before answering, drinking Gypsy style, with the container slung over his shoulder and his finger linked through a loop on the jug’s neck. The effect was very dashing. “Since Gypsies have no written language, no one really knows. An Oxford linguist who has studied the language told me that his guess was that the Rom began their wanderings in Asia. Northern India, perhaps.”
      

Thinking of what she had read of India, she studied the dark-skinned people around her and decided that the linguist’s theory sounded plausible. “Are there no oral tales of Romany history?”

“Many, most of which contradict each other.” He chuckled. “There’s an old saying: ask the same question to twenty Gypsies and you’ll get twenty different answers. On the other hand, if you ask one Gypsy the same question twenty times, you will still get twenty different answers.”

Clare laughed. “You’re telling me that consistency is not considered a virtue to the Rom.”

“And all of them, from the youngest to the oldest, can lie beautifully and fluently when necessary.” He took another swig from the bottle, then handed it to the next man in the circle. “Or they may lie from an excess of creativity, or for amusement. A crafty man is admired here, just as an upright man is honored among the Welsh.”

On the far side of the campfire,
Milosh
struck up a tune on the fiddle, another man accompanying him with a tambourine. Conversation died and people began clapping hands, emphasizing the old beat of the music. Her lush body swaying, Ani walked over and presented Clare with a crimson scarf. “You and Nikki dance together while holding the ends,” she explained. “To show that you are now joined.”

Though Clare’s dancing skills were almost nonexistent, she was willing to try. As she got to her feet, Nicholas suggested, “Let down your hair.”

Obediently she took off her head scarf and raked her fingers through the thick tresses so that they fell into a dark, shimmering mantle. Then she and Nicholas took opposite ends of the scarf, and they moved into the center of the circle. “Behave like a flirtatious maiden,” he said with his Demon Earl smile. “Be the teasing minx I know you can be.”

She thought about that as they began circling slowly, the scarf taut between them. How had she felt when falling under Nicholas’s spell? Terrified of his sexual magnetism, yet utterly unable to resist it. Looking deep into his eyes, she let the potent memories flow through her.

She began by lowering her eyes in a pantomime of shyness, then letting her low-cut blouse slip seductively off one shoulder as she turned away. Lithe and powerful, Nicholas responded as pure male animal in pursuit of his mate, tugging on the scarf to draw her back.

She glided close, then slid away when he reached for her. When he followed, she darted beneath his arm, her hair lashing across his face, both defense and enticement. He allowed her to retreat, then whipped her close again. Modestly she covered her face with her free hand, yet when she spun away her skirt swirled provocatively high. He followed with the proud arrogance of a stallion, wordlessly promising conquest and fulfillment. As the music beat faster and faster, they whirled across the circle like beings possessed, their movements a fiery prelude to the inevitable end of their dance.

With one last wild flourish, the fiddle stopped, leaving pulse-pounding silence. Nicholas swept Clare into his embrace, bending her back over his arm.

As she pitched backwards, she experienced an instant of reflexive panic. It vanished as quickly as it had come, for she knew in every cell of her body that Nicholas would never let her fall.

As her hair splashed across the grass, he gave her a kiss that claimed her as his own. The Rom roared and stamped their feet with approval.

Gently he brought her up again, his gaze a caress. “One last ritual, Clarissima. We must jump over the branch of flowering broom that Ani just laid down.”

Hand in hand they raced across the clearing and leaped over the broom. Under the cover of the ensuing applause, she hissed, “Jumping the broomstick is an old Welsh country tradition that has probably been around since the Druids.”