Chapter 10
Chapter
The Brisbanes had left their conveyance in the drive, and it was arranged that we should meet them there in order to travel together to Hampstead Heath.
There was often to be found an encampment of Roma upon the heath, and usually one of considerable size, Brisbane informed us.
It was the logical place to begin our search.
He escorted his lady out as Stoker put on a fresh shirt—he keeps several at hand in the Belvedere—and I pinned on a hat and buttoned my coat.
“I like them,” I told him, tweaking the collar of his coat to lie neatly.
“I noticed. Do not become chums with Lady Julia,” he warned.
“Whyever not?”
“Because one minute we’re sleuthing out murderers and the next we’re receiving dinner invitations and exchanging Christmas gifts.”
“It is permissible to have friends, you know.”
“One does not befriend Marches. One observes them at a distance. Like animals in a zoological garden.”
“Piffle. Eccentricity is what makes people interesting. Besides, Brisbane is not a March,” I pointed out.
“Even worse. He is a private inquiry agent, which means he has made a profession of the very activities from which I try so desperately to dissuade you. I am afraid he will encourage your worst tendencies.”
“Or are you ever so slightly threatened that there is another man about who demonstrates your better qualities but with vastly superior tailoring? I smell the sulphurous whiff of jealousy.”
“Jealousy! That is the most insulting—”
“Perhaps not jealousy,” I conceded. “It may be nearer the thunderous clash of antlers between stags forced to occupy the same territory. Although now that I think on it, stags are not half as protective of their domains as Panthera pardus pardus. The African leopard—”
He stopped my mouth with a kiss that permitted no rebuttal. When he drew back, he kept a finger under my chin, tipping my face up.
“Your ability to construct an argument out of nothing but thin air and the desire to hear yourself speak ought to be studied by professors of rhetoric,” he replied.
I gave him a benevolent smile. “Thank you, my darling.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“Wasn’t it?” I returned his kiss heartily, and just as things began to take an interesting turn, I stepped back and adjusted my hat. “Come along, dearest. We mustn’t keep the Brisbanes waiting.”
* * *
The Brisbane carriage was as discreetly luxurious as the couple’s clothing.
Every comfort had been anticipated and addressed, from the compartment in the floor which emitted a gentle heat thanks to the hot bricks stowed within to the thickly padded seats upholstered in dark green velvet.
Brisbane gave a series of instructions to his driver, then assumed his place next to Stoker, facing backwards so Lady Julia and I might have the pleasure of sitting together and the comfort of facing the horses.
Our chatter was inconsequential stuff—Brisbane asked a number of thoughtful questions about my work as a lepidopterist while Lady Julia and Stoker exchanged snippets of gossip regarding various mutual acquaintances.
With such pleasantries, the journey passed swiftly, and in a remarkably short period of time, I felt the carriage swing upwards, mounting the climb that carried us out of the city and onto the heath.
The afternoon light had faded to the gloaming, an evocative Scots word that so poetically describes the time between sunset and nightfall. The greying skies added to the atmosphere, as did the soft smoky pillars rising in the distance and smudging the edges of the trees and rocks.
“Cooking fires,” Brisbane said. He called up to the driver.
“Stop here.” We alighted and took stock of where we were.
It seemed impossible that the heath should feel so much like the wildest of open countryside when London carried on with its hustle and bustle only a short distance away.
We were perhaps a mile as the crow—or the raven, in Lady Julia’s case—flew from Highgate Cemetery, and I made a note that Stoker and I should pay the place a visit whilst we were in the vicinity.
“This way,” Brisbane said with a nod of his head in the direction of the smoking fires.
I was conscious of a rising excitement in Lady Julia, and as we walked, she slipped her hand into her husband’s, murmuring something in his ear.
He smiled in response, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb.
They were clearly besotted with one another, and I was happy for them.
Such elaborate and public displays would never have suited me, I decided, and I had just about persuaded myself to believe it when I felt Stoker’s arm close about my waist.
“Stay near,” he said. “There are dangers about.”
I felt a flutter of feminine gratification that he wished to take care of me. This was immediately surpassed by irritation that he thought I could not take care of myself.
“Stoker, I am perfectly capable of dealing with whatever menaces we might face,” I reminded him.
“I know. I am counting on you to protect me.”
I turned to remonstrate, but there was a gleam in his gaze, and I puffed out a sigh instead. “You really are the most enraging, incorrigible, frustrating man I have ever known.”
He said nothing but tightened his hold on my waist, and those feminine feelings recrudesced, not least because he was close enough that I could detect the warm, leather-book and honey smell he so often carried upon his skin.
We caught up to our companions, and I was fascinated by the change in Brisbane.
At the Belvedere, his manner had been quietly composed, his gestures elegant.
Here, he strode, his shoulders broader, his chin thrust forward imperiously, as if daring anyone to cross him.
His head did not turn, but his eyes roved constantly, taking in every detail, it seemed.
We passed the long line of horses, staked and eating contentedly of their evening meal.
Steam rose from the pails of warm mash provided by boys who moved down the row, feeding and stroking the animals.
Horses were the life’s blood of the Roma, providing them transportation and money, and they were accordingly treated like kings.
A few young men hovered at the edges of the encampment, keeping watch, but Brisbane moved through unchallenged, and we soon reached the circle of vardos, the elaborately painted wagons which clustered about the campfires.
They were decorated in the colours of jewels, the trim picked out in rich gold paint which gleamed in the firelight.
Smoke filled the air along with the appetising aromas of cooking meats.
Large cauldrons hung from iron supports, their contents bubbling away, and spits for rabbits and chickens and the occasional duck turned slowly, fat dripping into the fires.
Tending each fire was a dame, her skirt looped up over her petticoats, her sleeves rolled to the elbow.
About her feet there was invariably a child or two and often a basket holding a swaddled babe.
On the steps of several of the vardos were older women, swathed in shawls and puffing on long-stemmed pipes.
They fixed us with steely stares as we approached.
“Where are the menfolk?” I inquired of Brisbane.
He nodded to the far side of the camp where several groups of men were clustered.
Some were drinking, some eating, others working with their hands to mend china or whittle, but most were engaged in some form of entertainment.
I saw one clever fellow juggling fire while a companion scraped away on his fiddle.
There were outsiders mingling with them, throwing coins in payment for their amusements.
One vardo had been set a little apart from the others and bore an elegantly lettered sign—magda who sees all.
Above this proclamation was the image of an enormous eye, an unsettling thing but one from which it was impossible to look away.
Brisbane strode directly to this wagon, but a tall, skinny fellow in a rusty-looking bowler hat stood outside the door. He put up a quelling hand to Brisbane.
“I am sorry, but she is with a customer. You must wait your turn, sir.”
He smiled thinly, showing a gold tooth, and Brisbane replied in a lilting language I did not understand.
“Romani,” Lady Julia murmured to me as the bowler-hatted man answered Brisbane.
His expression was not particularly friendly, and Lady Julia continued to explain, sotto voce.
“Brisbane is half-Romany. His mother was a member of this particular clan, but his father was an outsider, a Scotsman. His mother left her people to marry him. That sort of thing is viewed as a tremendous betrayal, you see. Brisbane is not accepted as a fully fledged Rom although he is fluent in the language. Outsiders are not permitted to learn it, so his command of the tongue is a signal that he is one of them, even if they do not wish to acknowledge him.” I understood that sort of liminal existence well, I reflected.
Half of one, neither of either. Never completely accepted into the world of one’s parents and so one makes one’s own way, laying the stones for a path not yet trod by another.
It was a lonely existence sometimes, and I was fiercely glad for Brisbane and myself that we had found partners to understand us—partners who were, in their own way, like us, struggling against their birth.
Stoker and Lady Julia may have been born aristocrats, but blue blood did not flow easily in their veins.
They had, each of them, cast off many of the privileges of their station for something altogether different.
Their comprehension might be sometimes imperfect, but that it existed at all was something miraculous.
Brisbane had continued to speak to the fellow in their ancestral tongue, and the man unbent enough to indicate we should wait a little distance away, where a few felled trees had been laid to provide rough seats.
We did as we were bade, settling ourselves to wait.
The fellow must have given instructions to our refreshment, for in a few minutes, a young girl appeared, heavy black plaits swinging to her waist. She offered a tray set with small, beautifully coloured glasses filled with cider.
“From Kentish apples we scrumped,” she explained in English. Brisbane handed a glass to me.
“Roma often pick fruit as seasonal employment. Kent is a favourite for hops and apples, and you’ll taste no cider better than that pressed from apples scrumped by a Romany lass.”
The girl smiled broadly, revealing two deep dimples in her cheeks. She was dressed in layers of bright fabrics, crimsons and deep greens, and her waist and ears were laden with heavy jewellery fashioned from gold coins.
“Her dowry,” Lady Julia explained as the girl moved away. “Everything they own, they must be able to carry away, sometimes quite quickly.”
“Because they cannot always plan their travels,” I mused as I sipped at my cider. It was robustly redolent of sweet, ripe apples, fruity and richly fermented. I made a note to drink slowly.
“They are among the most hated of groups in England even now,” Lady Julia said with a tightening of the lips.
“They are dependent upon public land or the kindness of landowners to find a place to stay for even a single night. There are many doors firmly shut to them simply because they choose a different way of life. It has always been thus for them in England.”
“I used to hear stories when I was a boy,” Stoker put in.
“Father always allowed them to camp on our property—he said it brought good luck. But there were plenty who chased them off and spread rumours about what they got up to. Vicious things were said of them, when all they wanted to do was trade horses and make a little money mending copper. The worst they ever did was steal a chicken or two, and any village lad had done the same or worse.”
“There are still laws on the books which permit a gorgio to turn out the cooking pot of a Rom to make certain there are no English babies being boiled,” Brisbane said with a curl of his handsome lip.
“That is appalling,” I said stoutly. “Inhumane.”
“But for centuries the English have regarded the traveller as less than human,” Brisbane pointed out. “When one fails to recognise the humanity in others, it is easy to make villains of them.”
“What is a gorgio?” I asked.
“It is the Romani word for an English person, someone not of the blood,” Lady Julia explained.
“And a poshrat is a half-breed,” came a voice behind us.
We turned as one to see an older Romany woman approaching.
She was heavily wrapped in shawls. One of these—gossamer fine and shimmering with silver threads—was draped over her head, the deep fringe rippling as she walked.
Like the younger woman who had served us cider, this one wore finery, but amidst the gold coins were pearls at her throat and ears, enormous, perfectly matched spheres of nacreous grey.
They were spectacular and must have been worth a queen’s ransom.
Fortune-telling, I decided, must be far more lucrative than I had thought.
“Magda!” Lady Julia leapt lightly from her perch to embrace the woman. “How have you been?”
“Keeping well, although there is a rheumatism in my knee,” was the answer. The woman looked intently into Lady Julia’s eyes. “You have a new happiness. A child, I think.”
Lady Julia blushed becomingly. “It is not what you think.”
“A child born, a child found, both may bring joy,” Magda replied with a shrug.
She turned to Brisbane, lifting her chin.
“You have not greeted me, poshrat.” The word might have meant half-breed and may have carried some vaguely derisive connotation in their language, but I sensed no real insult.
Instead, Magda regarded Brisbane with respect and perhaps something like affection.
“Magda,” he said, inclining his head politely. “We have need of you.”
She raised her arms heavenwards, the shawl making wings of her outstretched limbs. “When do you not? Come, children. Mother Magda will tell all.”