Chapter 28 #2
“Yes,” I said, throwing off his arm impatiently.
“He was here the night that Edward died. Father met him. He is investigating a matter for me. I stupidly gave a piece of evidence to Magda and now he means to get it back. She’s gone to her people, and if he goes there and tries to take it from her, or to make trouble—”
I did not have to finish. Val knew the Roma as well as I did.
Any infringement of their freedom by the English was met with hostility at the very least. More than once we had witnessed exchanges of some violence when they had been interfered with by villagers who should have known better.
We had left them largely alone and they had been good to us.
But I had always suspected that if we pushed them too far they would turn on us as well.
Their friendship was like the good will of any wild thing—a gift not to be taken lightly.
“We must go, Val. It will not be dark for a little while yet, but we must hurry.”
I was tugging at his coat, but he held my hands fast.
“You cannot go like that,” he pointed out, taking in my extravagant costume with a glance.
He was right, of course. No one with a scrap of sense flaunted their wealth in a Gypsy camp.
To do so was to invite robbery—or worse.
Smart visitors dressed discreetly and did not wager large amounts at their games.
If we meant to blend in, we would have to do the same.
I think the idea occurred to us both in the same instant, for no sooner had I looked at him than he was rummaging in his wardrobe, tossing out garments that might serve.
Within moments I had gathered them up and disappeared behind the screen to transform myself.
It took me ages to wriggle out of my clothes, but in the end I managed, tearing only a few of the costly ruby buttons off in the process.
I retrieved them, taking a few precious seconds to tuck them into my pocket.
It would have gone much faster with Morag, but I dared not take her into my confidence.
She would have insisted on coming along, and I was dubious enough about accepting Val’s help.
A few moments more and I stepped out, rigged as a boy, from proper tweed trousers to choking necktie. Val had slipped into my room and fetched my own boots and a hard black hat. He gave me his wide woolen scarf to wind about my chin and stepped back to appraise the effect.
“At least you have a crop, so we do not have to worry about your hair giving you away,” he said finally.
I scrutinized myself in his glass, rubbing at Fleur’s rosy salve with my handkerchief. “Passable, I think. With any luck it will be full dark by the time we arrive. Get some money, will you?”
He scooped up his notecase and gloves and we departed, slipping down the stairs and out the study door, into the back garden.
In a very few minutes we were through the gate and into the mews.
I was breathing a little easier then, wondering if we might actually get away with our deception.
We scurried around the corner and into the street where Val hailed a hackney.
I muttered a little, wishing he had found a speedier hansom, but there was no help for it.
“Where would you and the lady like to go, sir?” the driver inquired amiably.
“Damnation!” I said softly. “What gave it away?”
“If you don’t mind my saying, love, it’s the walk. All hips and bum, nothing like a bloke at all. Where to?”
“Hampstead Heath, the foot of Parliament Hill,” I muttered, and subsided into a sulky silence.
All during the lengthy, creaking drive I tried to imagine how I was supposed to walk without using my “hips and bum,” but at length I gave up.
Darkness had fallen and we were climbing, almost to the Heath, when Val spoke.
“Julia, I wish you would confide. What is this all about?”
I looked at my hands, fisted against my unfamiliar, tweedy lap.
“Why should I? You have not confided in me,” I said simply. “There was another bloody shirt in the laundry. Not another fight in front of the opera this time, I think.”
“Oh.” That was all he said. I knew that I should collar him about Magda, as well, demand an explanation for the despoiling of Carolina’s grave, but I did not.
I realized how close Magda had come to destroying him.
I could not have borne that. He was my flesh, and I loved him for all his faults, for all his misdeeds.
I would protect him, in the end. But for now I did not want to know.
The cab alighted at the fringe of the Roma camp.
There were a few private carriages, a fair number of horses, and another cab or two standing or tethered.
Val gave the driver an extortionate amount of money to wait for us.
I doubted our ability to find another cab so far out.
Besides, although I did not like to think about it, there was the chance we might have need of a quick escape.
Mindful of the cabman’s criticisms, I pulled my hat low and made a concentrated effort to walk flatly, my hips held firmly in check.
“What is the matter with you?” Val hissed.
“I am walking like a boy,” I explained, pitching my voice as low as I could.
“No, you are walking like a perfect imbecile. For God’s sake, Julia, you’re clumping.”
I straightened my knees a bit. “Is that better?”
“A bit.”
“You had best call me something else. Julian, I suppose. And get your hand away from my back. God only knows what people might think.”
Val shied violently but kept his hands to himself. Without thinking, he had reverted to his inbred courtesy and been guiding me with a hand to the back. A mistake like that could be lethal in these surroundings.
For a while we simply skirted the camp, keeping half in shadow as we ambled along.
The ground was dry and hard, well-packed from the wheels of the Gypsy caravans and the hooves of their horses.
The wind carried the sharp smoke of their wood fires, laced with the fragrant spice of the cook pots.
Over it all lay the thick odour of horse, the pungent smell of money to the Roma.
There was music as well, lively and bold, and threading through it all the strange, exotic lilt of their language, drawing us along.
A half-naked girl tried to pick Val’s pocket and failed, running back to her mother.
The woman cuffed her lightly, smiling and scolding her gently in Romany.
I had no doubt she was being reprimanded—not for the attempt, but for its failure.
The woman leaned over her cook fire, stirring an iron pot, and I smelled something rich and spicy, a stew of some sort, I supposed. My stomach gave a rumble of protest.
“Blast.”
“What is it, Julian?”
“I should have thought to bring food. Did you dine?”
He shook his head. “No. Even a few sandwiches would have served.”
“Never mind. I’ll stand you to dinner at Simpson’s when all this is done. Roast beef with all the trimmings.”
“Splendid. Only promise me you will wear a dress. This masquerade is playing hell with my nerves.”
“Done.”
We slipped in and out of the jostling crowds, sometimes following groups or pairs as a new bit of entertainment would lure them on, sometimes holding back and peering into the shadows near the caravans.
There were fortune-tellers, scrying with crystal balls and cards and palms. There were dancers with tiny, high-arched feet, stamping and yelling to the rhythms scraped out by the violins and guitars.
And there were the men, beguiling the English to wager on a roll of the dice or perhaps the purchase of a new horse.
There were smiles and shouts and groans, all well-lubricated with money and liquor.
I might have enjoyed myself had it not been for the coil of fear knotted in my stomach.
Val had no such scruples. I caught him ogling a dancer, her wide skirts flaring up to reveal a ripe brown thigh as she turned.
She winked at him, doubtless in hope of a generous coin, which he was quick to throw.
She blew him a kiss then and I tugged at his sleeve as he so often used to do to mine, urging him on toward a little group gathered around the blind old man who told lengthy tales in Romany with great, theatrical gestures.
“I was looking for Mr. Brisbane,” he protested.
“He is not under that dancer’s skirt, I can assure you,” I returned sharply. “In fact, I do not see him here at all. Or any of Magda’s people. Where have we not looked?”
Val scanned the encampment. “The caravans.”
I shook my head. “Too dangerous. We might edge near if we were to have our fortunes told, but if they caught us skulking about…”
He nodded grimly. “They are dealing horses that way,” he said, inclining his head behind me. “And there is a boxing tent as well. Perhaps he is watching a match.”
We decided to try the horse ring first, then the boxing tent, but before I could move, I heard the Gypsy storyteller’s voice rise and fall and I stood, captivated by the sound of it.
It was a beautiful language, with an Italianate, musical quality to it.
It was an expressive tongue, a perfect vehicle for the richness of the Roma emotions.
It was a language contrived to woo or to lament, to seduce or revile.
I, of course, knew none of it. For all Magda’s affection for me, she had never permitted me to speak a single word of her language.
I had gleaned a few bits here and there, contextually, but never more than a handful of words, and I had forgotten them along with so many other scraps of childhood.
I had never been allowed to ask if I even understood them properly.
The one time I had ventured to use the Romany word for Englishman, gorgio, Magda had turned her back on me and walked silently away.
Later she relented, but only enough to explain her anger.