The Gypsy Crown Read online

  ‘Here, allow me, my fine lady,’ Luka mocked and swept Beatrice a mocking bow, pretending to hold out one hand to assist her, but then splashing her with water. She shrieked, rosy with indignation.

  Just then a great black carriage, pulled by four black horses, came galloping around the bend in the road. At once the children pressed back into the hedgerow, Rollo growling deep in his throat.

  The coach raced through the stream, a great gush of muddy water rising up and wetting the children from head to foot. Luka saw a black cormorant of a man lean forward, staring at them coldly from the window. His frowning eyes fixed upon Beatrice. At once she pulled her shawl about her face, pressing back into the hedge. The carriage rattled on, the cold-eyed man leaning out to stare back at them.

  Emilia stood staring after it. ‘A devil of a man, a devil,’ she whispered. ‘I wish he had not seen us.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Beatrice said, trying to smile. ‘A parson anxious for his supper, no more. Come on! Let’s hurry. I’m hungry too.’

  ‘I’m starving,’ Noah said. ‘I could eat five hundred roast rabbits!’

  They all smiled, and crossed the stream, and hurried on. But somehow their merry mood was gone, and Emilia in particular was pale and silent.

  The Shadow

  The wood gave way to Thornton Heath, and they saw smoke rising lazily into the air from a hollow beyond a hill. They climbed a stile and hurried across the common, which was rough with heather and bramble. Their steps faltered as they came over the hill, for there in the valley were four unknown caravans, drawn close round the fire, with a string of fine horses grazing under the trees.

  The men sat, drinking ale and talking, while women in long colourful skirts were busy chopping vegetables and rolling cabbage leaves. Silvia was skilfully skinning the rabbit, and Maggie was bent over the heavy iron pot.

  ‘I’m tying Alida up here,’ Emilia said at once. ‘They’ll want her if they see her, and they can’t have her!’

  ‘Father wouldn’t give away your horse, no matter how much he wants to impress them!’ Luka said at once.

  ‘You said yourself they’re horse-traders, which is nothing but a polite way of saying “horse-thieves”!’ Emilia flashed back, and quickly tied Alida’s lead-rein around the branch of a low tree. ‘I’ll come back and feed her later, when it’s dark.’

  Beatrice looked troubled, but said nothing, knowing how much Emilia loved her horse. She busied herself smoothing down her crumpled skirt.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ Emilia said fiercely. ‘Don’t you worry about them!’

  Beatrice flushed pink as a peony.

  The younger men were all playing football with Sweetheart, their uncle Ruben’s brown bear. Sweetheart’s greatest joy was to drink weak ale and dance to her master’s fiddle. She loved playing football, too, and was surprisingly quick and agile for such a huge and heavy beast. She was also a sore loser and would grasp the ball close to her chest with both massive forepaws and moan piteously, if the game went against her. However, if she scored a goal she would rise up on her hind feet and dance a victory jig, which was so comical Ruben and Luka often let her win just to see it.

  She was dancing as they approached, bellowing in joy, the ball clutched to her chest. Zizi went bounding down the hill. She jumped up on Sweetheart’s shoulder and gave the ring in her nose a good tug. Sweetheart yowled and dropped the ball, clasping her sensitive nose with both paws. At once the little monkey leapt down, grabbed the ball and scampered away with it, sending all the young men chasing after her.

  All except one. He stood still, staring at Beatrice. She cast him a look, then dropped her eyes and went past quickly, climbing the steps up to their caravan and closing the door behind her. Emilia was not so shy. She scowled at him, guessing this was Sebastien. He was tall and dark and strong-looking, and wore a new coat and a gold hoop in one ear.

  Luka elbowed Emilia, warning her not to look so cross. She grimaced at him, and went running towards the fire, her eyes bright with angry tears. It had not occurred to her to tidy herself. With her black curls in wild disarray, her skirt torn and wet, and her feet muddy, she went rushing through the crowd of staring, murmuring women to find her grandmother.

  ‘Baba, it happened again. I felt … I felt …’

  Maggie looked up, frowning. ‘The shadow?’

  ‘Aye. We saw a carriage ride by, and a man in it, who looked out at us, and then I felt it, like an icy-cold hand around my heart. He was a devil of a man, Baba, a devil. I felt … I saw …’

  Maggie was quiet, her hands still.

  Very low, Emilia went on, ‘I saw Beatrice, in a cage, the shadows of bars on her face. And that man, standing over her, his hands on her throat. Baba, I did not like it!’

  Slowly Maggie’s hands began their work again. Her gaze abstracted, she said, ‘It does not mean what you saw will come to pass. You may not be foretelling, Emilia, so much as seeing into that man’s heart. The hearts of men are dark and strange at times, and no more so than when they see a young girl with the beauty of our Beatrice. Don’t fret, Milly. You will need to get used to the things you see, and learn when to close your eyes and not look.’

  ‘I didn’t like it,’ Emilia said. ‘I didn’t like it at all.’

  ‘Nay. Never mind. Tonight is a night for feasting. We’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. Go change that ragged skirt, and help Beatrice get ready.’

  Emilia did as she was told. She found her sister in the caravan, struggling to comb out her great mass of tangled curls. Emilia pinned it back for her and helped her button up her best skirt. Both girls had only two skirts each, one for everyday wear, and the other a flouncy, layered skirt of many colours, for feast days and special occasions. Beatrice’s was apple-green, and Emilia’s was pink, with a layer of crimson velvet at the hem that had once belonged to a riding skirt of the lady of Whitehorse Manor.

  ‘Don’t you look fine?’ Emilia said, tucking a flower behind Beatrice’s ear. ‘Oh, but he’s a lucky boy, this Sebastien.’

  ‘They’ve only come to look me over and talk about the dowry,’ Beatrice said. ‘They may not be able to come to an agreement with Uncle Jacob.’

  ‘Sure they will,’ Emilia said. ‘One look at you and he’ll be happy to have you, no matter how much we can offer them.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Beatrice said, her voice trembling. ‘Tell me, Emilia, can you see … is he nice, this boy?’

  ‘Very nice,’ Emilia said confidently, though she had not seen into his heart, as she was sometimes able to do. Beatrice smiled though, and went out much more happily, and Emilia could only hope that she had told the truth.

  The men of the Hearne tribe were all swarthy, hawk-nosed, with shrewd eyes and calloused hands. Emilia knew that her mother had been born a Hearne, and that they were famous for their horse-training and dealing. Emilia was said to have inherited her charm with horses and dogs from her mother’s family, and so she was very interested in seeing these uncles she had not met in many years.

  ‘Well, she can certainly cook,’ said Felipe Hearne, the Big Man of the family, as he tasted the roast rabbit Beatrice shyly brought him. ‘Can she sew too?’

  ‘She helps out up the manor,’ Jacob said. ‘The squire’s wife says she sews as fine a seam as any lady.’

  ‘She certainly knows how to sew on patches,’ sneered Sebastien’s cousin Nadine, a thin girl with bad teeth. Sebastien looked uncomfortable and moved away from her, and Beatrice pretended she had not heard. Emilia had to bite her lip to stop a quick retort. It was certainly true their clothes were all much patched and mended, but Emilia saw no shame in that. She thought Beatrice was very clever the way she kept adding new layers to Emilia’s skirts as she grew.

  ‘She’s certainly very pretty,’ Felipe Hearne said quickly, casting a frowning glance at Nadine who tossed her head rebelliously.

  ‘Beauty can’t be eaten with a spoon,’ his mother Janka said tartly. Luka and Emilia exchanged a quick, amused glance.
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  Maggie poured more ale, and bade Luka get out his fiddle. He was always happy to play, and regaled them with love songs until even old Janka began to soften. At last, after much haggling and ale-drinking, a deal was struck, and Sebastien gave Beatrice a necklace of gold coins to hang about her neck. Everyone cheered and banged their cups together, except for Nadine who looked very sour.

  Then Luka struck up a lilting, merry tune and the girls leapt to their feet and danced, clicking their fingers and stamping their bare feet, skirts swirling.

  The Finch family were traditionally musicians and entertainers. Fiddling, singing, dancing, tumbling, these were the Finch family’s wares, and they had once made a good living from them. Emilia’s father Amberline and Jacob and Ruben had once played at court, to the old king who was now dead, and his pretty, silly French wife, with her priests and her lap-dogs, her velvet-clad courtiers, her astronomers and jesters and dwarves. They had been given new coats and a bag of coins, and the family had all eaten roast pheasant in the king’s own kitchen.

  Amberline had died when Noah was a baby, though, killed by Roundheads. And it was hard to make a living from fiddling and dancing with the Puritans running the country. Horses, now, horses were always needed by the Lord Protector’s army, so it was no wonder the Hearne men all had new coats and the women’s skirts were fresh and bright.

  That night, there was plenty of opportunity for the Finch family to show off their talents. The men fiddled up a storm, and then, while the women sang and snapped their fingers and stamped their feet, they danced, fast and high, low and slow. Luka did cartwheels all round the campfire and everyone laughed to see how Zizi copied him, like a tiny, crooked shadow.

  ‘You should go to the fair, you should,’ Nadine, Sebastien’s cousin, said. It was hard to tell if the mocking undertone to her voice was just her usual way of speaking. ‘You’d bring the house down, you and that monkey.’

  ‘What fair?’ Luka asked, looking at her in sudden interest.

  ‘Fair at Kingston-Upon-Thames, tomorrow,’ she told him. ‘Only market fair for seven miles around. It’s not far from here. You’re practically there anyway.’

  ‘We might just do that,’ Luka said, and she showed all her dreadful teeth in a smile.

  Then Beatrice sang for them, and a hush fell over the merry crowd, for indeed she had the voice and the face of a dark angel. When the last enchanting notes had faded away, the hush continued for a long, long moment, then they all burst into applause, and Luka saw Sebastien’s face in the firelight, and saw that, for him at least, this was no longer just a marriage of convenience. Luka glanced at Emilia and saw his own confused feelings reflected on her expressive face – jealousy, grief for the loss of her sister, joy that it looked as if they may be happy together, and some indefinable longing or fear.

  Then the fiddles began again, and everyone was on their feet, laughing, dancing, clapping their hands, as the sparks from the bonfire swirled up to the starry sky like a swarm of fireflies, to dissolve in the smoky wind.

  The Owl Cried

  KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES, SURREY, ENGLAND

  12th August 1658

  ‘I heard the owl cry last night,’ Maggie said, hands clenched on her shawl. ‘That’s a death to come. I don’t like it.’

  ‘We need to raise the bride money for Beatrice,’ Jacob said. The worry-lines on his weather-beaten face were deeper than ever. ‘How else are we to do it if we do not go to the fair?’

  ‘I’d feel safer if we went back to Norwood,’ Maggie said. ‘The Whitehorses will give us work.’

  ‘Aye, digging ditches and hedge-trimming for a few pennies a day. It’ll take us a year to raise the gold for Beatrice. Yet if we go into Kingston, on fair day, we could earn ten times as much, twenty times as much, if we’re lucky. It’s the only market for miles around, you know that. Everyone comes to market with their pockets jingling, ready to be amused. I’ll play for them, and Bea can sing, and Luka tumble, and you can tell the gorgios’ fortunes …’

  ‘I will not go to town today,’ Maggie said. ‘I tell you, death lies ahead.’

  Jacob was silent. ‘For us?’ he asked at last.

  Maggie looked at them all, her scraggy grey brows drawn close. ‘Nay,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see the shadow on any of you. But still I think you should not go. The Rom should keep to the Rom.’

  ‘Except none of the Rom have gold in their pockets,’ Ruben pointed out. He was a plumper, more easy-going version of his brother Jacob. ‘We will not go for long. Just a little wander through to test the temper of the town.’

  ‘It’s market day,’ Luka cried. ‘Everyone’s happy on market day.’

  Maggie shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘You be careful, boy,’ she said. ‘Keep your sticky fingers in your pocket. We do not want any attention drawn to us.’

  Luka’s grin faded. ‘I’m not going to steal anything,’ he said indignantly. He rattled the coins in his pocket. ‘I’ve got money. I can buy what I want.’

  ‘Easy come, easy go,’ Maggie said, and climbed stiffly up the steps into her caravan and shut the door.

  Luka shrugged and petted Zizi, who was sitting on his shoulder as usual, her tail curled about his neck. What was money for if not to buy things?

  ‘There’d be salmon from the river,’ Jacob said. ‘Happen we could barter with the fishmongers. I haven’t tasted salmon for many a long year.’

  ‘Sweets,’ Mimi cried, clasping her hands together.

  ‘I need some new clothes for Mimi and Lena,’ Luka’s mother Silvia said. ‘And I’ve made a whole lot of baskets I could sell.’

  ‘The Major-General is gone,’ Jacob said. ‘Surely the people of Kingston will be glad for a bit of song and dance after all the gloom of these last few years? It used to be a merry town, I remember.’

  ‘It’s not as if it’s a Roundhead town,’ Ruben said, ‘with a name like Kingston.’

  Everyone snorted with laughter, for the new fashion of every inn and town changing its name to curry favour with Parliament had caused a great deal of confusion all over the country.

  ‘If we leave now, we’ll be home by sunset,’ Silvia said, untying her apron from about her waist.

  All the children began to shout with joy, and Luka turned cartwheels all round the camp, Zizi tumbling head over heels behind him. She did not know why Luka was so excited, but she shared in all his emotions as always.

  Emilia had never been to a market fair, since she had been only three years old when the old king had had his head cut off, and since her father had died that same year, and her mother the year after, they had not travelled far from the Great North Wood since. She had never even seen a big town, spending most of her days roaming in the forest, looking for mushrooms and nuts and berries, or tickling for trout in the streams.

  A year ago they would not have risked leaving the safety of the wood. A year ago, Cromwell’s major-generals had ruled England. It had been their job to arrest anyone found singing or swearing or drinking or dancing. Christmas had been banned, and the smell of roast goose on Christmas Day would have been enough to have the major-generals breaking down the door. Maypoles had been cut down all over the country, theatres had been closed, and horseracing banned. It was said the major-generals even patrolled the streets, making women scrub their faces free of makeup.

  Thousands of vagrants and beggars had been arrested then, it was said, and certainly the gypsies would have been taking a huge risk to go into the biggest town in the county while Thomas Kelsey was major-general. He was gone now, though, like all the other major-generals. Cromwell had been forced to dismiss them or lose the support of the common people. The gypsies had heard accounts of morris dancers daring to parade the villages at Christmas, and maypoles being put up in spring. If people dared to dance about a maypole, which the Puritans thought a most ungodly thing to do, surely it could do no harm for the gypsies to mingle with the crowds at the fair and maybe sing a song or two?

  Besides, everyone wa
s sick of hiding out in the forest, too scared to show their faces in case an overzealous constable took it upon himself to arrest them simply for being gypsies. A day at the fair could be very profitable, and everyone knew that Beatrice’s uncles would have great difficulty raising the bride price they had put on her. It was a matter of family pride that the gold was raised quickly.

  So the girls chattered and giggled as they put on their best skirts again, and Emilia groomed Alida until she shone, and plaited her mane and tail with bright ribbons. Luka changed his shirt and combed his hair for the first time in quite a long while, and then combed Zizi’s hair too, much to her delight. Then they all set off for Kingston-Upon-Thames, leaving Maggie alone with the caravans and looking very dour.

  It was a bright, sunny day, though the wind was sharp enough that the girls kept their shawls over their shoulders. It was a long walk, a matter of six miles or more, and so it was midmorning by the time they were coming into Kingston-Upon-Thames. They were all used to walking long distances, so none of them were very weary, not even Mimi, the youngest of the girls, who still had energy to hop about like a grasshopper in her excitement.

  Kingston-Upon-Thames was a large town, made prosperous by the building of Hampton Court Palace just across the river, which had employed many local craftsmen and tradesmen. The streets were crowded with wagons and carts, and people pushed and shoved all around. There was a girl herding along a flock of geese, a long switch in her hand, and several boys carried big baskets of corn and vegetables. A man dragged along a cart filled with crates of chickens, all of which squawked loudly. A fishmonger was growing harassed as he tried to force himself through the crowd, lifting his catch high above the dust that swirled up from the ground. The air rang with shouts and cries, honks, cackles, bleats and barks.

  Looking about them with interest, the gypsies made their way to the marketplace, surrounded by a row of inns and shops, those on the west side backing onto small wharves on the Thames. Luka and Emilia were wide-eyed, fascinated by the hustle and bustle and burley of the fair. Zizi clung tightly to Luka’s neck, her tail wrapped about his throat, her wrinkled brown face anxious, while Emilia kept a tight hold on Alida’s lead rein. She did not want her being stolen.