Autumn (42 page)

             
Mireille kept up her pace despite the chatter and soon she and Arabel had reached a small clearing where Raina’s caravan was situated. The Gypsy gossip’s home was a bright aquamarine colour with multi-coloured beads, shells and feathers decorating the outside of it, giving it a wildly
unkempt look and a surprisingly
strangely
,
inviting manner.

             
Raina opened the door immediately upon Mireille’s knock.

             
“Mireille! Why, you’re just in time for tea,” Raina said excitedly, glancing speculatively at Arabel as she moved away from the door frame in order to let her visitors enter.

             
Arabel recognized Raina as the woman who’d come to the Frankel’s caravan and informed them when Klara’s body had turned up at the Great Torch, and who’d told them that Jonty Governs was wanted for questioning.

             
“You’re Eli’s girl, from Crow’s Nest Pass, aren’t you?” Raina queried, peering closely at Arabel.

             
“Yes, I’m Arabel Spade,” Arabel replied a bit stiffly, unsure how she felt about being known solely by her association to Eli, as opposed to being known by her own merit.

             
“Right, Arabel Spade,” Raina murmured. “Your father – Patrick, isn’t that so?”

             
Arabel nodded; her throat felt suddenly tight, as if she’d been swallowing sawdust.

             
“Did you know my father?” she asked.

             
Raina nodded slowly. “Yes. I knew him.”

             
Raina ushered them into a small living room and gestured for Arabel and Mireille to be seated on an orange sofa while Raina herself perched enthusiastically upon a bright red stool. A peat fire burned merrily in Raina’s hearth and the cloying smell burned Arabel’s nostrils slightly.

             
Arabel’s heart was beating fast as she waited for Raina to continue speaking upon the subject of her father, but she did not. It was Mireille, instead, who picked up the thread of conversation, leading it in the direction toward the answers they had come for.

             
“Raina, what can you tell us of Yolanda Selivant? The woman who worked for Raoul Porchetto.”

             
Raina looked at Mireille askance.

             
“Yolanda Selivant? Been a mighty long time since anyone’s asked about her!” Raina replied with a sharp laugh.

             
“Does she still reside in the Copse?” Mireille asked.

             
Raina nodded. “To the best of my knowledge, yes, I’d reckon Yolanda is still livin’ hereabouts. Last time I saw her though, it was the good part of three years ago. She was living in the north side of the Copse, less crowded there, she said. Bit of a hermit now, I dare say.”

             
Mireille was thoughtful. “She’s no children, isn’t that right?”

             
“She’s on her own, as I recall. Never had any bairns, though some say she did keep old Porchetto’s backside warm many a season!” Raina laughed hoarsely at her own lame humour and Mireille and Arabel smiled politely.

             
“What else can you tell us about her?”

             
Raina peered at her visitors intently. “Now supposin’ you tell me what the use of this information is for, Mireille. Don’t you go asking ‘bout Yolanda and not telling poor Raina what sort of trouble the woman’s in!”

             
“No trouble,” Mireille responded easily. “We just want to speak with her.”

             
“About old man Porchetto.”

             
“Yes.”

             
“He was a dark, odd man,” Raina said thoughtfully. “Never did understand what Yolanda saw in him. Mind you, he was a good looking man, but mean. Too powerful for his own good, I’d say.”

             
“Some say he was the Dorojenja leader.”

             
“Aye, some say. But he’s been dead now these last three years. Unless he’s taken hold of the mantle despite death’s dark grip, he’s no leader now.”

             
“True,” Mireille said, smiling at Raina. “But there is the son, Paloma’s child.”

             
“Saul,” Raina supplied.

             
“Yes, Saul. Married, I heard?”

             
Raina shook her head. “Never heard Saul got married.”

             
“Can you recall the last time you saw Saul?”

             
Raina took some time, thinking it over. Finally she responded.

             
“Can’t say as I do, Mireille. Saul Porchetto kept to himself. Not even sure who his friends might have been.”

             
Arabel felt a small twinge of disappointment at this news but was eager to pursue the lead they’d been given in regard to Raoul Porchetto’s former mistress, Yolanda Selivant. There was a lull in conversation as Raina went to procure tea for her company and Arabel sat quietly with Mireille, glancing around at her surroundings.

             
Raina had continued her colourful theme indoors as well and the caravan was richly decorated with multi-coloured hooked rugs, brightly coloured paper lanterns and walls coated in the colour of sunshine. The caravan was basically one large room which Raina had separated into smaller spaces through the use of three, bright blue screens, giving her a kitchen, living room and sleeping area. Raina kept the place tidy and neat and the mish-mash of colour and fabric somehow matched Raina’s quirky disposition and belied her thin, shrewish looks.

             
Raina produced a honey and ginger tea for her visitors along with tiny lemon biscuits for nibbling upon and Arabel found the biscuits were delicious, so she helped herself to a few, since they were in miniature.

             
Raina was staring at Arabel with such a penetrating gaze that Arabel became uncomfortable.  Arabel very calmly drank her tea and tried to ignore the curiosity the other woman exuded.

             
“Your father made a lot of enemies,” Raina said to Arabel after some time.

             
Arabel nearly choked on a lemon biscuit crumb. “Excuse me?” she said.

             
Mireille patted Arabel on the back, a small but comforting gesture, but she made no move to intercede.

             
“Patrick Spade,” Raina continued, “angered many Gypsy folk hereabouts and some have long memories and harder hearts to hide them in.”

             
“I cannot fathom your meaning,” Arabel put in somewhat stiffly. “Please, if you would speak plainly.”

             
“Your father was accused of spying on us, on behalf of the Dorojenja,” Raina responded succinctly, her sharp grey eyes hard upon Arabel’s face.

             
Mireille laid her hand on top of Arabel’s, as if to stop her from protesting, or perhaps to offer more quiet comfort.

             
“My father was not a spy!” Arabel returned hotly.

             
Raina leaned in closer toward her. “How do you know?”

             
Arabel could not answer. The truth was, she did not know.

             
Raina waited a moment, then leaned back, satisfied. “You see, even his own daughter is not sure.” She sighed, a long gusty sound which seemed all the louder in contrast to the utter quiet which had fallen within the caravan.

             
“Tell us what you know, Raina,” Mireille finally said.

             
“Patrick Spade appeared out of nowhere. His folk weren’t from The Corvids. One day, there he was, pokin’ around the Copse, charmin’ the young ladies, makin’ friends with our youths. He got himself in real good with a few of us; he seemed harmless enough. There were more than a couple of young Gypsy girls lookin’ to find favour with him - he was a fine looking man! – but he only ever had eyes for your mama, Violetta. Folks say he took one look at her, and that was that. His heart was lost forever. “

             
Arabel listened to Raina with her head throbbing and her heart clenching. Arabel realized the woman was a gossip, but who could be better to listen to than she? In order to elaborate upon the history of a man Arabel had barely known, the father she had lost at six years old, Arabel steeled herself to listen, to question intelligently, and to not fly off the handle at what she was told.

             
“When all the troubles started and the bridge was lost, some say they saw Spade in the forest with the darkness, leading others in the rites of terror, binding them to the darkness of a Dorojenja wheel.”

             
Mireille broke in. “No one was ever able to identify Patrick Spade as being a member of the secret society, but there were many rumours of his involvement.” She turned to Arabel. “I’m sorry, Arabel, that we must speak of this. I wish I knew for certain what – if any – your father’s involvement was.”

             
“And my mother? Was she also accused of being a spy for the darkness?”

             
Raina shook her head. “No, there was never any question of Violetta being involved. “

             
Arabel remembered suddenly the hesitation she had witnessed when she’d asked Baltis and Mireille previously about any of the fever victims having ties to black wizardry or to the Dorojenja.

             
“You knew this,” Arabel said to Mireille
. “You knew he’d been accused of
spying on the Gypsies for the Dorojenja. Why did you not tell me?”

             
Mireille looked deeply into Arabel’s troubled blue eyes. “It is not my desire to fill your mind with statements based on
hearsay
, opinions raised without conscience, nor truths we can neither prove nor disprove.”

             
Raina snorted. “What she means, Arabel, is that no one knows for sure. The ugly stain marked Patrick Spade but when he fell to the fever alongside your mama, most folk said if there was ever any dark-rooted evil in him, it died the day he did, and that’s why no one tells of it. His death restored his reputation but the question of his involvement still remains unanswered.”

             
Arabel felt feverish herself, as if the information was heating her blood, and not in any good or pleasant sort of manner. Her head ached and the caravan felt cloying to her all of a sudden. Arabel was beyond pleased when Mireille reverted the topic of conversation back to Raoul Porchetto’s mistress, Yolanda Selivant.

             
“The north side of the Copse, Raina, that’s where you understand Yolanda Selivant resides?”

             
Raina nodded, finishing up her tea with a loud smack of her lips. “Last I heard, she’d settled down there, and comes to camp only every couple of months for supplies.”

             
Mireille finished her tea as well and got to her feet. Arabel stood as well, relieved that the visit was nearing its completion.

             
“Thank you for the tea, and the information. Those biscuits are delectable – you must give me your recipe!”

             
Raina showed the visitors to the door and she and Mireille hugged goodbye. Raina turned her grey eyes upon Arabel.

             
“You look just like your mama,” she said approvingly.

             
Arabel said nothing for a long time as she and Mireille wound their way back to the Frankel caravan. Everything within in Arabel refused to believe that her father could have had any ties to the Dorojenja, and neither could she fathom that Patrick Spade would have been so completely loved and adored by her mother had he been a practitioner of black wizardry.

             
“No one knows for sure, Arabel,” Mireille said quietly and Arabel knew she was speaking of her father.

             
“I know!” Arabel defended vehemently, wishing she’d heard the rumours from Mireille and Baltis, as opposed to finding out from Raina. “He could never have been a
part of the terror and darkness
- he just couldn’t!” she insisted.

             
Mireille did not reply. She understood Arabel’s distress and was astute enough to realize there was nothing she could say or do to ease the sting of the information they’d just been privy to.

             
They walked in silence and shortly Ira came swooping down from the sky to land upon Arabel’s shoulder with a loud clucking sound. The bird bent his black beak to Arabel’s head and butted her softly, his version of a cuddle. Arabel stroked Ira’s gleaming black feathers, comforted by the corvid’s chortling presence.