Gypsy Moon (13 page)

“Damned if I ever saw anything so brave, Colonel!” Krantz said.

Custer gave him a weak smile and a wink. “Don’t tell the others, but I hope I never see anything like it again! And if the truth be known, it was about one part brave and nine parts scared shitless!” He grinned a bit sheepishly. “That, of course, is strictly between you and me, Major.”

“Certainly, sir,” Krantz answered, glancing about to make sure no one else had heard.

“I think I’ll call it a day now. The boys have had their fun, don’t you think, Major? Time for the tongue count.”

“I hate to sound like a complete novice, Colonel, but what on earth are you talking about?” Winston Krantz squirmed with discomfort at having to admit his ignorance.

“Simple,” Custer answered. “Those carcasses are too heavy to haul all the way back to the fort. They’ll be butchered on the spot. Then, to total up our kill, the men will cut out the tongues and bring them back to see which side won. Besides, the tongue of a buffalo is the tastiest part.”

Winston Krantz held back any comment, afraid of what he might say. But the thought of eating buffalo tongue dispersed any appetite he’d worked up during the hunt.

An orderly came running, leading Custer’s spare hunter, Dandy. The colonel mounted and sat watching as his men butchered the buffalo. His horse neighed impatiently and Custer patted its neck.

“Damn fine horse I lost,” he muttered to Krantz.

The two men hung their heads in an unofficial moment of mourning for Custis Lee before heading back toward Fort Leavenworth.

That night, the mess tent was decked out with battle flags for the festive occasion. Long tables, set with bottles of wine, seated officers and men alike. Krantz and Custer’s troop had won the tongue count, so they were feted by the soldiers of the opposing force. Much kidding and telling of tall tales was the order of the evening as the meal passed down the ranks: steaming platters of hump stew; soup made of buffalo bones and marrow and seasoned with milkweed buds, rose hips, and prickly pear; broiled ribs; and, of course, the piece de resistance—smoked tongue.

“Sweet and tender as veal, eh, Krantz?” Custer asked jovially.

Winston had to agree that it wasn’t half-bad, although he passed on the raw liver, which some of the men actually fought over. A brash young lieutenant named Lance Delacorte won the largest portion. Winston looked away as the man devoured it with relish.

Well into the evening, when the meal was over and both the talk and the wine were almost exhausted, Winston Krantz felt a kind of warm glow steal over him. It had been a strange day and a stranger night, but all in all this was a good life—a man’s life.

He looked across the table at George Armstrong Custer and smiled his approval of the man. Suddenly he wanted to say something to let his superior know he respected him as an officer and liked him as a friend. A man needed a friend in this wild country.

“You certainly handled yourself well today, Colonel.”

“You’ve got to, if you want to stay alive out here, Krantz. If one thing’s not out to get your hide, something else will be. That’s the first lesson you learn out west: be ready for
anything
! Right, men?”

The other officers voiced their full agreement.

“I see your point, Colonel. It’s a far cry from humdrum duty, teaching at West Point, or even riding into bloody battles as we did during the war. At least then all we had to fight were the Rebs. Out here you’ve got beasts, redskins, and, so I hear, even Gypsies,” Krantz finished in a whisper.

Custer gave a great laugh. “They’re here all right, but not to do battle. I don’t think those Romanies have a word in their language for
fight.
I sent a troop of six men to their camp when they first got to these parts. I told my horse soldiers to rout them out, even if they had to use their guns to do it.”

“They’re still here, though, sir. What happened?”

Custer leaned back from the table and patted his full belly in a pleased manner as he continued, “Picture this, Major. My men ride up on the camp and all the Gypsies are singing and dancing around the campfire—those lovely, dusky women in their bright skirts, their faces reflecting the flames as if they were chiseled in bronze and copper. My men were struck dumb at first. When they did get around to issuing my orders, the Gypsies ignored them—acted as if they weren’t even there. They went right on laughing, singing, and dancing. Finally, one of my men fired a warning shot to get their attention. He got attention, but not the kind he’d expected. One of the young women came to him, disarmed him, and led him into the dance. Four days later, I went myself to see what the hell the Gypsies had done with my men. I figured I’d find them all dead. But no! There those happy fools were—all six of them—drinking brown ale, dancing, singing, carrying on like no decent soldiers I ever saw before. I was damn mad, I can tell you! But a day and a night in that Gypsy camp and I was tempted myself to stay the rest of my life.”

“Colonel, you don’t mean…” Winston Krantz could hardly believe such a thing of the man he’d witnessed staring down a bull buffalo.

“Don’t get me wrong, Krantz.” Custer laughed, guessing what the major must be imagining. “I know my duty. I rounded up my soldiers and hauled them back to camp. But I had a damn fine time doing it!”

“And you allowed the Gypsies to stay?”

“I hadn’t much choice. They refused to hear my orders. Even that Prince Mateo, who’s certainly nobody’s fool, turned deaf on me when I told him to vacate. They live by their own rules. As long as I don’t get any complaints, I’ll leave them be. But the minute I hear of any trouble, out they go. You can count on it!”

“Well, that’s reassuring,” Krantz said.

Custer threw back his head and laughed aloud. “Major Krantz, why don’t you ease up a bit? This isn’t Boston, or even Kentucky. We live by a different code out here. As for the Gypsies, I think you’ll change your mind about them once you see them perform.”

“That good, are they?” Krantz asked, not quite convinced that anything could change his mind about a dirty, thieving bunch of vagabonds.

“You’ll see. They say a Gypsy
Rom
can put on an entertaining show with no more than a dog, two fleas, and a fly. When you see that fellow, Mateo, and his matched stallions, I’d be willing to bet your staid Bostonian eyes will bug right out. You’ll probably be haggling with him to buy one of his horses as soon as he finishes his act. But you might as well save your breath. I think he’d sell his own mother—the old queen—before he’d part with one of those beauties.”

“I want to see his new woman!” Lieutenant Delacorte put in with an unmistakable gleam in his gray eyes.

“Ha! You’d better not let your wife hear you say that, Lance!” Custer laughed. “But I’m with you. I’m anxious to see this unusual lady he’s added to his act as well. I’ve heard she’s a blonde Gypsy, with skin as light as yours or mine, Krantz.”

“Do tell?”

Custer nodded and smiled a bit wickedly. “Mind you, I have nothing against dusky ladies. I’ve been forced to accept the hospitality of more than one Indian chief with an accomplished daughter. But the thought of one of those fiery Gypsy women with fair skin is somehow exciting, don’t you agree, gentlemen?”

“I’ll drink to that, sir!” Delacorte answered, raising his mug.

Winnie Krantz had no idea whether he agreed or disagreed. He’d never seen a Gypsy as far as he knew. And as for golden-haired women, he already had two in his life—Charlotte and her mother. That was enough to occupy any man’s thoughts and senses. He’d leave the Gypsies to Custer and young Delacorte, although Krantz had to confess he was curious to see their show when it came to camp in a couple of weeks. He would bide his time and reserve final judgment until then.

He pounded his chest with his fist to dislodge a belch, and in so doing felt Jemima Buckland’s letter inside his shirt. A new warmth crept into him and he had a sudden urge to reread it.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me?” he said, rising. Several others had already left for their bunks. The party was breaking up.

As Winston Krantz sauntered across the parade ground, he thought about Charlotte Buckland. He wondered where she was… how she was… and if he’d ever see her again. Suddenly he felt a deep sadness that she had refused to become his wife. Maybe it was the wine, or it could have been the moonlight. Whatever the cause, he felt a pressing need tonight for a woman—no, a
wife,
he corrected himself.

How nice it would have been to trudge home to Charlotte Buckland’s waiting caresses. He sighed and staggered slightly as he made for his bunk.

During the next few days, as Charlotte and Mateo worked closely together perfecting their act for the performance at Fort Leavenworth, she came to view him through different eyes. Indeed, Mateo was a different man when surrounded by his mighty black stallions. He was even more masterful and all-powerful—a god in the forty-two-foot ring that was his professional domain.

The memory of their one night of tumultuous love-making remained with Charlotte, waking and sleeping. But she found it difficult to equate this magnificently self-assured master of the horses with the tortured soul whose moon madness had claimed them both. Once that night was past, Mateo had never spoken of what had happened. He even seemed not to remember that he had taken her to him during those dark, stormy hours by the light of the full moon. But often when she turned toward him quickly, she would catch him gazing at her with a look of love and wonder in his dark eyes.

Charlotte stood at the edge of the outdoor ring now, watching as Mateo, poised on the Black Devil’s back, prepared to execute a new maneuver. He was a marvel. As he initiated his move, she thought once more that he must surely have invisible wings.

“Hi-yiah!” he whooped, and somersaulted over the horse’s hind quarters.

Charlotte applauded. “You’re more than ready for the show. I only hope I don’t disappoint you.”

For the barest instant, an intimate look passed over Mateo’s dark features. It appeared and was gone so quickly that Charlotte couldn’t be sure she had seen his change of expression at all. But if indeed she hadn’t imagined it, she knew in that moment that Mateo did remember their night together, that he both gloried in the thought of having loved her and hated himself for having caused her pain.

She longed to tell him that she forgave him, although there was nothing to forgive… that she would love him, no matter what. But there was no need. He knew without hearing her words. Still, speaking these truths aloud would have helped her a great deal. She desperately needed to have this thing between them—this dark shadow—lifted.

“I have come up with a name for you, Charlotte,” Mateo announced, striding toward her, hands on hips. It was a problem they had both been pondering. Certainly she couldn’t use her true name in the ring. “We will call you the Golden One. And I have directed Tamara to alter your costume accordingly. No scarlet, only gold. You will shine like the setting sun as you ride. You will blind their staring eyes with your radiance even as you warm their hearts. What do you think?”

Charlotte smiled and a twinkle lighted her eyes. “I like that, Mateo. Yes! The Golden One. And will the ringmaster claim that I, too, have performed before the crowned heads of Europe?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Would we tell such a lie to the unsuspecting
gajosl
No!” He came toward her and brushed back a stray lock of hair from her cheek in an intimate but casual gesture. “We will tell them,” he whispered, his dark eyes dancing with merriment, “that you come of the Gypsy stock of Ireland, and that a leprechaun king once took you for his own. His gift to you was your skill with the horses, and to honor him, you wear his gold.”

“Blarney,” Charlotte whispered back, laughing softly. “They will love it!”

“They will love
you,
Golden One.” He was leaning down to her, his lips parted, his face serious. “Even as I do.”

Mateo’s kiss, as light as a butterfly’s wing on her lips, came as a shock to Charlotte. This was the first time, since the night of the full moon almost two weeks past, that Mateo had failed to remain cool and distant with her. She hardly knew how to react.

Drawing away, Charlotte said, “Mateo, please. There are things that need to be sorted out. Do you know what happened between us in your tent? Do you remember anything of that night?”

Mateo’s smile vanished. He looked away from Charlotte, far off toward the distant horizon. “I know. I remember. I experienced anger and fear. Not my own, but that of someone else. And I felt a desire so strong, so uncontrollable, that it could not be denied. It is a dreadful anguish passed down through the ages. You should not have been there, Charlotte. You might have spared yourself by staying away. I couldn’t save you from the terrible passion, even though I experienced your pain as if it were my own.”

“Then you’re saying that night meant nothing?” His words twisted like a dagger in her breast. Charlotte felt faint and knew that tears were brimming in her eyes. “It was simply an urge you couldn’t control and I just happened to be the willing victim of your lust?”

“No, Charlotte!” He grasped her arms in a gesture of desperation. “That’s not what I mean at all. You know I’ve wanted you,
loved you,
from the beginning. But do you think that if I had been in my right mind I would have forced you in such a way? Never! I am a man of appetite, but not cruelty. What I’m trying to tell you is that I don’t know what that night meant to either of us. For me, it was as if my body were only the tool of some long-dead ancestor whose lust is too powerful to die. Somehow, the full moon allows this ghostly passion to revive itself in my body. That night, it was almost as if I lay there, helpless and tormented, watching a stranger take the woman I love. That is, until the last few minutes…” His voice trailed off.

Charlotte was confused, disappointed. She couldn’t understand.
Mateo
had held her and loved her, no other. How could he say these things to her and expect her to accept them?

“So what does it all mean? To you and me, Mateo?”

The desperation in Charlotte’s tone pleaded for an answer. But Mateo could give her none—not yet.

They were not the only two in the Gypsy camp left puzzling over events that had taken place on the night of the full moon. Even as Charlotte and Mateo stood silently searching for answers in each other’s eyes, Queen Zolande sat alone in her tent, pondering life’s meaning. Somehow she knew the answer to what had occurred on the night of the full moon was within her reach.

“But where…
where
?” the old queen muttered to herself.

A strange thing had happened to her during those storm-whipped hours of the full moon. She had felt Death lurking outside her tent that night. In her troubled dreams, she had been visited by her mother, her father, her dead sister, and many others much more ancient—some she had never known in this life. They had spoken to her. Even now, she could remember their words:

“Come! There will be no pain, my daughter,” her mother had assured her, looking young and happy.

“The tunnel of light, my child,” her father had said. “Follow it to the place where there are no questions because all the answers are known.”

A beautiful woman with hair like the raven’s wings and great, sad eyes had told Zolande, “Soon the moon’s pain will cease forever. The blood of the virgin will be avenged. You and I will find peace together, sister.”

But this apparition had not been Zolande’s dead sister—Phaedra’s mother. The old queen had pondered long and hard over the identity of the sad-eyed woman. She was Romany by her bright skirts and peasant blouse, the hoops at her ears, and the coins around her neck. But she seemed to be of some ancient tribe. Her skin was darker, her features more chiseled and sharply defined.

Zolande had thought at first, when she awoke from her dream, that she had been visited by Sara-la-Kali herself. But of course not!

“I am a foolish old woman, no longer right in the head,” she’d chided herself. “That holy saint has better things to do than soothe the passing of a nothing… a
nobody.”

But the ghostly woman’s mention of the blood of the virgin seemed such a fitting thing for the Gypsies’ patron saint to say—after all, she had been handmaiden to the sisters of the Virgin Mary.

And this was not the only mystery left over from that night. While the wind had whipped at her tent and the flame of her lamp had guttered threateningly, casting ominous shadows over her sickbed, Zolande had felt Death enter. More than that, she had
watched
it enter! It had crept in slowly, riding a silver beam from the full moon. With it had come a chill that had gripped her instantly. She’d lain in her wolf skins and shivered and ached with the death-dealing cold. And, odd as it seemed, Tamara had sat beside her bed, drowsing, in only a thin nightshift with never a chilblain on her smooth flesh.

But so it was with Gypsies. They felt neither the parching heat of summer nor the frigid winds of winter. So why had Death’s cold breath so affected her? Zolande wondered. Why indeed, unless her time had come that night?

Therein lay the mystery. Her time
had
come. She knew it! Her earthly tasks were done and her loved ones awaited her on the other side. She herself had been ready—even willing. She had opened her arms to Death that night as a maiden would welcome her lover. Death had leaned close enough to kiss her brow, her lips, and to touch her heart. She had felt the weak flutter of its final beat. And in that instant, she had seen the tunnel of light her father spoke of. She had entered it, fearful at first; then her silent heart had taken flight, hurrying her footsteps, which trod nothing more substantial than the air she had once breathed.

Suddenly, from out of the midst of the bright white light, voices had spoken to her. No, not to her, but to each other. She’d heard a man say, “What have I done to you?” And a woman, with great tenderness and love in her voice, had answered, “Only what Fate intended.”

At that very instant, as if the distant words had been some cue from on high, Zolande had felt herself jerked back from the tunnel of light. She was in her bed once more, her heart beating, the cold vanished. And the pain—the awful, soul-gnawing pain that had racked her body night and day for so many moons—the pain had gone. She’d no longer felt old and feeble. She’d felt reborn, as if the marrow-deep cold and the searing white light together had worked some magic to cleanse her of a terrible evil.

She had arisen with the dawn that morning, going about her chores as any Gypsy woman would. Her joints were limber, her heartbeat strong, her head and eye clear. No pain, no weariness, no regrets for the past or fear of the future. And thus it had been since that night.

The others had stared at first, then smiled. They asked no questions of their queen. That was good, because their queen had no answers to explain away the miracle. She had only the gladness in her heart that the miraculous was still a part of life.

But now she had four questions to ponder: Who was the woman in her dreams? How had she been snatched back to life from beyond the grave? Who were the couple whose words had rescued her?

“And why,
why
?” she wondered aloud. Surely she had been pulled back from the other side to accomplish some great service. But what?

Zolande shook her head to clear it. Weary now from puzzling over so many questions, she closed her eyes and let her mind drift. Back, back, back in time she journeyed—to the old country and near-forgotten memories. Suddenly she smiled, thinking of the golden-haired woman who had joined her father’s caravan in Zolande’s thirteenth summer to travel with them through Bavaria. They had all been so sure that this was the golden Gypsy who would dispel the ancient curse. How different Zolande’s own life would be even now, if such had been the case. Her own betrothed, Strombol, had been the carrier of the curse in those years. As such, he would have taken the light-skinned woman as his bride.

“And what, then, of Mateo?” Zolande wondered aloud. “Would he still have come from my womb, but with no taint of moon madness?”

She shook her head at her own foolishness. Without Strombol, there would have been no children. She had loved him far too much to marry any other. But Fate had seen to her needs. The woman had caught a chill and died of a fever during the first snowstorm that winter, proving that she was not of Gypsy blood. She had left Zolande her legacy—Strombol, and Valencia’s curse for her only surviving son.

“Ah!” Zolande cried aloud, clutching her throat suddenly.
“Valencia!”

There was no need to struggle with one of the questions any longer. Every Gypsy knew the story of Valencia and her curse. But now the woman herself had appeared to Zolande in her dream. The raven hair, the ancient look about her, her very words—the queen should have realized her identity at once. Still, there had to be a reason for the vision. This one answer gave birth to yet another question: Why had Valencia come to her?

Zolande tried to rest, but once more faces and voices from her dreams drifted back. “Blood of the virgin…”

“The moon’s pain will cease…”

“Only what Fate intended…”

The old queen might have slipped into a well-deserved repose at last, if Phaedra’s strident tones hadn’t penetrated her sanctuary.

“I know you went to his tent the other night. You needn’t deny it. I’m just curious, since we were supposed to be married. How was he?”

Charlotte hadn’t meant to get trapped like this by Phaedra. She’d come back directly from the practice ring and had been on her way to bring Queen Zolande some fresh berries when the other woman had barred her way and demanded conversation.

“He was quite ill, Phaedra,” Charlotte answered honestly, but blushing nonetheless.

Phaedra’s lips curled in a smirk. “Oh, come now! I saw you as you sneaked back to the brides’ tent at dawn—hair tangled, blouse ripped, skirts wrinkled. You’re not going to tell me all that came of tending Mateo while he was out of his head.”

“You might say so, Phaedra.”

“Nothing happened between you, then?”

“I really don’t see that that’s any of your concern.”

“No, I suppose not, now that I’ve decided I don’t want him yet.”

Charlotte’s eyes widened with surprise. “Don’t want him? I’m not sure I understand.”

“Well, it was my idea to press for a wedding date. But once I got what I wanted, I changed my mind. Besides, Queen Zolande is better now. There’s no hurry. She’ll last the winter at least.” She laughed. “That’s probably more than you can say.”

“Maybe you’re right, Phaedra. Maybe I won’t be here for the winter. Maybe Mateo won’t be, either.”