The Gypsy Crown (4 page)

‘I'd rather have Cromwell breathing down my neck than Pastor Spurgeon,' the constable said. ‘He's a cold fish, that's for sure.'

The innkeeper nodded, looking uneasy.

‘He'll be here soon,' the constable said, ‘to gloat over his prisoners. I'd best be getting on.'

‘Time for a quick ale?' the innkeeper suggested. ‘Hot and thirsty work, rounding up rebels and spies.'

‘That it is,' the constable agreed, and together the two men went out the door, slamming it behind them.

Luka heard the key turn in the lock and gritted his teeth together angrily. Mimi sobbed beside him.

The guard ushered them through another door, and Luka saw that one whole side of the inn was divided into two big cells, barred from floor to ceiling all along the front. Silvia, Beatrice and the girls were pushed into one cell, and Luka, Noah, Jacob and Ruben into the other.

The cell was crowded with men. Two looked as though they had been in a fight, with black eyes and bloodied noses. Several looked tired and poor and beaten down by life. There was a one-armed soldier in a tattered uniform, one sleeve pinned across his breast, and several filthy hedge-birds, their beards matted with leaves, their rags stinking of dirt and ale. Lying on the floor was a young man, very thin and pale, who coughed and coughed and coughed into a blood-stained rag.

There was also a thin man of about fifty, very neatly but shabbily dressed, who was seated at the table scribbling away at a scroll of paper with a tattered quill. He raised his head as Luka and the others were shoved in, shook it sadly, and went back to writing. Every now and again he spat in his inkwell to thin the ink, for it had almost run out.

Luka rubbed his arms, which felt bruised where the constables had gripped him, and looked about. His eyes lit up when he saw a narrow window set high into the wall. It was large enough for a man to put his head out, if he could have reached it. Luka gently touched his father's sleeve, and jerked his thumb at it.

‘Luka! Can you get out, do you think?'

Luka shrugged, trying not to show his pride in his agility. ‘Think so.'

‘Get Baba away safely! She'll die if they lock her up in this foul place. You'll need to get us help, if you can. Go in search of the Hearnes, they've gone to Epsom Downs for the races. They may be able to do something.'

‘What?' Ruben said sarcastically. ‘I doubt greasing the parson's palm will work.'

‘Nay, I doubt it too. But surely they can do
something
! Maybe the magistrate will be more open to a bribe than the pastor. Or maybe they can try and break us out of here. How, I don't know.'

‘Luka! Don't let them get Sweetheart,' Ruben said urgently. ‘They'll kill her, for sure. Please, get Sweetheart away to safety.'

‘I'll try,' Luka said, rather dubiously, for he had no idea how to get himself away to safety, let alone a six hundred pound brown bear.

He let Zizi out of his coat and she leapt about, gibbering loudly, much to the surprise and amusement of the other prisoners. In the other cell he could hear sobbing, and he pressed his face against the wall and whispered, ‘Mimi! Don't cry! I'll be out of here in a trice, and I'll come back to get you when I can.'

‘Luka, be careful, darling boy!' Silvia cried.

‘Keep Milly safe, Luka, please!' Beatrice called, her voice breaking.

‘I don't like this place,' Mimi wept. ‘Will you come and get us soon?'

‘Aye, I will, I will,' Luka promised, unable to do anything else. He passed his father his fiddle, and gave him a quick, hard hug. Jacob ruffled his hair.

‘Be careful, my boy,' he said thickly.

Luka backed up against the bars, then broke into a swift run and flung his body over into a high backflip that took him up to the window, where he clung to the bars for dear life.

The man with the quill looked up at him in surprise, then smiled. ‘Good luck to thee, friend!' he said. ‘I wish that I too could leap free of this foul place.'

Luka glanced back at him in surprise, then grinned. ‘Thanks,' he said, reached down to take his fiddle from his father, who had to stand on tiptoe to pass it to him, then wriggled through the window and was gone.

It was a sharp drop down to the street, so he clambered up the gutter and onto the steep thatched roof, his fiddle slung over his shoulder, Zizi leaping nimbly ahead of him. Keeping low, he climbed over the pitch and hid behind the chimneys so he could peer around. Below was a stable-yard where two grooms were saddling a large black stallion, much to Luka's delight.

Keeping as quiet as he could, he slipped over the edge of the pediment and rested his feet on the window ledge below, then, when he felt secure, slipped down to crouch there. Zizi dropped onto his shoulder, chattering in curiosity. Luka heard voices and pressed closer to the window, hoping no one would look out and see him.

‘I want you to get that girl, Coldham, and I want you to bring her back to me,' the pastor was saying. ‘I shall have her whipped for insolence before she hangs! Go and raid that camp of theirs. They'll be about the Devil's work for sure. Look you for any sign of witchcraft, any spells, curses, charms, or any other sign of Devil worship.'

‘Yes, sir,' a man replied. Luka recognised Coldham's harsh voice. ‘I'll look for any signs they've been in contact with the Royalists too, sir. These gypsies travel all round the country, sir, they could easily be carrying treasonous messages around.'

‘Very good, Coldham!' the pastor said. Coins clinked as money changed hands. ‘The Lord Protector would be most pleased with us if we've managed to capture a nest of spies and traitors!'

There was a knock on the door. The pastor called out impatiently. The door opened and another voice said, ‘Your horse is ready, Pastor Spurgeon.'

‘Very good,' the pastor replied, while Luka, clinging with hands and feet to the window frame outside, thought to himself,
Spurgeon sturgeon! It's a good name for you, Fishface!

‘I must ride now to see Colonel Pride,' the pastor said. ‘He will be most anxious to know all that I have been doing. I will be back tomorrow. Make sure that wild, malicious girl-child is under lock and key by then, Coldham.'

‘Yes, sir,' Coldham said for the third time.

Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full, sir,
Luka thought with contempt. What a lickspittle!

‘The court will sit on the first of September,' the pastor mused. Through the window, Luka could see him putting on his tall steeple hat and he ducked down, not wanting to be seen. ‘The prison is already packed to the hilt, unfortunately. The magistrates will have their hands full. It will be worth it to send a message to the people, though, that God's work will be done.'

‘Yes, sir,' Coldham said, and Luka imitated him to Zizi, who gave a wide monkey grin.

Then the voices died away. Luka shinned down to the ground and grabbed a pitchfork from a pile of manure.

‘Stand and deliver, laddies!' he cried.

The grooms swung around in surprise. Luka did not waste any time. He shoved the pitchfork at them, so they scrambled backwards, then he seized the horse's reins and swung himself up into the saddle. Zizi leapt up lightly and settled on the pommel before him, her tail wrapped about his wrist. The horse snorted and pranced, and Luka tightened his hold on the reins, bringing the stallion's head around and urging him forward.

‘Stop him!' a voice shouted.

The pastor stood in the doorway like a pillar of black marble. Only his face and hands and collar were white. His pale eyes were blazing. Coldham came running out the door, his mean, piggy face set in a grimace of hatred, his pistol in his hand. Luka wheeled the stallion about and pulled off his cap, making a low, sweeping bow.

‘Thanks for the horse, Fishface!' he cried, then he was off, out the gateway and through the town at a mad gallop.

E
milia galloped along the dusty road, occasionally lifting one hand to wipe her tear-wet face.

What are we to do?
she kept asking herself.
We should never have left Norwood! Baba was right …

Alida, swift as she was, could not run all day. Soon Emilia had to slow the mare and let her rest. She was so anxious she kept urging Alida into a trot, however, constantly turning and checking back over her shoulder. A great plume of dust rose into the air some miles back, showing someone was riding hard behind her. She kicked Alida with her bare feet, and the mare valiantly quickened into a canter again, even though her dappled flanks were scudded with sweat. Rollo ran tirelessly behind, his tongue lolling out of his mouth.

Emilia was filled with terror so acute it was like ice in her blood. She shivered, and her hands in Alida's mane were numb. What would they do to her family, to gentle Beatrice, and to brave, blind little Noah, to kind Uncle Jacob, and cuddly Aunt Silvia, to funny Uncle Ruben, and all her cousins, giggling Lena, bright-eyed Sabina and little Mimi, not yet ten? Surely they could not truly mean to hang them, just for singing and dancing in the marketplace?

She hardly knew how she made it back to the campsite at Thornton Heath. The miles blurred past, and only clever Alida got her home safely. Emilia was shivering as if she had a fever.

The camp was very quiet. Sweetheart snoozed in the shade of a tree. The dogs slept under the caravans, occasionally scratching at their fleas. Rollo ran to the water bucket to drink, his thin sides heaving.

Maggie sat on the steps of her caravan, her shawl drawn up about her face, a soft bag at her feet. Emilia slid off Alida's back and fell into her lap, sobbing.

‘You knew?' she said when at last she could speak.

Maggie shrugged. ‘I heard the owl's cry, and then, today, the cards showed me death.'

‘He says they'll hang,' Emilia sobbed.

Maggie took a deep breath. Emilia felt the thin cage of her ribs rise and fall. She looked over Emilia's shoulder at the white cloud of dust rising from the road.

‘Well, my wean, let me tell you a story,' she said.

Emilia looked at her in bewilderment. These were the words she heard most nights, as she was snuggled in her bunk with Beatrice, Noah curled up with Rollo in the bunk opposite, all of them warm and sleepy, tired out after the day. It was not what she expected her Baba to say now, with the constables only minutes away, and the whole family in Kingston gaol.

But she laid her hot, weary head on her grandmother's knee and listened, half in a dream, to Maggie's soft voice. In a way, it was a relief, not to run or fight any more.

‘A long time ago there was a travelling man who travelled as far as he could and found before him only sea. He stopped and tarried for a while, but a Rom can never rest, you know that, and so after a while he packed up his wife and his horses and his children, and he found himself a boat, and he came here to this country. It pleased him, the land he found himself in, and so he wandered this way and he wandered that way, and he found himself his roads.'

‘Now this man, this Traveller, had six children, and in time they all grew up and wanted to find roads of their own. So the Big Man, he gave them all some money, enough to buy a wagon of their own, or to drink it all, if that was what they wanted, and he told them again the three laws of the Rom, and blessed them, and sent them on their way.'

Emilia nodded her head, and Maggie smoothed the unruly curls away from her damp forehead.

‘His wife was a woman with her own powers, what would be called a witch nowadays, no doubt,' Maggie went on in her soft, singsong voice. ‘She wore about her wrist a chain of charms which had been passed down to her by her mother, who had had it from her mother, and so on for many years. There were six charms on this chain, and so she broke the chain and gave one to each of her six children. She thought she could protect them all this way, but from the day she broke the chain, things went from bad to worse for them.

‘I haven't time today to tell you all that happened to the six children, and where they went, and what they did. That's a tale for another telling. But you should know, my wean, that this was the year that young King Harry first came to the throne. He was not much older than our Beatrice, poor Harry the Eighth, and he was mad in love for his dead brother's wife, Catherine she was called. And so he married her, and she bore him a daughter, who we all remember well as Mary the Bloody.'

Emilia nodded her head again but did not speak.

‘Now years passed, enough years that the Big Man's children all married and had children of their own. You must remember King Harry loved music and dancing, and he had heard of our Traveller man, who could play the fiddle so fish rose from the streams and leapt into his hands, and birds flew down from the trees and perched on his bow. His fame had spread far and wide, and the fortune-telling fame of his wife. So the king had them brought to court, and Amberline played for him – oh, yes, your father was named for him – and then, laughing, the king asked Amberline's wife what she foresaw for him.'

Emilia moved restlessly, even the comfort of her grandmother's stroking hand and soft voice unable to rid her completely of her dreadful anxiety. Maggie's voice quickened.

‘No one knows what she told him, but the stories say he went white as a ghost first, and then red, and then he fell into a fury. He threw his cup, and smashed his hand into the table, and he roared and shouted until all the servants ran and hid, and then he had Amberline and his wife whipped from the palace. And that very night he called for his ministers and his quill and his seal, and he wrote up a law against the Rom, who by that time had spread far and wide. And so the bad time began, and the Rom were chased from town to town with stones and whips, and some were hung, and some were drowned, and many were branded like cattle. And now we tell our children, be careful who you tell the truth to.'

‘What did she see? What did she tell him?' Emilia was interested despite herself.

‘Who knows? I was not there to hear it. But three years later he had put aside his wife and his baby daughter and married another, the one they call the Witch Boleyn, and in another three years he'd cut off her head and married again, and by the time another three years had passed, there'd been another three wives, and he was sick and foul and feared, where once he had been golden and loved. So what did she tell him? What she saw, no doubt, and more fool her.'

‘And?' Emilia knew there must be some reason Maggie was telling her this tale, interesting as it was, and so she lifted her head and looked up into her grandmother's face, all lined and weathered, with eyes black and sparkling between the hooded lids.

‘Kings have come and kings have gone since that time, and queens too,' Maggie said. ‘But all that time the Rom have suffered because that old witch could not keep a still tongue between her teeth, and, my mother told me, because she broke the chain of charms. It's a chain of blood as well as gold, so the old tale tells, and if the charms could only be brought again together, even just for a little while, better days will come for all of us.'

Emilia struggled to understand. ‘You think these charms, they can help us, help Beatrice and Noah?'

Maggie nodded. ‘If not the charms themselves, at least those who carry them,' she said. ‘We are all blood, the Rom. You must go, you must ask them for help, you must bring help back and free us. Else we will hang, I am sure of it.'

All Emilia could grasp among this was her grandmother's use of ‘you' and ‘we'.

‘But … but you are free … they have not got you …' she stammered.

‘Not yet,' Maggie said. ‘But they come.'

Emilia became aware of the sound of galloping hooves. She had thought it was her heart.

‘Baba, Baba,' she wept.

‘Emilia, listen well. There are six charms. There is the crown, given to the eldest son of that old Travelling man. I have it now, I have worn it all my life. Take it.'

Emilia found her hand being prised open and something pressed into it. It was warm and round and worn about the edges. Maggie closed Emilia's fingers about it.

‘The crown is for light and luck and magic. It's why they call me the Queen of the Gypsies, though God knows we have no kings or queens as they do.'

Emilia nodded. She opened her hand and saw cupped within a very old gold coin, with a hole drilled through so it could hang from a golden chain. The coin was so old it was no longer round but misshapen like a moon two days from the full. Just visible on one side was a picture of a woman with a crown on her head, and what looked like stars about her. On the other side there were letters or runes, almost all rubbed away, and the crowned woman again, with one hand raised, the other holding some kind of wriggly rod or sceptre. Or perhaps it was a snake.

While Emilia examined the golden coin, Maggie was talking still, half to herself.

‘Then there is the charm of the running horse. It is silver, the moon metal, and has the power to charm all the beasts of field and forest, the charm to wheedle that you have, my darling girl. Old Janka Hearne, who was here last night, she has it still, I saw it. Go, go and find them, beg them for their help, wheedle them if you can. They have horses, they have money, and they have the ear of the Lord Protector, who likes them for their horses.'

‘What of the other charms?' Emilia asked desperately as the thunder of horses' hooves grew ever closer.

‘Lost, lost, so many are lost,' Maggie cried. For the first time Emilia heard fear in her voice.

‘But you must know what they are, where they are?' Emilia asked, slipping the golden bracelet over her hand, so it hung on her wrist, the coin dangling down. It felt very heavy.

‘There was the butterfly in amber,' Maggie said. ‘The butterfly means change and transformation, that is its power. Last I heard that family, the Graylings, went to London Town. We were all angry. Rom, living in the city! It shows how much times have changed.'

‘What else?'

‘There was the seashell, aye, that's a lucky charm! It gives protection and power over the forces of the sea and water. It belongs to the Wells family. They went along the seashore, of course, down south, near the old town of Rye. Then there was the lightning bolt charm, which I heard was made from the heart of a fallen star. That belongs to the the Smiths, the iron-forgers. They live and prosper in the Weald, I've heard, making swords and cannon for the Lord Protector. They're strong men and fierce, they'll be able to help, I'm sure.'

‘Butterfly, seashell, lightning bolt,' Emilia repeated, staring into her grandmother's face and trying to commit her words to memory.

‘Gold crown. Silver horse. Butterfly in amber. Iron bolt of lightning. The seashell that sees. What else, what else?'

Maggie was trying not to weep. Emilia was terribly frightened. Maggie never wept. She gripped her grandmother's hands. ‘One more, Baba. What? What is it?'

‘The herb of grace,' Maggie said. ‘A very powerful charm, very old. Rue, they call it. Rue, for pity's sake.'

‘Where can I find it? Who has it?'

‘The Wood family, from the New Forest. Their charm has the power of all growing things, the plants that heal and those that kill,' Maggie said. ‘Last I heard the Woods had all died, or been sold away. One was hanged as a witch, I know.'

‘So how am I to find them?' Emilia asked in despair.

‘I don't know, my darling girl, I don't know. Perhaps it is impossible. Perhaps it is just a story.' Maggie's voice broke, and she dashed tears from her eyes.

‘I'll find them, Baba, don't you worry,' Emilia promised, unable to bear seeing her grandmother cry.

The dogs began to bark a warning, leaping to their feet and hurling themselves to the end of their chains. Sweetheart sat up, scratched her flank and yawned, peering to see who was coming towards them at such a pace, hooves thundering on the rough ground.

Emilia took a deep breath and turned to face the rider, her hand clenched about the golden coin.

It was Luka.