The Silver Horse (6 page)

Felipe snorted, but Cosmo was frowning and rubbing his thumb over the tattered rabbit's foot he wore at his belt.

‘You want to keep my charm?' Janka sounded furious. ‘Not just wear it for the race?'

Emilia nodded. ‘At least until my family is free,' she said pleadingly, and wished she could control her voice better. One must never show weakness when bargaining, she knew.

‘Absolutely not.' Janka folded her arms.

‘Then I'll be on my way,' Emilia said, and wheeled her horse about.

‘Wait, wait!' Felipe cried. He turned to his mother. ‘It's only a little thing, you have much better jewels. Give it to the wean, if she wants it so bad.'

‘It's the charm of this family!' Janka cried. ‘Given to me by your father after his mother died.'

‘We are all kin,' Emilia said. ‘Our caravan is our family, and the world is our caravan.'

The old woman scowled, and held on tight to her charm, but Felipe went to her and spoke softly in her ear. She shook her head obstinately, and he whispered some more. After a little while, she shrugged and said something crossly. He answered soothingly. Emilia's heart lifted as she saw Janka shrug once more, then reluctantly pull something over her head and give it to her son. Felipe turned to Emilia and held it out on his hand.

‘So?' he said. ‘You have the charm, we have the horse.'

Emilia shook her head. ‘It's not so simple,' she said. ‘I also want your promise to help us free my family from Kingston gaol.'

Felipe's hand closed over the charm. ‘What sort of help?'

Emilia did not like to say she did not know. So, her brain racing, she said, ‘We must get them out before the magistrates sit at the beginning of next month. Before then, we'll try to get help from the rest of our kin. We'll ask them – and you – to come to meet us in Kingston by the last day of the month, and we'll tell you then what we need you to do.'

Felipe and Cosmo glared at her, and then put their heads together, muttering furiously. Emilia waited, so tense that Alida fidgeted and danced, curving her neck. She could always sense what Emilia was feeling.

Cosmo turned back to her. His face was hard and cold. ‘Who are you to try and bargain with us? You are nothing but a worthless girl. Your family
is imprisoned, you have no money, you wear borrowed clothes. How dare you try and tell us what to do?'

‘Fine,' Emilia said, and spurred Alida away.

Alida, as always, moved as smoothly and lightly as the wind through a meadow of grass. Emilia was surprised. Her heart was so heavy, she felt sure it should have acted as weights upon her mare's legs.

‘Wait!' Felipe called again.

Emilia drew Alida to a halt at the very crest of the hill.

‘The day is running away,' she said coldly. ‘You are wasting my time. If you want me to stay and run this race for you, I need to know now. Otherwise, I'm for the road.'

Cosmo laughed. ‘Girls don't race,' he said. ‘If your mare is to run today, I'll be on her back.'

Emilia shook her head. ‘She's my mare.'

Cosmo leant in towards Felipe and whispered. After a long moment, Felipe nodded his head.

‘Here's a bargain for you, little girl,' Cosmo said mockingly. ‘You take my mother's charm, and you race for us today. If you win, you get to keep the charm, as long as you need it, and we swear to help you if we can.'

Emilia's heart leapt with joy.

‘But you must leave us with some kind of surety. That seems only fair. So if you race for us today, and win, you have our precious family charm and our promise of help, but we get to keep the mare. Agreed?'

Emilia could only stare at him, aghast.

T
he iron door to the cell grated open. The guard loomed in the doorway, holding a tray. He was a big man with a smashed nose, ears like red cabbages, and hands like overcooked steaks.

Mimi and Sabina screamed and shrank back against Maggie, their grandmother, who put her arms around them. Mimi's mother Silvia looked up dully. Since she had inadvertently caused the death of a constable, causing the charges against them to include murder, Silvia had been sunk in a
bewildered misery and apathy, a stark change from the busy, cheerful woman she had always been.

‘Now, now, no need for shrieking,' the guard said. ‘I've brought you some breakfast. Aren't you hungry? It's not much, I'm afraid, the cook here is mean, and takes the best stuff for himself, but it's better than nothing.'

He shut the door behind him with his shoulder, and set the tray down on a rickety table.

The two little girls stared at him from the shelter of Maggie's arms. The guard smiled, showing a mouthful of crooked, discoloured teeth. ‘Come, am I so scary?' he said. ‘I'm not going to hurt you. Look what I've brought you.' He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and brought out two beautifully made little rag dolls. He offered them to Mimi and Sabina, but they shrank back and did not go to him. After a moment, he turned and gave them to Beatrice, saying apologetically, ‘It's my face, it scares them.'

Beatrice smiled wanly, and took the dolls to the little girls, who pressed them close. Although they were cousins, not sisters, they were alike enough to be twins with their skinny arms and big black eyes. Sabina was ten and Mimi a year younger, and they were tired, bored, scared and fretful. It had been hard work keeping them entertained over the past two days, and the women had long ago run out of stories and games, or the heart to tell them.

‘I'm guessing you didn't sew them yourself,' Maggie said to the guard as she got stiffly to her feet. She was a thin scarecrow of a woman, with a face that was all nose and eyelids. She spoke around an empty pipe that she kept clamped between her wrinkled lips, occasionally taking it out and staring at it as if she hoped some tobacco may have materialised there miraculously.

The guard grinned. ‘Not I!' he said. ‘That's my wife's handiwork.'

‘She's a fine seamstress,' Maggie said. ‘Not like
me.' She gestured down at her ragged skirts with one hand, and the guard grinned again. ‘I can throw a meal together, though,' she went on as she bent over the tray and examined the food there. ‘Not like this cook of yours. He calls this a meal?'

‘I'm afraid so,' the guard replied.

Maggie screwed up her face. ‘No wonder everyone in this gaol gets sick,' she said. ‘Not one of us got a wink of sleep last night listening to the coughing of that poor man next door. Can't they get a doctor in to him?'

The guard looked as apologetic as was possible for someone with his face. ‘Doctors cost money,' he said.

‘That they do,' Maggie said. ‘Tell me, is this wife of yours as good a cook as she is a seamstress?'

‘Indeed she is,' the guard said proudly.

‘You're a lucky man.'

‘I know it.'

‘I'm guessing she's a fine housewife too, and
has a little garden where she grows herbs and vegetables for the table?'

‘She does,' the man agreed, sounding a little puzzled.

‘And I can tell she's a kind-hearted woman, just as you are kind-hearted bringing in our lasses these lovely little dolls.'

‘The very best of wives,' he said.

‘Do you think this wife of yours could be sparing a little pottage for our lasses? They're only little, they don't eat much. And for our laddie too? For they'll be sick, for sure, if they eat this maggoty stuff.'

The guard gulped. ‘I'm not sure I'm allowed . . .'

‘No need to tell anyone,' Maggie said. ‘Just a nice bit of stew, with some potatoes in it, or a bit of bread and cheese. It won't be for long. We go up before the magistrate come the end of the month, and then we'll be out of your hair.'

The guard gulped. He knew as well as Maggie did that the gypsies faced the gallows. He looked
back at the little girls, now playing happily with their dolls, and said, ‘I'm sure a bit of stew won't do any harm.'

‘You're a good man,' Maggie said warmly. ‘Tell me, what's your name?'

‘Maloney, ma'am,' he answered, and then reddened, for one did not call a tattered old gypsy woman ‘ma'am'.

‘And your good wife?'

‘Jenny.'

‘Give Mistress Jenny my thanks for the dollies. It's hard on the little ones, being locked up in this bad place.'

‘Indeed it is,' Maloney agreed, looking sad.

‘Tell me, do you have girls of your own, to be knowing so well what my little ones would like?'

The guard's sad look deepened to real grief. ‘We did,' he said. ‘But they died. Two years ago now. Mary, my eldest, would be eight now, and the little one, Annie, she'd be six.'

‘Oh, that's hard,' Maggie said sympathetically. ‘There's nothing harder, is there, than losing a child? Have you and your wife had no more, to comfort you in your grief?'

He shook his head. ‘We've tried, but . . .' His voice trailed away, then he squared his shoulders and said gruffly, ‘But I mustn't be standing here, chitchatting like some old gossip. I've work to do.'

As he turned to go, Maggie stretched out one of her thin, clawlike hands to him. ‘If you'd like, you can bring your wife in to see me,' she said in a low voice. ‘I can tell her if there are to be any more weans for her and, perhaps, help her have another.'

He shot her a quick glance from under his heavy brows, and said, ‘You can do that? Truly?'

‘I can try,' Maggie said.

‘All right,' he said eagerly. ‘It'd have to be late, I wouldn't want the pastor or the warder to know.'

‘Good idea,' Maggie said. ‘Let her wrap her
shawl about her head, so no one knows she's come to the prison.'

He nodded and went out, shutting the door behind him. Beatrice had time only to turn to her grandmother with a questioning look before he was back, thrusting a little package wrapped in paper into her hands.

‘For the little ones,' he said. ‘So they don't go hungry.'

As he went out again, Maggie opened the paper. Inside were two hard-boiled eggs, a crust of brown bread, some cold bacon, a wedge of cheese and two small red apples.

‘That must be his own lunch,' Beatrice said wonderingly, surprised at his kindness.

‘It's better than some cold, maggoty porridge, that's for sure!' Maggie sat down again, beginning to peel one of the eggs. ‘Come here, my darling girls,' she crooned to Mimi and Sabina, breaking the egg in half. ‘Are you hungry?'

‘Wasn't it dangerous, offering to tell his wife's fortune like that?' Mimi's elder sister Lena said curiously as she came across to demand a portion of the food for herself.

‘I don't think so,' Maggie replied. ‘What can they do to me? Lock me in prison, threaten to hang me?'

‘They could burn you as a witch,' Beatrice said, a tight knot of anxiety in her throat.

‘Well, yes, there is that, but I thought it worth the risk.'

‘But . . . why?'

Maggie held up the bread and cheese, which she had broken up into small portions for them all. ‘At least he may bring us some better food,' she said, ‘if he feels sorry for us. And I need to think of the future too.'

‘The future,' Beatrice said, hopeless misery in her voice. ‘What future?'

‘Whatever future I can salvage for us,' Maggie
said. ‘I may not be able to save myself, or my sons, or even you, but the little ones? Will they truly hang the little ones? And if they don't, where are they to go? Who will look after them? My kin, I hope, but these are bad times for the Rom. I have to grasp whatever straws I can find.'

Understanding dawned in Beatrice's eyes. ‘You think . . . you hope . . . that he . . .' She gestured towards the door.

‘No harm in planting a few seeds,' Maggie said. ‘Besides, we all need hope in our lives. Even a prison guard deserves that.'

Beatrice sat down with her tiny wedge of bread and cheese as her grandmother tried to coax Silvia into eating some of the hard-boiled egg. She mulled over what her grandmother had said. She wished she could be so optimistic. Her mind flashed to Emilia and Luka, and to her betrothed, Sebastien, and though she wanted desperately to believe that they could help her and her family in
some way, she could not think how. Beatrice could see no hope at all in the future. No hope at all.

Luka and Sebastien, at that very moment, were talking about Beatrice. Sebastien wanted to know everything about her. So Luka told him about how Beatrice had practically raised Emilia and Noah by herself, even though she was not much older than they were, and how she had taught herself to sew so she could get work up at the manor, helping the seamstresses, which paid better than the usual gypsy method of helping out at harvest time and making baskets and other trinkets. Sebastien already felt a warm glow of interest in his young wife-to-be. Luka wanted to stoke this blaze even higher, so he told many tales of Beatrice's sweetness of temper, her practical good sense and her gentleness. He did not even have to exaggerate
very much, for Beatrice was indeed very sweet-tempered, if rather too prone to dissolving into tears for Luka's taste. He thought to himself, with a private grin, that he was glad he was not having to burnish Emilia's character. It would have been much harder to do so with every appearance of sincerity.

‘It is a crime that such a sweet and lovely girl should be locked up in prison,' Sebastien cried. ‘What evil has she done? What wrongdoing?'

‘They said we were begging, but we weren't, we were performing for our pennies,' Luka said righteously. ‘You've heard Beatrice sing, don't you think it's worth a handful of gold to hear her?'

‘Indeed,' Sebastien said. ‘She sings like an angel.'

‘Maybe that's why the pastor had her locked up,' Luka said. ‘He hates anything beautiful or joyous, he hates people to be happy. He wants us all to be as gloomy and miserable as he is.'

‘I don't understand these Puritans,' Sebastien said. ‘If they want to go around with long faces, wearing nothing but black and feeling utterly miserable, let them. But why do they have to make everyone else miserable too? What do they care if we want to sing and dance and make merry?'

‘Makes no sense at all,' Luka said, and lifted Zizi so he could cuddle her under his chin, taking comfort from her little nuzzle of affection and the softness of her fur.

While Luka and Sebastien were filling in the long hours of the day with idle conversation, Pastor Spurgeon was writing letters. He wrote swiftly and strongly, filling page after page with sloping black letters that flowed from his pen with utter assurance and certainty. Every now and again he signed his name with a flourish, then sealed the
letter with red wax and set it in a neat pile of other letters to be franked.