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The Snow Gypsy
The Snow Gypsy Read online
ALSO BY LINDSAY JAYNE ASHFORD
Whisper of the Moon Moth
The Woman on the Orient Express
The Color of Secrets
The Mysterious Death of Miss Jane Austen
Frozen
Strange Blood
Where Death Lies
The Killer Inside
The Rubber Woman
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2019 by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542040051 (hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1542040051 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 9781542040044 (paperback)
ISBN-10: 1542040043 (paperback)
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Jeff Miller
First edition
In memory of my great-grandmother Ann Eliza Fowler, who never had the chance to learn to read and write.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chapter 1
Spain: April 18, 1938
The snow has lingered longer than usual this spring. It shrouds the orange and lemon groves in the valley below the village of Capileira and sends fingers of white up the scars in the hillside where the sun never reaches.
The girl sets off in the cold pink dawn, urging the goats out into the street, up the steep path that leads to the mountain pastures. As she climbs higher, a veil of scented smoke drifts up from the fires of rosemary wood being lit in the houses. For a while the only sound is the tinkle of the goats’ bells. Then the cries of ravens tear through the morning air. They swoop over the herd, hungry for blood. The girl knows she must be vigilant. They will take a newborn kid if they get the chance.
Her breakfast of bread and cheese is eaten on a moss-covered rock, from which she watches the sun rise over the Mediterranean Sea. If she holds her hand above her eyes, she can make out the misty peaks of Morocco on the other side of the water. The goats tear at the tender new shoots of gorse and thyme, their udders swaying as they roam the landscape.
She is on her way back down when flakes of snow begin to appear. At first, they are soft and sparse, circling like almond blossoms as they fall. Then, as the wind gusts from the glacier on the top of the mountain, they turn into showers of icy splinters that sting her eyes.
A blanket of cloud smudges the sky, and the goats huddle closer, spooked by the sudden change in the weather. Fresh dung showers the path. The smell pinches at her nostrils. But it’s not just the flurry of snow. Something else has scared them. Someone is shouting. Angry voices rise from the ravine that separates her from the town far below. The girl can’t see over the ridge. But what she hears makes her blood freeze. A voice she knows, rising above the moan of the wind.
When the shots ring out, the goats stop dead. She fights her way through the jam of wet fur and scrambles down the mountainside. Shards of loose rock jab the worn soles of her boots, and thornbushes snag her clothes. She catches her foot in a gorse root and lurches forward, grasping at spiny branches to save herself. But the goats have followed her. They crowd around, a forest of legs blocking her way. By the time she reaches the valley floor, the ravens are already circling overhead.
Snow is falling like feathers on dead faces. Bodies lie where they have fallen. The wind tugs at their clothes, the colors bleaching as the blizzard buries them. She lurches from one lifeless form to another, frantically sweeping eyelids, noses, mouths. She drops to her knees beside two bodies that lie together, letting out a howl of anguish. She cradles their heads, pleading for some sign of life. But their white shrouds are red with blood.
Snow is falling like feathers. Angels coming for departed souls.
Shuddering with sobs, she flings herself down between the woman and the boy. Clasping two cold hands, she closes her eyes, willing the blizzard to go on. If she lies still for long enough, it will take her, too. It won’t be a frightening death like theirs. She will simply fall asleep.
But the goats won’t leave her alone. They cluster around, nibbling at her boots, pulling off her hat. She kicks out at them and closes her eyes tighter. One of them is making a strange noise. More like a cat than a goat. She wonders if this is the beginning of death—hearing sounds that don’t make sense.
The noise grows louder, more urgent. By some instinct she lifts her head. At the outer edge of her vision, something moves. Not downward like the snowflakes, but upward. Pinkish white, streaked with red, like a newly skinned rabbit. It looks like an arm—but it’s far too small to belong to the body lying in the snow. She blinks, thinking she must be hallucinating. But it’s still there—that desperate, flailing limb. And that thin, insistent cry.
She stumbles to her feet, her legs numb and clumsy. The body is some distance from the others. The wind tugs at a skirt the color of chestnuts. Black hair tumbles from a woolen cap that has fallen sideways. The eyes are open, staring into the sky. And there, in the folds of a shawl patterned with peacocks, is a tiny blood-smeared scrap of life.
The girl reaches out. The fingers that grasp hers remind her of the bunched tentacles of squid in the fish stalls at the village market. She wonders how something so small can feel so strong. Her eyes travel from the hand, along the arm to the body. A girl child. Still attached to its mother by a twist of sinew and veins.
With its frosting of snow, the woman’s face is ghostly. A trickle of dark red oozes from a wound at the base of her neck. The girl wonders how the baby can be alive when the person who gave birth to it is dead. But as the thought enters her head, she catches a slight movement—the twitch of a muscle on one side of the mouth. The lips slide apart like melting ice.
“Please . . .” The woman tries to lift her head. The eyelids flutter, blue-veined skin almost translucent. Her voice is a rasping whisper. “Take my baby.”
The eyes are cloudy black, like the two halves of a split olive. They hold hers for what seems like eternity, until she feels as if she’s falling into the fathomless land behind their dark centers. And then, without a sound, the head falls back into the snow.
The baby gives a piercing wail, as if it knows. The girl stares, bewildered, at its little purple face. She grabs at t
he shawl, tries to wrap it around the child’s body. But the cord gets in the way. Her hand goes to her waist, feeling for her belt. But the leather sheath where she keeps her knife is empty. In the scramble down the mountain, she has lost it.
Her teeth are all she has. The blood is like metal in her mouth. She thinks that she will never forget that taste. Always it will be trapped with the faces of those she loved, in a drift of memory.
She lifts the baby into her arms, tucking it inside her coat. She lowers her head against the blast of the wind, unsteady as she retraces her steps. How can she leave the loved ones lying there? How can she bury them? She sinks to her knees. Offering a prayer is all she can do.
Take my baby.
The goats huddle around as she struggles to her feet. She turns her head toward the mountain, to the fast-disappearing track that winds up to the summit.
Take my baby.
She catches her breath as the cold seeps into her bones.
Take it where?
Chapter 2
England: May 2, 1946
Rose Daniel caught an early train from Waterloo station. It felt good to be getting away from London. Away from the ugliness of the bombed-out buildings and the air of desolation they created. Away from the drabness of the clothes, the shops, the people. There was no color—as if the war had sucked the life out of everything.
Forty minutes into the journey, the train hurtled out of a tunnel into a gully lined with cherry trees. The rush of air sent pink petals tumbling like confetti against the carriages. A few fell through the open window and landed on the gray woolen fabric of her dress. As she brushed them away, the landscape opened out into meadows sprinkled with buttercups, where cows raised curious heads at the clatter of the wheels on the tracks. There was a whiff of farmyards coming through the window—a ripe, wholesome smell, so different from the sour air of the city.
Only another hour and the train would be passing through the wetlands between Chichester and the sea: the place where the Gypsies gathered in springtime to hunt hares and cut willow for making baskets—the place where Rose had once lived in a tent beside a stream for a whole summer and woken each morning to the sound of skylarks.
She slipped her hand inside the pocket of her dress, fingering Nathan’s letter. It had been a day like this, nearly ten years ago, when she had last seen him. A day of bright skies and dark shadows. He had come to find her to say goodbye, passing through Chichester on his way to board a ferry at Southampton. He’d said he hadn’t had the heart to tell their parents—just left a note on the kitchen table, saying, “Gone to Spain.”
The sun slanted into the railway carriage, lighting up the golden fur of Rose’s Afghan hound, Gunesh, who lay sleeping at her feet. Her hand went to his head, stroking the soft place between his ears. He had been a puppy—just eight months old—that summer on the Sussex marshes. She remembered how he had growled when Nathan poked his head through the flap of the tent. And how Nathan had tickled him into submission, the two of them wrestling by the stream, clothes and fur covered in sticky emerald beads of goosegrass.
She had cooked breakfast over a little fire of hawthorn twigs and listened to his passionate argument for joining a war in a country he’d never even visited.
“Fascism is the new Satan, Rose,” he’d said. “Let Spain fall, and the evil will spread all over Europe.”
She had nodded as she slid eggs out of the frying pan onto hunks of brown bread. “You don’t need to tell me about fascists. You know the place where I was living last term, in Paddington? It was just down the street from Oswald Mosley’s headquarters. His thugs in their black shirts used to march right past our front door, shouting, ‘Death to Jews!’”
“Hmm. So that explains why you’re living in a tent surrounded by rabbit shit.” Nathan had been pulling the petals off a daisy as he spoke. “I did wonder.”
“It wasn’t only that.”
“Oh? Don’t tell me—a boy, is it? Who is he? Some farmer’s son you locked eyes with while dissecting a dead cat?”
At that point she’d given him a shove, almost sending the eggs slithering off the bread onto the grass. “Listen, Horse, I came here to learn, not to mess around with men! I thought you of all people would understand.”
With Rose it was animals in general—dogs in particular—but for Nathan it had always been horses. Even their parents used to call him by the nickname he’d acquired as a child.
“And have you?” He’d given her a sly smile.
“Have I what?”
“Learnt anything?”
“Yes: heaps more than I’ve picked up in two years at university. Last week I watched a Gypsy man cure a whole litter of sick puppies. They had distemper. He used nothing but herbs gathered from round here. In London they’d all have died. Any vet will tell you there’s no hope for a dog in a case like that.”
“I wonder what the pet lovers of London will say when you tell them you’ve picked up everything you know from the Gypsy school of veterinary science?” Nathan was still smiling. “Are you even going to bother going back to university in September?”
Rose had clicked her tongue and said, “I suppose I’ll have to. They’ll never let me practice otherwise. But I hate the way we’re taught. Experimenting on live animals is so cruel, the absolute opposite of why I wanted to be a vet. And the drugs we’re supposed to use—I’m convinced most of them do more harm than good.”
And so they had gone on until it was time for him to leave, talking about her life, not his, dodging the stark reality that neither of them could voice: that Nathan might not come back from this war in Spain.
When Rose had kissed him goodbye, she had made herself smile. They had joked about the presents he would bring home. He had promised to buy her castanets so she could learn to dance like a Gypsy.
Over the next two years, there had been a handful of letters, the last one—the one she had in her pocket—was dated March 14, 1938. Then months had gone by with no word from him. When two years had elapsed with no contact from Nathan, their father had set out in search of him. But neither of them had returned. Rose glanced out the train window at a blur of fields and trees. She had promised herself she wouldn’t cry. But the faces were always there, behind her eyes. Her father, her mother, and Nathan.
That summer morning when he came to say goodbye seemed like another lifetime. She had loved living alone, happy and free, when she had had a family. How hollow that freedom felt now.
Where are you going, Rose?
Her mother’s voice echoed through her head. Standing by the door, her bag packed, Rose had been about to set off in search of her brother. Numb with grief at the death of her father, she felt impelled to follow the trail that he had taken. But she had been hopelessly naive. It was the summer of 1940. Hitler’s army had already taken France.
Where are you going?
Six years on, the truth was she didn’t know. But she was on her way to find the one person who could point the way.
Chapter 3
Spain: May 2, 1946
In a tavern in the shadow of the Alhambra palace, Lola Aragon lifted her arms above her head. When they could go no higher, she turned the backs of her wrists together, twisting long brown fingers into miniature antlers.
Her eyes were as black as poppy seeds in the glimmering lamplight. She glanced at Cristóbal, who stretched a long-nailed thumb over the strings of his guitar. The three children sitting beside him were watching for the signal. Without even looking at each other, they began clapping out a fast staccato beat. Nieve, the youngest, had hands no bigger than hens’ eggs, but she clapped as if the rhythm were a secret language she’d learned in the womb.
Lola moved across the room, her body as slender as esparto grass in a tight-fitting green dress and a shawl the vivid scarlet of pomegranate flowers. Her long dark hair was coiled at the nape of her neck, adorned with sprigs of white jasmine. She snaked her arms, head erect, hips swaying while her feet bombarded the wooden floor.
At the end of the second fandango, the tempo changed. Cristóbal let out the first mournful notes of the cante jondo. The deep song. Tortured and passionate, he sang as if blood, not music, were coming from his mouth. Lola’s dancing echoed the melancholy sound. Her body told a story of betrayal and lost love. She moved like someone possessed.
When the applause died down, she slipped out the back door to get changed, then hurried back to take the children out into the palace gardens for a late-night picnic of lemonade, cherries, bread, and goat cheese. They sat on blankets under a hazy crescent moon, listening to the crickets making music. Far below them dogs were barking on the banks of the Darro River. The children pinched their noses when the whiff of tainted water drifted up on the breeze.
“It was good tonight.” Cristóbal squeezed her arm when he came to join them. “Antonio Lopez couldn’t take his eyes off you. He came to talk to me while you were getting changed.”
“Please don’t tell me it was about marriage again!”
Cristóbal gave a helpless shrug. “What was I supposed to say? He’s not a bad man. He has half a dozen mules and a shed full of chickens. You’d never go hungry.”
“I never go hungry now!” Lola bit into a cherry and spat out the stone.
“But wouldn’t you like a child of your own one day?” He glanced at Nieve, who had fallen asleep on a blanket, one hand still clutching a hunk of bread.
Lola shook her head. “I have a daughter.” She reached across to stroke Nieve’s hair. “And I have you and Juanita and your kids—that’s all the family I need.” She tossed the bag of cherries into his lap. “And how could I dance if I was pregnant? It’s taken me years to get this far. You know how hard I have to practice. If I stopped for even just a week or two, I’d lose all the energy. Imagine what would happen if I had a baby to look after . . .” She glanced back at him. “Remember, I know what it’s like.”