The Snow Gypsy Read online

  “We’d love to have you with us,” Lola said. “And we can take you to all the good places in Granada when we get there—it’s very beautiful.”

  “Please come, Auntie Rose.” Nieve reached out for Gunesh, who laid his head contentedly in the child’s lap.

  “When are you leaving?” Rose asked Lola.

  “As soon as we’ve finished this.” Lola glanced at her half-empty plate. “We’ve packed most of our stuff already—we’ve just got to get Rubio from the paddock.”

  Rose turned to Nieve. “Want to come and help me take my tent down?”

  The little girl nodded eagerly. “Are you really going to come? Do you promise?”

  “On one condition.” Rose smiled. “I want you to teach me how to dance. But no sausages—otherwise I won’t fit into any of my clothes by the time we get to Granada!”

  It took less than half an hour to pack up the tent and cram everything into the rucksack. Then Rose and Nieve went to lead the horse out of the enclosure. His straw-colored mane tossed as he snorted a protest at leaving all his new friends behind.

  “It’s all right, boy.” Rose patted his gleaming chestnut flank. He reminded her of an animal she’d treated in London—a cart horse who had injured its leg pulling milk wagons. Its owner was going to have it shot, but she had managed to heal the torn tendons with a cold pack of vinegar-soaked seaweed and a diet of sloe flowers mixed with bran and molasses.

  They wound their way through the camp, past people busy gathering up pans and blankets and throwing buckets of sand onto smoking fires. As they neared Nieve’s wagon, Rose’s stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing Cristóbal. She wondered how he had reacted when he heard the news that she was going to be traveling with them. Would he have told his cousin what had happened after the wedding? And if he had, would Lola change her mind about wanting Rose around?

  When they got there, Lola was all ready to go. She took the lead rein from Rose and coaxed Rubio into position. She slipped the bridle and collar over his head before fastening the traces to the shafts of the wagon. Then she gestured to Rose and Nieve to climb aboard before jumping up herself.

  “Can I take Gunesh inside with me?” Nieve asked.

  “Yes,” Rose said. “He’ll probably be happier in there than out here.”

  “Ready?” Lola took hold of the reins with one hand, reaching back with the other to grab a long whip that protruded from the canvas flap.

  “What about your cousin?” Rose scoured the bare patches of ground in between the few vardos that remained. Perhaps he was lingering too long over his goodbyes and Lola had grown tired of waiting.

  “Still asleep!” Lola cocked her head backward as the wagon lurched forward. “We’d be here all day if we waited for him to surface.”

  “So he doesn’t know I’m . . .” Rose glanced behind her, trying to see into the gloomy interior of the wagon.

  “Don’t worry,” Lola said. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to have an extra pair of hands to help with the chores. He has many talents, my cousin, but he gets away with a lot. His wife spoils him too much.”

  Rose’s mouth went bone dry. “His wife?” Her voice came out high pitched and rasping, like the sound of the wind in the marsh grass.

  Chapter 12

  It wasn’t until they had set up camp for the night that Rose got a chance to speak to Cristóbal alone. After leaving Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the convoy of Spanish Gypsies had traveled west and then south, skirting the city of Montpellier before coming to a stop in a wooded area on the side of a hill. Cristóbal had emerged from the wagon two hours into the journey, rubbing his eyes as he stuck his stubbled chin out into the fresh air. Seeing Rose, he had muttered something she couldn’t make out and disappeared again.

  She had felt like grabbing her rucksack and jumping off the wagon when Lola dropped the bombshell that he had a wife. But how could she break the promise she’d made to Nieve without a word of explanation?

  The long hours on the road had been pure torture, knowing what she knew now. How could she have been so stupid? Why had she not thought to ask him if he was married? He had told her he had a dog back in Granada, but there had been no mention of a wife. He had fooled her into believing he was single by mentioning small details of his home life but leaving out the glaring fact that he was a husband and father.

  Lola had unwittingly compounded Rose’s misery by chatting about Cristóbal’s children as a way of passing the time on the journey. Rose learned that he had a son, Juan, aged twelve, and a ten-year-old daughter called Belén. And Lola had revealed something that made Rose even more wretched: Juanita, Cristóbal’s wife, was due to give birth to a third child any day now.

  If Lola hadn’t been driving the wagon, Rose wouldn’t have been able to hide the turmoil she felt inside. The fact that she had slept with another woman’s husband was bad enough. But there was something else gnawing away at her as the convoy of Gypsies rolled toward the border with Spain. What if she was pregnant?

  When they stopped for the night, she busied herself erecting her tent, choosing a pitch some distance away from the circle of vardos. She told Lola that she was tired and needed an early night. Gunesh was with Nieve, so she didn’t even have the comfort of his warm body as she crawled inside the tent.

  She could hear the crackle of a fire springing into life and the rattle of pans and cutlery. The thought of sharing a meal with Cristóbal made her feel sick. As she lay down and closed her eyes, she wondered what on earth to do. She thought of slipping away in the early hours of the morning when everyone was asleep. She could leave a note, saying that something had happened, and she had to go back to England. But what excuse could she possibly give? How could she have received any news from home while they were on the road? And she had no idea if Lola would even be able to comprehend a written message. None of the British Gypsies she’d encountered had known how to read or write. Most of them thought it an unnecessary waste of effort—completely irrelevant to their lifestyle. Bill Lee was the only one who’d wanted to learn.

  Outside, the light was beginning to fade. As she lay there, agonizing over the thought of Cristóbal’s heavily pregnant wife, she suddenly heard his voice.

  “Rose! Are you awake?” His voice had a harsh urgency.

  She lay perfectly still, her eyes tightly shut. She didn’t want to talk to him. If she did, she would start crying or screaming at him or both.

  “Let me in, won’t you?” She heard him pulling at the canvas flap.

  “Go away,” she hissed.

  “Not until I’ve had a chance to talk to you.” The silhouette of his head appeared through the opening. She could smell the bitter orange scent of the oil in his hair.

  “What is there to talk about?” She rolled over, pulling the sleeping bag over her head. “Why didn’t you tell me about your wife?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “That’s a pathetic answer. You told me about your dog, for God’s sake! How the hell could you come out with that and fail to mention your wife and children?”

  “What would have happened if I’d told you?” Cristóbal pulled down the sleeping bag, exposing her head and shoulders. “You were happy last night, weren’t you? I was happy. It was beautiful.”

  “How can you say that?” She yanked the sleeping bag up again. “How could you have done it, knowing your wife’s about to give birth to your baby?”

  “Because it’s natural for a man and a woman to love each other. There’s nothing wrong with it. When men and women love, they don’t kill or rob: they become givers. They create something magical.”

  “But it is wrong! What would your wife say if she knew? She’d be heartbroken!”

  “No, she wouldn’t—because she knows I’ll never leave her. That’s the way we live, Rose. A Gypsy man can have many passing loves—so long as he stays with his wife and children. I thought you knew that. You said you’d lived with Gypsies.”

  “Just go, will you!” she hissed.

>   “All right, I’m going. But you’d better remember that it wasn’t my idea for you to travel with us.”

  She heard him scramble out of the tent. Heard his footsteps receding into the night. Her heart felt as if it had shrunk to the size of a walnut, hard and bitter.

  Sleep that night was a patchwork of nightmares. She was back in the building she had lived in as a student, wandering from floor to floor, unable to find her bedroom. She would climb into an elevator and press a button, but the doors would open in a part of the building she didn’t recognize. Then she was there, walking along the green-painted corridor to the door of her room. She stood outside, hearing laughter, whispers, and the unmistakable sounds of a man and woman making love.

  She startled awake, her heart hammering in her chest. If there was such a thing as hell, she was in it. With harrowing clarity, the nightmare had re-created the day, nine years ago, when she had caught Sam—the boy she was supposed to be marrying after graduation—in bed with Daphne, her best friend. Every detail of the betrayal, every emotion, was there, stored away in her subconscious. And now it had seeped out, like something rotten and decayed, to haunt her in her sleep.

  Serves you right.

  The voice in her head was Daphne’s. She could see her face, a look of cold fury twisting her mouth as she flounced out of the room, her blouse buttoned up wrong and the laces of her boots trailing on the ground.

  What did you expect him to do while you were frolicking about with the Gypsies?

  How Daphne would crow if she could see her now. It wasn’t hard to imagine what she would say. Who did Rose think she was, mixing with people like that? Didn’t she have the sense to realize that wildness and freedom were shorthand for promiscuity and infidelity?

  She closed her eyes, wishing she could rewind the past forty-eight hours. Instinctively she reached out for Gunesh, seeking the comfort of stroking him. But her fingers found only the dew-damp canvas of the tent wall. As she touched the fabric, something butted against it from the other side, as if an animal was grazing outside. Then she heard a familiar bark.

  “Gunesh!”

  The tent flap burst open, and the dog leapt on top of her, closely followed by Nieve.

  “He couldn’t wait to see you—and neither could I!” The little girl snuggled in between Rose and Gunesh. “What shall we do today? Will you sit in the wagon with me? It’s so boring when Mama’s driving and Uncle Cristóbal’s snoring his head off. Can we make something? Or play a game?”

  “Well, I . . .” Rose hesitated. “I’m not sure whether I can come all the way to Granada with you. I don’t think your . . . I mean . . . your uncle didn’t seem very pleased when he found out.”

  Nieve grabbed Rose’s arm and squeezed it tight. “You can’t go! You promised!”

  Rose saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

  “Yes, I did.” She murmured the words more to herself than to Nieve. Here was a child with a face to melt any heart, clinging on to her, begging her to stay. A child who was about the age Nathan’s son or daughter would be if he or she were alive. As the thought flitted through her mind, she realized that however used and humiliated she was feeling, she absolutely couldn’t react in any way that would hurt this little girl.

  “Don’t worry—I’m not going anywhere.” She hugged Nieve tight, whispering the words into her hair.

  Chapter 13

  Segovia, north of Madrid, Spain: Eight days later

  Rose’s tent stood in a field that bordered the ancient wall of a convent. The bells had woken her early, but she didn’t mind. After opening the front of the tent, she lay back on her pillow, watching two birds flying in and out of the bell tower. They were storks—the most enormous birds she had ever seen. They carried great bundles of wood in their beaks, building a nest that stuck out untidily from the stonework. There was something prehistoric about the shape of them as they glided through the air—the way she imagined pterodactyls must have looked. She remembered seeing pictures of storks in storybooks as a child, carrying a knotted sheet with a newborn human child inside. No wonder people thought they brought babies. With beaks that size, they could probably transport a small elephant.

  The sight of something so symbolic of pregnancy and birth rekindled her guilt about Cristóbal’s wife. And the sight of the birds would have triggered further dark thoughts had it not been for her period having come the previous night. She had got down on her knees and murmured a fervent prayer of thanks. That, at least, was one thing she no longer needed to worry about.

  Rose wondered if Nieve was awake yet. They had got into a routine of taking Gunesh for a walk before breakfast, then settling down together in the back of the wagon before Cristóbal woke up. While Lola drove Rubio along the dusty Spanish roads, Rose was teaching Nieve how to read and write.

  Nieve had sown the seeds of the idea when she found Rose’s copy of Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich. On the cover was a medieval painting of the nun, who was pictured stroking a cat. Nieve thought it was one of the Mary saints from the church in Provence—and wanted to know where the cat had been hiding when they had been there. When Rose had explained that the image was an English nun who had chosen to live all alone with only a cat for company, Nieve had wanted the whole story. And when Rose began reading, the child had run her fingers over the letters on the page, mystified by the patterns they made.

  Nieve’s eyes had brightened when Rose pointed to the word cat and translated it. “Can you teach me how to do it? You can teach me that, and I’ll teach you how to dance!”

  Rose had replied that she’d better ask Lola first. She had learned from her time with the English Gypsies to tread carefully in matters outside their experience. Trying to introduce gawje ways was generally regarded with scorn. But Lola had been full of enthusiasm.

  “Perhaps you’ll teach me as well? We could do it when Nieve’s gone to bed.”

  Spending the evenings reading with Lola by the fire was a welcome distraction from Cristóbal. Once the meal was over, he would slope off to drink and play cards with the other men. Rose wondered if Lola had picked up on the tension between them. It was so hard, trying to make it seem as if nothing had happened. Trying to distance herself from him without making the hostility obvious. It was a constant battle, concealing the anger and humiliation she felt inside.

  Now, watching the storks building their nest in the bell tower, she couldn’t help but think about Cristóbal’s wife. In a day or two they would reach Granada, and for the sake of politeness, Rose would have to stay in the city for a few more days. Lola had promised to show her the Alhambra and the Gypsy cave dwellings of Sacromonte, where there was flamenco dancing every night. But no doubt Lola would also take her to see Juanita and the new baby. The thought of it turned her insides to ice.

  Lola left Nieve and Cristóbal asleep in the wagon while she went to buy bread. Walking through the cobbled streets of the old town, she caught far-reaching glimpses of the countryside through gaps between the buildings. She knew that they were not far from Madrid. She had made out the letters on road signs, deciphering the name of the city with the aid of the alphabet she kept tucked in her pocket. Rose had taught her to write numbers as well as letters. She knew that Madrid was not much more than a day’s journey from where they were now.

  As she stood in line at the bakery, she daydreamed about what it would be like to live in Madrid, to walk through the doors of the studios of España Films, to be dressed in fabulous costumes, to dance in front of a camera, to go to a cinema and see herself in a movie. She was going to have to hold on tight to that dream in the weeks to come. Cristóbal would be furious when she told him of her plans. Not because he would be losing his dancer—there would be other girls more than willing to replace her—but because her leaving would represent a final act of defiance: she would be trumpeting her independence from the rooftops, going off to Madrid with Nieve with no need for any man to support her.

  Ever since leaving Provence she
had been working out how and when the move could be made. She would have to stay in Granada for a few weeks at least—long enough to see Cristóbal and Juanita’s baby christened and to sort out a place to live in Madrid. Rose had offered to help with that. She had advised Lola to buy a newspaper in Segovia because it was close enough to the capital city to carry advertisements for places to rent there. And Rose was going to help her write a letter if they found somewhere suitable.

  She would have to hide the newspaper from Cristóbal. No point in making him even grumpier than he already was by flaunting her plans. She’d thought that winning the competition would lift his spirits—but since leaving Provence he seemed to have sunk into a black mood. Perhaps he was more worried about Juanita and the baby than he was letting on. She hoped so. It was about time he started taking his responsibilities as a husband and father more seriously.

  While the woman in front of her was being served, Lola’s mind drifted back to her own childhood. She wondered what it would have been like to have two parents. Her mother had always told her and Amador that their father had died when they were too young to remember him. Growing up at their grandfather’s forge in Capileira, they had been happy enough—until the war came. At twelve years old she was too young to realize that the shooting of her grandfather meant that the writing was on the wall for the whole family. Nor could she have known that the lie her mother had told would be revealed in the most horrific way possible.

  “¿Qué quiere?” What would you like?

  The baker derailed her train of thought. He was looking at her with a crooked smile. No doubt he thought her simple or slightly deranged, standing there at the front of the queue with her head in the clouds.