The kitchen was filled with the exquisite fragrance of freshly baked bread, and Kella and Matthew were so engrossed in examining the results of their afternoon’s work that they did not notice my entry.
“That first one was like a lump of stone,” Matthew laughed. “I will take it back to Obernewtyn and offer it to Gevan as a new kind of weapon.”
I had crossed quietly to the fire when I caught a movement at the door. I turned to watch Dragon glide into the kitchen, hollow-eyed underneath her murky skin-stain. Her eyes swept the room, coming to rest inevitably on Matthew, but there was no vestige of the adoration that had hitherto marked her regard for him. She stared at the Farseeker ward as if he were a window opened on a barren landscape whose existence she had not before noticed.
Something in her bleak regard chilled me to the bone.
Matthew sensed her eyes, but the moment he looked up, she looked away. Kella gave an exclamation and hurried over to her.
“How do you feel, love? Does your head still hurt?” She rubbed her floury hands on her apron to clean them, then curled an arm around the empath-coercer’s shoulders, drawing her close.
“Hurts,” Dragon echoed dully, standing passively in the healer’s embrace.
Kella’s brow creased in thought, and she shifted to her bench and riffled through a disordered pile of herb parcels to mix another herbal infusion. Once Dragon had swallowed the last drop, the healer tried to get her to eat something, but the girl showed no interest. She said listlessly that she would rather go back to sleep, and the healer led her out.
Frowning, Matthew lay a damp cloth over two more loaves he had just kneaded. Only then did he notice me standing by the fire.
He flushed, and I wondered at his thoughts.
Kella came back and, noticing me, offered to slice some bread for supper. I nodded and moved to help her. “What will Brydda do if Daffyd doesn’t come tonight?” she asked.
“He will come,” I said firmly, refusing to give voice to my fears. “In the meantime, after we have eaten, I am taking our gypsy home.”
21
DAFFYD HAD NOT come by the time I was ready to leave, and resolutely I dismissed him from my mind.
“I am taking you to your people, Iriny,” I told the gypsy.
She started at hearing her name, but her strange two-colored eyes were defiant and shuttered. “Do as you will,” was all she would say.
I explained that we had given her a sleep drug so that she would not be able to tell where she had been kept, nor how long the journey had taken to the gypsy camp.
“I don’t care if you give me poison,” she said, and there was a flash of pain that told me her mind was on her bondmate. Her eyes closed as Kella imposed another sleepseal.
It was strange, watching her fall into a deeper sleep. The gypsy had been with us for almost three sevendays, yet we knew as little of her now as when she had come among us. There had been no true exchange. Now we would never know, for there was scant likelihood of our ever meeting again.
Matthew and Kella carried her between them down to the cart and installed her safely inside while I changed into the elaborate Twentyfamilies attire Maire had given me. The loose, wide-necked shirt was designed to slide off one shoulder, but it exposed the bandages on my back. The other shirt she had given me was stained with blood, so after a moment’s debate, I unwound the bandages gingerly, reasoning that since there had been no pain, the wounds must be a good way to healing.
To my surprise, they had healed completely. I was unable to feel any scabbing. I would have to ask Maire about the ingredients she used in her miraculous ointment; Roland would give much to have such a recipe.
Buckling a thick belt with its dagger pouch about my waist and sliding a knife into it, I came down to the rig to find Kella packing blankets around the unconscious gypsy.
Matthew was in front of the wagon, holding out the leather harnessing so that Gahltha could back into it. The horse’s skin twitched with loathing as the farseeker buckled the straps that bound him to the false gypsy rig.
“Well!” Kella said, her eyes widening as she noticed the elaborate gypsy clothing.
I laughed self-consciously and flipped the full Twentyfamilies skirt to reveal a multitude of red and green petticoats. “Elaria has never been so well dressed.”
“If only Rushton could see you like that,” she giggled; then she flushed at my astonished look and began to fuss with the blankets.
“Let us go,” Gahltha sent tersely. “I/Gahltha do not like the feel of this funaga bond.”
We departed, and though the moon had risen early, it was low on the horizon, and, as on the previous night, ragged drifts of dark cloud made the evening a matter of shifting ambiguities and anonymous shadow. I set about erecting a formidable coercive enhancement of the rig to make it seem more fitting as a transport for a Twentyfamilies gypsy. The last thing I wanted was to be stopped because the rig did not match the rest of me.
As it happened, this was hardly necessary, for there appeared to be no soldierguards about, and the few people hurrying along, huddled deep in their coats and cloaks, paid no attention to me. It was a freezing evening, and I shivered in the light gypsy attire. I had not worn a cloak, because I wanted the Twentyfamilies clothing to be completely visible. I dragged a blanket around my shoulders from the back.
With little to do but sit and shiver, my thoughts wheeled back to Kella’s words and their meaning. The healer had long been aware that something lay between Rushton and myself, perhaps because of her empath abilities.
What would Rushton make of the gaudy Twentyfamilies clothes? He had told me once that gypsy clothes made me look like another person: wilder and more reckless. In truth, I did feel bolder in gypsy clothes, but the Twentyfamilies attire made me feel different again; more than Elspeth Gordie and more than Elaria the halfbreed.
In my mind’s eye, I saw Rushton standing in the misty mountain dawn, watching me ride away, his expression brooding. A waiting look, yes, but also a questioning look. And what sort of answer would Elaria of the Twentyfamilies give to that unspoken query, dressed as I was?
“Funaga play too many games/hide much,” Gahltha sent. “Beasts have not so many faces for truth-hiding. Why not say what is true, be what is true? Why hiding/pretending/untruthtelling?”
“I don’t know,” I sent soberly. “Perhaps because the truth is sometimes frightening.”
“Truth is fair/light/bright. Lies are darkness/fear/ignorance.”
“Sometimes it is hard to know what the truth is. And sometimes truth is pain. Easier to hide the truth and make a secret of it than to face it.”
“Truespoken,” Gahltha sent.
We came out from a narrow street, and I was glad to see before us the dark wilderness that was the largest of the city greens at night. Fires bloomed like orange flowers in the darkness, illuminating the side of a great shaggy tree and the edge of a wagon. The faces of the gypsies were pale blobs clustered about each separate campfire, hemmed about by ragged shadow, the spaces in between fires pitch dark. The green had seemed smaller when I had come there in the daylight, and more ordered.
As Gahltha picked his way down the uneven rows of gypsy wagons, parked in clusters with a little cooking fire at the center, the night was filled with spicy food smells and strains of music—singing and the languid strum of gitas, sprinkled with frequent bursts of laughter. At one campfire, I saw a girl and a boy dancing closely, spinning away and back to one another in graceful accord.
“Gypsies dance for a lover.…” The gypsy’s words came to me like a caress. I thought of his kiss and flushed, thrusting the memory from me.
A warmth and a camaraderie filled the night around me. I squinted as we wove about, trying to distinguish the elaborately carven wooden rig that belonged to Maire. We passed several Twentyfamilies rigs, but none resembled hers.
After a time, I began to despair, for aside from the difficulties of seeing in the dark, the wagon rows were crooked and folded hither and
thither about on themselves. This meant several times we found ourselves going the same way we had passed already.
“Gahltha/I can farseek Sendari?” Gahltha offered.
At the same moment, an older Twentyfamilies gypsy stepped from the darkness and called out to ask my name. I chose my words very carefully. “I … I call myself Elaria.” This was true enough.
He came nearer, and I had the same sensation as I had with Maire, that he was looking not at me but somehow around me. Suddenly I was very glad of the darkness.
“I am seeking Maire, the healer,” I said, tensing in case the name provoked a reaction.
The man nodded mildly. “Well, she is here, but that is all I can tell you. Usually, she sets her wagon over yonder.”
I nodded my thanks. Even so, we needed directions from Sendari to find the wagon, which was parked under a tree that seemed to wrap its branches around the rig protectively. A fire had been lit, and thick cuts of wood were set on end around it as rough stools.
The gypsy man who had rescued me from the whipping was seated at the fire. Beside him sat a plump, dark-haired gypsy girl and opposite were two gypsy men. The three were clearly Twentyfamilies—richly clad and with a certain haughtiness in their bearing. I wondered if one of them was Swallow.
Hearing Gahltha whinny to the other horses as we drew closer, the gypsy man looked up casually; then his eyes widened. He jumped to his feet, dismissing his companions with an imperious flick of his fingers. The two men went at once, giving me impassive looks, but the girl glared, first at the man, then at me, before flouncing off into the darkness.
“You look better in these than in the boyish trousers you wore last,” he said when we were alone.
If I had been Maruman, hackles would have risen on my neck. “I have brought Iriny,” I said tartly, climbing down. “She is in the back of the wagon.”
I moved to open the curtain and show him, but he caught my arm to stay me and looked about before letting me go. “Have a care. We do not want anyone seeing her.”
“You could have said so without mauling me.” I rubbed my arm, though in fact he had not held me tightly. I merely wanted to make the point that I did not want him grabbing at me.
He smiled, flashing white teeth, but before I could think of something cutting to say to wipe the leer from his mouth, he had crossed to Maire’s wagon and hammered on the carved panel.
“Maire!”
The old gypsy emerged in a pale nightdress and woolly shawl, her white hair hanging long and loose like skeins of cloud about her neck and shoulders. Her expression sharpened when she caught sight of me. “You have brought her?” she asked eagerly, climbing down with sudden agility.
I nodded, and to my astonishment, she flung her arms around me and pressed me to her withered bosom. “Lud keep you, girl!”
After another long look around, she and the man carefully lifted the unconscious woman from the cart, laying her gently on the ground by the fire. Maire knelt by her and opened her eyelids with a gnarled finger.
Finally, she looked up at me. “Is she drugged?”
“No,” I said. “She is sleeping. Our healer said she would wake tomorrow.”
Maire looked impressed. “She is so accurate at diagnosing?”
I shrugged, and let her make what she would of that as an answer. To my relief, she bent and continued to examine Iriny, paying special attention to the scarred inner forearms.
“These are healing well,” she said approvingly.
I was gratified for Kella’s sake. “I daresay they’ll heal faster with your miraculous potions.”
“Is she all right, then?” the man demanded, interrupting our courtesies in an impatient voice.
“Haven’t I just said so, you idiot?” Maire snapped with a sudden return to her old manner. “Are you going to stand there huffing like a fool or get her into the wagon before she dies of cold?”
Obediently, he bent to lift Iriny gently in his arms, staring down at her with a tender expression far removed from his earlier supercilious haughtiness. He climbed into Maire’s rig, and the old healer followed.
The dark grass and the flickering flames of the campfire bent beneath a cold wind that plucked hair from my plait and flapped the elaborate skirts about my knees. Suddenly I felt very alone.
“Not/never alone,” Gahltha sent from the darkness with all the intensity of a vow.
The gypsy man climbed from the wagon, a glint in his eyes that I did not trust. “I suppose you want your reward now?”
“Since you will leave tomorrow, yes,” I said. “First, I want to know who Swallow is. Maire said I could meet him.”
“And so you have,” the gypsy said. “Swallow is one of my names.”
I tried to hide my surprise. “One of your names? What does that mean?”
“Nothing more than I said. ‘Swallow’ is one name, just as ‘Elaria’ is one name. But there might be others a person would wear in different circumstances.”
I scowled. “What does ‘Swallow’ signify, then?”
“Swallow is the man you see before you.”
“Then you will not keep your bargain?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “You asked to meet Swallow. Here is Swallow.”
I wanted to shout at him for playing words against me, but I was too busy wondering why knowing who he was could save my life. Regardless, I had surely fulfilled Maryon’s quest.
I put my hands on my hips. “There was another part to this bargain, Swallow. You promised to paint onto my arm one of those pictures you have on yours. Unless you have found reason to renege on that promise now.”
Instead of becoming angry at my implication that he was a cheat, his smile merely broadened. “Gypsies always keep their promises. But perhaps we should discuss it first.…”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” I snapped.
He gave me an amused look and shrugged. “Very well.”
His tone was so meek that I was instantly suspicious. “Sit down and I will prepare what is needed,” he murmured. I sat, watching warily as he went over and reached into a trunk set on the side of Maire’s rig. He came back with a woven box somewhat smaller than the healer’s box of potions and sat opposite me. Opening it, he withdrew a series of sharp spikes and some little glass bulbs of color.
“Where are the brushes?” I demanded.
“Brushes?” The gypsy gave me an innocent look, but the flames reflected in his eyes danced.
“The … the brushes you use to paint the design on. And what are those?” I pointed to the sharp little skewers laid out neatly alongside the box.
“They are needles; I use them to apply the design,” the gypsy said, attaching a spike deftly to the top of a bulb of color. “The picture is created by a series of tiny stabs, which allows the color to seep beneath the skin and set. First I prick out an outline of the design, and then I fill in the color. Usually the process is carried out over many days, but since you want the whole thing at once, it will take the entire night.”
I felt foolish and angry. “You did not tell me—”
His eyebrows lifted. “No? It must be because you did not want to be told anything. Traditionally, the designs are marked onto Twentyfamilies gypsies when we are swaddled babes and too small to be afraid.”
I bridled. “I’m not afraid. What are you doing?”
“Putting them away,” he said calmly.
I took a deep, shaky breath and did not speak until I was certain my voice would be steady. “Not before you keep your promise.” I pulled up the sleeve on my shirt and held out my arm.
He stared at me, for once apparently bereft of witticisms.
“Well?” I snapped, angry because I was beginning to feel sick with apprehension. “If it is going to take all night, you had better get started.”
“You want me to use these on you?” He held up one of the sharp spikes.
I nodded, not trusting to the firmness of my voice.
His eyes glimmered, an
d slowly he again took out the bottles and needles.
I swallowed a great lump of terror and looked away from the needles into flames that seemed to shudder with fear.
“In the Beforetime, it was called a tattoo,” Swallow said. There was no mockery in his voice or his eyes now, but I would not have cared if he had sneered openly at me.
My arm felt as if it were on fire. Some obscure pride had made me endure the pain rather than sealing it away behind a mental net. The individual pricks had not been so terrible, but now my arm felt as if it had been savaged by a hive of virulent bees. Only the strange, long story he had told me as he worked had helped me bear it. Contrary to common gossip, Swallow said the gypsies had come from the sea, led by one who had vanished when they reached the Land. And though the story had taken hours to tell, I sensed there was much left unsaid.
Swallow passed his arm across his forehead, wiping away beads of sweat. For a moment, our eyes met; then he bent over his design again. I tensed involuntarily, expecting another endless series of needles, but he released me almost at once.
“It is done. Of course, you won’t see the full effect until the scabs form and fall away.”
Then he gave me such a queer, searching look that I felt uncomfortable. I glanced down for the first time, and a wave of nausea struck me at the sight of the raw and swollen welts.
What have I done? I thought in dismay.
“Maire!” Swallow called, dropping the needles into a pot of water suspended above the fire. I took a deep, steadying breath. The stars had faded. It was the second night in a row I had been awake to see the dawn.
He moved to the wagon again and rapped on its side. “Maire! Wake up. It is done.”
The gypsy healer had called us a pair of fools before stumping off to her bed. “It offends her sense of fitness,” Swallow had said, his eyes gleaming with mischief.
Maire emerged from the wagon, dressed in day clothes and wearing a full apron. She ignored my arm and looked critically into my face. After a moment, she shook her head.
“It is madness. Well, let me see.”
I held my arm out obediently, hoping she would apply some more of her miraculous salve, but instead she only mixed me a foul potion to drink.