Axel lay groaning on the ground so the man hit him again. A solid blow that sounded like wood being chopped.
Janice screamed and one of the other men slapped her so hard that she too fell over. The man who had slapped her put his shotgun on the ground and started to unbuckle his belt and take down his trousers.
‘Hey, Conrad,’ said one of the other men. ‘Why are you going first? You went first yesterday.’
Conrad tuned to face the complainer. ‘Stuff you, Jervis. I always go first. That’s because I’m the oldest brother. I go first, Jackson goes second, you go third and the twins draw straws. I told you already. That’s the way it happens.’
‘But you and Jackson get the shotguns as well. It’s not fair.’
Conrad pulled his trousers up, stepped over to Jervis and slapped him. ‘Not fair? You little wanker. It’s not about fair. You do as you’re told or you don’t get any more pussy. Do you want that? Have to jerk off while we all get the good stuff?’
Jervis shook his head. ‘Sorry, Conrad.’
‘Yeah well now you go after the twins. You go last as punishment. Okay?’
Jervis sniveled. ‘Okay, Conrad. Sorry.’
Conrad turned back to Janice, dropping his trousers once again. ‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘This is going to be sweet.’
There was a crack of an assault rifle and the front of Conrad’s chest exploded in a red mist. He didn’t even have time to register surprise before his brain shut down and he fell to the floor, dead.
There was another flurry of shots and Janice could see the bullets striking the other men. Jervis sprang up and started to run but was cut down by a volley of fire before he had taken three steps.
A large man with a long black beard and carrying a rifle ran up and knelt beside Janice. ‘Are you all right?’ He asked.
Janice stared at him and then started to weep.
He put his one arm around her. ‘Don’t cry, little one,’ he said. ‘You are safe now. Papa Dante and his boys will take care of you.’
There were six men including Papa Dante and four of them carried Axel gently back to a ring of caravans.
Papa led Janice, holding her by the elbow. When they got to the caravans an old woman approached them. She pulled the dressings from Axel’s face and ran her fingers tenderly across his features, stopping every now and then to concentrate. Then told the men to carry him to her vardo.
‘He’s suffering from pyrexia brought on by pyogenic infection. Possibly staph or strep,’ said Janice.
The old lady looked at Janice and smiled and Janice noticed, for the first time, that the old woman was blind. ‘Go have tea,’ she said. ‘I will fix your boyfriend.’
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ said Janice.
The old woman raised an eyebrow. ‘Not yet. Now go, I am busy.’
‘But, with all due respect. How can you? You’re blind. I have to stay with him.’
Papa took Janice by the arm. ‘Come, my pretty. Leave Gogo to do what Gogo does.’
Papa Dante led the doctor to his vardo. He helped Janice up the steps, then he introduced her to his wife. But first he asked her name.
‘Janice,’ she answered and, for the first time since she could remember she didn’t add the ubiquitous ‘Doctor’ on the end.
‘Well, Janice, this is Mama, my wife and my love and the second most beautiful person in the world.’
‘Only the second?’ Asked Mama. ‘Who is the first then, you old philanderer?’
Papa Dante shrugged. ‘Who knows, Mama. I for one have never met them but are you so arrogant as to assume that there is no one in the entire universe that might be just a little more beautiful than you?’
Mama punched the big man in the arm. ‘You are a pedant, sir. A pedagogue and a dogmatist.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Papa. ‘And also a liar. You are the most beautiful women in the world.’
Janice laughed and the husband and wife laughed with her.
Mama went outside and came back with a kettle that she rested on a counter top. Then she busied herself with mugs and tea and sugar. She didn’t ask how Janice took her tea she simply made it strong and sweet and then chucked a decent dram of rum into it.
Janice held the mug with both hands and breathed in the fragrant steam. Eventually she took a sip. It was beyond delicious and the sugar and alcohol stopped her shaking and calmed her nerves.
Then Mama handed her a sandwich. It was made from rough baked bread and on it were wedges of smoky ham and ripe cheddar cheese. Janice ate like she was starving, which she was and as she finished Mama pushed another one into her hand. The doctor felt like crying with appreciation and her eyes welled up with emotion. But Mama simply patted her on the back and gestured for her to keep eating.
After she had consumed the food Janice felt an enormous lethargy envelop her. The savagery of the last few days caught up with her and the feeling of real safety and warmth and welcome washed over her and she fell into a deep sleep.
Papa Dante waited until her breathing was deep and regular and then he laid her out on the sofa, covered her with a feather eiderdown, closed the shutters and left her to rest.
Papa walked into Gogo’s vardo and flinched. The stench was awful. The old lady was mashing up a poultice in a marble pestle and Papa could identify some of the ingredients. Garlic, ginger, honey…and then the rest was too strange to contemplate. It looked like some sort of crushed dried insect or bug. But whatever it was, the smell was eye-watering.
The soldier was still unconscious, lying on his back on Gogo’s table that she used to treat everyone. Papa noticed that she had removed the lad’s stitches and his wounds were open and suppurating lymph and pus.
Then Gogo took a shoebox out of her chest of drawers, opened it and grabbed a handful of what looked like cotton candy. Papa knew, from experience, that it was actually spider webs, collected just after the morning dew had dried up and the webs were at their cleanest and newest. She then rolled the web into various lengths and began to pack Axel’s wounds. When she was satisfied that a wound was sufficiently packed she would squeeze it closed and the natural adhesive qualities of the web would keep it perfectly sealed.
After that she covered the side of his face in the evil-smelling warm poultice, tucked a blanket around him for warmth and then left the vardo, gesturing for Papa to follow.
‘So, Gogo,’ said Papa. ‘Will he live?’
The old lady nodded. ‘If he is lucky. Even a few more hours and he would have been beyond repair. But I have extended his life, for now. But he needs real medicine, antibiotics. Huge amounts or he will relapse and succumb.’
Gogo spoke with no false modesty, nor was she boasting of her prowess. She merely stated the facts. She was confident that, using ingredients found in fields and surrounds, she had pushed back the inevitable, but she was just as sure that the relief was not permanent. Axel has been given time, just not much of it.
Janice woke in the early evening and Mama gave her a large mug of soup that was so thick as to almost be a stew.
‘I cannot thank you enough,’ said the doctor. ‘Your kindness and generosity in a world of madness is almost incomprehensible.’
Mama shrugged. ‘You were lucky. The boys were looking for one of the horses that had bolted and they heard your scream.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Janice. ‘I was lucky. But, over the last few days I have seen people attack each other over a can of soda. People who wouldn’t let me shelter in their house through fear. I have been attacked twice and I came across a village that had been burned to the ground and was full of dead people. Yet, without thought, you have taken me in.’
‘Aye,’ said Papa Dante. Janice hadn’t heard the big man enter and she flinched in surprise. ‘Sorry, little one,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t mean to shock you. I just wanted to say that your boyfriend is resting easy. I am sure that we shall see vast improvement by tomorrow.’
‘Thank you,’ said Janice, not bothering to deny her alleged relationship with Ax
el.
‘Do you see that?’ Papa Dante pointed at a small ceramic plaque on the wall of the vardo, next to the window. Janice lent forward and read it aloud to herself.
“The mental age of the average adult Gypsy is thought to be about that of a child of ten. Gypsies have never accomplished anything of great significance in writing, painting, musical composition, science or social organization. Quarrelsome, quick to anger or laughter, they are unthinkingly but not deliberately cruel. Loving bright colors, they are ostentatious and boastful, but lack bravery.” Encyclopedia Britannica in 1954.
‘That was societies official viewpoint on our people. And that was less than eighty years ago. Still today many people think of us the same way. But what many do not know is that we are a very religious people and has not the Lord told us to care for our fellow man?’
Janice nodded. ‘But I have recently learned that our fellow man is a stupid dickhead,’ she said.
Both Papa Dante and Mama laughed. ‘Truly said, little one, truly said,’ agreed Papa. ‘I often wonder why God saw fit to limit man’s intelligence but to still allow him limitless stupidity. Now, I know that you have been a bed all day, but I want you to drink this,’ Papa poured a shot of rum into a mug. ‘And then snuggle back into that there eiderdown and get some more sleep. Sleep heals much and you shall find that, by tomorrow, life will contain more joy and less…stupid dickheads.’
Janice downed the rum, lay back and, within minutes was asleep again.
Chapter 32