The following morning when I woke, weak light trickled in the window. I was alone in our vardo. Amberline’s bedding was cold to the touch; the bile rose in my throat.
I slipped out of the vardo; my parents still hadn’t stirred from theirs, though a scribble of smoke began to leak out of their flue. Our horse tossed his head at me and I followed the lead of his nose down towards the water.
And there Amberline was, by the stream, his shirt in one hand, a sliver of tallow in the other as he attended to the collar with a dip and a scrub, not surrendering his finely woven shirt to a threshing upon the river stones, not trusting me with his fine clothes.
I watched him from behind the willow, the fronds obscuring me like a waterfall. Dip and scrub, dip and scrub, muttering under his breath all the while, the sound of his words carried away on the water. His coat already lay across the thorny side of a bush, waiting for the morning rays, sending the steam skywards. His boots sat beside him, a scrap of newspaper tucked inside ready for the buff of print.
“You know I can see you skulking there,” he said without looking up. “I’ve the fox’s sight.”
I felt his voice on my skin as he caught me out, but I didn’t move, only stepped closer to the heart of the tree to watch him as he laid his newly washed shirt on the grass. He stood bare-chested before he broke through the green curtains of the willow and wound me into his arms, his lips seeking mine as much as mine sought his. He smelled like the earth, but I pushed him backwards, the blood rushing into my face.
“I thought you’d gone,” I said and he looked at me and laughed.
“Patrin, Patrin,” he said, unwinding my hair from its braid so that it rippled with the willow leaves.
“Is the vardo not good enough for you?” I asked, regretting it immediately the words left my mouth, suddenly ashamed. My father had spent a fortune on our vardo, for Amberline and me. I didn’t tell him the bride usually moves in with the husband’s family, for all Amberline had brought with him were the clothes on his back.
He grabbed my hand and I wanted to extract it, but he held me firm.
“Patrin, listen to me. We could move to London,” he said loudly, the boom of his voice echoing around the canopy, frightening the chorus from the birds. His admiration for the grand house and all its finery had made him covetous.
“Why would I go to London?” I answered. “There’s nowhere to camp, the water comes from a pump and they throw their waste from the windows – it’s hardly an enticing place.”
“There’s that to be sure, but there is also so much more, Patrin. The world doesn’t end at the edge of your camp,” he said and his chiding sent an angry rash of goose flesh across my arms. It was our camp now, my father had extended our hospitality, admitted him into our family and provided us with a home.
“London is the capital of the world, Patrin. If something you are looking for is not in London then it’s nowhere. Why, just imagine if you will the Pleasure Gardens, the trees all lit up, music wafting out across the lawn, the ladies dressed in more silk than a mulberry forest can contain, shimmering like butterflies in and out of the shadows. Then there’s the markets, Patrin; whatever you want you can buy. Imagine it, no more skinned rabbits tossed in stew, no wild onions and fallen fruit, the market makes an emperor of the common man. For a price you can buy anything from a basket of oranges to a pet peacock to enough velvet to make a gown three times over.”
Instinctively I clutched at my putsi and tried to ignore the sparrow that chirped above us in alarm. His little voice resonated in my chest, be-ware, be-ware, but I closed my eyes and just let Amberline’s words paint pictures behind my eyelids.
“And the jewels in the shop windows – why, the tears of angels are not more beautiful set in clusters of gold. I would set such clusters in your hair, Patrin, a crown of them, but they’d be nothing compared to your eyes.”
He kissed me tenderly on the eyelids and that little voice in my head silenced. Whatever signs presented themselves to me, I was blind to reading them. Even my own body spoke to me in a language I didn’t understand. My breasts ached. Everything smelled rotten. Everything I tasted was ash. I was unable to read my namesake patrin, the leaves, sticks and stones that directed my own life. Even a duchess had more insight into the workings of my own womb than I did.
As my belly grew Amberline became more erratic and critical of all the things my father had provided for us. It was not uncommon for me to wake in the night and find him not there. I’d lie awake listening for his return, marked by Jupiter’s low growl followed by a swift whine as Amberline’s boot made its mark in his ribs. He’d enter the vardo and drop down beside me in his clothes and fall fast asleep. Sometimes he smelled of smoke or wine, other times of grass or manure. But in the morning he’d scrubbed his suit clean. Then things started appearing in the vardo unexpectedly, the cupboard filling with china, a ring of gold around the rim, a fine coverlet for the baby to come made with down, and a fine bridle for our horse.
He spent his days over the fire with a bellows, coaxing the flame to grow hotter while he melted down whatever metal he lay his hands on, the coins from my necklace growing fewer as my belly grew. Inside an old iron pan he made the metal surrender to its liquid state and it lapped thin as a puddle from the moon before he poured it into a mould he had made.
“Stand back, Patrin,” he ordered and he didn’t have to ask twice as the heat from the fire roared on my cheeks and made the baby squirm against the confines of my belly as if she too were made of something shiny, something liquid, and was waiting to wrest into her final form.
Once the metal had cooled, Amberline would tap out whatever it was he had made, often a ring or a charm, and toss it into a bucket of river water, a hiss of hot complaint before it was back in his palm. From his pocket he unrolled a cloth where all his fine tools were kept, then gouged the tool’s ready tip into the newly formed metal, and I shivered at the marks he made on the pure surface, scrolls and curlicues and leaves all at his command. Spirals of silver dropped like seed into his cloth and Amberline carefully scooped up the shavings and put them in a small jar, to return to liquid later.
“Where did you learn such things?” I said as a magpie flew close to us with his chittering. Amberline kicked a stone in its direction, so that I didn’t even have time to say, “Good morning, Mr Magpie, and good morning to your family,” for luck.
“Where do you think, Patrin?” he snapped and began the whole process over again, the flames rising at the snap and suck of the bellows. Every question I seemed to ask him had the answer of London. My father was splitting a log nearby with deft heavy strokes.
“Let the man work, Patrin, and come with me up to the field, the farmer’s expecting me,” my father said as he laid down his axe and Jupiter leapt up from his place in the sunlight at my father’s first footsteps. Mother was off selling pegs she’d whittled. I was glad to be clear of Amberline’s mood which grew more mercurial.
My father walked slower than his usual stride, allowing me to keep up, but try as I might I still puffed away like a faulty bellows, my father lending me his arm on the steeper parts of ground. I pulled my shawl closer around me, the wind had the touch of ice.
The farmer was waiting for us in the field, the smoke from his pipe billowing towards us, the smell of the tobacco making me feel as if I would throw up. The field itself was lying fallow, the clods of earth dry and harrowed, thick with clay. He leaned on his shovel and watched us approach. Jupiter roared ahead, his feet kicking up dirt, and the farmer laughed.
“Good lad,” he said and patted Jupiter’s shaggy coat. “You wouldn’t think of selling him to me, would you, Scamp? He’d make a good sheepdog yet,” the farmer said.
“Not on the soul of the Baptist, Richards. If he wasn’t a dog I’d have him baptised and given the family name, I’ll not part with him,” my father said and shook the farmer’s hand. “You remember my daughter Patrin?”
Richards took my hand and shook it gently, his eyes on my belly. “Good day to you, miss,” he said. “You brought your rod?” he directed to my father and my father took out the dowsing rod from inside his waistcoat, the wood stripped of all bark, and it sat lightly in his hands. “Well let’s to it,” said Richards and my father stood steady with his eyes closed until he jerked forward and we all followed the arrow of wood.
“When are you due, missy?” he asked me, and I knew though this baby was due in the summer she’d be early.
“End of June,” I replied.
“Hard to believe it, I remember your mother carrying you across her front. Time is a fickle mistress.” Jupiter reached up and licked the farmer’s hand before he disappeared off into the hedgerow, his nose sensitive to the scent of a hare or hedgehog. “If he catches anything, we’ll share it,” Richards said. “And let’s hope your father is quick.” He surveyed his fields, the gathering clouds, all swollen with rain.
I think we walked all around the farm for the whole morning, the only water to be found was a light drizzle that barely did anything but net our hair. The farmer’s wells had gone dry and the harvest had not been as plentiful as he’d hoped. To water the animals he’d taken to getting his boy to drive an hour to the river to bring back a barrel full, but that would hardly do once the snows set in.
The rod moved only very slightly in my father’s hands, as if it was straining to hear a piece of far distant music, but try as my father might, he only led us in circles. “Lost the touch, Scamp?” Richards mocked. Jupiter came bounding back, his fur matted with leaves, but he’d found nothing either.
“You try, Patrin,” my father said. The farmer raised his eyebrows at me and I resented it, superstitious and fearful, reminding me we were Rom and we were outsiders.
My father handed me the rod. The tip of the Y poked my belly and the farmer laughed and my father encouraged me with a nod. “I’ll be up at the house, come get me if you find anything,” Richards said with little faith, before giving Jupiter a scratch behind the ears. I watched him walk away towards the buildings in the distance. A cow lowed at us before returning to her grazing; Jupiter started towards her but my father brought him to heel.
“Now, Patrin, hold the wand out from your body a little, just let it sit in your hands. Let it lead you.” I did as he said and took a tentative step, my breath like a wave in my head. My mind’s eye went blank and I felt the nausea rise but bid it be. The wand started to move in my hand, jerking me forwards, like a rein does its mistress.
“Don’t hold so tight,” my father coaxed and I opened my eyes, but I was unable to loosen my grip, it was the only thing that stopped me from falling, this little fork of a branch, whittled by my father’s hand. Jupiter bounded around my feet, excited by the sudden movement, and his bark echoed repetitively across the fields, sending a pair of jackdaws skyward.
“Patrin, slow down for goodness sake,” my father said, trotting beside me to keep up, but I couldn’t speak nor slow down. The wand hummed in my hand. I tripped over clods of earth, a stone, an old tree root, but the wand held me up, I was but a leaf on the wind. I don’t know how long I was pulled along with the promise of water, a thin line of sweat breaking out on my father’s lip and he a strong man. And all I craved was a drink of water from my father’s skin but couldn’t break my pace to drink from it.
“Rockra, rockra, speak, speak,” my father began to shout, but I had no breath left for speaking. He tried to grab my elbow, but I was slippery as if my elbow was made of scales. I heard the water before I saw it and I wanted nothing more than to throw myself into it like into a lover’s arms and feel myself quenched, borne up, made new. The river sang my name. A rushing sound filling all my senses, just as my father snatched the divining rod from my hand. He snapped it over his knee and then snapped it again and again until there was nothing but tiny kindling and I stopped walking, the hum gone from my palms. “Prikasa,” he said underneath his breath and I stood blinking, the light suddenly too bright. Jupiter headed for the water but my father called him off, his face ashen.
“What was that, Father?” I said and he shook his head, not wanting to repeat it, but I suddenly heard it again in my head, prikasa, an omen.
“What do you mean, Father?” I looked around me and saw how close to the river we had come: the river was an hour away from Richards’s farm but hadn’t it only been moments that I held the wand in my hand?
“Come along now, my darling,” he said and brought his arm around my shoulders. Yet as we walked away, the river still called my name, though I said nothing.
By the time we got back to camp the rain had already set in, but Amberline was still at his makeshift forge, cursing the rain and the clouds.