The trial came and my father remained resolute: he would not implicate Amberline, and neither would Amberline confess his role in the theft. When the judge passed sentence my mother howled beside me. I felt myself disappear and grow transparent, faint as water. Her hand gripped my back. It was all that held me up.
The news of my father’s sentence was a patrin of its own. Overnight, Rom came from far and wide to plead for his clemency, faces I hadn’t seen as a child, all moths around his light, all hoping. Both my brothers and their families appeared but they were as powerless as we were. A list of my father’s good deeds, his royal connections, his standing in our community, all fell on deaf ears. We were Rom, without land or house, tolerated but not accepted. Good enough to harvest crops and catch your rats, but not good enough for justice.
They led him out at daybreak and he stepped out of the lockup blinking, his head bowed until he was clear of the lintel and then he stood tall. My mother ran and threw her arms around him, her face buried in his neck, and he tried to caress her hair though his hands were manacled as if he were a danger to the world. My father. My mother was removed by one of the constables and I trailed beside him and reached for his hands, just wanting to feel them, his strong fingers dwarfing mine as they had when I was small, his touch telling me all was right in the world. He reached and kissed me on the head and then Little Egg and I felt the earth turn beneath my feet as the scaffold came into view.
My father mounted the steps with dignity, his feet leading him on, his eyes kept on us and not the gibbet that awaited. There were a dozen people waiting and I felt sick to the core. From behind me I felt Amberline’s arm wrap around my shoulders, his arm as leaden as a yoke; he’d left the cover of the woods for this, the danger now over for him. My mother stood with my brothers. She looked and saw Amberline and spat on the ground.
The hangman held the length of rope in his hand and was ready to loop it over my father’s head, when my father quietly spoke. The hangman released him from the manacle and someone below reached up towards my father and handed him his own rope. My father took it, thick and twisted, a rope made strong by a Rom’s hands. The ground beneath my feet roiled. My father, steady of hand, tied the knot that would kill him. He pulled the rope straight of any kink and tested it with a final tug, before he placed the noose around his own neck, a savage garland. My father looked up, squinting into the sun, until he found our faces.
“You see what you’ve brought me to,” he said, and I shivered before I realised he wasn’t addressing me at all. “Live soberly and take care of your wife and family.” His meaning was only too clear, his message for Amberline. I felt him stiffen beside me.
My father gave the signal. The hangman, his job diminished by my father’s own assistance, quickly dropped the trapdoor. I closed my eyes. There was a loud snap, the creak of the rope and the sound of the gathering wind. I couldn’t breathe, the inside of my eyelids held a darkness I thought I’d never wake from. I heard my mother’s gasp and cry and wanted to go to her. Amberline pulled me away.
That afternoon my father’s body was claimed and made ready for burial. My mother wouldn’t let anyone else prepare him. It was she who cleaned his body, washing his face and tying a clean diklo around his poor broken neck in a fragile knot, not daring to tie it close to his poor bruised and broken flesh. She polished his boots and buckles and placed a coin in each of his hands and all I could do was stand behind her and watch, for she’d not let me help, she’d not spoken a word to me, nor caught my eye. When Little Egg cried she looked up only briefly, blinking as if surfacing from a dream, startled by her surroundings, her face softening, before the reality of what occurred scattered her expression and she resumed the mask she needed to get her through.
My brothers had dug the grave and all the men carried my father’s body in its coffin to its resting place. Amberline offered to help, but they ignored him, spurned his offer to assist as if he was nothing at all. Little Egg reached out her hand towards the wood as it passed, but I scooped up her hand and tucked it away.
With my father lowered into his grave, we each took a handful of good dark earth and it hit the coffin like thrown cake, until my brothers snatched up the shovels and filled the grave. Their arms and backs in steady motion didn’t cease in their action until the surface was near smooth. My mother carefully bent and scooped out a hole; I thought she was digging down again, until I saw the branch of thorn by her side; it would grow, sustained by the earth and my father’s goodness. My mother’s expression was stone. We would come each year on this date to tie red thread and ribbon in his remembrance.
We made our way back to camp, all the other vardos and wagons making ready for the night, set up further away from my parents’ vardo, keeping their distance for the spark that would come. My mother took no rest nor water; she gathered the few possessions that were her own in a small pile on the grass – her clothes, her herbs, a bundle containing her needles and thread, a Bible. I went to help her but she waved me away. My brothers led the horse away and nodded to me, but ignored Amberline. How much did they know of Amberline’s role in my father’s death? If they had known the whole of it, they’d have plunged a knife into his heart, just as they were about to do to the horse.
My mother smashed all their fine china onto the floor, the clatter of it ringing through the night disturbing a pigeon who’d already set for the roost. She’d be forced to live with one of my brothers and his wife now.
“What is she doing that for?” Amberline said, confused at the storm growing around us, his hand curling protectively around my shoulder. But what could I tell him? These were our ways. All that had belonged to the living must be destroyed; his act had led to not only the death of my father but the destruction of my mother’s home and all their worldly possessions. My mother threw out the silver teapot and tray, sugar bowl and spoons and they landed at our feet. Amberline stepped back. My mother came out of the vardo with a shovel and started dashing them into the ground. Little Egg began to cry at the sharp sounds. Amberline took her into his arms, unrolled her small angry fist and blew a puff of air into her palm. At this, she hushed and he held her close to his chest. My mother smashed with her shovel and the side of the teapot split, collapsed like an overripe fruit. My mother looked up at Amberline.
“Want these too, do you?” she said bitterly, still striking down with the shovel. She drew my father’s knife from her belt, the one that Amberline had given him, and submitted it to the same attack, watching the pattern on the blade disappear, mangled to ribbon. When she had finished I went to gather them into a sack for her, but she held her hand up against me, she would not have my help. She tied a rope around the sack again and again, as if it were rats inside and not silver, the sickening tie of the knot made me lose my footing, though I stood on solid ground, Amberline’s hand steadying my elbow.
My mother turned in disgust and went to the wood pile, gathered all the wood she could and took it inside the vardo. I heard the strike of her flint, I knew it would have shaken in her hands. She struck again, the flame must have caught. A curl of smoke followed her out over the threshold as she stepped down and stood apart from us, watching. All the camp was silent.
“Is she deranged, Patrin? Should we try and stop her?” I shook my head and took Little Egg back in my arms.
The fire had caught and the whole interior glowed, the flames licking at the roof, the floor. The wooden beams started to crack and spit as the heat released the oils from the wood. The fire hit my father’s bottle of brandy and it exploded and encouraged the flames to go higher, popping out the wooden shutters of the window, using the curtains as a bellows – in and out they were sucked until the flames devoured them completely. From the doorframe the fire started to venture, sending its fingers curling around the frame until the fire ran all across the exterior. With a whomph all the air was sucked out of the vardo; the roof danced with spitting flames, the smoke stung my eyes and made me cough. I pulled my shawl over Little Egg’s head to shield her from the ashes that had started to fall, a bitter snow, but my mother would not step back. She shrugged off my touch, her skin hot from the fire; her dark hair grew grey from the falling ash, her face was lit with the fire, her eyes feverish with grief. The walls of the vardo collapsed in on themselves as we heard the horse scream, the blade ending its life, and for a moment the walls of the vardo remained, painted in blinding light, then were gone, the remains of my family’s life a heap of burning wood.
Jupiter howled and started running around the burning vardo looking for my father, poor animal, so I took him and tied him to a tree, lest he injure himself. His whimpers stung my ears as much as the smoke did my eyes.
I went back to my mother but she was already walking off in the direction of the river to throw the bag of smashed silver in the waters, so I had to chase her.
“Mother?” I called but she was silent. “Mother, speak to me,” I tried again.
She turned on her foot then, the flames painting her face red. “You choose, Patrin, you choose. It’s either him or us, there is not room in our family for both,” and with that she struck off for the river, leaving me with ash burning my eyes.