CHAPTER 10

At first only a few children looked up at me. Although they were fully clothed, the way their garments were distributed among them gave the effect that they had shared a single outfit. One had scarlet breeches, patched at the knees with blue. Another wore a waistcoat of the same deep red with multicolored buttons. An older girl who looked to be about my age wore a black dress, but had tied an apron of the scarlet material around her waist and wrapped a scarf of bright red silk around her neck. They paused in their game that amounted to tossing stones into piles and ran toward some women who were clustered around an open fire roasting what looked like squirrels. The women looked up at me with expressions that held more curiosity than suspicion. One of them walked over to a group of five men. The men’s eyes turned to me one by one as she spoke, and then, as if by some silent signal, in a group they started to walk toward me. I continued in their direction with my chin held high. My stomach was flipping over inside of me, and I could feel sweat trickle down my sides from under my arms, although my hands, face, and feet were icy cold. What was it I wanted to say? I thought to myself, my mind suddenly a complete blank. Oh, yes. The violin. My father.

We stopped a few paces apart from one another. They said nothing, obviously waiting for some explanation from me. I dipped a quick curtsy. Perhaps politeness was called for. “I humbly beg your pardon,” I said in a voice that sounded pinched and shaky to me, and that I hoped did not sound too fearful to them, “but I am looking for something of my father’s that was lost.”

The largest of the men folded his arms emphatically and flared his nostrils at me. Still no word from any of them, but I could hear the children whispering behind me.

“He was found here—murdered, I’m afraid …” Murdered. I had thought the word so many times in the last few days, but this was the first time I had allowed it to pass my lips. And here I was, standing alone in front of this group of hostile Roma men, each of whom appeared strong enough to strangle me with one hand. I felt my eyes fill with tears. I tried to say something more, but my throat was squeezed and I could not draw breath without making a great, raw scraping that sounded like the sob of a wild animal. I doubled over.

All at once I felt myself lifted off my feet. For a moment, I flailed my arms and kicked. But then a deep voice said, “Hush.” I don’t know why, but the voice calmed me and I started to cry. The man carried me and placed me on an animal skin inside a hut or a wagon, I did not know which. By then, I was giving full vent to my despair, not caring who saw or heard me. I had forced myself to be strong until now, locking my grief inside me as long as I was within my own world and trying to be brave for Toby and Mama. I don’t know why the curious, blank faces of strangers had made me suddenly crumble.

“Here. Taste this.”

The woman’s voice was gentle but insistent. When I took the cup of fragrant tea that she thrust under my nose, I noticed that the skin on her hands was dark, and that she had long fingernails that had been filed to sharp points at their ends and painted bright red.

“It won’t hurt you, kushti.”

I sipped. The tea was hot. I sipped again. Something in the tea soothed me. I sat up and looked around.

I had been brought inside a hut made of stout sticks with heavy cloth stretched over them. A fire burned in the middle, its smoke drawn out a small hole that had been left directly above it. The floor of the hut was covered in brightly colored blankets and animal skins, and a silver samovar sat in the corner, gleaming and ready for use. Despite its apparent impermanence, the atmosphere inside the hut was warm and welcoming.

“You had better tell me what it is you want,” said the woman.

“I’m so sorry. You must think me foolish and weak.”

“A young Viennese girl finds her own way out to the wicked Gypsy camp and addresses all the elders—without even carrying a weapon. Foolish, yes. Weak, no.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “I came because my father’s body was found here, by the river. He was a musician. I don’t understand why he was murdered—he did no harm to anyone. I need to find his violin. It disappeared the night he was killed.”

“A fiddler, you say?” Her eyes grew distant, as if she was thinking of something. “Yes, I think I remember.”

“Our friend—Zoltán—brought me here the other day. He said my father knew of this place and came here to listen to the music.”

“Your father. What was his name?”

“Antonius Schurman. Violinist at Prince Nicholas Esterhazy’s court.”

She opened her mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it.

“Do you—did you know him?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No. Never.”

I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t know how to ask again without insulting her. I drew in a long, shuddering breath and let it out in a sigh. “I just want to know what happened to him, and why someone would take his violin.”

“This violin—it is important to you?”

“Yes. It could be,” I said. I was beginning to hope that some of my questions might actually be answered.

“Danior will know something. Wait here.” The woman stood. She lifted the flap of carpet that served as a door and vanished through it, letting in a short shock of cold air. I pulled my cloak around me more tightly.

Danior! I thought. The very person I had hoped to see. At least one part of this strange adventure was going as planned. I didn’t have to wait long. The woman returned almost immediately with a young man whom I presumed was the fellow Zoltán had mentioned the day before. The flap opened again, and behind the man and the woman I thought I saw the older girl I had noticed before, peering in to try to get a look at me.

“Kon se rani?” the man said as soon as he caught sight of me. I had no idea what he meant, but his voice held a challenge in it.

“This is Danior,” the woman said to me. Then, turning to him, she said, “She is the daughter of a musician, a violinist, she says, in the court of Prince Nicholas Esterhazy.”

“What brings you here?” Danior asked, fixing me with his penetrating gaze.

I tried to meet his eyes, but I could not. I don’t recall noticing their color. I had the impression of deep darkness then, but it was dim inside the hut.

“She says her father came here. And that his body was found by the river.”

Until that point, Danior had stood staring down at me where I sat on the ground, feeling small and vulnerable in my quilted petticoat and my plain, fustian dress. But after the lady spoke, he crouched down, squatting quite comfortably next to me as he examined my face. “Yes. I have seen her. She resembles her father.”

He knew my father! But where had he seen me? He must have noticed me with Zoltán the day before. I had removed my mask while we were down at the river’s edge. The idea of being observed unknowingly by this fellow with his dark skin and deep eyes disturbed me.

I summoned up my courage and spoke. “I once heard a Gypsy violinist, and I know my father was fascinated by the music. If he came here from time to time to hear you play perhaps you might know why someone would have—harmed him?”

Immediately I regretted the implication of my words. Both the lady and Danior drew back visibly. “You believe that, because we roam the world, no land to call our own, we must therefore be thieves and murderers?” Danior said.

Yes, I thought, that was precisely what I had permitted myself to think. It was what everyone said, everyone who was fearful of the Roma ways. “Forgive me,” I said. “Zoltán said no one here was involved, but I am at such a loss to understand how it could have happened. My father was well liked. We were a respected family. He was only a musician.”

“Zoltán?” Danior said, picking out the one name I had uttered.

“He is also a musician, and my friend.”

“He brought you here. I saw him, too. What did he say to you?”

“He told me where they had found my father’s body. And he said you would not have the violin. Yet why else was my papa murdered? Who can have wanted to harm him, unless it was someone who wanted his beautiful violin?”

Danior rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Are you certain theft is the only possible reason for his murder? Perhaps you did not know your father so well as you thought.”

I gave him a skeptical look. My father did not seem the sort to have mysteries. Then again, I would not have expected him to make a habit of coming to a Gypsy camp for entertainment, nor to own a gold medallion I had never seen before. Least of all would I have expected him to suffer a violent death.

The idea that he might have secrets gave me a horrible thought. I looked up at the Gypsy woman, who stared back at me with not unfriendly eyes. These Roma women were said to be fascinating to men, with their smoldering looks and wild ways. Could my father have taken a mistress from among them? Perhaps the medallion was a love token. My mind leapt to the idea of revenge as a possible motive for murder. A father, perhaps, or a brother. Or a spurned lover. Were there children? I immediately formed the idea that my father could have had an entire family I did not know about. He spent much time away from home, performing.

But a moment’s reflection made me realize that my father’s busy life would make such a thing difficult if not impossible. And we moved like Gypsies ourselves every year, to Esterhaza from Vienna and back again. Yet the Roma wandered, too, and this band of Gypsies could be the same as the one that spent its summers not far from Esterhaza, and whose members the prince’s cook would blame for every little thing that went wrong on the estate.

“You should stay and break bread with us,” the lady said.

“I’m not hungry, but thank you.”

“It is not polite to refuse food when you are a guest of the Romany,” Danior said sternly.

All at once I realized that, however well I’d been treated so far, I was entirely at the mercy of my hosts. I surreptitiously felt my reticule. It still contained coins—I had not been unwittingly robbed. Then I blushed again that I would have expected to be. “Thank you, of course. You are very generous.”

Danior stood and reached his hand down to me. I took it and he pulled me to my feet. His grip was wiry. He had calluses on his fingertips. “You are a fiddler!” I said.

At that moment, a wide smile lit his face, revealing two rows of small, straight teeth. I noticed only then that he was quite a young man, and that his features had that balance that make expressions look alive, his nose straight until its end, where delicately flared nostrils softened the slight downward hook. He was clean shaven except for a thin mustache, revealing the perfect symmetry of his face. He wasn’t quite as handsome as Zoltán, but there was something fascinating about his looks.

When we emerged, I saw with dismay that the twilight had already started to draw in. How would I get back to Vienna now? Mother would be worried. And Toby? Had he found his way home all right? Would he be punished for my actions?

We sat with the others on mats of carpet woven with fanciful pictures of animals and flowers, positioned around a large fire with a cauldron hung over it on a makeshift frame. No sooner had I settled in my place than the girl, the one who seemed to be my age and who I had seen peering in when the flap of the hut opened, came and sat down next to me.

“I am Mirela,” she said. “You are Theresa. I know. I speak German. I can tell you what they say.” She swept her arm to indicate the entire camp. At that moment, everyone chattered noisily in that odd language I had heard before. Mirela spoke with a strong accent, but I could understand her. And the accent had a kind of music in it.

“Thank you,” I said, and asked about the woman whose hut I had been in.

“That’s Maya, and Danior is her cousin.”

A toothless woman with skin so wrinkled and tanned it looked like tough leather ladled out portions of stew into wooden bowls and broke hunks of brown bread off the loaves on a table at her side. A very small girl child brought me the first bowl. I thanked her. There were no spoons, I observed. Once all had been served, they stared at me.

Mirela whispered in my ear. “They will not eat until you do. It’s polite.” I turned to her, and she made a gesture as of lifting a bowl to her lips.

I did as she indicated and drank the broth. It seemed to be what was required, because immediately after I finished, everyone else did the same and the assembled crowd resumed chattering in their language with a few words of German sprinkled in.

Mirela proved a useful source of information about everyone in the camp. She pointed out the elders, the ones who resolved all disputes and dispensed justice, and then she arranged the assorted children into family groupings. These numbered around five.

“Where are your mother and father?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, shrugging, “they have died, so long ago I hardly remember them. Maya took care of me, with Danior.”

I thought about asking her how it was not to have a father, wondering if she could understand what I felt. She seemed just like any other girl to me, aside from her clothes. “See that boy there? That’s Omar. He teases me.” She put on a pout, but I could tell the teasing pleased her. Omar smiled in our direction.

“How shall I get back to Vienna?” I asked, interrupting her constant prattle. Everyone around us appeared to have settled in for a long, social evening.

“Back? Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure you must not worry.” When I thought back later, I could have sworn her eyes flicked to the area around my neck. But I was so distracted at the idea of not being able to get home that I soon forgot the impression.

As it grew darker, my heart sank. The liveliness of the conversation and the music of laughter swelled into the night. Mirela offered me a cup of wine and I willingly accepted, hoping to numb my growing sense of panic. The wine was stronger than I thought it would be. It warmed my throat, and soon I fell into a drowsy state. The fire crackled and danced, and Mirela’s voice lulled me. I was at the center of several rows of people who had gradually filled in the space behind me. When the meal ended, the talking died down, and here and there men and women stood. Some wandered off into the bushes, I thought probably to relieve themselves. I felt the need, too, but I didn’t want to venture alone away from the group.

When those who had left returned, some carried instruments—tambourines and drums, a recorder of sorts, and a couple of mandolins. They did not start to play right away, only strumming the occasional soft chord or riffling a tune full of strange intervals. They were waiting for something it seemed.

“This is my favorite part of the night,” Mirela whispered. “I forget all my troubles.”

I wondered what she was referring to, but there was no time to ask. Everyone quieted and turned toward the woods, where a torch had been planted in the ground. I watched as Danior emerged from the shelter of the trees with a violin at his shoulder. In the dusk he looked like a ghost, the torchlight flickering across his face, as he lifted his bow high and brought it down across the strings. The sound silenced everyone and locked them in what ever position they happened to be, sitting, standing, crouching, bent over to pat an infant on the head. Even Mirela was still. And me? I entered heaven—or hell—as I always did at the sound of a beautifully played violin. I thought then that it was my too-lively imagination, but I felt as if I had heard those Gypsy melodies before. Not exactly those, perhaps, but others like them, as if it were me and not my father who had made a habit of sneaking away to hear the Gypsies in the dead of night. I could not place the scraps of tunes, so after a bit I stopped trying. I stopped thinking altogether and surrendered myself to the power of the music. It was warm there, by the fire. Mirela slipped her arm around my waist and rested her head against mine. The companionship comforted me. I could have remained where I was until the end of time. I did not care if I ever returned to Vienna.