A Dusk of Demons Page 9

  “Now then, me darlins,” he said in a gravelly voice. “What’s wi’ ye?”

  Neither of us replied. So close to their camp, he must be a gypsy. A dirty lot, Ralph had said: thieves, maybe still infected with the Madness. According to the country people, they could lay spells. Steer clear of them, Ralph had warned.

  There was also the gun. It wasn’t like the guns Pengelly’s soldiers carried; it seemed older, and was double-barreled. His right hand held it just beneath the trigger guard, and the barrels caught a flash of sunlight.

  “It were pigeon I were after,” he went on, “but I had an eye to the road. What I seed there was two young ’uns riding the one pony, and early in the day to be so far from a sassenach dwelling. Then comes a dozen or more riders, goin’ lickety-split. And now I finds the same two young ’uns runnin’ hard through the brush.”

  He fixed a half-closed eye on us. “What did ye do with the horse? Set him loose? He looked a beast worth keeping, except they’d run ye down quick if ye stayed with him. Ye’re in trouble, I’d say.”

  “We’re all right,” Paddy said. The calmness of her voice impressed me. “We don’t need help, thank you.”

  He made no immediate reply—in fact looked away, cocking his head as though listening. All I could hear was a blackbird, and the coo of a pigeon. He had said he’d come out after pigeon. “They’ve struck back,” he said, after a moment. “They’re off the road and beating this way. Four of ’em, at least. Even without one of ye bein’ lame, they’d ketch ye within a half hour. As it is, five minutes.”

  He spoke with flat certainty. Paddy’s eyes met mine. If we were caught, nothing too bad was likely to happen, but Paddy would certainly be sent on to join the others, and I would be kept at the villa, probably under guard. I wouldn’t be given a second chance to walk away.

  “Hearken,” the gypsy said.

  Now I could hear it: distant feet, trampling through undergrowth. Paddy bit her lip and nodded.

  “Can you hide us?” I asked.

  He shook his ugly head. “Not here. Not nowhere in the woods. They’d be bound to hit on ye, sooner or later.”

  I realized he had not actually offered the help Paddy had refused. Perhaps he had just been mocking us. Or getting us off guard while he considered the best way of handing us over? He might be counting on a reward.

  “Nowhere in the woods,” he repeated. “But sassenachs won’t come nigh our caravans. Feared of goin’ mad, as I’ve heard.” He grinned widely. “Which are ye more feared of—the mad didikoy, or gettin’ ketched?”

  “We’ll go with you,” Paddy said quickly.

  “So be.” He listened again. “They’re comin’ on fast. I’ll carry ye, missy, with your permission. You follow, boy, and see can ye outrun me.”

  There was small chance of that. He picked up Paddy with his free arm and swung her easily over his shoulder, then set off in a loping run, breaking through brushes he could not easily skirt. I followed, marveling at the pace he set.

  Dogs barked as we approached the camp, and other gypsies looked at us but with no particular sign of interest. Children went on playing in the dust. There were six painted wagons, and he headed for one at the end, a little apart from the others. Its door was approached by wooden steps; he lowered Paddy and pushed us inside. Following, he closed the lower half of the door and leaned on it, gazing out.

  It was dim inside the wagon and there was a variety of smells, not all pleasant. From outside came sounds of whistling, a howling dog, people talking. Later we heard more distant voices, calling one another. That went on for about ten minutes, but it was as long again before the gypsy turned to us.

  “They’re gone. I doubt they’ll come back, but ye’d be wise not to venture abroad awhile yet. Ye can call me Mordecai. What am I to be naming ye?”

  • • •

  The wagons housed more than forty gypsies. The rest were crammed with adults and children (who slept in hammocks, slung from the roof at night and packed away each morning); only Mordecai had a caravan to himself. I thought at first he might be the chief, but learned the real chief lived in a yellow-and-blue caravan, slightly bigger than the rest, along with his mother, his wife, their son, his wife, and four small children.

  Mordecai asked if we were hungry, and when we admitted it left us to get food. Paddy took off her shoe and stocking and gingerly flexed her foot. I asked, “Is it bad?”

  “Bad enough.” She grimaced. “And it’s swelling.”

  I thought of our situation: in the middle of nowhere, Paddy lame, and Hussar on the way back to his stable. I guessed Paddy’s thoughts were running on similar lines. She said, in a depressed tone, “It was supposed to be a five-day journey north to the port, but from there boats sailed to Ireland almost every day. It won’t be easy now to catch up with them.”

  “The gypsies have horses. If we—”

  “Stole a couple? Not a very nice way of paying him back for hiding us.” She added practically, “Anyway, they’d soon catch us, and what then? Horses are probably the most precious things they own.” She put weight on her foot and winced. “I hope this doesn’t lay me up for long.”

  Mordecai returned, bringing plates heaped with bacon, eggs, and sausages. Also what looked like mushrooms, but darker in color and differently shaped. I left these till last, and saw him watching me.

  “D’ye think they’ve gypsy poison in ’em?”

  He took a fork, speared and ate one, smacking his lips. “What are they?” I asked. “Not mushrooms.”

  “It bein’ this time o’ year, ye mean? There are more godsends in woods and meadows than sassenachs know. Morels come in spring and early summer, when the world’s ripening.”

  “They’re delicious,” Paddy said. “Better than mushrooms.”

  I tried them, and they were. Mordecai took away the plates and returned with battered mugs of a hot liquid whose taste was strange but refreshing.

  “Now,” he said, scratching the stubble of his beard. “What’s to be done wi’ ye? It might be a help to know what ye’re about, and why the sassenachs were chasing ye, but a man’s business is his own till such a time as he chooses to share it.”

  Ignoring a look from Paddy, I told him something of what had happened. Not all. I didn’t mention Ralph or the Master, only spoke of being banished from the Isles, of Mother Ryan and the girls being sent on further, and the events of the past few hours.

  “So it’s Ireland ye’ll be lookin’ to go to?”

  “Yes.”

  “And ye’ve lost your horse, and it’s a tidy step to the port even for them as is fit for walking.”

  He stopped for what I imagined would be a moment’s consideration, but the pause lengthened. As he stared out of the caravan, I watched clouds slowly obscure the semicircle of sky, and as slowly clear again. I had a feeling his mind was somewhere else—that in this interval we did not exist for him.

  In the beginning this created an awkwardness, but that lessened as time went by. I took stock of our surroundings, which were not as cluttered as I had first thought. Certainly the caravan was tightly packed—with pans, plates, buckets, fishing rods and nets and gaffs, a range of tools (all clean and polished), boxes and sacks, strings of dried plants . . . but each thing seemed to be in its proper place, and there was an overall impression of tidiness.

  Eventually Mordecai returned to us, his face relaxing into its gap-toothed grin.

  “So it’s Ireland ye seek—by way of the north port? We didikoy are travelers, as maybe ye’ve heard. We make our way from place to place, accordin’ to the season and following old paths. Just now, we’re heading north. If ye’d wish to travel with us, ye’re welcome.”

  He did not wait for a response but went out. We heard his footsteps pad away. Paddy looked at me.

  I said, “Well?”

  “Rachel said gypsies stole children. I can’t think why, when they’ve so many of their own. Millicent said there were stories that they fattened them up and ate them. I
’d have thought stealing a pig would be less trouble.”

  “Taste better too, I should think.”

  We laughed. I said, “What about the Madness?”

  “If it’s anything like mumps or measles, we’ve probably caught it already. But Mordecai doesn’t look mad.”

  “Your foot really has swollen.”

  “Yes.” She prodded it gently. “Right now I doubt if I could crawl.”

  “So we might as well hang on with them, at least until it’s better.”

  She nodded. “We’re headed in the right direction. We’ve no chance anyway of catching up on this side of the water.” She shook her head. “I’d still like to know why he suggested our staying.”

  Before I had time to respond to that, we heard Mordecai returning. This time he brought a bowl of hot water with herbs floating in it, and set it down by Paddy.

  “Rest your foot in that, me beauty. Ye’ll find ’twill ease and heal it both.”

  Paddy said: “Mr. Mordecai . . .”

  “No misters here, lassie. Nor generals, nor servants. Mordecai, it is.”

  “We’d like to stay, Mordecai. Thank you very much.”

  • • •

  Next morning that camp was abandoned, and the caravans moved on. Progress was leisurely, limited by the pace of a laden donkey or a child-herded goat; one could forage afield and catch up easily. After several days of unhurried travel, a new resting place was found. It was in a hollow, half a mile from the road: a dell with a stream running through, and at the bottom a rocky pool where the women washed the family clothes, beating them clean against boulders. It was plainly an accustomed staging point in their processions, and one of the first jobs for the children was to root out saplings and bushes which had encroached since the previous year. Paddy and I took a hand without being told. We had learned that with gypsies you did not need to ask or be asked. People knew what was expected of them, and set about it with a will.

  Paddy’s ankle was fully recovered. Resting after our labors, chewing grass shoots in the sunshine, she said, “They’ll be in Ireland by this time. I wonder what it’s like. I don’t remember anything of it.”

  I certainly didn’t. I asked, “Do you think we ought to leave the gypsies and get on faster?”

  She considered that. “We’re safer with them, if anyone’s still looking for us. And I suppose there’s no particular hurry now.”

  I wouldn’t have argued if she had said yes, but was happier that she didn’t. I was getting to know the other members of the tribe, and the solemn warnings about gypsies already seemed laughable. At night we slept snug in blankets beneath Mordecai’s caravan, by day chatted with him as the convoy followed its deliberate course. He had a great store of knowledge of country life and ways, and seemed happy to impart it. Also, he had promised to take me hunting as soon as there was an opportunity.

  The following afternoon in fact, shotgun under his arm, he took the two of us into the wood that surrounded the new camp. Then and during similar expeditions he showed us how to listen and how to look—neither as simple as they first seemed—for what was needed: food for the cooking pot, both animal and vegetable. He taught us ways of reading spoors and droppings, not just which beast had left them—deer or rabbit, fox or badger or wild pig—but the wherefore as well as what: the creature’s size and age and condition.

  And he taught us how to move in the wild—slowly, quietly, surely—and how to read wind and weather and use them in our stalking.

  “Everything ye do,” he told us, “needs thinking through aforehand: careful and clear and honest.”

  It took time as well as patience. We returned that day with only a small bag, a couple of rabbits, but the beginning of new knowledge. It was knowledge not merely of the practicalities but of the laws of the hunter’s life and the discipline of the gun, based on its fearful power, which enforced a duty to kill from need only, and cleanly. Economically too. Ammunition was not easily replaced.

  That evening, as we picked the bones of roast rabbit, I asked Mordecai about Demons. He drew on his pipe, which had a creamy white stem that shaded to dark brown around the bowl, the bowl itself being carved in the shape of a woman’s head.

  “What of them, laddy?”

  “You never go to Summonings, do you?”

  He took the pipe from his mouth to shake out dottle. “Never been asked.”

  “We weren’t asked. Just told.”

  “Never been told, neether.”

  “The Summoners say Demons hunt down people who don’t attend. Aren’t you frightened they might come after you?”

  “Not in partic’lar.” He rammed in fresh tobacco, out of a battered jar with a picture on the side of a woman wearing a crown. “Them sassenachs you’ve been living among—you ever hear them talk of being frightened by wolves?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a’cause there ain’t any wolves in southern woods. Up in northern forests, it’s a different tale: You get wolves there, and bear too, for that matter. Not that wolves do any harm—keep to themselves, do wolves—but the northern sassenachs worry lest they take their children.” He grinned. “Barring the gypsies don’t ketch ’em first! Now bear’s another case altogether. You needs keep a sharp lookout for bear.”

  Paddy said, “But there are Demons—in the south, anyway.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  “We’ve seen them,” I said, and my flesh bristled despite the mildness of the night. Mordecai drew on his pipe.

  “It’s a funny thing.”

  He paused, and I asked, “What is?”

  “Them sassenachs you was with, they’re called the Mill people. That’s on account their Demons come out from the top of a mill. In the next territory going north, you get the Stack people. Their Demons come from old chimney stacks. And up in the north port there’s Mast people. Theirs come out from tops of masts in old hulks at the harbor’s end.”

  “So what’s funny about it?” Paddy asked.

  “Well, I been traveling the length and breadth of this land more’n sixty years. I’ve seed a sight of high places, but never a Demon’s nest in one of ’em. It’s as though they’re reserved special for sassenachs. No, us didikoy don’t bother Demons, and Demons don’t bother us. Now let’s talk of our proper concerns. Before you puts a gun away, you cleans it. Sit ye there, and watch the way I do it.”

  I duly watched: Everything Mordecai did was worth watching and learning from. But my sense of uncertainty and confusion lingered. The fact that gypsies were not called to Summonings and that he had never seen a Demon was one thing, the fact of Demons’ existence quite another. Having seen them with my eyes, had my ears bombarded by their cries, it was something of which I could be certain. It puzzled me that he, so interested in everything that went on about him, should be so indifferent in this case. I recalled Mother Ryan saying the Master too had made light of Demons. How could they—in their very different ways the two wisest men I had known—have been so incurious?

  I tried to tell myself it did not matter, that nothing mattered outside this good life which now embraced us. I thought of the luxury and order of Pengelly’s villa, contrasting it with the rough-and-ready freedom of the gypsy way, and knew beyond doubt which I preferred. I thought, too, of being Master of Old Isle, a faraway, forgotten dream.

  But were any of them things that really mattered? What of the aim we had been pursuing when we were saved from Pengelly’s men and taken in by Mordecai? What of Mother Ryan? Well, we were still heading in the right direction. That was something, wasn’t it? I glanced at Paddy, who was leaning back looking up at a yellow moon. It was she who had said there was no particular hurry about catching up with the others. I was shamefully glad she hadn’t brought the subject up again.

  • • •

  It was a summer of sustained good weather, warm even by the standard of the Western Isles. Morning after morning we were wakened by the sun’s rays slanting under the caravan as the year matured, day by leafy day. Cherrie
s and gooseberries ripened, and strawberries, raspberries, plums, pears, and apples followed in tempting succession. Some of these fruits grew wild, but I fear more came out of gardens and orchards. Several times we were chased by angry sassenachs (as we too came to call them), twice nearly caught. “Thieving gypsies!” they yelled after us as we legged it with our spoils.

  At the beginning I thought occasionally of Sheriff Wilson’s words in the General’s office: “We found you . . . will always find you, wherever you may be.” He had sounded confident. But as the days passed, both the threat and the recollection of the Sheriff himself grew shadowy. I felt safe in a green wilderness.

  We grew to know the other gypsies, discovering them to be ordinary people, neither specially good nor bad. Marie, for instance, was a scold, as quick to turn her razor-edge tongue on us as on her own three children. Petey was a sot: The gypsies made their own liquor and apart from him used it moderately. He was more noisy when drunk than Andy had been, and the first time we witnessed him ranting and falling about was alarming, but we grew used to it. He did no harm.

  Neddo was the tribe’s chief, though it was his mother, Gypsy Granny, who commanded most respect. She was very small, brown and wrinkled like a walnut, and fearsome when crossed. I gave offense in the first week by making too much noise near their caravan while she was having her afternoon nap, and thereafter I thought it best to steer clear of her. But she took a fancy to Paddy, and Paddy to her.

  She hauled me in also one afternoon, to help prepare black currants for a pie. (At each camp, Neddo made a clay oven, around which embers were skillfully packed, for the tribe’s baking.) This was a tedious job, which she supervised with eyes that, however old, were relentlessly sharp for tops and tails not as neatly snipped as she demanded.