The Enchantress (Book 1 of The Enchantress Saga) (8 page)

George nodded and sipped his wine, the fingers of his left hand drumming the table.

‘But all of you know why I am so anxious to be rid of you. You have always in your hearts adhered to the old faith, the Stuart cause. You are a danger and a hindrance to my advancement. Your family, Mother, has brought shame on the Delamain name. I do not care to be tarred with your brush. Would that the Allonbys, one and all, were safely over the water with their beloved Pretender. Tom, you openly espouse the old faith and, Brent and Emma ... I know well you are with Mother rather than with grandfather or me. I want to be rid of you, once and for all. I cannot wait to start a new life.’

Brent rose to his feet and crossed to where his brother sat.

‘Gladly, George, will we absent ourselves from our home. For it is our home whatever you may say. Even grandfather let us know that, however much he deplored the fact of father’s exile. You have abused that sense of hospitality that has always been a mark of our family name.

‘As for Tom and I, we shall go, and willingly. As soon as grandfather’s remains are laid to rest we shall take ourselves to people who do value and respect us, the Allonbys whom you so despise. We shall not lodge a night longer than necessary in a place where we are so unwelcome.’

‘Good,’ George said with satisfaction. ‘And when the militia come to disperse what is left of the Allonbys, God grant they take you off too and fling you in some loathsome dungeon where you are best forgotten ...’

‘George!’

His mother rose to her feet, eyes blazing.

‘I am still your mother, though God knows I sometimes wish I were not, for you disgrace me and the memory of your father. It is you who have caused this rift in our family, brought us to shame. You with your greed and your petty spite, George. I will stay in the dower for that is my right; but I will have as little to do with you as 1 can and Emma likewise. For if you cut us off we scorn you too. In your own family, George, you have this day made implacable enemies. Be it on your head, my son.’

George faltered and looked at his mother as though wondering if he should retract his words. He seemed to be once more the victim of warring forces as he stared at his mother and sister, his brothers whom he had just dispossessed.

But George Delamain – Sir George Delamain – had trained himself to eschew emotion from an early age. If momentarily he regretted the force of his words he quickly overcame such a sign of weakness and, without glancing backwards, strode purposefully out of the room leaving the great doors open behind him. His heavy footsteps echoed along the stone corridors as his family, still shocked at the abruptness of his words, gazed at each other wondering what the future would bring.

4

Analee felt instantly at home with the warm-hearted troupe of brothers and sister, Selinda, who welcomed her to their ranks. Selinda, who played the tambourine, was the most reserved, as her brother explained to them what had happened as they came back, exhausted from hours of playing. Each carried a large bag of coins which clinked satisfactorily together, indicating that there would be enough to eat for several days to come. Randal spoke hurriedly to them, bidding them pack up and be ready to start before dawn. By the time Analee had rejoined them they were all asleep curled up in the shadows of the cart, all except Randal who advised her to get as much rest as she could.

Now they were on their second day away from the gypsy camp wandering around the countryside near Penrith.

‘There we may bide the winter,’ Randal said, ‘for when the snow and the winds come ‘tis no place to be wandering on the roads.’

‘There is not enough work for us to bide there all winter,’ Hamo the fiddler said, ‘’tis best we go up to Carlisle and stop there.’

Hamo and Randal took turns leading the horse, and the girls walked by their side. Benjamin, the cripple, rode in the cart, entertaining them with his flute. Benjamin was like the runt of the litter compared with his tall strapping brothers – lean, wiry men with jet black hair and dark brown eyes. Selinda resembled her brothers, being dark and slim but of medium height. Her skin was whiter than theirs and there was an air of fragility about her, unusual in one who spent her time on the road. She had none of the sturdy robustness of Analee who swung along, easily keeping up with the men. From time to time they would halt to give Selinda time to rest or travel for a while with Benjamin in the cramped cart.

Benjamin was short, having suffered damage at birth and one of his legs was completely bent at the knee so that he had to hobble on his stick. He had a thin, emaciated frame and his arms and legs looked as though they would snap if any pressure were applied to them. His cheeks were hollow and his hair was sparse, unlike the thick thatches of his brothers, the luxurious raven locks of his sister. But the size and quality of his eyes, their luminosity as they blazed with amusement or affection, made Benjamin’s face almost beautiful. His skin had the transparency of fine porcelain and his mouth betrayed a sweetness of disposition as though he found himself permanently at peace with the world; in love with life.

Thus it was a gay troupe that Analee found she had joined as they walked briskly along chattering and laughing. Yet once on the road they were busy. There were rabbits to snare, hedges to explore for berries and ditches for hedgehogs, the odd fat pigeon to stalk, pounce upon and kill. There were herbs and grasses to gather to flavour their soups – mushrooms, nettles and wild garlic. Occasionally a lone fowl or chicken wandering on the road was seized and its neck wrung before it was plucked and roasted on a stick over a fire, its belly filled with rosemary and garlic.

At nightfall they sought the shelter of a wood or rocks and Randal and Hamo would make a fire while Selinda and Analee cooked whatever they had gathered during the day. Sometimes they had caught a hedgehog and then they made the favourite gypsy dish of
hotchi-witchi
by wrapping it in leaves and baking it in earth. They would take the prickles out with their fingers and divide the succulent flesh before cramming it into their mouths. More often than not, however, it was a rabbit or pigeon, or sometimes it was no meat at all but a soup made from berries and herbs in the gypsy way.

The other thing they did to pass their time on the road was to tell stories, and here Benjamin the dreamer excelled. They would gather around the little cart in which he rode and listen as he told tales about gypsy lore, or invented new ones himself about those far off days when the gypsies had come from the east and dispersed all over Europe. There were so many legends about the Romany folk handed down from generation to generation that no one knew whether they were true or false. The true ones were embellished in the telling and the false ones came, in time, to be regarded as true.

They skirted the town of Penrith and its surrounding hamlets and villages, moving all the time across that flat plain to the hills that proclaimed Ullswater and the range of lakes, valleys and mountains that stretched to the sea. At times hills appeared out of a haze, as though floating on cloud, and then they reminded Analee of some enchanted land such as she had heard her grandmother talk of in her far-off childhood. When the sun rose or set behind the hills and the sky was streaked with reds, purples and many shades of gold, Analee would be spellbound by the sheer beauty of it and yearn to be among the peaks, clambering along the narrow passes, roaming through the bracken and short wiry grass or sleeping in some sheltering cave.

At the head of Lake Ullswater they played in the tavern of the tiny village of Pooley and the next morning Analee crept out of the tent she shared with Selinda just as dawn was breaking. She stood by the side of the lake which, it seemed to her, was so large it must lead to the sea for it disappeared out of sight hidden behind the high fells on one side and the thick woods on the other.

There were one or two tiny islands on the lake, and the calm water with scarcely a ripple disturbing its surface was so enticing that impulsively Analee stepped into it wading out until it was almost up to her knees. She held up her skirts and nearly cried at the bitter cold of the water which came from high in the ice-bound hills.

All that day the troupe wandered along by the side of the lake with its wooded bays and rocky inlets, through the tiny villages nestling on its shores and across the broad valley of Patterdale with truly gigantic peaks towering on either side. One or two remote farmhouses were tucked in the folds of the steep fells upon which the hardy Herdwick sheep incredibly found purchase with their nimble feet.

The valley seemed to be the limit of their journey and when they came to the small lake at the end of it they bathed their weary feet and gazed upwards seeking a way out. Although beautiful and fertile, it was an empty desolate place with no more hamlets with taverns to play in.

A crofter, passing the time of day with this curious group, told them that there was a bridle path over the mountains to Ambleside and Windermere but he shook his head at the pony and cart and the sight of the cripple and the pale weary girl. Selinda tired easily and sat on a stone shivering, her arms pressed to her chest for warmth.

‘Them mountains terrify me,’ she said. ‘If you go on, I go back.’

‘Aye and me too,’ Benjy said, remembering the crofter’s piteous glance. ‘You cannot get the cart over there and I cannot go without it.’

Analee held her hand over her eyes and looked towards the massive mountain range which hemmed them in. They didn’t terrify her; they thrilled her. Were she alone she would take off along that narrow winding path that soon disappeared out of sight among the jutting crags. It was a ravaged, harsh wilderness with the individual alone among the elements.

‘We could perish in the mountains and none be the wiser,’ Hamo whined, and Analee looked at him with contempt; there was a soft side to Hamo and, more than anyone else, he was always grumbling and complaining about the lack of comfort.

Randal was whittling at a stick, frowning, indecisive for once. She knew he wanted to go on, and yet he was aware of the drawbacks. He glanced at her as though to say why did they not venture on alone and leave the others? She knew what was in his mind, had been for some time. All that prevented him was the presence of his brothers and sister.

He didn’t displease her; on a cold night she would rather have his body hugging hers than poor Selinda whose thin frame brought no warmth. But she liked things as they were; the dancing, the adventure. If they made love she would have to leave, for she never stayed with casual lovers for more than a night or two. If she wanted to ease the yearning of the flesh she saw nothing wrong with it; but her affections could not be engaged. Her heart was ice-bound like the mountains. It was not to be taken, certainly not by Randal Buckland.

‘We best turn back,’ Analee said. ‘We have not eaten well for days, Randal, and Selinda grows even thinner.’

Analee looked at her with pity; yes, a puny, delicate girl with large eyes black-rimmed with fatigue. She was ill-suited for the road, for the harsh life they led.

Randal threw his stick into the bushes and took the reins of the pony, circling the cart so that it faced the way they had come. Analee didn’t know why, but the gesture filled her with foreboding and she glanced behind her at the massive wall of rock they were forsaking as though there were something about it that would protect her. Somehow she felt there was some symbolic meaning in the act of turning back, that it was the wrong thing for her to do. She wondered if she should abandon them and go on, press on ever towards the sea?

Randal was looking at her. He smiled and held out a hand beckoning her on.

So they turned their backs on the heart of lakeland, and returned the way they had come towards the flat countryside lying between Ullswater and Penrith. Their spirits rose as they found more nourishing food to eat, sometimes given them by crofters or a kindly farmer’s wife.

In many ways it was an idyllic life in that fine hot summer. Sometimes they would stop in a village and Hamo would get out his fiddle and Benjy his flute, and Analee and Randal would link arms and begin the measured steps of a saraband, Analee accompanying herself on the castanets and Selinda throwing her tambourine high over her head. At the end of an hour or two when the whole village had gathered and some were beginning to drift away, Benjamin would limp around with a bag attached to a stick, going one way and Selinda going the other so that the whole circle of onlookers was encouraged to give a coin or two. Then they would buy food in the village and that night they would eat well.

Thus they made their way back to Penrith the town perched on a hill, so high that from parts of it you could see into Scotland. The great castle in the centre towered over the narrow streets and houses, which clustered together so that in some places they almost seemed to lean over and touch one another.

As soon as she came into a town Analee was aware of a constriction that made her long to be away from it again. She hated the feel of cobbles beneath her bare feet, the noise and shouts of those who thronged the streets going about their business. Selinda seemed aware of her fear and moved closer to her.

‘We know several of the tavern keepers here and always do a good trade. Sometimes we are asked to one of the great houses in the area. Twice we have played and danced at Lowther Castle, but at night we go to a field outside the town to make our camp. Do not fear.’

Analee smiled and grasped Selinda’s hand. ‘I do not fear; but I hate towns. Would we could always keep to the open road.’

Selinda glanced at her companion about whom she was curious because she said so little about herself. With the gypsy’s respect for an individual’s privacy neither Selinda nor her brothers would have dreamt of questioning Analee. They knew she was not from the north like them. Like them she spoke in the
Romani
tongue, but her accent was not theirs. At first they had thought she was foreign; she was so tall and her skin was of an olive cast like their brother and sister gypsies they occasionally met from Italy or Spain. But at night as they sat around their fires Analee just listened while they spoke of their experiences or joined with them as they quietly sang the gypsy lullabys which were universal.