Gypsy Jewel (10 page)

Damien did not react. In fact, he had lost attention for five full minutes, recalling his own sweet encounter with another young woman earlier. He could not shrug aside memories of her glorious golden hair, her emerald-green eyes and the secretive half-smile when she had danced for him. He longed to be with her now, anywhere but in this stuffy closed tent with sweating bodies and the suggestive squirming of the lewd woman across the aisle.

Nicky’s testimony finally ended, and looking smug, the youth surrendered the floor to his mother.

With a smile at her son that was anything but maternal, Belita rose with a shimmy and a jangle and haughtily took her place directly before Damien. Knowing full well he held Nicky’s fate in his foreign hands, she gave Damien a direct burning look and struck a pose that might have been arousing on any other woman. It inspired only faint disgust in Damien.

“
Kristatora
. You have heard my son speak. He speaks from his heart, as his mother must do now.” Belita wet her shiny red lips and continued in a husky voice. “This may be difficult for you to believe, but Belita must tell the truth. I have been with the Lowara for over two years. Never have I been brought before a
kris
myself.” That much was true; she didn’t bother to mention that she’d been banished from her birth band for attacking another woman in a fit of jealousy, and blinding her in one eye.

“I have seen the old witch and her spawn,” Belita continued, her low voice seeming to mesmerize every man but Damien. “At night they practice evil arts, chanting in their wagon and wishing ill upon any who cross them. I never did believe the story of the old woman finding the girl. April sprang to life from Tzigane’s dark cards. Now she is a young witch herself, and that wild horse is her familiar.”

Belita continued like a building storm, until she had carelessly shredded every bit of April’s character, who was not present to defend herself. The language she used was vile, and Damien glanced at Jingo to see the king’s disapproval covering his face like a thundercloud. Such viciousness was unworthy of Rom, a people who needed to band tightly together in a
gaje
world.

When she was finally through, her chest heaving proudly from the exertion, Belita shot one last seductive look of smoldering promise toward Damien and then followed her son out of the tent.

Jingo was inscrutable. “Next,” he said, “we will hear from the other witnesses.” He called out to have them brought in, and three giggly restless girls were thrust before Damien, blushing and stammering out their stories about how they had seen April throwing herself at Nicky, then slashing him with the knife.

“Do you have any questions for these witnesses?” was all Jingo asked when they were through, as he had with both Nicky and Belita. Damien asked them a few rote questions, still not certain of their credibility, but they seemed too stupid to concoct any fantastic stories that would persist unchanged for so long.

They had obviously witnessed something in the woods, but what? Had the girl offered herself to Nicabar, or had the horse trader attacked her?

Damien mulled over the matter while the three girls left, the one called Marya taking a last angry moment to hurl a curse after April’s name. Then the men were secluded for a time as they awaited the defendant.

Jingo said soberly, “I am sorry that you must see this side of the Lowara. But I am relieved that it will be over soon, and finally put to rest.”

But would it be? Outside Damien heard muttering in the camp, as the people grew restless and anxious for the decision. Then the voices rose and grew, as the defendant apparently passed toward the king’s tent, and Damien heard Belita’s coarse cry trailing after her.

Engrossed in his own thoughts, he could neither speak nor breathe when a slim silhouette of a young woman slipped into the tent, and the lamplight gleamed down the length of her rich golden hair.

Equally startled to see him, April stopped and stared, shaking her head a little in disbelief. Surely the stranger so coldly assessing her now could not be the same man who had leapt naked from a stream, chased, and caught her in the wood.

April could not bear to feel Damien’s blue eyes taking cool measure of her while she stood there waiting for Jingo to begin the questioning. She was furious, imagining what he might be thinking. She knew what Belita and Nicky must have said about her.

At Jingo’s order, she related her defense. She had been so sure of herself earlier, calm and poised, ready to defend to the death. But Damien’s presence unnerved her, and April faltered again and again, until a long silence broke in which he finally spoke briskly.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name.”

He was needling her for having denied it to him earlier, she knew.

“April,” she said, a brief spark of defiance lighting her green eyes for a moment.

“That is not a
romani
name, is it,
Vaivoides
?”

Damien addressed the king with the respect due his station, and Jingo noted the younger man’s curiosity as he replied, “No. April was named for the month in which she was found, a fancy of her foster mother, Tzigane. You may have seen the
phuri dai
. That is the woman who took April in as a babe, the one that Belita spoke of.”

So, the girl was not true Rom after all. But the mystery in the woods intrigued Damien more. Had April truly attacked Nicabar? The boy had the scar to show for it, exactly as would have resulted from a woman’s strength used in anger. And as Damien already knew, this proud girl had a temper simmering underneath that silky golden skin, though whether it would drive her to kill, he wasn’t sure.

As he questioned April in seeming impartiality, both of them were aware of the undercurrent of tension pulling them together from several feet apart. The intensity of the night before, the playful escapade at the stream, all combined now to make them uneasily aware of each other in the close confines of the tent.

The rapt silence of the others only made the world fall away the easier, and Damien found himself halting at times just to stare into her deep, still green eyes. Surely no lake had ever been so enticing, no sea ever beckoned so strongly to him. And yet there was nothing coy or obvious about April. She was wholly unaware of her power over men, and her few direct gazes at Damien were proud and defiant.

He held her very life now. What would Damien do, this stranger from another land, another world? Did her existence mean even less to him than it did to Belita? Would he let Nicky’s cruel mother extract vengeance after all?

April knew that her tale had tumbled out too quickly and too scattered to be believable. Nicky and his friends had had weeks to smooth their stories and accusations. With the deep despair of one who knows she is lost, April at last fell silent and simply stared at the ground.

“Have you nothing more to say?” Jingo prompted her anxiously. It was clear the king was worried she would leave it at that, a confused jumble of words, but April could only gesture helplessly back.

“I submit to the
kris
,” was all she could manage.

Everyone looked at Damien. His blue eyes never leaving the girl, he said slowly, “I must have time to think on this. At least a day.” Jingo was reluctant to postpone the decision, but he understood their guest’s hesitancy in making a rash ruling. He granted Damien the extra day, with the condition that he be excluded from the influence of any of the gypsies until then.

“You may go now, April,” Jingo told the girl. She had not followed the others out of the tent, but still stood uncertainly before the gripping gaze of the blue-eyed man.

Then suddenly, she turned and rushed out, clearly fighting rising emotions. Jingo looked after her, and said in a low voice to Damien, “There’s an old Rom saying you may have heard, “
si khohaimo may patshivalo sar o tshat-shimo
… sometimes, there are lies more believable than truth.”

Damien knew that was the closest the king dared come to begging for the life of the beautiful gypsy girl.

“A
PRIL!
W
HAT ARE YOU
doing?”

In the darkness a male voice hissed softly behind her, and she jumped and whirled around. Prince Adar snorted and sidestepped the halter she was trying to work over his nose.

“Petalo! You scared me to death.” April spoke in a fast, furious whisper, attempting to calm the stallion. She glanced at the young man she had practically grown up with. Though he was her age, Petalo was still far from grown-up. What he lacked in wisdom, however, he made up for in canniness, and April had always thought of him as a mischievous little brother.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she whispered. “I’m running away just like you said I should last week.”

She thought nothing of it when Petalo’s hand pressed down on her shoulder as a friend’s would, and he recanted quietly, “I was wrong to tell you that. It’s too dangerous. The moon is full tonight and you won’t make it far out of camp.”

“Far enough to escape death,” she muttered, as her anxious fingers finished securing the bridle on the horse. “Don’t you see, I have nothing to lose?”

Petalo was silent for a tense moment, then his young voice broke as he said, “There is another way. I have talked to Jingo of it. I am ready to return to my band in the spring. I would be proud to take you back as my wife.”

April knew what it cost her friend to make such an offer. Not taking him seriously, she said bitterly, “A wife accused of attempted murder. What a story that would make at the next Rom reunion. No, Petalo, there must be another way out, and I intend to find it tonight.”

The young man reached out and restrained the black by the halter. “April, you know Nicky will hunt you down if you try to leave.”

“But I must try.” Quick tears welled in her eyes. “Tzigane is in danger as long as I am here, and I will not see her suffer because of me. Already Belita’s stories about black magic have made the others shy away from my mother. If I am gone, they will quickly forget everything. Let me go, Petalo. You will wake up the others.”

But the urgent whispers in the night had already roused Damien. He had not been able to sleep anyway, but lay awake in the darkness musing upon the decision he must make about April. Lifting the canvas flap of the wagon, he glanced out and intently watched the scene unfolding before his eyes.

April was talking softly with a handsome youth with a shaggy black mane of hair. To his surprise, Damien felt a stab of jealousy when she reached up and gave the unfamiliar lad a chaste kiss on the cheek. A lover’s assignation? He thought not, but the way the boy was speaking so low and urgently to April, he had to wonder.

Suddenly April reached out and gave the boy a firm push, urging him to go. It was obvious to Damien that she was trying to escape, but the question was, had she asked the other fellow to stay behind or to go get another horse?

He felt a twinge of regret at the thought of never seeing her again. And she might succeed, if she continued to keep her steed silent. She had taken care to wrap the stallion’s hooves in canvas to muffle the noise, and kept feeding the horse a steady stream of tasty tidbits to quell his restless blood. She was certainly a resourceful young lady, he thought with admiration.

Only moments more and April would be on the black stallion and away. Detesting himself as he did it, Damien quickly knelt just outside the tent and reached out to retrieve a small, smooth pebble from the dirt.

Taking careful aim, he tossed it in the clump of dry brush behind the wild-eyed stallion. As he predicted, the horse shied and whinnied, raising an instant alarm and rousing the slumbering camp.

Obviously trapped, April made no move to hide. She was surrounded within moments and hustled off to a wagon at the other end of camp. The angry murmur among the gypsies told Damien he could not delay any further. First thing in the morning, he must settle the matter of April, though it would cost them both their freedom.

“Y
OU HAVE REACHED A
decision?” Jingo sounded relieved. “Good. April’s attempt to escape last night upset everyone. Well, you may tell me first. Then I will tell the others, who will accept it more easily coming from me.”

Damien nodded, feeling strangely uneasy for the first time among these generous people. He was betraying all of them, not just April and her apparent lover, but all of the Romany who believed him to be of their heart and mind. To a great extent he was, but his first loyalty still lay with the Queen of England and the Emperor of France, and he must never forget it.

Surprised to find his own voice emerge steady, Damien announced, “I find the girl guilty of attacking Nicabar.”

Jingo winced but nodded, resigned. The evidence was such that nothing else could have been decided. But he was disappointed in Damien’s decision to punish April.

“The reasons for her actions are still unclear,” Damien said, “for April never denied slashing the boy, but said he assaulted her in the woods. I suspect there may have been truth to that, but either way, she is still guilty. Now I will pronounce her sentence.”