The Snow Gypsy(38)

Rose pitched her tent on a forest floor dotted with wild orchids. When it was up she and Nieve went off to gather mushrooms for the evening meal.

“There are wolves around here,” Nieve whispered. “Bears, too. And a thing called a lince.”

“What’s that?”

Nieve clawed the air and made a growling noise.

“A lion? Ah—a lynx,” Rose said.

“And there are bandits as well. Uncle Cristóbal told me. When we stopped here on the way to France, we heard some trying to steal our horses.”

“What happened?”

“The men chased them off.”

Rose wondered if she should have pitched her tent a little closer to the circle of vardos. “I think I’d better have Gunesh in with me tonight in that case,” she said.

Nieve’s mouth turned down at the edges.

“You can have him to stay with you when we get to Granada,” Rose said.

“What about you? Aren’t you going to stay with us?”

“I’m going to find a room in an inn. There won’t be anywhere to put my tent—and your house is going to be a bit crowded, I think, with you and your mother and your cousins. There’ll be a new baby, too, won’t there?” Rose felt her stomach contract.

“But you’ll come and see us, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course.” Meeting Cristóbal’s wife and children was going to be an ordeal—but she could hardly refuse to visit Nieve and Lola in their own home.

Later, when the meal of rabbit and mushroom stew had been eaten and Nieve was tucked up in bed, Rose sat with Lola by the fire. It was just the two of them. Cristóbal had gone to play his guitar with some of the other men. The plaintive rise and fall of his voice drifted across the woodland clearing. Rose wondered how someone so heartless could produce something so profound, so spiritual.

“It’s been lovely for Nieve, having you with us these past few days,” Lola said. “Lovely for me, too. You’ve been such good company.” Her eyes told Rose that these were not mere platitudes. She had noticed how the other Gypsy women were with Lola. How they excluded her from their tight-knit group with nothing more than their body language.

“And I haven’t had to worry about Nieve wandering off on her own,” Lola went on. “She nearly drove me frantic on the way to France. Every time we stopped she seemed to disappear.”

“I suppose she’s at an age where everything new is exciting,” Rose said.

Lola nodded. “I know I should let her explore. Give her more freedom. But . . .” She trailed off, leaning forward to poke the fire back to life. “I’m terrified of losing her—that’s the problem. I’ve lost everyone that I’ve ever loved—and it’s made me overprotective.”

“It must have been very hard for you, growing up during the Civil War.” Rose held her breath, hoping it didn’t sound as if she was prying.

“It was the worst time of my life. I lost my grandfather the month the war started. He was a blacksmith, and we lived with him at his forge in Capileira. The Escuadra Negra came and dragged him away. We never knew where he died. But we found out that more than twenty men from our village were killed that day.”

Rose listened in silence, staring into the blue-green flames rising from the pine twigs. The Escuadra Negra. The Black Squad. The very name was sinister. Lola would have been only eleven or twelve years old when the war started. The thought of a child seeing her grandfather dragged off to his death was horrendous.

“The men who were left went into hiding higher up the mountains,” Lola went on. “They were joined by people like your brother. They carried out raids on fascist military bases and bombed bridges to cut them off. I told you, didn’t I, that my mother used to hide partisans in the house sometimes when they came to the village, and that Amador, my brother, used to take messages to them when he took the goats out to pasture.”

Rose nodded. She wanted to ask what had happened to them—but she was afraid of saying anything that might make Lola clam up.

“I told you Amador was my twin, didn’t I?” Lola paused. Rose heard her blow out a breath. “We used to take it in turn to go out with the goats each morning. One day I was up on the mountain, and it started to snow. I was on my way down, and I heard shouting in the ravine below the village. I heard my mother’s voice. I ran as fast I could, but when I got there . . .”

Rose reached across the space between them. Finding Lola’s hand, she closed her fingers around it.

“There were bodies everywhere. All women, except for Amador. My mother was lying beside him, the two of them covered in blood, with the snow falling on top of them. I lay down beside them. I thought the blizzard would take me, too, that I would just fall asleep and never wake up. That’s what I wanted. But the goats had followed me down. They wouldn’t leave me alone. And then I heard a strange noise, like a cat mewing. But it wasn’t a cat. It was a newborn baby. The mother had been shot but not killed outright. She was still alive when I got to her.” Lola closed her eyes. “I had to cut the cord with my teeth. She asked me to take her child.”

Rose tried to imagine her fourteen-year-old self confronted with something so gruesome. How Lola had had the courage to save that newborn’s life in such horrific circumstances was staggering. That she’d even known what to do was astonishing.