The Snow Gypsy(61)

“No—it’s okay,” Rose replied. “Let’s go and see the mule first.” The prospect of searching through what Zoltan had found made her stomach flip over. She was almost afraid to look, afraid of building up her hopes only to have them dashed if there was nothing there.

The sight of the sick animal forced her to put all other thoughts aside. It had a weeping sore the size of an apple at the base of its neck. Rose took a closer look while Zoltan held the animal’s head.

“Yes,” she said, “I can see it’s infected—it smells pretty awful, doesn’t it?”

Zoltan nodded. “The man in the next stall to mine at the market said I’d have to shoot it. He reckons the thing you said it was is incurable.”

“A lot of people think that. But I met Gypsies in England who knew how to cure it—that’s where I got the remedy from.”

“Hmm. There were people in Hungary like that, on my mother’s side of the family. I didn’t have much to do with animals, though, when I was living there.”

Rose hesitated, wondering if he was going to tell her more about his life before coming to Spain, but he didn’t—and she didn’t want to press him. “Have you got the potato and garlic water ready?” she asked.

“It’s in that bucket over there.”

“Okay. He’s not going to like it, so hold on tight.” Rose took a clean piece of rag from her bag and dipped it in the bucket. “Steady, boy!” Between them they managed to keep the mule from rearing up.

“You’re going to need to bathe it four times a day until it stops weeping,” Rose said. “It shouldn’t be quite so much of a shock to him next time. Do you think you’ll manage?”

“I think so.”

“You need to starve him for twenty-four hours—nothing but water,” she went on. “Then give him bran with a dollop of honey mixed in—and a handful each of these.” From her bag she produced two bunches of herbs that she’d picked from the riverbank on the way to Nieve’s school.

“Is that watercress?”

“Yes—and wild garlic.”

“And that’s it? No medicine?”

“That is the medicine.” She smiled. “He should be as right as rain in a week or so.”

The kettle was steaming when they went back into the cottage. Zoltan fetched the boxes from upstairs while the coffee was brewing. Then they both started sifting through the letters, identity papers, photographs, and maps. Rose glanced across the table. Zoltan was unlike any Gypsy she had ever met. He was scanning the documents as if he’d been reading all his life.

“I started looking when I got home yesterday,” Zoltan said. “I went through all the envelopes with British stamps on—but I didn’t find anything with your brother’s name on it.”

“Some of the letters aren’t in envelopes.” Rose held a sheet of thin blue airmail paper up to the light. “Did you look at those?”

Zoltan shook his head. “There are notes scribbled on scraps of cardboard, too. Do you think you’d recognize his handwriting?”

Rose took Nathan’s letter from her pocket and laid it out on the table. Then they both fell silent, scanning each item and piling them up beside their coffee cups. The knot in Rose’s stomach tightened as she read through heartfelt letters from people just like herself. Women who had brothers, sweethearts, husbands, or sons who had left everything behind to join the war against the fascists. And then there were the photographs—images of women, mostly, smiling out with eager, hopeful eyes. Some had messages written in tiny letters at the bottom of the photo or scribbled on the reverse side. To read them was agonizing. Rose wondered if any of these women had seen their loved ones return home.

Zoltan looked up as she was gazing at a particularly moving image of two little boys in Santa Claus hats, waving at the camera. “Not all of them have names on, do they?” he said. “I’ll put any like that over on this side for you to have a look at.”

Rose drew in a breath as she laid the image of the children aside. She thought it a slim chance that any of the pictures belonged to Nathan. He had never mentioned a girlfriend back in England, and he had left in such a hurry—and in such high spirits—it was unlikely he would have thought of packing a family photograph in his rucksack.

“This is a strange one.” Zoltan’s voice broke through her thoughts. “It’s dedicated to an animal, not a person.”

“An animal?”

“Yes. It’s written in Spanish. It says ‘To the horse, with all my love.’”

Rose leaned across to look at the snapshot in his hand. His thumb was over the face of a woman with long dark hair. “Can I have a look?”

Al Caballo con todo mi amor, Adelita.

Rose’s mouth opened but no sound came out.

“What? What is it?”

“My brother,” she whispered. “His nickname was Horse.”



Rose was afraid to believe that the photograph belonged to Nathan. She told herself that a nickname like that could be commonplace in Spain—although Zoltan didn’t agree. It took them another hour of careful searching to find something that corroborated the theory that the girl in the snapshot was her brother’s fiancée. It was a note, written in pencil on the back of a railway timetable. Rose recognized Nathan’s distinctive, sloping scrawl. It simply said “Tell Adelita I’ll be there for Our Lady of the Snows.”