The Snow Gypsy(96)

“I heard a noise,” Nieve said as they made their way back through the woods.

“What kind of noise?” Rose struggled to keep her voice steady.

“Like a bonfire when it crackles, only louder.”

“Probably someone out hunting.” Rose glanced down the hill, shielding Nieve as they emerged into the meadow. But there was no sign of Zoltan. The body had vanished.

When they reached the cottage, Lola scooped Nieve up in her arms and hugged her tight. “I’ve packed food and water for the journey,” she said, glancing at Rose over Nieve’s head. “I didn’t know whether . . .” She paused, biting her lip.

“I have to talk to him,” Rose said quickly. “But you two should get going. Wait for me at the top of the mountain—I’ll catch you up there.” Her eyes darted to the door. “Could you bear to take Batista’s mule? It’s still tied up outside.”

Lola’s eyes widened.

“It makes no sense to leave it here,” Rose urged. “It’s not the animal’s fault that its owner was a monster.”

“A monster?” Nieve whipped her head around. “Where?”

“Auntie Rose was just joking.” Lola stroked the child’s hair. “Come on, cari?o—there’s a special present waiting for us outside.”



A bloody trail led across the meadow from the spot where Batista had died. As she began to follow it, she caught a whiff of smoke. She ran to where the ground fell away. Zoltan was stripped to the waist, shoveling earth. A few yards away a heap of clothing smoldered on a wood fire. A flame curled up the shiny leather tricorn hat balanced on top of the pile.

Zoltan didn’t hear her until she was standing right behind him.

“Tell me it wasn’t true.”

He drew his hand across his forehead as he straightened up. “Let me explain, Rose—”

“It is true! My God!”

“Listen to me—please!” He went to take her hand, but she snatched it away.

“You made me believe you were a prisoner in a concentration camp! Said you were a Gypsy—when all the time you were killing Gypsies—women and children like Lola and Nieve! And Jews! People just like me.”

Zoltan closed his eyes, shaking his head. “I was never a member of the party—I never subscribed to that. We were just part of a state machine. There was no choice about joining the army—you had no say in where you were sent or what you did.”

“So you just did nothing?” Rose blew out a breath. “You were there, watching all those innocent people being slaughtered!”

He dropped down to a squat, his head in his hands. “Rose, I can’t change what I was. I’m ashamed of that person. Ashamed that I was too much of a coward to resist what I was being made to do.”

She grabbed his wrist, pushing him, sending him sprawling to the ground. “Are you telling me that you were some lowly camp guard just driven by orders? Do you expect me to believe that Batista would have a file on a person like that?”

He raised himself on his elbow. She saw the muscles in his jaw quiver as he opened his mouth. “No, I don’t. All I’m asking you to believe in is forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Rose stared into the face that, just hours before, she had been kissing. Into eyes so blue, so soulful. Eyes that had deceived her—and a mouth that had lied to her: not just once but countless times. Even if she could make allowances for that, how could she absolve him of collaborating in the murder of all those helpless people?

“It’s not me you should be begging for mercy,” she said. “Did it never occur to you, when you were making love to me, that if I’d had the misfortune to be born in occupied Europe, you’d have killed me without a moment’s thought?”

Zoltan stared at the mound of earth beyond his feet. “Don’t you think I burned inside when you talked about what happened to your relatives? Don’t you think I wake up every single morning hating myself for what I did? When you came into my life, it felt as if I’d been given a second chance, that if you could love me, I could somehow learn to love myself.”

“I did love you,” she breathed. “But it wasn’t the real you. The person I fell in love with doesn’t exist. I don’t even know your real name, do I?” She held up her hand. “No—I don’t want to know!”

“Rose, please!”

She clapped her hands to her ears, stumbling across the grass. To remain in his presence a moment longer was utter misery. She had to get away. Had to find Lola and Nieve. Had to break out of this nightmare.



Lola sat on a sun-warmed rock, watching Nieve chasing Gunesh in and out of the crumbling stone walls that were all that remained of the shrine of the Virgin of the Snows. She had taken shelter inside those walls on that terrifying trek to Granada, huddling against the warm bodies of the goats in a desperate bid to stop herself and the baby in her arms from freezing to death.

She thought about the man whose actions had driven her up the mountain in the teeth of a blizzard. The man who now lay lifeless in the valley below. She had wished him dead that night all those years ago—murderous thoughts interspersed with frantic prayers for her own life and the life of the baby. She’d recalled the story of the traveler stranded in snow, who had prayed to the Virgin for mercy. And she’d tried to convince herself that Christ’s mother would surely look kindly on a young girl with a baby. But she hadn’t really expected to survive that long, dark night. How could she deserve mercy when her heart was so full of hate?