"She is my mother," I repeated, "and I would like to find her, please. Where is she?"
"Where is she? Where is the arrow shot into the sky? Where is the treasure buried? Where does the owl fly in the moonless night? We are Gypsies, child. We meet, we greet, we go again, wherever the wind blows."
She said these things not as if to make folly of my question but more as a litany. Yet I sensed evasion. Something she was not telling me.
I tried again. "With what caravan does she travel?"
"With the caravan of many beautiful horses, child, black starred with white. May I see your hand now? Often have I held your mother"s hand, studied the lines of her palm, and told her fortune for no reason except that I revere her. There will be no crossing of my palm with silver. May I read your hand?"
Let the gentle reader please be a.s.sured that I took palmistry no more seriously than I did the making of wishes whilst blowing out birthday candles. I had been raised in an enlightened family, my father a logician, my mother a Suffragist, all of us free-thinkers who scorned superst.i.tion and regarded fortune-telling as a parlour amus.e.m.e.nt.
Yet I saw nothing to be gained by refusing the Gypsy woman her wish, whereas something might come of talking with her longer.
There we stood on the busy street, and paying no attention to horses, vehicles, or pa.s.sersby, the Gypsy woman grasped both of my ungloved hands with surprising gentleness in her dry, tough fingers. She looked first at the backs of my hands, and then turning them, she studied the palms, squeezing my left hand with an odd unsmiling affection. "It might as well be your mother"s all over again," she remarked, "except that it has a longer, deeper, and less divided line of the heart." She gave my left hand back to me. "That one belongs to the past and the family. It is the right hand that shows one"s true self, both fate and deeds."
"Even if one is left-handed?" Like my parents I question everything, but also I remembered Cecily, the left-handed lady who became a slave to society"s expectations when she was forced to use her right hand.
Fleetingly the Gypsy grimaced. "Such a question could come only from your mother"s daughter. Are you left-handed?"
"No."
"Then why ask? Hush, child, and let me see. . . ." She studied the palm of my right hand with such fixed intensity that time seemed to recede along with the clamour of the city and the pa.s.sing of traffic in the square. When she began to trace the features of my palm with the feather-light touch of a fingertip, I felt her touch reverberate throughout my personage to my deepest being. I stood without moving because I chose to do so, but also as if in a sort of trance.
She said in the rhythmic tones of a Mesmerist, "Your line of destiny begins with a star on the mound of Saturn and runs strongly into your line of life. The wedding ring on your left hand tells a lie. In truth you are alone, you have been alone even in your childhood days, and you are fated to be alone all your life unless you act to defy your fate."
I felt the truth of the words settle heavily, like a brick, in my bosom, yet I merely nodded. "What else?"
"Your heart line, again on this hand, long and strong. You have a deeply loving nature, yet no lover. You address this problem by loving humankind. You try to help, to serve, to do good in whatever way you can."
Her manner was so matter-of-fact that no blushes were necessary; again I merely nodded.
She went on. "Your hand is slender and sensitive, of an artistic nature, and your sun line shows great intelligence and intuition. It begins with a star on the mound of Apollo. One star on a hand is rare. Two stars-never before have I seen this, not even on your mother"s palm."
Instantly I had but one thought. "Where is my mother?"
"Your hand cannot tell me that."
"But you can?"
"I can speak only for the Mary of Magdala, the Mary of Bethany, the Black Mary. Your mother is where your mother is fated to be. You, Enola, must beware of following her. Follow your own stars. That is all I have to say to you. Now I go."
And there I stood for a moment like a statue with my right hand extended until I blinked as if awakening and looked around me. I had not told the Gypsy woman my name. How had she known my name?
Where was she?
I scanned Dorsett Square, and although my glance once more encountered the hokey-pokey man (with nary a thought of ice-cream this time), the girls swinging from the lamppost, and all the rest of it, I could not see the tall Gypsy woman anywhere. Where had she gone? Her disappearance seemed almost supernatural.
Nonsense, I told myself. She could have concealed herself in the public lavatory, for at Dorsett Square stood one of London"s monuments to hygiene, featuring iron columns, carved Grecian figures, and a clock tower. Or she could have gone into the Underground. Or she could even have taken a cab, for directly in front of the Underground station was a cab-stand, of course. But this escape route seemed less likely. Because of the fine summertime weather, open-fronted hansom cabs were plentiful and four-wheeled "growlers," the sort of cab one could hide in, rather lacking.
To hide, however, was quite what I wanted, suddenly realising how badly my dress and person were stained and grimed by my venture into the tunnel, and even more so, how dishevelled were my thoughts and emotions. Hurrying back downstairs into the dim Underground, I took the first train, and by a circuitous route made my way to the Professional Women"s Club. I needed to calm myself and think.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.
MY ROOM, LIKE THE EXCLUSIVELY FEW OTHERS IN the third storey of this sanctuary, was rather Spartan in its furnishings; this was, after all, a haven for intellectual women interested in Dress Reform and other freedoms, not likely to care whether the tables were draped or the bed wore a skirt. But the food, as I have said, was excellent. I ordered a plate of sandwiches to be brought to my room, and then, once bathed, I sat in my dressing-gown devouring tuna-paste, cuc.u.mber, and watercress, attempting to comfort both body and mind. I reminded myself that today was not the first time I had encountered someone who knew my mother. I had overheard her Suffragist contemporaries speaking of her the first time I visited the club. I could not understand why my encounter with the Gypsy woman had left me so flummoxed, and as is my custom when such is the case, I turned to paper and pencil.
Swiftly I sketched picture after picture. I drew the Gypsy woman"s face; the intensity of her catlike gaze almost frightened me. I drew a raven in flight, certainly not riding on my shoulder; in olden times, speaking ravens accompanied soothsayers, but also the black birds flocked to battlefields, waiting to feed on death. I drew the ill-tempered tosher in the Underground tunnel, caricaturing his strawberry nose and cauliflower ears as revenge for the scare he had given me. I tried to draw the Gypsy woman again but found her turning into Mum; this was most disconcerting, as I could not normally call my mother"s features clearly to mind; seeing them emerge hurt my heart. Turning that sketch face-down, I tried another, drawing a delicate, lovely lady, fair-haired and slender, with the most exquisitely sensitive eyes. She soothed my feelings so that I was drawing her again from a different angle before I realised she was Blanchefleur, Duquessa del Campo.
Oh, for Heaven"s sake, there I sat-I"d be drawing horsies next-eating fish-paste sandwiches, when I should be finding out what had happened to her!
Shoving all other thoughts aside along with my sketches, I set to work, attempting to reason out, on paper, what might have become of Lady Blanchefleur.
Either she disappeared of her own free will
or she has met with accident or foul play.
If her own will, how did she hide from
searching ladies-in-waiting?
Down track? Most unlikely, but must be
investigated.
Must learn more about lady"s background-
unhappiness? Her letter to her mum not
cheerful.
If accident or foul play?
Accident: She fell through a grating into
a sewer, broke her leg so she cannot climb
out, and no one can hear her screams?
Unspeakably melodramatic.
Foul play: She has been taken by force.
For ransom-but no demand has been
r eceived.
For some other purpose? Revenge? Who
is her enemy?
Again, inquire into lady"s background.
Perhaps the entire subway story is a fiction
concocted by the ladies-in-waiting?
But surely the emotion I had observed in them was genuine. I did not believe that last sentence for a moment, and none of my other jottings felt particularly insightful, either.
In such cases one quite needs to cease thinking for an hour or two, thereby letting the mind alone to do its work. But how to distract myself meanwhile?
Visit Mrs. Tupper, of course! It had been several days, my dear deaf former landlady would be delighted to see me, and the venture was always quite a diversion. At once I arose from my chair to prepare.
Mrs. Tupper, I must explain, was now a guest-in-residence at the amazingly populous house of Florence Nightingale. Unfortunately, my brother Sherlock knew this, surely deduced that I visited her, and I believe kept watch for me. The street urchins I often saw hanging about might well have been his "Baker Street Irregulars." However, he would have described me to them as a studious or spinsterish female in tweed or some other drab, dark garb, with mud-brown hair yanked back in a bun and an alarming nose disguised by spectacles.
Such being the case, whenever I visited Mrs. Tupper, for the sake of my own safety I went as an exquisitely lovely lady.
I will spare the gentle reader the rigours of the facial emollients and tinctures necessary to effect this transformation, except to mention that as usual I affixed a small birthmark to my temple to draw attention away from the centre of my face, that is to say my proboscis, the prominence of which was further diminished by my full, luxurious (and quite expensive) chestnut-coloured wig.
But I cannot deny myself a description of the afternoon calling-costume I wore that day, a heavenly confection of cerulean blue dotted swiss gathered into scallops over a skirt of midnight blue, with a wide white satin belt, a blue bodice trimmed in white, a dainty blue hat topped with daisies and ribbons, and a blue-and-white parasol ruffled with dotted swiss. In fawn gloves and gaiters, I looked, if I do say it myself, rather a dream.