“My captors were not in the habit of discussing their plans with me.”

“What were their habits, then?”

Mr. Knightley enquired into the particulars of how the gypsies lived, how they worked, how they traveled — how they might dispatch stolen goods. Unfortunately, Miss Jones’s replies offered little intelligence to aid their present purpose.

“I understand gypsy parties often include women skilled in herbalism,” Mr. Knightley continued. “Was there any such practitioner among your band?”

“Pray, do not call it ‘my’ band, for I want no part of it and never did,” Miss Jones said. “But yes, there was an old woman who provided most of their healing. Madam Zsofia. She was also what in the North Country we would call a ‘spaewife’—a seer.” She looked at Elizabeth. “It was she who taught me to read tea leaves, though there were others in the caravan who also practiced the art.”

“Did any English ever consult her?” Mr. Knightley asked.

“For healing or fortune-telling?”

“Either.”

“From time to time when we passed through a town, several of the women would earn coin by studying palms or turning cards… or reading leaves. ‘Dukkering,’ they called it. Sometimes Madam Zsofia would dukker, but more often than not she left it to the younger women. She did not like to interact with English. She rarely practiced her healing skills on them directly. She believed most English dishonorable.”

Darcy scoffed. “A gypsy thinks the English dishonorable?”

“She said that a people who could treat their own so heartlessly was capable of treachery toward anyone, and they were not to be trusted.”

“Yet she trained you.”

Miss Jones shrugged. “Madam Zsofia is a woman of contradictions. I cannot attempt to explain her.”

“Have you been in this neighborhood before?” Mr. Knightley asked.

“Once. We did not stay long.”

“How long have you been here this time?”

“A se’nnight, perhaps a day or two more.”

The gypsies had been in Highbury, then, since before either of the Churchill gentlemen were poisoned — long enough for the murderer, whomever he was, to have obtained his belladonna from the herb-woman. “Did any English visit the gypsy camp during that se’nnight?” Darcy asked. “Perhaps in want of a remedy from Madam Zsofia?”

“I know of none who came with such a purpose.”

Mr. Knightley studied her. His own countenance was inscrutable; Darcy could not tell how much of the girl’s story the magistrate believed.

“Miss Jones, does the name Churchill mean anything to you?” Mr. Knightley finally asked.

“Should it?”

“You tell me.”

“The only ‘church hill’ I know is the one I passed coming into the village, with the church and cemetery upon it.”

After a few additional questions, Darcy and Mr. Knightley had done with Loretta Jones. Mr. Knightley, who knew Mrs. Todd, dismissed the young woman into the widow’s care, with a request — phrased and delivered so as to leave no doubt of its in fact being a command — that Miss Jones not leave the village.

As they all entered the street, Alice spied Mr. Deal’s cart and dashed toward it, ignoring her mother’s call. Mrs. Todd huffed her frustration. “That child…”

“I will retrieve her,” Miss Jones offered. Without waiting for a reply, she followed Alice. Mrs. Todd started toward the cart as well, but Mr. Knightley stayed her.

“A word, Mrs. Todd.”

She stopped immediately. “Of course, sir.”

“It is generous of you to take Miss Jones into your home, but I caution you to beware. Though the gypsies have left, they could return.”

Mrs. Todd went to collect her daughter and Miss Jones, who was talking with the peddler while Alice played with a trinket. The conversation appeared to take a heated turn. Mr. Deal regarded the young woman sternly; Miss Jones shook her head and took a step toward him. The peddler glanced at Darcy and the others, then turned back to Loretta and said something that made her take the trinket from Alice, thrust it at his chest, and stride away with the child.

“I wonder what that was about?” Mr. Knightley said.

“It was Mr. Deal who stopped Miss Jones from fleeing when she saw Mrs. Darcy today,” Mrs. Knightley replied. “I expect she was expressing her opinion of his interference.”

The reappearance of gypsies in the neighborhood, and Loretta Jones’s escape from them, was discussed at every table in Highbury by day’s end. At tea in the Bates ladies’ sitting room, over supper at Abbey Mill Farm, during whist club at the Crown, the story was told and embellished until the village had reached such a general state of alarm that Mr. Knightley was obliged to offer assurance that the wanderers had indeed wandered out of the vicinity, and that the village was safe. This he did with caution, wanting to subdue panic yet urge residents to vigilance. If the gypsies did return, hundreds of eyes stood a better chance of spotting them than did the few pairs belonging to parish officials.

While Mr. Knightley held a special parish meeting that night to calm the masses, the Darcys remained at Hartfield to help calm Mr. Woodhouse.

Darcy believed that Mr. Knightley got the better part of that bargain.

Though until today Mrs. Knightley had managed to keep news of the gypsies’ return from her father, this afternoon he had overheard the boy sent to inform the magistrate, and from that moment forward could think of little else. Mrs. Knightley did her best to soothe his apprehension for the safety of his family — and the poultry — but the event of Mr. Knightley’s leaving the house that evening created in the old gentleman such uneasiness that only Darcy’s offer to stay behind mitigated his agitation. Mr. Woodhouse was then in fear for Mr. Knightley’s safety, and that of James the coachman, and all his neighbors venturing out after dark to the meeting, and it was all the three of them — Mrs. Knightley, Darcy, and Elizabeth — could do to divert him.

Elizabeth even joined him in another basin of gruel.

This last finally assuaged his anxiety enough that Mrs. Knightley persuaded him to retire for the evening. With solemn promises to inform him of any developments, including her husband’s safe return to Hartfield, Mrs. Knightley accompanied her father to see him comfortably settled in his chamber.

Left in the drawing room — and to themselves for the first time all day — Darcy and Elizabeth could at last freely discuss the day’s events.

“Do you believe our chances of recovering our belongings have improved or diminished now that we have located Miss Jones?” Elizabeth asked.

He hesitated to share his honest opinion, for it was not optimistic. “I should be very surprised if we ever see the christening set again. The ring, I have entirely given up as lost.”

She nodded in resignation. “I, too.”

“Do you believe that she was held by the gypsies against her will?”

Elizabeth pondered his query for a longer time than he had required for hers. “That is a difficult question,” she finally said. “As a victim of her ruse, I am disposed to doubt every word she utters. Yet as a woman, I do not want to disserve her if her story is indeed true.”

“You said that Miss Jones was less cooperative before Mr. Knightley and I arrived. Did she reveal anything to you that I do not already know?”

“Only that I should avoid serpents.” She offered no further explanation, only an enigmatic smile.

He toyed with the idea of affecting disinterest; with anyone else he would resist on principle alone such deliberate baiting. But Elizabeth was not anybody else. Nor was he wont to resist her. “Does Highbury suffer some sort of snake problem?”

“Miss Jones read my tea leaves and claimed that a cluster of them formed a snake, apparently a potent sign of ill luck.”

“We are now resorting to prognostication to guide our enquiry?”

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