Sabir’s help, Alexi pulled himself back across the saddle. He rested wearily forward on the horse’s poll. ‘I don’t know what has come over you recently, Damo. The prophecies seem to have hypnotised you. I wish now that I had not found them. Then you would remember your brother and sister again.’
Sabir led the gelding in the direction of the house. Its hoof made pelting noises in the dew-sodden sand. Apart from that and the scurr of the mosquitoes, the two men were surrounded, like a cloak, by the silence of the marshes.
Alexi cursed long-sufferingly. He stretched out a hand and touched Sabir lightly on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Damo. Sorry for what I just said. I’m tired. And I’m in pain. If anything happens to me, of course I want you to know where the prophecies are buried.’
‘Nothing’s going to happen to you, Alexi. You are safe now. And to Hell with the prophecies.’
Alexi levered himself upright. ‘No. This is important. I was wrong to say those things to you, Damo. I am frightened for Yola. It makes my tongue misbehave.
There is a gypsy saying: “Everybody sees only his own dish.’’ ’
‘So now you’re viewing Yola as a dish?’ Alexi sighed. ‘You are purposely misunderstanding me, Damo. Maybe this is an easier expression for you to understand: “When you are given, eat. When you are beaten, run away.’’ ’
‘I get what you are saying, Alexi. I’m not trying to misunderstand you.’
‘The thought of bad things happening to her makes me sick with fear, Damo. I even dream of her – of pulling her from evil places. Or from out of mud-holes and quicksands that try to take her back from me. Dreams are important, Damo. As a community, the Manouche have always believed in the cacipen – in the truth of dreams.’
‘Nothing bad is going to happen to her.’ ‘Damo. Listen to me. Listen carefully, or I will shit on your head.’
‘Don’t tell me. That’s another of your gypsy sayings.’ Alexi’s eyes were focused on the back of Sabir’s neck. He was willing himself not to pass out. ‘To recover the prophecies, you must go to where I found Gavril. It is twenty minutes ride north of the Bac. Just before you get to the Panperdu. There is a gardien ’s cabane there. It, too, faces north, as protection against the blowing of the Mistral. You can’t miss it. It is thatched with la sagno and has a plastered and tiled roof and a chimney-stack. No windows. Just a door. With a hitching rail in front of it and a viewing pole behind it, where the gardiens can climb up and see far across the marshes.’
‘Plus, according to you, it will soon become a crime scene. With police seething around everywhere with their sniffer dogs and their metal detectors and their plastic BVDs.’
‘That doesn’t matter. You don’t need to be seen when you pick up the prophecies.’
‘How come?’
‘Hide yourself. Then pretend as if you are at the cabane and turn to look south. You will see a single cypress tree standing out from the nearby wood. The prophecies are buried directly behind that, about two feet from the trunk. Not deep. I was already too weak for that. But deep enough. You will soon see that the earth has been disturbed.’
‘They’ll rot. In the first rain. They’ll become illegible. And all this will have been for nothing.’
‘No, Damo. They are contained in a bamboo tube. The tube is sealed in the middle with hard wax. Or tree sap. Something like that. Nothing can get in.’
An unknown horse suddenly whinnied ahead of them, the noise of its cry echoing through the marshes like a lament for the dead. Their own horse was about to answer, but some belated survival instinct in Sabir caused him to clamp the gelding’s nostrils shut just as the animal was taking a preparatory breath. He stood, the gelding’s nose locked beneath his arm, listening.
‘I told you.’ Alexi was whispering. ‘It is the eye-man. I told you he tortured Gavril. Got the location of the Maset off him.’
‘I can see lights through the trees. Why would the eye-man switch on a bunch of lights? It doesn’t make sense. It’s more likely that Yola has received a visit from some of her girlfriends from the town. Everybody knows about this place – you told me so yourself.’ Despite his apparent confidence, Sabir stripped his shirt and wrapped it tightly around the gelding’s nose. Then he led him on through the willow copse and down towards the rear of the barn. ‘Look. The doors and windows are wide open. The place is lit up like a cathedral. Has Yola gone mad?
Perhaps she wanted to guide us in?’
‘It’s the eye-man. I tell you, Damo. You must listen to me. Don’t go straight towards the lights. You must check the place out from the outside first. Perhaps Yola had time to run away? Either that, or she’s in there with him.’
Sabir looked up at him. ‘You’re serious?’
‘You heard his horse.’
‘It could be any horse.’
‘There was only Gavril’s and the eye-man’s left. I have Gavril’s. And the third horse is dead. The horses know each other, Damo. They know the sound of each other’s steps. They recognise each other’s whinny. And there aren’t any other horses within half a kilometre of here.’
Sabir attached the reins to a bush. ‘You’ve convinced me, Alexi. Now wait here and don’t move. I will go and reconnoitre the house.’
53
‘What are you burning? I can smell burning.’ Yola instinctively turned her face away from the light and towards the darkness behind her.
‘It’s all right. I’m not setting fire to the house. Or heating up the pinching tongs like the Hangman of Dreissigacker. I’m merely burning cork. To blacken my face.’
Yola knew that she was perilously close to exhaustion.
She didn’t know how much longer she could hold her position. ‘I’m going to fall.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Please. You have to help me.’
‘If you ask me again, I will sharpen a broom handle and shove it up your arse. That’ll keep you upright.’
Yola hung her head. This man was impossible to touch. All her life she had been able to manipulate and thus to dominate, men. Gypsy men were easy game that way. If you said what you had to say with enough conviction, they would usually give in. Their mothers had trained them well. This man was cold, however. Not amenable to the feminine. Yola decided that there must be a very bad woman in his life to make him this way. ‘Why do you hate women?’
‘I don’t hate women. I hate everybody who gets in the way of what I am doing.’
‘If you have a mother, she must be ashamed of you.’
‘Madame, my mother, is very proud of me. She has told me so.’
‘Then she must be evil too.’
For a moment there was dead silence. Then a movement. Yola wondered whether she had finally gone too far. Whether he was coming across to get her.
But Bale was only stowing away the remainder of the soup in order to give himself a clearer line of movement. ‘If you say more, I shall whip the back of your legs with my belt.’
‘Then Alexi and Damo will see you.’
‘What do I care. They don’t have guns.’
‘But they have knives. Alexi can throw a knife more accurately than any man I know.’
In the distance a horse whinnied. Bale hesitated for a moment, listening. Then, satisfied that it had been his own horse and that there had been no answering call, he resumed their conversation. ‘He missed Sabir. That time in the clearing.’
‘You saw that?’
‘I see everything.’
Yola wondered whether to tell him that Alexi had missed on purpose. But then she thought that it would be a
