unless you see out the picking to the end. Pity they couldn’t find it in them to stay.” When they began speaking of Sandermere’s attack on Paishey Webb, Maisie debated whether to visit the gypsies again today. She had planned to but now wondered if her presence would be unwelcome at such a time. But it struck her that the risk of retaliation by Sandermere, owner of the land where they had made camp, might encourage them to move on, and she wanted to see Beulah again. So she chatted briefly with the Beale family and took her leave, once again carrying her knapsack over one shoulder as she walked at a brisk pace toward the hill and the clearing. If she was not welcome, she would leave with haste.
THE LURCHER CAME down the hill, walked with her until they reached the vardos, and then ran across the clearing to Beulah. Maisie waved as she came into the shade, her eyes seeing only outlines as they adjusted from the day’s bright light. Beulah raised one hand and beckoned Maisie to her.
“I wanted to find out how Paishey is.” Maisie took her place, seated on a fallen tree next to Beulah.
“She’n be better when we leave, now. Only another week, then we’ll go.”
“Where to?”
“Up’n there.” She thumbed to the north, meaning London. “We’ll go to the Common for the winter. No more work on the land afore year’s end, not for us anyway.”
Maisie nodded. “What about her ear, where the ring was taken from her?”
Beulah called to Paishey, who was sitting on her haunches, chopping vegetables into a bowl. She set the task to one side and, light of foot, approached the matriarch. “Show’n her.” Beulah pointed to the younger woman’s ear.
Paishey drew back her black hair to reveal the lower half of her left ear, encrusted with a deep green paste molded to her flesh. Beulah motioned for her to lean forward and, as she came close, reached up with her vein- strapped hands and picked at the paste until it fell away. The lobe was no longer livid and swollen, and there was no division in the flesh, just a single line of no more than a hair’s breadth where the earring had been dragged free.
“She’n be wearing gold again, come morning.”
Maisie smiled at Paishey, taking her hand. “And your heart?”
The young woman nodded accord, to say she was well. “I’ve my Boosul and my Webb. If’n I let my heart break over an old sot, Webb’d go after ’im, and I don’t want that. We’n be good people, don’t want trouble.” She waved as she returned to her bowl of vegetables.
“I saw you out in the woods last week,” said Maisie, turning to Beulah. “You were dowsing, with a forked hazel twig.”
Beulah cackled. “Least you knew it were hazel.”
“Can you teach me?”
“No. Can’t be taught. I can tell you how, but I can’t teach you to feel, to listen to the rod.”
“I want to try.”
Beulah placed her hands on her knees and levered herself to standing position. Maisie stood up, too, and thought the old woman might rest her hand in the crook of her arm. Instead she walked upright, not stooped, toward her vardo, motioning for Maisie to follow her. She reached underneath the vardo to pull out a wooden fork cut from a hazel branch and cleared of leaves, then walked toward the field where the horses grazed. She stopped and looked out across the land, breathing in the late-afternoon air, as the sun traveled down toward the horizon, bathing the stubble in a pale orange-red shimmer. Beulah handed the fork to Maisie. Then, placing her hands on top of her pupil’s, she gave weight to the rustic divining tool.
“This’n be how it’ll feel, when it’s pulling.”
“How does it know what I’m looking for?”
Beulah shook her head. “You’n know the answer, girl. You does it all the time. You hold it here.” She tapped Maisie’s head. “If’n you want coins, you hold coins. If’n you want water, you see water. And if’n you want silver, you think silver.” And when she said the word
Maisie clutched her lapel. “Oh, no! Why did you take that? We could have used something else. Why my watch?” She looked down, clutched the fork’s handles, and moved forward.
“Slow, girl, slow. Let’n the fork tell you how to step.”
Maisie felt the woman’s hand, light, on her arm. She had not seen where the watch was thrown but listened with her fingers to the rod’s counsel and held the watch in her mind’s eye. Taking one carefully gauged step after another, she made her way across the grass. Without looking up, she knew the horses had stopped grazing and were ambling in her direction. Beulah walked behind her, along with the lurcher. She offered no words of advice, no instructions, only her presence as witness.
She turned once, the weight between her fingers pulling her to the left and then in a straight line. The horses were closer now—she could hear them nickering behind her. She wondered why Beulah did not chivvy them away, then thought it was to test her resilience to distraction. Never, since her apprenticeship with Maurice, had a lesson been so keen.
The rod pulled again, the weight trying her balance. Her watch was close. Then, as the rod pointed downward, the heaviness in her hands diminished. She knelt down, pushed the stubble aside, and claimed the watch.
“Thank God!” She held it to her chest, closing her eyes, then stood up, turning to Beulah.
The woman regarded Maisie in silence, with the horses leaning close together behind her and the dog at her side. “Now’n you know. Now’n you can dowse.”
“It was a sudden lesson, Aunt Beulah.”
Beulah was frowning and came to Maisie, taking the watch from her. She held it in her hand, as if to feel its weight. “Get rid of it.”
“What do you mean?” Maisie stepped back, as she might if threatened.
