An Incomplete Revenge

us and not gorja but half and half, and they’re the worst—they’ll stab a back before it’s turned.”

“Webb! Now, then. You pull your neck in, my boy!” Beulah nodded toward Boosul, who was swaddled in her mother’s skirts, for Paishey had come to sit beside Beulah.

Maisie looked from Webb to Beulah, then shook her head. She had been wrong in her timing, off in her choice of words, and she knew she should leave. “I know the truth, Mr. Webb. I know. And I can help you.” She squeezed Beulah’s hand and began to walk away.

She had gone but a few paces when she heard Paishey scream, followed by Webb shouting, “Beulah, Beulah!”

By the time Maisie reached the woman’s side, she was wide-eyed, gasping for breath, her words barely audible. The gypsy clan gathered around, as Paishey knelt behind Beulah and rested her head in her lap.

“Move back, she needs air!” Maisie heard her own voice echoing in her ears as she waved her hand to add weight to her words.

“Do as she says,” urged Webb. “Give her room to breathe.”

Maisie felt for Beulah’s pulse, her fingers barely moving against a throb that was neither strong nor rhythmic. “It’s her heart, Webb.”

Paishey had loosened the gypsy matriarch’s silver-gray hair, which lay down across her shoulders. Now, as the lines and wrinkles that marked her age diminished with each second, the woman raised her arm and motioned to her son to come to her. Maisie moved aside, allowing Webb to crouch beside his mother, then looked on as the dying woman wrestled against the weakness in her body to grasp the cloth of her son’s shirt and pull him closer. Webb cradled her in his arms, while Paishey remained at her head, and he leaned forward to hear the words his mother strained even to whisper. He nodded, his eyes reddened, yet his grip remained firm.

“Listen to her, son. She’ll free you,” was all that Maisie heard. Then, calling upon all reserves of energy remaining in her body, she spoke loud enough for the clan to hear. “He is my son. Follow’n him now.”

Webb began to sob. “No, Beulah, please, no. Stay, don’t go.”

But Beulah was smiling, holding up her hands as if to one who was reaching down to her, and saying her final words with a gentleness Maisie had not heard before. “Set yourself free, boy. Set yourself free.”

Maisie stepped forward, kneeling to feel her pulse and then to listen for her breath. There was nothing. She sat back to look at Beulah, then turned to Webb and Paishey. “She’s gone. I’m so sorry.”

Leaning forward, Paishey placed her hands on each side of Beulah’s head and used her thumbs to close her eyelids. Then she kissed each closed eye before reaching into her pocket for two copper coins to lay on the motionless lids. Webb moved away, and the women came forward, Esther helping Maisie to her feet. “We’ll’n look after her now, miss. You go on home. She belongs to us. We’ll’n take care of her.”

Maisie walked once more to the edge of the clearing, where even the horses had gathered, their heads up and intent. She pushed them aside to pass, and as she made her way down the hill, she heard the heartsick wail of a dog howling. It was not an ordinary call, the yelping that might answer a vixen’s midnight screech, but the timeless baying that country folk called a death howl. Maisie stopped to listen, was still so the dog’s cry could move through her, so she could feel the vibrations she had never been able to voice, that had caught in her chest so many times.

SEVENTEEN

As she walked away from the encampment, Maisie knew the keening had started, a sound that would grow ever louder as the gypsies gave vent to their loss. There would be no time to speak to Webb until after Beulah’s funeral, for which she would return in a few days. It would be a narrow opportunity—the gypsies would move on with haste now.

Not wanting to be on her own, Maisie walked to the hopper huts, where Tilley lamps burned outside to beckon her forward, for the sky bore the rose tint of sunset and dusk was but minutes away. The doors of the huts were open, and Londoners had brought chairs outside so they could sit and talk now that the day’s work was done. Billy’s mother was seated outside the family’s hut, shucking peas, the colander on her lap held steady by her knees.

“Is Billy here, Mrs. Beale?”

“Him and Doreen are in the cookhouse.” She pointed toward the whitewashed brick building and went back to her task.

Maisie stopped to talk to Doreen, noting the gaunt pallor that had clung to her skin since the death of her daughter was now disguised by sun-kissed cheeks. Billy walked outside with Maisie, where she told him about Beulah’s death.

“Well, that’ll put the tin lid on that, won’t it?”

Maisie nodded. “It certainly makes things a little trickier.” She paused. “You know, there’s one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you, Billy. I want to know what you heard after Sandermere attacked Paishey, when you restrained Webb. He said something that appeared to flummox you—then you seemed thoughtful, as if what he’d said wasn’t quite right.”

Billy nodded. “It was when ’e said mornin’ hate.” Billy pronounced the h—a consonant that was usually absent in his cockney accent. He was emphasizing the word hate.

“What does it mean?”

He shrugged his shoulders. Maisie understood that he did not care to speak about the years of his soldiering. “It’s what we used to say, in the war.” He kicked his foot against the clay-like earth, folded his arms, and looked down as he spoke, staring at the sandy patterns left by his boot. “There was times we knew the Hun didn’t want to be there any more ’n we did, and they knew we didn’t want to be there either. These weren’t the big shows but the sort of in-between times. We’d be in our trench, like ants, and they’d be in theirs. Bein’ a sapper, I was with the lads what ’ad to get out there and mend the wires, lay communication lines, that sort of thing. But of course, the ’igher-ups, theirs and ours, didn’t like us all just sittin’ there, not doin’ anythin’ but brewing up a cup o’ char, so we ’ad to fire off a few rounds every mornin’ and again at night, just to show we were still after the enemy.” He shook his head. “And it was as if we all knew what we ’ad to do, them and us. Someone would call out to us, ’Guten Morgen, Britisher,’ or we’d call out to them, ’Wakey, wakey, Fritz,’ and then we’d go at it for a while, prayin’ that no one copped it. Don’t know what they called it, but we called it the mornin’ hate and the evenin hate. Sort of summed it up, shootin’ at each other to show—to prove—that we hated.”