The Cure of Souls

‘The Black Virgin,’ Al Boswell said. ‘Sara la Kali.’

Candles in bottles dramatized his goblin profile. He’d calmed down now, after a couple of glasses of wine, and the four of them were sitting around the wooden table outside the vardo.

‘Medieval French saint,’ Merrily recalled. ‘Linked to Mary Magdalene. A servant?’ Was this the woman in the unlikely picture on Allan Henry’s sitting room wall?

‘Gypsies in France became strongly identified with the Catholic pilgrimage of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mere in the Camargue,’ Sally Boswell said. ‘This is where the three Marys – Mary Salome, Mary Jacobe and Mary Magdalene were said to have landed and where their relics are presumed to have been found under the church… and later, in a bronze chest, the remains of their black servant, Sara.’

‘Why did the gypsies adopt this Sara?’ Lol leaned away from the candlelight, his elbows on the table hiding the holes in the famous alien sweatshirt.

‘They’re a great paradox, the Rom,’ said Sally Boswell. ‘Flamboyant, volatile, and yet subtle and secretive. They were pagans originally – some still are, but most adopted the dominant religion of whichever country they travelled. They may have chosen Sara because she was the humblest of the saints, the most unassuming… the least obtrusive.’

Lol nodded. He would understand that. Given the options, she’d have been his patron saint as well, Merrily thought, tears pricking again. She was overtired, that was the problem.

‘Or,’ Sally went on, ‘they may have seen her as a Christian incarnation of the Hindu goddess, Kali. There was talk of blood sacrifice, but I think that’s an exaggeration or a corruption of the truth.’

‘Hmm,’ Merrily said.

After leaving the studio, she’d walked through the fields for a while before going up to her cell in the cottage. She’d washed and changed, come down, and then she and Lol had raided Prof’s fridge for scraps of salad, while she told him about Layla Riddock and Allan Henry and the objects in the big white room, the picture on the wall, the conclusion she and Sophie had come to. And then Lol had suggested Al and Sally Boswell might throw some more light on this, and he’d phoned them.

‘Can I ask you about some symbols?’ she said to Al. ‘The wheel, for instance.’

‘On its own?’

‘Like a cartwheel. With spokes.’

Al glanced at his wife.

‘Money,’ she said. ‘Wealth.’

‘So a gold talisman with a wheel engraved on it, worn around the neck…?’

‘Would obviously be designed to promote wealth.’

‘I wouldn’t wear one.’ Al poured himself more wine.

‘OK.’ Merrily moved on. ‘A group of objects: acorns, dice, a rabbit’s foot – oh, and a magnet.’

Al drank, then put down his glass. ‘To which you might want to add a few gold coins – and a magnifying glass. Because this person, whoever it is, wants – or needs – considerable wealth.’

‘Why wouldn’t you wear the talisman?’ Merrily asked.

‘You would want unearned wealth, little drukerimaskri?’

‘But you’re not a priest.’

His eyes flashed. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Sorry. I don’t know that.’

He sniffed sharply. ‘My father was a chovihano. Well-known guy – a shaman, a healer. A healer of souls and bodies and the living and the dead. Not many left in the world now.’

‘It’s hereditary?’

He looked glum. ‘Sometimes. But you need to work at it. It’s a calling, a commitment. You’d understand that. Me… I was a disappointment to my family.’ He offered the bottle round, got no takers, poured more wine for himself. ‘No, you’re quite right, I’m not a priest.’

‘You’re not rich, either,’ Lol said. ‘You don’t make enough guitars. You could have had a Boswell guitar factory turning out thousands, like – I dunno – the Martin family?’

‘Mother of God!’ Al half rose, the wine spilled and the candle flame wavered.

‘Not that I was actually advocating that,’ Lol said. ‘Just making the point.’

‘Valid. Quite valid.’ Al shook his head sadly, sat down and topped up his glass again. ‘I’m no businessman, Lol, and no chovihano – I’ve lived too long in gaujoland. But I try to honour the old code… which is about living lightly on the earth, taking what you need, taking selectively, taking secretly sometimes. Taking in a way so that nobody notices that what you’ve taken has gone. It’s not quite stealing… if nobody notices it’s not there any more.’

This was questionable morality, but Merrily was too tired to ask the questions. She sipped some of the sweet soft drink that Sally had brought her. It apparently contained hops and nettles.

‘You want to know the truth of it, I’m still paying back.’ Al drained his wineglass in one. ‘I’m paying back for the one time when I took… and it was noticed. How could it fail to be bloody well noticed? And that’s how I brought a curse upon my own family, why I live among the gaujos and keep my head down. It’s why we have a museum devoted to hops, and most of the Romany memorabilia’s in the back room, behind a locked door.’

Sally Boswell said in a low voice, ‘You could have paid.’

‘You get off my back,’ Al growled.

There was an uncomfortable silence. A bat flittered in an arc over the table. Merrily had one more question.

‘What about a wheel with a tree through it?’

Al looked up. ‘Where did you see that?’

‘It was a design on a rug. In the house of the man with the wealth talisman.’

‘Nothing particularly to do with wealth.’ He poured the last of the wine, a dribble, and pulled over another bottle. ‘The wheel would be the medicine wheel. The tree is the Tree of Life. Comes in three sections. The branches are in the Upper World of vision and inspiration. The middle, where the wheel goes through, is about our life and dealing with it. The roots are in the lower world of the ancestors… and the dead.’

‘The gypsy dead aren’t in the Upper World?’

Al smiled ruefully.

Sally said, ‘Not all gypsies believe in a heaven. And anyway, the dead are gone, and must stay gone. The dead are unhealthy. Death pollutes a place meant for living, so when someone was dying it used to be that they were taken out of their home and put in a tent or a bender. The person is always washed and dressed in fresh clothes before death.’ It was coming out pat now, Merrily thought – the museum curator’s voice. ‘Also, in Romany society, the names of recently dead people must never be mentioned lest this might call them back. At one time, when a gypsy died, his vardo would be set alight with all his possessions, so there would be nothing in this world to draw him back.’

‘Of course, these days,’ Al said, ‘the vardo is worth a lot of money, but it’s still usual for something to be ritually burned. Something closely associated with the dead person.’

There was an important question here; Merrily couldn’t untangle it.

Lol did. ‘So gypsies don’t try to communicate with the dead?’

‘Not recommended,’ Sally said.

‘But isn’t that what a shaman does – talks to the spirits?’

Merrily nodded gratefully – this was it.

‘Their ancestors, mainly,’ Sally said, ‘which is different. Also spirits of nature. Spirits of living things. Everything has a spirit… this table, those trees, the River Frome.’

‘A guitar?’ Lol said.

Al turned slowly. ‘Smart boy.’

Merrily saw that Lol’s face was alight with understanding. ‘All the wood for each guitar, you take sparingly,’ he said, ‘so that it isn’t missed. So maybe even the tree doesn’t have to die?’

‘Aha.’ Al leaned back, a knuckle depressing his cheek, two fingers making a V around an ear.

‘So that the living spirit of the tree – or trees, all those different species – goes into the guitar,’ Lol said. ‘And