Silent Court by M. J. Trow Page B

blown round on its stick. It was almost like a game for Marlowe to track these tawdry leavings; out past Stow cum Quy and Lode’s Mill, through Swaffham and across the Devil’s ditch, dark and foreboding as darkness fell; and to find, at the end of the fluttering trail, the camp.
    As he rode, he planned his strategy. He knew he would scarcely be able to simply blend in. Even if he had changed his clothes, he knew so little of their way of life that he could never hope to pass as one of them. He knew this much, that although their travelling nation was spread throughout the world, they were like one large family and to fail to recognize a name, an allusion to a fact known to them all would be to invite immediate exposure. So he decided that his best chance to win his way into the clan would be as a man on the run. If he threw himself on their mercy, they may take him in, if not for the love of their fellow man, for the love of the gold in his purse, for the love of angels.
    Lost in thought as he was he nearly rode over the outskirts of the camp before he knew it. The dogs were the first to sense his presence, followed swiftly by the children, who swung on his stirrup leathers and led him into the centre of the camp, whether he and the Wasp wanted to go there or not. He warned them of his horse’s temperament as best he could; he didn’t know if the children could understand him as they seemed to communicate in a complex patois of their own. By the time he was at the campfire and in the presence of Hern, Gerard and the others, he had one child in front of him on his crupper; a girl, he assumed, from her long hair. All of the young of the Egyptians wore the same clothes, a pair of wide pantaloons of patchwork material and a thick coat, in this weather at least, of woollen material, fluttering ribbons at every seam. The shortest hair was to the shoulders, but it seemed that the boys had it cut to keep it at that length and they wore it quite plain. The girls’ hair, as far as he could tell, was left to grow long until it formed itself into fat plaits with ribbons threaded deeply within each ringlet. To have tried to remove the fabric would have been to unravel the hair as well. His question as to whether they ever washed was answered by the proximity of the child in front of him. The smell of wood smoke and exotic oils was almost overwhelming and he hoped that it was only the flickering torchlight that gave the impression of small creatures scurrying through the ringlets.
    Five men and four women stood around the fire, the women further back in the shadows, with their faces seemingly deliberately hidden. Three of them had hair in the same style as the children; the fourth was, like himself, dressed quite richly and she shone out with cleanliness. Could it be true that they kidnapped people on their travels? But the woman didn’t seem to be shackled in any way, so he could only assume that she was there of her own free will.
    One of the men stepped forward and spoke with a commanding voice in which the playwright could discern more than a touch of the theatrical.
    ‘My name is Hern. What business do you have here?’
    Marlowe decided to go for the charming approach. After all, there were enough women present to possibly swing things in his favour if he needed more help, and he had not met a woman yet he couldn’t charm.
    ‘Forgive my intrusion, I had not intended to ride into your camp like this, but your lovely children –’ he clasped his passenger under the armpits and handed her down to Hern, resisting with difficulty the impulse to wipe his hands on his doublet afterwards – ‘brought me here. They are impossible to resist, the little dears.’ He looked down at Hern and saw the man’s eyebrow lift in disbelief. Looking beyond the flames, he noticed that the women were not taken in either. That they loved their children was beyond question, but that anyone else would think them anything other than gutter rats was