Lynda La Plante - The Legacy

Her voice had become mocking. She rolled another cigarette, and as she lit it the flame illuminated her face, her haunted eyes. ‘Will thee travel with us, Freedom? See, there’s Chalida with no man beside her, she’s Romanchilde.’

Chalida, sitting with the two doshas, was a beautiful girl with her hair unbraided to show she was unmarried. She looked up, and Freedom gave her a small bow, then turned to Rawnie and shook his head. Before he could say a word, two gypsies ran to the fire and began stamping out the flames. They shouted and pointed into the darkness, and everyone began to run this way and that.

Four gamekeepers with blazing torches were moving towards the camp through the woods. They carried shotguns, and their tracker dogs strained at their leashes. Jesse began shouting instructions. Pans and bottles and equipment were swiftly packed, and the horses were dragged from their roped pen to harness to the wagons. The poached rabbits and pheasants were quickly hidden. The children screamed in terror as the gamekeepers crashed into the camp and released their dogs. For a moment Freedom was frozen, he couldn’t believe what was happening. One of the little doshas was hunched by a wagon, shrieking with fear as a dog snarled and snapped at her. In seconds Freedom was on his feet and at her side. He kicked the dog away and grabbed the child, lifted her into the wagon. ‘Call your men off, you bastards, call the dogs back …’

Jesse was already fighting with one of the gamekeepers. Freedom ran to a man he recognized, grabbed him by his lapels. ‘You call your men off or so help me God I’ll have your throat wrung, hear me … look at me, mun, you know me.’

Little Johnny Mask was beating back one of the dogs with a stick. Jesse had wrested a shotgun from the hands of one of the gamekeepers, and had turned it on the man Freedom held. ‘No … Jesse, no!’

He held the gun poised, finger on the trigger. Rawnie ran to his side and placed her hand over the barrel. ‘Freedom, get them out of the camp, tell them we’ll move out, we mean no harm …’

The gamekeepers, terrified, did not need to be asked twice. They backed off, calling their dogs to their sides. Freedom held the shotgun, keeping the men back, but he stood with them, not his own people.

It took only a short while before the wagons were ready. Jesse walked up to Freedom, carrying his son in his arms. ‘Come with us, brother, leave with us.’

Past antagonisms forgotten, Freedom held Jesse close, and they kissed each other on both cheeks. From his pocket Jesse took a gold coin, pressed it into Freedom’s hand. ‘Kushti rardi, brother.’

The wagons moved out, and the gamekeepers made their way back down the hill to The Grange. The men were silent, their dogs under control. Freedom walked slightly ahead of them, his thoughts with his people. As they came out of the wood he saw below him, glistening like a mirage, The Grange, lit by a multitude of chandeliers. His anger rose up and he stiffened. They had treated his people no better than dogs.

‘Come on, move on, bloody gyppo, get on back …’ In an instant Freedom swung around and knocked the man out, took his shotgun and broke it into pieces. Then he took off so fast none of them had a hope of keeping up with him … the night enveloped him, and he could no longer be seen or heard.

The gamekeepers ran into the courtyard and reported to the chief warden. ‘Bastard took off after his people, bloody gyppo should never have been brought here in the first place.’

Evelyne could hear them and their dogs clearly. Watching from her litde window, she saw the police wagon arrive, and she turned back to her cot bed. So Ed had been right, he had run. She was feeling queasy, and she reached for her dressing-gown, slipped quietly along the corridor to the bathroom she shared with the other servants. Fighting her dizziness, she was violently sick. More than ever she felt she must leave The Grange.

As she returned to her room, she found two housemaids whispering together near her bedroom door. One of them turned to Evelyne.

‘Oh, Evie, they say the gyppo fighter’s run off, half-killed the gamekeepers, tried to strangle one, and him what was almost hung afore … and he stole the dinner cook was preparing for Sir Charles, what a to-do.’

Miss Balfour appeared, wearing a hairnet, tight-lipped, her skin wrinkled like a prune. ‘Back to bed, all of you, now. This has nothing to do with you, back to bed this instant.’

The two maids shot into their rooms like rabbits bolting into their holes. Miss Balfour stared at Evelyne with such overt disgust on her face that Evelyne barred her way.

‘If you have something to say to me, Miss Balfour, then say it to my face.’

Miss Balfour shrank back and scurried to her room, locking the door behind her. Evelyne entered her own bedroom and gasped. Freedom lay on her bed, smiling, his feet up on the iron bedrail. She closed the door fast. ‘What are you doing here? Do you not know everyone’s out searching for you, and now the police are called in — are you mad, man?’

Miss Balfour could have sworn she heard a man’s voice. She slipped out of her room and crept along the corridor, listened at Evelyne’s door. Afraid to confront them both, she tightened the cord of her dressing gown and hurried down the back stairs.

Freedom cocked his head to one side and placed his finger across his lips to remind Evelyne to speak softly.

‘Will you come with me, you don’t belong here, and they keep us like prisoners … Come away with me? Is this the way you want to live your life? To be paid each month so they own you? So they can tell you when to eat and when to sleep?’

He began to undo his shirt, as if the sounds of the baying dogs below and the whisding of the searching policemen had nothing to do with him.

She whispered back, frantically, ‘You’re drunk, I can smell it, and you go back down right now. They think you’ve run, and poor Ed will get into terrible trouble.’

He threw his shirt aside and began to unbutton his trousers.

‘Are you mad, man? What are you thinking of, here, in the house?’

His face changed, his eyes were so black they frightened her, ‘They don’t own me, they got a piece of paper says they do, but I’m no animal to be bought. No man sets his dogs on me.’

‘You forget yourself, Freedom Stubbs. If it weren’t for Sir Charles you’d be at the end of a hangman’s rope and you well know it.’

‘It’s you that saved me, you, manushi, now come here.’

She backed away from him, pressed herself against the wall. ‘I’m not your manushi, I am not your wife. You don’t belong to them? Well, I don’t belong to you. Now get out of here, go on, get out!’

His fist curled in rage, but she stood up to him, unafraid now.

She slapped his fist. ‘That’s all you know, isn’t it — the fight? You don’t want to better yourself — well, run back to your people, go on, run back, but don’t expect me to be with you in some wretched wagon, chased off the land, run out of every town.’

In a fury he pulled her to him, but she slapped his face. He took it, smiled down at her, and she stepped back and slapped him again.

‘Oh, manushi, is that all yer know, the fight? But my, my, you’re rinkeney when you’re angry … now come to me before you give me a tatto yeck … see, I got something for you.’ He handed her the gold coin Jesse had pressed into his hand … she threw it across the room. He cocked his head to the side, then picked up his shirt and began to dress.

Suddenly she clung to his back … he turned in her arms and cupped her face in his hands. ‘Eh, woman, you twist me so, ye don’t know what thee wants, listen to your heart, manushi, listen.’