At least Tamas will see me all dressed up.
She jumped from the step of the caravan and skipped through the camp, waving at old Nuri, cross-legged in the grass, rocking Bo’s newest brother off to sleep. Swallows glided silently, high above her, looping lazily like fish in the blue, cloudless sky. She could smell and hear Esmeralda cooking. The scent made her salivate and the curses made her laugh.
She rounded the tarpaulin-covered flatbed truck she shared with Milosh and Lala when it was too cold to sleep under the stars. The girls bustled around the campfire like chickens just thrown a handful of corn.
‘What can I do?’ she yelled, trying to make herself heard.
‘Waaa! The Witch Princess herself. Here to grace us with her presence!’ Esmeralda took a cigarette from her lips and put one hand on her very round hip. The gold scarf around her head was dark with sweat. ‘You are the cause of all this catastrophe, I understand?’
Esmeralda’s voice had one volume: maximum.
‘Hey, I’m just a working girl,’ said Sam. ‘A very hungry working girl. Whatcha cooking? Is that lamb?’
‘Lamb? The Princess wants lamb?’
Esmeralda carefully manoeuvred between four black, fat-bottomed pots suspended over the fire, dipping bread into one and tasting. ‘Well, this here is supposed to be supper for the men, but because of this whole catastrophe this afternoon, yes, Princess, you shall have your lamb.’
Esmeralda’s first-born, Mirela, looked up from the pot into which she was dropping pieces of a carrot hidden in her hand. Each orange disc fell from her fingers as she expertly sliced it with a small silver knife. Although only thirteen, Mirela was a great cook, was wanted by the Gaje police, and was Sam’s best friend in the whole world. Well, not counting Birthday Jones…
When she bent to pick up another carrot from a bag at her feet, Mirela gave Samantha a big wink from beneath her heavy black fringe. Sam grinned back.
She spotted Lala scolding Bo and Hero over by the main town-car. While Esmeralda was busy with the rice, Sam bent to a foil-wrapped package at the feet of little Shofranka and gave her a can-I-steal-some-bread? raise of her eyebrows. Shofranka gave her a sure-of-course-you-can smile in return. Sam reached quickly into the foil and tore a chunk of bread from a warm, flat loaf within. She raised it to her nose and breathed, then scoffed it quickly. Smiling, she drew closer to Esmeralda.
‘You’re not buying this gypsy king crap, are you, Esmeralda?’ she said. ‘I mean, as if he’s coming out here.’
She made a game-show hostess sweep with her hand around the camp. Her favourite place in the world it may well be, but this was no Romani palace.
Esmeralda stopped stirring the huge pot.
‘I’ll tell you what I am doing, Samantha White,’ she said. ‘I am preparing the most important lunch that you’ve ever seen in your life. And I have no tables set up. And there is no band, no menfolk, and I have no roasted meat. I’ll be very lucky to find some whisky. It is a complete disgrace. Lala came to me just a half-hour ago with the news, and I was planning only chicken and rice for all of us.’
‘He’s not coming,’ said Samantha.
Esmeralda wore her favourite bright red skirt. It cascaded past her toes and into the dirt. Printed gold cherubs bearing harps and violins cavorted around the hem as she moved. The mud and oil smudges from the campsite only added to the cherubs’ party scene.
‘You are only a child,’ Esmeralda said, quietly.
‘What?’ said Samantha. Esmeralda felt funny. And she never spoke quietly.
‘Samantha,’ said Esmeralda. ‘I love you.’
Mirela was watching intently, her silver knife stilled.
‘I love you like a daughter,’ continued Esmeralda. ‘Like a child from my womb. I will always love you. But you are not Romani. I don’t know what you are. All of us have always known that the day would come when you would draw attention. I don’t know whether today is the day. I don’t know what is going on.’
Esmeralda put her cigarette back between her lips and spoke around it, the smoke trickling into her squinting, glinting eyes. ‘But what you do need to understand is that the gypsy king will be here shortly. And he’s coming to see you.’
Esmeralda threw the last of her cigarette into the fire. She reached down to the grass for her trademark knife, standing in the soil where she’d stabbed it. She wrenched it into the air – a curved, heavy machete that made short work of any animal the men brought for her attention. The pendulous chandeliers in her ears swung riotously with the movement. She gripped her knife waist high.
‘I can tell you, though, Samantha,’ she said. ‘We’ll be ready.’
Samantha felt her tongue dry around the last of the bread in her mouth and she coughed. Whether the king was coming or not, Esmeralda sure believed he was.
Sam squatted next to a bundle of corn still in their husks, and began wrapping them in aluminium foil. When she had a pile, she poked them into the ash at the edges of the fire. The sun beat down on the back of her neck.
‘Where is that lazy boy?’ Esmeralda suddenly shouted. ‘Tamas! Tamas! Get over here now!’
Mirela found Sam’s eyes and smirked. Samantha poked her tongue out just as Tamas loped around the corner of the truck, Oody at his feet.
‘Lunch ready?’ he said, flashing his grin.
His white teeth were perfect, and he wore a silver charm around his neck on a thick black cord. Samantha had made them for everyone last Christmas, first blessing each with gypsy luck with a midsummer’s night spell. It shone dully against his tanned bare chest. She dropped her squat and sat down hard on the grass, staring up at him. She’d known him all her life, but she’d never get sick of that view.
‘Go and put a shirt on right now!’ said Esmeralda.
Oh no, don’t do that, thought Samantha.
‘And then get back here immediately. I want you to set up three tables and twelve chairs under the trees over there.’
Esmeralda pointed her wooden spoon towards the copse of trees where Sam had spotted Tamas earlier.
‘What for?’ he said. ‘It’s too hot to move everything over there. We don’t need the tables today. Let’s just eat here.’
For a woman her size, Esmeralda could move fast.
She was by Tamas’s side in a second. Gripping him by the bicep, she started slapping her wooden spoon against the backside of his jeans.
‘Grandson of Nuri, son of Besnik! It is only for my love of your angel mother…’ Esmeralda took a deep breath and landed a slap with each of her next words: ‘May. She. Rest. In. Peace. That I do not use this spoon on your head!’
‘Argh! Aunty, what are you doing?’
Tamas swung his hips away from the blows. Samantha knew that although those shoulders could have picked Esmeralda up and carried her easily, he did not dare pull away from his aunty when she was in a mood like this. Although the spoon couldn’t be hurting him much, Oody raced around madly, barking like a machine gun, weaving in and out of Esmeralda’s legs.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ Tamas yelled. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you?’
Oody’s barking drew Hero, the tiny dog racing in as quickly as his name would imply. Bo followed, waving a stick with a hanky for a flag, hollering at the top of his lungs, just because he could and everyone else was. Lala limped along behind them, shaking her fist in the air, yelling at Bo to calm down. Samantha hid her laughter behind her hands as Mirela stood up and did a special belly dance for her cousin, mimicking Tamas’s attempts to dodge the spoon. Mirela shouted with laughter and her black hair streamed around her face like ribbons.
Samantha’s chest felt warm, like her heart was smiling too. The Gaje might telephone the police if they were watching a scene like this, but this was her crazy family and they’d die for one another.