Bruar's Rest

again to the old woman, snoring beneath a thick eiderdown in her own bed to the rear of the wagon. ‘Mother Foy, wake up, someone is at your door.’
    ‘Too bad for them it’s not daylight, cause I don’t open me door until it is. Ye best get back to sleep.’
    Megan pulled a faded, green velvet cover under her chin and waited. Raised as she was under canvas, her dog-like senses were flashing warning signs. She could hear heavy breathing inches from her window. A hand was being drawn along the wooden panels beneath it. Silently she slid her feet onto the floor and sat at the edge of the bed. Eyes darted, following every sound. Footsteps padded the ground. Someone was there and wanted the occupants to know it. Mother Foy’s snoring was louder than ever, how could she sleep so soundly when a demon might be planning their end? Would it torch them? Perhaps break down the door, drag her out and murder her? Slit the old lady’s throat? Flashes of Rory’s red blood oozing away his life into the moss brought sweat beads that trickled from brow-line to ears. This new found haven was becoming unsafe by the second. But wait a minute, was there really someone there? Was it not just this springy new bed? She’d slept in a few since leaving Kirriemor. And what of the dogs lying under many of the vardas, some the size of small ponies. Surely if an intruder was hanging around in the dark a hound would howl? Of course it would! She felt silly for submitting her bare feet to a cold floor and losing over an hour of slumber. Convinced all her fears were unfounded, she at last curled up under the velvet bedcover and went back to sleep.
    Next morning the dawn sunlight shone through gossamer webs spun from wagon roof to tree branches; they had been newly abandoned by fat spiders which were off to sleep away the day in some quiet cranny of the quarry wall, bellies bursting with chewed insects. People were up and busying themselves. Some collected firewood while others filled kettles and pans for the first meal of a gypsy day. Megan had risen before anyone else, setting snares around a ruined stone dyke, and came back with a fat rabbit in each hand. Mother Foy beamed proudly through the smoke of her first fill of pipe. ‘Well, me little raven-haired moorhen, I’ve yet to meet as smart-handed a one as yourself.’ She took the still warm, dead animals and held them above her head. ‘See what this maid of Scotland has brought us this fine day, a change from our hedgehogs,’ she said proudly, swinging the rabbits so everyone could glimpse them. Laying them on a flat stone she said, ‘Now, girlie, what kind of noise had the fear of Job in you last night?’
    ‘Oh, I had the jitters right enough, but I think my imagination got the better of me. It was hard to ignore my instincts, though.’
    ‘And these instincts of yours, what did they say in the dead of night?’
    ‘At first I felt a hand on the wagon. Something was outside, breathing, the heavy breath was hot, and I felt it. But had there been an intruder it surely would have awakened you. You were snoring loudly, old woman, and hardly moved, so I thought maybe my senses were overdoing things.’
    ‘Never ignore your God-given instincts, gypsies have them too. It goes with being hounded through the countryside just like your people in Scotland. Some authorities will punish our culture until it be no more. I’ll ask if anyone heard anything in the night, while you boil up a brew.’
    The old woman drew a long-fringed shawl around her body, sucked on her pipe, took a stick and hobbled off, leaving Megan’s peace shaken. She’d convinced herself no one was there in the dark, it had all been her imagination, but now all her fear returned. Her eyes hardly left the old woman as she wandered slowly from wagon to wagon. Soon she returned.
    ‘That tea looks inviting, girlie, pour me a big mug. Nobody heard a dickey-bird last night, apart from owls and bladder-weakened old men. I even asked if Bull had come back, but it seems that he had a fight down Thirsk way. He’s staying there a few nights, thank the gods. No doubt we’ll have his company soon, though, blast him to kingdom come.’
    Lucy, Anna and Ruth scattered her fears when they invited her to come hawking round the tiny villages of the Yorkshire Dales. They had dipped dozens of briar roses in candle wax and hoped to sell some. ‘Come and tell lassies they’ll marry tall, dark and handsome men, watch their ugly faces