Bruar's Rest

night for a bare-knuckle fight, no one denies it. He fought well he did, won a few rounds, but I picked him up from the gutter and washed his wounds. That man, well, let’s say he was out for the count; the end of the fight saw both of his eyes closed with bruises. If he killed anybody, then it must have been with eyes shut.”
    Megan could hardly believe that her friend was defending a killer. She broke away and ran over to Lucy’s distraught mother, who was donning her coat to go and identify her daughter’s body.
    ‘She was going away with Mr Newton. Buckley was blackmailing him. He killed him and Hawen killed Lucy. I’m willing to be whipped for saying it, but if it puts that devil from hell behind bars, then I’ll gladly tell all I know, because Lucy told me herself.’
    Lucy’s mother pushed her aside abruptly. ‘Shut your mouth. My girl didn’t fall by his or any other’s hand, and she took her own life. I begged her not to fret over a boy she’d met during the war. We heard recently that he was dead. She warned me she couldn’t live without him, foolish girl, and now she’s dead because of it.’
    The policemen stood around, watching and waiting.
    Megan’s head was spinning with all kinds of dark thoughts, ‘How could a mother distraught about her daughter’s murder tell such lies,’ she thought. Her mind was in turmoil; drastic measures were called for. ‘Take me into jail. I did it,’ she screamed. ‘Come on, get the bloody handcuffs on me.’
    Mother Foy lifted her stick and brought it hard down across her back ‘She’s a gowpie, don’t take any notice. She sees demons everywhere.’
    She fixed her gaze deep into Martin’s eyes, and summoned him close to her so that only he could hear. ‘Now, she may be telling truth or she might not, but what would folks say if they were to discover that Mr Newton, the finest gentleman around these parts, had been dipping into gypsy flesh? What would that do to his family’s standing among the nobility? And what about his dear wife and innocent children—what of their reputations?’ She lowered her eyes to the ground and waited for his response.
    Mother Foy’s words made crystal clear sense to him. He knew that his hands were tightly bound by the need to protect the aristocracy of the land. He summoned his troops.
    ‘Come on boys, let’s go. She’s just a stupid gypsy gowpie, with nothing between her ears.’
    Megan, powerless to persuade a living soul of the truth of her story, watched until all that was left of the law officers was a cloud of thin wheel dust.
    ‘What the hell got into you just now?’ asked Mother Foy. ‘We know who killed Newton and Lucy, but we gypsies never, ever, bring the law into our affairs.’
    ‘How the hell are you going to punish Buckley? He’ll chew you all into little balls and spit you out. Bloody cowards, that’s what you are. And what’s a gowpie anyroad?’
    ‘There are ways to sort Buckley, gypsy ways. Now, maybe we haven’t got a fixer here in the quarry, but word’s out now and soon others will tighten a noose for his neck. You take a look at the face on Lucy’s mother and tell me she’s not planning revenge. If the law get to him first she’ll rot with anger for not having avenged her girl. No, his days are numbered. And a gowpie is simple.’
    ‘Simple what?’
    ‘Touched.’
    Ruth and Anna, who had stayed silent through out the commotion approached her and said, ‘We are going onto the moor to fetch Lucy’s body, will you help us?’
    ‘Of course, but surely the police will be watching over Lucy’s remains, seeing as a murder has taken place?’
    ‘They don’t care about my Lucy, only the Honourable Mr Newton,’ the dead girl’s mother called across, thanking her for caring about her dear daughter. She then added that other women from the camp were going to fetch her girl’s remains, and she was welcome to come.
    Thoughts about all that had happened, and what was going to take place now, teemed in Megan’s aching head. “They might be strange people, but they are certainly not cowards,” she thought. It had been to protect the gypsy code of secrecy that Lucy’s mother had remained so composed while the police were present.
    Megan planned to leave the encampment that very hour, and for sure that was what she wanted to do, but somehow the pain that Buckley and his evil ways was spreading over her hosts was also penetrating her heart, so how could she go now? ‘Tomorrow,