Chapter 22
It was late afternoon and Papa Dante pulled the vardos off the road and into a field. They unhitched the horses and, by hand, pulled the vardos into a circle or tabor, as Papa Dante called it.
Usually the horses would be hitched to a tree or fence outside of the tabor but, due to circumstances, they were now kept inside the secure circle to prevent theft.
Sam awoke, went to the front of the vardo and looked out. The first thing that he noticed was the children. They had all been riding inside the vardos when Sam had been picked up so he had not seen them. There were over forty of them ranging in age from toddler to young teens. And all of them were hard at work.
Toddlers carrying kindling, bigger kids toting wood logs. Others fetching buckets of water from a nearby stream and yet more grooming the horses. Rubbing them down with hay and then curry combing their coats to a sleek shine.
The women of the clan were laying a group of cooking fires and setting up trestle tables with mugs and plates and various sized bottles.
Some of the men helped to carry heavy items, bags of oats for the horses or large cast iron cooking pots, but, on the whole, the men stood watch. Their blue eyes constantly scanning their surrounds, rifles held ready.
Papa Dante was everywhere. Helping, chiding, laughing and commanding. He glanced up and saw Sam watching so he beckoned to him to come over.
The young boy climbed down and walked to him.
‘Sam the man,’ bellowed Papa Dante. ‘Meet some of the chilluns.’
Papa reeled off a gaggle of Celtic names, talking fast, like an American tobacco auctioneer. ‘Dylan, Oisin, Keeva, Siobhan, Keraney, Tierney, Shamus, Ultan.’
There was a chorus of greetings.
‘Now, Sam,’ continued Papa. ‘You go with Keeva and Dylan and collect more wood for the fires. Hurry off now.’
Keeva, a blonde girl of around seven grabbed Sam’s hand. ‘Come on, you be with us now.’ The little girl led the way, tugging Sam along with her. Dylan, a tall twelve year old, walked behind them. Another dark haired, blue-eyed male, hovering on the edge of becoming a man.
‘So,’ said Keeva. ‘Where’s your mam and your da?’
‘My dad went to work and never came home,’ answered Sam. ‘Then the bad men came and made my mommy dead. Then I had dog biscuits and then Papa Dante found me in a hedge.’
‘Oh. That’s sad,’ said Keeva, her feelings genuine but shallow as only a child’s can be. ‘But now that you with us you got lots of ma’s and da’s. Papa Dante and Mama are the pa and ma for everyone. Even the big ones.’
‘They’re not the ma and da of Gogo,’ said Dylan. His first contribution to the conversation.
‘Course not,’ agreed Keeva. ‘Nobody is the ma and da of Gogo. She’s too old.’
‘Aye,’ affirmed Dylan. ‘Papa Dante says that she was an old lady even when the mountains were still but mist.’
As they talked they picked up dry wood. Keeva piled the lighter sticks of kindling into Sam’s arms and Dylan carried the larger logs.
They came across a circle of mushrooms under an oak tree and Keeva stopped. She pulled up the front of her skirt to form a pouch and started to pick them, brushing the soil from the roots and putting them into the pouch.
Both Sam and Dylan simply stood and watched, arms full of wood. When she was finished she stood up. ‘Come on, let’s go back.’
She skipped ahead of them as they returned, singing softly as she did. By the time they got back to the tabor things had fallen into a semblance of order. Wood was piled for the night. Three fires were on the go. One large in the center and two separate smaller ones to each side.
Keeva’s find of woodland mushrooms was greeted with applause and she curtsied after handing them over. They were then added to a huge pot of stew that was bubbling next to one of the smaller fires. Canvas water bags had been hung on some of the vardos and Sam noticed that they all seemed to be leaking.
He pointed at one of them and asked Keeva. ‘Why do all of your water bottles leak? Are they broken?’
Keeva shook her head. ‘It’s to keep the water cold, silly,’ she said.
‘How does it work?’
The little girl shook her head again. ‘Don’t know.’
‘So why am I silly then, you must also be silly.’
Dylan laughed. ‘He got you there, Keeva.’ He turned to talk to Sam. ‘The bags leak a bit so that, when the wind blows and evaporates the water, it cools the bag down, just like sweating makes us cool. So there, Sam the man. Now you know.’
Mama started clapping her hands and calling out. ‘Come on everyone. To table now.’
Everyone converged on the long trestle table set out in the middle of the encampment, except for four of the men, one at each quarter of the circle, who sat on top of the vardos, watching outward. Vigilant.
Supper consisted of stew and potatoes. The stew may have contained some chicken, Sam wasn’t sure, but mainly was vegetable. Thick, nourishing and tasty. Mugs were filled with clear cold water that tasted faintly of the canvas it was stored in. It was not an unpleasant taste.
But what held Sam’s attention for the whole meal was the old lady who sat at the head of the table. She had come out of her vardo when Mama had clapped and she had walked straight to her seat at the table, aided only with her walking cane, despite the obvious fact that she was totally blind. Both eyes a blank white stare of opaque cataracts.
At the end of the meal, Sam stood up to help clear the plates and the old women pointed at him. ‘Boy,’ she said. Her voice clear and strong with the timber of youth. ‘Come sit here, Gogo will talk to thee.’
Sam walked the length of the table and stood next to the old lady.
‘Bring thy face to me,’ she commanded.
Sam lent forward and she put her hands on his face. Lightly feeling.
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You’ll be all right. You will stay with Keeva and her folk. Now, we can’t be having that English name, my boy. Now you be one of us your name be Somhairle.’
‘That’s hard to say.’
‘You’re right, boy. But never you mind because the short version of Somhairle is Sam.’
‘So, I’m still Sam?’
‘Aye,’ agreed Gogo. ‘But now you are more than you were before. Now, go to Keeva and she will introduce you to your new family.’
Sam walked back down the table to Keeva who greeted him with a curtsey and then put her arms around him and kissed both his cheeks. Then she stood back and gestured to a man and a lady standing next to her.
‘This is my da,’ she said. ‘And this is my ma.’
The man was cast from the same mold as the other Pavees, tall and wiry, dark skin, black hair and beard with eyes like chips of winter sky.
He went down on one knee in front of Sam. ‘Greeting and welcome, young Somhairle,’ he said. ‘I be Fergus. You may call me Fergus or da, whatever makes you more comfortable.’ He hugged Sam and kissed him on both cheeks.
Next the lady knelt before him. She went through the same ritual of hugging and kissing on both cheeks. ‘Greeting Somhaile, son,’ she said. ‘My name is Clodagh, but it would greatly please me if you could call me ma.’
Then all three of Sam’s new family knelt on the floor and hugged him close.
And, for the first time, Sam felt safe enough to cry for the loss of his true parents.