'I have what I trust will be good news,' he said bracingly, and Yasmin smiled dutifully. 'Do you recall Mrs Forbes?'
Yasmin nodded, her heart sinking as she realised what was to come.
'Ah, yes, the late rector's widow. She still lives in the house she bought when her husband died, and I came here to the living. It is several miles distant from here, but she still contrives to take an interest in parish affairs.'
He paused, and Yasmin risked a glance at him. Mrs Forbes is far too busy about what should be his affairs, she thought, remembering the many occasions when she had encountered Mrs Forbes. The old lady had frequently descended on the rectory, demanding in peculiarly strident tones to be told why something was not being done as in her husband's day. The children in the schoolroom had often mocked her, while taking care to keep out of the way of her sharp tongue.
'She is growing old and her eyesight is failing. She needs a companion, someone to do her errands, and read to her, and write letters. She has agreed to give you a trial for a month. I think you ought to accept the offer. She is old,' he added, reading accurately Yasmin's dismayed expression, and intending consolation. Then realising the interpretation that could be put on his words, he added quickly, 'and she needs understanding and help.'
'Does she wish for an immediate answer?' Yasmin asked, wanting to delay the decision, while knowing hesitation could bring no relief.
'I will send an answer tomorrow, that will be time enough.'
Thankful for so slight a reprieve, Yasmin escaped, and the rector was as relieved to see her go as she was to leave him. He was such an understanding man he realised fully the dismay with which Yasmin or any young girl would face such a life, but there was no alternative and he could offer little consolation.
* * * *
Avoiding the rest of the family she wandered out into the woods that surrounded the village. Already the leaves were turning russet and gold and red, and the riot of colour comforted her a little, for she had always been responsive to beauty, especially out of doors. Yasmin walked on, wandering deeper into the woods, trying to forget the decision she had to make that was no real choice, for what alternative had she? For the first time since Aunt Georgiana's death Yasmin consciously tried to recall her and their life together. Until now she had shied away from such memories for they had been painful, but there in the solitude of the woods she began to realise they could bring healing too, for the memory of the happy times could sustain her in the times to come which were likely to be far from happy.
Though life had been quiet for the two of them, they had been merry and contented. They had lived in the present, and Aunt Georgiana had told Yasmin nothing about her family or her life before she adopted the child, and had tried to persuade Yasmin to forget her own early years before she had been adopted. Yasmin had obeyed her wishes in so far as she did not talk of her life with the gypsies, but she had been unable to stop thinking about them, and wondering how she had come to be with them, for like the rector she could not believe she had belonged to them. Sometimes, in the dead of night when she had been unable to sleep, she wove fantasies that made her a stolen princess, eventually discovered and rescued by a handsome prince who married her and carried her off to his castle. Such romantic nonsense had been replaced as she grew older by more prosaic theories as to how she had come to be living with the gypsies, but Yasmin had respected Aunt Georgiana's wish not to talk of them, and had never confided these speculations to her. Now, however, she began to wonder about her lost family. Who and what were they? Was there any way in which she might find them again after so many years?
Yasmin was so wrapped up in her thoughts she almost stumbled over the child that lay huddled in the path. As she dragged her thoughts back to the present reality, she wondered for a horrified moment if he were dead, but then the small body heaved with a loud sob, and she bent down to him.
'Are you hurt?' she asked anxiously, putting her arm about him. She noticed he was clean, and his clothes, though poor, neatly mended.
He started up, a frightened look on his face, and muttered something. At first it was unintelligible to Yasmin, and she wondered how a foreign child could be lost here in the woods. Was he one of the poor French émigrés, she at first thought, though it did not sound like the French she had learned at the rectory lessons. It might, of course, be a dialect, yet she had heard nothing of any French people in the area. Then a word he used awoke memories. For a moment Yasmin believed she was still dreaming about her early life, for he used a word she had been familiar with amongst the gypsies. She listened more carefully when he repeated what he had said, and her smile evidently reassured him. The language was coming back to her and hesitantly she repeated some of the words. He seemed to understand her, for he nodded eagerly and gabbled back at her.
'You are lost? You have wandered away from the camp?'
'I was picking blackberries,' he said, holding out a small bowl which was stained with the juice of the berries, but had none still in it.
Yasmin had not realised the gypsies, as they always did at that time of year, had returned to the area. They could not have been there long, or she would have heard of it. Even with Aunt Georgiana's dislike of mentioning them, she had always known when they had arrived. But she had never been allowed to go near them, and had never been to the fair which the gypsies had always attended in the next village. Once she had caught a glimpse of their gaily painted vans passing along the lane, but Fanny, who had been with her, had whisked her away before she could see much.
Yasmin smiled down at the child who, she estimated, was about four years old.
'I will take you back,' she told him, and he smiled confidently up at her.
She knew where the encampment was, for she had always been instructed to avoid that area during the time the gypsies were in the district. It was scarcely a mile away. Yasmin took the child's hand, and they walked along slowly. He was chattering happily now, though she only half listened, for not only was his rapid speech difficult to understand, but she was consumed with a tremendous excitement, partly apprehension, that she would at last be meeting the gypsies. She had no idea whether they were the same ones that had kept her as a child, but it did not matter. As if in a dream she walked on, and at length came to the edge of the wood where there was a treeless hollow between the wood and the lane.
As they emerged from the trees Yasmin looked eagerly about her. There were a dozen or so gaily painted vans arranged neatly about the hollow. A space in the centre was occupied by a fire, and a couple of women were busy beside it tending cooking pots while small children played beside and under the vans. Occasionally the women threw a remark to an old woman seated at the door of one of the vans, and their laughter and the cries of the children echoed around the hollow.
The child released Yasmin's hand and ran swiftly towards the women. As he came near they espied him, and one of them ran to meet him and swept him up into her arms.
'Where have you come from? Where are your sisters?' she demanded, and looked past him towards the strange girl who stood so still at the edge of the clearing.
* * * *
The gypsy stood silently for a moment, then slowly put the child to the ground, staring all the while at Yasmin. She approached slowly, and they all regarded her silently, even the children who had been playing about the encampment a few moments before.
'I found him in the woods, he was lost,' Yasmin explained, and then they all seemed to come back to life. The two younger women overwhelmed her with thanks, explaining eagerly that the boy's sisters had been in charge of him, and he must have eluded them. They drew Yasmin towards the fire, begging her to take some of their own wine. She glanced uncertainly at the older woman, who had remained motionless all this while. She was staring at Yasmin, a curiously satisfied smile on her face, her dark, still-bright eyes gleaming.
'So you have returned to us. I knew you would before I died.'
Startled, Yasmin looked at the two younger ones, but they had withdrawn slightly to one side, and were looking curiously from her to the old woman.
'Sit beside me, child. Rosa, get wine, and then, both of you, attend to the cooking.'
They sped to do her bidding and Yasmin, bemused, approached and sat where indicated on a small stool.
'Yasmin,' the old woman breathed softly, and Yasmin was not surprised she knew her name. It was all happening with an inevitability that seemed utterly natural and right. Yasmin nodded, and the old woman looked at her closely, then sighed.
'You are very like your father, even though you have your mother's hair,' she commented.
Yasmin was by now in such a dreamlike state this sudden mention of her unknown parents did not in the least startle her.
'Please tell me about them,' she replied quietly.
The crone sat for a while, silently regarding her.
'What do you know of them?' she countered.
Yasmin shrugged. 'Nothing at all. I was adopted when I was six. I know that before then I lived with gypsies, but nothing else.'
'Who adopted you?'
'My aunt,' she replied without thinking, then she shook her head. 'I do not know, a lady I called "aunt". Georgiana Boswell. I took her name.'
The old woman smiled at her. 'It is your own name,' she said softly. 'I am glad she did not reject that.'
'My name? But it was hers!' Yasmin protested.
Without realising what she had been doing, Yasmin had pulled the locket out from her dress, and now she opened it and looked at the portrait. The old woman held out her hand and Yasmin passed it to her.
'Yes, this is precisely as she looked when she first came to us, except then she was happy, not sad as she appears here.'
'Tell me,' Yasmin asked, knowing she was on the verge of important revelations. At last she would hear about herself.
'Boswell is my name too,' the old woman began in a sing-song voice. 'I am your grandmother. Georgiana was your mother, not your aunt. She was not a Romany, but she fell in love with my son, and ran away with him. She had been very unhappy at home, and was being threatened with a marriage to an old man. She could not bear the idea and took her chance of happiness with my boy. They married, and she travelled with us for two years. You were born, but then her father discovered her and forced her to go away with him. My son was killed trying to rescue her, and she was ill-treated until she promised to remain at home. She sent a message to us asking us to care for you until she could claim you. She dared not admit to your existence for fear her father would put you into a foundling's home. Then when he died she moved away from her former home, took you with her, and I have seen nothing of either of you since.'
Yasmin had listened enthralled. 'Why did she not tell me I was her daughter?' she asked. 'She never even said she had been married.'
'I believe her brother had power to stop her income and she feared he would do so if he knew of your birth. Also because she and her children would be his heirs if he died childless, and so far his wife had proved barren, so she feared what he, too proud a man to accept you, and as hard as his father, would do to you. She told me some of this when she came to take you away, and that she would henceforth communicate with him only through lawyers so he could not discover where she lived.'
'Tell me about my father,' Yasmin asked, and the old woman very willingly did so, for she had adored her son Michael. Then she asked about Yasmin's life and heard how her mother – and strange it seemed to the girl to think of her beloved aunt as her mother – was dead, and Yasmin herself about to find work as a companion.
'You will not like that,' Mrs Boswell declared at once.
'There is no alternative.'
'There is one, if you dare take it,' she said softly. 'You could return to us, your father's people. You belong to us as much as to your mother's folk.'
* * * *
Yasmin stared. This had never occurred to her, and the idea both frightened and fascinated her.
'Would the others accept me?' she asked slowly, looking across at the women who still worked beside the fire.
'They will do as I say,' Mrs Boswell said proudly, 'but you need have no fear. Your mother adapted to us and our ways, and so will you. It is for you to decide. Take your time. We remain here for a week, and in that time you can get to know us. I would not wish you to come against your will, but I do wish to have my son's child beside me in my last few months of life.'
They sat and talked for a long time, and Yasmin heard about her new family. The other members of it gradually reappeared from their various tasks and gathered round the fire, and Yasmin was introduced to them and made welcome. Utterly forgetful of the rector, who would be concerned at her long absence, she stayed and ate with them. Then her grandmother sent her home with Leon, a man some ten years older than herself, and a cousin, for escort.
Long before the week was up, Yasmin knew she wanted to go with the gypsies. It offered a way of escape from the dreaded life of a companion, but more than that she was drawn to be with her own people. She had told the rector of her strange encounter on the following day when he had asked for her answer to Mrs Forbes. He had been astounded, and Yasmin begged him to keep her confidence for the time being.
'I will delay sending your answer to Mrs Forbes,' he said at last, reluctantly. 'It will give you time to make up your mind.'
She did not wish for this time, for her mind was almost made up, but she agreed. Fanny had found herself a job with the new tenant of her aunt's cottage, and was pleased to keep Snow, the kitten, so there was nothing to hold Yasmin. The rector spent a long time with her expounding on the many disadvantages of the step she contemplated, but they did not weigh with her. Seeing this, he went himself to talk with Mrs Boswell, and came back satisfied Yasmin would be in good hands.