Free Curse of the Gypsy by Donna Lea Simpson

then others of her tribe would be ill.
    No, that could not be the answer.
    After an hour, she still had not found anything else that accounted for the symptoms they all suffered, the vomiting, the diarrhea, the sleep that bordered on unconsciousness. Her father was worried, too, but she had not overemphasized the problem for fear that it would make him ill. Trouble had done such a thing in the past. When her mother had announced two years before that she would be taking up residence in Bath, he had suffered what the doctor termed a kind of attack that, if repeated, could leave him paralyzed.
    No, she’d handle this alone.
    But there were things she could still speak to him about, and Darkefell was one of them. When she first came home she had told her father about all her adventures in Yorkshire and Cornwall, and he had enjoyed them thoroughly. He was, perhaps, the only person in the world who did not think she ever outreached her skills in anything she attempted. He seemed to view her as a kind of omnipotent figure of colossal ability, intelligence, and physical strength.
    As uncomfortable as such awe as he held her in could become, he tempered it with a deep affection that warmed her to the soul. She loved her father, trusted him, and relied on him as the source of her strength. She needed to speak with someone about her uncertainty over the marquess or she would burst.
    “Papa,” she said, staring at the bookcase in front of her as she slid a slim volume of Latin flower names back into its place. “Lord Darkefell has told me he loves me and I think I am in love with him.” She turned to gaze at her father. He was bent over a book, trying to see the print with his poor eyesight. “Papa, did you hear what I just said?”
    “What? I beg your pardon, Anne, I was not attending,” Lord Harecross said. “What did you say?”
    “Never mind,” she said, unwilling—or afraid—to repeat herself. It was an intensely private thing, this growing love, and though she had shared her feelings for the marquess with two other people—her friend Pamela St. James in Cornwall and of course Mary—it suddenly seemed precipitous to share that part of her life with her father. He would be full of questions about this man whom he had not yet met. The moment and the urge passed, and she hugged her secret love to her breast again. She still had time to think about it and decide what to do.
    The problem of the illness reasserted itself as of paramount importance. “Papa, you had the old gypsy mother here more than once, talking to her, constructing your lexicon of the Romany language.”
    “Yes, yes, indeed.”
    “Did you give her food while she was here? And when was the last time?”
    “Well, of course I gave her food, my dear.” He furrowed his brow and stared at the book he was perusing. “Cream cakes. She was fond of cream cakes and strawberries. She was very particular about what she ate, for gypsy cooking habits stress cleanliness. That is how I first learned their word ‘ marime ,’ meaning, as best as I can tell, dirty, or rather, unclean. Many things are considered marime , including a woman’s menstrual cycle, and indeed her whole lower body.”
    Anne was not shocked by his frank speech. She had learned from her father that to be ashamed of bodily functions was to be ashamed of being human. To be ashamed of being human was to be ashamed of a creation of the Lord, and that was blasphemy. Perhaps she did not quite look at it as he did, but she believed much of what he believed. “That actually answers one of my questions. Papa, I am trying to connect the gypsy mother’s illness with that of Wee Robbie and Mrs. Jackson, and I am coming up blank. Can you think of any connection? Upon thought, I have ruled out water from the same source, for I believe the gypsies use the stream, while Farfield Farm has its own well. Robbie may have drunk from the stream, but he has not been to Farfield Farm.”
    “I will set my mind to