Free Stone Cradle by Louise Doughty Page B

I was going to scrape the burnt off, into the water I was cooking. I laugh to think we had to do that, now, but it wasn’t bad if you got it right.
    He didn’t normally talk to me thoughtful like, so I knew there was a question coming. I looked at him. There was light shining on his hair, which was soft and shiny, and I thought how hard it must be for a boy his age: a boy no longer, nor not yet a man. What a strange, in-between creature that is. What was he? He must’vewondered that, and I couldn’t help him, of course, having been a girl at that age myself.
    Not for the first time, I felt a small ache inside, seeing him sitting there. It was his shoulders. He had bony shoulders that made him look fragile, like a bird, and I wanted to just hold him when I looked at his shoulders and keep the whole small, tough-little body of him wrapped up inside myself, all safe.
    ‘Yes, Chicken …’ I said.
    ‘Dei …’ He scratched his head, then held the toast up, turning the spike round to see it was done enough both sides. ‘Was my Dadus a gorjer ?’
    Looking back, it was something amazing he’d not asked before.
    ‘Why are you asking that, Chicken?’
    He decided the bread was blackened right enough and went to pull it off the spike, but it was too hot and burned his fingers. He gasped with annoyance, shook his hand in the air, then put the fingers in his mouth.
    That kept him quiet for a moment or two. Long enough.
    ‘I had a fight with Zephyrus and his brothers …’ he said.
    ‘I know, I heard about it.’ There isn’t a thing can be done in a group of Travellers but the whole camp doesn’t get to hear about it.
    ‘Well it was ’cause they were a-calling me a half ’n’ half.’
    I knew’d that too, but it saddened me to hear him say it, for I could not bear he was getting into fights on my account.
    I leaned forward to him, so’s he knew I was serious. ‘You listen to me, Lijah Smith,’ I said. ‘You are going to be as much a Romani chal as any chavo in this camp, in the whole district, in fact. Don’t you let nobody ever tell you you’re a half ’n’ half. No one in the world has the right to call you that, for it ain’t true.’
    He paid attention to the toast, but I could tell he was pleased. I thought perhaps that was the end of our little talk but then he caught me out by saying, ‘So who was my Dadus, then?’
    ‘Your Dadus …’ I said, as I took the cooled-off toast from himand picked up a blunt knife to scrape it into the saucepan, ‘Well, you might ask …’ I could see from the corner of my eye that he was watching me carefully.
    Tshk, tshk, tshk went the knife against the toast and the tiny black crumbs fell into the water. ‘Your Dadus was a Romany King, that’s why we had to keep the love between us a big secret, as the whole of his kingdom would have fall’d apart if word of it had ever got out.’
    I glanced at him. His eyes were big as teacups and dark as down-a-well. ‘He had a kingdom …’ he said.
    ‘Aye, Chicken, he did. He came from the Kingdom of Russia, where the Russians live. He was just King of the Romany bit of it, mind, and as well as being a King he owned a thousand horses, and it was part of his job to bring the horses to this country and sell them, and that’s how come he passed through Werrington one day, with the horses, and that’s how come you were got. And he made me promise on my life never to tell a soul, for he was bound to go back to the Kingdom of Russia and marry some cold princess that he did not love, but he said he would remember me for ever.’
    ‘And did he know you had a babby by him?’
    I thought I could detect a note of not-quite-believing in his voice. Tshk, tshk, tshk went the knife against the toast.
    ‘He did not, my poor child,’ I said sombrely, ‘for I had no way of getting word to him, nor will we ever have, for he is on the other side of the world being the King of Russia, but I know he thinks on us from time to time, when