Public opinion

WHEN she regained consciousness she was lying in the clearing trussed up with ropes that rasped her wrists and ankles, making movement an agony. A coarse rag was stuffed between her teeth and a diklo was wrapped tightly around her mouth keeping the gag in place. Only her eyes could be moved, and they immediately alighted upon Kalia stretched out beneath a tree directly opposite, snoring deeply, oblivious and uncaring of the discomfort of his prisoner left lying in the full glare of the midday sun.

By the time he awoke the sun had dropped to the level of the tree tops and Marielle was almost delirious from combined effects of blistering ropes, harsh sun, and the suffocating gag. He showed no compunction as he bent down to loosen the diklo which by then had begun to feel like a constricting iron band.

"So I take it you now intend to behave?" he questioned with casual cruelty, fingering the gag as if in two minds whether or not to replace it.

"Yes ..." she croaked through swollen lips, her eyes imploring him to believe his strong-arm tactics were no longer necessary.

His lip curled in a callous grin, but he loosened the ropes to allow her to massage the deep weals around her wrists and ankles to revive circulation. She offered no condemnation, not even when he taunted,

"That is just a foretaste of what will follow should you try to escape again. Your presence means money in my pockets; I shall be very angry if there are any further attempts to disrupt my plans. I sympathize with your desire to rejoin your husband," he sneered. "I hope, for your sake, that his impatience matches your own!" The clearing rang with laughter as he walked away to tend to the horse, and she had to grit her teeth to prevent letting slip the angry retort burning on her lips.

There were still a couple of hours to go before nightfall, so she used the time to repair as best she could the damage caused to her appearance. Frequent bathing in cold water from a nearby spring reduced the swelling from her lips and rendered the scratches on her arms and face almost invisible; dampened fingers dispersed the tangles from her hair, leaving it smooth and sculptured moistly to her head. Her dress presented the biggest problem; the bodice was not too bad, but the long skirt was in ribboned strips from the knees downwards. With as much care as she would have given to a treasured ball-gown, Marielle began ripping away the tattered remnants of the skirt, concentrating upon making as straight a hem as possible until she had achieved a passable imitation of a mini. Then, her feminine morale slightly uplifted, she made her way back to the clearing.

The horse was harnessed, the cart loaded, and Kalia, with scowling countenance, was waiting. Without speaking, Marielle stepped up on to the cart, flinching from the crack of the impatient whip he flicked across the horse's withers, then with a jerk that almost rocked her from her seat the cart moved forward, then stopped suddenly as the horse reared between the shafts, quivering nostrils and flattened ears denoting fear of some object that had appeared in its path. With a curse Kalia stood up in his seat, flicking the reins to urge the horse forward. Nothing could be seen in the gathering gloom, so the shock of hearing a voice snake out from the direction of the enshrouding trees was great. "Get down, Kalia!" the voice commanded. "Get down and prepare to take your punishment!"

"Rom!" The name left Marielle's lips like a soft prayer. In a moment, it seemed, the clearing was full of gypsies stepping from behind the trees - grim-faced avengers waiting, silently demanding, that justice should be done. She cried out and slid away from Kalia's frozen silhouette to run towards Rom, only to be thrust behind him to join the audience of watchers waiting with bated breath for the first sign of action from their savagely revengeful leader.

Fear relaxed its grip sufficiently on Kalia's vocal chords to enable him to stutter, "The woman pleaded for my help! She hates you, Rom Boro . .. enough to offer me a bribe to help her escape. My tribe is poor ... money is needed desperately ... do not condemn me for attempting to relieve the suffering of my people! "

Marielle's cry of protest was drowned by rumbles of sympathy from the surrounding gypsies. Only Rom remained unmoved, his flint-hard eyes held no hint of softening as he ignored Kalia's pleas and repeated dangerously,

"Get down, Kalia ... and bring your whip!" Like wind rustling through dry leaves his words were taken up by the men, hissed through clenched teeth from one to the other until the clearing echoed with the sibilant, terrifying whisper: whip fight! Marielle froze with dread and steeled herself to witness yet another pagan ritual. She had learnt to accept that protest would be useless, even resented; Rom had thrown down a challenge and for him to back down now would be regarded by the watching gypsies as "being forced to eat dirt".

Kalia suddenly assumed the aspect of a whipped cur, his body sagged with dejection as he obeyed Rom's command and reached for the horsewhip which only minutes before he had so vigorously applied to the haunches of the now placid horse. He looked so pathetic when he climbed from the cart that even Rom was sufficiently disarmed to allow his attention to waver. He was adjusting the handle of his whip when Kalia lashed out. There was a slight, whistling whisper followed by a sharp whipcrack and before Marielle's shocked eyes Rom's hand jerked up to cover the blood-stained cheek which Kalia had just grazed. The watching men showed their disapproval of Kalia's tactics by booing and spitting their contempt, but they did not have long to wait for Rom's reaction. He uncurled his snake of leather slowly, then, pinpointing Kalia's cunning face with a look of cold venom, he circled round him, his anger so visible that Marielle experienced a thrill of dread on behalf of his opponent. The

encircling gypsies rapidly spread out to leave a space wide enough to escape the far-reaching whips, their heavy breathing the only sound impinging the tense atmosphere.

Again Kalia nervously snapped out, but Rom jumped back and he missed. Once more he tried, hitting out a few tentative whip snaps which Rom warily anticipated. Then, white to the lips with anger, Rom began infuriating his opponent by teasing him into reckless moves which he then contemptuously foiled. Arrogantly he stalked Kalia in a full circle, feinting blows which were never intended to land on the sweating, back-stepping man until his humiliation was unmistakable. Finally, incensed by the men's derisive catcalls, Kalia spat at Rom in scorn, only to double up in silent agony with a thin red whip mark across his gaping mouth; with one quick flick of the wrist Rom had been avenged!

Marielle almost retched when Kalia fell to the ground clutching his ragged mouth with blood-stained fingers. She staggered away with tears of shame and disgust scalding her cheeks, her senses so shocked she barely took in Rom's harshly-voiced condemnation.

"Save your tears, you'll need them later to prove your penitence. If you think Kalia's punishment too harsh, then be grateful you did not marry a true gypsy. The punishment they dole out to erring wives is barbaric, but most effective..."

She turned slowly to face her accuser. "What will they do to me?"

she whispered, ready to believe anything of people who could enjoy the barbarity she had just witnessed.

"They will merely look on while I chastise," he clipped. "I would willingly forgo the ritual, were it not expected of me as chief that I should punish my wife's infidelity in the only way the tribe can accept - physically." As she stared at him with the vacant eyes of a child striving to understand, the grim line of his mouth wavered,

touched by deep pain. He sounded exasperated beyond endurance when he pulled her forward to clamp bitterly, "Why did you do it, why? Surely there was no need for me to explain that the marriage ceremony was of no consequence to either of us? That it is neither legally nor morally binding - a mere sop to the demands of the krisatori which could have been dismissed from your mind as soon as you reached safety?" He raked her ashen face, hesitating over bruise-shadowed eyes and a mouth completely beyond control. "You surely didn't think ...?" He pushed her away as doubt became certainty. "You had nothing to fear from me," he lanced coldly. "I wish only to carry out my promise to Sophie by getting you safely out of the country. Perhaps I should have reassured you earlier on this point, but I thought my motives so plain that to have voiced them would have been merely to underline the obvious!"

Marielle called upon every reserve to steady her nerves as she quavered, "I'm not sure what you are implying, but if it is what I suspect then your conceit must be enormous! I asked Kalia to help me simply because I am sick of travelling with a tribe of barbarians whose whole mode of life is repugnant to me. I am a product of a civilized society, and as such I crave the stimulus of intelligent minds. I don't wish to disparage the kindness and hospitality of your people, Rom Boro, but the truth is I was desperately bored, and escape with Kalia seemed to offer a short cut to sanity! "

He had no need to pretend anger when, a few hours later, he drove the tagila with reckless speed into the centre of the encampment. The men who had accompanied him in his search had arrived back earlier, and judging from the hard eyes and tightly-pursed lips of their womenfolk the tale they had told must have thoroughly condemned her. Rom plunged into his role of furious husband by jumping down from the cart and roughly plucking her from her seat, setting her down with such scant ceremony that the impact jarred her spine. His mouth tightened when Lala shouted from the crowd: "She is wilful,

that one, Rom Boro! Shame on you for burdening us with a wild goose you cannot tame!"

Marielle was too dispirited to show fight, the weight of her worries overshadowed even the growing certainty that the resentment felt by the tribe would not be appeased until they saw her humbled by a public beating. Pity stirred for Rom, faced with a situation demanding action she knew instinctively was abhorrent to him. She watched with almost detached curiosity his struggle against divided loyalties - on the one hand, the demand of his tribe that he live up to his position of leadership by following out their code of immediate retribution and on the other, his own deeply-rooted aversion to physical assault upon a woman. No one but she guessed that he finally decided upon compromise. As his hands seized her shoulders, brutally shaking her into submission, he hissed through immobile lips: "Play up, for God's sake! Shout, scream, do anything that will satisfy their thirst for vengeance! "

But she could not. It was as if her senses were too numbed by mental agony to allow physical assault to register. Driven to desperation by her mute refusal to co-operate, he shook her giddy, then threw her savagely across his shoulder and began striding towards the van.

There were mutterings amongst the dissatisfied onlookers : "Life amongst the Gaje has made our leader soft," and an answering: "It is as our elders have long suspected, Rom will not be for ever content to share our life, we must prepare -for the day when he decides to return permanently to his own." Similar reproaches were ringing in his ears when he stepped inside the van and ferociously booted shut the door.

"You little fool!" he breathed, raking her with fire- flecked eyes as he set her on her feet. "Was it too much to expect that you play out a charade for their benefit? Didn't you sense their demand for tears, for pleas for mercy, for any visible signs of the torment expected of a repentant wife? Surely you could have mustered up something more convincing than the reproachful look of a thrashed kitten!" Her chin

was tilted by an impatient hand until his anger was reflected in eyes of limpid grey. She winced when he harshly decreed: "Outside they are waiting, hoping against hope that their suspicions are groundless - that their chosen leader is not incapable of mastering an unruly woman!" He sounded dangerously silky when he went on, "With or without your co-operation, I intend making sure they are not disappointed."

Marielle stared up at him, suddenly alive to a hidden meaning in his words, then backed away, afraid for the first time, not of his anger, but of the sinister curve of his lips which barely parodied a smile.

"No! Please, no ..." she begged wide-eyed, her face as colourless as the shorn gown clinging incongruously to her figure, giving her the look of a child dressed up to play a favourite game of brides.

"But yes," he countered, advancing towards her, his saturnine features showing a determination that terror- thrilled. Too late her frozen senses reacted to the urgency of his demands. He was through play-acting! Not only for his tribe's sake, but to appease some devil she had aroused within him he wanted to punish her, to see her writhe, hear her plead for mercy...

Blows would have been infinitely preferable to the scourge of hard lips that sought revenge upon her protesting mouth, strangling within her the infinite capacity for loving which once she would have bestowed willingly. While his mouth silently forced her surrender, his hands caressed her shivering limbs, sliding over delicate satin as if contemplating inflicting the ultimate degradation of tearing the flimsy material from her body. When at last he lifted his mouth to explore the soft contours of her shoulder she fought him with words, ragged, contemptuous words that rasped through a throat tight with feeling. Nuzzling her neck, he laughed, softly mocking, and the sound aroused in her the fighting spirit subdued by the emotional storm she had endured.

She pushed hard against him and screamed, a loud, prolonged scream that must have penetrated outside the van to the ears of everyone in camp. With the fury of a cornered tabby she raked his tanned face with clawed fingernails, kicked his shins, then for good measure stamped the heel of her shoe hard upon his foot. Pandemonium reigned as he retaliated by clamping her flaying arms to her sides, unbalancing them both in the process so that they stumbled into a dresser, sending crockery smashing to the floor with a crash that shuddered through the van. Exerting tremendous effort, she broke loose and backed away, spitting fury as she put the space of the van between them. She tensed, expecting retaliation, but Rom was otherwise occupied.

Disposing of the slivers of broken crockery clinging to his clothes, he observed calmly, "That ought to do the trick. All we need do now is remain quiet and leave the rest to our audience who, if I'm not mistaken, will now be imagining that the 'wild goose' has been tamed and we are now in the process of 'making up'."

Her hands faltered to her sides, comprehension firing her cheeks a humiliated crimson as she read amusement in his face...

There was no question of his leaving the van that night; to have retired outside to his usual sleeping place would have re-aroused suspicion in the minds of his people. So he rolled out a blanket on the floor, stretched himself on its length, and after a cursory "goodnight"

fell fast asleep. For hours Marielle lay on her bunk, wary, and not entirely disarmed by his quick return to normality. But as the shadows lengthened and his breathing grew deeper and more even she allowed her tense limbs to relax, even though chaotic thoughts still rioted through her mind. Tentatively, she raised a finger to her bruised lips. They felt hot and trembled as if only just released from the kisses that had intoxicated to the point of seduction. She had fought two fights, one against him and the other against an inner voice that urged her to indulge in the temptation of the moment.

What would have been the outcome if she had listened to that voice?

Would she have perhaps suffered the shame of rejection or - her body blushed in the darkness - had the increasing urgency of his questing lips indicated that he, too, had not been entirely unmoved?

The smell of freshly brewed coffee wafting through the van welcomed in a new day. Rom, freshly shaven and visibly refreshed, was bending over her when she opened her eyes.

"Did I startle you?" He actually smiled. "Here, drink this, it will chase the dream dust from your eyes." Gratefully she drank, meeting his eyes with childlike solemnity over the rim of her cup until he frowned and turned away. "When you've finished," he clipped across his shoulder, "I will change the bed linen. It is expected," he explained in answer to her raised eyebrows, "another of our outlandish customs which must be tolerated."

Marielle glanced up, puzzled by the hint of unease in his tone, but his profile was impassive. Obediently, she finished her coffee and dressed while his back was conveniently turned, then she bundled up the sheets and gravely handed them over.

"Perhaps you would like to wash while I attend to these," he politely ordered, avoiding her questioning look as he accepted the proffered bundle. Feeling certain he wanted to be rid of her, she picked up a towel and hurried out of the van, then, impelled by a curiosity she could not control she hesitated, then turned and began slowly to retrace her steps. When she reached the van she began instinctively to creep, so her silent footfalls gave no warning of her return. He had placed the sheets on the bunk and was bending over them trying without much success to stem a flow of blood from a cut in his

"Perhaps you would like to wash while I attend to these," he politely ordered, avoiding her questioning look as he accepted the proffered bundle. Feeling certain he wanted to be rid of her, she picked up a towel and hurried out of the van, then, impelled by a curiosity she could not control she hesitated, then turned and began slowly to retrace her steps. When she reached the van she began instinctively to creep, so her silent footfalls gave no warning of her return. He had placed the sheets on the bunk and was bending over them trying without much success to stem a flow of blood from a cut in his