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“But then there was that terrible incident where four Roma were killed by a gas bomb. Someone had booby-trapped a sign that said ‘Gypsies go home.’ Which is difficult to do considering how hell-bent everyone is on ridding their countries of gypsies. After the news came in about the bomb it was a little hard to get everyone at the table to talk.” She took a breath and then let it out all at once. “Germany was willing to pay reparation money from the war but it was to go towards building settlements. Try to explain that settlement and concentration camp are not so far apart in the gypsy mind and those grim Teutonic types go deaf. Besides Germany and the rest of the world would just as soon forget the gypsies that were exterminated, what are eighty thousand homeless riffraff compared to six million Jews.” She drank broodingly from her glass, “Understand that I say this as a Jew. Jewish memory,” she tapped her head, “is very long, maybe too long, I think sometimes. But gypsies,” she gestured broadly towards the encampment, “gypsies act as if there is no memory at all. The world has forgotten too, there is no mention of us in the records and rarely in the history books that seem to be springing up like mushrooms. Perhaps it is our nature to forget though, all our tradition is oral and moving from place to place we shed our stories, change them, kaleidoscope them in and out to suit our purposes. Of course,” the prosaic Russian was back, “illiteracy does not help.”
    She sighed and shifted her position, hair gleaming like polished obsidian in the firelight, strands of it falling and catching in the folds of her crimson scarf. Courtesan, queen and mother were tired.
    “Perhaps is best what is easiest, to forget. Remembering only honors the dead; it does not bring them back. And so, you have more babies,” she watched a pretty pair of boys scamper past, “and you build a future for them. Ah, Jemmy,” she sat up abruptly and clapped her hands together, “I am too silly being sad, I am forgetting your present.”
    Jamie groaned. “Yevitsa, I would think after last time you’d give up on the gift giving.”
    Yevgena shrugged her shoulders expressively, “You give a man a camel one time and he never lets you forget it.”
    “You didn’t really—” Jessica said, beginning to laugh.
    “She did,” Jamie said exasperatedly, “for my thirtieth birthday. Bertha the Camel, she of two humps and great spitting ability.”
    “Ah, but she came in very useful did she not?” Yevgena waved an index finger in his direction. She turned to Jessica. “He gave her to an Arab minister of trade in exchange for being allowed to export that poisonous Kilkenny Fog he makes.”
    John, looking very relaxed and happy, slid bonelessly onto the edges of their small group. “Talking about Bertha are you?” He grinned, “Dear God, don’t tell me you’ve brought him another gift, Yevgena!”
    “But of course I have,” she leaned forward and pinched Jamie’s cheek affectionately. “Would your Yevitsa forget your birthday?”
    “I rather wish you would sometimes,” Jamie said dryly.
    “Well then what is it this time?” John rubbed his hands with relish.
    Yevgena smiled slowly, gleefully, mischief abounding on Levantine shores now.
    “I’ve brought you a girl,” she said.

Chapter Two
Gypsy Girl
    “In the old days,” Yevgena said to the shocked faces around her, “there was a group of rather lovely young men of diverse talents, who, in return for food and gifts, would go about dispensing poetry, music and,” her voice tilted towards a lower register, “love.”
    “The Pilgrims of Love,” John said, amusement beginning to overtake shock.
    “For lack of a better term,” Jamie interjected acidly.
    “Nevertheless,” Yevgena continued undeterred, “history is there for us to improve and expand upon, so I’ve found a female pilgrim.”
    “Rings on her fingers and the