MARIA MELVILLE’S WYLDCLIFFE JOURNAL
APRIL 5, 1919

Miss Scarsdale says that what I saw was a sign, from the past to the future. I don’t really understand what she means. I only know how I felt when the drums began.

I can’t write about that, not yet.

I am sitting up in bed in the infirmary, waiting for my ankle to heal. My other cuts and bruises are getting better, but it will be days, perhaps weeks, before I can walk or ride again. Miss Scarsdale has told Miss Feather-stone that she has given me books to study while I am an invalid, but really she wants me to carry on as I have begun, and write everything down that has happened to me since I arrived at Wyldcliffe.

I will try. I will do my best. I am sorry if I cannot tell my tale well, but this is my story.

Before I came to Wyldcliffe, Mother and Father protected me from every hurt, but they have always told me the truth, even when I was very young. Mother’s favorite line from the Gospel is “The truth will set you free,” and I have tried to live by that too. So when Daphne tried to shock me with her unkind gossip about my birth, what she said wasn’t actually a surprise. I have always known that Mother and Father, Katherine and William Melville, aren’t my blood parents. As far back as I can remember, I knew that my real mother had died when I was a baby. Her name was Adamina, like mine. It means “daughter of the earth,” and Adamina was a Gypsy. “One of the Roma, a proud and ancient people,” Mother always said when she talked of her. “Don’t ever forget that, Maria darling. Be proud of who you are.”

And I am, I really am. Stupid, ignorant girls like Daphne and Winifred cannot destroy that pride.

When Mother and Father first got married they wanted to have a big family and dreamed of having lots of children to live with them at Grensham. But no baby came along, and when Mother was nearly thirty the doctor told her she couldn’t have a child. She and Father tried not to be sad, and because they loved each other so much they were determined to make a happy, useful life together, even without children. So they looked after their land and the tenants on the estate. Mother ran a school, and Father built a village institute and started a health clinic, with a doctor for the local people. But still Mother said that they sometimes felt empty.

It must have been hard for them, having so much, but not the one thing they truly wanted.

Life at Grensham carried on as it always had, following the seasons of the earth and the church and the quiet country life. Father had always let the Gypsies camp on his land every year, which some of the neighboring landowners didn’t like. There was trouble sometimes, but Father said it was an ancient right and the old ways of the land had to be respected. The Gypsy people came at harvest time and helped to bring in the crops, and Father was grateful and paid them fairly. They loved Mother especially and one year did her the honor of giving her a beautiful embroidered Romany dress in return for the help she gave to the women and their children. But one year there was dreadful trouble. Adamina was the most beautiful of all the young Gypsy wives, and she was expecting a baby. Her husband, Stefan, was accused of stealing from a local farmer and was sent to prison by the magistrate. The shock and upset made the baby come early, and Adamina died after the birth, with the baby in her arms. That baby was me.

I feel so sad when I think about her, my real mother, but my sadness seems far away in the past, like a beautiful piece of music that soothes as well as hurts.

After Adamina died, Mother helped to look after me, and soon she loved me as if I were her own baby. The Gypsies did not know what to do with me, as I belonged to the whole tribe, and yet to no one, as my father Stefan was still in prison. He had not yet claimed me by tying a red lace around my neck, according to the custom. Father knew that Stefan would never steal, and he went to great lengths to clear his name and get him freed. When Stefan came out of prison, he was heartbroken over Adamina’s death and said he was going to travel far away to forget his grief and never come back to Grensham. It was a place of death and ill omen for his people now. But out of gratitude for the kindness he had received there from Mother and Father, he gave them the red lace and told them to claim Adamina’s child as their own. It was what they both had dreamed of ever since they had first seen me.

And so that’s how this “dirty Gypsy” came to be adopted by a rich English couple. They have loved me so dearly and given me everything, even this fine education at Wyldcliffe. They did not imagine that the young ladies here would bully and despise me and drive me to seek more dangerous companions. . . .

I must rest now.

After the first couple of weeks I stopped trying to make friends with the stuck-up madams at Wyldcliffe, but in my heart I desperately wanted someone to love. Instead of trying to persuade Daphne and Winifred to like me, I looked for friends in other places. One comfort was darling Cracker, a beautiful, sturdy hill pony that Father had given me to ride. I was so glad Cracker was here with me. Sometimes I crept to the stables and wrapped my arms around his neck and breathed in his strong, warm scent. That felt like a little bit of love in this bleak place. Though perhaps if I had not had Cracker with me, none of this would have happened.

I was allowed to get up early and ride him down to the village and along the banks of the little river, as long as the groom came with me. On Sunday afternoons, a small group of girls who had brought horses from home were given permission to ride over the lower slopes of the moors with the grooms. These were precious hours of freedom. And on my fifteenth birthday, a few weeks after I had arrived, I had an even greater treat. Miss Scarsdale rode out with me on her beautiful white mare, and we took the path right over the moor that leads to the standing stones on the top of Blackdown Ridge. She said the stones were brought there hundreds and hundreds of years ago by people who worshipped them as part of their gods. The great stones were eerie, standing on the horizon all black and cold against the sky. Miss Scarsdale knows so much about geology and archaeology and history, and so many other things. She makes me realize how much I have to learn. I loved being out on the open moor and hearing the bleat of the lambs and the cries of the birds. I saw a curlew and a lapwing. We also rode past the entrance to some caves. Miss S. told me that they spread under the hills like a honeycomb.

I dreamed about the caves again last night. I woke up sobbing and gasping and had to call the nurse. I am ashamed of being so weak and childish, but I can’t stop myself. I must be strong! I must be a soldier. . . .

But I was writing about trying to make friends. Sometimes I kept a piece of cake from supper and offered to share it with the maids in the servants’ hall. I have always been great friends with the village girls at home who help Mother in the house, but these servants were different, sullen and suspicious. No doubt they are given a hard time by Miss Featherstone and are unhappy with their lot. Whatever the reason, they looked at me differently because I was a young lady, and the young ladies at the school looked at me differently because I was a Gypsy. So I was alone. Alone. It is a dreadful word. It makes my heart ache just to write it.

But when the Brothers came to Wyldcliffe, I was no longer alone.