The rose oil cart. “I suppose we look a bit of a mess,” I confessed. “We’ve been walking since this afternoon. But we’re not bandits.”
“We are very anti-bandit,” Huck assured him.
He gave us a soft smile. “My wife told me to look for you, in case you needed help.”
“We do. Can you tell us if the Danube River is close by?” I asked Valentin. “We need to find passage across. We’re headed to Bucharest.”
“Ah,Bucure?ti. Like you, Romania is my mother’s birthplace, and I travel there several times a year,” Valentin said. “The river is just beyond this forest, but you will not cross tonight. No boats. Not until morning.”
My heart sank.
“Do not worry. You can stay with us tonight,” Valentin said generously, gesturing toward the campfire in the distance. “I’m traveling with several traders and merchants. We’re taking goods into Romania tomorrow—our last trip before winter—and have made a camp for the night.”
“In the woods?” I said, skeptical.
“It’s very safe,” he promised me, then scratched his neck and added, “Usually.”
“What about a hotel?” I asked. “You could maybe... take us to a telephone or a hotel?”
Valentin laughed, but not unkindly. “Miles and miles away. We are in the countryside. There are no hotels here. I just rode for two hours to fetch bread from a farmer, and he doesn’t own a telephone.”
Huck’s eyes flicked to mine, questioning.
I hesitated. This was ridiculous, wasn’t it? Heading off into the woods with a complete stranger?
“My wife would be angry with me if I left you alone out here. There is safety in numbers, and we have food, fire, and a place to lie down, yes?”
I thought of my mother and wondered what she’d do in this situation. She always said to trust my intuition. And my intuition thought Valentin had an honest face. Besides, it was cold and muddy, and what else were we going to do?
I nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
“Good! Come with me.” Valentin patted the wagon behind him, which was half filled with crates of supplies and what smelled like fresh bread.
Huck seemed relieved. He took my satchel and chucked it onto the back of the wagon along with his pack. “You know what they say. Beggars can’t be chosen.”
I ignored his offered hand and hoisted myself onto the back of the cart. “That sounds about right.”
Valentin guided his horse forward toward the camp in the woods. The ride was slowgoing and bumpy, and halfway there I considered suggesting that we get out and walk to spare his poor nag the disservice of having to haul all of us. But the chatter ahead was getting louder, and the night darker, and it wasn’t long before our destination came into view: the traders’ camp.
Just inside the forest, several canvas tents circled a large clearing where a dozen or so people were talking and drinking out of tin cups. Carts filled with crates and wooden barrels were lined up near horses that had been hitched to a line of rope tied between trees. And in the middle of all this, a brightly blazing bonfire sent a thick column of smoke up into the tops of the trees.
Valentin stopped the cart near the line of horses and hopped off. A couple of older men were draping blankets over the horses’ backs, their breath visible in the chilly night air. I smelled fresh hay and the scent we’d caught an hour or so ago: rose oil. There was the little cart of clinking bottles beside us.
“Come!” Valentin said. “Be welcome. We do not bite.” He gestured for us to follow him toward the center of camp, and we did, winding around people sitting on blankets spread over the ground, picnic-style. Curious faces, both pale and dark, looked up at us with blinking eyes. Mostly men of various ages, but a couple of women also, and at least two children. Valentin said something to one of the men in Bulgarian, and he relayed it to others around him as Huck and I lifted our hands in greeting.
Woodsmoke and the scents of both alcohol and garlicky meat filled my nostrils as we walked around the bonfire. Near a couple of tents on our right, I noticed a barrel-shaped vardo wagon. It had a window with shutters on the side, decoratively carved eaves under the roof, and a door with pull-down steps at one end.
“Are you travelers?” Huck asked, looking at the wagon.
“Romany, he means,” I explained to Valentin.
He shook his head. “This place here, in the woods, is an old Romany campsite. We trade with them sometimes. I come from a town called Razgrad, where my father is a Bulgarian carpenter. He made this wagon for a Romany couple who are getting married. I’m delivering it to their families before the wedding.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
He nodded. “It sleeps good too. Very solid,” he said, knocking on the wood. “My father makes several of these caravan wagons every year. The Romany have a tradition to give a new wagon to young couples, and also to burn the wagon with all belongings when someone dies so that amullodoes not return to claim them. So we are always busy making new caravans.”
“What is a...mullo?” I asked.
