Quid Stellae Signant
Written for Madeline.
Jehan did not mean to fall in love.
He was already in love with Andrea, and all his poetry of the past week had borne her name. She was an angel, a goddess, a vision, and he was dying, in a quiet, desperate manner, for her love. He certainly had not intended to forsake her. As a matter of fact, all he'd meant to do was to go out of Paris for a day trip, and have a sort of picnic lunch somewhere with wild strawberries, because he hadn't had a strawberry in ages, and missed them.
Innocently, he went out, and sat in among some small, pretty trees to eat his lunch, with the sun sparkling through the leaves and making him want to write poetry. He suddenly caught sight of something. He stood, and trotted through the trees, his wide sleeves flapping in the breeze. When he emerged from the trees, he came upon a small number of hooded wagons put into a ring. It was a gypsy caravan.
Jehan was utterly enthralled.
He crept closer, curling his arm around the slender tree trunks as though he were reluctant to approach. There were people inside the ring: people making small fires; people setting out little wooden stools; people laughing or sternly saying things in a language he couldn't understand. There were children, and old men and women, and people his age. The women and girls wore beautiful, somewhat faded skirts and blouses, and the men loose shirts and breeches. They all wore jewelry. Most of them were barefoot; many of them bare-headed.
And Jehan fell in love.
Just then, someone saw him, and several of the people danced over to look at him. The dark-skinned girls giggled, and the dark-haired men laughed.
Jehan Prouvaire, at that time, didn't look quite eighteen; he looked harmless. They were completely unafraid of him, and not inclined to be hostile. He was just a lost, pretty-eyed child.
"Boy," one of the women said to him, in tumbling, accented French. "Boy, you come for why?"
"I'm from the city," he whispered.
"You want something? We mend things, we sell, we trade things. You want your fortune, boy? We tell fortunes, sometimes. Is that why you come looking for us?"
Jehan couldn't answer.
When he loved just one girl--when he loved Andrea--it was hard enough to be around just her and not stumble over himself, or blush, or trip on his words. Now, he was near almost fifty people, and he was in love with them all, and everything about them. It was enough to make him feel faint.
One of the girls, wearing a purple and blue and green skirt that made him think of watercolour grapes, fanned at him with a battered hat. It blew the loose brown curls of his hair gently. "Is the boy all right? You all right?"
"I'm all right. I shall buy anything you like." He looked imploringly towards the woman who had first spoken. "But will you let me stay? I want to stay here for a few moments."
The woman smiled at him, and drew him forward with a firm, dark hand. "You want to stay? Why should you stay?"
"I'll do anything you'd like me to," he told her. "Please, I'll do anything at all."
The woman laughed, turned to the others, and said something he couldn't understand. Another of the girls laughed something back, and a tall, smirking young man suggested something else. The woman turned back to Jehan. "Then you help. You go with him," she indicated one of the men, "and he show you what you do. He's Calliditas." She grinned.
Jehan obediently went to the young man's side. He looked up--for Calliditas was infinitely taller than he was--and saw two sharp, dark eyes watching him.
"I'm Jehan," he said softly.
Calliditas put a hand on his shoulder. "Jehan? You come with me."
So for the next three hours, Jehan worked. He had never really needed to work before. After all, he was the only son of a very wealthy aristocratic family, and before there'd always been servants to do things. He had never searched a meadow for plants, or repainted the gold ribbons on the side of a wagon; he'd never before split wood for fires, or sung his poetry to small, thin children with the eyes of old men. But the longer he worked, and the more the children asked him to sing the long, pretty song again, the deeper he fell in love.
Calliditas watched him with approval, and the gypsy girls laughed at his pale skin and pale brown hair. When he had finished the work they gave him, he stayed to tell their children stories about his home and take supper with them. He never thought of going back to the city, even when it became dark. He was far too enchanted.
In the morning, he awoke early to find them packing away their wooden stools and putting out their fires. The gypsy girls twirled their multicoloured skirts and picked early flowers for their hair, as all around them everyone prepared to leave. Jehan instantly ran to the woman who had allowed him to stay.
"Are you going? You can't be going away?"
"Of course we go, boy. We don't stay long anywhere. We go all over."
"But I love you. I love all of you! You can't be going!"
She laughed gently and cupped his chin in her rough hand. "We always go. You can't make us stay. We don't stay, not us. Even if you love us."
"I want to go with you," said Jehan miserably, feeling his eyes sting.
"Maybe you come with us. All our little children, they like you. Everyone likes you. You work hard. A good boy, you are; we all like you."
If Jehan had been thinking properly, he would have refused. But Jehan was in love, and when he was in love, he never thought properly. If he had been thinking, he would have remembered the talks of Enjolras' that everyone half-believed, about revolution. As it was, he remembered Combeferre, and how he might miss him. If he had been thinking, he would have realised he was leaving behind college and his entire future. But Jehan wasn't thinking of the things he had learned; he was thinking of the things he could learn.
"I might come with you?"
"You sure? You got pretty sweetheart in the city? You not just gonna leave her alone?"
"No, there's no one. Please--if it's possible--"
She laughed again, and dropped her hand. "You wait a moment, and I ask." Then she turned to the other gypsies, and began to speak in their language. They kept looking over at Jehan, and he blushed nervously, but tried to stand straight. At last Calliditas nodded firmly and touched the shoulder of an old man, who also nodded. The woman looked back at Jehan. "You may come with us. But you're Romani now, you understand? You learn to speak like us, and you dress like us, and you move on and never stay anywhere. You not see your family again."
Jehan didn't weep. Sometimes lovers were disowned for their love. This would be almost the same thing. "All right," he said, trembling a little. "All right."
The woman smiled, and held out her arms. "You call me Mollis. You come with us now."
Gladly, Jehan let her hold him close.
Later, he wrote letters, to Combeferre, to his parents, to the college to explain he wasn't coming back. He apologised to everyone. He sent his love and gratitude to everyone. He tried to make everything as right as he could, and then he disappeared.
Jehan Prouvaire hadn't meant to fall in love. But once he had, he could never fall in love with anyone else again.
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