Chapter VI.
On The Road To Paris
Just as Clopin had said, we spent little time in that forest camp in Romania. In fact, the day after the wedding, we packed up the tents and supplies into the covered wagons, hitched the animals, and were on the move. Clopin's goal was to get back into France as soon as possible.
That's when I found out what the language was that these gypsies spoke. It was French, although some of them also spoke Spanish.
"Bonjour means hello," Marcel explained to me, as our "caravan" of covered wagons paraded through the forest. "Como ca va? means How are you?"
He and his brother Henri taught me as much as they could. I spent the days with them as we traveled through the woods by practicing the language with them, and learning new words. By the end of the first week, I had practiced so much, that I was already conversational, and was beginning to understand bits and pieces of what the other gypsies were saying. They mostly talked about how good it would be to get back to Paris, and how they would be just in time for the Festival of Fools if they kept to the travel schedule as Clopin said they would.
"What is the Festival of Fools?" I asked Marcel and Henri as we sat in the covered wagon with Anisa, Ramus, Heidi, and Jasmine. (We had all grown close over the past few days, even Ramus and Anisa were becoming friends). The wagon rocked along gently, and occasionally jolted suddenly when we hit ruts in the ancient road that we were traveling through.
"It's the best time of the year in Paris," Henri answered, excitedly. "It's the one day when it doesn't matter if you are French soldier, the king, the pope, the archdeacon, a commoner, or a gypsy. It's the day we are all there to celebrate the carnival season before Lent. There are parades, dances, feasts, music, and lots of other stuff. It's also the day when we pick the ugliest person in the city to be king for one day."
"Sounds fun," I said. "Although isn't it a bit cruel to pick someone just because they look ugly?"
"No," Henri answered, "after all, they get to be king for a whole day right? What's so cruel about that?"
I nodded, although it still seemed a bit strange.
The caravan continued for the rest of the day, and we camped in a hollow in the forest. The trees were slowly changing from the large deciduous and pines that we had seen in Romania, to Junipers, and date palms, just like in Greece and Turkey. In the distance, was the faint shining outline of the sea.
"Where are we?" I asked.
"A few miles outside of Venice," replied Anisa. She and her brothers and the rest of the Court of Miracles had obviously taken this route before many times because they had known of all stops along the way so far.
"What's Venice?" I asked.
"It's this really cool city where there are no roads, or streets, just canals, because you see, the entire city is in a lagoon. All the buildings are on little islands and to get from one place to another, you take a little boat called a gondola."
"Wow," I replied. It sounded really exciting! I remembered now that my mother had told us a story of her travels in Italy, where she had traveled to a city like this one where there was water everywhere. It had to be the same one, after all how many places in the world could be like Venice?
"We'll be there tomorrow," Anisa answered, before the question had even rolled off my tongue.
The next morning, we all got up bright and early and the caravan moved closer and closer towards the coast. I was bursting with excitement to see this place. The more the other gypsies told me about it, the more exciting and interesting of a place it sounded. Finally, we arrived at the shore. The water beyond was a deep emerald green, tinged with blue. Far out towards the horizon, I could see the outline of the city, Venice. There were domes, towers, and church spires visible, even from this distance.
Obviously, we couldn't get the wagons across the water, so we waited for a boat to come by and meet us, and we boarded it. Some of the other gypsies brought stuff that they could trade in the city, and money to stock up on food for our journey to France, which according to Clopin, was still a little ways away.
I couldn't believe it though, once the boat got us into Venice, and we all got off at a dock.
"Everybody," Clopin said to us all when we had all gotten off the dock. "We are going to spend the night here tonight, but we leave bright and early in the morning so we can reach Rome as soon as possible. We'll all meet here in at eight o'clock tomorrow morning. If you aren't here, I guess you'll have to stay here until we come back next year, because we aren't waiting for anybody."
Everyone else got a chuckle out of that, and then we dispersed.
"Come on!" Henri and Marcel called, as they began to run away from everybody else, down an alley. I followed, running fast to stay up with them.
When we came to the end of the alley, we found that there was nothing but water in front of us: a canal. Farther down it, a gondola was slowly gliding towards us. Marcel called for the gondolier to come over and pick us up.
"We're going to show you something really cool," Marcel told me as we stepped into the strangely shaped boat. It was like a large canoe, but one end stood high, and the image of lion was carved into it.
I sat tight as the gondolier pushed off with the large oar he was carrying and we began to glide down the canal. There were rows and rows of elegant buildings on either side of us. They were made of plaster, and the roofs of the buildings were red tiles. Sculptures of winged lions were almost everywhere.
"Those are the lions of St. Mark," Marcel told me. "They represent St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice."
"Wow, cool," I said in awe. This place was so awesome!
We also passed under various arches and bridges that crossed over the canals.
"That's the bridge of sighs," Henri said. "It leads to a prison, and all the prisoners sigh as they walk over it, knowing that they will never come out again."
Finally, the gondolier stopped the boat.
"This is where we get out," Marcel said, and we stepped out, thanked the gondolier, and I followed Marcel and Henri into a large open square. At one end of the square was a large clock tower with a pointed top. According to the clock, it was half past noon. On another side of the square, was a large palace with beautiful domes and intricate carved designs and paintings on it.
"Welcome to St. Mark's Square," Marcel told me. "The heart of Venice."
I immediately noticed that there was an enormous flock of pigeons in the square that pecked at the ground for scraps of food that people might have left, and took to the air whenever a little kid ran through them. I could live here, I told myself.
But of course, we had to move on, and the next day, we all met where Clopin said we should, and the boat took us back to the mainland of Italy. And from there, we continued to travel across Europe to get to Paris. We stopped along the way in Rome, Florence, St. Tropez, and then finally got into France. From there, we went to Marseilles, and then traveled north. Finally, almost two weeks after leaving Venice, we arrived at our destination: Paris, at last.
I had thought Venice was beautiful, but I wasn't prepared for what Paris had to offer. We all arrived at the city by traveling along the Seine River. We unloaded all the cargo from the covered wagons onto boats, and floated down the river into the city. As we floated along, I was astonished by the city that was to be my new hometown. There were houses, taverns, spooky alleys, gothic churches with gargoyles, and tons of other things. But the most striking thing of all was Notre Dame. We got out of the boats on the island where the grand cathedral was located. Marcel said that the island was called Ile de la cite. It was the oldest part of the city, and Notre Dame towered high above it.
I don't know to this day exactly how to explain the splendor of Notre Dame. The bell towers, the purple rose windows, the gargoyles, the spires, wow! It is defiantly something that everyone should see before they die.
This was our new home. Paris, and Notre Dame.