When her vardo got closer, it was possible to see exactly what was going on. This was a cleared space forming a half circle in front of a ruin that the forest had encroached on. Had it been a village? There was more than one building. But it had been in ruins for a very long time. The roofs were long gone, the walls were breaking down, and the ruins themselves were overgrown. There was going to be just enough room for them to all camp overnight, and it would be very tight quarters indeed. Kellermann was directing people where to put their wagons, and the buffalo and the cattle had already been penned inside one of the ruined buildings. “No tents!” he was saying. “If you aren’t sleeping in a wagon, sleep under it! Set your brakes or use wheel-blocks! Tether your horses to the forest side of the wagon! We’ll bring fodder and water along for them!” He waved her along and pointed where she was to go: right alongside Rosamund’s vardo. Rosamund already had her horses unhitched, the harness draped over the wheels to dry, the horses tethered to the shaft, which was pointing to the forest. Giselle pulled up alongside as closely as she could and still allow movement between the wagons, and one of the tent wagons pulled up beside her vardo. She jumped down and got her horses unharnessed, rubbed down, and tethered and went around to the back of the vardo to see what Rosamund was doing.

Rosamund was staring at the ruins with a slight frown on her face.

“What’s the matter?” Giselle asked.

“That’s not a village,” Rosamund said, shortly. “I need to go look at those ruins.”

She started off for the ruins. Giselle scrambled after her. “Why?” she asked, when she had caught up.

“Because ruins are not always empty.”

Together they threaded their way through the wagons and the show folk setting themselves up for an overnight stay. Those who normally camped in tents had extracted blankets and canvas to bed down under the shelter of the wagons, and were setting up several central fire pits against the fall of night. It looked as if they had done this before, since no one seemed in the least put out by the change in camping arrangements. No one paid any attention to the two young women who were making their way toward the decrepit remains of what must have been some imposing . . . and unfriendly . . . buildings. Unfriendly, because the windows in those battered walls were very small, and there weren’t a lot of them. It must have been dark and gloomy inside those places, when they had still been standing.