Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (11 page)

I shrugged off David’s restraining arms and looked up into his face. I knew my eyes were blank with despair. ‘We keep on travelling,’ I said. ‘But there is nowhere to go.’

His blue eyes were sympathetic. ‘You’re no gypsy,’ he said. ‘You want a home.’

I nodded, the familiar longing for Wide rising up inside me so strongly that I thought it would choke me like swallowed grief. ‘I want to take Dandy somewhere safe,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘You keep the pennies,’ he said softly. ‘She’ll earn well with this act when I’ve finished training her. You watch how Robert Gower did it. You keep the pennies and the gold and within a season or two you could buy your own home for her. Then you can take her away.’

I nodded. Dandy was still waiting on the little board, I could see it swaying in the air currents at the roof of the barn.

‘She’ll need to hear you,’ he said. ‘You’d better tell her you’re all right.’

‘Very well,’ I said, surly. ‘I’ll tell her.’

Dandy’s pale distant face peered at me from the side of the platform, looking down to where I stood far, far below her.

‘All right, Dandy,’ I called up. ‘I’m all right now. I’m sorry. You jump if you want to. Or come down the ladder if that’s all you want to do today. You’ll never hear me try to stop you again.’

She nodded and I saw her hook the trapeze towards her.

‘I’ve never seen you cry before,’ Jack said wonderingly. He put a hand up to touch the tears on my cheek but I jerked my head away.

It didn’t stop him. ‘I didn’t think you were girl enough for tears, Meridon,’ he said. His tone was as soft as a lover.

I shot him a hard sideways look. ‘She’ll never hear me call her down again,’ I promised. ‘And you’ll never see me cry again. There’s only one person in the whole world I care for, Jack Gower, and that’s my sister Dandy. If she wants to swing on the
trapeze then she shall. She won’t hear me scream. And you’ll never see me cry again.’

I turned my shoulder on him and looked up to the roof of the barn. I could not see Dandy’s face. I did not know what she was thinking as she stood there on that rickety little platform and looked down at us: at the fretwork of the brown rope catch-net, the white wood shaving floor, and our three pale faces staring up at her. Then she snatched the bar with a sudden decision and swooped out on it like a swallow. At precisely the centre of its return, at the very best and safest place, she let go and dropped like a stone, falling on to her back into the very plumb centre of the net.

There were hugs all around at that, but I stood aloof, even fending Dandy off when she turned to me with her face alight with her triumph.

‘Back to work,’ David called, and set us to exercises again.

Jack was ordered to hook his legs over the bar on the wall and practise trying to haul his body up so that it was parallel with the ground. I worked beside him, hanging from my arms and pulling myself up so that my eyes were level with the bar and then dropping down again in one fluid motion.

Dandy he lifted up to the trapeze and set her to learning the time to beat again.

Then we all took a short rest and swapped around until dinner-time.

Robert Gower came into the kitchen when we were at our dinner and took Mrs Greaves’s seat at the head of the table, a large glass of port in his hand.

‘Would you care for one of these, David?’ he asked, gesturing to his glass.

‘I’ll take one tonight gladly,’ David replied. ‘But I never drink while I’m working. It’s a rule you could set these young people, too. It makes you a little bit slow and a little bit heavy. But the worst thing it does is make you think that you are better than you are!’

Robert laughed. ‘There’s many that find that is its greatest advantage!’ he observed.

David smiled back. ‘Aye, but I’d not trust a man like that to
catch me if I were working without a net beneath me,’ he said.

Robert sprang on that. ‘You use cushions in your other show,’ he said. ‘Why did you suggest we try a net here?’

David nodded. ‘For your own convenience mostly,’ he said. ‘Cushions are fine for a show which is housed in one place. But enough cushions to make a soft landing would take a wagon to themselves. I’ve seen a net used in a show in France and I thought it would be the very thing for you. If they were using the rings, and just hanging, not letting go at all, you could perhaps take the risk. But swinging out and catching, you need only be a little way out, half an inch, and you’re falling.’

The table wavered beneath my eyes. I took my lower lip in a firm grip between my teeth. Dandy’s knee pressed against mine reassuringly.

‘I’ve worked without cushions or nets,’ David said. ‘I don’t mind it for myself. But the lad I was working with died when he fell without a net under him. He’d be alive today if his da hadn’t been trying to draw a bigger crowd with the better spectacle.’ He looked shrewdly at Robert Gower. ‘It’s a false economy,’ he said sweetly. ‘You get a massive crowd for the next three or four nights after a trapeze artist has fallen. They all come for the encore, you see. But then you’re one down for the rest of the tour. And good trapeze artists don’t train quick and don’t come cheap. You’re better off with a catch-net under them.’

‘I agree,’ Robert Gower said briefly. I took a deep breath and felt the room steady again.

‘Ready to get back to work?’ David asked the three of us. We nodded with less enthusiasm than at breakfast. I was already feeling the familiar ache of overworked muscles along my back and my arms. I was wiry and lean but not all my humping of hay bales had prepared me for the work of pulling myself up and down from a bar using my arm muscles alone.

‘My belly aches as if I’ve got the flux,’ Dandy said. I saw Robert exchange a quick smile with David. Dandy’s coquetry had lasted only as long as her energy.

‘That’s the muscles,’ David said agreeably. ‘You’re all loose and flabby, Dandy! By the time you’re flying I shall be able to cut a loaf of bread on your belly and you’ll be as hard as a board.’

Dandy flicked her hair back and shot him a look from under her black eyelashes. ‘I don’t think I’ll be inviting you to dine off of me,’ she said, her voice warm with a contradictory promise.

‘Any aches, Jack?’ Robert asked.

‘Only all over,’ Jack said with a wry smile. ‘It’s tomorrow I’ll stiffen up, I won’t want to work then.’

‘Merry won’t have to work tomorrow,’ Dandy said enviously. ‘Why’re you taking her to the horse fair, Robert? Can’t we all go?’

‘She’ll be working at the horse fair,’ Robert said firmly. ‘Not flitting around and chasing young men. I want her to watch the horses outside the ring for me and keep her ears open, so I know what I’m bidding for. Merry can judge horseflesh better than either of you – actually better than me,’ he said honestly. ‘And she’s such a little slip of a thing no one will care what they say in front of her. She’ll be my eyes and ears tomorrow.’

I beamed. I was only fifteen and as susceptible to flattery in some areas as anyone else.

‘But mind you wear your dress and apron,’ he said firmly. ‘And get Dandy to pin your cap over those dratted short curls of yours. You looked like a tatterdemalion in church yesterday. I want you looking respectable.’

‘Yes, Robert,’ I said demurely, too proud of my status as an expert on horseflesh to resent the slight to my looks.

‘And be ready to leave at seven,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll breakfast as we go.’

We went to Salisbury horse fair in some style. Robert Gower had a trim little whisky cart painted bright red with yellow wheels and for the first few miles he let me drive Bluebell, who arched her neck and trotted well, enjoying the lightness of the carriage after the weight of the wagon. Mrs Greaves had packed a substantial breakfast and Robert ate his share with relish and pointed out landmarks to me as we trotted through the little towns.

‘See the colour of the earth?’ he asked. ‘That very pale mud?’

I nodded. There was something about the white creaminess of it which made me think of Wide. I felt as if Wide could be very near here.

‘Chalk,’ he said. ‘Best earth for grazing and wheat in the world.’

I nodded. All around us was the great rounded back of the plain, patched with fields where the turned earth showed pale, and other great sweeps where the grass was resting.

‘Wonderful country,’ he said softly. ‘I shall build myself a great house here one day, Meridon, you wait and see. I shall choose a site near the river for the shelter and the fishing, and I shall buy up all the land I can see in every direction.’

‘What about the show?’ I asked.

He shot me a smiling sideways glance and bit deep into the crusty meat roll.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’d always go with it. I’m a showman born and bred. But I’d like to have a big place behind me. I’d like to have a place so big it bore my name. Robert Gower, of Gower’s Hall,’ he said softly. ‘Pity it can’t be of Gowershire; but I suppose that’s not possible.’

I stifled a giggle. ‘No,’ I said certainly. ‘I shouldn’t think it is.’

‘That’ll give my boy a start in life,’ he said with quiet satisfaction. ‘I’ve always thought he’d marry a girl who had her own act, maybe her own animals. But if he chose to settle with a lass with a good dowry of land he’d not find me holding out for the show.’

‘All his training would have been done for nothing then,’ I observed.

‘Nay,’ Robert contradicted me. ‘You never learn a skill for nothing. He’d be the finest huntsman in the county with the training he’s had on my horses. And he’ll be quicker witted than all of the lords and ladies.’

‘What about Dandy and me?’ I asked.

Robert’s smile faded. ‘You’ll do all right,’ he said not unkindly. ‘As soon as your sister sees a lad she fancies she’ll give up the show, I know that. But with you keeping your eye on her and me watching the gate, she won’t throw it away for nothing. If she goes into some rich man’s keeping then she’ll make a fortune there. If she marries then she’ll be kept too. Same thing, either way.’

I said nothing but I was cold inside at the thought of Dandy as a rich man’s whore.

‘But you’re a puzzle, little Merry,’ Robert said gently. ‘While you work well I’ll always have a place for you with my horses. But your heart is only half in the show. You want a home but I’m damned if I can see how you’ll get one without a man to buy it for you.’

I shook my head. Robert Gower’s good-natured speculation about my future need for a man set my teeth on edge.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the reins, you have your breakfast. And for the Lord’s sake pull your bonnet straight. Your curls are all blown out from under it.’

I handed him the reins and crammed the hat on my head, tying it more securely. It was an old one belonging to Mrs Greaves which she had offered me last night together with a demure brown cape. They were both too big for me and I looked like a little girl dressing up in a game to look like a farmer’s wife. But the skirts were the worst. Every time I took a
stride I seemed to get my legs tangled up in the yards of fabric. Dandy had hooted with laughter and warned me that I had better take little ladylike steps at the fair or I would fall flat on my face.

Robert kept the reins as we trotted into Salisbury and drove accurately to the Black Bull near the horse market. The streets were full of people and everywhere the warm smell of hot horseflesh as string after string of every sort of animal trotted down the street. The pavements were crowded with pie-sellers and the muffin men rang their bells loudly. Flower girls were selling heather and bright-berried sprigs of holly, and everywhere I looked there were match girls and boot boys, porters and urchins, people selling horses and people looking at them, and on one corner a gypsy telling fortunes.

I glanced across at her. I was always drawn to my own people, though I could remember next to nothing of our language and our laws. But I had a dim memory of my mother’s dark-framed face and her smile, and her strange-tongued lullabies.

The Rom woman was selling clothes pegs and carved wood flowers and fairings out of a big withy basket at her side. Under her shawl she had a little mug and a well-wrapped bottle, and I noticed many men stop and give her a penny for a swig from the mug. She’d be selling smuggled rum or gin, I guessed. Strong spirits which respectable publicans would not touch but which would keep the cold out on a raw day such as this. She felt my eyes on her and she turned and stared frankly at me.

I would normally have drawn back to Robert Gower’s side at such a challenging stare. But I did not, I took a couple of steps forward. In my pocket I had six pennies dedicated until this moment for ribbons for Dandy and sweetmeats for myself, but I stepped forward and held out one of them to her.

‘Will you tell my fortune?’ I asked her.

She bent her head in its dirty red headscarf over my palm.

‘Give me another penny,’ she started. ‘I can’t see clear.’

‘Tell me a misty fortune for a penny, then,’ I said shrewdly. But she suddenly pushed my hand away and put my penny back into it.

‘I can’t tell your fortune,’ she said to me quickly. ‘I can’t tell you nothing you don’t already know.’

‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘Because I’m Romany too?’

She looked up at that and she laughed, a high old-woman’s clatter. ‘You’re no Rom,’ she said. ‘You’re a gorgio through and through. You’re a landowner, a daughter of a line of squires and you’re longing for their land all the time, aren’t you?’

‘What?’ I exclaimed. It was as if she had peeped into my head and seen the childhood dreams which I had never told anyone except Dandy.

Her face creased with mocking laughter. ‘They’ll think highly of you!’ she said. ‘You with your gypsy sister and your dirty face and your common ways! You’ll have to break your back and break your soul and break your heart if you want to become a lady and rule the land like them.’

‘But will I get it?’ I demanded in an urgent whisper, one look over my shoulder to see that Robert had not heard. She was pulling herself to her feet and picking her basket up, moving away from me into the crowd. I put a restraining hand on her shawl. ‘Will I become a lady? Will I find my home?’

She turned, and her face which had been hard was no longer laughing but gentle. ‘They’ll bring you safely home to their land,’ she said. ‘In the end, I think they will. Your true ma, and her ma especially. It’s their hunger you feel, silly little chavvy. They’ll bring you safe home. And you’ll belong to their land in a way they never could.’

‘And Dandy?’ I asked urgently. But the fringe of her shawl slipped through my fingers and was gone.

I waited for a moment, looking into the crowd. Then I saw her, bow-backed, slipping her way through to another corner of the square, spreading her cloth, arranging her basket, hunkering down on the cold stone. I looked around for Robert, afraid I had lost him in the crowd, but he was only a few yards away, talking to a red-faced man with his hat pushed far back on his forehead.

‘A killer,’ the man said emphatically. ‘That horse is a killer. I bought him from you in good faith and he near killed me. He’s untrainable.’

‘No such thing as an untrainable horse,’ Robert said slowly. He was talking very softly, keeping his temper well in check. ‘And I sold him to you in good faith. I told you I had bought him for my son to ride in the show but that we could not manage him, nor waste the time training him. We were travelling through the town as you well knew, six months ago, and I warned you I would not be here to take him back if you misliked him. But you were confident you could handle him and you paid a paltry price for him because I warned you fair and square that he had been badly broken and handled worse before he ever came to me.’

‘I can’t give him away!’ the red-faced man broke in, nearly dancing on the spot in his impatience. ‘I brought him here today to sell as a riding horse and he put one buyer on his back in the mud and damn near broke his arm. Now they just laugh at me. You’ll return me my money, Mr Gower, or I’ll tell everyone that you’re not to be trusted as a horse-dealer.’

That caught Robert on the raw, and I smiled grimly at the thought of him caring for his honour when he was trading in horse flesh, remembering Da’s shady flittings from fair to fair.

‘I’ll see the animal,’ Robert said levelly. ‘But I make no promises. I care for my good name and for the reputation of my horses and I won’t have it bandied around the market, Mr Smythies.’

Mr Smythies looked meanly at Robert. ‘You’ll return my money plus interest or you’ll never sell a horse again within twenty miles of this town,’ he said.

The two of them turned. I followed Robert through the crowd, keeping my eye on his broad back, but noticing how even in all this press of people there was a way cleared for the two of them. People fell back to make a way for Mr Smythies, he was evidently a Someone. Robert might find he had to buy the horse back, and I had the familiar irritated dread that it would be me who would have to ready the brute for the next fair and the next fool.

I was prepared to hate it on sight. I knew exactly how it would look, I had seen enough ill-treated horses in my time. Its eyes would be rimmed with white all the time, its coat forever damp
with a fearful sweat. If you went to its head he would toss and sidle, an upraised hand would make it rear and scream. If you went anywhere near its tail it would lash out and if you got on its back it would try to get down and roll on you to break every bone in your body. If you fell and stayed down it would paw at you with wicked hooves.

The only way Da and I ever coped with really bad horses was to cut the inside of their leg and dribble as big a dose of Black Drop into the vein as we dared, sell the horse at once before the drug wore off, and clear out of town as fast as we could. I made a grimace of distaste at the thought of working on a wicked-tempered horse again and caught at Robert’s coat-tails as he rounded a corner and went into a stable yard.

In the far corner, with his head over a loose box, was the most beautiful horse I had ever seen.

He was a deep shining grey with a mane as white as linen and eyes as black as ivy berries. He looked across the yard at me and all but whickered in pleasure to see me.

‘Sea,’ I said softly, as if I knew that was his name. Or as if it were somehow half of his name, the first half of a name like Sea Fret, or Sea Mist, or Sea Fern.

I sidled closer to Robert and gave his coat-tail a gentle tug. Mr Smythies was still complaining at his side but Robert’s tip of the head in my direction told me that he was listening to my whisper.

‘I can ride him,’ I said, my voice almost inaudible above the rising crescendo of Mr Smythies’ complaints.

Robert shot a quick look at me.

‘Sure?’ he said.

I nodded. ‘I’ll ride him if you’ll give him to me for my very own,’ I said.

I could feel Robert stiffen at the threatened loss of cash.

Mr Smythies on his other side had been joined by two friends. One of them, flushed with ale, had seen the buyer thrown from the horse and was telling a third man who had now joined them how dangerous the horse was.

‘Should be shot,’ he said. ‘Shot like a dog. ‘Sdangerous.’

I sensed Robert’s rising discomfort and temper, and I nipped his arm through the thick sleeve of his jacket.

‘A wager,’ I said quietly. ‘You’ll win your money back, and more.’

Robert shook his head. ‘He’s a devil horse,’ he said quietly. ‘I sold him as a problem. You’d not stay on.’

Mr Smythies was reaching the climax of his tirade. ‘I have some influence in this town,’ he boomed. ‘Aye, and I’m not unknown even in your village, I think. There’s many who would be upset to know that you tried to trick me into buying a horse which no one could ride. A dangerous horse, that has this very day broken a man’s arm. Could have broken his back!’

‘’Sdangerous,’ his friend corroborated owlishly. ‘Should be shot.’

Robert reached for his purse tied deep in his jacket pocket. I grabbed his hand.

‘I can,’ I hissed. ‘If I come off, I’ll work for you all year for nothing.’

Robert hesitated.

‘Dandy too,’ I offered recklessly. ‘I really can.’

Robert wavered for a moment, and truly, so did I. If I lost a bet for him he would not beat me as Da would have done under those circumstances. Robert’s anger would be infinitely worse. I remembered his wife weeping and left on the road as the wagon drew unhurriedly away from her and felt a bolt of sudden doubt. But then I looked again across the yard and saw the horse which could not possibly hurt me. I knew it. It was my horse. And this was the only way I could earn it.

‘The horse is not so bad,’ Robert Gower said, his voice as loud as Mr Smythies’. Some men walking past the alley paused and turned in to see what was happening in the little yard. ‘I sold him with a warning that he had been badly broke and badly ridden before he came to me. But he was not a killer when he left me, and he is not one now.’

Mr Smythies looked ready to explode, his colour had flushed deeper, his hat pushed back even further on his head had left a strawberry stripe above his popping eyes.

‘Why, my little housemaid here could get on his back,’ Robert said beguilingly, drawing me forward. ‘She rides a little with my show, she goes around crying it up, you know. But she’s just a little lass. She could stay on him, I’d put money on it.’

‘A wager!’ shouted someone from the back and at once the call was taken up. Mr Smythies was torn between a beam of pride at being at the centre of attraction and confusion that Robert seemed to have clouded the issue.