Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (8 page)

There was only one place where I would be safe. There was only one place where I could take Dandy and give her the things which delighted her and yet keep her from danger – Wide.

I knew it was my home.

I knew it was my refuge.

I had no idea where it was.

I sighed like an old lady who has reached the end of her musings and found she is no further forward. One day I would find Wide; I was sure of it. One day I would be safe. One day I would be able to make Dandy safe.

I turned on my side with that thought…and I fell asleep.

I don’t know what I had expected of Warminster but the little grey-stoned main street with the three or four shops and two good inns pleased me. It looked like a place where nothing very much had ever happened or would happen. I looked around the broad main street and imagined the weekly market which would be held there: the stalls selling flour and bread and cheeses, the noise of the beasts from the sheep and cattle market. I was glad we were spending the winter here. It looked like a place where Dandy would find little scope for her talents of coaxing silver out of the pockets of old gentlemen – I was glad of that.

I leaned forwards to look about me and Robert Gower smiled at my eagerness, said proudly, ‘Nearly there now,’ and took a sharp left-hand turn off the cobbled main street down an unpaved mud lane. I expected a one-room upstairs, two-rooms downstairs cottage with a low roof and paper and rags stuffed in the windows, with a little patch of a kitchen garden at the front, and a field for the horses at the back.

‘Gracious!’ Dandy said as the wagon turned in off the track and we found ourselves in a handsome stable yard.

Robert Gower smiled. ‘Surprised, little Miss Dandy?’ he asked with satisfaction. ‘I thought you would be! All your little nosiness into how much I earn and how much I pay never discovered that I’m a freeholder in a market town! Aye! I have a vote and all!’ he said triumphantly.

He pulled the wagon up and Dandy and I got down. I went without thinking to the ponies at the back and untied them and brought them round. Robert nodded at me.

‘Stabling I’ve got!’ he said. ‘Stabling for every one of them if I wanted them inside all winter eating their heads off and getting fat. They’ll go out in the fields of course, but if I wanted to keep
them in I could. Every single one of them. Ten loose boxes I’ve got here! Not bad, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, and I spoke the truth. It was a miracle of hard work and careful planning to bring a man from poverty to this secret affluence. And I respected him all the more that he could leave this comfort to travel in the wagon and work every day of the week for a long arduous season.

A door in the wall of the yard opened and a grey-haired woman came out dressed in her best apron with a matching white mob cap. She dipped Robert a curtsey as if he were Quality.

‘Welcome home, sir!’ she said. ‘There’s a fire in the parlour and in your bedroom when you are ready to come in. Shall I send the lad out for your bags?’

‘Aye,’ Robert said. ‘And set tea for two in the parlour, Mrs Greaves. These two young women, Meridon and Dandy, will take their tea in the kitchen with you.’

She smiled pleasantly at me, but I frankly gaped at her. By travelling a few miles down a road Robert Gower had transformed himself into Quality. He and Jack made the transition. Dandy and I were what we always had been: Romany brats.

Jack saw the change too. He slid off Snow’s back and handed the reins to me as if I were his groom. He passed Bluebell’s leading rein to me as well, so that I was holding the string of ponies and the two big horses.

‘Thank you, Meridon,’ he said graciously. ‘The lad will show you where they go,’ and then he walked past me through the doorway to the house. Dandy, still on the step of the wagon, exchanged one long look with me.

‘Phew,’ she puffed out, and jumped down from the wagon to take the string of little ponies off me. ‘Welcome to the servants’ quarters, Merry!’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No wonder Robert Gower didn’t want Jack fancying either one of us. He must think he’s half-way to being gentry!’

An odd sly look crossed Dandy’s face, but she had her head down to the halter and was leading the ponies away so I could not
see her properly. ‘Aye,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Our pretty Jack must be quite a catch for the young ladies of Warminster!’

Before I could answer her a lad came through the door to the stable yard. He was dressed well enough but cheaply in good breeches and a rough shirt and a fustian waistcoat. He took Bluebell’s reins from me and patted her neck in greeting.

‘I’m William,’ he said by way of introduction.

‘I’m Meridon Cox,’ I replied. ‘And this is my sister Dandy.’

His look went carefully over me, noting the slim-cut boy’s riding breeches and the cut-down shirt; my tumble of copper curls and my wiry strength; and then widened when he saw Dandy, her red skirt casually hitched up to show her ankles, her green shawl setting off her mass of loosely plaited black hair.

‘Do you work for Robert Gower?’ he asked incredulously.

‘I do the horses and Dandy does the gate,’ I said.

‘And are you the lasses that are going up on that swing?’ he demanded of me.

My stomach churned at the thought of it. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘My sister will, but I work with the horses. I just have to try it a little. I’m to be the bareback rider.’

‘He’s had the barn cleaned out, and the trapeze man came yesterday and put the ropes and the blocks and the pulleys up in it,’ William said in a rush. ‘Ever so high. And they’ve stretched a net like a fisherman’s net underneath, to catch you if you fall. We tested it too with a couple of bales of hay to see if it’s strong enough.

‘The barn’s filled with wood shavings from the wood mill – sacks and sacks of them. So when you’re done with practising on the rigging, he can use the barn for training the horses when the weather’s too bad to be outside.’

I nodded. Robert had meant it when he promised us a hard winter of work. ‘And where do we sleep?’ I asked. ‘Where do we take our meals?’

‘He’s had the rooms above the stables done up for you,’ William said. ‘We’ve put two beds of straw in for you, and your own chest for your things. And your own ewer and basin. There’s even a fireplace and we had the sweep in to clear it out
for you. You’ll eat at the kitchen table with Mrs Greaves and me.’

He showed us the way into the stables. Each door had a horse’s name on it. William glanced at me and saw I was puzzling over the words, not knowing where I should take Snow.

‘Can’t you read?’ he asked surprised. And taking the horse from me he led Snow into the best stall, furthest away from the door and from the draughts. Bluebell went in next door; and then the ponies, two to a loose box. I looked over the doors to see they all had hay and water.

‘When they’re cooled down they’re to go out, all except Snow,’ William said. ‘Through that gateway, down the little path through the garden and there’s a field at the bottom. You’ll take them down.’

‘What do you do?’ I demanded, nettled at this allocation of work. ‘Don’t you look after them?’

William crinkled his brown eyes at me through his matted fringe.

‘I does whatever I’m told,’ he said, as if it were some private joke. ‘Robert Gower took me out of the poorhouse. If he tells me to be a groom, I’m a groom. I was that last winter, and the one before that. But now that’s your job and I do the heavy work in the house and anything else he asks me. Whatever he tells me to do, I does it. And as long as I please him, I sleep sound in a bed and I eat well. I ain’t never going back into the poorhouse again.’

Dandy shot a look at me which spoke volumes. ‘How much does he pay you?’ she demanded.

William leaned against the stable door and scratched his head. ‘He don’t pay me,’ he said. ‘I gets my keep, same as Mrs Greaves and Jack.’

‘Mrs Greaves gets no money?’ I demanded, the picture of the smart respectable woman clear in my mind.

‘He bought her out of the workhouse too,’ William said. ‘He gives her the housekeeping and she feeds well out of that. He gives her some money every quarter for her laundry bill and new
aprons. But he doesn’t pay her. What would she want money for?’

‘For herself,’ I said grimly. ‘So that if she wanted to leave she could.’

William gave a slow chuckle. ‘She wouldn’t want to do that,’ he said. ‘No more than I would. Where would she go? There’s only the workhouse, for there are no jobs going in the town, and no one would take a servant who had left without a character. There’s plenty as tidy and neat as her in the workhouse – why should anyone take a woman off the street? Why should anyone pay wages when the workhouse is full of paupers who would work for free with their keep?’ William paused and looked at Dandy and me. ‘Does he pay you?’ he asked.

I was about to say, ‘Yes,’ but then I paused. He did indeed pay me, a penny a day. But out of that princely sum I had repaid him for my shirt and my breeches, and I wanted to buy a jacket for the winter too. I had no savings from my wages. He had paid out the pennies and when I had saved them into shillings, I had paid them back. I looked at Dandy; he paid her the odd penny for minding the gate and she still picked the occasional pocket. ‘Do you have any money saved, Dandy?’ I asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I had to repay Robert for the material for my riding habit. I still owe him a couple of shillings.’

‘We’re all treated the same then,’ William said with doltish satisfaction. ‘But you have a real pretty room of your own up the ladder.’

He pointed to a rough wooden staircase without a handrail which went up the side of the stable wall. I checked that all the horses were safely bolted in, and then Dandy and I clattered up the twelve steps to the trapdoor at the top. It lifted up and we were in the first room we had ever owned in our lives.

It was a bare clean space with two mattresses of straw with blankets in each corner, a great chest under the window, a fire of sticks laid in the little black grate, and two little windows looking out over the stable yard. The walls were finished in the rough creamy-coloured mud of the region, and the sloping ceiling
which came down to the top of the windows was the underside of the thatched roof – a mesh of sticks and straw.

‘How lovely!’ Dandy said with delight. ‘A proper room of our own.’

She went at once to the broken bit of mirror which was nailed to one of the beams running crosswise across the room and smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘A looking glass of my own,’ she breathed, promising herself hours of delight. Then she dropped to her knees and examined the ewer and bowl standing in lonely state on the chest. ‘Real pretty,’ she said with approval.

I ducked my head to look out of the window. I could see over the stable yard and across the lane to the yard and cottage on the far side. Beyond them was a glimpse of green fields and the glitter of light on a broad river.

William’s brown head appeared comically though the trapdoor. ‘Come for your tea,’ he invited. ‘It’s ready in the kitchen. You can bring your things up later.’

Dandy rounded on him with all the pride of a property dweller. ‘Don’t you know to knock when you come to a lady’s bedroom!’ she exclaimed, irritated.

William’s round face lost its smile and his face coloured brick red with embarrassment. ‘Beg pardon,’ he mumbled uncomfortably, and then ducked down out of sight. ‘But tea is ready,’ he called stubbornly.

‘We’ll come,’ I said and taking Dandy firmly by the arm I got her away from the mirror and the ewer and would not even let her stop to examine the great chest for the clothes we had not got.

Our first two days in Warminster were easy. All I had to do was to care for the horses, to groom them and water them, and discover the boredom of cleaning out the same stable over and over again. Travelling with horses I had never had to wash down cobblestones in my life, and I did not enjoy learning from William.

Dandy was equally surly when Mrs Greaves called her into the kitchen and offered her a plain grey skirt and a white pinny.
She clutched to her red skirt and green shawl and refused to be parted from them.

‘Master’s orders,’ Mrs Greaves said briefly. She stole Dandy’s finery while she was sulkily changing, and took them away to be washed but then did not return them. Dandy collared Robert as he was inspecting the stable the same afternoon.

‘I warned you,’ he said genially. ‘I told you there’d be no whoring around this village. They’re God-fearing people, and my neighbours. You’ll cause all the stir you want at church tomorrow morning without being as bright as a Romany whore.’

‘I’ll not go to church!’ Dandy said, genuinely shocked. ‘I ain’t never been!’

Robert glanced at me. ‘You neither, Meridon?’ he asked. I shook my head.

‘Not been christened?’ he asked in as much horror as if he had been anything but godless himself when we were on the road.

‘Oh aye,’ Dandy said with reasonable pride. ‘Lots of times. Every time the preacher came round we was christened. For the penny they gives you. But we never go to church.’

Robert nodded. ‘Well you’ll go now,’ he said. ‘All my household do.’ He looked at me under his bushy blond eyebrows. ‘Mrs Greaves has a gown for you too, Meridon. You’ll have to wear it for going in the village.’

I stared back, measuring the possibility of defiance. ‘Don’t try it my girl,’ he advised me. His voice was gentle but there was steel behind it. ‘Don’t dream of it. I’m as much the master here as I am when we’re in the ring. We play a part there, and we play a part here. In this village you are respectable young women. You have to wear a skirt.’

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘You always did wear a dress, didn’t you?’ he asked. ‘That first day I saw you, you were training the horse in some ragged skirt, weren’t you? And you rode astride in a skirt as well, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘But I like boy’s breeches better. They’re easier to work in.’

‘You can wear them for work,’ he said. ‘But not outside the stable yard.’

I nodded. Dandy waited till his back was turned and then she picked up her dull long grey skirt and swept him a curtsey. ‘Mountebank squire,’ she said; but not so loud as he could hear.

I said nothing about the dress destined for me. But that night, at supper in the kitchen, Mrs Greaves pushed a petticoat, chemise, grey dress and pinny across the wide scrubbed table. There was even a plain white cap folded stiffly on top of the pile of clothes.

‘For church tomorrow,’ she said.

I raised my green eyes to her pale blue ones. ‘What if I don’t want to go?’ I asked.

Her face was like a pat of butter smoothed blank by fear and suffering. ‘Better had,’ she said.