Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3)

by Philippa Gregory

  He showed them how to climb the ladder, toe-heel, toe-heel, all up the shaking length of it. And he laughed gently when Dandy called down that she was out of breath just from climbing the twenty-five steps.

  ‘You must practise then!’ he said. ‘If you are going to be Mademoiselle Dandy, the Angel without Wings, then you must seem to soar up the ladder. Not waddle up like a pinioned duck!’

  He went up the ladder behind Jack, with no one to hold it still for him, and he looked as if he were running upstairs he took it so swiftly. I peeped through my fingers at them, sickeningly high, and I caught parts of his low-voiced instructions. He was thoughtful for me, because he called down to warn me.

  ‘Meridon, I am teaching them to fall into the net, so you will see us all falling, but we shall all be quite safe.’

  I uncovered my face at that so that he could see me nod to show I understood. I even watched as he took hold of the trapeze firmly in his hands and stepped off the little platform, swinging gently out, letting its swing die down of its own accord until it was still – then he dropped from it. As he fell he turned his legs up so that he landed on his back and on his shoulders. He sprang to his feet and walked with an odd, bouncy, graceless stride to the edge of the net and vaulted down.

  ‘Like that!’ he called. ‘Keep your legs up, your chin tucked on your chest and you cannot be hurt.’

  Jack’s distant white face nodded and he reached out a shepherd’s crook and hooked the swinging trapeze and drew it towards him. I watched as he took a grip of it and then I had to shut my eyes as I saw his expression harden and knew he was nerving himself to step off the platform clinging to it.

  The twang of the net told me he had landed safely, and his yell of elation up to Dandy. ‘Come on, Dandy! It is fine! It is a wonderful feeling. Better than riding even! And the fall is scary, but it is so good to feel yourself safe! Come on, Dandy!’

  That broke something in me. ‘Don’t make her! Don’t make her!’ I screamed and whirled up from the wood shavings on the floor of the barn. Jack had sprung down from the net and turned and fairly caught me as I launched myself at him. ‘You shouldn’t! You shouldn’t!’ I said. I was beyond myself, not knowing what I was saying. My hands were in fists and I went to thump Jack hard in the face, but he parried the blow. ‘Don’t make her!’ I shrieked again. ‘It ain’t safe!’

  Jack could not manage me, but David, a clear foot taller than him and much heavier, grabbed my arms and hugged me tight, pinning my arms to my sides.

  ‘It is safe,’ he said, his voice a low rumble in my ear. ‘I would not let your sister come to harm. I would not let her up there if I thought her in danger. I want her to do well, and so do you. She wants to learn this trick. You must not be selfish and stop her going her way.’

  ‘It’s not safe for her,’ I said. I was weeping in the hopeless effort to make him understand me. ‘It’s not safe for her! I know! I am a gypsy! I have the Sight! It’s not safe for her!’

  He turned me in his arms, turned me to face him and scanned my frantic wet face. ‘What is safe for her?’ he asked gently. ‘This is the way she chooses now. She could choose worse.’

  That made me pause. If Dandy could delight in the applause from hundreds of people and earn a fair share of the profits then she would not go running after strangers and let them put their hands up her ragged skirts for a penny. If I knew Dandy, she would learn airs and graces as soon as she became Mademoiselle Dandy. I could trust Robert Gower to keep his investment away from men who would hurt her. I could trust him not to leave her on the road once she was a trained act in her own right and any showman in the world would give his eye-teeth for her.

  I gave a little sob. ‘She’ll fall,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I’m sure she will.’

  His grip tightened on me. ‘You can will her into falling,’ he said ominously. ‘If you carry on like this you will have wished her into a fall. You are frightening yourself and you are frightening her. You are robbing both of you of the confidence you need, and you are wrecking my training. And you’re a fool if you do that, Meridon. You and I both know that Robert Gower won’t keep her if she’s idle.’

  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 sm
iled 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.’

  8

  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 urc
hins, 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?’