Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3)

by Philippa Gregory

  I wished now that I had made her fear heights as I do, that I had somehow insisted that she always stay on ground level. That I had turned Robert against the idea of the trapeze as soon as he mentioned it. That I been warned by the barn owl. That I had remembered in time that the one unlucky colour in shows is always green.

  Sea suddenly wheeled sharply to the right and nearly threw me off sideways. I clutched at his neck and stared around me. For some reason, clear only to his horse’s brain, he had turned off the main track and was heading down a little lane scarcely wider than a hay wagon. I stopped and thought to turn his head back towards the main road. But he was stubborn and I was too weary to be able to bend him to my will. Besides, it mattered so little.

  I listened. I could hear the ripple of a river ahead of us in the darkness and I thought that perhaps he was thirsty and it was the noise of the clear water which was drawing him away from the road and down this little cart track. I let him go where he would, obeying my training which said that the horses must be fed and the horses must be watered. Whether you are hungry or thirsty or no. Whether you have forgotten what it feels like to want water or food. Still the horses have to be fed and watered.

  He went easily down the dark slope towards the ford where I could hear the river rippling. The singing in my head was louder, clearer. It was almost as if it were coming from the river. The night-time air blew gently down the valley and set the trees sighing with the smell of new grass. There were tall pale flowers at the riverside and they glowed in the moonlight. Sea went out into mid-river and bent his proud head and drank. The endearing sound of the sweet water sucked in by his soft lips echoed loud around the little valley. I sat still on his back and felt the cool night air caress my cheeks, as soft a touch as a lover’s hand. An owl called softly to its mate one side of the river then the other, and as I sat there in silence, in the silvery moonlight, a nightingale began to sing a few clear notes which rippled like the river and were as clear as the singing in my head.

  The trees stood back a little from the river and the banks were grassy with great clumps of primroses and sweet-scented violets. There were silver birches in a clump near a boggy patch of ground and their stiff catkins pointed spiky at the silvery sky. Sea blew out softly and when he raised his head from drinking it was so quiet that I could hear the water drip from his chin. Down river, the banks overhung the deep curves of water and there were dark standing pools where I thought one would find trout and maybe even salmon. Sea raised his head again, then lumbered awkwardly on the sandy river bed to the far side of the bank. I thought we should really turn back to the main road, but I was too desolate to think clearly about inns and stabling and a bed for the night. I let him have his head and he went smoothly and steadily on down the little track as confident as if he were going home, home to a warm stable for the night.

  I did not even check him when he turned sharply to the left, though it was obviously a private drive. I could not find it in me to care. We went past a little lodge cottage and past the high wrought-iron gates. The cottage windows were dark and the drive was soft mud. We made no noise. We rode past like a pair of ghosts, a ghost horse and a ghost rider, and I let Sea go where he wished. It was not just that I was so weary that I was dreamy with tiredness, but I also felt as if I were in the grip of one of my dreams of Wide. As if all the dreams had been leading me steadily here, till I had nothing left of my real life at all, no ties, no loves, no past, no future. All there was for me was Sea’s bobbing head and the rutted drive, the woods and the smell of violets on the night air. Sea walked carefully up the drive and his ears flickered forward as the dark bulk of a building showed itself against the lighter sky.

  It was a little square house, facing the drive, overshadowed by the trees. There were no lights showing at any of its windows, all the shutters were bolted as if it were deserted. I looked at it curiously. I felt as if the front door should have been open for me. I felt as if I should have been expected.

  I thought Sea might check and go around to the stable block but he walked past it, as steadily as if he had some destination in mind. As assured as if we belonged somewhere, instead of wandering around in circles under a pale springtime sky. His ears went forward as we went under the shadow of a great spreading chestnut tree and I smelled the flowers as fat and thick as candelabra on the tree as he broke into a trot.

  We rounded the bend of the drive and I pushed the cap back on my head a little, and leaned forward. After all these years of dreaming and hoping, of waiting and being afraid to hope, I thought I knew where I was at last. I thought I had come home. I thought this was Wide.

  The drive was right, the drive where the man I called Papa had taken the little girl up on the horse and taught her how to ride. The trees were right, the smell of the air was right, and the creamy mud beneath Sea’s hooves was right. The horse was right as well. There had been other beautiful grey hunters here before. I knew it, without knowing how I knew. Sea’s stride lengthened and his ears were forward.

  There was a great chestnut tree on the corner of the drive and I recognized it, I had seen it in my dreams for years. I knew the drive would bend around to the left, and as Sea drew level and we went around the corner I knew what I would see, and I did see it.

  The rose garden was on my left, the bushes pruned down low and the rose-beds intersected by little paths all leading to a white trellised summerhouse, a smooth-cropped paddock behind it, and behind that a dark wall of trees which were the parkland.

  On my right was the wall of the terrace. It ran around the front of the house bordered by a low parapet with a balustrade and stone plant pots with bushy heads of flowers, dark against the darkness. In the middle of the terrace was a short flight of shallow steps leading to the front door of the house. I checked Sea then; he was on his way around the house to where I knew, and he seemed to know, there was stabling and straw on the floor and hay in the manger; but I stopped him so that I could look and look at the house.

  It was a lovely house, with a smooth rounded tower at one side, overlooking the rose garden and the terrace. Set in the middle of the façade was a double front door made of some plain pale wood, with a brass knocker and a large round ring door-handle. It was as if it spoke to me with easy words of invitation, as if to say that this was my house which I had been travelling towards all the weary journeys of my life.

  There were no lights in the house, it looked deserted, but in measureless confidence I slid from Sea’s back and went stiffly up the steps and to the front door.

  Out the back, from the kitchen quarters, I heard a dog bark, insistently, anxiously. I turned around on the doorstep and looked outwards over the terrace. I looked once more at the rose garden and beyond it the paddock, and beyond that the darker shadow of the woods, and high above it all the high rolling profile of the Downs which encircle and guard my home.

  I breathed in the smell of the night air, the sweet clean smell of the wind which blows from the sea, over the clean grass of the Downs. Then I turned and put my small hand in the wide ring of the door, twisted the handle around, and leaned against the door so it slowly swung inwards and I stepped into the hall.

  The floor was wood, with dark-coloured rugs scattered on top of the polished planks. There were four doors leading off the hall and a great sweep of stairs coming down into the hall. There was a newel-post at the foot of the stairs, intricately carved. There was a smell of dried rose petals and lavender. I knew the house. I knew the hall. It was as if I had known it all my life, as if I had known it for ever.

  The dog from the kitchen at the back was barking louder and louder. Soon he would wake the household and I should be in trouble if I was found trespassing, my old boots on the new rugs. But I did not care. I did not care what became of me; not tonight, not ever again. There was a great bowl of china raised on wooden legs and I went over to it curiously. It was filled with dried rose petals and lavender seeds, sprigs of herbs, and it smelled sweet. I took up a handful and sniffe
d at it, careless that it spilled on the floor. It did not matter. I could not feel that anything mattered at all. Then I heard a noise outside on the terrace and the stone steps, and there was a shadow blocking the moonlight in the doorway, and a kind voice said softly:

  ‘What d’you think you’re doing?’

  I turned and saw a working man in the doorway, blocking the moonlight, his face half in shadow. A rugged, ordinary face, tanned with weather, smile-lines etched in white around the eyes. Brown eyes, broad mouth, a shock of brown hair, ordinary homespun clothes. A yeoman farmer, not Quality.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I replied, as if it were my own house and he a trespasser.

  He did not challenge my right to ask.

  ‘I was watching in the woods,’ he said politely. ‘There’ve been some poachers, out from Petersfield I think. Using gin traps. I hate gin traps. I was waiting to catch them and see them off when I saw you riding down the drive. Why are you here?’

  I shrugged, a helpless weary little gesture. ‘I’m looking for Wide,’ I said, too tired to think of a better story. Too sick at heart to construct a clever lie. ‘I’m looking for Wide, I belong there,’ I said.

  ‘This is Wideacre,’ he replied. ‘Wideacre estate, and this is Wideacre Hall. Is this the place you are looking for?’

  My knees buckled a little under me, and I would have fallen but he was at my side in one swift step, and he caught me and carried me out to the night air and dumped me gently on the terrace step and loosened my shirt at the throat. The gleam of the gold clasp on the string caught his eye and he touched it gently with one stubby forefinger.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  I unfastened it and drew it out. ‘It was a necklace of rose pearls,’ I said. ‘But all the pearls were sold. My ma left it to me when she died, I was to show it when they came looking for me.’ I paused. ‘No one ever came looking for me,’ I said desolately. ‘So I kept it.’

  He turned it over in his hands and held it close so that he could read the inscription. ‘John and Celia,’ he said. He spoke the names like an incantation. As if he had known what the inscription would say before he looked at it in the moonlight, as if he knew that was what he would see in the old worn gold. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe my ma knew, but she never told me. Nor my da. I was to keep it and show it when they came looking for me. But no one ever came.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked. His gaze under the ragged fringe of hair was acute.

  I was about to say ‘Meridon’, but then I paused. I did not want to be Meridon any more. Mamselle Meridon the bareback rider, Mamselle Meridon on that damned killer trapeze. I did not want the news of Gower’s Amazing Show to reach me here, I wanted to leave that life far behind me as if it had never been. As if there had been no Meridon, and no Dandy. As if Meridon were as dead as Dandy. As if neither of them had ever been.

  ‘My name is Sarah,’ I said. I cast about in my mind for a surname. ‘Sarah Lacey.’

  18

  The next few days were a blur, like a dream you cannot remember on waking. I remember that the man who hated gin traps picked me up in his arms, and that I was so tired and so weary that I did not object to his touch but was a little comforted by it, like a hurt animal. He took me inside the house and there were two other people there, a man and a woman, and there were a great many quick questions and answers over my head as it rested on his shoulder. The homespun tickled my cheek and felt warm and smelled reassuring, like hay. He carried me upstairs and the woman put me to bed, taking away my clothes and bringing me a nightgown of the finest lawn I had ever seen in my life with exquisite white thread embroidery on the cuffs and hem and around the neck. I was too tired to object that I was a vagrant and a gypsy brat and that a corner of the stables would have suited me well. I tumbled into the great bed and slept without dreams.

  I was ill then for two days. The man who hated gin traps brought a doctor from Chichester and he asked me how I felt, and why I would not eat. He asked me where I had come from and I feigned forgetfulness and told them I could remember nothing except my name and that I was looking for Wide. He left a draught of some foul medicine, which I took the precaution of throwing out of the window whenever it was brought to me, and advised that I should be left to rest.

  The man who hated gin traps told me that Sea was safe in the stables and eating well. ‘A fine horse,’ he said, as if that might encourage me to tell of how I got him, how a dirty-faced, stunned gypsy brat came to be riding a first-class hunter.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and I turned my face away from his piercing eyes and closed my eyelids as if I would sleep.

  I did sleep. I slept and woke to the sunlight on the ceiling of the bedroom and the windows half open and the smell of early roses and the noise of pigeons cooing. I dozed again and when I woke the woman brought me some broth and a glass of port wine and some fruit. I ate the soup but left the rest and slept again. In all of those days I saw nothing but the light on the ceiling of the bed chamber and ate nothing but soup.

  Then one morning I woke and did not feel lazy and tired. I stretched, a great cat-like stretch with my toes pointing down to the very foot of the bed and my arms outflung, and then I threw back the fine linen sheets and went over to the window and pushed it open.

  It had rained in the night and the sunlight was glinting on the wet leaves and flowers of the rose garden and mist was steaming off the paddock. Immediately below me the paving stones of the terrace were dark yellow where they were damp, paler where they were drying. Beyond the terrace was the gravel of the drive where Sea and I had ridden that first night, beyond that the rose garden with pretty shaped flower-beds and small paths running between them. A delicate little summerhouse of white painted wood stood to my left; as I watched, a swallow swooped in through the open doorway, beak full of mud, nest-building.

  Beyond the rose garden was a smooth green paddock with Sea, very confident, cropping the grass with his tail raised, a stream of silver behind him. He looked well, perhaps even a little plumper for his stay in a good stable with fine hay and spring grass to eat. Behind the paddock was a dark mass of trees in fresh new foliage, copper beeches red as rose-shoots, oak trees with leaves so fresh and green they were lime coloured, and sweet green beeches with branches like layers of draper’s silk. And beyond the woods, ringing the valley like a guardian wall, were the high clear slopes of the Downs, striped with white chalk at the dry stream beds, soft with green and lumpy with coppices on the lower slopes. The sky above them was a clear promising blue, rippled with cloud. For the first time in my life I looked at the horizon and knew that I was home. I had arrived at Wide, at last.

  There was a clatter of horse’s hooves and I looked along the drive and saw the man who hated gin traps riding up towards the house, sitting easily on an ungainly cob. A working horse, a farmer’s horse, able to pull a cart or a plough or work as a hunter on high days and holidays. He scanned the windows and pulled up the horse as he saw me.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said pleasantly, and doffed his cap. In the morning sunlight his hair showed gleams of bronze, his face young, smiling. I guessed he was about twenty-four; but a serious young man appears older. For a moment I thought of Jack, who would have been a child at forty as long as he was under his father’s thumb; but then I pushed the thought away from me. Jack was gone. Robert Gower was gone. Meridon and her sister were gone. I could remember nothing.

  ‘Good morning,’ I said. I leaned out of the window to see his horse better. He sat well, as if he spent much of his day in the saddle. ‘A good working horse,’ I observed.

  ‘Nothing like your beauty,’ he replied. ‘But he does well enough for me. Are you feeling better? Are you well enough to dress and come downstairs?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am quite better. But that woman took my clothes.’

  ‘That’s Becky Miles,’ he said. ‘She took them and washed them and ironed them. They’ll be in the chest in
your bedroom. I’ll send her up to you.’

  He turned his horse and rode past the front door round to the back of the house to the stables. I shut the window and opened the chest for my clothes.

  There was warm water in a jug with a bowl beside it in exquisite cream china with little flowers painted on the outside, and a posy at the bottom of the jug. I splashed a little water on my face and dried myself reluctantly on a linen towel. It was so fine I didn’t like to dirty it.

  I dressed and felt the luxury of ironed linen and clean breeches. There was a minute darn on the collar of Jack’s old shirt where I had torn it weeks ago. I shrugged on the old jacket as well – not that I would need the warmth, but because I felt awkward and vulnerable in this rich and beautiful house in my shirtsleeves. My breasts showed very clear against the thin cotton of the shirt; I pulled the jacket over to hide them.

  There was a comb, a silver-backed hairbrush, a small bottle of perfume and some ribbons laid out before a mirror of the purest glass I had ever seen on the dressing-table and I stopped in front of it to brush my hair. It was full of tangles as always, and the riot of copper curls sprang out from the ribbon bow I tried to tie around them. I gave up the struggle after the third time and just swept it back from my face and left it loose. The man who hated gin traps did not look as if he were a connoisseur of female fashions. He looked like a simple working man, and one who could be trusted to deal with a person fairly, however they looked. But the house, this rich and lovely house, made me feel awkward in my boy’s clothes with my red hair all tumbled down my back. It was a fine house, I somehow wanted to be fine to suit it. I didn’t look right there, in darned linen and someone else’s boots.

  There was a tap at my door and I went to open it. The woman he called Becky Miles stood outside. She smiled at me. She was taller than me, a large-built woman running to plumpness, her fair hair starting to turn grey at the temples, a little sober cap on her head, a dark dress and a white apron.