Meridon

39

We saw a hackney coach going down Park Lane and we hailed it and bundled in. Will counted his silver in the pale light through the window to see if he would have enough to meet the fare without flashing his gold guineas around. He was always as cautious as a yeoman, Will Tyacke.

I leaned back against the dirty squabs of the coach and sighed. ‘How much have you got?’ I asked.

Will pulled out his gold coin by coin and carefully counted. ‘Ninety-eight guineas,’ he said. ‘You lost all your stake, didn’t you?’

‘Aye,’ I said smiling at him under my half-closed eyelids. ‘I like to play like a gentleman.’

‘You play like a cheat,’ he said instantly. Then he cocked his head. ‘What was that?’

I dropped the window and we listened.

There were shouts from behind us, I heard a voice say: ‘Hey coachman! Wait!’

Will’s face was white. ‘They turned,’ he said. ‘What now?’

‘We outpace them!’ I said.

Before he had a chance to protest I grabbed his handful of guineas and stuffed them in my pockets. I went head-first out of the coach window clutching the door frame and up on to the box beside the driver like a street urchin.

‘What?’ he said. He was already pulling up his horse in obedience to the shouts from behind.

‘Go on!’ I yelled.

He gawped at me.

I put a fistful of guineas in his hands. ‘Card-sharpers,’ I shouted over their noise. ‘They don’t like losing. And they’re blown. Keep this old nag going and there are twenty guineas for you at the end of the ride!’

He glanced quickly behind. Only the captain and a couple of men had kept up. They would not catch us if the damned nag between the shafts could go faster than a knock-kneed stumble.

‘Faster!’ I said.

The man broke into a wide broken-toothed grin. ‘Twenty guineas?’ he asked.

‘Thirty!’ I said.

He flashed his whip over the horse’s back and the creature, startled, broke into a shambling canter. Will, sticking his head out of the window, could see we were drawing away from the gamblers.

‘Howay!’ he yelled.

I laughed aloud.

Then I looked to the front.

Some damned hay-wagon was blocking our way. It had turned on its side and there were half a dozen men scurrying around trying to right it, a couple of idle milkmaids pausing to watch, and four or five link boys.

The hackney could edge around the wagon if the people would give us space but they were all over the road. I looked back. Captain Thomas was red in the face but he saw we were stuck. I saw him smile.

‘Stop thief!’ he yelled, damn his strong lungs.

I thrust my hand deep in my pocket.

‘Let me pass, lads!’ I yelled. ‘Look here!’

With a great broadcast sweep I flung the coins in my pocket – guineas, silver, coppers – wide into the sky. The urchins and the milkmaids dived to the ground out of our path. The men righting the hay cart looked blankly at me and then chased after the rolling coins.

‘Drive on!’ I ordered. Another handful of coins as we got through and, as from nowhere, beggars and street-walkers and urchins and thieves were all out of their doorways and lodgings falling over each other in their haste to chase the money.

‘Sarah!’ Will exclaimed, anguished.

I laughed. ‘Look!’ I said pointing back.

Captain Thomas had pushed someone in his haste to get through the crowd and the man had pushed back. What had been a little scramble was now a promising street-fight. The man had punched Thomas roughly in the shoulder and had hold of his coat collar and would not let him pass. I danced up and down on the box waving farewell and holloaing.

‘Goodbye, pigeon-plucker!’ I yelled in triumph. ‘Goodbye, curtal! Goodbye, you glim-glibber! You poxy tatsman! You hog in armour!’

The hackney whirled around the corner and threw me off balance. I fell down to the seat and grinned at the driver.

‘Drop us at the corner of the mews behind Davies Street,’ I said, and he nodded and drove where I ordered.

‘A fine night you’ve been having,’ he observed.

I stretched luxuriously, thinking of the deeds safe, and Will safe, and me safe away from the Haverings and the Quality life at last.

‘A fine night,’ I agreed.

The coach drew up at the corner and Will tumbled out. He shook his head at me. ‘Good God, Sarah!’ he said. ‘That was near all the money I had!’

‘I promised the driver thirty guineas if he got us away,’ I said. ‘Turn out your pockets, Will.’

The driver came down from the box as Will and I went through every pocket in our coats and breeches. We mustered seventeen guineas and some coppers.

‘I won’t hold you to it,’ he said. ‘Seventeen is fair, I’ll have that off you.’

He helped himself to the coins out of Will’s reluctant palm and drove off, beaming.

Will’s face could have modelled for an etching of a countryman fleeced in the big city.

‘Sarah that was all our money!’ he said. ‘How d’you think we’ll get home?’

‘Ride,’ I said cheerily.

‘And go hungry?’ Will demanded. ‘We’ve little money for food.’

I gleamed at him. ‘I’ll steal it,’ I said. ‘Or you can call up a crowd and I’ll ride on the street corners.’

Will’s cross face collapsed into laughter. ‘Oh you’re a rogue,’ he said. ‘By rights I should never bring you to Wideacre, they’re an honest crew there and you are a brigand!’

I laughed back, then we turned and walked side by side down the cobbled street to the stables.

It was early still, and quiet in these back streets. In the distance there was the noise of milkmaids and the water-carrier; at the end of the road the night-soil cart went past with a stench blowing behind it. The city was not yet awake. Only working people, with the hardest jobs, were up this early.

The groom was waiting for us, his eyes wide at the state of me, and the state of his best suit, and Will with his shirt hanging out the back.

‘My lady…’ he said helplessly.

‘I’ll have to keep your suit,’ I said pleasantly. ‘But I’ll send you money for another and for the service you’ve done me this night, when I get to my home.’

‘To the house?’ he said hopefully.

‘Sussex,’ I said.

His face looked stunned. ‘M’lady, you’re never running off,’ he said. ‘I’ll lose my place if they know I let you go, and you’ll be ruined. Go home, m’lady, I’ll say anything you want.’ He turned to Will. ‘You know she’s not for you,’ he said fiercely. ‘I could see how you looked at her, but you know she’s Lady Havering now. You’ll ruin her if you take her away.’

Will gave a snort of laughter. ‘I take her!’ he said. ‘I don’t want her. She can go home if she likes, I can no more control her than I can order the wind to blow. I’ve got what I came for. I want nothing more.’

I had my hand on the stable door but at that I turned and smiled at Will with all my heart in my eyes. It was the smile of a woman who knows herself to be utterly and faithfully beloved. There would never be anyone for Will but me, we both knew it. There would never be anyone but him for me.

‘I want Sea,’ I said. ‘And Mr Tyacke wants his horse. Put a man’s saddle on Sea, I’m riding astride.’

He gave an audible moan at that, but he went into the darkness of the stable and I heard him curse Sea as he blew out as the girth was being tightened. Then he led the two horses out into the street. Their hooves clattered loudly on the cobbles and he looked around nervously.

‘What am I to say?’ he demanded. ‘They’ll ask me where Sea is. What am I to say?’

‘Tell them her ladyship ordered it,’ Will said curtly. ‘How could you argue with her?’

‘They’ll ask what she was wearing! And that’s Lord Perry’s saddle…’ the man said despairingly.

‘Oh dammit, you come too,’ I said, suddenly impatient with the nonsense. ‘Take a horse and come with us. We’re going down to Wideacre. There’s work you can do there. We can send the horse back later, and it will be better if there’s no one here to gossip.’

Will looked at me. ‘We take a groom with us?’ he asked incredulously.

I grinned. ‘Why not?’ I demanded. ‘I thought it would appeal to your radical conscience. We release him from his servitude, we break his chains. We stop him bellyaching on about what they will say to him.’

Will nodded, his eyes dancing. ‘Get a horse,’ he said to the man. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Gerry,’ he said from inside the stables. ‘Could I have one of Lord Perry’s hunters?’

‘For God’s sake, no!’ Will exclaimed. ‘A working horse, what d’you think this is, a picnic?’

‘Seems a waste, if we’re stealing a horse, to take a cheap one,’ I muttered mutinously, but at Will’s sharp look I fell mum.

Gerry led a handsome black hack out of the stables and swung into the saddle. He was beaming.

‘Now we’d better move fast,’ Will said. ‘When will they notice you gone, Sarah?’

‘Not till eight,’ I said. ‘And no one will disturb her ladyship before ten.’

Will squinted at the sky. ‘Must be six now,’ he said uneasily. ‘I’d give a guinea to be safe home.’

He helped me up into the saddle and swung up into his own. Sea’s ears went forward and he side-stepped and danced on the spot, impatient to be off.

‘Knows he’s going home,’ Gerry said admiringly. ‘He’s a fine animal, I’ve never seen better.’

‘You lead the way,’ Will said to him. ‘Get us on the Portsmouth road, but use as many back streets as you can. I’d rather we weren’t seen.’

Gerry nodded importantly, and led the way down the mews street. The hooves echoed loudly and someone looked out from a high window. Will glanced at me.

‘Pull your hat down,’ he said, then he looked a little closer. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘You look awful pale.’

‘I’m fine,’ I lied promptly.

We paused at the corner of David Street and I looked down the road to where the Havering House stood on the corner. I could see smoke coming from the chimneys as Emily went around lighting fires, back to her usual back-breaking work now the dirty work of nursing me was done.

‘Emily,’ I said.

She had cared for me when no one else would do so. She had let me out to see Will and told no one about it. She had helped me get Perry up to bed and kept mum. And she had held me and bathed the sweat off my forehead and sat with me night after night with no thanks, and no tip, and no rest. She would go on lighting the fires and cleaning the grates and sweeping the stairs and sleeping in a cramped bare attic until she grew too old to work. Then Lady Havering would throw her out and if someone had said to her, ‘But the old woman will have to end her days in the poorhouse,’ her ladyship would widen her blue eyes and ask why Emily had never saved her wages since she had worked from childhood? and exclaim, ‘How improvident are the poor!’

‘Emily,’ I said.

‘What?’ Will asked. They were hesitating, ready to turn down the street, waiting for me. Sea champed at his bit, reined-in too tight.

‘I’m taking Emily,’ I said, deciding suddenly. ‘She shouldn’t be left there. She shouldn’t be left with Lady Havering, in that house. She should come with us to Wideacre.’

Will’s face was a picture of rising rage. ‘You are taking your maid?’ he demanded. ‘You, a jumped-up gypsy brat, need to take a maid with you?’

‘No, you idiot,’ I replied briskly. ‘She was the only one in that whole household who ever showed me a ha’penny of love. I’m not leaving her behind. She’d be happy on Wideacre. She can ride pillion behind Gerry.’

I slid down from Sea and tossed the reins to Will. He caught them, and before he could protest I had run up the street and tapped on the big front door. I heard Emily’s little feet pattering down the hall and her nervous: ‘I ain’t allowed to open the door…’ tail off as she opened the door and saw first a slim young man in grey, and then my face under the grey tricorne hat.

‘Sarah! I beg pardon m’m, I means your ladyship!’

‘Hush,’ I said peremptorily. Not all the escapes in the world could make me unstintingly pleasant. ‘Don’t chatter, Emily. Fetch your bonnet and all the money you have. You can come away with me if you want. I’m running away to my home in Sussex and you can come too. There’s work you can do there, farm work – but fairly paid and not too hard. You might like it. D’you want to come? I’m leaving now.’

She flushed scarlet. ‘I’ll come,’ she said defiantly. ‘Dammit! I will!’ and she turned on her heel and bounded up the main staircase where she was not allowed to go, and then scuttered along the passageway to the attic stairs.

I glanced back down the street. The daylight was getting brighter, the sun was up in a sky the colour of primroses, it would be a fine day. A cool clear day. A good day for travelling. Will made an impatient beckoning motion at me. I smiled and waved back.

I was not afraid of being seen, I was not afraid of being caught. Since I had lain beneath Will in the darkness of the park, I had lost every scrap of fear I had ever known. There was a warmth and a lightness about me as if I would never fail or fear anything ever again. I did not fear Lady Havering, nor poor Perry. I knew at last who I was and where I was going. A lifetime of travelling had not taught me half so much.

There was a rush along the hall and Emily came out, wrapped in a tatty shawl and with a bonnet on her head. She carried a shawl roughly knotted in one hand, and a little withy birdcage in the other with a starling in it.

‘Can I bring ‘im?’ she asked me anxiously. ‘I’ve ‘ad ‘im for a year, and ‘e sings marvellous.’

I glanced down the street to Will who was now rigid with anger. ‘Of course,’ I said and my voice shook with laughter. ‘Why not?’

Emily pulled the door gently to close and came down the steps. We walked back towards the horses.

‘Your young man,’ she said with quiet satisfaction as she saw Will. She did not seem in the least surprised.

I held her bag and the cage as Gerry jumped down from his horse and lifted her up and then mounted behind her. I passed the bundle up and then the cage. The starling, annoyed by the jolting, began to sing loudly. I shot a sly look at Will.

He was not fuming at all, he was not seething with irritation. He sat on his horse as easily and as calmly as if he were taking the air on Wideacre.

‘Quite ready, my darling?’ he asked me, and I started to hear an endearment from him and then smiled and coloured up like a silly wench.

Quite ready? Nothing and no one you have forgotten? No one else you would like to bring with us? No chimney sweeps, or lap-dogs, or crossing boys?’

‘No,’ I said. I took back my reins and swung myself up into the saddle and then burst into laughter.

‘Do tell me you’re glad I brought the starling,’ I begged as Gerry led the way south, towards the river.

Will laughed joyously, his brown eyes filled with love. ‘I am delighted,’ he said.