Meridon

40

Gerry led us southwards, across the Green Park and then down the Vauxhall road, a part of the city I did not know. It was odd, sometimes like countryside, sometimes a town. There were little fields and byres where they kept dairy cattle, and carts with young women riding on them came down the road towards London and waved to us. There were a few grand houses too, and many many tumbledown cottages with barefoot children peeping out of unglazed windows. We crossed the river by the Vauxhall Bridge. Sea threw his head up at the sound of his hooves ringing hollow, and I held him still for a moment and looked downriver.

The early morning mist was slowly lifting, the river was all silver and pearl. There were river-trading ships with sails, ghostly in the mist, and wherry boats and fishing smacks fading in and out of sight as the mist curled around them. The city eastwards gleamed like a new Jerusalem in the morning sunlight.

‘It could be a wonderful place,’ Will said softly beside me. ‘Even now, if they used the new machines they are inventing, and the new ideas they have, for the benefit of the poor. If they thought of the land and how to keep it sound, if they thought of the river and how to keep it clean. This could be the most wonderful city in the world, and the most wonderful country.’

‘People always say that,’ I said. ‘People always say it could have been good. But then they say it’s too late to go back.’

Will shook his head. ‘If we go on as we are going, with people thinking of nothing but making fortunes and caring nothing for their workers and caring nothing for the land then they will regret it,’ he said certainly. ‘They think they can count the cost of living like that – a high rate of accidents perhaps, or no fish in a river where fish once used to spawn. But the cost is even higher. They teach themselves, and they teach their children a sort of callousness, and once people have learned that lesson it is indeed too late. There is nothing then to hold back rich people from getting richer at the expense of the poor, nothing to protect the children, to protect the land. The rich people make the laws, the rich people enforce them. Time after time we have a chance to decide what matters most – wealth, or whether people are happy. If they could only stop now, and think of the happiness for the greatest number of people.’

I smiled at him. ‘They’d tell you that the way to make people happy is to make them rich,’ I said.

Will shrugged and the horses moved forward. ‘I don’t think people can be happy unless they are well fed and well housed and have a chance at learning,’ he said. ‘And you’ll never do that by opening the market place and saying it’s all free to those with money to buy it. Some things are too important to be traded in a free market. Some things people should have as a right.’

I thought of the Havering land and the clearing of the Havering village. I thought of some of the people I had met in London who had no more skill nor wit than Da, but lived in great houses and dined off gold plate. And I thought of her, and of me, dirty-faced little children with never a farthing of a chance to get out of that miserable life and think of something other than getting and keeping money.

‘I got from the bottom to the very top,’ I said. I thought of Robert Gower’s long struggle from the failed cartering business, to the horse-riding act, and then his own show. And I thought of what it had cost him. It had made him a man with stone where his heart should be, and it had made his son a murderer.

‘It’s not the rising or falling which matters,’ he said. ‘There shouldn’t be a bottom where children are cold and hungry and beaten. Not in a rich world.’

I nodded, and we rode in silence for a little while.

‘You’re pale,’ he said. ‘Are you well?’

‘I’m all right,’ I said, lying again. I was deathly tired, but I wanted to ride to my home, to Wideacre. I wanted to ride without stopping until midday when we might have enough money between the four of us to buy bread and cheese and a flask of ale. ‘I’m all right,’ I said.

Emily looked back. ‘She does look poorly,’ she confirmed. She scanned my face. ‘You’re still too weak to be up all night, Miss Sarah,’ she said. She looked at Will. ‘She didn’t ought to be riding,’ she said.

Will glanced at me in surprise. ‘Are you still weak?’ he asked. ‘I heard you were ill, but then I heard you were married and I thought you must have recovered.’

I gave a wry smile. ‘I’m well enough,’ I said.

‘Don’t ‘e know?’ demanded Emily of me. ‘Don’t ‘e know what happened?’

‘Apparently not,’ Will said tightly. ‘What is this?’

I looked down. Sea’s neck and mane were rippling under my gaze as if we were swimming through water. The sun was growing brighter, its glare hurt my eyes and I was hot, wrapped up in my cape.

‘It’s nothing,’ I said softly. ‘I’ll tell you later, Will.’

‘She’s awful white,’ Emily said. Gerry pulled his horse up and looked anxiously back. ‘She shouldn’t be riding,’ Emily said. ‘Not after being out all night.’

‘What the devil is wrong?’ Will said in sudden impatience. ‘Sarah! What’s the matter.’

‘Nothing,’ I said irritably. ‘I was ill for a long time, and now I am better. I get a little tired that’s all.’

‘Are you well enough to ride?’ he asked.

My tough little Rom spirit rose up in me. ‘Of course,’ I said. The road was shimmery and bright, I half closed my eyes.

‘Ride all the way home?’ Will demanded.

‘Of course,’ I said again, my voice was softer, my throat seemed to be tightening like it had done when I had the fever. ‘How else can we get there?’

‘Are you sure?’ he asked again, and now his voice was tender.

‘Oh Will,’ I said wearily, accepting my weariness and my weakness at last, just as I had accepted the joy in my body earlier in this long night. ‘Oh Will, my love, please help me. I’m as sick as a dog,’ I said.

Then I pitched forward on to Sea’s neck and the darkness of the road came up to meet me.

When I came to, it was broad daylight and I was being jolted, rhythmically like a rocking cradle. I was lying on straw, wrapped warm in my heavy cloak, bedded as snug as a winter fieldmouse. I blinked up at the winter sky, bright and blue above me, and I looked to my right and there was Will Tyacke unstoppering a flask of ale and looking smug.

‘Drink,’ he said and held it to my lips. It slid down in a cool malty swallow.

‘Whaa?’ I asked.

‘More,’ he said firmly, and I gulped again and my parched throat was eased at once.

‘Emily and Gerry are coming along behind us, leading Sea, riding the Havering horse and my bay,’ Will said. ‘You and I have bought a ride with this carter who is taking a load of Irish linen bales to Chichester. He will ride straight past your very doorstep, m’lady.’

‘Money?’ I asked succinctly.

‘Gerry had a handsome sum saved against his wedding day,’ Will said happily. ‘I promised I would repay him when we got to Wideacre, and he split the hoard. I’m so glad you decided to rescue him from his servitude. We’d have been stuck penniless without him.’

I chuckled. ‘Where are they now?’ I asked.

Will nodded behind. ‘Dropped back to rest the horses. The carter has an order to meet in Chichester, he’ll be changing his team as we go. We’ll be home by nightfall.’

I snuggled a little deeper and put my hands behind my head to gaze up at the sky.

‘Then we have nothing to do…’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ Will said sweetly. ‘Except rest, and eat, and drink ale, and talk.’

He shifted round so his arm was behind my head and I was leaning against his shoulder, comfortable and warm. He held the flask of ale to my mouth and I took a gulp, then he stoppered it up and leaned back and sighed.

‘Now,’ he said invitingly. ‘Tell me all about it. I want to hear everything, all the secrets, and all the things you thought about when you were alone. I want to know all about you, and it’s time you told me.’

I hesitated.

‘It’s time I knew,’ he said decisively. ‘You must start from the very beginning. We’ve got a long ride and I’m not at all sleepy. Start from the very beginning and tell me. What’s the very first thing you remember?’

I paused and let my mind seek backwards, down the years, a long way back to the dirty-faced little girl in the top bunk who never heard a kind word from anyone except her sister.

‘Her name was Dandy,’ I said, naming her for the first time in the long sorrowful year since her death. ‘Her name was Dandy, and my name was Meridon.’

I talked as the carter drove. I broke off when we went into inns, and we climbed down from the back and bought the man an ale. He took up another passenger one time, a pretty country girl who sat in the front with him and giggled at the things he said. We sat still and quiet during that time, around noon. But we did not court as they were courting. Will did not kiss me, and I did not box his ears and blush. I rested my head on his shoulder and I felt the tears roll down my cheeks for the two little children in the dirty wagon, and even for Zima’s little babby we had left behind.

When the girl had gone, climbing down at her home, a darkshuttered cottage, leaving with a wave, Will had said softly, ‘You asleep?’ and I had said ‘No.’

‘Tell me then,’ he said. ‘After that first season with Gower, where he took you for winter quarters, tell me about that.’

I thought of the cottage at Warminster, of Mrs Greaves and the skirt which I stained so badly, falling from Sea, that I never had to wear it again. I told him about Dandy and her pink stomacher top and her flying cape, and of David who trained us so kindly and so well.

Then I buried my face in his jacket and told him about the owl which flew into the ring, and about David warning us about the colour green. And how I had forgotten.

I wept then, and Will petted me as if I were a little well-loved child, and wiped my face with his own cotton handkerchief, and made me blow my nose and take a gulp of ale. He took some bread rolls and some cheese from his pocket and we ate them as the sky was growing darker again with the quick cold twilight of winter.

‘And then…’ he prompted, as I finished eating.

I sprawled back against the softness of the straw and turned my face to the sky where the pale stars were starting to show. The evening star hung like a jewel above the dark latticework of the twigs of the passing woods.

My voice was as steady as a ballad singer, but the tears seeped out from my eyelids and rolled down my cheeks in an easy unstoppable flood as if I had waited for a year to cry them away. I told him of Dandy’s plan, and how she trapped Jack. How she teased him and courted him until she had him, and how she got a belly on her which she thought would bring us to a safe haven with the Gowers. That she thought Jack would cleave to her, and that Gower would be glad of a grandson to inherit the show. That she was always a vain silly wench and she never troubled herself to wonder what others might want. She was so anxious to seek and find her own pleasures, she never thought of anyone else.

I should have known.

I should have watched for her.

And I confessed to Will that I had known in some secret shadowy way, I had known all along. I had been haunted. I had seen the owl, I had seen the green ribbons in her hair. But I did not put out my hand to stop her and she went laughing past me, and Jack threw her against the flint wall, and she died.

We were quiet for a long time then. Will said nothing and I was glad of that. It was silent but for the creak, creak noise of the wheels and the steady jolting of the cart, the clip, clop, of the dray horses and the carter’s tuneless whistle. A wood pigeon called for a few drowsy last notes, and then hushed.

‘And then you came to Wideacre,’ Will said.

I turned in his arm and smiled at him. ‘And I met you,’ I said.

He dipped his head down to me and kissed my red swollen eyelids, and my wet cheeks. He kissed my lips which tasted of salt from my tears. He buried his face in my neck and kissed my collar-bone. He reached into my little nest of straw and hidden by my cape his hands stroked me as gentle as a potter moulding clay, as if he were shaping my waist, my breasts, my arms, my throat, my cheekbones. Then his hands slid down over my breasts to the baggy waistband of Gerry’s breeches, and his flat hand stroked down my belly to between my legs.

‘Not now,’ I said. My voice was very low. ‘Not yet.’

He leaned back with a sigh of longing, and pulled my head on to his shoulder. ‘Not long now,’ he said in reply. ‘You’ll come to my cottage tonight.’

I hesitated. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘What would Becky say?’

Will looked puzzled for a moment.

‘Becky,’ I said. ‘You told me…that day in the park…you said you were promised to wed her. You said that she loved you. I can’t come to your cottage…I don’t want to spoil things for you…’ I tailed off. I lost my words at the thought of having to share him with another woman. ‘Oh Will…’ I said miserably.

Will Tyacke let out a great guffaw of laughter, so loud that the carter craned around one of the bales to beam at the two of us with his toothless smile.

‘Oh you poor silly darling!’ he exclaimed, and gathered me up into his arms and kissed me hard. ‘You poor silly girl! I told you that in a rage, you simpleton! When you were so full of Lord Perry in your bedroom and his luck at cards! I was angry, I wanted to hurt you back. I’ve not seen hide nor hair of Becky in months! She lived with me while she was ill, and she bedded me then once or twice. Then she worked her way through half the village and when she’d taken her fill of all of us she was up and off to Brighton! We’ve not seen her since.’

‘But her children…?’ I exclaimed. I was stammering with anger. I had pictured her so clearly, and the little faces at the fireside, I had tortured myself to tears thinking of Will beloved in that little family. ‘Will! You lied to me! I broke my heart imagining you and her children all in your cottage together. I have been dreading and dreading the moment you would tell me that you had to stay with her and the children.’

‘Oh I have the children,’ Will said carelessly, and at my astounded look he said: ‘Well, of course I have! She was running around with every man in the village, someone had to look after them! Besides,’ he said reasonably. ‘I love them. When she left, they said they’d like to stay with me. They asked me if I would marry someone so that they might have a new mother.’ He grinned at me sideways. ‘I take it you’ve no objection?’ he asked.

I gaped. ‘Three children?’ I asked.

‘Aye.’

‘And all very small?’

‘It’s easier if they’re small,’ he said reasonably. ‘They get accustomed more quickly. It’s like training puppies.’

‘But I know nothing about children,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t possibly care for them.’ I thought of Zima’s whimpering babby, and my own bitter-hearted indifference to it. ‘I don’t know how to look after children, Will. I don’t know how to run a house, I don’t know what to cook for them. I couldn’t do it!’

He gathered me close to him again and silenced me with soft quick kisses.

‘My silly love,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t chase around the country after you, and bring you here to apprentice you as a housekeeper. I don’t want you to feed them and keep them for me. I do all that already. I want you to live with me so that I can enjoy the sight of you morning noon and night. I don’t want you to skivvy for me.

‘As for them – I want you to love them. Think of them as little foals and love them. I’ll do all the rest.’

I would have protested, but he held me close and when I raised my face to say: ‘But Will!’ he kissed me with warm dry kisses so that although I knew it wouldn’t do; though I knew he was wrong, and that I would not be able to love them; I gave myself up to the easy warm pleasure, and stayed silent.

He reached over me and piled some more straw over us for warmth.

‘Cold night,’ he said. ‘Not long now.’

The carter in the front lit his pipe and the sweetmeat smell of the smoke blew back over us, I could see the embers glow in the darkness. He hitched the reins over the post and took down and lit the lantern in the front.

‘Can ‘ee light the one at the back?’ he called to Will, and Will wriggled out of our burrow of straw and went to the back of the cart to light and hang the lantern out. Then he came back to me, treading carefully over the big bales of cloth, and banked more straw around me, and slid in beside my warmth. He put his hand behind my shoulders and drew me to him again.

‘And in all that time,’ he said. ‘All that time of your travelling childhood and girlhood, in all those villages and towns and out-of-the-way places, I suppose there were many men, many men, who saw you and wanted you, and loved you. Maybe you had them, did you? And maybe a child you had to be rid of? Or leave?’

‘No,’ I said, half offended. ‘No, not one. I told you Will, I was cold; cold as ice, all through. You know how I was when I came to Wideacre first. I didn’t like to be touched by anyone, not even Dandy. I’d never have taken a lover.’

‘What of Perry?’ Will asked.

I made a face which he could barely see in the gathering darkness. ‘I don’t think Perry quite counts,’ I said.

Will snorted with male conceit.

I thought for a moment about Lady Havering and poor Maria, and the sacred importance of a woman’s chastity. I thought of the way men prize virginity in their women, as if we were brood mares who need to be kept away from bad-bred mates. And my face hardened a little in the darkness, that Will, my Will, should be a man like all the rest, and care that I had slept with no one, even though he had lain with Becky and with a score more, I daresay.

‘If it matters at all, I’ve never properly laid with a man,’ I said ungraciously. ‘You can call me a virgin if it pleases you.’

He could not see my face clearly in the half-darkness, but my tone of voice should have been enough to warn him.

‘A virgin!’ he exclaimed in simple delight. ‘A virgin? Really?’

He paused.

I said nothing, I was seething in silence.

‘A virgin!’ Will said again. ‘How extraordinary! To think you can see unicorns and everything! I’ve never had a virgin before. I don’t think I’ve ever met a virgin before! I hope it won’t hurt me very much!’

‘Why…!’ I had no words. I clenched a fist to punch him but he caught it by instinct, and hugged me tight. ‘You silly little cow,’ he said lovingly. ‘As though I care whether you’ve had half of Salisbury or not. You’re with me now, aren’t you? And you love me now, don’t you? I only wanted to know if you’d left your heart somewhere on the road behind you. But if there’s no jealous lover battering down my door then I can sleep quiet in my bed with you.’

We did sleep quiet enough. The carter dropped us at the Acre corner and we bid him farewell and watched the tail-light of his wagon jogging away down the dark lane. The sight of the little lantern going away into the darkness reminded me of something, something sad, though I did not know why. Then I remembered the woman who had run behind a wagon calling, ‘Her name is Sarah’ – my mother, who had wanted to send me away from Wideacre because she could not believe that it was possible to be a landlord and not to be cruel. I put my hand out and drew Will’s comforting bulk close to me. It would be different for me.

‘Boots all right?’ Will asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘They’re my own, my riding boots.’

‘Come on then,’ he said and took my hand and led me down the lane.

The woods on the left of the road were dark and secret, there were quiet rustles and far away an owl hooted. Will sniffed at the air like a hungry dog.

‘Good to be home,’ he said.

On our right the fields were pale under the moonlight where the winter grass was light coloured. A ploughed field, ready for wheat, breathed out a smell of dark earth, wet loam. As we walked past, very quiet on the pale-coloured road a deer raised its head and looked at us, and then melted away across the field into the trees.

I could hear a very faint whispering in my ears, like the high light singing noise which had drawn Sea and me to Wideacre all those long months ago. Then I heard the rippling of the river, as clear as a carol.

‘High,’ Will said. ‘Stepping stones will be covered.’

We paused at the ford.

‘There used to be a bridge here,’ Will said. ‘Years ago. It came down twice and no one troubled to rebuild it the second time. We should maybe do that.’

‘Yes,’ I said. In the deepest part of the river, in the middle, the reflected moon bobbed like a floating porcelain plate. The river sucked and gurgled at the bank’s edge, a cool breeze blew down the valley bringing the smells of the Downs, the frozen grass and the winter thyme.

‘Carry you?’ Will offered. ‘Carry you like a bride over the threshold?’

‘Nay,’ I said and smiled at him. ‘We’ll both paddle. You don’t want to be seen carrying lads over rivers at midnight, Will, people’ll begin to talk.’

He chuckled at that and took my hand and we both went cautiously into the dark current.

I gave a little gasp as it flowed over the top of my boots. It was icy and my boots were filled with water in an instant, my stockings and breeches soaked. Will held my hand steadily until we reached the cobbled bank on the far side of the ford. He looked down at my expensive leather riding boots and smiled.

‘You’ll be glad enough to be carried another time,’ he said.

‘Not I,’ I said stoutly. ‘You’d be better off with your Becky, if you want a woman to pet and carry, Will!’

He chuckled again and took my hand and we squelched along the road together.

The Wideacre gatehouse was a dark mound on our left, there were no lights showing, the gates stood open as always. Will nodded.

‘Come up tomorrow, set the house to rights,’ he said. ‘Will you live here?’

I hesitated, searching his face which was shadowed in the half light of the moon.

‘It’s not mine,’ I said. ‘You won it, it belongs to you.’

‘Now…’ Will started, then he paused. ‘You wanted me to win it?’ he asked. ‘I thought you lost it to me so that we had a better chance of getting out of that place in one piece. But did you want me to win it in truth? Win it and keep it for Acre?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think the Laceys have had it long enough. I want the village to have it now. I lost it to you to make it safe. If I had won it, Perry or Lady Havering would have been after it, or after me, at once. As Perry’s wife it would be his as soon as I claimed it. But you won it, it is yours now. I want the village to own it.’

Will nodded slowly. ‘You are sure?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want this to go sour between us in a few years’ time.’

I took a deep breath. Behind me were generations of owners of land, it was a wrench to turn my back on them, on their striving and hunger and give the land away. But I was the last of the Laceys, the old gypsy woman in Salisbury had said I would be the best of them all.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All I want is a little cottage in the village. I want to live here and breed and train horses.’ I stole a look at his intent face. ‘I want to live with you,’ I said bluntly.

He put his arms around me and drew me close to him. I lifted my face to his kiss and I breathed in the warm country smell of him, and tasted the warmth of his mouth as it came down on mine.

‘I love you,’ I said, and it suddenly struck me that I had never said those words before, not to anyone. ‘I loved you from the moment I first saw you, when you came out of the woods, out of the Wideacre woods, and found me at my home.’

Will nodded. ‘I was looking for gin traps,’ he said softly, remembering. ‘I hate gin traps.’

I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said.

A cold wind blew down the lane, icy as if it had come from the very heart of the moon. I shivered.

‘You’ll catch your death!’ he said, and caught me to his side and marched me down the road to Acre, to his cottage, to my home.