Philippa Gregory - Meridon

I would never be able to tell him that. He had gone, as he had sworn he would go, to a new corporation, a new attempt at creating some real justice in the way England was run. Not words on paper, not ideas in people’s minds, not pleasant civilized chat across a dinner table. Real changes for real people. And I knew that after that experiment failed – as fail it surely would, for it was too little in a world too big and too implacable – after that he would go to another, and to another and another. And though Will might never win he would never stop, travelling from one place to another, doing whatever he could in small brave ways to set a wall against the greed and corruption of the world we of the Quality were building.

I folded the letter carefully and then I bent down and poked it into the fire. It would be of no help to me, nor to any of the Haverings if they knew that I would have gone against their wishes if I could. I had spoken once against Lady Clara, I had accepted Perry’s awkward apology. They had won as the rich always win. They write the rules. They make the world. They win the battles.

I was sorry it had taken me this long to learn it. I had come from a poverty so grinding that I had seen the Quality as a race apart, and knew nothing more than a longing to be part of them. They made it look so easy! They made fine clothes and good food and polite chatter look like a God-given right. You never saw their struggle to keep their money earning more and more money. You never saw the ill-paid servants and clerks who serviced their needs, who earned the money for them. All you ever saw was the smooth surface of the finished work – the Quality world. I leaned against the mantelpiece and looked down at the fire. It was as if I were to say that marble like this of the mantelpiece came straight from the ground smooth and carved, and never needed working. They managed to pretend that their wealth came to them naturally – as if they deserved it. They hid altogether the poverty and the hardship and the sheer miserable drudgery which earned the money which they spent smiling.

I had been as bad as any of them – worse; for I had known what life was like down at the very bottom, and I had thought of nothing but that I should be free from that hardship, that I should win my way up to the top. And sour it was to me, to learn when I made it there, when I was little Miss Sarah Lacey, that I felt as mean and as dirty as when I had been a thieving chavvy in the streets.

It is a dirty world they’ve made – the people who have the power and the talents and who show no pity. I had had enough of it. I would be little Miss Sarah Lacey no more.

There was a knock on the parlour door. ‘Lady Sarah, there is a parcel for you,’ the parlourmaid said.

I turned with a scowl which made her step swiftly back. I had forgotten I was little Miss Sarah no more. Now I was Lady Sarah and damned nonsense it was to talk of being on the side of the poor while I sat in the parlour of the great Havering town house and was waited on by a dozen ill-paid people.

I took the parcel with a word of thanks and opened it.

It was from my lawyer, Mr Penkiss. It was the contracts for the marriage and the deeds of Wideacre for Perry. Wideacre was out of the hands of the Laceys. Wideacre was mine no more.

I spread the old paper out on the parlour table and looked at it. It meant nothing to me, the writing was all funny, and the language was not even English. But I liked the heavy seals on the bottom, dark red and cracked, and the thick glossy pink ribbon under them. I liked the curly brown lettering and the old thick manuscript. And now and then, in the text I could see the word ‘Wideacre’ and knew it was telling of my land.

The Laceys had earned it in a grant from the king. The Norman king who came over some time and beat the people in a war and won the country. That was how it was told in the gentry parlours. In the taproom at Acre they said that the Laceys had stolen it, robbed farmers like the Tyackes who had been there for years. In the wagons of the Rom they said that once they had held all the land, that they had been the old people who had lived alongside fairies and pixies and old magic until the coming of men with swords and ploughs. I smiled ruefully. All robbers: generation after generation of robbers. And the worst theft of all was to take someone’s history from them. So the children who went to school from the Havering estate believed the Haverings had always been there. And they were taught that there was no choice but to doff their caps to the power of the rich. And no alternative but to work for them – and try to become rich yourself.

I rolled up the parchment carefully and put it back in its package along with the marriage contract. If Peregrine were not too drunk tonight he might be well enough to take it to the lawyers tomorrow.

I glanced towards the window. It was getting dark with that cold, damp, end-of-January darkness which made me glad of the warm fire and the quiet room. I rang the bell and ordered more logs for the fire, and I heard the front door bang as Perry came home.

He was unsteady on his feet, but I had seen him a lot worse. He beamed at me with his good-natured drunkard’s smile.

‘It’s good to see you up,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re well again. I missed you when you were ill.’

I smiled back. ‘You’d have made a tragic widower,’ I said.

Perry nodded, unabashed. ‘I’d have missed you all the same,’ he said. ‘But oh! it’s good to have as much money as I like!’

‘Are you winning or losing these days?’ I asked dryly.

‘Still winning!’ Perry said delightedly. ‘I don’t know what devil is in the cards. I haven’t lost a game since I came back from Newmarket. No one will play with me any more except Captain Thomas and Bob Redfern! I must have had a thousand guineas off them both!’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Shall you mind leaving all this excitement to come home? I want to go back to Wideacre, and I’m well enough to travel now.’

Perry rang the bell and ordered punch made strong when the butler came.

‘When you like,’ he said. ‘But the roads will be bad. Why not wait until it is warmer, and the roads less dirty? We’ll get stuck for sure.’

The silver bowl came in and Perry poured himself a cup and handed me one. I sipped it and made a face.

‘Ugh Perry! It’s far too strong! It’s solid brandy!’

Perry beamed. ‘Keeps the cold out,’ he said.

‘Will you stop your drinking, once we are at Wideacre?’ I asked a little wistfully. ‘Will you really stop your drinking, and the gambling? Is it truly just being in London which makes you do it?’

Perry stretched out his legs to the fire. ‘I’ll tell you the truth,’ he said. ‘I started gambling because I was bored, and I started drinking because I was lonely and afraid. You know how it was for me before.’ He paused. ‘I am sure I could give it up like that,’ he snapped his fingers. ‘Any time I wanted to. I could just walk away from it and never touch it again.’

I looked at him curiously. ‘I’ve seen men who said that who would kill someone for a drink,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen men who would shake and vomit if they couldn’t get a drink when they needed it. I even heard of one man who went mad without it, and killed his little chavvy, and didn’t even know he’d done it!’

‘Don’t talk like that!’ Perry said with instant disdain. ‘Don’t talk about those horrid people you used to be with, Sarah. You’re not among them any more. It’s different for us. I’m not like that. I can take or leave it. And in London, in the Season, everyone drinks. Everyone gambles. You’d be gaming yourself if you weren’t ill and staying at home, Sarah, you know you would.’