Philippa Gregory - Meridon

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?’