Philippa Gregory - Meridon

A wood-pigeon called softly, as sweetly as a cuckoo. Beyond the garden was a rich paddock of good grass and as I looked I saw Sea walk from one end to another, ears pricked, moving like a waterfall. They must have brought him in late last night, he had taken no hurt from the journey. I called softly to him: ‘Cooee, Sea!’ and he looked towards the window with his grey ears pricked up towards me, and then nodded his head as if in greeting before turning back to crop the grass. He looked pleased to be in the little field. He looked at home.

A floorboard behind me creaked and a broad arm came around me and the man who hated gin traps lifted my thick mop of curls and kissed the nape of my neck.

‘Mmmm,’ he said by way of greeting, and then his other arm came around me and I leaned back against him and closed my eyes, and let the sunlight and the cool morning, and the greenness of the fields and the warmth of his body against my cool skin wash over me in a great wave of delight.

He slid his hand down my flank and cupped one rounded buttock gently in his hand, then without hesitation his hand went between my legs from behind and his fingers, skilled and knowledgeable, parted my gentle flesh and found the core of the little maze of my body, and stroked me so that I sighed again and again until, still holding me with my back pressed against his warm chest, he entered me and I clung to the window-sill and rested my head against the cool of the window frame and thought for one moment, ‘I have never never felt such delight.’

Then we tumbled down together on the hard floorboards, giving and taking pleasure, moving and seeking, demanding and contented in a great frenzy of happiness until I sighed out loud – and then there was a silence and nothing but the birdsong and the wood-pigeons calling in the silence and the sun was very warm on my shoulder and on my rapt face.

We lay very still, and then Will reached up to the bed and drew me up too. I sat naked on his bare thighs and felt the pleasure of being close and naked like innocent animals. He looked more like a fox cub than ever, his eyes brown and smiling and sleepy. He was radiant with love, I could feel the glow of it on his skin, all over.

‘I hope you’re not going to expect that every morning,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m a working man, you know.’

I laughed delightedly. ‘And I’m a working woman,’ I said. ‘I must go into Chichester this very day and see about leasing the Hall. It would produce a good income for the corporation, and a nice couple, a London merchant, or a retired admiral or someone like that, would be good neighbours to have.’

‘It’ll be odd: them coming to a cottage to pay rent,’ Will offered. He stood up and stretched so that his head brushed the low ceiling. ‘Odd for them to see you living here.’

‘I have low tastes,’ I said lightly and I kissed his warm chest and rubbed my face against the soft hairs.

I pulled on my breeches and Gerry’s best shirt. ‘I’ll need some more clothes, too,’ I said.

‘I knew it,’ Will said gloomily. ‘Can’t you make do with hand-me-downs?’

‘I’ll work in breeches,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But I’ll have one – no, two! – dresses for best!’

There was a clatter from the room next door.

‘Is that the chavvies?’ I asked. I was alert at once. I could not help but fear them, Becky’s daughters, the children Will had chosen to raise.

Will nodded, and the next thing the door burst open and all three of them were upon him swarming all over him like puppies.

‘And look who’s here!’ Will exclaimed as he got clear.

They all three turned to look at me, six unwinking eyes surveyed me from head to bare feet.

‘Is this Miss Sarah?’ the oldest one asked uncertainly, taking in my rumpled hair and my breeches.

‘She was Miss Sarah,’ Will said. ‘But now she has come to live with us. She’s finished with living in London, and with grand folks. She’s my true love and she’s come home to me.’

The middle one, very ready to believe in princesses coming to cottages, came forward and put her hand out to me. ‘And will you be my ma and comb my hair without pulling?’ she asked.

I took a deep breath. ‘Yes I will,’ I said bravely, and took her hand. Will beamed at me across their heads.

‘Will can be your da, and I’ll be your ma,’ I said plunging in. ‘But you’ll have to help me go on, I was never anyone’s ma before.’

‘She’s a circus girl,’ Will said impressively. ‘She can dance on horseback and she can swing on a trapeze. There’s not many little girls who have a ma who can do that. You come on downstairs and she can tell you all about it while I make the porridge!’

They tumbled downstairs in a rush at that offer and while they spooned porridge into their mouths and Will made strong hot tea for them I told them a little about Robert and Jack and learning to ride bareback and the falls. Then I told them about winning Sea and they all rushed upstairs to pull on their woollen stockings and their clogs under their nightshirts so that they could go out at once and meet Sea.

‘Will you do circus tricks for us here?’ the oldest one pressed me. ‘Will you teach us how to dance on horseback, and we can all be in a circus?’

Will laughed aloud at my aghast face.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Her travelling days are over. She may teach you some tricks for fun, but her main work should be training horses for people to buy.’

‘To dance with?’ asked the littlest one, eyes and mouth round.

‘No,’ I said smiling. ‘To ride. But I will show you how I used to dance bareback if we ever have a horse who will let me do it. Sea would not stand for it for one moment!’

Will sent them upstairs then to get dressed in earnest and wash their faces in time for school. Then he and I walked together to take them to school and went hand in hand down the village street to bid good-day to other people of Acre and to tell them that I had come home at last.

It was a busy couple of days. There was Gerry and Emily to settle in with two familes down the village street. Emily bloomed like a rose in the countryside but Gerry was surly and cross until he went into Midhurst and got himself a job at the Spread Eagle, then he was very full of bragging to the other ostlers about London ways. He brought home a good wage, and he paid a share of it into the common fund for the corporation. He seemed settled, and Will and I repaid him our debt.

I went, as I had promised, to Chichester and the Hall was offered for rent. We would get a handsome sum for it, the agents thought. I spoke to them before I went to the dressmakers for new clothes so they had to deal with me in my breeches. It was to their credit that they never so much as glanced at me. They called me Lady Havering throughout and I did not know how to stop them. They never so much as mentioned Perry, nor the fact that the name on the deeds of the Hall was now ‘The corporation of Acre, manager Will Tyacke’. But I knew that once I had set so much as a step out of the office, the tale would be all around Sussex – aye and Hampshire too, by tea-time.

I had to go and see the vicar and tell him how everything was changed, and the world upside down for him. He could not comprehend why a rich woman could choose to be poor. He could not understand why I should wish to live in a cottage and rent out the Hall. Finally I told him bluntly that though I was married to Lord Havering I would never live with him, and that Will was my lover. He had been trying to maintain a pretence that I was living in Will’s cottage as a rich woman’s whim. But when I said outright that Will and I loved each other, and loved the land, and would live here together for the rest of our lives, he went white with shock, and rang the bell for me to be shown the door.