Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘I’ll never be able to go to church,’ I said to Will that evening. I was sitting on the settle, skinning a rabbit with my sleeves rolled up, as he cooked the supper. ‘I’m a scarlet woman. I’ll never be able to take the chavvies in to say their prayers, not even sat at the back. Vicar’ll look badly at you too.’

Will turned, a wooden spoon in his hand and licked it with relish before he smiled and answered me. ‘Small lack,’ he said. ‘But he’d best remember which side his bread is buttered.’

When I looked blank he beamed at me. ‘You’ve made the village into a squire!’ he said grinning. ‘We own the living. If he’s impertinent I think we can refuse him his wages, certainly don’t need to pay the Wideacre Hall’s share of his tithe. If you don’t fancy having a vicar we can leave the post empty after he is gone. You can persuade the whole village to turn pagan if you wish.’

I laughed in return. ‘I had forgotten!’ I said delightedly. ‘But I wouldn’t do it! The whole place is pagan enough already! But I had forgotten we own the living, the vicarage and all!’

‘Aye,’ Will said, and turned himself to the important task of game stew.

The only thing which fretted me at all in those busy spring days was the thought of Mr Fortescue. I spoke of him one morning, when the letters for the estate came in and there was no reply from him. Will took a handful of my curls and gently shook my head. ‘He’s a good man,’ he said softly. ‘He only ever wanted your happiness. He’ll be shocked, but I reckon he’ll take it. He was deep in the dismals when he knew you were set on marriage to Lord Peregrine. And I never heard a word from him that you’d been forced to it. It shook him to the marrow, he was too pained even for speech. He’d think that anything was better for you than that. I wager he’ll be glad enough that you’ve run away from that Havering crowd. And we have Wideacre safe. Safe for ever, safe for the corporation. He’ll be glad enough of that.’

I nodded. And Will was right. Only a couple of days later, when I was turning over the earth in the front garden with Lizzie helping and getting in the way with a spoon in her grimy hands, and mud on her face, the post-boy came down the street with a letter addressed to Lady Sarah Havering, care of Will Tyacke, which I thought a masterly compromise between postal accuracy and scandal.

James Fortescue was brief and to the point: ‘I am more happy than I can say to know that you two have found happiness together. Please do not think of the opinions of Society. You are building a new world on Wideacre, you cannot expect to be welcomed by all those who live in the old. You have my blessings on your brave attempt to break free.’

I tucked the letter into the pocket of my breeches to show Will when I met him in the fields at midday.

It was good to know that I had not disappointed James Fortescue. He was the only contact with the mother I had never known, Julia Lacey. If he could see that we were trying to build a new world, to be new people, maybe she would have understood too.

It was only Mr Fortescue who had worried me. I did not think of Perry at all. All of the Haverings, all of their bright talkative social world, had fallen away from me as if it had never been. They had gone, I could barely remember the meaningless lessons I had learned from them and the empty life I had lived with them.

Lizzie and I returned our attention to the flowerbed. Will had promised me a rose bush in the middle of the patch of earth and Lizzie and I were turning over the soil and digging in muck. My thoughts were running so much on James Fortescue and his letter, that when I heard hooves coming up the lane and the noise of carriage wheels, I straightened and scooped Lizzie up and set her on my hip to go down to the little garden gate, thinking I would see a hired post-chaise, and James smiling out of the window.

It was a bright morning and I put up my hand to shield my eyes, the other hand clasped around Lizzie’s little body, her chubby arms around my neck. With a shock of sudden surprise I saw that it was not James’s carriage pulling up outside my little gate. It was the Havering crest, and as the footman lowered the steps I saw it was Perry on his own.

‘Sarah?’ he asked in bewilderment. He came down the steps, blinking in the bright sunlight. ‘Sarah?’

I saw he was so bad with drink, that he could hardly recognize me. He was shaking, and his eyes were clogged with sleep and screwed up against the light. The footman was standing like a block, eyes straight forward. A man trained so well that he could appear deaf and dumb, especially when dragged into scandal such as this. Perry put a hand out on the footman’s shoulder and leaned on him like one might lean on a gate.

‘Is that a baby?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘No I ain’t!’ said Lizzie, immediately argumentative.

I tightened my grip to hush her and I said, ‘It’s a little girl, Perry, Will Tyacke is her da. I look after her with him.’

He looked past me and Lizzie to the little cottage. There were a few late-blooming roses still in frozen buds around the front door. A bush of forsythia was yellow as brass at the garden wall.

‘Charming!’ he said uncertainly. Then he paused. It was as if he did not know what more to say.

‘I’ve come to fetch you home,’ he said. His mama’s lesson had suddenly returned to his wandering mind. ‘If you come at once there’ll be no scandal and I’ll say no more about it. I will forgive you,’ he said pompously. ‘We can live in the country all the time if you wish. I’ll give up gambling, and I’ll give up drinking.’

He paused for a moment and screwed up his eyes as if he were trying to recapture some thought. ‘No!’ he said. ‘I’ve given up already. Shock of your leaving us like that. I’ve given it all up already. So you should come back.’

‘Oh Perry!’ I said gently. ‘What is in your pocket?’

Blinking owlishly he put his hand into his right pocket and then flinched as he closed his hand on the hip flask which I knew he would have there. From his other pocket he pulled out a handful of papers. They were gambling vowels: IOUs from other gamblers. The wintry wind caught a few of them and blew them down the street. It was small loss. I guessed they were useless.

‘No, Perry,’ I said softly. ‘I am not coming home. Tell your mama I thank her for her kindness and that I will not contest a divorce action. Tell her I have a criminal connection and she can have me put aside so that you can marry again. Tell her I am sorry, but I shall be living here on Wideacre with the man I love.’

Perry blinked again. He took out his flask and unstoppered it and took a swift swig. On the clean cold Wideacre air the smell of warm gin was sickly-sweet. He turned and stepped unsteadily back into the carriage. The footman, as impassive as a statue, folded the steps in and shut the door and swung on to the back of the carriage. His hands were blue with cold. He did not look at me.

Perry dropped the window holding the leather strap. ‘I don’t know what people will say about you,’ he said with the sudden spitefulness of a thwarted child. ‘They will say the most dreadful things, you know. You will never be able to go anywhere again. No one will blame me. No one will blame me at all. They will say you are at fault, and no one will call you Lady Havering ever again.’

I shifted Lizzie’s warm weight and I smiled at him with compassion. I was far from his world now. I was far from the world of the landed, of the squires, of the owners. I was the last of the Laceys and I had turned my back on ownership, I was trying a new way. I wanted to build a new world.

‘I don’t need your name,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your title. I am Will Tyacke’s whore, that’s good enough for me.’