Philippa Gregory - Meridon

Dandy glanced around as we walked and even risked a tiny sideways smile at a group of lads waiting by the church door. But Robert Gower looked back and she quickly switched her gaze to her new boots and was forced to walk past them without even a swing of the hips.

I kept my eyes down. I did not need a glance of admiration from any man, least of all a callow youth. Besides, I had something on my mind. I did not like the Warminster Robert Gower as I had liked the man on the steps of the wagon. He was too clearly a hard man with a goal in sight and nothing, least of all two little gypsy girls, would turn him from it. He had felt that he did not belong in the parish workhouse. He had felt that he did not belong in a dirty cottage with a failed cartering business of his own. His first horse had been a starting point. The wagon and the Warminster house were later steps on the road to gentility. He wanted to be a master of his trade – even though his trade was a travelling show. He had felt, as I did, that his life should be wider, grander. And he had made – as I was starting to hope that I might make – that great step from poverty to affluence.

But he paid for it. In all the restrictions which this narrowminded village placed on him. So here his voice was harder, he had struck Dandy, and he had told us both that he was ready to throw us off.

I, too, wanted to step further. I understood his determination because I shared it. I wanted to take the two of us away. I wanted to step right away from the life of gilt and sweat. I wanted to sit in a pink south-facing parlour and take tea from a clean cup. I wanted to be Quality. I wanted Wide.

I watched him and Mrs Greaves closely and I kneeled when they kneeled and I stood when they stood. I turned the page of the prayer book when they did, though I could not read the words. I mouthed the prayers and I opened my mouth and bawled ‘la la la’ for the hymns. I followed them in every detail of behaviour so that Robert Gower could have no cause for complaint. For until I could get us safely away, Robert Gower was our raft on the sea of poverty. I would cling to him as if I adored him, until it was safe to leave him, until I had somewhere to take Dandy. Until I could see my way clear to a home for the two of us.

When we were bidden to pray I sank to my knees in the pew like some ranting Methody and buried my face in my calloused hands. While the preacher spoke of sin and contrition I had only one prayer, a passionate plea to a God I did not even believe in.

‘Get me Wide,’ I said. I whispered it over and over. ‘Get me and Dandy safe to Wide.’

6

We kept the Sabbath, now that we were on show as Robert Gower’s young ladies. Dandy and I were allowed to walk arm in arm slowly down the main street of the village and slowly back again. I – who could face dancing bareback in front of hundreds of people – would rather have walked through fire than join Dandy in her promenade. But she begged me; she loved to see and be seen, even with such a poor audience as the lads of Warminster. Also, Robert Gower gave me a level look over the top of his pipe stem, and told me he would be obliged if I stayed at Dandy’s side.

I flushed scarlet at that. Dandy’s coquetry had been a joke among the four of us in the travelling wagon. But in Warminster there was nothing funny about behaviour which could lower the Gowers in the eyes of their neighbours.

‘It’s hardly likely I’d fancy any of those peasants!’ Dandy said, tossing her head airily.

‘Well, you remember it,’ Robert said. ‘Because if I hear so much as a whisper about you, Miss Dandy, there will be no training, and no short skirt, and no travelling with the show next season. No new wagon of your own, either!’

‘A new wagon?’ Dandy repeated, seizing on the most material point.

Robert Gower smiled at her suddenly sweet face.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I have it in mind for you and Merry to have a little wagon of your own. You’ll need to change clothes twice during the show and it’ll be easier for you to keep your costumes tidy. You’ll maybe have a new poorhouse wench in with you as well.’

Dandy made a face at that.

‘Which horse will pull the new wagon?’ I asked.

Robert nodded. ‘Always horses for you, isn’t it, Merry? I’ll be buying a new work horse. You can come with me to help me choose it. At Salisbury horse fair the day after tomorrow.’

‘Thank you,’ I said guardedly.

He shot a hard look at me. ‘Like the life less now we’re in winter quarters?’ he asked.

I nodded, saying nothing.

‘It has benefits,’ he said judicially. ‘The real life is on the road. But only tinkers and gypsies live on the road for ever. I’ve got a good-sized house now, but I’m going to buy a bigger one. I want a house so big and land so big that I can live just as I please and never care what anyone thinks of me, and never lack for anything.’

He looked swiftly at me. ‘That make any sense to you, Merry?’ he asked. ‘Or is the Rom blood too strong for you to settle anywhere?’

I paused for a moment. There was a thin thread of longing in my heart which was my need for Wide.

‘I want to be Quality,’ I said, my voice very low. ‘I want a beautiful sandstone house which faces due south so the sun shines all day on the yellow stone, with a rose garden in front of it, and a walled fruit garden at the back, and a stable full of hunters on the west side.’ I broke off and looked up at him, but he was not laughing at me. He nodded as if he understood.

‘The only way I’ll get my house is work, and hard trading,’ he said. ‘The only way you’ll get to yours is marriage. You’d better make haste and get some of your sister’s prettiness, Meridon. You’ll never catch a squire with your hair cropped short and your chest as flat as a lad.’

I flushed scarlet from my neck to my forehead.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said turning away, angry with myself for saying too much; and that to a man I should never wholly trust.

‘Well, take your walk,’ he called genially, to Dandy and me together. ‘Because tomorrow you start work in earnest.’

I knew what Robert Gower’s idea of earnest work was like, and I kept Dandy’s saunter to a minimum – just up and down the wide main street – so that I could be home before dinner in time to muck out the stables and groom the horses. Ignoring Dandy’s protests I insisted we leave the kitchen straight after our dinner, so that we could turn the horses out in the paddock just as it was growing dark. In the corner of the field stood the barn which Robert Gower had ordered to be ready, where Dandy’s work would start tomorrow.

‘Let’s go and see it,’ Dandy said.

We trod carefully across the uneven ground and pushed the wide door open. Our feet sank into deep wood shavings, thickly scattered all around the floor. Above our heads, almost hidden in the gloom was a wooden bar on a frail-looking pair of ropes swinging slightly in the draught like a waiting gibbet. I had never seen such a thing before, except in that hand-bill. Just standing on the floor and gazing up made me sick with fright. Dandy glanced up as if she hardly minded at all.

‘How on earth will we get up there?’ I asked. My voice was quavery and I had my teeth clenched to stop them chattering.

Dandy walked across and stood at the bottom of a rope-ladder which hung from a little platform at the top of an A-frame built of pale light wood.

‘Up this, I suppose,’ she said. She tipped her head back and looked up at it. ‘D’you see, Meridon? I suppose we stand up there and jump across to the trapeze thing.’

I looked fearfully up. The trapeze was within reach, if you stretched out far and jumped wide out over the void.