Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘What d’we do then?’ I asked miserably. ‘What happens then?’

‘I s’pose we swing out to Jack,’ she said, walking across the floor of the barn. On the other side was a matching A-frame with an open top. ‘He stands at the top and catches my feet, swings me through his legs and back up,’ she said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

‘I won’t do it,’ I said. My voice was harsh because I was so breathless. ‘I won’t be able to do it at all. I don’t care what I promised Robert, I didn’t know it would be so high and the ropes so thin. Surely you don’t want to do it either, Dandy? Because if you’d rather not, we’ll tell Robert Gower we won’t do it. If the worst comes to the worst we can make a living some other way. We could run away. If you don’t want to do it too, he cannot make us.’

Dandy’s heart-shaped face rounded into her sweetest smile. ‘Oh nonsense, Merry,’ she said. ‘You think I’m as big a coward as you are. I don’t mind it, I tell you. I’m going to make my fortune doing this. I shall be the only flying girl in the country. They’ll all come to see me! Gentry, too! I shall be in all the newspapers and they’ll make up ballads about me. I can’t wait to start. This is everything for me, Merry!’

I held my peace. I tried to share her excitement, but as we stood in that shadowy barn and I looked up at the yawning roof and the slim swing and the slender rope I could feel my mouth fill with bile and my head grow dizzy.

I put my hands over my ears. There was a rushing noise, I could not bear to hear it. Dandy took hold of my wrists. She was shaking them. From a long way away I could hear her saying: ‘Merry, are you all right? Are you all right, Merry?’

I shook my head, pulling away from her grip, fighting in a panic for my breath, waiting for the vomit to curdle up into my mouth. Then the next thing I knew was a sharp slapping on my cheek. I opened my eyes and put up my hand to ward off a blow. It was Jack. I was held in his arms, Dandy hovering beside him.

‘You with us now?’ he asked tersely.

I shrugged off his hold and sat up. My head still swam.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’

‘Was it just looking at the swing?’ he asked glancing upward, incredulous that anyone could faint for fear at such a petty object.

I hesitated. ‘Yes,’ I said uncertainly. ‘I suppose it was.’ Jack pulled me to my feet before I could think more clearly. ‘Well, don’t look at it then,’ he said unsympathetically, ‘and don’t go setting Dandy off neither. Da is set on having her up there, and you promised you’d try it.’

I nodded. Dandy’s face was bright, untroubled.

‘She’s set on going,’ I said. My voice was croaky, I coughed and spat some foul-tasting spittle. ‘An’ I’ll keep my word and try it.’

‘You won’t be up there for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Look there, that’s the practice one.’

He gestured over to the other side of the barn near the door where a swing hung so low that I could have jumped up to reach it. Someone hanging would be only ten inches from the floor, just enough to dangle.

‘On that!’ I exclaimed. Jack and Dandy laughed at my face. ‘I could face that!’ I said. Relief made me giggly and I joined in their laughing. ‘Even I could swing on that,’ I said.

‘Well, good,’ said Jack agreeably. ‘It would please my da very much if you would swing on the practice swing. You need never go high unless you want to, Merry. But he’s paying a big fee for the man from Bristol to come and teach us. He’d like to see him in full work for the two months.’

‘I’d wager on that,’ Dandy said nastily. ‘But he agreed that Merry needn’t learn if she was afeared. She’s doing enough for the two of you falling off horses all day, as it is.’

‘I don’t mind swinging on that,’ I said, and I meant it. ‘I might even like it.’

‘Getting dark,’ Jack said. ‘You two had best get back. We’ll start work early in the morning.’

We went out into the grey twilight and Jack pulled the door shut behind us.

‘What’s it like sleeping in a house after being in a wagon all your lives?’ he asked.

‘Too quiet,’ Dandy said. ‘I miss you snoring, Jack.’

‘It’s odd,’ I agreed. ‘The room stays still all the time. You get used to the wagon rocking every time someone moves, I suppose. And the ceiling seems so high. In our old wagon, with Da and Zima, the roof was just above my head and I used to get a wet face when I turned over and brushed against it.’

‘What’s it like for you, Jack?’ Dandy said insinuatingly. ‘Will you miss not seeing us in our shifts in the morning? Or getting a little peep at us when we wash?’

Jack laughed but I guessed he was blushing in the darkness.

‘Plenty of girls in Warminster, Dandy,’ he said. ‘Plenty of choice in this town.’

‘As pretty as me?’ she asked. Dandy could make her voice sound like a gilt-edged invitation to a party, if she had a mind to. I could feel Jack sweat as he walked between us.

‘Nay,’ he said honestly. ‘But a darned sight less troublesome.’ He turned abruptly as we walked into the stable yard. ‘I’ll say goodnight to the two of you here,’ he said, and went through the little door in the wall to the garden and the main house.

Dandy went up the stairs before me humming, and unpinned her cap before the bit of mirror while I lit our one rush candle.

‘I could have him,’ she said softly. It was almost an incantation, as if she were making magic with her own lovely mirror-image. ‘I could have him, though his da has warned him against me, and though he thinks to look down on me. I could call him into my hand like a little bird with a speck of bread.’

She untied her pinny and slid her gown up and over her head. The curves of her body showed clear as a ripple on a stream. Her breasts rounding and plump with pale unformed nipples. The dark shadow of curly hair between her legs and the smooth curve of her buttocks were like magical symbols in an old book of spells. ‘I could have him,’ she said again.

I stripped my Sunday gown off and bundled it into the chest and leaped into my bed, covers up to my chin.

‘Don’t even think of it,’ I said.

At once the desirous tranced expression left her face, and she turned to me laughing. ‘Old Mother Meridon!’ she taunted. ‘Always on the lookout for trouble. You’ve got ice between your legs, Meridon, that’s your trouble. All you ever want there is a horse.’

‘I know what a horse is thinking,’ I said grimly. ‘Pretty Jack could plan a murder and you’d never see it in his eyes. And Robert wants nothing but money. I’d rather have a horse any day.’

Dandy laughed. I heard the floorboards creak as she lay down on her mattress.

‘I wonder what the trapeze artist will be like,’ she said sleepily. ‘I wonder how old he is, and if he’s married. He looked fine on that hand-bill, d’you remember, Merry? Half-naked he was. I wonder what he’ll be like.’

I smiled into the darkness. I need not fear the charms of Jack Gower nor the anger of his father if the man of the trapeze act would just flirt a little with Dandy for the two months that he was with us – and then go.

He was prompt, anyway. He walked into the yard at six o’clock on a bitterly cold November morning, a small bag in his hand. He was dressed like a working farmer, good clothes, made of good quality cloth, but plain and unfashionable. He had a greatcoat on and a plain felt hat pushed back. His impressive moustaches curled out gloriously along his cheeks and made him look braggish and good-humoured. William took one look at him and bolted into the house to tell Robert that he had arrived. Dandy and I observed him minutely from our loft window.