Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘I remember,’ David said steadily. ‘And you will remember my terms.’

‘Daily payments in coin,’ Robert concurred. ‘If you work till eleven you can all take breakfast in the kitchen. Then an afternoon session until dinner in the kitchen at four.’

‘Then they’ll need to rest,’ David said firmly.

Robert nodded. ‘The girls can make their costumes then,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow I promised Merry she could come to the horse fair with me.’

David nodded and waited for Robert to go out and close the barn door behind him. Then he looked at Jack and me.

‘Better get to work,’ he said.

7

In my apprehensive fright of the ropes and the swings and the high vaulting roof of the barn I had been certain that David would insist we should climb right to the top on that very first morning. But he did not. Even before Dandy reappeared from the house looking sulky and beautiful in a pair of baggy homespun breeches belonging to William and a linen shirt of Jack’s, David had ordered Jack and me to trot and then sprint around the barn on five increasingly fast circuits.

Then he had us running backwards and dancing on the spot until our faces were flushed and we were all panting. Dandy’s careful coronet came down and she twisted it carelessly into a bun on the nape of her neck. But the three of us were as fit as working ponies. Jack and I had been training hard every night on the bareback act and were as quick and as supple as greyhounds. And for all that Dandy would sneak off to doze in the sun at every opportunity, she had been raised as a travelling child and to walk twenty or thirty miles in a day was no hardship to her – and to swim races at the end of it.

‘You’ll do,’ David himself was puffing as we dropped to the wood shavings for our first rest. ‘I was afraid that you would all be plump and lazy, but you are all well muscled and you’ve got plenty of wind.’

‘When do we go up?’ Dandy demanded.

‘Any time you like,’ he said carelessly. ‘I’ll check the rigging while you go to your breakfast and then you can go up and down whenever you wish. I’ll show you how to drop into the net, and once you know that you can come to no harm.’

‘I don’t know I can,’ I said. I was keeping my voice steady but the flutter of fear in my belly kept snatching my breath away.

David smiled at me, his enormous moustaches still curly on his sweaty cheeks.

‘I know you are afraid,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I understand that. I have been afraid too. You will work at the speed you wish. You’ve the build for it, and the body, I should think. But this is something you can only do if your heart is in it. I’d not be party to forcing anyone up a ladder.’

‘How did you come into it?’ Jack asked.

David smiled. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said lazily. ‘The pressgang snatched me from my home at Newport and I was pressed on board a man-of-war – big it was, frightening for a country lad. I jumped ship as soon as I could, Portugal actually, Lisbon, and lived rough for a while. Then I joined a travelling show of contortionists. I didn’t have the body for that, but they put me at the bottom of the heap and I could hold the rest of them up. Then I saw an act up high on Roman Rings and I set my heart on it.’ He twirled his moustache. ‘It made me,’ he said simply. ‘I apprenticed myself to the man I saw doing it, and he taught me. Then we used a trapeze instead of the rings which meant we could swing out and not just hang like other performers were doing. First I was the only one. But then his young son started to learn and we found he could swing out and reach for me, and I could catch him and swing him back to his trapeze. It was a good act.’

He paused. I saw his eyes narrow with grief at some memory. I felt my belly clench with fear.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘The lad fell,’ he said simply. ‘He fell and broke his neck and died.’

Nobody said anything for a moment.

‘Merry, you’re green,’ Jack said. ‘Are you going to be sick?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Go on, David. What did you do then?’

‘I came back to this country and found a partner to help me with the rigging and to stand the other side and reach out and catch my feet as I swung over. But your father is the man with the ideas! I’d never have thought of putting lasses up high. The people will love it.’

‘He’ll be paying you a good sum,’ Dandy said acutely. ‘You’re the only man in England who can swing on a trapeze. Yet you’re teaching us. And you say yourself that girls will pull a crowd.’

David beamed. ‘I’m getting old,’ he said frankly. ‘I get tired after two shows and my partner is getting slow. I’ve no savings, nothing at all. Robert is paying me a king’s ransom to teach you three something that I’ll have no use for in two seasons’ time. And he’ll pay me more yet – to refuse to teach other people the tricks I’ve taught you.’ He grinned at Jack and moistened his fingers with his tongue so that he could curl the ends of his moustache. ‘That’s no secret,’ he said. ‘Your father knows it as well as I do.’

Jack nodded. ‘How long do you last on the trapeze?’ he asked.

‘Till you’re twenty-five or so,’ David said consideringly. ‘Depends how fit you are to start with. I’ve been hungry and ill most of my life. I don’t expect to be working much after thirty.’

‘It’s a hard life,’ I said looking at him. His skin was flushed pink and the wonderful moustaches were curly, ebullient. But the bags under his eyes were deep and shadowed.

‘Isn’t every trade hard?’ he asked me; and I nodded, hearing an echo of my own half-starved worldliness.

‘Now!’ he said, suddenly active. ‘To work.’

He set Jack to exercises, five hundred paces of running on the spot and then lying flat and pushing up and down using his arms. He gave Dandy a metal bar and ordered her to run on the spot holding it before her, and then above her head, and then push it up and down as she ran. But me he took around the waist and lifted me up so that my fingers closed around the smooth hardness of the low-slung trapeze bar.

I hung like a confused bat while he stepped back and called me to raise my legs and beat them down hard. I did so, and the swing rocked forward.

‘Keep your legs together! Let the swing take you back!’ he called. ‘Now at the back-up, at the return of the swing stick your arse out, force your legs down together! Beat!’

Again and again he called the timing for me, and the barn faded, and Jack and Dandy’s sweating faces faded, and my fear faded until there was nothing but a voice saying, ‘Now!’ and my irritatingly slow body taking too long to beat down with the legs so that I swung forward, arched like the prow of a boat.

I could not get my legs to go down fast enough, smoothly enough. Each time he said, ‘Now!’ I was conscious of being too late, too slow. I had never felt so fat and awkward and flustered in my life. Then when the swing bore me forward I could not bring up my legs high enough to give me the space to beat back. I worked till I was near tears with frustration and with a longing sense that I could do it – that I was only a few lazy muscles away from doing it right – when he said gently: ‘That’s enough Meridon. Have a rest now.’

I shook my head then and the swing drifted to a standstill and I found my arms were aching with fatigue. I dropped down off the swing and crumpled to sit where I landed. Dandy and Jack were watching me and David had a quizzical smile.

‘You like it,’ he said certainly.

I nodded ruefully. ‘I feel so close to getting it right!’ I said angrily. ‘I just can’t get to the beat at the right time.’