Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘Do you want to climb down?’ David called.

I opened my mouth to tell him that I did not dare climb. That I did not dare swing. I had lost my voice. All I could do was croak like a fear-struck frog.

‘Get out of it,’ Dandy said, careless of my deep terror. ‘Grab hold of the trapeze and swing down and drop into the net, Meridon. It’s the quickest way. Then you’ll never have to come up again.’

I could not turn my head to look for her. I was clamped rigid by my fear. With one lithe movement she was up beside me on the pedestal and had unhooked the trapeze. She drew it towards me and took my arm and wrested it from its grip on the upright pole. I grabbed at the trapeze bar as if it might save me. It pulled me a little near the edge with its weight and I gasped a little in fright. It was dragging me off. I had not known that it would pull me so. I was midway between falling and clinging on. I did not have the strength to pull back, and my fist was clenched so tight I was not able to drop the trapeze and let it swing away.

With one swift, callous movement Dandy reached behind my back and snatched my left hand from the supporting pole. At once the weight of the trapeze dragged me forward and off the pedestal board into the void of space. In panic I grabbed at the trapeze with my free hand as a drowning man grabs at a twig in his despair. I clutched it and cried for help as I swooped down the lurching black valley of the swing in a blank haze of screaming terror.

It was like falling in dreams, in those dreadful nightmares when you seem to fall and fall for ever and the terror of them is so bad that you wake screaming. I swooped downwards clinging to the trapeze and then felt the drag as it swung up the hill of the other side of the swing. Then I was falling backwards, which was even worse, swinging back towards the pedestal and I was yelling in terror that I was going to hit the pedestal and knock Dandy off it.

‘It’s all right!’ I heard her call from close behind me. ‘Just swing, Merry! Like you do on the practice trapeze.’

The brown of the tarry string of the catch net leapt into vision as I swung down towards it again and then it fell away from me as I crested the swing. I hung like a brace of pheasants in a larder. But inside my limp hopeless body I was weeping with terror.

Three more times the swing rocked backwards and forwards with me a white doll tossed about underneath it. Then it slowed and slowed and finally stopped and I hung still above the catch-net.

‘Drop down,’ David called. ‘You’re safe now, Meridon. Drop down into the net. Keep your legs up as you drop and you’ll land softly on your back. Just let go the bar, Meridon.’

I was frozen. My hands were locked tight on the bar. I looked down and there between my feet was the catch-net and, beneath it, the gleaming white of the wood shavings. Safety, solid ground. I willed myself to let the bar go.

It was no use. It was as if I had forgotten the skill to open my hands, to release my fingers. I was clenching the bar as if it were the only thing which would save me from tumbling head first into a precipice.

‘Let go!’ David called, his voice more urgent. ‘Meridon! Listen to me! Just let go the bar and we’ll have you down!’

I looked towards him and he saw the mute terror in my face. He went over to the A-frame where the catcher straddles, ready to swing the flyer forwards and back up to the trapeze. He climbed up Jack’s ladder swiftly until he was parallel with me, his face on a level with my own. But too distant to reach me.

‘Come on, girl,’ he said, his voice soft and warmed with his Welsh accent. ‘Just let your hands go and you’ll drop gently in the net and we can all go and have a rest. You’ve worked hard this morning, you’ll be ready for your dinner.’

I could feel the tears coming into my eyes and then running down my cheeks but I did not cry out. His voice was warmer.

‘Come on, Merry,’ he said sweetly. ‘Just lift your legs up a little and lie back and you’ll be down as snug as if you were laid in bed. You’ve seen Dandy do it a hundred times. Just lift your legs a little and let go.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but still no voice came. I took a deep breath and my overstrained back muscles shuddered. I gripped tighter with my fingers in fear of falling.

‘I…can’t,’ I said.

‘Course you can,’ David said instantly. ‘There’s not the least difficulty in the world, little Merry. Lift your legs up towards me and shut your eyes and think of nothing. You’ll be down in a second.’

I obeyed him, as I could, as well as I could. I did as I was bid. I lifted my legs so that when I dropped I would fall backwards into the catch net. I shut my eyes. I took a deep breath.

It was no good. My fingers were locked as if they were the latches on a door. I could not will them to open. I was clinging, like a baby monkey to its mother’s back, in pure instinctive terror. I could not let go.

I did not let go.

Minutes I hung there while David talked to me gently, ordered me, begged me. Minutes while Dandy climbed up the ladder in his place and smiled at me and asked me to let go and come down to her. Her smile was strained, I could see the fright in her eyes and, despite myself, my grip tightened.

The tears poured down my cheeks, I was torn between my longing for this nightmare to be over and to be on safe ground again, and my absolute blank and helpless terror which had locked my grip so that I could not let go.

‘Meridon, please!’ Jack said from ground level. ‘You’re so brave, Meridon! Please do as David says!’

My clenched muscles around my chin and throat struggled to open. ‘I…can’t,’ I said.

David climbed up the catcher’s frame again. ‘Meridon,’ he said softly. ‘Your grip is going to go soon and you will fall. You can’t stop that. As you feel yourself going I want you to lift your legs so that your weight goes backwards. Then you will land on your back. If you fall straight down you will hurt yourself a little. I want you to land soft. When you feel your grip slipping get your legs up.’

I heard him. But I was far beyond obeying him. All I could feel was the singing continuous pain in my back and my shoulders and my arms and my chest. My bones felt as if they were being dragged from the sockets. My hands were like claws. But I could not tighten their grip. And though I was squeezing them harder and harder I could feel them begin to loosen and slip.

‘No!’ I wailed.

‘Legs up!’ yelled David. But I could not hear him in my panic. My fingernails clawed at the bar, my hands grasped at air. I fell like a dagger into the ground, feet first, into the catch net.

At once it threw me back up. It was stretched taut to catch Dandy falling softly on her back, not a feet-first dive. My legs doubled up, my knees cracked me in the face, my stomach lurched as the net threw me up and I fell, as helpless as a baby bird from a nest, down to the swinging merciless blow again. Four or five times I bounced, hopelessly out of control, until the last time when the fear and the shock were too much for me, and everything went blank.

10

When I came to, I was in bed; not in my own bed but in the pretty lime-washed room at the back of Robert Gower’s fine house. When my eyelids quivered I could hear Robert’s voice telling me in a muted whisper that I was safe in his house. He knew I could not open my eyes to see for myself. I was stone blind.

Robert Gower sat with me. He ordered Jack and Dandy back to work at once, as soon as they had carried me into the parlour and William had gone at a gallop for the Salisbury surgeon. Robert would not trust the Warminster barber. Dandy had sworn at him and said she would not leave my side but Robert had pushed her out of the room and said she might come and sit with me but not until she had swung on the high trapeze and done every single trick she had already learned.