Philippa Gregory - Meridon

He had looked in my face and had spoken to me as a man of substance speaks to a servant girl. Worse. He had spoken to me as a freeholder and a citizen speaks to a dirty travelling slut. All the work I had done for him and the knocks I had taken for him had not served to alter the fact that he had bought me from Da as a job lot in with a pony and a girl they both knew was a slut. I walked away from him, and I walked away from the tiny growing hope I had felt that there might be bridges which I could build from the world of the people who belonged, who slept soft and kept clean, and mine. There were no bridges. There was an absolute division.

As I led Sea down to the paddock I longed for Wide with as much passion as if I were still in my lice-ridden bunk listening to Da humping Zima. I had not belonged there. I did not belong here. I felt as if I would belong nowhere until I could own my own land and command servants of my own. There was no middling course for me, there was no staging place. It seemed I was condemned to the very ditch of society unless I could somehow scramble my way, all alone, to the top. I had to get to the top. I had to get where I belonged. I had to go to Wide.

I stepped back from the horse and clicked to him to get going. He was new to the work or else he had forgotten the skill. I worked with him all morning though my hands were stiff and my cheeks were icy. It was only when I went into the kitchen for my breakfast that I found they had become red and chapped because I had been crying into the cold east wind for all of the time.

We hardly noticed the Christmas season. Robert was distant and cold to us all since that time in the yard. He spun a silver coin down the table to Jack at breakfast on Christmas morning and he gave Dandy and Katie and me a thrupenny piece each. Mrs Greaves had a bolt of material, William a penny, David a rather good pair of second-hand gloves.

That was it. We all went back to work, and Christmas was just another day of training horses for me and working on the trapeze for the rest of them.

The new ponies bought at Salisbury were going well with the others and Robert had taught me the moves with the stick in one hand and the whip in the other and the words to call at them. We had a pretty little act with them coming into the ring and splitting into two teams, crossing from one side to another, passing while they circled (I always lost the smallest one who would tag on to the wrong team), pirouetting on the spot, and finally taking a bow while I stood in the middle of them smiling at where the audience would be, with my back to them as if I could trust them on their own – which I absolutely could not.

I worked them every morning before breakfast, while Robert watched the trapeze practice or worked at his accounts inside the house. After we had eaten we took Bluebell and the new horse, Morris, into the field and I practised vaulting on them, and standing. Bluebell was steady as a rock, she had learned the job with Jack all those years ago and I was probably a welcome relief – a good deal lighter even if I did tend to overshoot and go flying off the far side.

‘Don’t jump!’ Robert would yell irritably from the centre of the ring while his pipe puffed little signals up at the cold blue sky. ‘Let the horse’s speed take you up. All you do is get your feet off the ground. Her canter will do the rest!’

I had mastered standing up on the horse with Jack to hold me, but with Robert keeping the horse at a steady pace I was learning to stand alone. First, hanging on like grim death to the strap, but gradually – as we trained every day, snow or shine – learning to let the strap drop and balance with my arms outstretched holding nothing, standing head up, my feet shifting and stepping on the horse’s bouncing haunches.

In the later afternoon Jack would come out of the barn to work with us. Dandy and Katie would train without him, sometimes flying tricks to David who would catch them, sometimes practising by flying a trick to the right position but dropping into the net, but most of the time practising the new trick David had taught them – a cross-over – where Dandy swung out on the trapeze and was caught by Jack as Katie took off on the returning trapeze. Dandy would somersault from Jack’s hands into the net as Katie was caught by him, then Katie could either try to swing back up to the pedestal board, or drop down to the net too. David, Jack and Robert all said it looked wonderful. It was to be the final trick of the show. Katie and Dandy preened themselves and looked smug once they had the timing right. I had no opinion on it at all. I simply could not watch it.

By the end of December David had all but finished his task, on time, and earned the promised bonus. He had given Robert a trained trapeze troupe: one boy catcher and two girl flyers; and that without too many mishaps. They had a routine of tricks: Dandy could swing from her bar to Jack into a legcatch, she could do a bird’s nest across when she got her feet tucked behind the trapeze bar while still holding on with her hands and then, at the last moment, stretched out her hands to be caught. She could do a pass they called the angel pass with one leg pointing to the roof and the other pointing down, when he handed her back to her own trapeze holding a hand and a foot, and she and Katie could reliably do a cross-over. Katie’s best trick was the angel pass. It looked showy but actually it was one of the easiest. David had taught them all how to do somersaults and twisters, into the net. They would have to practise them on their own.

He spent the last few days working with me on the practice trapeze. As long as I did not have to climb the ladder up to the pedestal I did not feel that icy shaking fear. I could do a number of tricks, get the trapeze swinging, drop underneath it so that I was upside down, get into the bird’s nest position, hang from my feet alone. Robert had it in mind to sling the trapeze under Dandy’s A-frame, and to use me as a warm-up act after the interval to get the crowd ready for the real trapeze work which would go on high above my head. I had no objection except I stipulated I should wear my breeches and a shirt.

‘For God’s sake, Meridon!’ Robert said irritably. ‘You can’t do a trapeze act dressed like a stable lad. You’ll wear a short skirt and a stomacher top and air your bubbies like the other girls.’

‘Nowt to show!’ Katie whispered.

I narrowed my eyes and said nothing.

David intervened. ‘It takes something of the excitement away from the aerial act,’ he said judiciously. ‘It detracts from the girls up high if Merry is only half-way up but dressed the same. Why don’t we dress her like Jack? She can wear tight white breeches like him and a billowy shirt top. She’d look grand, and that leaves the two girl flyers half-naked as they like to be!’

Katie and Dandy simpered. Jack nodded. ‘It suits us all better, Da,’ he said. ‘And you’ll have the Justices down on you for sure if you have a lass half-naked that near ground level.’

‘All right,’ Robert said. ‘The girls can wear blue costumes, and Jack and Meridon can have blue silk shirts. Meridon can use one of your short blue skirts when she’s doing her rosinback act.’

‘She should have her own, in a different colour,’ said Dandy. Katie nodded. Neither of them wanted to share.

‘She’d look nice in green,’ Katie volunteered.

David and Robert shook their heads in unison. ‘Green’s unlucky in the ring,’ David said.

‘Share your damned skirts you lazy wenches,’ Robert said. ‘Or make up another one in red.’

‘Down to my knees,’ I said.

Robert nodded. ‘That’s settled then,’ he said briskly. Then he turned to David. ‘You’ve done a grand job, I’m proud of you. We’ll have a dinner tonight to celebrate. Mrs Greaves is roasting a haunch of venison now.’