Philippa Gregory - Meridon

Dandy would get the kettle on the fire and William and I would fetch dry crisp kindling for a quick blaze. We always carried some dry wood slung under the wagons for wet days. Jack never emerged until he heard the clink of the tin cups then he would come out, frowsy-eyed with his blanket huddled around his bare shoulders for his cup of tea – the last in the pot and as strong as it could be.

‘My God you’re an idle whelp,’ Robert would say; and Jack would smile apologetically and dip his face into the wide mug.

Katie was the worst of all. She would stay in her bunk until the last possible moment and not the hiss of the boiling kettle nor the smell of frying bacon was enough to get her out. Not until we were starting to pack up to leave and Robert was hammering on the side of the wagon and threatening to fetch her out would she come. She was a sight in the mornings! Her eyes red-rimmed and puffy, her hair in a straggly plait. Robert was at his most dour when he saw Dandy and Katie before they had combed their hair and washed their faces, and he often glanced over to Jack, convinced that his son could not desire such girls having seen them at their sleep-dazed worst.

But Robert was blind. He missed all the clues. It was some snobbery in him which made him oblivious to what was happening every day on the road. Dandy and Jack collecting kindling, Dandy and Jack fetching water from the stream, Dandy and Jack dropping behind and then running, flushed and sweaty to catch up with the wagons. Robert was looking for something else, he was watching for signs of tenderness, for Jack seeking one of us out. He did not know that Jack was well past the courtship time when he had halloed up the stairs and watched Dandy in the firelight. Now he needed her to slake his thirst, but between the repetitive cycle of lust and sating they did not seek each other out.

They were not companions. Dandy would always seek my company for choice. On the road once more we fell back into the casual companionship of our childhood. When I drove she sat beside me, leaning back against my shoulder. When she drove I would deal imaginary hands of cards on the driving seat, stacking hands with all hearts, dealing off the bottom, dealing off the top, dealing out of the middle.

‘Did ye see that, Dandy?’ I would ask her over and over. Her eyes were sharp enough but I often fooled her.

When she went poaching she would bring me back a little trophy – a blue feather shed by a jay, a single early white violet. When I rode Sea and she was driving I would sometimes rein him in to go alongside the wagon, glancing at her from time to time, watching her lazy absorption in her private dreams.

‘What are you thinking of, Dandy?’ I asked her once and she smiled at me her sweet feckless smile.

‘Same as you,’ she said, nodding at the thick muddy road and the leaden wintry sky. ‘Of a warm hearth and a good meal which has been caught and cooked by someone else.’

When we settled for the night and Katie was out of the way, rolled up tight in blankets in her bunk, Dandy would hand me her comb without speaking and I would comb and braid her hair as I had done since we were the smallest of chavvies. Then sometimes, if I was not feeling prickly and untouchable, I would let her tackle the tangles in mine, comb it smooth and plait it for the night.

Then I would kiss her good-night as she lay in her bunk. Her skin smelled musky: the smell of female sweat and warmth, hay and cheap perfume. The beloved familiar smell of my sister.

She and Jack were not friends. When Jack wanted company, wanted to walk alongside someone on the road, wanted someone beside him on the driving seat, he would crane his neck around the side of his wagon and whistle, ‘Hey! Merry!’

When he rode Snow I was often riding Sea and we sometimes left the road for a canter across the fields or a gallop to the top of a hill. If I was walking behind the wagons he would fall into step beside me and we would chat – idly, easily. He would tell me about the villages and towns he had worked, I would tell him about breaking horses, cheating gulls and sharping cards. He learned to leave me alone when I shook my head and strayed away from the line of wagons. He learned to keep his hands out of my wind-blown curls and his arm from around my shoulders.

‘Don’t pull me about,’ I said irritably, one evening when we were watering the horses down by a stream and he had put a careless hand around my waist.

He took his hand away. ‘I barely touched you!’ he complained. ‘And I wasn’t pulling, I was…’ he searched for a word. ‘Patting. Like I would a horse.’

I giggled. ‘Well, don’t pat me then,’ I said. ‘I’m not a pony.’

He grinned back at me and kept his hands to himself as I had bid him. Friendly-like.

He was a healthy young animal at the pitch of fitness, hot for a mate. He would have flirted with me if I had given him the smallest of welcomes. He eyed Katie when he thought no one was watching. And Dandy and he strayed off the road together to kiss and hump every day or so. Purely for lust, I think he did not even like her.

For Dandy he was the first man she had ever had, and she revelled in the pleasure he gave her. Jack was no virgin, but with Dandy he had discovered a passionate partner whose desire matched his own. They were never in love, but they were addicted. That spring, as we headed east into the sunrise every morning, they sought and found each other, regular as a water-wheel turning over, every other day. Between times they were merely civil.

Katie watched them with her knowledgeable smile. She thought Jack would tire of Dandy, and she was right. She gave him not a word of encouragement nor a smile – she had her mind on my gold guinea. But I was sure that once the debt had been paid the bargain would be off and she would flirt and tease Jack until he took her, in preference to Dandy. What would happen then I could not imagine. But I did turn it over and over in my mind, worrying whether Dandy would fly out at her, or whether she would disdain to struggle.

‘Mother Merry!’ Dandy said laughing as she saw my downcast face.

Least happy of us all was William. He did not complain but his round face grew moonlike and his eyes were sad. Robert asked him at the end of the second week what was troubling him and he confessed that he did not like travelling. He felt as if we ought to arrive somewhere; not just go on and on. Dandy and I stared at him in utter incomprehension but Katie nodded as if she understood.

‘I ‘specs he’s never been out of Warminster in all his life until now,’ she said. ‘Is that right, William?’

He nodded mournfully.

Robert tossed his enamel plate on the grass and leaned back, picking his teeth with a grass stem.

‘Well, if you dislike it so much I daresay I can send you home,’ he offered. ‘There’s work enough for you there, lord knows. Mrs Greaves would have had to take on a lad to do the garden and the vegetables alone.’

William’s face lit up as if someone had placed a candle behind a round Chinese lantern.

Robert tapped his teeth with his thumbnail. ‘I’ll have to find a lad to come in your place,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘One that’s handy with horses and knows how to travel.’

He said nothing more but when we stopped outside Winchester he put on his best brown coat and went into town on Snow. He came back with a skinny young lad in poorhouse homespun breeches behind him. I recognized a gypsy as soon as I saw him.

‘His whole family’ve been gaoled,’ Robert said by way of introduction. ‘His da’ll likely hang. His ma’ll be transported. And his grandparents will be in gaol for seven years apiece. They couldn’t prove he’d been in on it, so they just put him in the poorhouse.’