Philippa Gregory - Meridon

Robert watched him for a second, puzzled. Then he called: ‘And Performing. For Your Entertainment. Flying at incredible height and speed, the Only girl flyers in the World! The Angels Without Wings: Mamselle Katie –’ Katie strode into the ring, smirked all round especially towards the man from London, and started climbing the ladder. ‘And Mamselle Dandy.’

She walked in without a glance to me. I was standing before the trapeze at the foot of her ladder, like a scarecrow in a field, my hand outflung, gesturing towards the middle of the ring where my sister took her bow with her green ribbons flying and her smile bright with the triumph at the trap she had sprung. I went to hold the foot of her ladder and her brilliant smile and her laughing eyes went past me as she climbed up.

‘Old misery!’ she whispered. ‘I planned this all along! You’ll see.’

I put my weight on the ladder to hold it steady for her and I waited until I could feel she had stepped from the ladder to the pedestal. I did not look up. I never looked up. I left the ring with my head up and my bright meaningless smile stuck on my face, and my eyes down, and I pulled the door shut behind me and leaned my forehead against the hard wooden planks and listened, as I always listened. So that I should hear the gasp of the crowd when one of them was stretching across to Jack, and then the roar when they were back on the pedestal. So that I should know that Dandy was safe.

I was so bone-weary I nearly dozed, standing upright, keeping my vigil for my sister with my face pressed against the rough wood plank. I heard the excited applause as they watched Jack on his pedestal vault up into a handstand, and the sudden rush of clapping when he swung right over to be standing upright again. Then there was the rustle of delicious apprehension as they watched Jack strap himself into his belt, and shuffle his feet on the blocks. They saw him rub his hands together – as he always did – and then reach purposefully out.

That would make them look to the right, where the girls were, and then I heard the great ‘oooh’ as Katie took hold of the trapeze and stepped out into space. She always went across first, I knew. I heard the audience hold their breath and Jack’s, ‘Pret!’ was as clear as if I were in the front row. I pressed my palms flat against the door. The sense of sinking into the darkness was so strong that I could scarcely keep from slumping against the door and letting it wash over me. I felt someone beside me, and glanced quickly to one side. It was Rea.

‘You all right?’ he asked.

Inside the barn Jack yelled, ‘Hup!’ and there was a muted scream from the crowd as Katie swung her legs forward. I heard the smack as Jack caught her ankles and then the cry from the crowd as he swung her towards the back wall, and then twisted her around so she turned and caught the swinging bar, and then their burst of cheering when she reached the pedestal and turned and held up her hand and smiled.

I nodded at Rea’s worried face. He seemed to be wavering, the whole world around me seemed to be melting and undulating.

‘You’re sweating and shivering,’ he said. ‘And you look awful white. Are you ill, Meridon?’

I heard the crowd rustle as Dandy and Katie changed places on the pedestal board and Dandy took the trapeze in her hands. I heard the little gasp as Dandy made her characteristic confident little leap downwards, and I heard Jack wait as she built-up her swing. Then I heard him call, ‘Pret!’ and I knew it would be Dandy he was watching now, Dandy he was reaching out for. Dandy with her legs hooked over the trapeze bar so that she could reach out for him with her hands. That little extra distance which made the trick that little extra bit more difficult. She would be stretching towards him now with her green ribbons flying away from her face and that triumphant dazzling smile on her face which Jack would unerringly recognize as Dandy’s delight that she had gulled him and trapped him, and defeated him and his father.

‘You going to faint?’ Rea asked urgently. ‘Can you hear me, Meridon?’

Jack yelled, ‘Hup!’ and I heard something in his voice which I had never heard before.

The sinking feeling in my head snapped, the planks of the door became suddenly clear. I scrabbled against them in sudden urgency.

‘Let me in!’ I shouted.

The door gave way before me, I looked up; for the first time, I looked up. I saw their hands touch, I saw Jack’s safe hard grip, then I saw him swing her, with the speed of her swing and all his own whipcord strength, he swung her out, and flung her towards the high flint and mortar wall at the back of the barn. And as she flew towards it, her hands uselessly plucking at air, she screamed a long terrified scream which I heard, and recognized at once, as if I had been waiting to hear it for months. Then there was an awful thump as she smashed head-first into the wall and dropped like a nestling to the ground, and an echo of the scream from everyone in the crowd and a hundred voices shouting.

I went in like a bolting horse. They were all on their feet, all crowding round, mobbing her on the ground by the back wall. I went through the crowd like a weasel through a henhouse. I felt someone brush me and I knocked them off their feet with my shoulders as I ran through them. I could see the edge of Dandy’s pink skirt and her pale bare leg twisted around.

Behind me Robert was yelling. ‘Get back! Get away! Give the lass air! Is there a surgeon here? Or a barber? Anyone?’

I pushed a little child to one side and heard him fall and whimper and then I was at her side.

Everything was very slow and quiet then.

I put my hand to the tumbled mass of black hair and the green and gilt ribbons and I gathered her up to me. Her shoulders were still warm and sweaty, but her head lolled back, her neck was broken. The top of her head was a mess of blood, but it was not pumping out. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall behind her, they were rolled back in her head so the whites showed. Her face was frozen in a grimace of terror, the scream still caught in her throat.

I laid her down, gently back down on the ground and pulled the short skirt down over her bare legs. She was lying all twisted, her head and shoulders one way, her legs and hips the other, so her back was broken as well as her neck. There was a dribble of blood at the corner of her gaping mouth but that was all. She looked like a precious china doll smashed by a feckless child.

She was dead, of course. She was the deadest thing I had ever seen. Dandy, my beloved, scheming, brilliant sister, was far far away – if she was anywhere at all.

I looked up. Jack was struggling to undo his belt, I guessed his hands were shaking so much that he could not hold the buckle. He looked down at me from the catcher frame and he met my gaze. His mouth was half open as if he was appalled at what he had done. As if he could not believe what he had done. I nodded slowly to him, my eyes blank. It was unbelievable, but none the less he had done it.

I stood up.

The crowd all around me had fallen back. I saw their bright faces and their mouths moving but I could not hear anything.

Rea was beside me. I turned to him and my voice was steady.

‘You’ll see she’s buried aright,’ I said. ‘In the manner of our people.’

He nodded, his face yellow with shock.

‘Her clothes burned, her plate smashed, her goods buried with her,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Not the wagon,’ I said. ‘The wagon is Robert’s. But all the things she wore, and her bedding, and her blankets.’

He nodded.

‘And her comb,’ I said. ‘Her ribbons. Her little pillow.’

I turned away from the crumpled body, and Rea standing beside it.