Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘You’ll know at once,’ he said. He nodded to James Fortescue, ‘He’ll tell you in a moment.’

Mr Fortescue put down his cup and took some papers and a pen and ink-pot out of a little case beside him.

‘I have to ask you some questions,’ he said.

Ask he did! He asked me everything about my life from my earliest memories until the time when I rode up the drive to Wideacre Hall. After two or three slips I dropped the pretence that I could not remember and told him all he wanted to know: all that I could remember of my ma, what her family name had been, where her gypsy family travelled and where they stayed. Then I shook my head.

‘She died when we were just little babbies,’ I said. ‘I can hardly remember her at all.’

Then he asked me everything I could remember of my early life. I told him about Da, and the travelling around. The grand projects and the few jobs. I glided over the bad horses and the cheating at cards. And I found, although I tried to say her name once or twice, that I could not say it at all. Even to think of her was like scratching at an unhealed scar on my heart.

I did not want them to know about Gower’s Show and Mamselle Meridon, so I told him only that I had been apprenticed to a man who trained horses, that I had chosen to leave him, and found myself here. I came to a standstill and trailed into silence. James Fortescue looked at me over the top of his coffee cup as if he were waiting for more.

‘There are things I do not want to talk about,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Nothing criminal. But private.’

He nodded at that, and then asked to see my string and clasps and asked me once more where I had got it. He looked at it carefully through a special little glass he took from his pocket, and then finally he handed it back to me.

‘Do you have none of your baby clothes?’ he asked. ‘Did you never see them?’

I screwed my eyes up with an effort to remember. ‘I saw them,’ I said hesitantly. ‘We shared them, of course. I saw a white lace shawl, very fine, trimmed in lace. Someone must have given it to us.’ The memory of the white lace shawl slipped away from me as if it had disappeared into darkness. ‘Everything was sold after Ma died,’ I said again.

Mr Fortescue nodded, consideringly. Then he said, very softly. ‘You say “us”. Who was the child who shared your childhood?’

My chair scraped as I suddenly pushed it back. My hands on the table had started their trembling again. I looked at them carefully until they were still. Then the man who hated gin traps leaned over and put his large calloused hand over mine.

‘You don’t need to say,’ he said softly.

I took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I won’t say more than this,’ I said. ‘We were raised together, we were sisters. She never dreamed of Wide as I did. We were twin sisters, but we looked different.’

‘And where is your sister, your twin sister, now?’ Mr Fortescue asked.

I heard a low cry like an animal in pain and I hunched up over the pain which was like hunger-cramps in my belly. I felt a thud of pain on my forehead, over my eyes, and I heard a low thumping sound. Then another, and then another, and then someone grabbed my shoulders and I realized I had been banging my head on that dark shiny table. The man who hated gin traps pulled me around and held my shoulders tight until I stopped shaking and that distant moaning noise stopped.

‘That’s enough,’ he said over my head to James Fortescue. ‘We’ve got enough. It’s her. She can’t bear to tell us more now.’

I heard footsteps cross the room and the clink of a decanter on a glass. ‘Drink this,’ Mr Fortescue said, and I knocked back half a glass of cognac as if I were my da.

It hit me in the cold sad part of my belly and spread a warmth all through me. I rubbed my face with my hands, my cheeks were dry and warm. I had shed no tears, I felt as if I would never cry again. My forehead was sore. I felt a flicker of fear that I had been hurting myself so. But then the cold dullness was all around me and I did not care what they thought of me. I did not care what I did.

‘I’m all right now,’ I said. The man who hated gin traps still had his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged him off. ‘I’m all right now,’ I said again, irritably.

There was a silence in the dark room. Outside in the stable yard someone was whistling.

‘I have enough,’ Mr Fortescue said. ‘I had enough as soon as I saw her. I won’t vex you with more questions, Sarah. I shall tell you why I needed to ask you them.’

I nodded. I was still trembling from that welling-up of pain, but I took the cup of coffee for its warmth. There was a knack to balancing it on the little plate which was under the cup. I watched it carefully until I had it safe up to my mouth, and then I blew on it cautiously and supped it. It was a strange taste, but hot and sweet and strong. I thought about the taste of it, I watched the little plate under the cup, I curled my toes up hard inside my boots until I could get the picture of her, and my pain at losing her, out of my mind.

Then I looked up and listened to Mr Fortescue.

‘I believe that you are the daughter of Julia and Richard Lacey, and the only heir to this estate,’ he said simply. ‘Your mother was in fever after your birth and she gave you away to the gypsies. Your father was killed by an escaped criminal who came back here seeking his revenge. Your mother died shortly after.’ He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again his voice was even. ‘She wrote to me before her death,’ he said. ‘She had no close relations and she entrusted to me the task of trying to find her daughter and to care for the estate until the child was of age.’

He looked at me. ‘I am sorry I failed you so badly, Miss Lacey,’ he said. ‘I did indeed try, for all these years I have had men looking for you. We traced the gypsy family and then much later your foster mother; but then the trail went cold. I never knew of the man you call your stepfather.’

I nodded, but I said nothing. If they had found the two of us before some of the beatings I had taken. If they had only found us before Da sold us to Robert Gower. Or if they had found us just yesterday, when we were a day’s ride away and she had been playing in the sea and her hair had tasted of salt when I kissed her.

I shrugged off the pain and took a deep breath. In a few moments the picture of her would be out of my mind and I would be able to hear Mr Fortescue’s voice again.

‘I’ve done better with the estate, I think,’ he said. ‘We restored it to the profit-sharing scheme started by your mother, and we have expanded. It is now quite famous as a village corporation – an experiment in communal planning and communal land-use. Will Tyacke here acts as foreman and keeps in touch with me in my offices in London or Bristol. I only supervise. All of the decisions are made here, by the people themselves.’

‘Is it a wealthy estate?’ I asked bluntly.

Mr Fortescue looked down at a little case he had by his chair. ‘Run as a corporation it does not make a profit,’ he said. ‘It pays you an annual share of some £10,000. If you were to withdraw an economic rent you would earn some £40,000. I have the figures here for you to see.’

He went to pick them up but I checked him.

‘I…I cannot read,’ I said awkwardly.

He nodded as if there were no reason to think that anyone could. ‘Of course,’ he said gently. ‘Then we can go over them together another time. But you may believe me that you have a good estate, run as a corporation, with the people who live here sharing in the wealth. It is showing substantial and steady profits.’

I thought of the nine guineas I had in my little purse and the work I had done to earn them. I thought of her dancing with her skirts up for pennies, and of Da selling us in a job lot with a young pony. I thought of Jack, so fearful of his father’s ambition that he killed to keep his favour, to inherit the show. And I thought of myself, flint-hearted and hungry…and wealthy beyond anything I could ever have dreamed.