Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘Married?’ I asked.

Will flushed a little. ‘Nay,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m not courting either. I had a lass but she wouldn’t stay in the village. She wanted to go into service and me go with her. I’m handy with horses and she wanted me to try for a job as coachman with the Haverings. I wouldn’t leave Acre. I’d not leave Acre for any lass, however bonny. So she went without me. That was last summer. I’ve had no one serious since then.

‘We go this way up to the Downs,’ he said, and turned his horse away from the church up a little track which climbed the hill.

The horses went shoulder to shoulder up the track, but I loosened the rein and let Sea increase his speed and go ahead of Will so that I could ride alone without him watching my face. The singing noise which I had heard in my head from the very first time I had come to this land, through the dark and the cold, lit only by the moon, was now louder. I was riding up the track which I had seen so many times in my dreams. We were clear of the planted fields and the tall quiet beech trees were crowding close around us. The horses’ hooves were silent on the damp earth and on the leafmould. Sea’s ears pointed forward at the bright circle of light where the trees ended and we would come out…out to what?

I knew how it would be and yet I was suddenly afraid that it would not be as I thought it should. That so much else in this place was so different from my dream. Instead of finding a warm house and a father and being a copper-headed beloved daughter I was a gypsy who had come in out of the darkness, a stranger, an intruder. James Fortescue might say he loved me for my mother’s sake, or because it was his duty, or because he felt guilty that he had failed to find me – but those things meant nothing. In my world none of those things would make a man lift his hand to brush away a fly.

Will Tyacke might take an afternoon to show me around the estate and make me welcome – but I could see that this private little world had run perfectly well without me for sixteen years. They were used to having no one at the Hall. They preferred it that way. I was not a welcome heir, finding her way home at last. I was an unwanted orphan. My so-called guardian and the foreman of my village had done well enough without me all this time.

If the land was not right, I thought, I should go away. Not as they hoped, not a ladylike organized departure, telling people that I did not like the country, that I preferred to live in a little town. If the land was not right I should run off tonight. I would hack my hair into a bob, I would steal the silver and the pretty miniature portraits on the small tables in the parlour, and anything else light enough to carry in my pockets. I should ride until I found a hiring fair and hire myself out as a groom to a good stud farm where I could work with young horses. I was fit for nothing. I did not know the ways of the Rom – and besides, as the old woman in Salisbury had seen, I was no Rom. I was not one of those special people.

I could not go back to work with a show. I would never work again in a ring. I could not have smelled the woodshavings and the horse sweat without freezing with horror. And I did not belong here. Not in the Hall with this difficult mannered life, not in those rooms where you could scream at someone and then they would pour you tea, not in this mad village with these peculiar people who let squatters settle and paid them wages, and who paid a pension to people too old to work

If the land was wrong I would go away and try and find somewhere that I could be myself. Another place.

Another place to search for again.

Sea put his head down and cantered towards the circle of light at the head of the track and we scrambled up the last slope. Will had stayed behind, letting me ride alone. The light dazzled me, the sudden piercing sound of a lark singing up high was as sharp in my ears as the swelling singing which had come to me on this land. The spring grass was a bright mouth-watering green, the sky a pale pale blue streamered with white slight clouds. Sea breathed deep and blew out. I turned his head towards the valley and looked over Wideacre.

I could just see the house. Its pale sandstone yellow colour was like good butter, a little pat among the green of the park. I could see the round turret of the parlour and the wedge of the terrace in front of it. The heads of the trees were thick, like a sheep’s winter fleece, the pines standing out dark against the light spring green.

At the foot of the hill I could see the village. My village. The village my mama had known. I saw it through my eyes, I saw it through her eyes. I saw it as I had dreamed it for one longing dream after another. I knew that it was my home. I had been coming towards it all of my life, for all of my life. I had loved it and missed it and needed it, and now I was coming into the very heart of it.

I breathed in a deep gasp of the wind which was blowing softly across the top of the Downs. I wanted to belong here. I wanted this place. Even though I knew it was too late for me, I longed for it as a man might long for a woman who left him long, long, ago.

Will’s horse came up behind me and he pulled it up. ‘That’s our land, beyond the village: that’s Wideacre Common land up as far as you can see north,’ he said, pointing with his whip. ‘To the west that is the Havering estate. These Downs are Wideacre estate too, twenty miles going north, ten miles to the west. Then it’s Havering land again. All of this valley is Wideacre land.’

I breathed in the smell of it, you could almost taste the chalk in the soil. The grass was fine as hair and short-cropped, studded with flowers and in the hollows there were great clumps of violets and the pale yellow of primroses.

‘Gets thick with cowslips later on,’ Will said, following my gaze. ‘We come up and pick them to make cowslip wine. We come up here on Mayday morning too. You’d like that. We come up and watch the sun rise.’

I nodded my head, not speaking. I had a distant memory of a dream of standing looking towards Acre and seeing the sun come up pale and pink on a May morning.

‘It is as I always thought it would be,’ I said speaking half to myself. ‘I have dreamed and dreamed of this place ever since I can remember. I have wanted to be here all my life.’

Will brought his horse closer alongside Sea and put his calloused hand over mine as I held the reins. I flinched at the touch and Sea stepped to one side.

‘It will not be as you thought it,’ he said gently. ‘It could not be. Nothing ever is. And while you have been dreaming of us, things have been changing here, we have been working towards a dream of our own. We are trying to do something here which is both an example and a model to the rest of the country. And it is part of a long tradition. A forgotten tradition which people try to ignore. Ever since there have been landlords there have been ordinary men and women claiming the right to run the land in their own way, of earning their own bread, of living together as a community. It may seem strange to you now, Sarah, but I think we can be the family you don’t have.’

I shook my head. ‘I’ve got no family,’ I said coldly. ‘I dreamed of a landscape. I didn’t dream of you, or of James Fortescue. All the family I had are dead, and now you two tell me they weren’t even kin. And my real kin…well they’re dead too. I’ve got no one, and I need no one. It was the land I dreamed of; and it’s the land I want.’

Will shrugged his shoulders; and did not try to touch me again. He pulled his horse over to one side and let me admire the view on my own.

‘Would you like a gallop over the Downs and then round by the Common to your home?’ he asked, his voice carefully polite. ‘Or do you want to see more of the village?’