Philippa Gregory: Meridon

‘I’ll see you after the show,’ he said. The tone of his voice made it sound as if it might be a threat or a promise.

Dandy’s eyes gleamed. ‘You might,’ she said, as natural a coquette as ever flirted with a handsome youth. ‘I have other things to do than hang around a wagon.’

‘Oh?’ he asked. ‘What things?’

‘Meridon and I are going to the fair,’ she said. ‘And we’ve money to spend, and all.’

For the first time he looked at me. ‘So you’re Meridon,’ he said carelessly. ‘My da says you can train little ponies. Could you manage a horse like this?’

He gestured behind the screen and I peered around it. Tied to a stake on the ground was a beautiful grey stallion, standing quiet and docile, but his dark eye rolled towards me as he saw me.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said with longing. ‘I could look after him all right.’

Jack gave me a little smile as warm and understanding as his da.

‘Would you like to ride him after the show?’ he invited. ‘Or do you have better things to do, like your sister?’

Dandy’s fingers nipped my arm but for once I ignored her. ‘I’d love to ride him,’ I said hastily. ‘I’d rather ride him than go to any fair, any day.’

He nodded at that. ‘Da said you were horse-mad,’ he said. ‘Wait till after the show and you can go up on him.’

He glanced towards the gate and nodded as his father waved.

‘Take your seats,’ Robert Gower called in his loud announcing voice. ‘Take your seats for the greatest show in England and Europe!’

Jack winked at Dandy and ducked behind the screen as his father shut the gate and came to the centre of the flat grass. Dandy and I scurried to the hill and sat down in expectant silence.

I sat through the show in a daze. I had never seen horses with such training. They had four small ponies – Welsh mountain or New Forest, I thought – who started the show with a dancing act. There was a barrel organ playing and the boy Jack Gower stood in the middle of the ring with a fine purple coat over his red shirt and a long whip. As he cracked it and moved from the centre to the side the little ponies wheeled and trotted individually, turning on their hind legs, reversing the order, all with their heads up and the plumes on their heads jogging and their bells ringing ringing ringing like out-of-season sleighbells.

People cheered as he finished with a flourish with all four ponies bending down in a horse curtsey, and he swept off his purple tricorne hat and bowed to the crowd. But he exchanged a look with Dandy as if to say that it was all for her, and I felt her swell with pride.

The stallion was next in the ring, with a mane like white sea foam tumbling down over his arched neck. Robert Gower came in with him and made him rear and stamp his hooves to order. He picked out flags of any colour – you could call out a colour and he would bring you the one you ordered. He danced on the spot and he could count up numbers up to ten by pawing the ground. He could add up, too, quicker than I could. He was a brilliant horse and so beautiful!

They cheered when he was gone too and then it was the time for the cavalry charge with the barrel organ playing marching music and Robert Gower telling about the glorious battle of Blenheim. The little pony came thundering into the ring with its harness stuck full of bright coloured flags and above them all the red cross of St George. Robert Gower explained that this symbolized the Duke of Marlborough ‘and the Flower of the English Cavalry’.

The other three ponies came in flying the French flag and while the audience sang the old song ‘The Roast Beef of Old England’, the four ponies charged at each other, their little hooves pounding the earth and churning it up into mud. It was a wonderful show and at the end the little French ponies lay down and died and the victorious English pony galloped around in a victory circle and then reared in the middle of the ring.

The drink-sellers came around then, with a tray of drinks, and there were pie-men and muffin-sellers too. Dandy and I had only our pennies and we were saving them for later. Besides, we were used to going hungry.

Next was a new horse, a great skewbald with a rolling eye and a broad back. Robert Gower stood in the centre of the ring, cracking his whip and making the horse canter round in a great steady rolling stride. Then with a sudden rush and a vault Jack came into the ring stripped down to his red shirt and his white breeches and Dandy’s hand slid into mine and she gripped me tight. As the horse thundered round and around, Jack leaped up on to her back and stood balanced, holding one strap and nothing else, one arm outflung for applause. He somersaulted off and then jumped on again and, while the horse cantered round, he swung himself off one side, and then another, and then, perilously, clambered all the way around the animal’s neck. He vaulted and faced backwards. He spun around and faced forwards. Then he finished the act, sweating and panting, with a ride around the ring, standing on the horse’s rump absolutely straight, his arms outstretched for balance, holding nothing to keep him steady, and a great jump to land on his feet beside his father.

Dandy and I leaped to our feet to cheer. I had never seen such riding. Dandy’s eyes were shining and we were both hoarse from shouting.

‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ she asked me.

‘And the horse!’ I said.

That was the high point of the show for me. But Robert Gower as Richard the Lionheart going off to war with all the little ponies and the stallion was enough to bring Dandy close to tears. Then there was a tableau of Saladin on a great black horse which I could not have recognized as the same stallion. Then Richard the Lionheart did a triumphant parade with a wonderful golden rug thrown over the horse’s back. Only his black legs showing underneath would have given the game away if you were looking.

‘Wonderful,’ sighed Dandy at the end.

I nodded. It was actually too much for me to speak.

We kept our seats. I don’t think my knees would have supported me if we had stood. I found I was staring at the muddy patch at the bottom of the hill and seeing again the flash of thundering legs and hearing in my ears the ringing of the pony bells.

All at once my breaking and training of children’s ponies seemed as dull and as dreary as an ordinary woman’s housework. I had never known horses could do such things. I had never thought of them as show animals in this way at all. And the money to be made from it! I was canny enough, even in my starstruck daze, to know that six hard-working horses would cost dear, and that Robert and Jack’s shining cleanliness did not come cheap. But as Robert closed the gate behind the last customer he came towards us swinging a money bag which chinked as if it were full of pennies. He carried it as if it were heavy.

‘Enjoy yourselves?’ he asked.

Dandy gleamed at him. ‘It was wonderful,’ she said, without a word of exaggeration. ‘It was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen.’

He nodded and raised an eyebrow at me.

‘Can the stallion really count?’ I asked. ‘How did you teach him his numbers? Can he read as well?’

An absorbed look crossed Robert Gower’s face. ‘I never thought of him reading,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You could do a trick with him taking messages perhaps…’ Then he recollected us. ‘You’d like a ride, I hear.’

I nodded. For the first time in a thieving, cheating, bawling life I felt shy. ‘If he wouldn’t mind…’ I said.

‘He’s just a horse,’ Robert Gower said, and put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The stallion, still dyed black, came out from behind the screen with just a halter on, obedient as a dog.