Philippa Gregory - Meridon

‘They’ll go to the Midhurst poorhouse I suppose,’ she said. ‘Any of them who can claim rights in other parishes will go to where they can, if they have money for the fare. I don’t care, it’s none of my concern. I won’t have them on my land any more.’

I hesitated. This blank ruthlessness was not new to me. I had been sold from a stepfather who despised me, to a master who loved me only when I earned him money. I saw no reason why I should worry over the fate of a dozen dirty villagers who were not even my tenants. And yet, in some part of my mind, I did worry. I did not feel comfortable to be sitting here in the sunny parlour looking at the sheen of Lady Clara’s peach silk while three miles away there were people arguing with bailiffs and begging them not to evict. I knew what it was to have nothing. I knew what it was to be homeless. I wondered what the people would do, those with young children who would be separated from them in the poorhouse. Those young women with husbands who would lose their homes and have to sleep apart.

‘I’ll ride the other way,’ I said uncertainly. ‘Towards Wideacre.’

She put both hands up and carefully smoothed her cheeks as if she would stroke away the faint fretwork of lines from under her eyes.

‘Certainly my dear,’ she said pleasantly. ‘If you see any of the evicted tenants don’t go too near. They may be carrying the fever and they will certainly be ill natured. They did have fair warning of my intentions, you know. Mr Briggs told them a day ago.’

I nodded, thinking that a day’s warning was perhaps not enough if you had been born and bred in a cottage and lived all your life there.

‘Perry can ride with you,’ she said. ‘Pull the bell.’

I did. At Havering we all did what Lady Clara wished. Within the hour Perry and I were obediently riding together up towards the Common at the back of the Havering estate.

The path wound through a little coppice of silver birches, their heart-shaped leaves shivering in the summer air. It was another hot day, the scent of the thick bracken heavy and sweet. When the path came out on a little hill Perry drew rein and we looked back.

There was little trouble in the village. We could see from where we watched a couple of soldiers standing with Mr Briggs at the end of the village street while half a dozen men went workmanlike down one side, pulling off rotting doors and knocking axes through old dusty thatch. Drawn up in the street, ahead of the wreckers, was a large cart with a handsome shire horse between the shafts. The Havering people were loading their few goods on to the cart, a man standing on the cart helping them. I screwed my eyes against the glare of the sunlight but I hardly needed to see him to know it was Will Tyacke.

‘Who’s that?’ Perry asked me.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I lied before I had even considered the lie. ‘Perhaps someone from the poorhouse.’

‘Oh,’ Perry said innocently, and we stood for a little while, watching in silence.

The wreckers reached another house and there was a moment’s hesitation. We were too far to hear or see anything clearly but I guessed that someone inside had refused to leave. I shrugged. It was not my land and anyway Lady Clara was probably in the right. Since she was not going to spend money on making the cottages habitable they were better pulled down. The tenants would have to make lives for themselves elsewhere. There was no reason why Lady Clara should be responsible for each and every one of them.

‘What d’you think is happening?’ Perry asked. ‘The sun is so bright I can hardly see.’

I shaded my eyes with my hand. Sea stirred restlessly as he felt my weight move on the saddle.

‘Someone, I think a woman,’ I said. I could just make out a little figure standing in the dark doorway of one of the hovels. As I watched, the wreckers made a rush for her and she grabbed the post which propped the thatched porch. In a ludicrous pose, like a comical print, one of the men got hold of her legs while she clung to the post of her house.

I sniggered, and Perry laughed beside me. ‘She’ll pull it down herself if she doesn’t watch out,’ he observed.

We watched together smiling, but there was no sport. Will Tyacke went quickly to her and made the man put her on her feet. He bent over her and I saw she was quite a small woman. He put his arm around her and he led her to the cart. Out of the cottage behind her came three little children, the smallest a baby, lugged by the others.

Will lifted all of them one by one, into the cart and then went back into the cottage for their goods: a cooking pot, one stool, a clutter of plates and bedding. Not much. Even less than we had in the old days in the wagon.

‘Poor sport,’ Perry said in sudden distaste.

‘Aye,’ I said. I had a bad taste in my mouth and I went to spit but then I remembered that ladies do not spit. ‘Let’s ride!’ I said and touched Sea with my heels and turned his head.

We cantered along the crest of a hill until we came to the stone post which marked the start of my land. At once the path was wider, it had been cut back as a firebreak and there was a wide track as good as a race-course of the pure white sand bordered with the black peat of the Common.

‘Race?’ Perry called, and I nodded and held Sea back so that we drew level and then let him have his head.

We thundered along the track together, Sea going faster than I had ever known him go at the challenge from another high-bred horse. Perry’s horse was probably the better, but Sea was fitter from my daily rides. He was carrying a lighter rider too and we managed to pull ahead before the firebreak crested up a hill and I pulled up at the top.

Perry and his hunter were half a length behind us and Perry came up smiling and jumped from the saddle.

‘Lost my hat,’ he said with a grin. ‘We’ll have to go back that way.’

Without his hat his golden curls had tumbled into a blond mop. His blue eyes were clear and shining, his colour bright. Any girl in the world would have fallen in love with him at first sight.

I put my hand down and touched the top of his head. He looked up at me, and reached up to lift me down from Sea’s back, his hands on my waist for a brief moment. Then he released me as soon as my feet touched the ground.

‘I didn’t like seeing that at the village,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘Me neither,’ I replied.

Perry turned from me and swung his jacket down on the heather. We sat side by side looking down into the Fenny valley. Havering Hall woodland was a dark mass to our right, Acre was over to our left. My home, the home I had longed for but seldom even visited was below us, hidden in the trees at the back of the house.

‘It’s Mr Briggs’s doing,’ he said. ‘I have no say in how the place is run until I am married, or reach my majority.’

‘Twenty-one?’ I asked.

He nodded. ‘Four years,’ he said.

‘It’s even longer for me,’ I said. ‘I’m only sixteen now. I’ll have to wait five years.’

Perry looked sideways at me. ‘I know it is what my mama wants,’ he said carefully. ‘And to be honest, Sarah, she told me to ask you. In fact,’ he said with scrupulous honesty, ‘she said she’d pay my gambling debts if I asked you.’

‘Asked me what?’ I said. But I knew.

‘Asked you to marry me,’ he said without any heat at all. ‘I tell you why I said I would.’ He lay on his back, as idle and as lovely as a fallen angel, and counted his white fingers up at the clear sky.

‘One, I would get hold of my land and capital. Two, you would get hold of your land and capital. Three, we could run them together and we could make sure that Wideacre is run sensibly but that people are not treated so badly as they have been on Havering. Four, we would not have to marry anyone else, or court, or go to London parties unless we wanted.’