Meridon

10

When I came to, I was in bed; not in my own bed but in the pretty lime-washed room at the back of Robert Gower’s fine house. When my eyelids quivered I could hear Robert’s voice telling me in a muted whisper that I was safe in his house. He knew I could not open my eyes to see for myself. I was stone blind.

Robert Gower sat with me. He ordered Jack and Dandy back to work at once, as soon as they had carried me into the parlour and William had gone at a gallop for the Salisbury surgeon. Robert would not trust the Warminster barber. Dandy had sworn at him and said she would not leave my side but Robert had pushed her out of the room and said she might come and sit with me but not until she had swung on the high trapeze and done every single trick she had already learned.

I wanted to cry out that Dandy should not go up there, that it was too terrifying, too high for anyone, especially my beloved sister. But my throat was wracked with pain, the only noise I could make was a helpless rasping sob, and the hot tears squeezed out of my swollen eyes and stung as they ran down my scraped cheeks.

‘It’s for her good,’ Robert said softly. I could tell from his voice that he was standing beside me. ‘She’s to go up at once or she’ll brood over your fall and lose her nerve, Meridon. I’m not being cruel to her, or to you. David said the same.’

I would have nodded my head, but the very sinews of my neck felt as if they had been ripped out. I lay in silence, in my blind blackness, and I felt the sofa underneath me roll and shift as I lost consciousness again. ‘And who will look after Dandy when I am dead?’ I thought as the world slid away from me.

She was back beside me when the surgeon arrived, but she was crying too hard to be of any help to him; easy, sorrowful tears while she washed the blood off my face with a cloth which stung as if it were on fire. I felt for her in my private darkness and whispered: ‘Dandy, am I going to die?’

It was Robert Gower who held me gently so that the skilled man could feel all around my fiery neck. He had gentle hands, and I could feel him taking care not to hurt me. But every part of my neck and shoulders and throat, even the skin of my scalp, was searing with pain. It was Robert Gower who laid me back on the pillow and unbuttoned the shirt so that the man could feel my ribs. Each touch was like a burning brand but I did not cry out. Not from bravery! My throat was locked so tight I could make no sound.

‘She’s bad,’ the surgeon said at last. ‘Broken nose, contusion of the head, concussion, ricked neck, dislocated shoulder, cracked rib.’

‘She’ll be well again?’ Robert asked.

‘It will be nigh on a month at least,’ the voice replied. ‘Unless she takes a fever, or an ague from shock. But she seems tough enough, she should survive it. I can set the shoulder now.’

He leaned towards me; in my pain-filled darkness I could feel his breath on my cheek.

‘I have to twist your arm so that it fits back into the socket of your shoulder, miss. It will hurt, but it will be better for you when it is done.’

I could say neither yes nor no. If I could have spoken I would have begged him to leave me alone.

‘Best go out, Dandy,’ Robert said. I was glad he was thinking of her.

I listened intently and I heard her footstep go to the door and the click of the latch. The surgeon took hold of my hand; my fist was clenched against the pain, and Robert took hold of my aching shoulders. They twisted hard with sudden force and the pain and the shock of it made me scream aloud until the darkness swallowed me up and everything was gone again.

Next time when I awoke I knew where I was. My eyes were still bruised tight shut but I could smell the lavender scent on the sheets, and I could feel the lightness of the room on my swollen eyelids. In the garden I could hear a solitary robin singing a rippling dancing tune. Some of the pain had gone. The shoulder felt better, as he had promised me it would. The eyes were eased with pads of something cool and wet. My head ached as if it had been pounded like a drum; but in the middle of my pain I smiled. I was alive.

I had truly thought that I was going to die. Yet here I was, under sweet-smelling linen sheets, with winter sunlight on my closed eyelids. Alive – able to care for Dandy, to keep her safe. Able to smell the clear scent of lavender. I felt my bruised face turn upwards in a little smile.

‘Don’t know what you’ve got to smile about.’ Robert Gower spoke gruffly, he was sitting somewhere at my head. He had been so quiet I had thought myself in the room alone.

‘I’m alive,’ I said. It came out as a rasping croak, but I could at least speak.

‘You are,’ he said. ‘You’re the luckiest little kitten which ever escaped a drowning, Meridon. I thought you were dead when I saw David bringing you into the kitchen with blood everywhere and your arm hanging as if it were broken. Mrs Greaves shrieking, Dandy crying and hollering at David. David cursing himself and all of us for not listening to you! The whole thing was a damned nightmare, and now here you are looking like a wagon drove over you, and smiling as if you are happy!’

My smile stretched a little broader at that, but broke off in a wince as my neck hurt me. ‘I am happy,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Is Dandy all right?’

Robert made a little ‘tsk’ noise of impatience. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘She’s down in the kitchen eating her dinner. I said I’d sit with you while they ate.’

I said nothing, and we sat in silence for long minutes while the robin sang outside in the garden and the shadows on my eyelids grew darker.

Then I felt a gentle touch, as soft as a robin’s feather on the clenched fingers of my hand.

‘I am sorry, Meridon,’ Robert said softly. ‘I would not have had you hurt for the world. We’re all sorry that you went up. You need never go up again. I’ll get a poorhouse girl tomorrow to start training. You can stick with the horses.’

I shut my eyes on that thought and started the slide into sleep where my bruises would not hurt me and the smell of lavender might make me dream of Wide. I heard, as if from a long way away, Robert whisper: ‘Good-night, my brave little Merry.’ Then I thought I felt – but I must have been mistaken – the featherlight touch of lips on my clenched fist.

He was as good as his word and I heard from David and from Dandy that the workhouse girl started the next day. She was chosen because she had been a farm worker in wheat country – a lifetime of heaving stooks had given her hard muscles in her belly and arms. David also told me (though Dandy, notably, did not) that she looked ravishing up high on the pedestal. She had long blonde hair which she let fly free behind her. She had no fear of heights and no nerves, and though she started a whole month behind the other two she was swinging from the high trapeze and doing the simplest of tricks into the net within a few weeks.

The surgeon had ordered me to rest and I was glad to lie still. My face was awful. I had two black eyes which closed so tight that for the first three or four days I was fully stone blind. I had broken my nose when my knees cracked up into my face, and for the rest of my life it would be slightly skewed.

It was many days before I was able to walk down across the field to see them working. I passed the horses on the way and saw Sea in the far corner of the field, his coat a deep grey shimmer. Robert had promised me that no one would touch him while I was ill. He might grow a little wilder, but he would have no fresh memories of rough handling. He was fed with the other horses, and brought indoors when nights were cold. But while Robert trained them and taught them their new tricks, Sea was left out in the field.

There was a hard frost on the ground, it looked as if it might snow for Christmas. I cared little either way. Da and Zima had never celebrated Christmas in our dirty little caravan and my only memory of the festival was that it was a good time for Dandy to pick pockets while the mummers went around, and a good time for selling horses for spoilt children. Our birthday fell some time after Christmas. This year we would be sixteen. We never paid no mind to either Christmas nor our birthday – whenever it was.

‘Cold,’ Robert said. He was walking with me, his hand under my elbow to help me over the frozen molehills and hard tussocks of grass.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Will you bring the horses in all day if it snows?’

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I can’t afford to make them soft. The time will come when we do shows all the year round. I’ve already turned down work at a Goose fair outside Bath over the Christmas holidays. If you’d been well I’d have taken at least you and Jack to work the fair. I’ll let it go this year, but next year we’ll lay off in October, work for December and the Twelfth Night fairs, and then lay off again until Shrove Tuesday.’

He looked at the barn as if he were staring into the future.

‘I’ll take a complete show out on the road. The horses will open the show and do the first half, and then during the interval we’ll rig up the net and the frames. When I can get a barn we’ll take it and do evening shows by lamplight as well.’ He looked beyond the barn, to where the afternoon sun was red on the horizon. ‘There’s more and more places which stay open all year round,’ he said longingly. ‘Where they’ve built a hall with the ring in the middle, aye, and a stage behind for singing and dancing. A few good years on the road, and maybe I could build my own place with the rigging up high and the ring underneath, and we would not need to travel from fair to villages – the audience would come to us.’

I nodded. ‘You could do that,’ I said with a little smile, looking at his rapt face. ‘It might work. A big enough town, with lots of people travelling through, and wealthy people who would come again and again. It might work.’

He glanced down at me. ‘You believe in me,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ I said simply. ‘I always have.’

There was a little silence then, between us.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘You see how your sister is doing!’

He flung open the door to the barn and we went in. They were losing the light inside and were doing the last tricks of the day before stopping work. The poorhouse girl, Katie, was on the ladder. Dandy was on the pedestal. Jack was standing astride on the catcher’s frame.

I felt my throat grow dry and I swallowed at the sight of Dandy looking so small and up so high.

‘Right!’ David called. He was on the ground below the flyers’ ladder. ‘Last trick of the day, and we have an audience so let’s show what we can do! Dandy! Let’s have that trick again.’

Dandy climbed two paces up an extra ladder above the pedestal to give herself more height and took the trapeze in both hands. Jack checked the buckles which held the thick leather belt at his waist, and rubbed his hands together, scowling and looking upwards. I hardly saw him. I was watching Dandy like a fieldmouse watches a circling hawk far above him. I saw her smile. She was happy enough.

I looked back to Jack. He was watching Dandy’s swing build up until she came so close that if he reached out he could tap her on the feet. He shifted a little, as if to ready himself and then he called, ‘Pret!’ in the way David had taught him. Dandy beat with her legs and swung a little harder, then Jack shouted, ‘Hup!’ and Dandy stretched her feet out towards him as far as she could.

For a moment she seemed to hang in space, quite motionless. Then Jack reached out and we heard the firm slap of his hands on her ankles. At that moment Dandy let go the trapeze and swung, head down, arms trailing, through Jack’s legs, through the A-frame, while Jack bent low to swing her.

She crested the swing on the other side and Jack let her swing back underneath him just as the trapeze swung back towards them. Then, with a scowl of concentration, Jack twisted his arms and Dandy half turned so she slewed around, still travelling in the air to face the trapeze as it came towards her, reached out her hands to it and took a firm grip as Jack released her feet. Dandy swooped upwards, clinging to her trapeze, and then back to the pedestal. Katie at the top reached out and caught her round the waist and helped her up. Dandy turned around and shrieked, ‘Bravo!’ to herself, Robert, and me, and we burst into spontaneous clapping.

‘Well done!’ Robert called up. ‘That is wonderful, Dandy! Well done Jack and well done David! That’s grand! Is there any more?’

Again they readied themselves. Dandy built up the swing and then put her legs back and looped them around the bar of the trapeze. Jack watched her, called, ‘Pret!’ to Dandy to warn her he was ready for her on the next swing. Then we heard him shout, ‘Hup!’ This time she had further to reach and there was almost a second when she released the safe lock of her legs on the trapeze before we heard the slap of his hands on her wrists. He swung her forwards and then back and Dandy flew from his hands, turning a languid elegant somersault before bouncing safely into the net.

I was sorry that I was such a fool with the ladder and the height that I could not be up there beside her. I should have liked to have been close to Dandy when she was swinging. I should have liked it to have been me who grabbed her around her slim waist and hauled her in. I would have liked to have helped her back on to the pedestal from the sickening drop beneath her.

‘What can Katie do?’ Robert called to David.

‘She’s not being caught yet,’ David called back. ‘The idea is that she does the trick and she and Jack just touch – so that they learn where each other is. She’s not ready to finish the trick yet.’

Robert nodded and we watched as Katie swooped across, and Jack slapped her ankles with a sound which echoed around the frosty air and she dropped into the net, turning up her feet and falling on her back.

‘Good work,’ Robert said. He took David by the shoulder and led him out of the barn, pausing only to damp down the stove.

Katie climbed out of the net and smiled at me. We had already met – Dandy had brought her up to the spare bedroom to meet me when she started work for Robert – but we had hardly spoken.

‘Well done!’ I said. ‘You are far ahead of me, and I had a month’s full practice.’

‘I had a good teacher,’ she said with a sly little smile. I thought for a moment that she had meant David, but then I saw that she was looking towards Jack as he came down the ladder hand over hand, his legs and feet held clear to one side.

Katie pushed back her mass of yellow hair. ‘You slapped me hard enough today,’ she said to Jack. Her voice, heavy with the Dorset burr, had a provocative little lilt to it. ‘My wrists is all red.’

She held her arms out to him, palms up so that he should see the red marks. I shot a look at Dandy. She was staring at Katie as if she had never seen her before.

‘That’s nothing,’ David said baldly. ‘Hello, Merry. Are you walking all right?’

‘I’m stiff,’ I confessed, ‘and a bit unsteady. But I feel well enough now.’

Jack’s smile was openly warm. ‘I missed you,’ he said frankly. ‘It’s good to see you in here again. What did you think of Dandy?’

He drew me towards him and put an arm around my waist to support me as we walked towards the door. I let him help me over the hard ground, as I had let his father guide me before. I did not flinch from the touch of the Gowers. Father and son, I had come to trust them. And Jack’s touch on my waist was warm, I could feel the roughness of his hand through the linen shirt.

Katie popped up on his other side, took his arm.

‘What did you think of the act, Meridon?’ she asked. ‘Isn’t Jack fine? I feel so brave when I hears him calling the swing. I just jumps when he tells me!’

I hesitated. I felt as if during my illness a whole world had shifted slightly so that everything was out of frame. I looked past Jack at Dandy. She was blank-faced too.

‘It was fine,’ I said neutrally. ‘Robert was pleased.’

‘Robert!’ The poorhouse girl gave a little affected scream. ‘I calls him Mr Gower. I’d never dare call him Robert!’ She seemed to cling a little closer to Jack. ‘I really do respects your da,’ she assured him.

Jack turned his head to me and gave me one of his slow provocative winks.

‘So you should,’ he said. ‘Merry and my father are old friends. He gave her the right to call him by his given name. And Dandy. Everything is different when we’re working all together on the road.’

‘I can’t wait!’ she exclaimed. ‘I can’t wait to get away from this horrid little village where everyone looks at me and points at me. I can’t wait to get away to do shows every night, and me and Dandy wear our pretty short skirts!’

I looked across at Dandy. It was my guess that she would be seething with temper. I was right. Her face had that curiously intense expression which came over her in one of her sudden total rages.

‘Dandy,’ I said quickly, before she could explode. ‘Dandy, can you take me to the kitchen? I want to sit down.’

Jack stopped, went to lift me, but I put out an ungracious elbow and pushed him off.

‘I’ll go with Dandy,’ I said.

‘All right,’ Katie said blithely. ‘We’ll check the horses together, won’t we Jack?’

Jack gave me another of his rueful lazy looks and let her turn him, let her lead him away into the gathering darkness towards the stable and the hay loft.

‘My oath, what a whore,’ I exclaimed to Dandy under my breath.

Her black eyes were blazing. ‘The damned she-dog!’ she said. ‘I’ll scratch her eyes out if she tries anything on with Jack!’

‘You can hardly be surprised,’ I said. ‘She’s been here a good three weeks. Surely she was like this all along?’

Dandy was almost incoherent with temper. ‘No! No!’ she said. ‘D’you think I’d have stood for it? With my Jack? Not a damned look, not so much as a whisper. All she’s done is work night and day on the trapeze and learned to swing. She never so much as glanced at him!’

‘Why now, then?’ I asked puzzled.

Dandy scowled dreadfully towards the bright lights of the kitchen which shone over the darkening garden. ‘It’s you,’ she said suddenly. ‘It must be you. She’s never done it before. She thinks he’s after you. He came down the ladder all showy to please you, and he put his arm around you. He’s been asking for you every day, and he went to Salisbury twice to buy you flowers and once for fruit. His da never told him wrong for wasting the time either. She must think he’s courting you and she’s trying to cast poison.’

I gaped. ‘She’s mad,’ I said blankly. ‘Doesn’t she know what Robert would do if he thought any of us were setting lures for Jack?’

‘No,’ Dandy said swiftly. ‘She’s hardly seen Robert. He’s been training the horses all day, while we’ve been working. He’s never told her what he plans for Jack. He’s hardly spoken to her.’

We stood for a moment in silence gazing at each other and then suddenly we both broke into laughter. ‘Oh don’t! Oh! Don’t!’ I said, holding my sides. ‘My ribs still hurt! Don’t make me laugh, Dandy!’

‘Won’t he be absolutely wild when he finds out!’ Dandy crowed. ‘Won’t she catch it then! It’ll be back to the poorhouse for her! Act or no act!’

I stopped laughing for a moment. ‘That’s a bit hard,’ I said. ‘It’s a high price to pay for being a bit of a flirt.’

Dandy’s face was stony. ‘Who cares?’ she demanded. ‘I won’t have her hanging on Jack. If Jack goes with any one of us, he goes with me. I’ve been ready enough to keep things cold between us because his da ordered it and you begged me; but if she is crawling all over him I’m damned if I see him taken away from me!’

‘Now Dandy, it’s nothing,’ I said swiftly. ‘It’s probably as you say – that she was trying to tease me, to put me in my place. She doesn’t know that none of us court Jack. That none of us work like that. I’m back sleeping in the stables tonight. I’ll tell her then.’

Dandy tossed her thick black hair and looked mulish. ‘I’d rather we just told Robert that she was chasing Jack and let her go back to wherever she came from,’ she said unkindly. ‘I don’t like having her in my room. I don’t like her hanging on Jack. I saw him first. He saw me. He’s had eyes for me from that first day, Merry. We only did nothing to please his da. You know that.’

I thought a moment. I remembered Jack’s hot eyes upon me, and how he had asked me if I dreamed of him. I thought of him watching me as I swam and being angered by my indifference.

‘He’s a coquette as bad as her,’ I said without sympathy. ‘He’d go with any girl who flattered his vanity, and he’d be challenged by any girl who kept him at a distance. I’d not be surprised to see him take up with her.’

Dandy grabbed my arm. ‘I mean this, Merry,’ she said rapidly. ‘I’ve held off from him because I wanted to see how the land lay with his da, and it’s been so different here. I wanted to see if there was any chance of this damned future that Robert plans for him. But I wanted him when I first saw him. And I want him still.’

I held her away from me and looked at her carefully. I knew Dandy, I had watched and loved her as close as a mother, as intently as a lover. I knew she was only speaking half the truth. The part which she would not admit was her vanity and her pride. She could not stand the thought that Jack might go into the hay loft with the pretty fair-headed pauper when he had obeyed his father and not laid a finger on Dandy for month after tempting month. Dandy had been the prettiest girl any of us had ever seen for so long, that the thought of coming second best was enough to overset her.

‘Oh come on, Dandy,’ I said reasonably. ‘I know you fancy him. He’s a nice enough young lad. Vain as a monkey, but nice enough. But you know how Robert is about him; he looks very high for him. There’s no chance for anything more for you than a kiss and a romp. You could do better than that. When you’re Mamselle Dandy you’ll meet better men than Jack could ever be. It’s as Robert says: if you keep your head then you could marry well. That’s better than a roll in the hay with a lad whose father could ruin you if he caught you.’

For a moment she looked uncertain, but then we heard the trapdoor to the upstairs room at the stables slam and Dandy’s eyes blazed.

‘The little whore!’ she said, and she tore herself out of my grip and raced towards the stables.

I tried to run after her but my ribs still hurt, and my shoulder. I followed on behind, and by the time I reached the stables Jack was tumbling down the stairs shrugging his jacket on. He gave me one of his naughty sideways grins.

‘Hey, Merry,’ he said. ‘Dandy’s thrown me out of your room, says she wants to change into her gown for dinner. I’ll see you later.’

‘What were you doing in my room, Jack?’ I asked him, curious for his answer.

He gave me a wink. ‘Nowt serious, Merry,’ he said.

‘Hasn’t your father warned you off Katie?’ I asked curiously.

Jack’s dark gaze twinkled. ‘Half of Warminster has had her,’ he said. ‘My da wouldn’t waste his breath. He knows I won’t let it affect my work. He knows she won’t get a belly on her. He knows it’s not loving. He don’t care.’

Jack beamed at me for a moment. ‘Are you jealous, Merry?’ he asked softly. ‘Did you think I was kissing the soft hairs on the back of her neck, and licking the hollow between her shoulder blades? Did you want that for yourself?’

I stepped backwards so that he could see my face clearly in the light of the horn lantern. I knew my face was calm, my eyes clear, unmoved.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not want that for myself. I will never want that. Not from you, not from any man. I wondered if you were man enough to go against your da’s word or if you would stay a virgin all your life to please him. Now I understand, you’ll only have your poke where he permits.’

Jack flushed brick-red with anger at that gibe.

‘I don’t admire your taste,’ I said loftily. ‘But don’t forget that your da only allowed her. He said you were not to have Dandy.’

Jack threw his hands up in impatience. ‘Dandy!’ he said. ‘She’s all you ever think of!’

‘Don’t you think of her?’ I demanded, quick as a hawk in training to a lure.

Jack shrugged. ‘Not much,’ he said lightly. ‘I can live without her.’

‘Good,’ I said, and I meant it. Robert Gower was the only man in the world who would feed and house Dandy and me while I was bruised and battered and unable to work and while Dandy had no skill she could sell on her own. We were as dependent on him as if we were his pauper servants. I knew now that Dandy desired Jack and I feared she would make a set for him. The only thing which stood between us and the frozen road out of Warminster was Jack’s respect for his father’s wishes.

‘Don’t forget your da said you were not to look at her,’ I insisted.

Jack shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes at the darkening night sky. ‘Merry, you carry on like some prioress. I don’t want your damned sister. I could do with a roll in the hay. Katie offered it for free. I’d do it with Katie, I wouldn’t touch Dandy with a ten-foot barge pole. All right?’

‘All right,’ I said at last.

I hoped to God it was.