Meridon

11

I expected to find Katie with her shirt ripped and her face scratched. Poorhouse brat she might be, Warminster whore she might be, but I did not think she would exceed my sister in the art of dirty fighting. But when I climbed slowly up the stairs to the loft-bedroom they were sitting side by side brushing each other’s hair and giggling together.

‘He put his hand down the inside of my shirt!’ I heard Katie say. Dandy giggled delightedly. ‘I said to him: “I don’t know what you’re looking for down there, Jack!”’

Dandy rocked with laughter at this sally. ‘You never did!’ she said. ‘What did he do then?’

‘He took my hand and put it down his breeches!’ Katie said triumphantly.

‘And?’ Dandy prompted.

Katie’s sharp hungry little face grew avid. ‘He was hot,’ she said. ‘He was hard as a stallion to a mare.’

I was watching Dandy’s face and I saw a shadow of absolute envy pass across it. But she laughed merrily enough.

‘I’m sorry I came in and spoiled sport then!’ she said lightly. ‘Would you have done it with him, if I had not come in?’

‘Oh aye!’ Katie said at once. ‘I was hot for it too!’

She and Dandy fell into each other’s arms and rocked with laughter. Dandy’s eyes met mine across the fair head and her dark eyes were cold as ice.

‘I’m surprised he dares,’ she said. ‘When Merry and I joined the show his da told us plain that there was to be no courting.’

Katie’s smile was world-weary. ‘’Tis hardly courting,’ she said. ‘It’s just a bit of fun. You’d hardly call it courting. We’re neither of us new to it. And neither of us would speak of love. Mr Gower told me I was to mind my ways in the village. He didn’t say nothing about at home.’

‘But you don’t care for Jack?’ Dandy asked sharply.

Katie laughed lazily, put her hands to her head to pin up her tumbling blonde hair. ‘I cared enough a minute ago,’ she said lazily. ‘I’d have cared to do it with him then. But I don’t mind now. If I get needful I can sneak down to the Bush in the village. There’s a couple of lads down there I know well. They’ll meet me behind a hedge somewhere so Mr Gower don’t know. They’ll give me a penny as well.’

Dandy’s smile was as warm as ice on a bucket. ‘Would you refuse him then?’ she asked. ‘I’ve had my eye on him since last summer. His da said “no” and he hasn’t dared. But I’ve had my eye on him for my very own. Would you refuse him if he comes to you again? To oblige me, Katie?’

Katie threw back her lovely head and laughed aloud. ‘Nay!’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have the heart! And I had my hand down inside his breeches, Dandy, and he felt real fine to me. I couldn’t find it in me to say “no”.’

‘I’d pay,’ Dandy said patiently. ‘I’d pay you more money than you’d ever think to earn in all your life.’

Katie sneered. ‘Got your pennies saved up have you, Dandy? Saved your pennies from your horseback riding?’

‘I’d pay you a guinea,’ Dandy said. She heard my gasp and she avoided my eyes. ‘I’d pay you a guinea if you promise not to have him. I’d pay you a guinea and I’ll give it to you at Whitsun.’

‘Where’d you get a guinea from?’ Katie said, impressed despite herself.

‘We’ve got it already,’ Dandy said proudly. ‘You know Merry’s got her own horse. We’re doing better than you think. We’ve got ten guineas between the two of us, and some shillings for spending money. You’re straight out of the poorhouse, you don’t understand what it’s like for us with our own act. You’ve never seen Merry work the horses. She can earn a lot of money. We’re only staying with Robert Gower this year. Next year we could go anywhere. Anyway, I’ve got a guinea all right. And it’s yours if you keep your hands off Jack.’

‘Dandy,’ I said in an urgent undertone.

But it was too late. The poorhouse whore spat into her dirty palm and Dandy shook quickly, before she could change her mind. Dandy got up and went to the mirror and pulled at the string bow which was tying her hair. ‘I’ll know if you cheat, mind,’ she said to her reflection.

Katie slumped back on her pallet. ‘I won’t cheat,’ she said disdainfully. ‘You can keep your Jack. I have lovers I don’t have to buy. I wish you good luck with him.’

Dandy turned away from the mirror. I thought she would be angry at the gibe but her face was serene. ‘I have to get around his father yet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Buying you off is just the start of it.’

She pulled her gown out of the clothes chest and slipped it on over her shift. She brushed out her hair and pinned it on top of her head. There was a very faint tide mark of grime at her bare neck and she rubbed at it with a damp forefinger and then put a clean white collar atop.

I sat on my bed and said nothing. Katie got to her feet and pulled on her poorhouse skirt as a replacement for her working breeches. She looked from Dandy to me and then went down the stairs to the stables below in silence.

‘One guinea,’ I said grimly.

Dandy turned from the mirror and put out her hands to me. ‘Don’t look like that, Merry,’ she said. ‘If I pull Jack and marry him then we won’t need your little ten guineas, we’ll have this house and the whole show.’

‘If you so much as try then my little ten guineas is all we’ll have,’ I said miserably. ‘Robert warned you, Dandy, and he warned Jack in front of us, and neither of you said so much as a whisper. He’ll put us out, both of us. And then where will we be? All we’ll have is a sixteen-hand hunter trained to nothing, you a trapeze artist without a trapeze, and me a rosinback rider without a horse.’

Dandy went to hold me but I put my hands up to fend her off. I was still too sore all over, and anyway I did not want her caresses.

‘He’ll never marry you, Dandy,’ I said certainly. ‘If you’re lucky he’ll have you and then forget all about it.’

Dandy smiled at me, a long slow powerful smile. Then she dived under the straw mattress of her bed and brought out a little linen bag.

‘Robert sent me to the wise woman,’ she said. ‘I lied and told him it was double the price. She told me how to get rid of a baby if I should have one. She told me when it was safe to go with a man so I should not get with child; and…’ Dandy opened the drawstring at the neck of the bag and showed me the few dusty leaves inside, ‘she sold me this!’

‘What is it?’ I asked. I sat down on my bed. I was feeling deeply weary. Tired because of my bruising and aches, but sick inside at the way that some danger and trouble seemed to be growing greater every moment without me being able to stay it or turn Dandy from her course.

‘It’s a love potion,’ she said triumphantly. ‘She knew I was Rom and I would know how to use it. I shall hex him, Merry, and I shall bring him to me. I shall have him begging for me. And then he’ll persuade his da to let us be wed.’

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. Night had fallen outside and the room was lit only by the firelight.

‘You’re mad,’ I said wearily. ‘Robert Gower would never have you wed Jack.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong!’ Dandy said triumphantly. ‘Everyone has noticed how he is about you. Mrs Greaves, David, even Jack himself. Jack said that he was as worried about your fall as if you had been his own daughter. He’s softer with you than he is with any of us, even Jack. You’re the key to Robert Gower, Merry! He wants you to work for him for always. He wants you to train his horses for him. He sees now that you’re as good as he is, he’ll soon see that the way to keep you with his show is to marry one of us into it. He knows you’d never marry so that only leaves me. Me and Jack!’ she concluded.

I closed my eyes and tried to think. It was possible. Robert Gower could not have taken more care of me if I had been his own child. The surgeon’s fees alone would run into pounds. It was true that I trained horses better than anyone I had ever seen. I had won him a fortune that day in Salisbury. There were other shows looking for horses and trainers. I had only Sea, but he could be made into a wonderful act if I wished. Dandy was only an apprentice, but there could not be a prettier girl flyer in the world. She was certainly the only girl flyer in the country.

But…I stopped and opened my eyes. Dandy had tucked away her little bag of herbs inside her shift and was tying her pinny around her waist. ‘You’d never persuade Robert,’ I said. ‘Not in a hundred years, not on your own. The only person who could turn him around would be Jack. And you will never get Jack to stand up to his da.’

Dandy’s face was as clear as a May morning. ‘I will,’ she said confidently. ‘When he’s my lover he’ll do anything for me.’

If I had been stronger I should have argued more. Even then, as I closed my eyes against the dizzy hazy pain of headaches and old bruises, I knew that I should sit up and make Dandy see sense. That she needed my protection more than she had ever done in her life. But I failed her. I leaned back against the wall and rested until she had pinned her cap and was ready for us to go to dinner. Even then, as the three of us walked over to the house, I should have told Katie that the promised guinea was mine and not Dandy’s, and that I should not pay it. She could have Jack with my blessing.

But I was tired and ill and, I suppose, lazy. I had not the strength to go against Dandy’s overpowering conviction. I did not even have the wit to keep my eyes open to see if she palmed the herbs and got them into his cup of tea at dinner. I just let her go her own way, even though there was something in the back of my mind which told me that I had let the dearest person in the world slip through my fingers and had not put out a hand to save her.

My sense of miserable foreboding stayed with me so long that Robert spoke of sending for the surgeon again.

‘You’ve lost your smiles, Merry,’ he said. We were in the stable yard and I was ready to start working Sea. I had decided to treat him as if he were unbroken – train him to a lunge rein, and take him slowly through all the stages of a young horse as if he had never been ridden before. His head nodded to me over the loose-box and I was anxious to begin, but Robert touched my arm.

‘I’d send for the surgeon,’ he offered. ‘He’ll not be working from Christmas Eve tomorrow till Twelfth Night, but if you feel ill, Merry, he’ll come out for me.’

I paused and looked at Robert. His face was kindly, his eyes warm with concern.

‘Robert,’ I said directly. ‘Would you let me be a partner in your business? The ten guineas I have – would you let me buy more horses with them and we could work them jointly? Would you let Dandy and me be joint owners with you?’

Robert stared at me blankly for a moment, as if he could not think what the words meant. Then I watched the coldness spread across his face. It started at his eyes which lost their affectionate twinkle and became as hard and stony as a man driving a bad bargain. The smile died away from his lips and his mouth set hard in a thin line. Even the lines of his profile became sharper, and under the joyful, laughing showman I saw the bones and sinews of the ruined carter who staked his livelihood on his little boy dancing on the back of one horse, and drove away from the woman who had tried to trap him with her love.

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was icy. ‘No, Meridon. This is my show, my own show, and God knows I have worked hard enough for it and long enough for it. There will never be a share in it for anyone but Jack. It will never go out of my family. It is all the kin I now acknowledge. I’ll pay you a better wage, if you’re discontent. I’ll pay Dandy tuppence a show whenever she works. But I’ll not share it.’

For a moment his face was almost pleading, as if he were asking me to understand an obsession. He looked down at me. ‘I’ve come so far to make it my own,’ he said. ‘I’ve done things I’ll have to answer for to my Maker…’ He broke off and I wondered if he could hear in his head the voice of the woman calling him from behind the swaying wagon. ‘I can’t share, Merry,’ he said finally. ‘It isn’t in my nature.’

I waited, then put out a placatory hand to him. ‘Don’t be angry,’ I cautioned. ‘I want to ask you a question but don’t rip up at me.’

His face grew even more closed. ‘What?’ he said.

I had a moment’s intense impatience that I should have to stand in a stable yard and ask a man not to be angry with me for a question which I had not even yet voiced. Dandy’s intense female need had brought me to the slavish role of trying to prepare a man for a request which I myself thought was unreasonable. Something of this must have shown in my face, for Robert suddenly grinned:

‘Not like you to tread cautiously, Merry,’ he said. ‘Are you learning pretty pleasing girlish ways from your sister and the Warminster whore?’

I gritted my teeth and then, unwillingly, laughed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But it’s a question you might dislike.’

‘Get on with it then,’ he said, weary of this fencing.

‘I want a share in the show,’ I said. ‘If you couldn’t abide strangers coming in, how would it be if Dandy and Jack were to make a match of it? I know you looked higher for him, but he and Dandy working together make a good team. They could make their fortunes. Marriage is the only way you’ll keep Dandy. And where she goes, I go.’

Robert looked at me and I could see the pinched impoverished man looking out of his eyes.

‘No,’ he said blankly. ‘No woman is irreplaceable. If Dandy gets a better offer she can go. You can go with her. There are times when I love you like a daughter, Merry, but I have loved and left a daughter before now, and never regretted it. If you can’t work for me on wages then you’d best leave.’ He nodded at the stable, at the barn beyond where Dandy and Jack were practising the only touring trapeze act in England. ‘I’d change my plans for the season, I’d throw away all my hopes rather than see Dandy wed Jack,’ he said. ‘You’re a pair of draggle-tailed gypsies and she’s as hot as a bitch in heat. I look a good deal higher for my son, I’d see you both dead at my feet rather than have him wed either of you and bring your tainted gypsy blood into my family and into my show.’

I took a deep breath of the cold winter air and I dropped him a curtsey, as low and as slavish as Zima’s broad-arsed bobs.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said, as if he had tipped me a farthing. ‘I quite understand now.’

I turned from him and walked towards my horse, Sea. I slid the bridle on his head and opened the door to let him out in a daze of anger and hatred. I walked past Robert – Robert who had been so kind to me and had held me when the surgeon pulled at my arm – I walked past him and I hardly saw him. There was a hot red haze around my eyes and I think if I had spat on his boots as I passed it would have come out as blood. My pulse was thundering in my head and my hand on Sea’s lunging reins gripped by instinct, not care. In the back of my mind I knew it was Dandy’s folly that had led me into this idiot’s babble of marriage and sharing. But I knew also that the warm summer days in the wagon and the hard wintry work at Warminster had led me to see Robert’s interests and ours as running in harness. Dandy’s foolish lust for Jack had blinded me as well as her. She had convinced me she could have him. She had nearly convinced me she could keep him. I had needed Robert’s coldness to sober me.

He had looked in my face and had spoken to me as a man of substance speaks to a servant girl. Worse. He had spoken to me as a freeholder and a citizen speaks to a dirty travelling slut. All the work I had done for him and the knocks I had taken for him had not served to alter the fact that he had bought me from Da as a job lot in with a pony and a girl they both knew was a slut. I walked away from him, and I walked away from the tiny growing hope I had felt that there might be bridges which I could build from the world of the people who belonged, who slept soft and kept clean, and mine. There were no bridges. There was an absolute division.

As I led Sea down to the paddock I longed for Wide with as much passion as if I were still in my lice-ridden bunk listening to Da humping Zima. I had not belonged there. I did not belong here. I felt as if I would belong nowhere until I could own my own land and command servants of my own. There was no middling course for me, there was no staging place. It seemed I was condemned to the very ditch of society unless I could somehow scramble my way, all alone, to the top. I had to get to the top. I had to get where I belonged. I had to go to Wide.

I stepped back from the horse and clicked to him to get going. He was new to the work or else he had forgotten the skill. I worked with him all morning though my hands were stiff and my cheeks were icy. It was only when I went into the kitchen for my breakfast that I found they had become red and chapped because I had been crying into the cold east wind for all of the time.

We hardly noticed the Christmas season. Robert was distant and cold to us all since that time in the yard. He spun a silver coin down the table to Jack at breakfast on Christmas morning and he gave Dandy and Katie and me a thrupenny piece each. Mrs Greaves had a bolt of material, William a penny, David a rather good pair of second-hand gloves.

That was it. We all went back to work, and Christmas was just another day of training horses for me and working on the trapeze for the rest of them.

The new ponies bought at Salisbury were going well with the others and Robert had taught me the moves with the stick in one hand and the whip in the other and the words to call at them. We had a pretty little act with them coming into the ring and splitting into two teams, crossing from one side to another, passing while they circled (I always lost the smallest one who would tag on to the wrong team), pirouetting on the spot, and finally taking a bow while I stood in the middle of them smiling at where the audience would be, with my back to them as if I could trust them on their own – which I absolutely could not.

I worked them every morning before breakfast, while Robert watched the trapeze practice or worked at his accounts inside the house. After we had eaten we took Bluebell and the new horse, Morris, into the field and I practised vaulting on them, and standing. Bluebell was steady as a rock, she had learned the job with Jack all those years ago and I was probably a welcome relief – a good deal lighter even if I did tend to overshoot and go flying off the far side.

‘Don’t jump!’ Robert would yell irritably from the centre of the ring while his pipe puffed little signals up at the cold blue sky. ‘Let the horse’s speed take you up. All you do is get your feet off the ground. Her canter will do the rest!’

I had mastered standing up on the horse with Jack to hold me, but with Robert keeping the horse at a steady pace I was learning to stand alone. First, hanging on like grim death to the strap, but gradually – as we trained every day, snow or shine – learning to let the strap drop and balance with my arms outstretched holding nothing, standing head up, my feet shifting and stepping on the horse’s bouncing haunches.

In the later afternoon Jack would come out of the barn to work with us. Dandy and Katie would train without him, sometimes flying tricks to David who would catch them, sometimes practising by flying a trick to the right position but dropping into the net, but most of the time practising the new trick David had taught them – a cross-over – where Dandy swung out on the trapeze and was caught by Jack as Katie took off on the returning trapeze. Dandy would somersault from Jack’s hands into the net as Katie was caught by him, then Katie could either try to swing back up to the pedestal board, or drop down to the net too. David, Jack and Robert all said it looked wonderful. It was to be the final trick of the show. Katie and Dandy preened themselves and looked smug once they had the timing right. I had no opinion on it at all. I simply could not watch it.

By the end of December David had all but finished his task, on time, and earned the promised bonus. He had given Robert a trained trapeze troupe: one boy catcher and two girl flyers; and that without too many mishaps. They had a routine of tricks: Dandy could swing from her bar to Jack into a legcatch, she could do a bird’s nest across when she got her feet tucked behind the trapeze bar while still holding on with her hands and then, at the last moment, stretched out her hands to be caught. She could do a pass they called the angel pass with one leg pointing to the roof and the other pointing down, when he handed her back to her own trapeze holding a hand and a foot, and she and Katie could reliably do a cross-over. Katie’s best trick was the angel pass. It looked showy but actually it was one of the easiest. David had taught them all how to do somersaults and twisters, into the net. They would have to practise them on their own.

He spent the last few days working with me on the practice trapeze. As long as I did not have to climb the ladder up to the pedestal I did not feel that icy shaking fear. I could do a number of tricks, get the trapeze swinging, drop underneath it so that I was upside down, get into the bird’s nest position, hang from my feet alone. Robert had it in mind to sling the trapeze under Dandy’s A-frame, and to use me as a warm-up act after the interval to get the crowd ready for the real trapeze work which would go on high above my head. I had no objection except I stipulated I should wear my breeches and a shirt.

‘For God’s sake, Meridon!’ Robert said irritably. ‘You can’t do a trapeze act dressed like a stable lad. You’ll wear a short skirt and a stomacher top and air your bubbies like the other girls.’

‘Nowt to show!’ Katie whispered.

I narrowed my eyes and said nothing.

David intervened. ‘It takes something of the excitement away from the aerial act,’ he said judiciously. ‘It detracts from the girls up high if Merry is only half-way up but dressed the same. Why don’t we dress her like Jack? She can wear tight white breeches like him and a billowy shirt top. She’d look grand, and that leaves the two girl flyers half-naked as they like to be!’

Katie and Dandy simpered. Jack nodded. ‘It suits us all better, Da,’ he said. ‘And you’ll have the Justices down on you for sure if you have a lass half-naked that near ground level.’

‘All right,’ Robert said. ‘The girls can wear blue costumes, and Jack and Meridon can have blue silk shirts. Meridon can use one of your short blue skirts when she’s doing her rosinback act.’

‘She should have her own, in a different colour,’ said Dandy. Katie nodded. Neither of them wanted to share.

‘She’d look nice in green,’ Katie volunteered.

David and Robert shook their heads in unison. ‘Green’s unlucky in the ring,’ David said.

‘Share your damned skirts you lazy wenches,’ Robert said. ‘Or make up another one in red.’

‘Down to my knees,’ I said.

Robert nodded. ‘That’s settled then,’ he said briskly. Then he turned to David. ‘You’ve done a grand job, I’m proud of you. We’ll have a dinner tonight to celebrate. Mrs Greaves is roasting a haunch of venison now.’

David did his little showman’s bow, his hand on his heart. ‘I’m obliged, sir,’ he said formally.

Robert nodded at us. ‘Finish your practice and turn out the horses and then come in, the rest of you,’ he said. ‘You can all take a glass of wine tonight to say farewell to your trainer. He’s done you proud.’

He turned and went out of the door. I dropped from the practice trapeze and watched Jack catching as Katie came towards him, her little face grimacing with concentration.

David called them down and all three of them threw somersaults into the net, a showy confident end to a good act. I watched the wood shavings underneath my boots.

‘Listen to me, you three,’ David said, his voice lilting. ‘I’ve done with you now and these are my final words to be taken seriously.’ He turned to Jack. ‘Watch the rigging,’ he said. ‘These are good frames and I’ve used such things myself. But the net is a new idea. I don’t know when it will get old. I don’t know whether it will stretch. Test it every time you get it out with a couple of hay bales into the middle, and watch it. Your lives depend on it. Don’t forget.’

Jack nodded, his face grave.

‘You keep the beat,’ David said to him as if he were passing on a mantle of office. ‘You call the trick, and if they’re not ready or out of time, you keep yourself out of their way and let them swing back, away from you again. It’s not your job to grab at them. Only catch the good tricks.’

Jack’s dark eyes were wide. He nodded.

David turned to Dandy and Katie. ‘Don’t do the catcher’s work for him,’ he said. ‘He’s paid to catch. You swing to where you’re supposed to be and let him earn his money. He catches you, you just stretch out to where he ought to be. If he’s not there, you swing back again, or do the trick to the net and you get on your back and you fall soft.’

Katie and Dandy nodded, as earnest as apprentices.

‘Trust him,’ David said. His voice sent a great shudder down my spine.

‘Trust him,’ David said again. ‘He’s your catcher. You’ve got to fly to him as if you loved him entirely and are certain that he will be there. Trust him and give yourself over to him.’

Robert had left the door ajar and it swung open. A gust of icy wind blew in, and with it, a great white tumbling bird. A barn owl, eyes glaring and dazzled by our lanterns. It flew in, a massive wide-winged bird, entirely silently, not a whisper of its passing, its open crazed face turning right and left, seeking its way out. It flew directly over Dandy and Jack, and then wheeled around, so close to her that its passing stirred her hair. It flew between her and the lantern hung on the ceiling. Its shadow fell black over her and Dandy gave a little affected shriek and clung to Jack’s arm, then the door swung open again, the bird turned and was gone. I fell back against the wall and felt the flints and mortar sharp against my fingers. I was shaken.

‘My God,’ Katie exclaimed. ‘That was like a ghost!’

I saw David rub his hands hard against his cheeks. I saw him square his shoulders, I saw him wipe his hand across his mouth as if he were painting on his bright professional smile.

‘Just a barn owl trying to get out of the cold, poor thing,’ he said lightly. I think only I heard the strain in his voice. ‘Snow is coming, we’d best run up to the house and get ready for dinner. It’s the last decent meal I’ll have for days. I’m cooking for myself tomorrow.’

He looked across at me and his bright smile faltered for a moment while we met each other’s darkened gaze.

‘You hungry, Merry?’ he asked determinedly, willing me to pretend that I had not seen that second of his superstitious fear. I pushed myself away from the wall to stand on my own two feet.

‘Starving,’ I said. My voice was thin, but the others noticed nothing. David’s speech had been planned to send them out with their new act full of confidence. He wanted them to trust each other entirely, he wanted them to work without him, as well as they had done for the past two months. He had wanted to send them out with his blessing. He did not want them thrown and frightened with the easy superstition of travelling people.

We clattered around, banking in the stove, blowing out the lanterns except one to light our way back to the house across the fields. I looked for the barn owl when we were outside, but it had gone.

We all got tipsy at dinner. Robert became maudlin and blinked at the shiny surface of the table, and then insisted on singing loud and mournful ballads. David declared that all Welshmen could sing from birth without training and blasted out some convincing evidence in an incomprehensible language to prove it. Dandy danced very prettily with her skirts held high, and Katie sang a bawdy ale-house ditty. Jack and I became morosely quiet with the drink, though neither of us had more than a couple of glasses.

Robert called a halt at eleven o’clock.

‘Work tomorrow, same as usual,’ he said.

‘I’ll be gone as you’re rising,’ David said to the three of us. ‘I’ll say my farewells to you now.’

He spread his arms wide and hugged all three of us: Katie, Dandy and me. Katie he bussed and put to one side and whispered something in her ear which made her giggle and blush. Dandy he held very close for a moment and then set her on her feet.

‘Keep your wits about you and push out on the beat,’ he said. ‘If you know a trick isn’t going to work then drop into the net. And don’t get lazy! And practise every day!’

He turned to me and put his arms around me. ‘I wish I could have got you up high, Merry,’ he said. ‘But I am sorrier than I can tell you about your fall.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ll have others,’ I said, thinking of Sea waiting to be broken to the saddle.

He did not hug Jack. He took him by the shoulders and he looked into Jack’s guileless open face. ‘They’re your responsibility now,’ he said. ‘It is your job to keep the flyers safe. Do you swear to me on your life that you will do that?’

Jack blinked, surprised at David’s tone. ‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I’ll do the best I can.’

I felt my hands clench into fists, like they do when I’m afraid. David scanned Jack’s face once and then smiled.

‘Well, good luck to the three of you then,’ he said. He nodded to Robert over our heads. ‘You’ll always have my direction,’ he said. ‘If you need me for new tricks or re-training I’d be glad to work with the four of them again.’

Robert rose from the table, and clasped his hand with a smile. ‘I’m obliged to you,’ he said. ‘It’s better than I’d dreamed.’

David saw us to the kitchen door. The room was cosy, the stove banked-in for the night. A dog in its basket. A cat curled in the hearth. We opened the back door and a gust of icy air blew in, a swirl of snowflakes with it. Dandy and Katie pulled their shawls over their ducked heads and dashed out down the path towards the stables. I hesitated on the doorway, careless of the blowing snow. David looked down at me, waiting.

‘Does it mean anything,’ I asked, ‘in shows? Does it mean anything when an owl flies across the ring? When a bird flies in?’

David’s smile was easy. ‘Nothing at all, my fey little gypsy,’ he said tenderly. ‘Now run to your bed before you get cold. And try to stop tumbling off those horses of yours. If you’re worried about Dandy there’s little need. I’ve done the best I can and she knows her job.’

I nodded, longing to be convinced.

‘It’s all right then?’ I said.

‘It’s all right,’ he said, and he bent and gave me a gentle kiss on the forehead. I held my ground and did not pull away from his touch.

I stepped out of the back door and the wind hit me in the face and the snowflakes dazzled me. I dipped my head and ran in the direction of the stables. David had said it was all right. David had said that the bird meant nothing, its shadow falling on Dandy meant nothing. If there had been danger David would have warned me.

I tumbled up the stairs to our bedroom, shucked off my clothes in the cold room and fell into by bed. I did not want to think about anything.