Meridon

25

I did not like Mr Fortescue being gone. I did not like it that Wideacre Hall was lived in only by Becky and Sam. I did not like it that there was no smoke coming out of the front chimneys when I rode along the Common behind the house and looked down on it. I did not like it that the front door was always shut.

It had been comforting, in some way, to know that though I had defied him and left him for the Haverings, James Fortescue was still there if I had wanted to go back. But now the furniture in the parlour and the dining rooms, and all the front part of the house was under dust sheets and James was gone.

It made me glad to see Will. Only he knew about Wideacre, only he loved the place as my mother had done. And he came to ride with me every day – as James had asked him to do – and he took me over every field, explaining what was being ploughed and planted and what was being left fallow.

Lady Clara raised no objection at all. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You have to know every inch of it if you are ever to argue against your trustee and his manager. You will have some difficult battles ahead of you over the next five years. Your only chance of winning some of them is if you know the land as well as Will Tyacke.’

So, included in my schooling as a conventional young lady was an afternoon ride every day with Will. I never wore my breeches now. Instead I had a choice of two new riding habits – a pale green one to show off the colour of my eyes, and a slate-coloured grey one. I always waited to be called, as a young lady should, in the parlour. So it was he who waited in the stable yard while I pinned on my hat and took up my gloves and whip.

‘No need to rush, Sarah,’ Lady Clara said looking at me over the top of a journal she was reading. ‘Move more slowly and you will move more smoothly.’

I nodded and went as smoothly as I could over to the mirror and adjusted my hat a careful half-inch.

‘Better,’ she said approvingly.

I looked at myself. I could not see a fraction of difference. But it was not my trade. She no doubt thought she saw an improvement.

‘It’s a hot day,’ she said languidly. ‘Do try and keep your face shaded, Sarah, you are already far too brown.’

‘Yes, Lady Clara,’ I said.

‘When you come back from your ride you can offer Will Tyacke a glass of small beer in the kitchen,’ she said.

I hesitated. ‘I don’t think he’d like that,’ I said.

She raised her arched eyebrows. ‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me he’s a water drinker as well! That would be too too ridiculous!’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen him drink beer and wine. But he’s a proud man. I don’t think he’d like being offered beer in the kitchen when I go into the parlour.’

Lady Clara put the journal face down on the little table beside her and took up her fan. I knew her well enough now to note the little signs which showed that she was thinking carefully about what I was saying. I was on my guard at once.

‘Would you regard him as someone suitable for my parlour?’ she asked carefully.

‘No,’ I said. ‘He does not even like the parlour at Wideacre. We always talked in the dining room.’

She nodded. ‘Are you suitable for my parlour?’ she asked.

I hesitated.

‘Are you?’ she asked me again.

‘No,’ I said blankly. ‘I know you have taught me how to walk across the floor and how to sit on a chair without flinging myself into it. But in my heart I am still not Sarah Lacey a young lady. Inside me I am still…’ I broke off. I had been about to say ‘Meridon the bareback rider’ but I never wanted that name spoken in this house. I never wanted Lady Clara to know how low my life had been before I found my way here.

She gave me a cool little smile. ‘Sometimes in my heart I am a naughty little girl who would not wash her face until her father beat her, who liked to play with the peasant children outside the castle in Ireland,’ she said. ‘We are all other people in secret, Sarah. There is nothing unusual in that. But I learned to be a lady of the first Quality in London. You will learn that too. It is what you want, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ I said. It was. I wanted to leave the old life, and the old loves, far behind me. It was too great a pain in my heart even to think of them. I had to be far far away from them, and never go back again.

‘Then you come into my parlour and Will does not,’ she said. ‘I instruct you to offer him a small beer in the kitchen at the end of your ride. It is correct to be thoughtful towards one’s servants, Sarah. You should offer him a cool drink after he has escorted you in this heat.’

I nodded. ‘Yes, Lady Clara,’ I said, and then I left the room opening the door with my right hand and closing it carefully behind my back with my left.

Will was sitting, patient as a tree stump, in the afternoon sunlight in the stable yard. He was holding Sea’s reins. Sea turned his head and whickered when he saw me, Will smiled too.

‘Quite sure you’re ready now?’ he asked with his warm easy smile.

‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I was delayed on my way out. I’m sorry I kept you.’

‘I’m in no hurry,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Shall I get you up?’

There was no need. I could have vaulted up as easily as ever but there were two grooms and a stable lad who all appeared out of the shade to lift me up.

‘He’s fresh,’ one of the older grooms warned me, pulling his forelock. ‘Begging your pardon, Miss Lacey.’

‘She’ll handle him,’ Will said with quiet confidence, and we turned away down the woodland track which led out to Wideacre land.

‘Where today, Sarah? Up to the Downs to gallop the fidgets out first? You’ve not seen the sheep for a few days, we’re about ready to start shearing.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘And I’d like to come out when shearing starts. Is it a lot of extra work?’

‘We use travelling shearers, or extra men from Midhurst,’ Will said, his long-legged cob falling into stride beside Sea’s dancing steps. ‘We usually get it over and done within a week. We set up shearing pens beside the barns on the Downs, and send the fleeces to London to be sold. This year we have a contract with some woollen mills in Hampshire so we’re selling direct at an agreed price. Once the shearing is over there’s a bit of a party for the shepherds and their families and the shearers in the barns.’

I nodded. We were trotting down the woodland track, the way I had come the first time I had brought Perry to Havering Hall. The sunlight was dappled on the track, the sound of the River Fenny low and musical. The birds were singing in the upper branches of the trees and the air smelled sweet and warm and summery.

‘Oh,’ I said in longing. ‘I’d love to sleep outdoors again.’

‘Tired of Quality living already?’ Will said with a wry little smile. ‘There’s always a bed for you in Acre.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t go backwards. But this summer is so fine, and I seem to spend all my days indoors.’

‘Aye,’ he said gently. ‘You don’t get out and about much, do you? It’d irk me badly. We’ve not been bred to the indoors life, you and me. I’d go half mad cooped up all day in a parlour like that.’

‘I am learning things,’ I said defensively. ‘Things I need to know.’

Will nodded, tolerant. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘If you are sure you need them.’

‘I do,’ I said firmly, and he nodded and said no more.

We rode together as old friends, talking when we wanted, silent most of the time. He rode well. His horse Beau could never match the speed and stamina of Sea who was a full-bred hunter. But he could give us a good race and if we gave them a ten- or twenty-yard start we were sometimes hard-pressed to catch them before the winning post.

Will said little, but we never passed working people or a newly planted field without him ensuring that I knew exactly what they were doing. Whenever we passed anyone in the lane, or working on a hedgerow or digging a ditch, we would pull up and Will would introduce them by name, or remind me when I had met them before. Watching him with these people I could tell he was well liked and, despite his youth, respected. The older men deferred to his judgement and reported to him, the younger men were pleasant and easy with him. I guessed that they teased him about his rides with me; but when I was there they were respectful and easy. The young women stared at me, taking in every detail of my clothes and boots and gloves. I did not mind. I had stood in the centre of a show ring when coins and flowers were thrown in at my feet. I was hardly likely to blush because half a dozen girls could not take their eyes from the golden fringe on my jacket. I saw more than one of them glance at Will with an intimate special smile and I guessed he was popular with the young women too.

We passed two girls on the lane who called, ‘Good day,’ to me and flicked smiling eyes at Will.

‘You’re a favourite,’ I said dryly.

‘You know those two, remember?’ he asked. ‘They’re the Smith girls. They live in the cottage opposite the forge. The Smith’s daughters, they call him Littl’un.’

‘Yes,’ I said diverted. ‘Why does everyone call him that? He’s hardly little!’

Will smiled. ‘His real name’s Henry,’ he said. ‘His ma died while she was giving birth to him and he was real small and puny when he was a child, always ailing. No one thought he’d live, so no one took the trouble to give him a name of his own. They called him for his brother. Then, when Julia Lacey started setting the village to rights again, her Uncle John the doctor took special care of him and he grew strong. He survived but the nickname stuck.’

I nodded. Even in the names of people you could trace the power that the owners of the land had over the people who worked it. There was the compliment that women of twenty and older were named Julia, after my mother, and there were several Richards in the village and a little crop of Johns. But the blacker side was the children who had not been named at all during the hungry years when my family had ruined the village with their greed. During those years children were given nicknames or the same names as their brothers and sisters. It was so unlikely that they would all survive. And the graveyard had many little mounds with blank headboards of wood, where there had been no money to have stone carved or, in the despair of hunger, nothing anyone wanted to say.

‘Very few children die in Acre now,’ Will said, accurately reading my thoughts. ‘Very few. Of course they get ill, and of course there are accidents. But no one dies of hunger on your land, Sarah. The way we run the estate means that everyone has a share of the wealth, and that is enough to feed everyone.’

We turned the horses up the little lane which leads up to the top of the Downs. I could ride it now with confident familiarity.

‘It will have to change,’ I said evenly. ‘When I am of age, I will change it.’

Will smiled at me, and reined back so that I could go ahead of him up the narrow track. ‘Maybe you’ll change first,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’ll come to see that to live on a land where people are well fed and where they have responsibility for their own work is a greater pleasure than a little extra money. The land is farmed well, Sarah, don’t forget that. But it is not farmed at the expense of the people who work it.’

‘I’ve no time for passengers,’ I said. I was glad Lady Clara could not hear my voice which was harsh and flat. ‘In this new century it is a different world. There are great markets overseas, there are huge fortunes to be won or lost. Every farm in the country has to compete with every other one. If you give in to your workforce you are fighting with one hand tied behind your back.’

I drew up to let him come alongside and I saw the sudden heat of anger go across his face.

‘I know you have been taught to speak how the landlords speak,’ he said and his voice was very controlled. ‘But all of you will have to learn that the wealth of a country is its people. You won’t be able to produce much wealth with a half-starved workforce. You won’t be able to make machines and tools with a workforce which cannot read or write. You will make a little profit for a short time by working everyone as hard as you can and paying them a little. But who will buy the goods if the working people have no money?’

‘We’ll sell abroad,’ I said. We had reached the top of the Downs and I pointed to where the sea was a slab of clear blue, shading to violet at the horizon. ‘We’ll sell to native countries, all around the world.’

Will shook his head. ‘You’ll do the same things there as you do here,’ he said. ‘You and your new-found friends. You’ll buy cheap and you’ll sell dear. You’ll overwork them and you’ll underpay them. When they revolt you’ll bring in the army and tell them it’s for their own good. You’ll refuse to educate them and then you’ll say they can’t be trusted because they’re so ignorant. You’ll keep them underfed and ignorant and dirty and then complain that they smell different or that they cannot talk properly. You’ll do to them what you’ve done to working people in this country!’

He paused. I said nothing.

‘It won’t work,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll never be able to keep it up. The native countries will throw you out – oh yes, and your cheap whisky and bad cottons with you. The working people of this country will insist on their rights – a vote, a right to decide who governs them. Then it will be estates like Wideacre which will show people the way ahead. Places like this which have tried sharing the wealth.’

‘It’s my wealth,’ I said stubbornly. ‘It’s not the wealth.’

‘Your land?’ he asked. I nodded.

‘Your people?’ he asked.

I hesitated, uncertain.

‘Your skies? Your rain? Your birds? Your winds? Your sunshine?’

I turned my head away from him in sudden irritation.

‘It doesn’t work,’ he said. ‘Your idea of ownership makes no sense, Sarah. And you should know that. You have lived on the very edge of the society right on the borderlines of ownership. You know that out there the world is full of things which nobody owns.’

I shrugged. ‘It’s because I was out there that I’ll call it my land,’ I said sourly. ‘You don’t know because you’ve never been that poor. You’ve slept soft and ate well all your life, Will Tyacke. Don’t tell me about hardship.’

He nodded at that. ‘I forgot,’ he said spitefully. ‘We are all to be punished for your misfortune.’

Then he turned his horse and led the way across the top of the Downs in a day so sweet and sunny and fine that I was angry with myself for calling up the old feelings of being robbed and abused, even now; when I should be glad that I had won through.

He let it go, he was too kind to harangue me when I looked as I did then: hurt, and angry and confused. Instead he demanded an outrageous long start in a race, claiming, with no cause, that Beau was threatening to cast a shoe and would be slower. Instead he took off like a whirlwind and I had to bend low over Sea’s neck and urge him on to his top gallop to catch Beau before he reached the thorn tree which acted as our winning post at the top of the Downs.

We reached there neck and neck and we pulled up with a shout – Sea just a nose ahead.

‘I think he’s getting faster!’ I said, all breathless with my hair tumbling down and my hat askew.

‘It’s the practice he’s getting,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘I never rode races before.’

‘I wish you could have seen Snow,’ I said, careless for a moment. ‘I wish you could have seen Snow. He is an Arab stallion, an absolutely wonderful white colour and Robert can do anything with him. He can count, and choose coloured flags out of a jar. And he can rear and dance on his hind legs. Robert is teaching him to carry things in his mouth like a dog!’

‘Robert?’ Will said, his voice carefully neutral.

‘A friend I once had,’ I said flatly. Something in my voice told him I would say no more so he merely smiled.

‘I wish I had seen him too,’ he said. ‘I love good horses. But I’ve never seen a grey to match this one. Where did you get him, Sarah? Did you have him from a foal?’

I hesitated then, wary. But the day was too warm, and the song of the larks was beguiling. Far below me I could see the little village of Acre as snug as a toy village on a green carpet. The patchwork of fields, green and yellow with their different crops told of the easy wealth of my estate. The thick clumps of darker green were the trees of the parkland around my home, my house, Wideacre.

I smiled. ‘I won him!’ I said, and as Will listened I told him how I had first seen Sea and how he had been called unridable. How I had persuaded my master to let me ride him (a horse-trader he was, I said), how he had started the book and made hundreds of guineas from the bet. Will laughed and laughed, a great open-hearted bellow, at the thought of me hitching up my housemaid skirts and getting astride Sea. But he went quiet when I told him how Sea reared and plunged at the end and threw me down.

‘You must have had many falls,’ he said gently.

I nodded, smiling at the memory of that day in Salisbury, uncaring about past pains.

‘Is that how you banged your face?’ he asked. ‘Falling off horses? Your nose is a little bit crooked.’

I stroked it, self-conscious. ‘No,’ I said. I was about to tell him of the fall from the trapeze but the thought of it called her, my sister, from the quiet silent place where I had buried her in my mind. I could feel my grief swelling up in my throat, as if I were about to choke on a sorrow too big to live inside my chest.

‘No,’ I said husky, and turned my face away so that he should not see that my mouth was turning downwards in an ugly grimace of pain, and my eyes were going red and hot. I dared not start crying. I knew that if I started I would never stop. A lifetime would not be long enough to have my cry out for the loss of her and the loneliness I was left with.

‘No,’ I said again.

‘We’ll go back over the Common,’ he said suddenly, as if he had forgotten what we had been talking about. ‘There’s some land there which could take trees. I want you to tell me what you think about it. They’re mining a lot of coal quite deep in Kent these days and there’s a good market for small straight timber to prop up the ceilings of the galleries where they dig for coal. We could plant pine trees and they would be ready for cutting in as little as ten years’ time.’

‘Oh,’ I said. My throat was still tight.

‘And you can have a look at the north side of the Common and the Havering estate,’ he went on. He was talking faster, louder than usual, giving me time to pack my heartbreak away again, where no one could see it. ‘You’ve never been around that side, I don’t think, unless you’ve been with Lord Peregrine. D’you ride much with him?’

‘Hardly at all,’ I said huskily, but I had myself back in hand.

Will glanced at me, gave me one of his fleeting sweet smiles. ‘He’ll be off to town soon, I daresay. Or wherever else they go in summer.’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘He’s staying with us for a while longer.’

We were riding side by side in an easy walk, eastwards along the crest of the Downs, following an old drovers’ road which goes all the way into Kent. Will looked sideways at me, his brown eyes questioning.

‘He’s never stayed in the country so long before,’ he said. ‘Why’s he stopping now?’

I gave him a clear look back. I would never trouble to mince words for Will Tyacke. ‘He likes me,’ I said blankly.

‘His ma’d have something to say about that,’ he said.

‘She likes me,’ I said with a little smile.

He saw my smile and scowled at me. ‘Is that what you’re after?’ he asked. ‘With all you could have? Is that what you want?’

I grinned at him, it was funny to see him so vexed. ‘I’m not wedding,’ I said. ‘I’m not the type. I’ll never marry, I don’t burn for a husband, I never have.’

Will nodded, as if what I had said confirmed a thought of his. His satisfied expression rubbed me wrong. ‘But if I were husband-hunting, I can’t think of a better-looking man,’ I said, my deceitful voice clear. ‘He’s as lovely as an angel, and never out of temper. He’s fun to be with, he makes me laugh. And he’s gentle with me, as sweet as a lover.’

Will lost the smile from his face as if I had slapped him. ‘Don’t bring him here as squire,’ he warned me with sudden impatience. ‘We’d none of us stand for Havering ways on this land.’

‘Oh, leave be,’ I said, suddenly irritable myself. ‘I get sick of hearing what you will and won’t have on Wideacre. I spoke so to vex you, I don’t expect to hear threats for something that’ll never happen.’

I dug my heel into Sea’s side and let him have his head along the smooth track so that we raced ahead of Will and Beau and increased our lead until they were just a toy-sized horse and rider far away down a grassy track. I pulled up then and waited for him to come alongside me, my temper blown away with the gallop. And when he thundered up, Beau blowing hard, his grin was rueful. He leaned across and slapped me on the shoulder, like he would another lad to mend a quarrel.

‘I’m done,’ he said with his open, friendly grin. ‘I know you don’t want him. He sets my teeth on edge with his ways, but I’m glad he’s good company for you. I’d begrudge you nothing, Sarah, you know that. I’m sorry I spoke hard to you.’

I smiled back, and then we rode together over the Common, and looked at the place where we might plant pine trees, and then checked the blossom in the apple orchard where the petals were falling like snow, before we rode side by side homeward.

That was the last cross word between us that afternoon, and it was a typical afternoon with laughter and temper. We never bored each other, we never rode in a sullen silence. We might ride quietly through fields, looking all around us, or through hushed woodlands, or stand motionless looking up at the sky where a rare buzzard circled; but we never stayed silent for lack of things to say.

We often flared up; Will had a knack of igniting my temper, and as I knew him better I grew more and more able to fire up at him and then make friends. He was like a traveller, a wagon dweller. You could flare up in utter and absolute anger and ten minutes later it was forgotten. There was nothing to remember. Everyone had said all they wanted to say, the scene was closed. Only in houses, where people have to keep their voices down and to keep smiles pinned on their faces did quarrels rumble on and on in sweet voices and range over every thing.

When we clattered in to the stable yard I remembered my instruction and turned to Will with a considering look on my face.

‘Would you like a drink of ale, Will? It’s a hot day,’ I said.

He was about to accept but he checked and looked more closely at me. ‘You have a voice,’ he said pleasantly, ‘and a look in your green eyes which always warns me when something comes from these new-found airs and graces of yours. I suppose if I say “yes” then you tell me I may go to the kitchen?’

I felt myself flush up.

‘Gracious of you,’ he said with irony. ‘I’ll go to the kitchen for a drink of small beer gladly. You’ll come with me?’

I hesitated, and his face suddenly cleared and he smiled at me with all his heart in his eyes.

‘Oh Sarah!’ he said, and he jumped off his horse and came around to me and lifted me down from the side-saddle. ‘Come and have an ale, Sarah!’ he said his voice warm with the invitation. ‘Come with me into the kitchen and have an ale and stop pretending to be what you’re not.’

I let him hold me, his arms were warm and safe around me, and I suddenly wanted to go with him to the clean kitchen and sit at the scrubbed table and drink a great deep draught of cold ale and watch the cook peeling the vegetables for my dinner.

His hands on my waist were firm, and he kept one hand around my waist as we turned for the kitchen door. I did not pull away from his touch.

‘Sarah!’ the voice was Lady Clara’s, she was standing on the end of the terrace which overlooks the stable yard. I flushed and pulled away from Will. I knew very well she had been watching me.

‘Come in out of the sun, Sarah!’ she said. Her voice was low but it carried clearly to me in the stable yard, the Quality voice which does not have to be raised to give orders and be obeyed. ‘You will get as tanned as a field labourer standing there!’

I moved in unthinking obedience towards her, then I turned back to Will.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You can see I have to go, I’ll ride with you tomorrow.’

His face was as black as thunder. He turned back to his horse and swung himself up high on his back.

‘No,’ he said curtly. ‘Tomorrow I am busy. You may go up to the Downs barn on Thursday if you want to see some shearing. They will start at seven.’

‘Will?’ I called him, but he rode past me without another word. He went so close that Beau’s flicking tail stung me in the face.

‘Will?’ I said again, hardly crediting that the warm smile had gone from his face as quickly as a summer storm blows up, just because I had turned to do Lady Clara’s bidding.

He did not hear me or he chose not to hear me. He hunched low over Beau’s neck and he set him to a canter as soon as he was past the terrace. He went past Lady Clara without a nod or salute. As soon as Beau’s hooves touched the earth of the track towards Wideacre he gave him his head and they went as if all the fiends in hell were after them.

I turned slowly, and went up the terrace steps to Lady Clara. She smiled at me as if she had seen something which had amused her very much and then she drew me into the parlour where there was a jug of iced lemonade waiting with two chilled sugar-rimmed glasses.