Meridon. Philippa Gregory

voice still husky with sleep but I was too dozy to cuff him.

      We put them out on stakes because we were camped by the lane-side and did not want them wandering. Robert himself checked that the blankets were tied safe on Snow and Bluebell to keep them warm. Then we all took our suppers of bread and milk into our bunks, saying not a word to each other. We were all tired and we were used now to saying nothing when we were hard-worked on the road. It was the best and easiest way. We ate in silence, each one alone with private thoughts. Then Robert’s tin mug clanked on the wooden floor as he dropped it down from his bunk empty and said, ‘G’night,’ into the darkness of the wagon. Then I heard Jack’s mug drop, and Dandy’s.

      ‘Sarah?’ Dandy whispered into the darkness, invoking my childhood love for her by use of my secret name.

      ‘Yes?’ I replied.

      ‘You don’t think he’d ever leave us behind, do you?’ she asked.

      I was silent for a moment, thinking. In the wordy, bargaining part of my mind I was very sure that Robert would leave Dandy, would leave me, would leave Jack his own son, if his upward struggle from his poverty demanded it. But there was a part of my mind which gave me shivers down my spine. It had given me my dream of wide, it had taught me that my name was Sarah and reminded me constantly that I belonged at Wide with my family. And that part of my mind was heavy with some kind of warning, like the distant rumble of a summer storm.

      ‘I don’t think he’ll leave us behind,’ I said slowly. A noise like thunder rolled in my inner ears. ‘But there is no telling what he would do,’ I said. I was afraid but I could not have named my fear. ‘There is no knowing, Dandy. Don’t upset him, will you?’

      Dandy sighed. Her fear was gone as soon as she had expressed it to me. ‘I can handle him,’ she said arrogantly. ‘He’s just a man like any other.’

      I heard the slats of her bunk creak as she turned over and went to sleep. I did not sleep, even though I was tired. I lay awake, my hands behind my head, looking with unseeing eyes at the ceiling which was so near my face, pattering softly with the sound of light rain. I lay and listened to the rain on the canvas and I thought it told me in a hundred tiny voices that Dandy was wrong. She could not manage Robert like any man. Indeed she could not manage men: even while she picked their pockets they were getting her cheap. She thought she was managing them; she prided herself on her skill. But they were cheating her – enjoying watching or fingering a pretty gypsy virgin, and cheap, very cheap indeed.

      I shuddered and drew the covers closer up under my chin. The rain pattered softly, whispering like a priest in a Popish confession that there was only one safety for Dandy and me and that was to get away from this life altogether. To get away from the showgrounds and the fairs. To get away from the gawping villages and the street-corner mountebanks. I wanted to be safe with Dandy, safe in a Quality life with clean sheets, and good food on the table, fine dresses and days of leisure. Horses for riding, dogs for hunting, little canaries in cages and nothing to do all day but talk and sew and read and sing.

      I wanted that life for Dandy and me – to save her from the world of the showgrounds and from the life of a whore. And for me: because I did not know what I would become. I could not stay in my boy’s breeches and care for horses for ever. Jack was a warning to me as much as a threat. He might desire me a little, in his vain coquettish way. But other men might desire me more. I could keep my hair cropped and green eyes down, but that would not save me. There was no one in my life who would fight to keep me safe, or who would refuse a good price for me.

      There was only one place where I would be safe. There was only one place where I could take Dandy and give her the things which delighted her and yet keep her from danger – Wide.

      I knew it was my home.

      I knew it was my refuge.

      I had no idea where it was.

      I sighed like an old lady who has reached the end of her musings and found she is no further forward. One day I would find Wide; I was sure of it. One day I would be safe. One day I would be able to make Dandy safe.

      I turned on my side with that thought … and I fell asleep.

       Chapter 5

      I don’t know what I had expected of Warminster but the little grey-stoned main street with the three or four shops and two good inns pleased me. It looked like a place where nothing very much had ever happened or would happen. I looked around the broad main street and imagined the weekly market which would be held there: the stalls selling flour and bread and cheeses, the noise of the beasts from the sheep and cattle market. I was glad we were spending the winter here. It looked like a place where Dandy would find little scope for her talents of coaxing silver out of the pockets of old gentlemen – I was glad of that.

      I leaned forwards to look about me and Robert Gower smiled at my eagerness, said proudly, ‘Nearly there now,’ and took a sharp left-hand turn off the cobbled main street down an unpaved mud lane. I expected a one-room upstairs, two-rooms downstairs cottage with a low roof and paper and rags stuffed in the windows, with a little patch of a kitchen garden at the front, and a field for the horses at the back.

      ‘Gracious!’ Dandy said as the wagon turned in off the track and we found ourselves in a handsome stable yard.

      Robert Gower smiled. ‘Surprised, little Miss Dandy?’ he asked with satisfaction. ‘I thought you would be! All your little nosiness into how much I earn and how much I pay never discovered that I’m a freeholder in a market town! Aye! I have a vote and all!’ he said triumphantly.

      He pulled the wagon up and Dandy and I got down. I went without thinking to the ponies at the back and untied them and brought them round. Robert nodded at me.

      ‘Stabling I’ve got!’ he said. ‘Stabling for every one of them if I wanted them inside all winter eating their heads off and getting fat. They’ll go out in the fields of course, but if I wanted to keep them in I could. Every single one of them. Ten loose boxes I’ve got here! Not bad, is it?’

      ‘No,’ I said, and I spoke the truth. It was a miracle of hard work and careful planning to bring a man from poverty to this secret affluence. And I respected him all the more that he could leave this comfort to travel in the wagon and work every day of the week for a long arduous season.

      A door in the wall of the yard opened and a grey-haired woman came out dressed in her best apron with a matching white mob cap. She dipped Robert a curtsey as if he were Quality.

      ‘Welcome home, sir!’ she said. ‘There’s a fire in the parlour and in your bedroom when you are ready to come in. Shall I send the lad out for your bags?’

      ‘Aye,’ Robert said. ‘And set tea for two in the parlour, Mrs Greaves. These two young women, Meridon and Dandy, will take their tea in the kitchen with you.’

      She smiled pleasantly at me, but I frankly gaped at her. By travelling a few miles down a road Robert Gower had transformed himself into Quality. He and Jack made the transition. Dandy and I were what we always had been: Romany brats.

      Jack saw the change too. He slid off Snow’s back and handed the reins to me as if I were his groom. He passed Bluebell’s leading rein to me as well, so that I was holding the string of ponies and the two big horses.

      ‘Thank you, Meridon,’ he said graciously. ‘The lad will show you where they go,’ and then he walked past me through the doorway to the house. Dandy, still on the step of the wagon, exchanged one long look with me.

      ‘Phew,’ she puffed out, and jumped down from the wagon to take the string of little ponies off me. ‘Welcome to the servants’ quarters, Merry!’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘No wonder Robert Gower didn’t want Jack fancying either one of us. He must think he’s half-way to being gentry!’

      An odd sly look crossed Dandy’s face, but she had her head down to