Meridon. Philippa Gregory

courting. This place is where you are going to learn to be artistes. Think of it as a church, think of it as a royal court. But never think of it as an ordinary place. It has to be magic.’

      Robert went quietly outside and knocked the hot ember out of his pipe into the wet grass. He said nothing. I remembered the time he had told Jack and me that we were never never to fight inside the ring. Now the barn was to be half sacred! I shrugged. It was Robert’s money. If he wanted to build a barn where he was not allowed to smoke his pipe and pay a man to give him orders it was his affair. He saw my eyes on him and gave me a rueful smile.

      Dandy and Jack were spellbound. They were awed by the idea of the practice barn becoming a special place where they would become special people.

      ‘It is magic,’ David went on, the lilt in his voice more pronounced. ‘Because here you are going to become artists – people who can make beauty, like poets or painters or musicians.’

      He turned abruptly to Robert. ‘Is there no heating?’ he asked.

      Robert looked surprised. No,’ he said. ‘I know you had a stove on your drawing but I thought you’d all be warm enough, working in here.’

      David shook his head. ‘You can’t keep the sinews of the body warm by working them,’ he said. ‘They get cold and then they strain and even snap. Then you can’t work for weeks while they heal. It’s a false economy not to heat the building. I won’t work without a stove.’

      Robert nodded. ‘I was thinking of how we work with the horses,’ he said. ‘I always get hot enough working with them. But I’ll have one put in this afternoon. Can you use the building until then?’

      ‘We can make a start,’ David said grandly. He looked at Dandy. ‘Do you have some breeches like your sister?’ he asked.

      Dandy’s face was appalled. ‘I’m to wear a short skirt!’ she said. ‘Robert promised! I’m not to be in breeches!’

      David turned to Robert, smiling. ‘A short skirt?’ he asked.

      Robert nodded. ‘In pink,’ he said. ‘A little ruffled skirt with shiny buttons, and a loose matching shirt at the top.’

      ‘She’d be safer with bare arms,’ David said. ‘Easier to catch.’

      Robert puffed on the cold stem of his pipe. ‘Bare arms and a naked neck with a little stomacher top, and a skirt above her knees?’ he asked. ‘They’d have the Justices on me!’

      David laughed. ‘You’d make your fortune first!’ he said. ‘If the lass would do it!’

      Robert pointed the stem of his pipe at Dandy. ‘She’d do it stark naked given half a chance, wouldn’t you Dandy?’

      Dandy lowered her black eyes so that all one could see was the sweep of dark eyelashes on her pink cheek. ‘I don’t mind wearing a skirt and a little bodice top,’ she said demurely.

      ‘Good,’ David said. ‘But you must practise in breeches and a warm smock with short sleeves.’

      ‘Go to the house, Dandy,’ Robert ordered. ‘Mrs Greaves will fit you with something from Jack or William. Make haste now.’ He looked at Jack and me wearing our riding breeches and our stable smocks. ‘These two all right?’

      ‘Yes,’ David said.

      ‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Robert Gower said reluctantly. ‘You’ll remember our agreement is that they can spring to the trapeze and swing out to Jack and back to their platform inside two months.’

      ‘I remember,’ David said steadily. ‘And you will remember my terms.’

      ‘Daily payments in coin,’ Robert concurred. ‘If you work till eleven you can all take breakfast in the kitchen. Then an afternoon session until dinner in the kitchen at four.’

      ‘Then they’ll need to rest,’ David said firmly.

      Robert nodded. ‘The girls can make their costumes then,’ he said. ‘But tomorrow I promised Merry she could come to the horse fair with me.’

      David nodded and waited for Robert to go out and close the barn door behind him. Then he looked at Jack and me.

      ‘Better get to work,’ he said.

       Chapter 7

      In my apprehensive fright of the ropes and the swings and the high vaulting roof of the barn I had been certain that David would insist we should climb right to the top on that very first morning. But he did not. Even before Dandy reappeared from the house looking sulky and beautiful in a pair of baggy homespun breeches belonging to William and a linen shirt of Jack’s, David had ordered Jack and me to trot and then sprint around the barn on five increasingly fast circuits.

      Then he had us running backwards and dancing on the spot until our faces were flushed and we were all panting. Dandy’s careful coronet came down and she twisted it carelessly into a bun on the nape of her neck. But the three of us were as fit as working ponies. Jack and I had been training hard every night on the bareback act and were as quick and as supple as greyhounds. And for all that Dandy would sneak off to doze in the sun at every opportunity, she had been raised as a travelling child and to walk twenty or thirty miles in a day was no hardship to her – and to swim races at the end of it.

      ‘You’ll do,’ David himself was puffing as we dropped to the wood shavings for our first rest. ‘I was afraid that you would all be plump and lazy, but you are all well muscled and you’ve got plenty of wind.’

      ‘When do we go up?’ Dandy demanded.

      ‘Any time you like,’ he said carelessly. ‘I’ll check the rigging while you go to your breakfast and then you can go up and down whenever you wish. I’ll show you how to drop into the net, and once you know that you can come to no harm.’

      ‘I don’t know I can,’ I said. I was keeping my voice steady but the flutter of fear in my belly kept snatching my breath away.

      David smiled at me, his enormous moustaches still curly on his sweaty cheeks.

      ‘I know you are afraid,’ he said reassuringly. ‘I understand that. I have been afraid too. You will work at the speed you wish. You’ve the build for it, and the body, I should think. But this is something you can only do if your heart is in it. I’d not be party to forcing anyone up a ladder.’

      ‘How did you come into it?’ Jack asked.

      David smiled. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said lazily. ‘The press-gang snatched me from my home at Newport and I was pressed on board a man-of-war – big it was, frightening for a country lad. I jumped ship as soon as I could, Portugal actually, Lisbon, and lived rough for a while. Then I joined a travelling show of contortionists. I didn’t have the body for that, but they put me at the bottom of the heap and I could hold the rest of them up. Then I saw an act up high on Roman Rings and I set my heart on it.’ He twirled his moustache. ‘It made me,’ he said simply. ‘I apprenticed myself to the man I saw doing it, and he taught me. Then we used a trapeze instead of the rings which meant we could swing out and not just hang like other performers were doing. First I was the only one. But then his young son started to learn and we found he could swing out and reach for me, and I could catch him and swing him back to his trapeze. It was a good act.’

      He paused. I saw his eyes narrow with grief at some memory. I felt my belly clench with fear.

      ‘What happened?’ I asked.

      ‘The lad fell,’ he said simply. ‘He fell and broke his neck and died.’

      Nobody said anything for a moment.

      ‘Merry, you’re green,’ Jack said. ‘Are you going to be sick?’

      I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Go on, David.