Meridon. Philippa Gregory
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she had learned to time herself to the rhythm of the swing. David was calling the beat for her but more and more often she was bringing her legs down at exactly the right moment and the swing was rising, gaining height, rather than trailing to a standstill as it had done on our first day.
They were glad enough to come back to the house for breakfast. David exclaimed over my black eye but it had opened enough for me to see clearly and I had taken enough knocks in my girlhood to rid me of vanity about a few bruises.
‘When we were chavvies I don’t think I ever saw Merry without a black eye,’ Dandy said, spreading Mrs Greaves’ home-made butter on a hunk of fresh-baked bread. ‘If she didn’t come off one of the horses then our da would clip her round the ear and miss. We didn’t know her eyes were green-coloured until she was twelve!’
David looked at me as if he did not know whether to laugh or be sorry for me.
‘It didn’t matter,’ I said. They were hurts from long ago, I would not let the aches and pains of my childhood cast a shadow over my life now. Not when I could feel myself opening, like a sticky bud on a chestnut tree in April.
‘Will you be too sore to train today?’ David asked me.
‘I’ll try,’ I said. ‘Nothing was broken, I was just bruised. I reckon I’ll be all right to work.’
Robert pushed his clean plate away from him. ‘If your face starts throbbing or your head aches, you stop,’ he said. Dandy and Jack looked at him in surprise. Mrs Greaves, at the stove, stayed very still, her head turned away. ‘I’ve seen some nasty after-effects of head injuries,’ he said to David, who nodded. ‘If she seems sleepy or in pain you’re to send her in to Mrs Greaves.’
Mrs Greaves turned from the stove and wiped her hands on her working apron, her face inscrutable.
‘If Meridon comes in ill you take care of her, ma’am,’ he said to her. ‘Put her on the sofa in the parlour where you can keep an eye on her.’ She nodded. Dandy was frozen, a piece of bread half-way to her mouth.
‘Meridon to come into the parlour?’ Dandy demanded tactlessly.
A flicker of irritation crossed Robert’s face. ‘Why not?’ he said suddenly. ‘The only reason you two girls are housed in the stable yard is because I thought you would like your own little place, and it is easier for you to mind the horses. The two of you are welcome in the house, aye, and in the parlour too if you wish.’
I flushed scarlet at Dandy’s slip, and at Jack’s open-mouthed stare.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said flatly. ‘I’m well enough to work and I won’t need to rest. In any case, I’d not want to sit in the parlour.’
Robert pushed his chair back from the table and it scraped on the stone-flagged floor. ‘A lot of to-do about nothing,’ he said gruffly and went out of the kitchen. David got to his feet as well.
‘Half an hour’s rest,’ he said to the three of us. ‘I’d like to see this famous horse of yours, Meridon.’
I smiled at that and led all of them, Mrs Greaves as well, out to the stable yard to see my horse, my very own horse, in daylight.
He was lovely. In daylight, in a familiar stable yard, he was even lovelier than I had remembered him. His neck was arched high, as if there were Arab blood in him. His coat was a dark grey, shading to pewter on his hind legs. His mane and tail were the purest of white and silver, down his grey face there was a pale white blaze, just discernible. And four white socks on his long legs. He whickered when he heard my step and came out of the stable with just a halter on, as gently as if he had never thrown and rolled on a rider in his life. He threw up his head and sidled when he saw the others and I called:
‘Stand back, especially you Jack and David. He doesn’t like men!’
‘He’ll suit Meridon, then,’ said Dandy to Jack and he smiled and nodded.
Sea stood quiet enough then, and I held his head collar and smoothed his neck and whispered to him to be still, and not to be frightened, for no one would ever hurt him or shout at him again. I found I was whispering endearments, phrases of love, telling him how beautiful he was – quite the most beautiful horse in the world! And that he should be with me for ever and ever. That I had won him in Robert’s bet, but that in truth we had found each other and that we would never part again. Then I led him back down through the path at the side of the garden to the field and turned him out with the others to graze.
‘You’ll be wanting time off to train him,’ David said wryly, watching my rapt face as Sea stretched his long neck and trotted with proud long strides around the field.
‘Robert wanted me to work the other horses anyway,’ I said. ‘I was never to be your full-time pupil.’
David nodded. ‘And you’ve started your little savings fund,’ he said. ‘You’ll be a lady yet, Meridon.’
I was about to smile and turn off the remark when I suddenly remembered the gypsy at the street corner in Salisbury, just before I saw Sea, just before the bet and the ride and the fall. She had said I would get my home, my gentry home. She said that my mother and her mother would lead me home, and that I would be more at home there than either of them. I would indeed be a lady, I would make my way into the Quality. David saw my suddenly absorbed expression and touched me on the shoulder. I did not flinch at his touch.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ he said.
‘I’ll not rob you,’ I replied at once. ‘I was thinking nothing which was worth sharing.’
‘Then I’ll interrupt your thoughts with some work,’ he said briskly and raised his voice so that the other two could hear: ‘Come on you two! A race back to the barn to warm you up. One, two, three, and away!’
That day’s training was the pattern for the following days of that week, and for the week after. Every day we worked, running, exercising, heaving ourselves up on the bar, pushing ourselves up from the floor using just our hands. Every day we grew stronger, able to run further, to do more of the exercises. Every day we ached a little less. I had learned the knack of swinging on the practice trapeze: I could build the swing higher and higher until it felt like flying. As the swing grew the swooping frightened feeling inside me grew, but I learned to almost enjoy that sudden down-rush with the air in my face and my muscles working to keep the swing moving, to build the speed and the momentum. Every day, though for some days I truly did not notice, David had raised the rigging on the trapeze so that it hung higher and higher from the floor until the only way to mount it was to go up the ladder at the side of the barn and swoop down with it.
Then one day, in the third week, while Dandy and Jack were practising swinging on the high trapeze in the roof of the barn, David called me off the practice trapeze.
I dropped to the ground and waited. I was scarcely out of breath at all now.
‘I want you to try going up the ladder today,’ he said gently. ‘Not to swing if you don’t want to, Meridon. I promised you I’d never force you, and I mean it. But for you to see if you have your nerve for heights now you are so confident on the practice trapeze. Besides, when you hang straight from the flying trapeze you are about the height from the catch-net as you are now from the floor. It’s just as safe, Meridon. There’s nothing to fear.’
I looked from his persuasive blue eyes up to the pedestal rigged at the roof of the barn, and at Dandy’s casual confident swing on the trapeze. She and Jack were practising doing tricks into the net. As I watched, uncertain if I could face the ladder up to the rocking pedestal, Dandy launched herself off the pedestal on the trapeze and flung herself off it in a ball. She somersaulted once and fell into the net on to her back, and bounced up smiling.
‘I’ll try,’ I said drawing a deep breath. ‘I’ll go up there at least.’
‘Good girl,’ David said warmly. He patted my back and called to Dandy. ‘Go up the ladder behind your sister. She’s going to see the view from the top.’ To Jack he snapped his