Meridon
I remember her dimly: pale and fat, and too weary to play with us. She sickened, she had a long and lonely labour. Then she died, crying to Da to bury her in the way of her people, the Rom way with her goods burned the night of her death. He did not know how, he did not care. He burned a few token scraps of clothing and sold the rest. He gave Dandy a comb of hers, and he gave me an old dirty piece of string with two gold clasps at each end. He told me they had once held rose-coloured pearls.
Where she got them Da had never known. She had brought them to him as her dowry and he had sold each one until there was nothing left but the string. One gold latch was engraved with the word I had been told was ‘John’. The other was inscribed ‘Celia’. He would have sold the gold clasps if he had dared. Instead he gave them to me with an odd little grimace.
‘You have the right,’ he said. ‘She always said it was for you, and not for Dandy. I’ll sell the gold clasp for you, and you can keep the string.’
I remember my dirty hand had closed tight over it.
‘I want it,’ I had said.
‘I’ll split the money with you,’ he had said winningly.’ Sixty: forty?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘That’s enough to buy a sugar bun,’ he said as if to clinch the deal. My stomach rumbled but I held firm.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Who are John and Celia?’
He had shrugged, shifty. ‘I don’t know,’ he had said. ‘Maybe folks your ma knew. You have a right to the necklace. She always told me to be sure to give it to you. Now I’ve done that. A promise made to the dead has to be kept. She told me to give it to you and to bid you keep it safe, and to show it when anyone came seeking you. When anyone asked who you were.’
‘Who am I?’ I had demanded instantly.
‘A damned nuisance,’ he said; his good temper gone with his chance to trick the gold clasp from me. ‘One of a pair of brats that I’m saddled with till I can be rid of you both.’
It would not be long now, I thought, sucking on a grass stem for the sweet green taste of it. It would not be long now until he would be able to be rid of us. That conversation had happened a long time ago, but Da had never changed his mind about us. He never acknowledged how much meat Dandy provided for the pot. He never realized that his horses would have been half-wild if I had not had the knack of riding them. Not he. The selfishness which made it easy for him to take on a woman with two small babies at the breast and no way to keep her save a cartload of foolish dreams, now made it easy for him to plan to sell us to the highest bidder. Whatever the terms.
I knew Dandy would end up whoring. Her black brazen eyes twinkled too readily. If we had been with a gypsy family, travelling with kin, there would be an early betrothal and early childbirth for Dandy, and a man to keep her steady. But here there was no one. There was only Da who cared nothing for what she might do. And Zima who laughed lazily and said that Dandy would be street-walking by the time she was sixteen. Only I heard that feckless prophecy with a shudder. And only I swore that it should not happen. I would keep Dandy safe from it.
Not that she feared it. Dandy was vain and affectionate. She thought it would mean fine clothes and dancing and attention from men. She could not wait to be fully grown and she used to insist I inspect the conical shapes of her breasts every time we swam or changed our clothes and tell her if they were not growing exceedingly lovely? Dandy looked at life with lazy laughing eyes and could not believe that things would not go well for her. But I had seen the whores at Southampton, and at Portsmouth. And I had seen the sores on their mouths and the blank looks in their eyes. I would rather Dandy had been a pickpocket all her days – as she was now – than a whore. I would rather Dandy be anything than a whore.
‘It’s just because you hate being touched,’ she said idly to me when the wagon was on the road towards Salisbury for the fair. She was lying on her side in the bunk combing her hair which tumbled like a black shiny waterfall over the side of the bunk. ‘You’re as nervy as one of your wild ponies. I’m the only one you ever let near you, and you won’t even let me plait your hair.’
‘I don’t like it,’ I said inadequately. ‘I can’t stand Da pulling me on to his knee when he’s drunk. Or the way Zima’s baby sucks at my neck or at my face. It gives me the shivers. I just like having space around me. I hate being crowded.’
She nodded. ‘I’m like a cat,’ she said idly. ‘I love being stroked. I don’t even mind Da when he’s gentle. He gave me a halfpenny last night.’
I gave a little muffled grunt of irritation. ‘He never gave me a thing,’ I complained. ‘And he’d never have sold that horse on his own. The farmer only bought it because he saw me ride it. And if it hadn’t been for me Da would never have trained it.’
‘Better hope the farmer’s daughter is a good rider,’ Dandy said with a chuckle in her voice. ‘Will she throw her?’
‘Bound to,’ I said indifferently. ‘If the man hadn’t been an idiot he’d have seen that I was only keeping her steady by luck, and the fact that she was bone-weary.’
‘Well it’s put him in good humour,’ Dandy said. We could hear Da muttering the names of cards to himself over and over, practising palming cards and dealing cards as the caravan jolted on the muddy road. Zima was sitting up front beside him. She had left her baby asleep on Dandy’s bunk, anchored by Dandy’s foot pressing lightly on her fat belly.
‘Maybe he’ll give us a penny for fairings,’ I said without much hope.
Dandy gleamed. ‘I’ll get you a penny,’ she promised. ‘I’ll get us sixpence and we’ll run off all night and buy sweetmeats and see the booths.’
I smiled at the prospect and then rolled over to face the rocking caravan wall. I was still bruised from my falls and as weary as a drunken trooper from the day and night training of the pony. And I had that strange, detached feeling which I often felt when I was going to dream of Wide. We would be a day and a half on the road, and unless Da made me drive the horse there was nothing I had to do. There were hours of journeying, and nothing to do. Dandy might as well comb her hair over and over. And I might as well sleep and doze and daydream of Wide. The caravan would go rocking, rocking, rocking down the muddy lanes and byways and then on the harder high road to Salisbury. And there was nothing to do except look out of the back window at the road narrowing away behind us. Or lie on the bunk and chat to Dandy. Between dinner and nightfall Da would not stop, the jolting creaking caravan would roll onwards. There was nothing for me to do except to wish I was at Wide; and to wonder how I would ever get myself – and Dandy – safely away from Da.
Chapter 2
It was a long, wearisome drive, all the way down the lanes to Salisbury, up the Avon valley with the damp lush fields on either side where brown-backed cows stood knee-high in wet grasses, through Fordingbridge, where the little children were out from dame-school and ran after us and hooted and threw stones.
‘Come ’ere,’ Da said, shuffling a pack of greasy cards as he sat on the driving bench. ‘Come ’ere and watch this.’ And he hitched the ambling horse’s reins over the worn post at the front of the wagon and shuffled the cards before me, cut them, shuffled them again. ‘Did yer see it?’ he would demand. ‘Could yer tell?’
Sometimes I saw the quick secretive movement of his fingers, hidden by the broad palm of his hand, scanning the pack for tell-tale markings. Sometimes not.
He was not a very good cheat. It’s a difficult art, best done with clean hands and dry cards. Da’s sticky little pack did not shuffle well. Often as we ambled down the rutted road I said, ‘That’s a false shuffle,’ or ‘I can see the crimped card, Da.’
He scowled at that and said: ‘You’ve got eyes like a damn buzzard, Merry. Do it yourself if you’re so clever,’ and flicked the pack over to me with an irritable riffle of the cards.
I gathered them up, his hand and mine, and pulled the high cards and the picture cards into my right hand. With a little ‘tssk’ I brushed an imaginary insect of the driver’s bench with the picture cards in a fan in my hand to put a bend in them, ‘abridge’, so that when I re-assembled the pack I could feel the arch even when the pack was all together. I vaguely looked out over the passing fields while I shuffled the deck, pulling the picture cards and the high cards into my left hand and stacking them on top alternately with stock cards so I could deal a picture card to myself and a low card to Da.
‘Saw it!’ Da said with mean satisfaction. ‘Saw you make a bridge, brushing the bench.’
‘Doesn’t count,’ I said, argumentatively. ‘If you were a pigeon for plucking you’d not know that trick. It’s only if you see me stack the deck that it counts. Did you see me stack it? And the false shuffle?’
‘No,’ he said, an unwilling concession. ‘But that’s still a penny you owe me for spotting the bridge. Gimme the cards back.’
I handed them over and he slid them through and through his calloused hands. ‘No point teaching a girl anyway,’ he grumbled. ‘Girls never earn money standing up, only way to make money out of a girl is to get her on her back for her living. Girls are a damned waste.’
I left him to his complaints and went back inside the lumbering wagon where Dandy lay on her bunk combing her black hair and Zima dozed on her bed, the babby sucking and snortling at her breast. I looked away. I went to my own bunk and stretched out my head towards the little window at the back and watched the ribbon of the road spinning away behind us as we followed the twists and turns of the river all the way northward to Salisbury.
Da knew Salisbury well – this was the city where his ale-house business had failed and he had bought the wagon and gone back on the road again. He drove steadily through the crowded streets and Dandy and I stuck our heads out of the back window and pulled faces at errand boys and looked at the bustle and noise of the city. The fair was on the outside of town and Da guided the horse to a field where the wagons were spaced apart as strangers would put them, and there were some good horses cropping the short grass. I looked them over as I led our horse, Jess, from the shafts.
‘Good animals,’ I said to Da. His glance around was sharp.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And a good price we should get for ours.’
I said nothing. Tied on the back of the wagon was a hunter so old and broken-winded that you could hear its roaring breaths from the driving seat, and another of Da’s young ponies, too small to be ridden by anyone heavier than me, and too wild to be managed by any normal child.
‘The hunter will go to a flash young fool,’ he predicted confidently. ‘And that young ’un should go as a young lady’s ride.’
‘He’s a bit wild,’ I said carefully.
‘He’ll sell on his colour,’ Da said certainly, and I could not disagree. He was a wonderful pale grey, a grey almost silver with a sheen like satin on his coat. I had washed him this morning, and been thoroughly wetted and kicked for my pains, but he looked as bright as a unicorn.
‘He’s pretty,’ I conceded. ‘Da, if he sells – can Dandy and me go to the fair and buy her some ribbons, and some stockings?’
Da grunted, but he was not angry. The prospect of the fair and big profits had made him as sweet as he could be – which, God knew, was sour enough.
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll give you some pennies for fairings.’ He slid the tack off Jess’s back and tossed it carelessly up on the step of the caravan. Jess jumped at the noise and stepped quickly sideways, her heavy hoof scraping my bare leg. I swore and rubbed the graze. Da paid no attention to either of us.
‘Only if these horses sell,’ he said. ‘So you’d better start working the young one right away. You can lunge him before your dinner, and then work him all the day. I want you on his back by nightfall. If you can stay on, you can gad off to the fair. Not otherwise.’
The look I gave him was black enough. But I dared do nothing more. I pulled Jess’s halter on and staked her out where she would graze near the caravan and went, surly, to the new grey pony tied on the back of the wagon. ‘I hate you,’ I said under my breath. The caravan tipped as Da went inside. ‘You are mean and a bully and a lazy fool. I hate you and I wish you were dead.’
I took the long whip and the long reins and got behind the grey pony and gently, patiently, tried to teach it two months’ training in one day so that Dandy and me could go to the fair with a penny in our pockets.
I was so deep in the sullens that I hardly noticed a man watching me from one of the other caravans. He was seated on the front step of his wagon, a pipe in his hand, tobacco smoke curling upwards in the still hot air above his head. I was concentrating on getting the grey pony to go in a circle around me. I stood in the centre, keeping the whip low, sometimes touching him to keep him going on, mostly calling to him to keep his speed going steady. Sometimes he went well, round and around me, and then suddenly he would kick out and rear and try to make a bolt for it, dragging me for shuddering strides across the grass until I dug my heels in and pulled him to a standstill and started the whole long process of making him walk in a steady circle again.
I was vaguely aware of being watched. But my attention was all on the little pony – as pretty as a picture and keen-witted. And as unwilling to work in the hot morning sunshine as I was. As angry and resentful as me.
Only when Da had got down from the caravan, pulled on his hat and headed off in the direction of the fair did I stop the pony and let him dip his head down and graze. I slumped down then myself for a break and laid aside the whip and spoke gently to him while he was eating. His ears – which had been back on his head in ill humour ever since we had started – flickered forward at the sound of my voice, and I knew the worst of it was over until I had to give him the shock of my weight on his back.
I stretched out and shut my eyes. Dandy was away to the fair to see what work she and Zima might do. Da was touting for a customer for his old hunter. Zima was clattering pots in the caravan, and her baby was crying with little hope of being attended. I was as solitary as I was ever able to be. I sighed and listened to a lark singing up in the sky above me, and the cropping sound of the pony grazing close to my head.
‘Hey! Littl’un!’ It was a low call from the man on the step of the caravan. I sat up cautiously and shaded my eyes to see him. It was a fine wagon, much bigger than ours and brightly painted. Down the side in swirly red and gold letters it said words I could not read; with a great swirly ‘E’ which I guessed signified horses for there was a wonderful painted horse rearing up before a lady dressed as fine as a queen twirling a whip under its hooves.
The man’s shirt was white, nearly clean. His face was shaved and plump. He was smiling at me, friendly. I was instantly suspicious.
‘That’s thirsty work,’ he said kindly. ‘Would you like a mug of small beer?’
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘You’re working well, I enjoyed watching you,’ he said. He got to his feet and went inside his wagon, his fair head brushing the top of the doorway. He came out with two small pewter mugs of ale, and stepped down carefully from the step, his eyes on the mugs. He came towards me with one outstretched. I got to my feet and eyed him, but I did not put out my hand for the drink though I was parched and longing for the taste of the cool beer on my tongue and throat.
‘What d’you want?’ I asked, my eyes on the mug.
‘Maybe I want to buy the horse,’ he said. ‘Go on, take it. I won’t bite.’
That brought my eyes to his face. ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ I said defiantly. I looked down longingly at the drink again. ‘I’ve no money to buy it,’ I said.
‘It’s for free!’ he said impatiently. ‘Take it, you silly wench.’
‘Thank you,’ I said gruffly and took it from his hand. The liquid was malty on my tongue and went down my throat in a delicious cool stream. I gulped three times and then paused, to make it last the longer.
‘Are you in the horse business?’ he asked.
‘You’d best ask my da,’ I said.
He smiled at my caution and sat down on the grass at my feet. After a little hesitation, I sat too.
‘That’s my wagon,’ he said pointing to the caravan. ‘See that on the side? Robert Gower? That’s me. Robert Gower’s Amazing Equestrian Show! That’s me and my business. All sorts I do. Dancing ponies, fortune-telling ponies, acrobatic horses, trick-riding, cavalry charges. And the story of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin, in costume, and with two stallions.’
I gaped at him. ‘How many horses have you got?’ I asked.
‘Five,’ he said. ‘And the stallion.’
‘I thought you said two stallions,’ I queried.
‘It looks like two,’ he said, unabashed. ‘Richard the Lionheart rides the grey stallion. Then we black him up and he is Saladin’s mighty ebony steed. I black-up too, to be Saladin. So what?’
‘Nothing!’ I said hastily. ‘Are these your horses?’
‘Aye,’ he said gesturing at the ponies I had noticed earlier. ‘These four ponies, and the skewbald which pulls the wagon and works as a rosinback. My boy’s riding the stallion around the town, crying-up the show. We’re giving a show in the next-door field. Two performances at three and seven. Today and Every Day. By Public Demand. For the Duration.’
I said nothing. Many of the words I did not understand. But I recognized the ring of the showground barker.
‘You like horses,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My da buys them, or trades them. We both train them. We often sell children’s ponies. So I trains them.’
‘When will this one be ready?’ Robert Gower nodded to the grey pony.
‘Da wants to sell him this week,’ I said. ‘He’ll be half-broke by then.’
He pursed his lips and whistled soundlessly. ‘That’s fast work,’ he said. ‘You must take a lot of tumbles. Or is it your da who rides them?’
‘It’s me!’ I said indignantly. ‘I’ll lunge him all today and I’ll get on him tonight.’
He nodded and said nothing. I finished the ale and looked at the bottom of the mug. It had gone too quick and I had been distracted from savouring it by talk. I was sorry now.
‘I’d like to see your da,’ he said getting to his feet. ‘Be back for his dinner, will he?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I scrambled to my feet and picked up the whip. ‘I’ll tell him you want to see him. Shall he come over to your wagon?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And when you’ve finished your work you can see my horse show. Admittance Only One Penny. But you may come Complimentary.’
‘I don’t have a penny,’ I said, understanding only that.
‘You can come free,’ he said. ‘Either show.’
‘Thank you,’ I said awkwardly. ‘Sir.’
He nodded as gracious as a lord and went back to his bright wagon. I looked again at the picture on the side. The lady with the whip and the rearing white horse was dressed as fine as a queen. I wondered who she was and if she was perhaps his wife. It would be a fine life to dress as a lady and train horses in a ring before people who paid all that money just to see you. It would be as good as being born Quality. It would be nearly as good as Wide.
‘Hey you!’ he called again, his head stuck out of his caravan door. ‘D’you know how to crack that whip, as well as flick it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. I ought to be able to. I had practised ever since I was able to stand. My da could crack a whip so loud it could scare the birds out of the trees. When I had asked him to teach me he had thrown an old rag down on the ground at my bare feet.
‘Hit that,’ he had said; and that was as much help as he was ready to give. Days I had stood flicking the whip towards the target until I had gradually strengthened my little-girl wrists to aim the whip accurately at the cloth, and now I could crack it high in the air or crack it low. Dandy had once taken a stalk in her mouth and I had taken the seed head off it for a dare. Only once. The next time we tried it I had missed and flicked her in the eye. I would never do it after that. She had screamed with the pain and her eye had swollen up and been black with a bruise for a week. I had been terrified that I had blinded her. Dandy forgot it as soon as her eye healed and wanted me to crack a whip and knock feathers off her hat and straws out of her mouth for pennies on street corners; but I would not.
‘Crack it, then,’ said Robert Gower.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It would scare the pony and he’s done nothing wrong. I’ll crack it for you when I’ve turned him out.’
He nodded at that and a little puff of surprised smoke came from his pipe like a cottage chimney.
‘Good lass,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Meridon,’ I said.
‘Gypsy blood?’ he asked.
‘My mother was Rom,’ I said defensively.
He nodded again and gave me a wink from one of his blue eyes. Then his round fair head ducked back in under the doorway and the caravan door slammed and I was left with the young pony who had to be schooled enough for me to ride him that evening if Dandy and I wanted to go to the fair with a penny each.
I made it by the skin of my teeth. Da’s rule was that I had to get on the horse’s back without him kicking out or running off – and apart from a quiver of fright the grey stood still enough. And then I had to get off again without mishap. By working him all day until we were both weary I had him so accustomed to my nearness that he only threw me once while I was training him to stand while I mounted. He didn’t run off far, which I thought a very good sign. I did not work at all at teaching him to walk forwards or stop. They were not the conditions Da had set for a visit to the fair so I cared nothing for them. All he could do by the end of the day was stand still for the twenty seconds while I mounted, smiled with assumed confidence at Da, and dismounted.
Da grudgingly felt in his pocket and gave a penny to Dandy and a penny to me.
‘I’ve been talking business with that man Gower,’ he said grandly. ‘As a favour to me he says you can both go to his show. I’m going into town to see a man about buying a horse. Be in the wagon when I come back or there’ll be trouble.’
Dandy shot me a warning look to bid me hold my tongue, and said sweetly: ‘Yes, Da.’ We both knew that when he came back he would be so blind drunk that he would not be able to tell if we were there or not. Nor remember in the morning.
Then we fled to the corner of the field where the gate was held half-open by Robert Gower, resplendent in a red jacket and white breeches with black riding boots. A steady stream of people had been going by us all afternoon, paying their pennies to Robert Gower and taking their ease on the grassy slopes waiting for the show to start. Dandy and I were the last to arrive.
‘He’s Quality!’ Dandy gasped, as we dashed across the field. ‘Look at his boots.’
‘And he got dressed in that caravan!’ I said amazed, having never seen anything come out of our caravan brighter than the slatternly glitter of Zima’s best dress over a soiled petticoat grey with inadequate washing.
‘Ah!’ said Robert Gower. ‘Meridon and …?’
‘My sister, Dandy,’ I said.
Robert Gower nodded grandly at us both. ‘Please take a seat,’ he said opening the gate a little wider to allow us inside. ‘Anywhere on the grass but not in front of the benches which is reserved for the Quality and for the Churchmen. By Special Request,’ he added.
Dandy gave him her sweetest smile and spread her ragged skirt out and swept him a curtsey. ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said and sailed past him with her head in the air and her glossy black hair in thick sausage ringlets all down her back.
The field was on a slight slope, levelling off at the bottom, and the audience were seated on the grass on the slope looking down. In front of them were two small benches, empty except for a fat man and his wife who looked like well-to-do farmers but not proper Quality at all. We had come in at the bottom of the hill and had to walk past a large screen painted with strange-looking trees and a violet and red sunset and yellow earth. It was hinged with wings on either side so that it presented a back-cloth to the audience and went some way to hiding the ponies who were tethered behind it. As we walked by, a youth of about seventeen dressed very fine in white breeches and a red silk shirt glanced out from behind the screen and stared at us both. I know I looked furtive, expecting a challenge, but he said nothing and looked us over as if free seats made us his especial property. I looked at Dandy. Her eyes had widened and she was looking straight at him, her face was flushed, her smile confident. She looked at him as boldly as if she were his equal.