Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (23 page)

I nodded at Rea’s worried face. He seemed to be wavering, the whole world around me seemed to be melting and undulating.

‘You’re sweating and shivering,’ he said. ‘And you look awful white. Are you ill, Meridon?’

I heard the crowd rustle as Dandy and Katie changed places on the pedestal board and Dandy took the trapeze in her hands. I heard the little gasp as Dandy made her characteristic confident little leap downwards, and I heard Jack wait as she built-up her swing. Then I heard him call, ‘Pret!’ and I knew it would be Dandy he was watching now, Dandy he was reaching out for. Dandy with her legs hooked over the trapeze bar so that she could reach out for him with her hands. That little extra distance which made the trick that little extra bit more difficult. She would be stretching towards him now with her green ribbons flying away from her face and that triumphant dazzling smile on her face which Jack would unerringly recognize as Dandy’s delight that she had gulled him and trapped him, and defeated him and his father.

‘You going to faint?’ Rea asked urgently. ‘Can you hear me, Meridon?’

Jack yelled, ‘Hup!’ and I heard something in his voice which I had never heard before.

The sinking feeling in my head snapped, the planks of the door became suddenly clear. I scrabbled against them in sudden urgency.

‘Let me in!’ I shouted.

The door gave way before me, I looked up; for the first time, I looked up. I saw their hands touch, I saw Jack’s safe hard grip, then I saw him swing her, with the speed of her swing and all his own whipcord strength, he swung her out, and flung her
towards the high flint and mortar wall at the back of the barn. And as she flew towards it, her hands uselessly plucking at air, she screamed a long terrified scream which I heard, and recognized at once, as if I had been waiting to hear it for months. Then there was an awful thump as she smashed head-first into the wall and dropped like a nestling to the ground, and an echo of the scream from everyone in the crowd and a hundred voices shouting.

I went in like a bolting horse. They were all on their feet, all crowding round, mobbing her on the ground by the back wall. I went through the crowd like a weasel through a henhouse. I felt someone brush me and I knocked them off their feet with my shoulders as I ran through them. I could see the edge of Dandy’s pink skirt and her pale bare leg twisted around.

Behind me Robert was yelling. ‘Get back! Get away! Give the lass air! Is there a surgeon here? Or a barber? Anyone?’

I pushed a little child to one side and heard him fall and whimper and then I was at her side.

Everything was very slow and quiet then.

I put my hand to the tumbled mass of black hair and the green and gilt ribbons and I gathered her up to me. Her shoulders were still warm and sweaty, but her head lolled back, her neck was broken. The top of her head was a mess of blood, but it was not pumping out. Her eyes stared unseeingly at the wall behind her, they were rolled back in her head so the whites showed. Her face was frozen in a grimace of terror, the scream still caught in her throat.

I laid her down, gently back down on the ground and pulled the short skirt down over her bare legs. She was lying all twisted, her head and shoulders one way, her legs and hips the other, so her back was broken as well as her neck. There was a dribble of blood at the corner of her gaping mouth but that was all. She looked like a precious china doll smashed by a feckless child.

She was dead, of course. She was the deadest thing I had ever seen. Dandy, my beloved, scheming, brilliant sister, was far far away – if she was anywhere at all.

I looked up. Jack was struggling to undo his belt, I guessed his hands were shaking so much that he could not hold the buckle. He looked down at me from the catcher frame and he met my gaze. His mouth was half open as if he was appalled at what he had done. As if he could not believe what he had done. I nodded slowly to him, my eyes blank. It was unbelievable, but none the less he had done it.

I stood up.

The crowd all around me had fallen back. I saw their bright faces and their mouths moving but I could not hear anything.

Rea was beside me. I turned to him and my voice was steady.

‘You’ll see she’s buried aright,’ I said. ‘In the manner of our people.’

He nodded, his face yellow with shock.

‘Her clothes burned, her plate smashed, her goods buried with her,’ I said.

He nodded.

‘Not the wagon,’ I said. ‘The wagon is Robert’s. But all the things she wore, and her bedding, and her blankets.’

He nodded.

‘And her comb,’ I said. ‘Her ribbons. Her little pillow.’

I turned away from the crumpled body, and Rea standing beside it.

I went two steps and Robert held out his arms to me. I ignored him as if I had never loved him, nor anyone in all my life. I turned back to Rea.

‘No one but you may touch her,’ I said. But then I was uncertain. ‘Is that right Rea? Is that the way of our people? I don’t know how it is done.’

Rea’s lips were trembling. ‘It shall be done in our way,’ he said.

I nodded and I walked under the catcher frame, where Jack’s hands were shaking so hard he could not undo his belt. I did not look up again. I walked past Robert and felt his hand brush my shoulder and I shrugged it off without looking at him. I went through the barn door where I had stood like a fool when Dandy went laughing to her death, and I went out to where the horses were tethered.

I heaved the saddle on to Sea’s back, and he dipped his head for the bridle. I could see the shine on the metal girth buckles and the bit, but I could not hear them chink when they rattled. I tightened the girth and led him across the grass to our wagon.

Her bedding still smelled of her. A warm smell like corn-flowers, like hay. The wagon was scattered with her clothes, her ribbons, her hairpins, a mess of powder and an empty bottle of perfume.

I stripped off my trapeze costume and I pulled the ribbons out of my hair. It tumbled down in a sweep of copper curls and I pushed it back. I pulled on my shirt and my working smock and my riding breeches. I had a pair of old boots of Jack’s and I pulled them on without a shiver. I reached under my mattress and pulled out my purse of ten guineas. I laid one on Katie’s pillow. She had kept her part of the bargain and left Dandy a free hand with Jack. She had earned her coin. I slipped the purse inside my breeches and tied the string to my belt. Then I reached into the hole in my mattress and took out the string with the two gold clasps. I fastened it around my neck and tucked it under my shirt, and I shrugged myself into an old worsted jacket which once had belonged to Robert and was warm and bulky. There was a flat cap stuffed in the pocket; I piled my hair into it and pulled it on my head.

Katie was at the door of the wagon.

‘Robert sent me,’ she said breathless. ‘He says you’re to go to his wagon and lie down until he can come to you. He’s getting the crowd out of the barn.’ She hesitated. ‘Rea’s watching over Dandy,’ she said. ‘He’s covered her up with her cape.’

She gave a little frightened sob and put out her hands to me for comfort.

I looked at her curiously. I couldn’t for the life of me see what she had to cry about.

I went past her, careful that she should not touch me, and stood for a moment on the step of the wagon. Sea raised his head at the sight of me and I unhitched his reins.

‘What are you doing?’ Katie said anxiously. ‘Robert said you were to…’

She tailed off into silence as I jumped up into the saddle.

‘Meridon…’ she said.

I looked at her and my face was like a frozen stone.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

I turned Sea’s head and rode towards the edge of the field. People made way for me, their faces alight with interest, watching me avidly, recognizing me even out of costume. They had enjoyed a fine show tonight. The best we had ever done. Certainly the most exciting. It is not every day you see a girl flung across a barn into a flint wall. They should have paid extra.

They parted either side of me as I rode towards the gate. Sea paused, looked down the road. South was towards the beach where we had ridden together that morning and I had tasted the salt on her hair when I had kissed her. I turned Sea’s head north and his unshod feet sounded soft on the mud of the lane. To our left the sun was sinking in a haze of pale saffron and apple-blossom clouds. Sea walked quietly, I rode him on a loose rein.

I did not sob. I did not even weep inwardly. I rode carefully past the people walking back to their homes and talking in high excited voices about the accident and what they had seen! and her face! and that awful scream! I rode past them in silence and I kept Sea headed north until we were through the little village and heading for the road towards London. Still heading north, with Sea’s hooves making little squelchy noises in the ruts but quiet on the dried mud. North while the sun went lower and lower in the sky and the evening birds started to trill in the hedges which bordered the darkening lane. North, and I did not sob, or rage. I scarcely took breath.

I reached the road which plies along the line of the coast as it was growing dusky with the early grey twilight of spring. Sea turned to the right and I let him go where he would. It meant we were travelling east and I was glad of it for the sunset was now behind me. I did not want to ride into the setting sun, the colour of it hurt my eyes and made them sting as if I were going to cry. I knew I was not going to cry. I knew I would never cry again. The little isolated corner of affection which had been my love for Dandy had gone as swiftly and completely as she had gone. I did not expect to love anyone, ever again. I did not wish it.

A stage-coach went past us going in the opposite direction towards Chichester and the guard on the back blew his horn merrily as he saw me. I turned the collar of the jacket up against the cooler evening air. It was not cold, but I was icy inside. The jacket could not warm me. I saw my hands were trembling slightly on the reins and I looked at them carefully until they were steady. To our left, low on the horizon, a single pinprick of light shone very white and clear in the evening sky. I stared at it, and it seemed to stare back at me.

It mattered very little which way I took. It suited my whim to turn Sea’s head towards the star which looked as icy and as cold as I felt inside. As it grew darker I saw that the lane was climbing, up to the crest of a hill. There was a sweet light singing all around us. Sea walked softly, his head up, snuffing at the air as if the chalk grass smelled good to him. It was quiet and dusky and he was unafraid, though his ears raked our surroundings for sounds of danger. I gave a solitary little chuckle at the thought of fear. Fear of living, fear of falling, fear of dying.

All gone.

I had achieved a state of absolute confidence. At last I had
nothing left to lose, and the little girl who had looked at the ceiling above her bunk and known herself to have only one good thing in her life was now a woman with nothing. I felt gutted of love, of life, of tenderness. I felt clear and simple. I was as clean and cold as a freezing stream or like a chalk rock face with a sheen of ice on it.

The road was heavily wooded; under the trees the blackness of the evening was thick and blinding. Sea walked as if he were balancing on eggshells, his ears went forward and back, his head turned so that he could look everywhere. I slumped in the saddle as if I were a squire who had been hunting all day. I was bone weary. I even dozed as we went quietly up that lane; Sea’s hooves made no sound on the pine needles and the mud. I only wakened when we came out from under the trees at the crest of the hill and found we were in the light of the rising half-moon.

I rubbed my eyes. We had climbed to a great rolling sweep of hills which had risen softly up from the coast. Now we were clear of the dark pine and budding beech trees the grass was short and sweet, cropped by sheep. Three or four of them scuttered out of our way as we came out of the wood. Little lambs scampering behind, butting at their mothers in their nervousness.

I looked back. Behind me the moonlit sea glowed like silver. The little islands of mud showed black in the darkness like a model of a landscape, not the real thing. I could see the fist of the land around the village of Selsey as it stuck out into the sea, and further to the west were other sludgy promontories of land, little points where we had halted in our slow progress to this damned county where Dandy had gone up to fly once too often, and I had been too slow and too great a fool to stop her. Sea turned his grey head to look down the road we had climbed and blew out through his nostrils as if he were impressed at the distance we had already travelled. I did not know where he thought he was going. I did not know where I thought I was going. I had not the energy or the ability to think of it. Due north seemed a good enough direction, and this lane was pleasant riding and the countryside quiet. I clicked softly to him and he turned his head and walked on.

We went along the crest of the hill in a beautiful clear sweep and then the track started to drop down towards the valley on the other side. It looped and turned in hairpin bends in an effort to make the track easier for coach horses. I thought one might get a light coach up the hill in summer, but nothing too heavy. Nothing in winter at all. I guessed the road would be a quagmire of pale chalky mud by then. Something in the idea of that colour of pale chalky mud made my mind stop still, and made me think where I had seen thick creamy mud before. But it was gone before I had time to catch at it.

Sea walked faster as we started down the steeper slopes, then he tossed his head a bit and tried a few paces of a trot, his back legs slipping and sliding. I steadied him with a touch on the reins. I could not be troubled to tighten the reins and rise for a trot. I could not be bothered with his change of pace. He slackened off when he felt my unwillingness and walked steadily in the moonlight again.

I thought it must be between seven and eight of the clock, but I could not be sure. It did not matter. If I was anxious to see the time there would be a village church with a steeple and a clock soon enough, even on this deserted road. I was not hungry. I was exhausted with fatigue but I did not crave sleep. It did not matter to me if this night was just begun, or half done, or if it never ended at all. I slouched in the saddle and let Sea make his own way carefully down the hill, under the shadows of trees again, the reins loose on his neck.

We came to a village at the foot of the hill. A pretty little place with a stream running alongside a bigger broader lane, and several of the cottages had little bridges over the water so that the householders could walk dry-shod to the road even when the stream was in flood. There were candles set at some of the windows to light the way home for weary men who had been out working late in the fields. I wondered idly what farm workers found to do at this time of year, perhaps ploughing? or planting? I did not know, I had never needed to know. I thought then, as Sea stepped like a ghost of a horse through the evening village, that there was precious little I did know about ordinary life;
about life for people who did not dress up and dance on horseback. I thought then that I would have served Dandy a good deal better if I had worked on my skill at training horses for farmers and gentry rather than letting us be bound on the wheel of the show season. And now broken by that wheel, too.

The road went uphill out of the village and Sea brightened his pace and I let him trot uphill. If it had been light I guessed there would have been a great sweep of country on our left. I could smell the fresh greenness of it, and the hint of meadow flowers closing their little faces for the night. On our right was the high shoulder of the hill. The hill of the South Downs, I thought. I considered for a moment where I was.

I could see a map in my mind’s eye now. I was heading north from Selsey, I had skirted the town of Chichester, and this road must surely be the London road. That accounted for the firmness of the going, and the wideness of the track which was broad enough for two passing carriages for much of the way. That reminded me to keep a careful look-out ahead of me for toll cottages. I did not want to waste my money paying for use of the road when a little ride cross-country would save me a penny. I watched out too for coaches before or behind me. I did not want to speak to anyone, I did not even want them to look on my face. I had a silly belief that my face was so set and so stony that anyone looking into my eyes would cry for me. That they would see at once that I was a dead person looking out of a live face. That there was no one behind my eyes and my mouth and my face at all. I practised a smile into the darkness and found that my lips could curve and my face rise with no difficulty and with no difference to the weight of ice inside me. I even tried a little laugh, alone into the darkness of the fields on the far side of the village. It sounded eerie, and Sea’s ears went back flat and he increased his pace.

I checked him. I was so tired I did not think I could bear the jolting of his trot, and I felt as if I would never canter again. I could hardly remember the girl who used to vault on to the back of a cantering horse and dance with a hoop and a skipping rope. She seemed like a hopeful little child to me now, and I wondered
idly why they had worked her so hard. Her and her poor little sister…I broke off my thoughts. It was odd. I was speaking and feeling as if I were an old woman. An old woman tired and ready for death.

The girl who had played in the sea this morning was a lifetime away from me now. I thought that I was more like the woman who had seen the wagon go away from her in that awful dream of the storm, and known that she would never see her baby again. The woman who had called after the wagon, ‘Her name is Sarah…’ I felt like that woman now. I felt like any woman feels when she has lost the love and the saviour of her life. Old. Sick at heart. Ready for her own death.

I sighed and Sea took it as a signal and broke once more into a trot which brought us over the top of the hill and down to the village which lay at its foot on the spring line.

It was getting later and the lights were doused in this hamlet. Sea went by in silence, not one man saw us pass. Only a little child looking from an upstairs window at the moon saw me go by. He raised his hand like a salute and his eyes sought mine, and he smiled a friendly, open little smile. I neither smiled nor waved. I hardly saw him, and I felt nothing when I saw his mouth turn down in disappointment that the stranger on the horse had not acknowledged him. I did not care. He would be worse disappointed than that before tomorrow was out. And I did not wish to be kindly to little children. No one had ever had a kind word for me when I was his age. No one had a kind word thereafter. Except she was kind to me. In her own light way, she had loved me. But that was little comfort now.

Quite the contrary.

It was a scattered little village this one. A public house with a lantern in the window the last building along the road, a little fir tree nailed above the door. I thought idly that perhaps I should stop and go in and eat and take a drink. I thought wearily of a bed and a warm fire. But Sea kept on walking and I did not care very much that I was cold and tired and hungry. Indeed I did not care at all. Sea’s head pointed due north and he scanned the road ahead of us with his shifting ears. I wondered idly what he heard.

What I could hear, what sung in my ears so that I shook my head irritably, was a high singing noise. Too high for human voices, too sweet for a squeaking hinge. It had started as soon as I had got into the saddle this afternoon, at Selsey. And it was calling me louder and clearer all along the road. I stuck my finger in one ear and then the other. I could not block it out and I could not clear it. I shrugged. It was all one with the clamminess of my skin and the cold inside my belly. The way my hands trembled when I did not remember to watch them and keep them steady. A singing in the air made little difference either way.

Sea broke into a trot again and I sat down in the saddle and let him go what speed he wished. I was far away in my thoughts. I was thinking of a summer years and years ago when she and I had been little grimy urchins and we had gone scrumping for apples in a high-walled orchard. I had been quite unable to face the thought of climbing up the wall or jumping down the other side and in the end had squeezed through a fence which had ripped half of my ragged dress off me. She had laughed at my scratched face. ‘I don’t mind being high,’ she had said.

I wished now that I had made her fear heights as I do, that I had somehow insisted that she always stay on ground level. That I had turned Robert against the idea of the trapeze as soon as he mentioned it. That I been warned by the barn owl. That I had remembered in time that the one unlucky colour in shows is always green.

Sea suddenly wheeled sharply to the right and nearly threw me off sideways. I clutched at his neck and stared around me. For some reason, clear only to his horse’s brain, he had turned off the main track and was heading down a little lane scarcely wider than a hay wagon. I stopped and thought to turn his head back towards the main road. But he was stubborn and I was too weary to be able to bend him to my will. Besides, it mattered so little.

I listened. I could hear the ripple of a river ahead of us in the darkness and I thought that perhaps he was thirsty and it was the noise of the clear water which was drawing him away from
the road and down this little cart track. I let him go where he would, obeying my training which said that the horses must be fed and the horses must be watered. Whether you are hungry or thirsty or no. Whether you have forgotten what it feels like to want water or food. Still the horses have to be fed and watered.

He went easily down the dark slope towards the ford where I could hear the river rippling. The singing in my head was louder, clearer. It was almost as if it were coming from the river. The night-time air blew gently down the valley and set the trees sighing with the smell of new grass. There were tall pale flowers at the riverside and they glowed in the moonlight. Sea went out into mid-river and bent his proud head and drank. The endearing sound of the sweet water sucked in by his soft lips echoed loud around the little valley. I sat still on his back and felt the cool night air caress my cheeks, as soft a touch as a lover’s hand. An owl called softly to its mate one side of the river then the other, and as I sat there in silence, in the silvery moonlight, a nightingale began to sing a few clear notes which rippled like the river and were as clear as the singing in my head.

The trees stood back a little from the river and the banks were grassy with great clumps of primroses and sweet-scented violets. There were silver birches in a clump near a boggy patch of ground and their stiff catkins pointed spiky at the silvery sky. Sea blew out softly and when he raised his head from drinking it was so quiet that I could hear the water drip from his chin. Down river, the banks overhung the deep curves of water and there were dark standing pools where I thought one would find trout and maybe even salmon. Sea raised his head again, then lumbered awkwardly on the sandy river bed to the far side of the bank. I thought we should really turn back to the main road, but I was too desolate to think clearly about inns and stabling and a bed for the night. I let him have his head and he went smoothly and steadily on down the little track as confident as if he were going home, home to a warm stable for the night.