Meridon. Philippa Gregory

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ intimate undertone as we tied the ponies in a string at the back of the wagon. Da’s little pony had settled down with the others and went obediently into line.

      ‘I feel idle today,’ I confessed, not looking up from the halter I was knotting.

      His warm hand came down over my fingers as I tied the rope, and I looked up quickly to see his face, saturnine in the twilight.

      ‘What do you dream of in your bunk, Meridon?’ he asked softly. ‘When you lie in your bunk and daydream and the ceiling is rocking above you. What d’you dream of then? Do you think of a lover who will take off your clothes, strip those silly boy’s breeches off you, and kiss you and tell you that you are beautiful? Don’t you dream of a clean bed in a warm room and me, lying in bed beside you? Is that what you think of?’

      I left my hand under his warm clasp and I met his eyes with my steady green gaze.

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘I dream that I am somewhere else. That my name is not Meridon. That I do not belong here. I never dream of you at all.’

      His handsome dark face turned sulky in an instant. ‘That’s twice you’ve said that,’ he complained. ‘No other girl has ever turned away from me, not ever.’

      I nodded fairly. ‘Then chase them,’ I said. ‘You’re wasting your time with me.’

      He turned on his heel and left me abruptly. But he did not go back to the lighted wagon. I nearly bumped him as I came around the wagon with a hay net to hang on the side. He had been leaning against the wagon, brooding.

      ‘You’re cold, aren’t you?’ he accused. ‘It is not that you don’t like me. I’ve just been thinking. Dandy smiles at the old gentlemen and they chuck her under the chin and give her a ha’penny. But you never smile, do you? And now I think of it, I’ve never seen you let anyone touch you except Dandy. You don’t even like men to look at you, do you? You won’t come out to cry-up the show with me because men might look at you and desire you, and you don’t like that, do you?’

      I hesitated, a denial on my lips. But then I nodded. It was true. I hated the fumblings and the giggling. The dirty hands questing inside lice-ridden clothes. The tumblings behind hedges and haycocks and emerging shame-faced. It was as if my body had a pelt missing, my skin was too sensitive for a stranger’s touch.

      ‘I don’t like it,’ I said honestly. ‘And I’ve never understood how Dandy can bear it. I hate the old men who want to touch me, I hate the way they look at me.

      ‘I don’t dislike you, Jack, but I will never desire you – nor anyone, I think.’ I paused, turning over in my mind what I had just said. ‘I’m not even sad about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve no father to care for me, and I wouldn’t know how to keep house for a lover. I’m better off as I am.’

      ‘Cold,’ he said, taunting me.

      ‘As ice,’ I confirmed, quite unruffled. Then I heaved the heavy hay net up to the hook and pushed past him and went into the wagon.

      Dandy was already in her bunk, combing out her black hair and singing under her breath in a low languorous hum. I climbed up into mine, and dozed off at once, barely waking when the caravan started rocking over the field and into the lane. I just opened my eyes and saw the open doorway and the stars ahead of us and heard the noise of many unshod hooves on the hard-packed mud as we headed for winter quarters and Warminster.

      We stopped one night on the road. I tumbled out of my bunk to rub down Snow and Bluebell, to walk them down to the stream and let them drink when they were cool, and then the little ponies. The little ones were nervous in the dark and shied. One of them scraped my leg and trod on my toe and I cursed in a 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 СКАЧАТЬ