Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (55 page)

I gaped. ‘Three children?’ I asked.

‘Aye.’

‘And all very small?’

‘It’s easier if they’re small,’ he said reasonably. ‘They get accustomed more quickly. It’s like training puppies.’

‘But I know nothing about children,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t possibly care for them.’ I thought of Zima’s whimpering babby, and my own bitter-hearted indifference to it. ‘I don’t know how to look after children, Will. I don’t know how to run a house, I don’t know what to cook for them. I couldn’t do it!’

He gathered me close to him again and silenced me with soft quick kisses.

‘My silly love,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t chase around the country after you, and bring you here to apprentice you as a housekeeper. I don’t want you to feed them and keep them for me. I do all that already. I want you to live with me so that I can enjoy the sight of you morning noon and night. I don’t want you to skivvy for me.

‘As for them – I want you to love them. Think of them as little foals and love them. I’ll do all the rest.’

I would have protested, but he held me close and when I raised my face to say: ‘But Will!’ he kissed me with warm dry kisses so that although I knew it wouldn’t do; though I knew he was wrong, and that I would not be able to love them; I gave myself up to the easy warm pleasure, and stayed silent.

He reached over me and piled some more straw over us for warmth.

‘Cold night,’ he said. ‘Not long now.’

The carter in the front lit his pipe and the sweetmeat smell of the smoke blew back over us, I could see the embers glow in the darkness. He hitched the reins over the post and took down and lit the lantern in the front.

‘Can ‘ee light the one at the back?’ he called to Will, and Will wriggled out of our burrow of straw and went to the back of the cart to light and hang the lantern out. Then he came back to me, treading carefully over the big bales of cloth, and banked more straw around me, and slid in beside my warmth. He put his hand behind my shoulders and drew me to him again.

‘And in all that time,’ he said. ‘All that time of your travelling childhood and girlhood, in all those villages and towns and out-of-the-way places, I suppose there were many men, many men, who saw you and wanted you, and loved you. Maybe you had them, did you? And maybe a child you had to be rid of? Or leave?’

‘No,’ I said, half offended. ‘No, not one. I told you Will, I was cold; cold as ice, all through. You know how I was when I came to Wideacre first. I didn’t like to be touched by anyone, not even Dandy. I’d never have taken a lover.’

‘What of Perry?’ Will asked.

I made a face which he could barely see in the gathering darkness. ‘I don’t think Perry quite counts,’ I said.

Will snorted with male conceit.

I thought for a moment about Lady Havering and poor Maria, and the sacred importance of a woman’s chastity. I thought of the way men prize virginity in their women, as if we were brood mares who need to be kept away from bad-bred mates. And my face hardened a little in the darkness, that Will, my Will, should be a man like all the rest, and care that I had slept with no one, even though he had lain with Becky and with a score more, I daresay.

‘If it matters at all, I’ve never properly laid with a man,’ I said ungraciously. ‘You can call me a virgin if it pleases you.’

He could not see my face clearly in the half-darkness, but my tone of voice should have been enough to warn him.

‘A virgin!’ he exclaimed in simple delight. ‘A virgin? Really?’

He paused.

I said nothing, I was seething in silence.

‘A virgin!’ Will said again. ‘How extraordinary! To think you can see unicorns and everything! I’ve never had a virgin before. I don’t think I’ve ever met a virgin before! I hope it won’t hurt me very much!’

‘Why…!’ I had no words. I clenched a fist to punch him but he caught it by instinct, and hugged me tight. ‘You silly little cow,’ he said lovingly. ‘As though I care whether you’ve had half of Salisbury or not. You’re with me now, aren’t you? And you love me now, don’t you? I only wanted to know if you’d left your heart somewhere on the road behind you. But if there’s no jealous lover battering down my door then I can sleep quiet in my bed with you.’

We did sleep quiet enough. The carter dropped us at the Acre corner and we bid him farewell and watched the tail-light of his wagon jogging away down the dark lane. The sight of the little lantern going away into the darkness reminded me of something, something sad, though I did not know why. Then I remembered the woman who had run behind a wagon calling, ‘Her name is Sarah’ – my mother, who had wanted to send me away from Wideacre because she could not believe that it was possible to be a landlord and not to be cruel. I put my hand out and drew Will’s comforting bulk close to me. It would be different for me.

‘Boots all right?’ Will asked.

‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘They’re my own, my riding boots.’

‘Come on then,’ he said and took my hand and led me down the lane.

The woods on the left of the road were dark and secret, there were quiet rustles and far away an owl hooted. Will sniffed at the air like a hungry dog.

‘Good to be home,’ he said.

On our right the fields were pale under the moonlight where the winter grass was light coloured. A ploughed field, ready for wheat, breathed out a smell of dark earth, wet loam. As we
walked past, very quiet on the pale-coloured road a deer raised its head and looked at us, and then melted away across the field into the trees.

I could hear a very faint whispering in my ears, like the high light singing noise which had drawn Sea and me to Wideacre all those long months ago. Then I heard the rippling of the river, as clear as a carol.

‘High,’ Will said. ‘Stepping stones will be covered.’

We paused at the ford.

‘There used to be a bridge here,’ Will said. ‘Years ago. It came down twice and no one troubled to rebuild it the second time. We should maybe do that.’

‘Yes,’ I said. In the deepest part of the river, in the middle, the reflected moon bobbed like a floating porcelain plate. The river sucked and gurgled at the bank’s edge, a cool breeze blew down the valley bringing the smells of the Downs, the frozen grass and the winter thyme.

‘Carry you?’ Will offered. ‘Carry you like a bride over the threshold?’

‘Nay,’ I said and smiled at him. ‘We’ll both paddle. You don’t want to be seen carrying lads over rivers at midnight, Will, people’ll begin to talk.’

He chuckled at that and took my hand and we both went cautiously into the dark current.

I gave a little gasp as it flowed over the top of my boots. It was icy and my boots were filled with water in an instant, my stockings and breeches soaked. Will held my hand steadily until we reached the cobbled bank on the far side of the ford. He looked down at my expensive leather riding boots and smiled.

‘You’ll be glad enough to be carried another time,’ he said.

‘Not I,’ I said stoutly. ‘You’d be better off with your Becky, if you want a woman to pet and carry, Will!’

He chuckled again and took my hand and we squelched along the road together.

The Wideacre gatehouse was a dark mound on our left, there were no lights showing, the gates stood open as always. Will nodded.

‘Come up tomorrow, set the house to rights,’ he said. ‘Will you live here?’

I hesitated, searching his face which was shadowed in the half light of the moon.

‘It’s not mine,’ I said. ‘You won it, it belongs to you.’

‘Now…’ Will started, then he paused. ‘You wanted me to win it?’ he asked. ‘I thought you lost it to me so that we had a better chance of getting out of that place in one piece. But did you want me to win it in truth? Win it and keep it for Acre?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think the Laceys have had it long enough. I want the village to have it now. I lost it to you to make it safe. If I had won it, Perry or Lady Havering would have been after it, or after me, at once. As Perry’s wife it would be his as soon as I claimed it. But you won it, it is yours now. I want the village to own it.’

Will nodded slowly. ‘You are sure?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want this to go sour between us in a few years’ time.’

I took a deep breath. Behind me were generations of owners of land, it was a wrench to turn my back on them, on their striving and hunger and give the land away. But I was the last of the Laceys, the old gypsy woman in Salisbury had said I would be the best of them all.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘All I want is a little cottage in the village. I want to live here and breed and train horses.’ I stole a look at his intent face. ‘I want to live with you,’ I said bluntly.

He put his arms around me and drew me close to him. I lifted my face to his kiss and I breathed in the warm country smell of him, and tasted the warmth of his mouth as it came down on mine.

‘I love you,’ I said, and it suddenly struck me that I had never said those words before, not to anyone. ‘I loved you from the moment I first saw you, when you came out of the woods, out of the Wideacre woods, and found me at my home.’

Will nodded. ‘I was looking for gin traps,’ he said softly, remembering. ‘I hate gin traps.’

I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said.

A cold wind blew down the lane, icy as if it had come from the very heart of the moon. I shivered.

‘You’ll catch your death!’ he said, and caught me to his side and marched me down the road to Acre, to his cottage, to my home.

Will tapped on the door and called: ‘It’s me,’ and I heard someone stir inside. ‘It’s Sally Miles,’ he said to me. ‘She watches the bairns for me when I’m away.’

The door opened and Will pushed me into the firelit room. A woman in her thirties smiled at me, and then gaped when she recognized me. ‘Miss Sarah?’ she exclaimed. ‘I mean, Lady Havering?’

Her eyes widened even further when Will took my riding cape and she saw my jacket and breeches.

‘Your ladyship?’ she gasped.

Will chuckled at her face. ‘Sarah’s left Lord Peregrine,’ he said simply. ‘She’s come home to us. She’s come home to me. She’ll live here now.’

Sally Miles blinked, then she dipped a curtsey and smiled at me.

‘Well!’ she said.

I put out my hand and shook with her. ‘Don’t curtsey to me,’ I said. ‘There’s no need. I never was a proper lady in the manor. Now I’m where I belong, and right glad to be here. I’ll need you to teach me how to go on with the children and the house.’

She nodded, still bemused. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘Of course.’ Then she looked at Will. ‘How’s all this then?’ she asked. ‘I thought you were moving up north, just going to London to say your farewells?’

Will kneeled at my feet and pulled off my wet boots. ‘It’s as you see,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you all about it in the morning, Sally. We want to get to bed now, we’ve been travelling all day, and we were up all last night too.’

She nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said blankly. ‘Well, there’s porridge in the pot and ale in the jar. I could make you some tea?’

Will glanced at me and I shook my head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Babbies all well?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sleeping sound.’ She paused, she was longing to stay. ‘I’ll be off then,’ she said hesitantly.

‘Good-night, many thanks,’ Will said briskly.

She paused in the doorway to look at me. ‘I knew your ma Miss Julia,’ she said softly. ‘I think she’d be glad to know you’ve come to live among us. It’s an odd thing to do, but I think she’d have done it herself if she could.’

I nodded. ‘I think so,’ I said.

Then she opened the door and a cold gust of air blew in and made the flames leap in the little hearth, and she was gone.

‘Be all around the village by daybreak,’ Will said philoso-phically. ‘Saves telling people. Hungry, are you?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Bed then,’ he said softly.

Now we were so close to being lovers I was suddenly cold with nerves.

‘Yes,’ I said uncertain.

He drew me towards him and he took me in his arms, lifted me gently, and carried me up the creaking wooden staircase to the upstairs room at the back of the cottage where the window looked out on a dark field and beyond it, the Fenny, with the stars in the night-time sky above and the black downs of Wideacre all around us. He took off my wet stockings and breeches, as gentle as a lady’s maid, took off my linen shift, and laid me down on the soft hay mattress. Then he loved me until the sky paled with dawn and I heard the spring birds singing.

I woke so slowly and so silently that it seemed hours before I even knew I had woken. The first thing that caught my attention was the silence. There was no rumbling of carts, no shouting of London street-traders, it was so quiet that you could hear your own breath, and against the silence, sharpening it, was the twittering of birds.

I turned my head. The man who hated gin traps was still asleep, as warm as a fox cub in a burrow. His face tucked into
my shoulder, his nose pressed against my skin. I smiled as I remembered him saying last night, ‘Dear God, I love the smell of you!’

I moved away from him cautiously, so as not to wake him. The sunshine was bright on the lime-washed wall. The bedroom faced east and the shadow of the lattice window made a fretwork of patterns above the bed. I raised myself on one elbow and looked out of the window.

There had been a light frost overnight and the grass was soaked and sparkling. Each blade of grass held a drop of water which shone in the sunlight. Our window was half open and the air that breathed in was sweet and cold as spring water.

I moved to sit up and at once Will’s arm came around me in a demanding, irresistible grip. He held me like a child might hold a favourite moppet – quite unconscious in sleep, quite unyielding. I waited till his grip loosened slightly then I stroked his arm and whispered: ‘Let me go, Will. I’m coming back.’

He did not wake even then, but he released me and buried his face deeper into the pillow so that his face was where my head had laid. I crossed barefoot to the window and swung it wide, I was home at last.

The hills of the Downs were on my left, higher and more lovely than I had remembered. Soaring up, streaked with white, reaching to the clouds, massively solid. On the lower slope there was a scar where timber had been felled, and then further down, the plough line where the horses could not drag a plough so our fields ended on a continuous curving line which girdled the high slopes.

I could see the pale dried fields of stubble and the rich dark fields where the earth was new-turned. The fields which were resting looked green and lush. Even the hedges looked dark and fresh where they were still clinging to their leaves. They had burned the stubble in one field and there were little black tracks where the flames had been. The ash would make the land grow. The burning had come and gone, and the land would grow the better for it.

Immediately below the window was the cottage garden – a
little chequerboard of hard labour. One main path, and then a score of others like a grid so that the garden was divided into square, easily reached beds. I could see clumps of lavender, and mint, and thyme and a great pale-leaved sage bush. There was some rue and fennel and whole beds of other plants I did not know. I would have to learn them. Someone in the village would teach me. I knew I would learn the country remedies as if I had known them all my life. I was no longer little Miss Lacey who could be drugged and tricked by a London charlatan.

A wood-pigeon called softly, as sweetly as a cuckoo. Beyond the garden was a rich paddock of good grass and as I looked I saw Sea walk from one end to another, ears pricked, moving like a waterfall. They must have brought him in late last night, he had taken no hurt from the journey. I called softly to him: ‘Cooee, Sea!’ and he looked towards the window with his grey ears pricked up towards me, and then nodded his head as if in greeting before turning back to crop the grass. He looked pleased to be in the little field. He looked at home.

A floorboard behind me creaked and a broad arm came around me and the man who hated gin traps lifted my thick mop of curls and kissed the nape of my neck.

‘Mmmm,’ he said by way of greeting, and then his other arm came around me and I leaned back against him and closed my eyes, and let the sunlight and the cool morning, and the greenness of the fields and the warmth of his body against my cool skin wash over me in a great wave of delight.

He slid his hand down my flank and cupped one rounded buttock gently in his hand, then without hesitation his hand went between my legs from behind and his fingers, skilled and knowledgeable, parted my gentle flesh and found the core of the little maze of my body, and stroked me so that I sighed again and again until, still holding me with my back pressed against his warm chest, he entered me and I clung to the window-sill and rested my head against the cool of the window frame and thought for one moment, ‘I have never never felt such delight.’

Then we tumbled down together on the hard floorboards, giving and taking pleasure, moving and seeking, demanding and
contented in a great frenzy of happiness until I sighed out loud – and then there was a silence and nothing but the birdsong and the wood-pigeons calling in the silence and the sun was very warm on my shoulder and on my rapt face.

We lay very still, and then Will reached up to the bed and drew me up too. I sat naked on his bare thighs and felt the pleasure of being close and naked like innocent animals. He looked more like a fox cub than ever, his eyes brown and smiling and sleepy. He was radiant with love, I could feel the glow of it on his skin, all over.

‘I hope you’re not going to expect that every morning,’ he said plaintively. ‘I’m a working man, you know.’

I laughed delightedly. ‘And I’m a working woman,’ I said. ‘I must go into Chichester this very day and see about leasing the Hall. It would produce a good income for the corporation, and a nice couple, a London merchant, or a retired admiral or someone like that, would be good neighbours to have.’

‘It’ll be odd: them coming to a cottage to pay rent,’ Will offered. He stood up and stretched so that his head brushed the low ceiling. ‘Odd for them to see you living here.’

‘I have low tastes,’ I said lightly and I kissed his warm chest and rubbed my face against the soft hairs.

I pulled on my breeches and Gerry’s best shirt. ‘I’ll need some more clothes, too,’ I said.

‘I knew it,’ Will said gloomily. ‘Can’t you make do with hand-me-downs?’

‘I’ll work in breeches,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But I’ll have one – no, two! – dresses for best!’

There was a clatter from the room next door.

‘Is that the chavvies?’ I asked. I was alert at once. I could not help but fear them, Becky’s daughters, the children Will had chosen to raise.

Will nodded, and the next thing the door burst open and all three of them were upon him swarming all over him like puppies.

‘And look who’s here!’ Will exclaimed as he got clear.

They all three turned to look at me, six unwinking eyes surveyed me from head to bare feet.

‘Is this Miss Sarah?’ the oldest one asked uncertainly, taking in my rumpled hair and my breeches.

‘She was Miss Sarah,’ Will said. ‘But now she has come to live with us. She’s finished with living in London, and with grand folks. She’s my true love and she’s come home to me.’

The middle one, very ready to believe in princesses coming to cottages, came forward and put her hand out to me. ‘And will you be my ma and comb my hair without pulling?’ she asked.

I took a deep breath. ‘Yes I will,’ I said bravely, and took her hand. Will beamed at me across their heads.

‘Will can be your da, and I’ll be your ma,’ I said plunging in. ‘But you’ll have to help me go on, I was never anyone’s ma before.’

‘She’s a circus girl,’ Will said impressively. ‘She can dance on horseback and she can swing on a trapeze. There’s not many little girls who have a ma who can do that. You come on downstairs and she can tell you all about it while I make the porridge!’

They tumbled downstairs in a rush at that offer and while they spooned porridge into their mouths and Will made strong hot tea for them I told them a little about Robert and Jack and learning to ride bareback and the falls. Then I told them about winning Sea and they all rushed upstairs to pull on their woollen stockings and their clogs under their nightshirts so that they could go out at once and meet Sea.

‘Will you do circus tricks for us here?’ the oldest one pressed me. ‘Will you teach us how to dance on horseback, and we can all be in a circus?’

Will laughed aloud at my aghast face.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘Her travelling days are over. She may teach you some tricks for fun, but her main work should be training horses for people to buy.’

‘To dance with?’ asked the littlest one, eyes and mouth round.

‘No,’ I said smiling. ‘To ride. But I will show you how I used to dance bareback if we ever have a horse who will let me do it. Sea would not stand for it for one moment!’

Will sent them upstairs then to get dressed in earnest and
wash their faces in time for school. Then he and I walked together to take them to school and went hand in hand down the village street to bid good-day to other people of Acre and to tell them that I had come home at last.

It was a busy couple of days. There was Gerry and Emily to settle in with two familes down the village street. Emily bloomed like a rose in the countryside but Gerry was surly and cross until he went into Midhurst and got himself a job at the Spread Eagle, then he was very full of bragging to the other ostlers about London ways. He brought home a good wage, and he paid a share of it into the common fund for the corporation. He seemed settled, and Will and I repaid him our debt.

I went, as I had promised, to Chichester and the Hall was offered for rent. We would get a handsome sum for it, the agents thought. I spoke to them before I went to the dressmakers for new clothes so they had to deal with me in my breeches. It was to their credit that they never so much as glanced at me. They called me Lady Havering throughout and I did not know how to stop them. They never so much as mentioned Perry, nor the fact that the name on the deeds of the Hall was now ‘The corporation of Acre, manager Will Tyacke’. But I knew that once I had set so much as a step out of the office, the tale would be all around Sussex – aye and Hampshire too, by tea-time.

I had to go and see the vicar and tell him how everything was changed, and the world upside down for him. He could not comprehend why a rich woman could choose to be poor. He could not understand why I should wish to live in a cottage and rent out the Hall. Finally I told him bluntly that though I was married to Lord Havering I would never live with him, and that Will was my lover. He had been trying to maintain a pretence that I was living in Will’s cottage as a rich woman’s whim. But when I said outright that Will and I loved each other, and loved the land, and would live here together for the rest of our lives, he went white with shock, and rang the bell for me to be shown the door.

‘I’ll never be able to go to church,’ I said to Will that evening. I was sitting on the settle, skinning a rabbit with my sleeves
rolled up, as he cooked the supper. ‘I’m a scarlet woman. I’ll never be able to take the chavvies in to say their prayers, not even sat at the back. Vicar’ll look badly at you too.’

Will turned, a wooden spoon in his hand and licked it with relish before he smiled and answered me. ‘Small lack,’ he said. ‘But he’d best remember which side his bread is buttered.’

When I looked blank he beamed at me. ‘You’ve made the village into a squire!’ he said grinning. ‘We own the living. If he’s impertinent I think we can refuse him his wages, certainly don’t need to pay the Wideacre Hall’s share of his tithe. If you don’t fancy having a vicar we can leave the post empty after he is gone. You can persuade the whole village to turn pagan if you wish.’