Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) (30 page)

She laughed, a rich deep throaty chuckle at that. ‘Any dependants?’ she asked and at my shake of the head she pursued her theme: ‘No cousins? Nor aunts? Foster brothers and sisters? No sweethearts? No friends? No young husband? No secret babies?’

‘No one,’ I said.

She looked at me narrowly, looking past my young face, past my old tired eyes, past my clothes, into my heart. ‘Are you a virgin?’ she asked.

I flushed scarlet. ‘Yes,’ I said awkwardly, and when she said nothing but merely raised her beautifully curved eyebrows in surprise, I said: ‘I don’t like being touched.’

She nodded as if she understood. ‘And the people who brought you up?’ she asked. ‘Those that you have been living with, you’ve ditched them all?’

I met her bright look without wavering. ‘All of them,’ I said.

There was a tap on the door and a dark-gowned maid came in with a silver tray and a pot of chocolate. Lady Havering threw back the bedcovers and rose from her bed and swished over to take her seat at the window. She gestured me into the seat before her so that I faced her and the clear light.

‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘You’re rather alone. Unless you have taken a fancy to the little Bristol trader.’

‘I haven’t,’ I said. I felt a moment’s discomfort at my disloyalty. But then I remembered the quiet house and the noise of my drinking soup and my heart hardened. ‘I don’t know what to do. Mr Fortescue talks of teachers of elocution and dancing, and tells me I should have a lady companion.’ I grimaced. ‘Then there’s the land,’ I said. ‘I need to know what’s being done on it and yet there is no one to ask but Mr Fortescue and Will Tyacke.’

Lady Havering poured the chocolate and then sat back and looked at me again. ‘Do you disapprove of his guardianship of your land?’ she asked, her voice very neutral.

‘Yes I do,’ I said firmly. ‘It is being run for the gain of the working people, that means the Hall makes a loss every time we sow and reap. The village is doing well out of it, but the estate gets a share of what it ought to have entire.’

Lady Havering nodded grimly. ‘I’ve not seen the estate books,’ she said. ‘But I have eyes in my head and I have seen them undersell me in the Midhurst market for season after season until the price of food has been forced down and held down. It’s revolutionary! It destroys the value of property.’

I nodded.

‘How old are you?’ she asked.

‘Sixteen or thereabouts,’ I said.

She nodded and tapped her teeth with her long fingernail. ‘Five years until you can run the estate for yourself,’ she said softly. ‘A long time to have to endure Mr Fortescue’s amateur farming.’

‘A long time to live with a lady companion,’ I said with feeling. ‘Life with a lady companion in that house, with Mr Fortescue coming to stay.’

Lady Havering nodded, as if she had come to some decision. ‘Not to be borne,’ she said briskly. ‘Drink your chocolate up, child, and I will come with you to see Mr Fortescue. I’ll take you under my wing, you need not fear the lady companion. I’ve launched one daughter successfully into the world and I can certainly do it again with you. And you won’t shock me. Your lady companion would probably pop off with spasms within a week!’

I obediently raised my cup but I did not drink, I looked at her over the rim.

‘What do you mean, “take me under your wing”?’ I asked.

She gave me one of her rare sweet smiles. ‘I will look after you,’ she said pleasantly. ‘You can come and stay here and I will teach you the things you need to know to be a lady in society. When the Season starts again I will bring you out, introduce you
to the people you need to know. I will choose your dresses for you and teach you how to dance, how to eat, how to behave. You are my cousin, you have no family but me. It is fitting.’

I did not stop to think that Lady Havering did not look like a woman who was burdened with a sense of duty. I put my cup down with a clatter.

‘Would you do that for me?’ I demanded. ‘For me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will.’

I said nothing for a moment and she was silent too. Then I spoke, and the delight had gone from my voice.

‘What for?’ I said shrewdly. ‘What d’you get out of this?’

She poured herself a fresh cup and she chuckled. ‘Very good, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Yes, I do “get something out of this”. Firstly, I irritate your precious Mr Fortescue which will be a great delight to me. Secondly, while I am chaperoning you I shall charge my dress bills to your estate which can very well afford them, whereas I cannot. Thirdly, by doing this I am making it more likely that you are not infected with Wideacre Jacobinism which is something I cannot afford to have on my doorstep. The more Mr Fortescue leaves you well alone, the sooner you can get the estate back into order.’

‘You would teach me to read the accounts and understand what is going on?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can hire my manager yourself and use him to check this madness on Wideacre. You can stop it going any further by refusing to hand over the land to the village as they want. And as soon as you are of age you can turn it into the profitable place it by rights should be.’

I spat in my palm and reached it out to her across the little table. ‘Done,’ I said.

The pleasant smile on her face never flickered. She spat in her own and shook hands. ‘Done,’ she repeated. Then her face changed and she turned my hand over, palm up, so that she could see the deep hard lines and the callouses and rope burns.

‘Gracious me,’ she said. ‘Turning you into a young lady will be no sinecure. We will start with your hands! Whatever have you been doing to get them into this state? I doubt we’ll ever get them soft.’

I looked at my palms for a moment. The bulge at the thumb and at the base of the fingers was as tough as old leather. I thought of the reins I had held and the ropes I had pulled and the trapeze bar.

‘I was working,’ I said, taciturn.

She nodded. ‘You needn’t tell me,’ she said. ‘As long as no one from your past comes pestering me, then it is none of my affair and it can stay that way. But tell me one thing: Is there anyone who would recognize you or follow you?’

‘No,’ I said. Robert Gower would let me go. Jack would run a mile rather than face me.

‘Did you commit any crimes?’ she asked bluntly.

I reviewed the poaching and the gambling, the horse-breaking and the little cheats. I looked up and her eyes were on me.

‘Nothing spectacular,’ I said.

She threw back her head and laughed at that and the bows on her cap bobbed.

‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Nothing spectacular. I shall ask no more. Have you told Mr Fortescue all this?’

I shrugged. ‘A little,’ I said. ‘Enough to prove to him who I am. Nothing more.’

She nodded as if she were pleased. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘As your duenna I shall make rules for your behaviour. The first is that you will wear gloves all the time, and the other is even more important.’

I waited.

‘You’ll speak of your past to no one,’ she said bluntly. ‘What you have told me you will tell no one else. When you move in society we shall say merely that you were living quietly in the country with humble people before you were found by the trustees. Your background will be obscure but deeply respectable. Have you got that?’

I nodded. ‘Obscure but deeply respectable,’ I said turning the words over in my mouth. ‘Yes, I’ve got that.’

She shot a sideways smile at me. ‘Good,’ she said.

There was a tap at the door and she turned her head and called: ‘Enter!’

Lord Peregrine put his head tentatively around the door. ‘It’s me, Mama,’ he said.

‘Excellent, you can come in,’ she said briskly.

Bathed and dressed he was radiantly beautiful, as lovely as a girl. He was wearing a dark blue riding coat with pale tight breeches and high patent-leather hessian boots. His blond hair was tightly curled and still wet from his bath. His eyes were a limpid blue and only the violet shadows under them showed that he had missed a night’s sleep. His mother looked at him coolly.

‘You’ll do,’ she said.

Lord Peregrine flashed an engaging smile at her. ‘Why, thank you, Mama!’ he said as if at a great compliment and then he stood quite still, as if he were awaiting orders.

He soon had them. He was to escort me back to Wideacre Hall and to take his mama’s card to announce that she would visit Mr Fortescue that afternoon. He was to await a reply but to stay no longer than twenty minutes, and he was to drink nothing but tea or coffee.

‘I don’t know what sort of table you think he keeps there, Mama,’ Lord Peregrine said pleasantly. ‘But he doesn’t look to me like the sort of chap who offers you champagne at ten in the morning.’

She smiled grimly. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said. ‘And then you’ll come straight home.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ he said, his smile unblemished.

I took it that I was dismissed and I rose to leave. Lady Clara shot a quick measuring glance at me.

‘Properly dressed, you would be beautiful,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the Chichester dressmaker come out tomorrow. You will come to me then and be fitted for new clothes.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, Lady Clara,’ I said politely.

She held out her hand to me and raised her cheek for a kiss and then I managed to get myself past the delicate little table and over the pale-coloured rugs without accident. I don’t think I breathed easy until the door was shut behind us, and Lord Peregrine was leading the way back down the gallery.

‘Taking you in hand, is she?’ he asked.

‘Aye,’ I said.

He nodded, and paused at the top of the wooden staircase to look at me. ‘Well that’s good,’ he said encouragingly. ‘She’ll get you a girl’s dress. I was thinking about it while I was having my bath and I couldn’t think where to get one. I’m glad about that.’

I chuckled. ‘I’m glad too,’ I said.

‘And you’ll be coming here again!’ he said. ‘That’s grand. I was afraid it was going to be awfully slow until I went to London, but you and I can ride together and I can show you around.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No trouble at all,’ he said cordially and then he took my arm and we strolled across the marble hall as if we were young brothers, as if I had been born and bred in such a place, as if we were best friends.

Peregrine escorted me home riding a showy hunter from his mama’s stables. Mr Fortescue came out on the terrace when he saw us riding up the drive and I saw by his face that he was not pleased to see me with Perry.

He invited him inside and offered him a dish of tea. Perry rolled his eyes at me and graciously accepted. He sat in the parlour with one eye on the clock, delivered his mama’s message – word-perfect – and then left as the clock ticked precisely to the twenty minutes.

Mr Fortescue looked gravely at me.

‘You have attracted the attention of Lady Clara,’ he said. ‘She isn’t the woman I would have chosen to be your adviser.’

I looked back at him, my face as insolent as when I used to face my da.

‘I daresay,’ I said. ‘But then you wanted me locked up here with some country widow for five years.’

James half gasped and shook his head. He strode over to the window and jerked back the curtain to look out. I wondered why he did not yell at me, then I remembered Quality manners. He was waiting until he could speak to me civilly.

I thought him a fool.

‘You are trying to misunderstand me,’ he said in a soft voice when he turned back to the room again. ‘I do not want to lock you up here, I do not want to dictate how you should live. You may have the friends you please. But I would not be doing my duty if I did not tell you that Lady Clara has a reputation in the wider world for being a spendthrift, a gambler and a woman of the world. Her son, Lord Perry, is still at university but even so he has the reputation of gambling and heavy drinking.’

I looked at James and my face was hard. ‘You are saying they are not well-behaved people,’ I said blankly.

James nodded. ‘I am sorry to speak ill of them and I would not gossip. But you do not know the world they move in and I have to tell you they are not suitable company for a young lady.’

I smiled. ‘Then they’ll do well for me,’ I said. ‘There’s a lot I’ve not told you, Mr Fortescue, for I see no need for you to know. But hear now that my father was a drunkard and a gambler, that I made my living by horse-breaking and bad trading and by stacking the card decks for him. I am not the young lady you want me to be, and I’ll never learn to be. I’m too old and too wild and too hard to be made into that mould now. The Haverings will do well enough for me.’

He was about to answer when Becky tapped at the door and asked if I was riding with Will Tyacke, for he was waiting for me in the yard.

I nodded at James and it was me who ended the little scrap this time. I went out into the yard feeling elated with my victory. I had gone some way to even a score that was running between us; between him who was trying to make me the child I should have been if he had found me and brought me here in time – and the real hard-hearted vagrant I was.

Will was in the yard, high on his horse. He smiled to see me.

‘You got Lord Perry home safe then, I see,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ I said. I didn’t choose to tell him any more.

‘He’s a pleasant enough youngster,’ Will said, invitingly.

‘Aye,’ I said. I swung up into the saddle, and bent my head to tighten the girth.

The horses moved off, Will was waiting for me to say more.

‘Bit wild,’ he offered.

‘Aye,’ I said. I had the girth to my liking and I leaned forward and flicked Sea’s mane all over to the right side of his neck.

‘Still, there’s many a young woman who finds him handsome,’ Will said judicially.

‘Aye,’ I assented.

‘Some of the lasses don’t see him drunk, don’t see that he’s a lad who cares for no one but himself,’ Will said pompously.

I nodded.

‘Then they think he’s a fine young gentleman, they’re mad for a smile from him.’

‘Oh aye,’ I said by way of variation.

Will surrendered. ‘Do
you
like him, Sarah?’ he asked.

I checked Sea and looked straight at him. His face was serious, I knew that this question mattered very much to him. He wanted an honest answer.

‘Nowt to do with you,’ I said blankly and shut my mouth on my silence.

We rode without speaking down the drive to the lane, and then turned left to the village. I was looking around me as we went, at the greening hedge on either side of the lane and the rustle where birds were feeding their young in hidden nests. Will was scowling at the road between his horse’s ears.

‘I thought I’d take you to see the village schoolmaster today,’ he said as we came within sight of the first cottages. ‘He was away the other day when we were riding through. We’re rather proud of our school.’

He led the way down the village street. The cobbler was at his last again in the little window. He waved at me and I waved back. The carter shouted ‘G’day’ from his wagon where he was hammering a loose board. I smiled my bright meaningless show smile and he beamed back at me – glad of false coin.

Will rode past the church and past the track up to the Downs to a long square barn which stood parallel with the lane. From inside I could hear the hum of children chanting a song or a poem or some rhyme.

Will whistled, a long sharp sound and after a few minutes the door at the side opened and a young man came out, blinking in the bright sunlight after the shade of the classroom.

He was dressed very oddly! He was all in green. Baggy green breeches tucked into sound leather boots, and a baggy green jerkin with a wide leather belt. His straight black hair was cropped short and parted in the middle in a way which made his face look broad and strong and ugly but somehow nice at the same time.

‘This is Michael Fry,’ Will said. ‘Michael, this is Sarah Lacey.’

‘Hello, sister,’ the man said. ‘I do not call you by any title because I call no one by any title. I believe that we were all created equal and I show the same respect to you as I do to anyone else. You may call me Michael or you may call me brother.’

Sixteen years on the road had prepared me for all sorts of people. I had met men like Michael before.

‘Hello Michael,’ I said. ‘Are you the teacher here?’

He smiled and his dark face suddenly lightened. ‘I am the teacher of the young citizens,’ he said. ‘And in the evenings I read and talk with their parents. We study together to prepare ourselves for our work here, and our plans to expand this community so that it is an example for the rest of the country and a mission to them!’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Michael came to us three years ago from a community in Wales,’ Will said. There was laughter in the back of his voice, but it was not directed at Michael. ‘He has served the corporation very greatly in his advice to us, and by working with the children.’

Michael smiled at Will. ‘They are the future,’ he said. ‘They must be prepared for it.’

Will nodded. ‘This was set up as a school by your mother’s mother,’ he said. ‘When they started setting the place to rights and handing over to the workers. Before that it was a tithe barn.’ He looked at the height and length of it. ‘It makes you realize how costly are the benefits of a spiritual life,’ he said wryly.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

Michael flashed a smile up at me. ‘This was a barn where they stored the share of the crop they had to give to the church and to the vicar,’ he said. ‘We still have a vicar but he is supported by a small fee from the estate. We do not allow him to take his share of wealth when he has neither ploughed nor sown.’

I nodded. ‘He’ll like that,’ I said.

Michael choked on a little crow of laughter and Will grinned at me.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He does.’

‘Anyway, now it is a school in this end of it, and the other half is lodging for Michael and for the children whose parents are dead or run away. We have three at the moment.’

I nodded. I knew enough about village life to know this was unheard of. Orphans and pauper children should be taken to the local poorhouse where they dragged out a miserable childhood and were sold to employers as soon as possible. Rea and Katie had agreed that the poorhouse was worse than anything. ‘They hit me all the time,’ Rea had once told me, surprised at violence which was not done in anger but as routine. ‘Every morning before breakfast. For being a Rom.’

‘And in the middle section,’ Will went on, ‘is where the old people work who are no longer fit for outside work. They spin together, they mind the babbies when the mothers are away in the fields, they do some carving, they make up herbs. And we pay them a little for their work and sell the goods for the Wideacre corporation.’

An idea struck him. ‘You were brought up gypsy, weren’t you, Sarah? Could you show them how to carve those wooden flowers and dye them the pretty colours? We could sell them at Midhurst fair.’

I chuckled. ‘The only skills I learned were thieving and gambling,’ I said. ‘You don’t want me teaching a load of old women how to sharpen cards.’

Will laughed as well. ‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you sharing those skills.’

‘And here,’ Michael said, gesturing to the open doorway, ‘this is my model school. When I came here there was a dame-school, it taught the children to be servants, to be farm-hands. Only a few learned to read, hardly any to write. They taught the girls to be house-servants and the boys to be ploughboys.

‘I changed that!’ he exclaimed. ‘They learn the same lessons with me: boys and girls. I will not have them taught differently. They all know how to steer a plough, they all know how to shoe a horse, they all know how to cook a meal for a family of four. Everyone should know these things and then the stamp of servitude and the idleness of the rich would be at an end!’

‘Oh,’ I said again.

Will was openly smiling at my bemused face.

‘But I also teach them skills which they would learn nowhere else,’ Michael said. ‘Here they learn to read, so that all the knowledge of the world is open to them. They learn to write, so that they can speak with one another even when they are apart. And I teach them the study of geography so they know where they are, and history, so they understand how it is that they are poor but the victors of the struggle are rich. And I teach them French so that they can talk with their brothers and sisters in the glorious republic of France.’

‘Oh,’ I said again. I closed my mouth because my jaw was gaping.

Will laughed aloud. ‘You will frighten Sarah with your Jacobinism,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She will think you want to cut off her head at least.’

Michael looked quickly upwards, and smiled. He had an endearing crooked smile, one of his front teeth was quite gone. I saw now that he was younger than I had thought. And his face was not ugly at all but somehow crumpled. His clothes were not as odd as they had first appeared. I had thought he was in costume, but I now understood that his clothes must mean something. That everything must mean something.

‘I do not want to guillotine my sister,’ he said simply. ‘How could I? She has been a poor girl and lived a simple life as we do. I am glad to welcome you to your home, sister. I hope you will find much worthy labour to undertake here.’

My mouth twisted a little wryly at the thought of my ‘simple life’ which had been all deceit and costume and magic and cheating; and as for worthy labour – I did not think I had done a day of what this man would consider worthy, or even honest, labour since I was born. But I did not want to explain this to him.

‘You cannot be glad I have come home,’ I said baldly.

He smiled at me again, that sweet smile which had so much confidence in it.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘There would have been a squire come to
this village sooner or later, I am very glad it is you. You have lived among poor good people, you will have seen their sufferings. You will help us here to lead a better life. I do welcome you, sister.’

I stared at him suspiciously. Either he was an utter rogue or else a simpleton. It was not possible that he could be glad I had come home.

He turned to Will. ‘Would you like to come in, brother?’ he asked. ‘The young citizens would like to see their new sister.’

Will glanced at me. ‘No,’ he said, guessing rightly that I did not want to meet the children before I had time to think about their extraordinary teacher in this odd village. ‘Sarah is looking around today. She needs to get her bearings before she meets any more of us. Take them her greetings.’

Michael nodded. ‘Fraternal greetings,’ he said.

Will chuckled. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Take them her fraternal greetings and tell them she will see them later, tomorrow or the next day.’

Michael smiled at us both, and went back towards the school. We waited until we had seen the school door close and heard the rhythm of the rhyme break up into many high voices all asking questions, and then we turned our horses back towards the way we had come and past the church towards the Common.

‘He’s a great find,’ Will said. ‘You may think him odd at first but he has done more to help this village than anyone else. He has had experience of half a dozen corporations and communes and experimental farms and everything else. He was over in France in the early days of the republic. He is a member of every legal society you can think of – and a good deal more which would be called illegal, I imagine. We’re lucky to have him with us. It took a deal of persuading.’

‘You asked him here?’ I asked in surprise. I had thought him an idiot who had come here because he could not find work elsewhere.

‘I nearly had to go on my knees, only that would have been old-fashioned servility,’ Will said. ‘He is a dedicated and brilliant teacher with a commitment to a new world. Even after all the
work he has put in here I do not think we can be sure of keeping him for ever. There are other communities who would badly like him, and I think in his heart he would rather be in the Americas than anywhere else. This country offers nothing for a man of his talents, they persecute him when they should see how urgently he is trying to make the lives of working people better.’

‘Is he safe?’ I asked. I had a dim awareness of people in France and a king toppled from his throne and a riot.

Will smiled. ‘He is a man of peace,’ he said. ‘I never met his like. He will not even eat meat because an animal will have met its death for his pleasure. When I think of him, and I think of the vicar!’ He broke off and sighed.