Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

‘I said you could have him if you could stay on him,’ he said. ‘I’ll feed him and shoe him, for you. Aye and I’ll buy you tack for him as well. That do you, Meridon?’

  I smiled at that and felt the bloodstained skin crack around my eye.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Then I put one hand on Sea’s neck for support, and started to hobble from the field.

  9

  Robert sent me back to the inn where we had left the whisky cart and I led Sea into a loose box and curled up in the corner myself on a bale of straw, too tired and too battered and bruised to care where I was; and much too shy and dirty to order myself a hot drink and my dinner in the parlour as Robert had instructed. Hours later, when the stable was getting dark and the cold winter twilight was closing the horse fair, he came clattering into the yard with two big horses and three little ponies tied reins to tail behind him.

  I stumbled to my feet as groggy and weary as if I had been riding all day and peered over the stable door. Sea blew gently down my neck.

  ‘Good God,’ Robert said. ‘You look like a little witch, Merry. Stick your head under the pump for the Lord’s sake. I can’t take you home like that.’

  I put my hand up to my head and found my cap was lost and my curls all matted with dried blood. The eye which I had bruised was almost closed, and smeared all around my mouth and nose was dried blood.

  ‘Are you badly hurt?’ Robert asked as I came carefully out of the stable.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It probably looks worse than it is.’

  He shouted for a stable lad and tossed the reins of the two big horses towards him.

  ‘Come here,’ he said gruffly, and worked the pump for me as I dipped my head underneath it.

  The icy water hit me like a blow and rushed into my ear and made me gasp with shock. But I felt better as soon as my face was clean. I rinsed most of the blood out of my hair as well.

  Robert sent another lad running for a kitchen towel and I rubbed my hair dry. I was shivering with the cold and I had horrid trickles of icy water running down my neck inside my gown, but at least I had woken up and felt fit enough to face the drive home.

  ‘Or do you want me to ride?’ I asked, eyeing the string of horses we had to get home somehow.

  ‘Nay,’ Robert said contentedly. ‘You’ve done a day and a half’s work today, Merry, and I’m better pleased with you than I ever have been with any living soul, and that’s the truth. You won me £300 in bets, Merry, and it’s a gamble I’d never have dared take if you hadn’t urged me to it. I’m obliged to you. You can have your horse with my blessing, and I’ll give you ten guineas for your bottom drawer as well. You’re a fine lass. I wish I had a dozen of you.’

  I beamed back at him, then I shivered a little because with the falling darkness a cold breeze had sprung up.

  ‘Let’s get you home,’ Robert said kindly; and he sent the lad back inside to borrow a couple of blankets and wrapped me up on the seat of the whisky as if I were a favoured child instead of the hired help.

  He decided against bringing all the horses home in the dark on his own. He tied only the big horses on the back of the carriage with Sea tied behind as well, and ordered stabling for the ponies overnight. Then he swung himself up beside me, clicked to Bluebell and we set off for home in the fading light.

  He hummed quietly under his breath as we left the outskirts of the town and then he said abruptly to me:

  ‘Did you do that with your da, Merry? Take a wager on your riding and then gull people out of their money?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said cautiously. I was not sure if he would approve. ‘But, often it was too well known that I trained horses for my da and so people wouldn’t bet heavily like they did today.’ I shrugged. ‘I looked different, too,’ I said. ‘Today I looked like a housemaid. With Da I always looked like a gypsy.’

  Robert nodded. ‘I’ve never made so much money in one day in my life,’ he said. ‘I’d give half of it away if I could do it again.’

  I shook my head regretfully. ‘I couldn’t do it with any other horse,’ I said. ‘It would be a grand trick to earn money. But Sea was special. I knew he was my horse the moment I saw him. I knew he would not hurt me.’

  Robert glanced at my battered face. ‘You hardly came off scot-free,’ he observed.

  I made a little grimace. ‘That was because he heard that horrid man’s voice,’ I said. ‘It scared him all over again. But he was all right with me.’

  Robert nodded and said nothing as the horse trotted between the shafts and the light from the lamps on either side of the cart dipped and flickered. It was growing darker all the time, I heard an owl hoot warningly. The moon was coming up, thin and very pale, like a rind of goat cheese.

  ‘What about an act where we challenge all comers to ride him?’ Robert said slowly, thinking aloud. ‘Outside the field, before the show starts. We could call him the killer stallion and challenge people to stay on his back. Charge them say tuppence a try, with a purse if they stay on for more than a minute.’ He hesitated. ‘Make that five minutes,’ he amended. ‘Then, after we’ve called up a crowd and they’ve seen him throwing a few men, out you come in a pretty dress and ask for your turn. Jack makes up a book, you ride the horse, and we all make a little profit.’

  He turned and looked at me, beaming.

  I took a deep breath. ‘No,’ I said quietly. At once, his good-humoured smile vanished.

  ‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘You’ll get a cut of the profits, Merry. You did well today remember. I’ve not forgotten I promised you ten guineas. I’ll pay up and all.’

  ‘No,’ I said steadily. ‘I am sorry, Robert, but I won’t do that with my horse.’

  Something in my voice checked his bluster. ‘Why not, Merry?’ he asked. ‘Wouldn’t do any harm.’

  ‘Yes it would,’ I said certainly. ‘I don’t want him taught to be wild and vicious. I don’t want him frightened any more. I want to teach him to be a good saddle horse, a hunter. I don’t want him throwing every fool with tuppence who thinks he’s a rider. I want him to have a soft mouth and a sweet temperament. He’s my horse, and I won’t have him working as a killer stallion.’

  Robert was silent. Bluebell trotted, the clatter of the hooves behind us sounded loud in the darkness. Robert hummed under his breath again and said no more.

  ‘You promised to keep him for me,’ I said, calling on Robert’s sense of fair trade. ‘You didn’t say he had to work for it.’

  Robert scowled at me, and then broke into a smile. ‘Oh all right, Merry!’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re a proper horse-dealer for you haggle like a tinker. Keep your damned horse, but you’re to ride him when you’re calling up the act, and you’re to look to training him for tricks in the ring. But he won’t do anything you don’t like.’

  I smiled back at him, and in one of my rare gestures of affection I put my hand on his sleeve.

  ‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said.

  He tucked my hand under his arm and we drove home in the darkness. My head nodded with weariness and my eyelids drooped. Some time in the journey I felt him draw my head down to rest on his shoulder, and I slept.

  Dandy undressed me and put me to bed when we got home, exclaiming over my hurts, and the loss of my cap, and the bloodstains on my grey gown and white apron. Mrs Greaves brought a tray with soup and new-baked bread, a breast of chicken and some stewed apples for me to have dinner in bed. Jack came up to our room with a basketful of logs and lit the fire for me in the little grate in our room, and then he and Dandy sat on the floor and demanded to know the whole story of the horse fair, and the winning of Sea.

  ‘He’s a beautiful animal but he hardly let me near him,’ Jack said. ‘He went for my shoulder when I took his bridle off. You’ll have your work cut out for you trying to train that one, Merry.’

  Dandy wanted to know how much Robert had earned, and they both opened their eyes wide when I told them of the guinea bets which had been called all around me, and that Robert had promised me ten of my very