Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  I woke early, and I looked at the cool light on the white ceiling, and then I said it. I said the words that had gone with me all my life, which I had hoped to escape here: ‘I don’t belong here,’ I said.

  I lay still then for a few moments, listening to the desolation of that voice inside me which told me that I was alone, that I was lonely, that I belonged nowhere now, that I had never belonged anywhere, that I never would belong anywhere. I knew it was true.

  I was keeping travellers’ hours and I was as restless as a stable cat shut indoors. There was no noise from the kitchen nor the sound of the maid cleaning the fires, it was too early even for her.. I trod softly over to the wardrobe and looked for my riding habits. One was being washed and the other was not there. I had torn a seam the day before and Lady Clara’s maid had taken it away to mend it. She would bring it back at breakfast time, but I needed to be out now. At the bottom of the wardrobe, pushed well back, were my old clothes. Jack’s old breeches, his boots, Robert’s thick jacket. I pulled them out and dressed myself quickly. I pulled my good riding boots on and they fitted me a deal more comfortably than ever had Jack’s hand-me-downs. I went soft-footed to the door and opened it a crack to listen.

  I had been right, it was too early for anyone to be stirring. As I crept down the wooden stairs I heard the clock in the hall strike the quarter-hour. I looked at it in the pale light. It was only a quarter past five. I stepped as delicately as a mare on an icy road over the black and white tiles of the hall and through the baize door to the kitchen. All was clean and tidied away and quiet. A red eye of embers glowed inside the kitchen stove, a black cat asleep on the flat top.

  I shot the bolts on the kitchen door and let myself out into the cold dawn air. Robert’s jacket was warm and rough against my cheek. It smelled of the earlier life: of his pipe tobacco, of fried bacon, of horse sweat, of oats. The smells of my childhood, which was no childhood at all.

  Sea was turned out in the paddock wearing just a headcollar. There was a spare rope by the water pump, I needed nothing else to ride him. I went to the gate and whistled for him (a lady never whistles) and he raised his head and pricked his ears and came blithely towards me as if he were glad to see me in my old familiar clothes. As if I were about to take him back to the old life. I clipped the rope on his headcollar and led him through the little white gate. I had forgotten how high he was. I had been lifted into the saddle as if I were a child or an old lady for months. I had nearly forgotten how to vault.

  I said, ‘Stand,’ to him and found I had lost none of my skill. I was on his back in one clear leap and his ears went forward as he felt me astride him as I had always ridden him before we came here. I touched him gently with a soft squeeze of both legs on his warm flanks, and he stepped out gently down the drive towards the old woodland track through the parkland to Wideacre.

  A blackbird had started singing, his voice sounded surprised to be awake this early, but all the other birds were still silent. The sun was not yet up, the morning was cool and grey. Sea and I were like ghosts of ourselves, leaving in dawnlight as we had come in moonlight. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the golden guineas were still there safe. We could go as we had come and disappear into the world of the common people. The world of wagons and travellers and shows, and no one would ever be able to find us again. Wideacre could stay as it was – fair, fruitful, generous. Nothing need change if I was not there, demanding my rights like a late-hatched greedy cuckoo chick. Perry could drink and play, annoy his mother and seek her forgiveness without me. He would come to his fortune at the end. It would make no difference to Lady Clara.

  I could sink from the sight of this new life and no one would grieve for me. Within three months they would have forgotten all about me again.

  Sea’s hooves rang as he came out of the woods on to the stones of the lane towards Acre and I turned his head east towards my land. I had half a will to look at it once more and then to go, to leave it for ever. I belonged neither there on the land, nor in my old life without her. I belonged nowhere and I had nowhere to go and no idea what I should do. I rode as I had ridden that night, without direction and Sea stopped at the little stream, as he had stopped that night and dipped his head to drink while I smelled the cold mist off the water.

  ‘Sarah,’ a voice said, and I looked up. My eyes were blurred – they had been watering as I rode – and I blinked to clear them. It was Will Tyacke standing under the trees on the other side of the stream.

  ‘You,’ I said.

  Sea put his ears forward and went out of the stream towards Will and put his great head down for a pat. He liked Will; he was the only man he did like.

  ‘Sarah, in your old clothes,’ Will said.

  ‘My riding habit’s being mended,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ride early.’

  ‘Sleepless?’ he asked.

  I nodded and he gave me a little smile. ‘Too soft for you at Havering?’ he asked.

  The months of our quarrel slid away from us both. ‘Too soft, too big, too grand,’ I said in a little voice. ‘It’s not my place.’

  ‘Where is your place?’ he asked. He patted Sea’s neck and came close to stand at his shoulder so that he could look up into my face.

  ‘Nowhere, as far as I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve come too late for this life, and I don’t care to go back to the old one. I’ll never learn to be a lady as Lady Clara. I suppose now I couldn’t be happy with the work I used to do. I’m betwixt and between. I don’t know where I should be.’

  He reached up to me and rested his hand on my leg. I stayed still, I did not mind his touch. ‘Could you be here?’ he asked very low. ‘Could you be with us in Acre? Not up at the Hall as gentry, but in the village with the ordinary people? Living with us and working with us, making the land grow and feeding the people, selling in the market and working and planning?’

  I looked down at his face and saw his brown eyes were full of love. He wanted me to say yes. He wanted me to say yes more than he wanted anything else in the world. Despite our quarrel, despite my turning from him to go to Lady Clara’s parlour, he wanted me to say yes and to go to Acre with him, as his equal.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t waste your hopes on me. Will Tyacke. I am dead inside. There is no place for me to be happy, not in the Hall, not in the village, not at Havering nor Wideacre. Don’t look like that and don’t talk like that. You are wasting your time: I have nothing for you and nothing for the village either.’

  He dropped his hand and he turned away. I thought he was going to walk from me in a rage but he took only a few steps and then he turned to face the stream and dropped down to his haunches and watched the flow of it go past us. Sea had stirred up the mud of the river bed and as we watched it grew clearer and then flowed clean again.

  ‘I’ve just walked back from Havering village,’ he said. ‘Some of them have moved into Acre, sharing cottages. One lass wanted me to see if I could find something she had left behind, but they have burned it out.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘They even carted the stones away,’ he said wonderingly. ‘In a few months’ time you won’t be able to tell there ever was a village there. They have wiped the land clean of the people who lived there for hundreds of years.’

  ‘Were you there with the cart?’ I asked.

  Will looked quickly up at me. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I didn’t see you.’

  ‘I was riding, up on the Common behind,’ I said. I suddenly remembered that I had been with Perry and that we had laughed at the woman who clung to the doorpost. ‘I wasn’t allowed to come near,’ I said. It was a weak excuse. ‘They had the typhus fever.’

  Will shook his head. ‘Nay,’ he said. He was angry but his voice was so low and soft no one but me could have guessed it. ‘There was a woman there who was feverish and delirious through hunger. She didn’t have typhus, she was dying in a fever. She had been giving her smallest child the breast to try and keep her alive and so when there was no food to be begged or bought