Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read online

  I think it was the gloves which made something in my mind click like a clockwork mechanism. I heard my old voice, my worldly gypsy-child’s voice say: ‘Damn me, they’re going to marry me as I lie here dying!’ and a sense of absolute outrage made me sweat with temper and made my eyes go bright and dizzy.

  Perry came to my bedside and looked down at me.

  ‘Not too close, Perry,’ his mother said.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, Sarah,’ he said. ‘I did not mean it to be like this for us. I really wanted us to marry and make each other happy.’

  His anxious face was wavering as he spoke. That burst of temper had tired me.

  ‘You’re dying,’ he said bluntly. ‘And if I’m not married to you I’ll be ruined, Sarah. I have to have my fortune, please help me. It will mean nothing to you when you’re dead, after all.’

  I turned my face away and closed my eyes. I was black with rage. I should do nothing for him, nothing for them, nothing.

  ‘She should have some laudanum to soothe her,’ I heard the doctor say. They were all here then. Emily’s nervous pulling at my shoulder raised me a little and I opened my mouth and let the draught slide down. At once I felt a golden glow inside me. It was far stronger than usual. It was strong enough to make me drunk with it. Clever Doctor Player was earning his fee – the Wideacre Dower House which belonged to me. My sense of anger and my panic-stricken scrabble for life eased away from me. My rasping breath grew quieter and steady. I was getting less air, but I minded less. I would have protested against nothing while the drug worked its magic on me. It all seemed a long way away and wonderfully unimportant. I felt easy; I liked Perry well enough, I did not like to see him look so afraid and so unhappy. He should have his fortune, it was only fair.

  I smiled at him, and then I looked around the room, Maria’s room which I had disliked on sight, and yet would be the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes for the last time. They had put flowers on my writing desk, white lilies and carnations and the little flap was down ready for the ledger which the rector would bring. There was fresh ink and mended pens and a blotter and sealing wax. They were all ready. There were more flowers on the mantelpiece by the clock. The stuffy room was heavy with their perfume, I looked around at them and I laughed inside. They would do nicely for my funeral too. I guessed Lady Clara would choose white flowers for the wreath. She would never waste hot-house flowers in mid-winter.

  There was a tap at the door and I heard Rimmings’ voice say: ‘The Reverend Fawcett, ma’am,’ and I heard a brisk tread into the room. Through half-closed eyelids I saw him go and make his bow to Lady Clara, and shake the doctor’s hand. He bowed to Perry then he approached my bed, halting a careful distance from me, and his smile was less assured.

  ‘Miss Lacey, I am sorry to see you so ill,’ he said. ‘Are you able to hear me? Do you know why I have come?’

  Lady Clara came swiftly to my bedside, her silk morning dress rustling. She came to the other side of the bed and fearless for once, took my hand and put her other hand against my cheek as if she loved me dearly. I flinched. She knew I hated being touched, she was not a loving woman. All this was for show. I understood that. I had been a circus child.

  ‘Dear Sarah understands us, when her fever is abated,’ she said firmly. ‘This marriage has been her dearest wish since she and my son met last spring.’ She lowered her voice. ‘We none of us could bear to disappoint her,’ she said. ‘They have been betrothed for months, I could not deny her the right to marry before…’ she broke off as if her emotions were too much for her. My breath rasped in the silence. I had no voice to deny it, even if I had wished. Besides, the drug had robbed me of determination. I felt sleepy and lazy, idle and happy, as feckless as a child on a hot summer’s day. I did not care what they did.

  The rector nodded and his dark shiny head caught the grey winter light from the window. ‘Is this your considered wish, Miss Lacey?’ he asked me directly.

  Lady Clara looked at me, her wide blue eyes had a look of desperate pleading. If I found my voice and said ‘no’ her son would be ruined. I could hardly see her, I could hardly see the rector, or Perry. I was thinking of the high clean woods of Wideacre and how, when he was teaching me my way around the estate, Will used to ride with me. How very loud the birdsong was, in those afternoons, under the trees.

  I thought of Will, and smiled.

  They took it as consent.

  ‘Then I will begin,’ said the rector.

  He did Lady Clara’s work for her. He began at the beginning and missed out nothing – as far as I knew, for it was the first wedding service I had ever heard all the way through in all my life. When we were chavvies she and I used to hang around the back of churches at wedding-time for sometimes kindly people would give us a penny, pitying our bare legs and thin clothes. More often they would give us a ha’pence to scout off and leave the church looking tidy. We never cared for their motive, we only wanted the coppers. I knew some parts of the service, I knew there were questions to be answered, and I puzzled my tired hot mind with whether I should say ‘no’ and stop this farce while I could. But I did not really care enough for anything, the drug came between me and the land.

  When he came to the section where I should have said ‘I do’ he slipped through it, and my confused blinkings were consent enough. Lady Clara was at my side, reckless of infection, and when she said firmly, ‘She nodded,’ that was consent enough.

  I was fair game. I seemed to be back in time on Wideacre and it was night. I was riding Sea wearily down the hill from the London road. At the ford at the foot of the hill he splashed in and then paused, bent his head and drank. I could smell the coldness of the water and the scent of the flowers on the air. In the banks along the river the primroses gleamed palely in the darkness. In the secret darkness of the wood an owl hooted twice.

  ‘I now pronounce thee man and wife,’ a voice said from somewhere. Sea lifted his head and water dripped from his chin, loud drops in the night-time stillness, then he waded through the swift water and heaved up the far bank and on to the road again.

  Lady Clara was pushing something into my hands, a pen. I scrawled my name as she had taught me to do on the paper she held before me. In the darkness on the land Sea headed purposefully between two open wrought-iron gates and a shadow of a man came out from under the trees and looked up at me. It was a man who was out looking for poachers because he hated gin traps. It was Will Tyacke.

  ‘She is smiling,’ said the rector’s voice from the foot of the bed.

  ‘It was her dearest wish,’ Lady Clara said quickly. ‘Where do you wish me to sign? Here? And the doctor for the other witness? Here?’

  They were going. Silently in the dream Will reached up for me on the horse and silently I slid from Sea’s back into his arms.

  ‘We will leave her to rest now,’ Lady Clara said. ‘Emily, you sit with her in case she wakes and needs something.’

  ‘She will be mentioned in our prayers,’ the rector said. ‘It would be a tragedy…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Lady Clara said. The door closed behind them. In the world of the fever-dream Will Tyacke bent his head and I lifted up my face for his kiss. His arms came around me and gathered me to him, my hands went to his shoulders, tightened behind his neck to hold him close. He said. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Miss Sarah!’ Emily said. She was patting my cheeks with a wad of damp muslin. There were hot tears running down my flushed cheeks, but my throat was too tight and I was too short of breath to weep. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said helplessly. ‘There’s no need to cry. Beg pardon,’ she added.

  They were sure I would die, and they wrote to Mr Fortescue, telling him of my illness and of the wedding in the same letter. He was away in Ireland on business when the letter came, and it awaited his return to Bristol. With him away there was no one to tell them on Wideacre that they had a new master. That the London lord whom Will had warned them of had won their land indeed, and he and his hard-faced