Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read Free Page A

instantly.
    ‘She’ll get herself hanged,’ he said without gratitude and without concern. ‘She thinks all she has to do is to roll her black eyes at the keeper and he’ll take her home and give her sweetmeats. She won’t always get away with that as she gets older. He’ll have her, and if she refuses he’ll take her to the Justices.’
    I sat up, instantly alert. ‘They’d send her to prison?’ I demanded.
    Da laughed harshly. ‘They’d send us all to prison; aye, and to Australey if they could catch us. The gentry is against you, my girl. Every one of them, however fair-spoken, however kind-seeming. I’ve been the wrong side of the park walls all my life. I’ve seen them come and seen them go – and never a fair chance for travellers.’
    I nodded. It was an old theme for Da. He was most pitifulwhen he was in his cups on this topic. He was a tinker: a no-good pedlar-cum-thief when he had met my ma. She had been pure Romany, travelling with her family. But her man was dead, and she had us twin babies to provide for. She believed him when he boasted of a grand future and married him, against the advice of her own family, and without their blessing. He could have joined the family, and travelled with them. But Da had big ideas. He was going to be a great horse-dealer. He was going to buy an inn. He was going to run a livery stables, to train as a master-brewer. One feckless scheme after another until they were travellers in the poorest wagon she had ever called home. And then she was pregnant with another child.
    I remember her dimly: pale and fat, and too weary to play with us. She sickened, she had a long and lonely labour. Then she died, crying to Da to bury her in the way of her people, the Rom way with her goods burned the night of her death. He did not know how, he did not care. He burned a few token scraps of clothing and sold the rest. He gave Dandy a comb of hers, and he gave me an old dirty piece of string with two gold clasps at each end. He told me they had once held rose-coloured pearls.
    Where she got them Da had never known. She had brought them to him as her dowry and he had sold each one until there was nothing left but the string. One gold latch was engraved with the word I had been told was ‘John’. The other was inscribed ‘Celia’. He would have sold the gold clasps if he had dared. Instead he gave them to me with an odd little grimace.
    ‘You have the right,’ he said. ‘She always said it was for you, and not for Dandy. I’ll sell the gold clasp for you, and you can keep the string.’
    I remember my dirty hand had closed tight over it.
    ‘I want it,’ I had said.
    ‘I’ll split the money with you,’ he had said winningly.’ Sixty: forty?’
    ‘No,’ I said.
    ‘That’s enough to buy a sugar bun,’ he said as if to clinch the deal. My stomach rumbled but I held firm.
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘Who are John and Celia?’
    He had shrugged, shifty. ‘I don’t know,’ he had said. ‘Maybe folks your ma knew. You have a right to the necklace. She always told me to be sure to give it to you. Now I’ve done that. A promise made to the dead has to be kept. She told me to give it to you and to bid you keep it safe, and to show it when anyone came seeking you. When anyone asked who you were.’
    ‘Who am I?’ I had demanded instantly.
    ‘A damned nuisance,’ he said; his good temper gone with his chance to trick the gold clasp from me. ‘One of a pair of brats that I’m saddled with till I can be rid of you both.’
    It would not be long now, I thought, sucking on a grass stem for the sweet green taste of it. It would not be long now until he would be able to be rid of us. That conversation had happened a long time ago, but Da had never changed his mind about us. He never acknowledged how much meat Dandy provided for the pot. He never realized that his horses would have been half-wild if I had not had the knack of riding them. Not he. The selfishness which made it easy for