Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) Read Free Page B

him to take on a woman with two small babies at the breast and no way to keep her save a cartload of foolish dreams, now made it easy for him to plan to sell us to the highest bidder. Whatever the terms.
    I knew Dandy would end up whoring. Her black brazen eyes twinkled too readily. If we had been with a gypsy family, travelling with kin, there would be an early betrothal and early childbirth for Dandy, and a man to keep her steady. But here there was no one. There was only Da who cared nothing for what she might do. And Zima who laughed lazily and said that Dandy would be street-walking by the time she was sixteen. Only I heard that feckless prophecy with a shudder. And only I swore that it should not happen. I would keep Dandy safe from it.
    Not that she feared it. Dandy was vain and affectionate. She thought it would mean fine clothes and dancing and attention from men. She could not wait to be fully grown and she used to insist I inspect the conical shapes of her breasts every time we swam or changed our clothes and tell her if they were not growing exceedingly lovely? Dandy looked at life with lazylaughing eyes and could not believe that things would not go well for her. But I had seen the whores at Southampton, and at Portsmouth. And I had seen the sores on their mouths and the blank looks in their eyes. I would rather Dandy had been a pickpocket all her days – as she was now – than a whore. I would rather Dandy be anything than a whore.
    ‘It’s just because you hate being touched,’ she said idly to me when the wagon was on the road towards Salisbury for the fair. She was lying on her side in the bunk combing her hair which tumbled like a black shiny waterfall over the side of the bunk. ‘You’re as nervy as one of your wild ponies. I’m the only one you ever let near you, and you won’t even let me plait your hair.’
    ‘I don’t like it,’ I said inadequately. ‘I can’t stand Da pulling me on to his knee when he’s drunk. Or the way Zima’s baby sucks at my neck or at my face. It gives me the shivers. I just like having space around me. I hate being crowded.’
    She nodded. ‘I’m like a cat,’ she said idly. ‘I love being stroked. I don’t even mind Da when he’s gentle. He gave me a halfpenny last night.’
    I gave a little muffled grunt of irritation. ‘He never gave me a thing,’ I complained. ‘And he’d never have sold that horse on his own. The farmer only bought it because he saw me ride it. And if it hadn’t been for me Da would never have trained it.’
    ‘Better hope the farmer’s daughter is a good rider,’ Dandy said with a chuckle in her voice. ‘Will she throw her?’
    ‘Bound to,’ I said indifferently. ‘If the man hadn’t been an idiot he’d have seen that I was only keeping her steady by luck, and the fact that she was bone-weary.’
    ‘Well it’s put him in good humour,’ Dandy said. We could hear Da muttering the names of cards to himself over and over, practising palming cards and dealing cards as the caravan jolted on the muddy road. Zima was sitting up front beside him. She had left her baby asleep on Dandy’s bunk, anchored by Dandy’s foot pressing lightly on her fat belly.
    ‘Maybe he’ll give us a penny for fairings,’ I said without much hope.
    Dandy gleamed. ‘I’ll get you a penny,’ she promised. ‘I’ll get us sixpence and we’ll run off all night and buy sweetmeats and see the booths.’
    I smiled at the prospect and then rolled over to face the rocking caravan wall. I was still bruised from my falls and as weary as a drunken trooper from the day and night training of the pony. And I had that strange, detached feeling which I often felt when I was going to dream of Wide. We would be a day and a half on the road, and unless Da made me drive the horse there was nothing I had to do. There were hours of journeying, and nothing to do. Dandy might as well comb her hair over and over. And I might as well sleep and doze and daydream of