Free Meridon (Wideacre Trilogy 3) by Philippa Gregory Page A

with a whelp. And you keep away from the village lads, too, d’you hear? It’s a respectable village, Warminster, and I go there every winter. I want no trouble with my neighbours.’
    We both nodded obediently. But Dandy caught my eye and winked at me in anticipation. I smiled back at her. I had never slept under a roof but always a wagon, always in a narrow bunk within touching distance of four other people. It would make me feel like Quality to get into my own bed. It would be like being a lady. It would be like being at Wide.
    I took that thought with me to bed, after I had rubbed down the horses and eaten my supper nodding over my bowl with weariness. That thought took me in my dream to Wide.
    I saw it so clearly that I could draw a map of it. The pale lovely sandstone house in the new style with a round turret at one end which makes a pretty rounded parlour in the westcorner. That room catches the sun in the evening and there are window seats upholstered with pink velvet where you can sit and watch the sun set over the high high green hills which surround the little valley. The house faces south, down a long winding avenue of tall beech trees which would have been old when my ma was young, even when her ma was young. At the bottom of the drive is a pair of great wrought-iron gates. They have rusted on their hinges and are left open. The family, my family, never wants them shut. For out of the drive and down the lane is the source of their wealth, or our wealth. The little village with a new-built church and a row of spanking new cottages one side of the only street; and a pretty vicarage and a cobbler and a smithy and a carter’s cottage and stable yard on the other side.
    These are the people of Wide. These are my people, and this is where I belong. However much I might love the travelling life with the Gowers, I knew this was my home. And in my dream of Wide I knew – knew without a shadow of doubt – that I was not a gypsy’s brat. I was not Meridon Cox of Gower’s Amazing Equestrian Event. I was Sarah. Sarah of Wide. And one day I would be back there.
    I awoke on that thought and stared at the ceiling of the wagon. This caravan was not damp like the other and there were no strange-shaped damp patches to make boggart faces and frighten me. I squeezed my finger into the hole in my straw mattress and felt for the scrap of cloth which I had twisted and hidden there. I hooked it out and unwrapped it, leaning on one elbow to hold it to the grey light filtering in through the sprigged curtains at the window. The string was grimy and old but the clasp was still shiny. It still said ‘Celia’ on one side and ‘John’ on the other, names of people I did not know. But they must have known me. Why else should I have all that was left of Celia’s necklace? And I heard a voice, not my own voice but a voice in my head, call longingly, but without hope of an answer: ‘Mama.’
    The next day was our last day and we gave only one performance which was ill attended. It was too cold for people to relish sitting on the damp grass for long, the horses were surly and unwilling to work, and Jack was chilled in his shirtsleeves.
    ‘Time to move,’ Robert said counting the gate money in the swinging bag. ‘We’ll start now and stop at suppertime. Get the loading done, you three, I’m going to the village.’ He shrugged on his tweed jacket and pulled on his ordinary boots and set off down the lane. Dandy scowled at his back.
    ‘Aye, push off when there’s work to be done,’ she said softly. ‘Leave two girls and your son to do all the hard work.’ She looked at me. ‘The more money that man makes, the greedier and the lazier he becomes,’ she said.
    ‘Is he making money?’ I asked. I had noticed no great change, but Dandy kept the gate and knew as well as Robert how the money bag had been growing heavier.
    ‘Yes,’ she said shortly. ‘He is taking shillings and pounds every day and he pays us in pennies. Hi