Dandy’s smile was as warm as ice on a bucket. ‘Would you refuse him then?’ she asked. ‘I’ve had my eye on him since last summer. His da said “no” and he hasn’t dared. But I’ve had my eye on him for my very own. Would you refuse him if he comes to you again? To oblige me, Katie?’

Katie threw back her lovely head and laughed aloud. ‘Nay!’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have the heart! And I had my hand down inside his breeches, Dandy, and he felt real fine to me. I couldn’t find it in me to say “no”.’

‘I’d pay,’ Dandy said patiently. ‘I’d pay you more money than you’d ever think to earn in all your life.’

Katie sneered. ‘Got your pennies saved up have you, Dandy? Saved your pennies from your horseback riding?’

‘I’d pay you a guinea,’ Dandy said. She heard my gasp and she avoided my eyes. ‘I’d pay you a guinea if you promise not to have him. I’d pay you a guinea and I’ll give it to you at Whitsun.’

‘Where’d you get a guinea from?’ Katie said, impressed despite herself.

‘We’ve got it already,’ Dandy said proudly. ‘You know Merry’s got her own horse. We’re doing better than you think. We’ve got ten guineas between the two of us, and some shillings for spending money. You’re straight out of the poorhouse, you don’t understand what it’s like for us with our own act. You’ve never seen Merry work the horses. She can earn a lot of money. We’re only staying with Robert Gower this year. Next year we could go anywhere. Anyway, I’ve got a guinea all right. And it’s yours if you keep your hands off Jack.’

‘Dandy,’ I said in an urgent undertone.

But it was too late. The poorhouse whore spat into her dirty palm and Dandy shook quickly, before she could change her mind. Dandy got up and went to the mirror and pulled at the string bow which was tying her hair. ‘I’ll know if you cheat, mind,’ she said to her reflection.

Katie slumped back on her pallet. ‘I won’t cheat,’ she said disdainfully. ‘You can keep your Jack. I have lovers I don’t have to buy. I wish you good luck with him.’

Dandy turned away from the mirror. I thought she would be angry at the gibe but her face was serene. ‘I have to get around his father yet,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘Buying you off is just the start of it.’

She pulled her gown out of the clothes chest and slipped it on over her shift. She brushed out her hair and pinned it on top of her head. There was a very faint tide mark of grime at her bare neck and she rubbed at it with a damp forefinger and then put a clean white collar atop.

I sat on my bed and said nothing. Katie got to her feet and pulled on her poorhouse skirt as a replacement for her working breeches. She looked from Dandy to me and then went down the stairs to the stables below in silence.

‘One guinea,’ I said grimly.

Dandy turned from the mirror and put out her hands to me. ‘Don’t look like that, Merry,’ she said. ‘If I pull Jack and marry him then we won’t need your little ten guineas, we’ll have this house and the whole show.’

‘If you so much as try then my little ten guineas is all we’ll have,’ I said miserably. ‘Robert warned you, Dandy, and he warned Jack in front of us, and neither of you said so much as a whisper. He’ll put us out, both of us. And then where will we be? All we’ll have is a sixteen-hand hunter trained to nothing, you a trapeze artist without a trapeze, and me a rosinback rider without a horse.’

Dandy went to hold me but I put my hands up to fend her off. I was still too sore all over, and anyway I did not want her caresses.

‘He’ll never marry you, Dandy,’ I said certainly. ‘If you’re lucky he’ll have you and then forget all about it.’

Dandy smiled at me, a long slow powerful smile. Then she dived under the straw mattress of her bed and brought out a little linen bag.

‘Robert sent me to the wise woman,’ she said. ‘I lied and told him it was double the price. She told me how to get rid of a baby if I should have one. She told me when it was safe to go with a man so I should not get with child; and…’ Dandy opened the drawstring at the neck of the bag and showed me the few dusty leaves inside, ‘she sold me this!’

‘What is it?’ I asked. I sat down on my bed. I was feeling deeply weary. Tired because of my bruising and aches, but sick inside at the way that some danger and trouble seemed to be growing greater every moment without me being able to stay it or turn Dandy from her course.

‘It’s a love potion,’ she said triumphantly. ‘She knew I was Rom and I would know how to use it. I shall hex him, Merry, and I shall bring him to me. I shall have him begging for me. And then he’ll persuade his da to let us be wed.’

I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. Night had fallen outside and the room was lit only by the firelight.

‘You’re mad,’ I said wearily. ‘Robert Gower would never have you wed Jack.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong!’ Dandy said triumphantly. ‘Everyone has noticed how he is about you. Mrs Greaves, David, even Jack himself. Jack said that he was as worried about your fall as if you had been his own daughter. He’s softer with you than he is with any of us, even Jack. You’re the key to Robert Gower, Merry! He wants you to work for him for always. He wants you to train his horses for him. He sees now that you’re as good as he is, he’ll soon see that the way to keep you with his show is to marry one of us into it. He knows you’d never marry so that only leaves me. Me and Jack!’ she concluded.

I closed my eyes and tried to think. It was possible. Robert Gower could not have taken more care of me if I had been his own child. The surgeon’s fees alone would run into pounds. It was true that I trained horses better than anyone I had ever seen. I had won him a fortune that day in Salisbury. There were other shows looking for horses and trainers. I had only Sea, but he could be made into a wonderful act if I wished. Dandy was only an apprentice, but there could not be a prettier girl flyer in the world. She was certainly the only girl flyer in the country.

But…I stopped and opened my eyes. Dandy had tucked away her little bag of herbs inside her shift and was tying her pinny around her waist. ‘You’d never persuade Robert,’ I said. ‘Not in a hundred years, not on your own. The only person who could turn him around would be Jack. And you will never get Jack to stand up to his da.’

Dandy’s face was as clear as a May morning. ‘I will,’ she said confidently. ‘When he’s my lover he’ll do anything for me.’

If I had been stronger I should have argued more. Even then, as I closed my eyes against the dizzy hazy pain of headaches and old bruises, I knew that I should sit up and make Dandy see sense. That she needed my protection more than she had ever done in her life. But I failed her. I leaned back against the wall and rested until she had pinned her cap and was ready for us to go to dinner. Even then, as the three of us walked over to the house, I should have told Katie that the promised guinea was mine and not Dandy’s, and that I should not pay it. She could have Jack with my blessing.

But I was tired and ill and, I suppose, lazy. I had not the strength to go against Dandy’s overpowering conviction. I did not even have the wit to keep my eyes open to see if she palmed the herbs and got them into his cup of tea at dinner. I just let her go her own way, even though there was something in the back of my mind which told me that I had let the dearest person in the world slip through my fingers and had not put out a hand to save her.


My sense of miserable foreboding stayed with me so long that Robert spoke of sending for the surgeon again.

‘You’ve lost your smiles, Merry,’ he said. We were in the stable yard and I was ready to start working Sea. I had decided to treat him as if he were unbroken – train him to a lunge rein, and take him slowly through all the stages of a young horse as if he had never been ridden before. His head nodded to me over the loose-box and I was anxious to begin, but Robert touched my arm.

‘I’d send for the surgeon,’ he offered. ‘He’ll not be working from Christmas Eve tomorrow till Twelfth Night, but if you feel ill, Merry, he’ll come out for me.’

I paused and looked at Robert. His face was kindly, his eyes warm with concern.

‘Robert,’ I said directly. ‘Would you let me be a partner in your business? The ten guineas I have – would you let me buy more horses with them and we could work them jointly? Would you let Dandy and me be joint owners with you?’

Robert stared at me blankly for a moment, as if he could not think what the words meant. Then I watched the coldness spread across his face. It started at his eyes which lost their affectionate twinkle and became as hard and stony as a man driving a bad bargain. The smile died away from his lips and his mouth set hard in a thin line. Even the lines of his profile became sharper, and under the joyful, laughing showman I saw the bones and sinews of the ruined carter who staked his livelihood on his little boy dancing on the back of one horse, and drove away from the woman who had tried to trap him with her love.

‘No,’ he said, and his voice was icy. ‘No, Meridon. This is my show, my own show, and God knows I have worked hard enough for it and long enough for it. There will never be a share in it for anyone but Jack. It will never go out of my family. It is all the kin I now acknowledge. I’ll pay you a better wage, if you’re discontent. I’ll pay Dandy tuppence a show whenever she works. But I’ll not share it.’

For a moment his face was almost pleading, as if he were asking me to understand an obsession. He looked down at me. ‘I’ve come so far to make it my own,’ he said. ‘I’ve done things I’ll have to answer for to my Maker…’ He broke off and I wondered if he could hear in his head the voice of the woman calling him from behind the swaying wagon. ‘I can’t share, Merry,’ he said finally. ‘It isn’t in my nature.’