All I had to do to stop this courtship in its tracks was to tell Robert. He would be angry but it would be no worse than one of his bawled tirades. I could cool Jack’s ardour by just a hint of such a thing. Or I could promise Katie a further guinea if she intrigued with him behind Dandy’s back. But for some reason I felt powerless. I felt as if Dandy’s hex on Jack had bound us all, so that Katie and I lingered in the stables though neither of us wished the affair well. And I lied to Mrs Greaves who might have told me what to do.

‘Dandy doesn’t fancy Jack,’ I said unconvincingly. ‘We’re all three of us close, through being on the road together and working together like we do. Robert’s aiming higher than us for his son; and Dandy has her work.’

Mrs Greaves nodded and let it go at that. ‘Dinner in twenty minutes,’ she said and picked up my wet things from the floor.

I nodded and went out into the gathering darkness to the stable yard. William should have lit the fire in our little room by now and I thought I would steal some moments on my own. Half-way up the ladder I heard voices and I paused. I heard Jack’s voice, and Dandy’s amused ripple of laughter.

‘I think you’ve hexed me, Dandy, with some damned gypsy brew,’ he said. ‘I truly do!’

‘Only the magic that’s in your breeches,’ Dandy said softly, a smile in her voice. ‘What’s this then, my bonny lad, if it isn’t magic?’

‘Oh Dandy,’ Jack sighed. ‘Nay, keep your hands off, lass. I won’t be teased by you. You’ll make me too weak to catch you at practice tomorrow.’

‘David told me to fly to you as if I loved you,’ she said. ‘I can do that Jack. I can fly to you as if I love you. I do love you, you know.’

‘Dandy,’ Jack sounded uncomfortable.

‘D’you love me?’ she asked earnestly.

‘Dandy,’ Jack said again.

‘You love me when I touch you there,’ she said in a soft breathy voice. ‘You love me well enough when I open my bodice like this, don’t you Jack? You love me well enough when I kiss you like this, don’t you Jack?’

I could hear Jack’s breathing suddenly grow harsher and I heard an abrupt scuffle as he broke away from her.

‘Now stop this, Dandy,’ he said rapidly. ‘We’ve got to stop this. If my da finds out he’ll throw us both off the show and we’ll have nowhere to go and nothing to live on. He warned us both. I’m a fool to come up here and be with you on my own, and you’re a devil to lead me on like this. You know I can’t promise to love you. I don’t promise to love you. When we started you said it was just all for fun. I can’t make promises to any lass, you know that.’

There was utter silence in the little room. I crept a bit closer to the trapdoor and strained my ears to hear. I thought that Dandy would be mad with anger that he should pull away from her, but I had not realized how clever she was with him.

‘All right,’ she said sweetly and the laughter was back in her voice. ‘All right, bonny Jack. We’ll play by your rules and we won’t upset your da. You make no promises to me and I’ll make no promises to you.’

I heard the floorboard creak as she stood up and the whisper of her petticoat as she slid down her gown.

‘Now,’ she said, and her voice was full of potent female power. ‘Now you tell me, and you can tell me true. Not whether you love me, bonny Jack, for we’ve agreed not to say that word. But tell me if you like the look of me, mother-naked.’

I heard a sound from Jack that was like a groan and then the tumbling sound of them falling together back on to a bed. I heard my sister gasp as he thrust into her and then her little whimpering cries as they sought their pleasure together. He gave a muffled shout and then a little later I heard Dandy sigh deeply as if she had finally got what she wanted.

I sat with my chin cupped in my hands on the draughty stairs and waited for them to have done so that I could get into my room. I felt neither shock, nor that second-rate desire which comes from watching or hearing. I had heard and seen my da and Zima ever since I was a baby and it meant nothing to me except the increased likelihood of more quarrels later when their appetites were slaked.

I had warned Dandy off, Jack had warned her against asking him for love. She had been hot for him since the summer day she first saw him in his red shirt and his white breeches in the field outside Salisbury fair. Now she had wooed him and had him. I did not know if that would be enough for her. I felt, in every aching bone of my chilled body, that no good would come to us of this, Jack might be as randy as a stud dog, but he was not in love. If she was counting on him to treat this romp as a betrothal she would be sorry before she was done.

I shrugged and stood up. Dandy had been likely to lose her maidenhead young, and I could have stopped it as easily as stopping the wind blowing. The affair might cool within weeks and my worry would have been for nothing. Certainly when we were working together on the road under Robert’s eye there would be fewer opportunities for pleasuring. Jack had told her clearly that he would not love nor marry her, and she had taken him with that knowledge to satisfy his lust and hers. I judged they had enjoyed the private use of our room for long enough and crept down to the foot of the ladder. By the time I clattered slowly up they were huddled into their clothes and Jack was tending the fire. He nodded at my sullen face and took himself off to wash before dinner.

Dandy shot me a sideways glance. ‘I’ve had him,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I was on the stairs.’

She nodded. Neither of us had ever been house-dwellers, we never minded being overheard.

‘Will that be enough for you now?’ I asked her. ‘Have him for pleasure, as you said, and leave the rest alone.’

She pulled the bow that tied her hair and the great black wave tumbled down over her face. ‘Oh surely,’ she said, from underneath it, and retired to her pallet and started brushing it through.

I stared at her in silent frustration. She was putting up a wall around her thoughts as surely as if she had told me to mind my own business. We had both learned that trick. Dandy could lie with her lover, learn her skill, wash her body in front of me without embarrassment. She and I were raised in a wagon, we had no sense of private place. Our private rooms were all in our own minds and she could shut me out of her plans and imagination as surely as I could close her out of mine.

‘You won’t be able to have him without Robert knowing when we’re on the road,’ I said warningly.

Dandy swept back a wave of glossy black hair. She smiled at me, her eyes were sated. She looked as if she knew what she was doing and was well pleased.

‘I’ll be ready to move on by then,’ she said sweetly. ‘Don’t fuss, Meridon, you’re like an old mother hen. I know what I’m doing. I’ve got ten weeks.’

I turned from her and stared into the fire, the fire which Jack had tended for us. If I were a real Romany I should see in the fire what the danger was which sent shivers up my spine. If I had the Sight instead of pretending to it, and a few worthless dreams of Wide, I should know what I feared so. I turned my fears over in my mind like the mother hen she called me, turning her eggs. Robert could abandon us in his rage when he found that Dandy and Jack had lain together. I knew that did not matter now. There would be other shows which would be glad to have us. Dandy had a unique skill and I had special talent. Dandy was the only girl flyer in the country and I was the best trainer and rider I knew. We had ten guineas (nine, thanks to Dandy’s desires) and a fifty-pound hunter. We would not starve. It was not the fear of being left by Robert which clutched at my heart.

Dandy might fall. But Dandy always might fall. She was skilled and Jack was a good catcher. They had been taught well and they were practising daily. Robert had sworn that they would never work without the catch-net. The height might make me sick with fear but it did not trouble Dandy. And her happiness was sound enough. I knew she was hot for Jack but it was partly lust and partly pique because he had fancied Katie. I did not believe in love. I had never seen such a thing. I had never seen a man or a woman in love. I had never seen a man or a woman do anything except please themselves. While Dandy wanted Jack I thought she would be able to have him. If his da spoiled sport when we were on the road she could make her choice to leave him go, or find ways to be with him. Either way it was Dandy’s amusement. Not her life’s need.

‘Are you done? Old Mother Merry?’ Dandy asked me mockingly. She had tied up her hair again and had a fresh kerchief tied at her neck. She had been watching me as I stared at the flames, and she had read my face aright. ‘Worried all you can?’ she taunted me.

‘Yes,’ I said. Then I put my finger on the one, last fear. ‘You are sure the old woman showed you how to stop a baby,’ I said. ‘And told you when you are safe to lie with a man?’

Dandy chuckled, a deep rich laugh and her blackberry eyes danced. ‘Oh aye,’ she said. ‘There’s a time when you cannot make a child, and a time when you will. There’s herbs which will help you do it, and herbs which will make it less likely. There’s some nasty stuff which turns your guts half inside out but washes a baby out if one is started. I know how to make sure I don’t get with child.’ Her black eyes teased me. ‘And how to get a belly on me if I wish it,’ she said.

‘You would not wish it,’ I said stiffly.

Dandy chuckled. ‘And let Katie be the only one up on the high trapeze in a pink stomacher, Meridon? You must be mad!’

13

February was freezing and cold. In early March there was a thaw but then it froze hard again. Robert made us work in all weathers and we all four grew bored and rebellious, but we kept our complaints to ourselves. We all set to costume and harness making, Mrs Greaves teaching Dandy and me to sew. We were less handy than either Jack or Katie. He had been making costumes and harness all his life and she had learned a speedy careless stitch in the poorhouse. Only Dandy and I puckered up the cheap silk with great ungainly running stitches where we should have hemmed. Time and time again Mrs Greaves made us rip it back and start at the beginning, until the fabric grew damp and grimy from handling.