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Meridon
Philippa Gregory
The third volume in the bestselling Wideacre Trilogy of novels. Set in the eighteenth century, they launched the career of Philippa Gregory, the bestselling author of The Other Boleyn Girl and Three Sisters, Three Queens.Meridon, a desolate Romany girl, is determined to escape the hard poverty of her childhood. Riding bareback in a travelling show, while her sister Dandy risks her life on the trapeze, Meridon dedicates herself to freeing them both from danger and want.But Dandy, beautiful, impatient, thieving Dandy, grabs too much, too quickly. And Meridon finds herself alone, riding in bitter grief through the rich Sussex farmlands towards a house called Wideacre – which awaits the return of the last of the Laceys.Sweeping, passionate, unique: 'Meridon' completes Philippa Gregory's bestselling trilogy which began with 'Wideacre' and continued with 'The Favoured Child'.
PHILIPPA GREGORY
Meridon
Copyright (#ulink_dd39d2af-3d85-5e5f-ab0e-0cc80b7affc7)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1990
This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Copyright © Philippa Gregory Ltd 1990
Jacket design by Ward/MacDonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Jacket image © Granger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo.
Philippa Gregory asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780006514633
Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780007370115
Version: 2017-04-12
Contents
Cover (#u22746975-0eac-591c-b076-6bb72a452cca)
Title Page (#u398e2d97-5206-5310-8543-9b8f80e33a60)
Copyright (#ubfa29728-5844-5982-b53f-56718d0ca7aa)
Map (#ua6f6675d-abb8-5127-a95a-e2a64f0cad33)
Chapter 1 (#ua3171679-5c50-55ad-902d-383bf374f4c8)
Chapter 2 (#u58132e15-8604-5b38-a55b-c9538e0d9e27)
Chapter 3 (#ufc2f46b5-6027-51db-9d0d-1a146721ddf0)
Chapter 4 (#u14daf22e-d608-5d35-aebc-6128b7c5d83f)
Chapter 5 (#u872f7575-e0db-5fe2-a572-ebeb558b9969)
Chapter 6 (#u80e3a585-b84f-5a0f-9f63-5edeb59ecdc3)
Chapter 7 (#ub3ed804c-fe56-5fa6-a1bc-08cb16ce17f4)
Chapter 8 (#ub3f8e69e-cadd-56cc-86a7-fb8ae7091b2e)
Chapter 9 (#u388fc605-89fa-5977-961b-c46574e13c67)
Chapter 10 (#ud0c0a0da-e290-5226-ada8-81a5c6f25f9a)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Philippa Gregory (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
MAP (#ulink_2ced47ac-cd37-54f9-96d0-512551583e1d)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_0b8f24a1-f863-5c2b-be9e-6f9f0c94bd84)
‘I don’t belong here,’ I said to myself. Before I even opened my eyes.
It was my morning ritual. To ward off the smell and the dirt and the fights and the noise of the day. To keep me in that bright green place in my mind which had no proper name; I called it ‘Wide’.
‘I don’t belong here,’ I said again. A dirty-faced fifteen-year-old girl frowsy-eyed from sleep, blinking at the hard grey light filtering through the grimy window. I looked up to the arched ceiling of the caravan, the damp sacking near my face as I lay on the top bunk; and then I glanced quickly to my left to the bunk to see if Dandy was awake.
Dandy: my black-eyed, black-haired, equally dirty-faced sister. Dandy, the lazy one, the liar, the thief.
Her eyes, dark as blackberries, twinkled at me.
‘I don’t belong here,’ I whispered once more to the dream world of Wide which faded even as I called to it. Then I said aloud to Dandy:
‘Getting up?’
‘Did you dream of it – Sarah?’ she asked me softly, calling me by my magic secret name. The name I knew from my dreams of Wide. The magic name I use in that magic land.
‘Yes,’ I said, and I turned my face away from her to the stained wall and tried not to mind that Wide was just a dream and a pretence. That the real world was here. Here where they knew nothing of Wide, had never even heard of such a place. Where, except for Dandy, they would not call me Sarah when I had once asked. They had laughed at me and gone on calling me by my real name, Meridon.
‘What did you dream?’ Dandy probed. She was not cruel, but she was too curious to spare me.
‘I dreamed I had a father, a great big fair-headed man and he lifted me up. High, high up on to his horse. And I rode before him, down a lane away from our house and past some fields. Then up a path which went higher and higher, and through a wood and out to the very top of the fields, and he pointed his horse to look back down the way we had come, and I saw our house: a lovely square yellow house, small as a toy house on the green below us.’
‘Go on,’ said Dandy.
‘Shut up you two,’ a muffled voice growled in the half-light of the caravan. ‘It’s still night.’
‘It ain’t,’ I said, instantly argumentative. My father’s dark, tousled head peered around the head of his bunk and scowled at me. ‘I’ll strap you,’ he warned me. ‘Go to sleep.’
I said not another word. Dandy waited and in a few moments she said, in a whisper so soft that our da – his head buried beneath the dirty blankets – could not hear, ‘What then?’
‘We rode home,’ I said, screwing my eyes tight to re-live the vision of the little red-headed girl and the fair man and the great horse and the cool green of the arching beech trees over the drive. ‘And then he let me ride alone.’
Dandy nodded, but she was unimpressed. We had both been on and around horses since we were weaned. And I had no words to convey the delight of the great strides of the horse in the dream.
‘He was telling me how to ride,’ I said. My voice went quieter still, and my throat tightened. ‘He loved me,’ I said miserably. ‘He did. I could tell by the way he spoke to me. He was my da – but he loved me.’
‘And then?’ said Dandy, impatient.
‘I woke up,’ I said. ‘That was all.’
‘Didn’t you see the house, or your clothes or the food?’ she asked disappointed.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Not this time.’
‘Oh,’ she said and was silent a moment. ‘I wish I could dream of it like you do,’ she said longingly. ‘’Taint fair.’
A warning grunt from the bed made us lower our voices again.
‘I wish I could see it,’ she said.
