My smile stretched a little broader at that, but broke off in a wince as my neck hurt me. ‘I am happy,’ I said hoarsely. ‘Is Dandy all right?’

Robert made a little ‘tsk’ noise of impatience. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘She’s down in the kitchen eating her dinner. I said I’d sit with you while they ate.’

I said nothing, and we sat in silence for long minutes while the robin sang outside in the garden and the shadows on my eyelids grew darker.

Then I felt a gentle touch, as soft as a robin’s feather on the clenched fingers of my hand.

‘I am sorry, Meridon,’ Robert said softly. ‘I would not have had you hurt for the world. We’re all sorry that you went up. You need never go up again. I’ll get a poorhouse girl tomorrow to start training. You can stick with the horses.’

I shut my eyes on that thought and started the slide into sleep where my bruises would not hurt me and the smell of lavender might make me dream of Wide. I heard, as if from a long way away, Robert whisper: ‘Good-night, my brave little Merry.’ Then I thought I felt – but I must have been mistaken – the featherlight touch of lips on my clenched fist.

He was as good as his word and I heard from David and from Dandy that the workhouse girl started the next day. She was chosen because she had been a farm worker in wheat country – a lifetime of heaving stooks had given her hard muscles in her belly and arms. David also told me (though Dandy, notably, did not) that she looked ravishing up high on the pedestal. She had long blonde hair which she let fly free behind her. She had no fear of heights and no nerves, and though she started a whole month behind the other two she was swinging from the high trapeze and doing the simplest of tricks into the net within a few weeks.

The surgeon had ordered me to rest and I was glad to lie still. My face was awful. I had two black eyes which closed so tight that for the first three or four days I was fully stone blind. I had broken my nose when my knees cracked up into my face, and for the rest of my life it would be slightly skewed.