Читать книгу The Favoured Child - Philippa Gregory - Страница 9

Richard’s convalescence from the fever and the mending of his collar-bone and arm progressed without any problems. The surgeon came from Midhurst again to make sure the break was healing and he told Mama he would not need to call again. Richard was irritable during the days when he was cooped up in his tiny low-ceilinged bedroom, but once he could come downstairs for his meals – looking very grand in Grandpapa’s old jacket for a dressing-gown – he became his old sweet-tempered self. I thought that his short temper over Scheherazade had come from the fever and the pain and the very great blow it had been to his pride that I should be seen riding a horse which had just thrown him.

Bearing that in mind, I was discreet in my visits to the stables with crusts of stale bread for Scheherazade. I did not dream of riding her again, and I scowled at Dench when I met him chatting with his nephew Jem in our stable yard and he told me of a ladies’ saddle he had found which was being sold cheap.

‘I am not allowed to ride her,’ I said as I might have said, ‘Get thee behind me’ to my greatest temptation. ‘She is Richard’s horse, not mine.’

‘He can’t ride her,’ he said frankly. ‘He was always afraid of her, she was always unsettled with him. Tell him that you’ll ride her for him while his arm’s mending. Jem’ll give you a few hints on how to manage her.’ Jem beamed at me and nodded. ‘She needs exercising,’ Dench said. He made it sound as if I would be doing Richard a favour instead of giving myself the greatest joy I could imagine. ‘No horse likes to be neglected. She’ll get bored and fretty locked up in the stable all the time. Tell Master Richard that she needs to go out. He can watch you ride himself if it makes him feel any better.’

‘I’ll tell Mama she needs exercising,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to ride her.’

‘Pity,’ he said succinctly.

Jem nodded. ‘You should stand up for yourself, Miss Julia,’ he said. ‘You’re the Lacey, after all.’

I said nothing.

‘D’you want to lead her down to the orchard?’ Jem suggested.

‘Oh yes!’ I said. Jem turned to fetch her from the loose box and she came out in a rush. Dench stepped quickly aside and put a hand up for her head collar, but I stayed still. She stopped before me, as though it were me she had been in a hurry to see, and she dropped her lovely huge chestnut head to sniff at the front of my gown. I held her soft nose and laid my cheek along it.

Then I saw a movement at the library window, and I froze. Richard was watching me. As soon as I saw him, I moved, instinctively, away from the horse, ashamed as if he had caught me rifling his possessions or reading his private letters. I lifted my hand in a little wave, but Richard did not respond. He stepped back from the window before Jem and Dench had turned to see who was there.

‘Richard was watching,’ I said feebly. ‘I won’t take her to the orchard, Jem. You do it.’

Jem made a hissing noise through his teeth and clipped a rope on to the head collar. He and Dench exchanged one sour look, but said nothing.

‘I must go,’ I said, and turned away from the horse, the lovely horse, and went back to the parlour.

It was a quiet day, like all the other days, and the only excitement of the afternoon came when Richard and I were playing piquet at the parlour table and I won one hundred and fourteen pounds in buttons. Richard declared himself bankrupt and ruined and tossed down the cards. He glanced across at my mama, sitting at the fireside, and asked her, as if he had just thought of the question, ‘Mama-Aunt, what is Lord Havering going to do about Dench?’

‘Dench?’ my mama repeated in surprise. ‘What about Dench?’

Richard looked blank. ‘Surely he has been reprimanded,’ he said, bewildered. ‘After taking such dreadful risks with Julia’s safety that day?’

Mama paused. ‘I was very shocked at the time,’ she said. ‘But when he brought you home, I was so relieved to have you safe that I said nothing. It was all such a rush!’

‘I would have expected you to be more concerned about Julia,’ Richard said, still surprised. ‘Didn’t she faint when she got home?’

‘Yes …’ Mama said.

‘If she had fainted on horseback, she could have fallen and broken her neck,’ Richard interrupted. ‘Dench should never have put her on Scheherazade. She could have been badly thrown. Scheherazade had just thrown me, and I had been well taught and riding for months.’

Mama looked appalled. ‘I should have thought …’ she said guiltily. Then she turned to me. ‘But you seemed so confident,’ she said, ‘and you rode her so well! You could obviously control her. I just assumed you had been riding her around the paddock when Richard’s back was turned!’

‘No!’ I said at once. ‘I never did that. I had never ridden her before. Dench told me to get on her, so I did.’

‘It was very wrong to send Julia off on a big dangerous horse for her first ride alone,’ said Richard. ‘Astride too…and through Acre!’

Mama frowned. ‘I have been careless,’ she said. ‘I did not think about it once I had you both safe home, but you are right, Richard. I shall speak to Mama about it.’

She shook her head with worry and bent to snip a thread from her sewing. When she looked up, she smiled at Richard in gratitude. ‘What a good head of the household you are, Richard!’ she said. ‘You are quite right!’.

I smiled too at the praise for Richard, and Richard sat back in his chair and beamed at us both with confident masculine authority.

We saw Lady Havering the next day when she called on her way to Chichester to see if we needed any purchases. I saw Mama talking long and earnestly at the carriage window and I knew that Lady Havering would strongly disapprove of Dench for being careless with my safety; that she would be appalled to learn that I had been riding astride with my skirts pulled up, and through Acre too! I only hoped Dench had nothing worse to face than one of my grandpapa’s bawled tirades. I knew he would be utterly untroubled by that.

But everything went wrong. Grandpapa was not at home, and in his absence Lady Havering ruled at the hall. She did not go to Chichester after hearing Mama’s complaint; instead she drove straight home to the hall, stiff-backed with ill-founded outrage. She drove straight to the hall and into the stable yard and turned Dench off. She gave him a week’s wages and no reference, and she would not hear one word from him.

He packed his bags and left the room above the stables where he had lived for twenty years. He walked the long way back to Acre village, where his brother and his family lived, dirt poor. Then after dinner – rye bread and gruel – he walked up to the Dower House, where only recently he had driven the Havering carriage with Richard inside, and Mama had cried and blessed him.

Stride was out, so Mrs Gough came to the parlour and told us that Dench was at the back door. Mama looked indecisive.

‘I hope he isn’t drunk and rowdy,’ Richard said apprehensively.

That tilted the balance for Mama, and she went to her writing-box and wrapped a florin in a twist of paper. ‘Tell him that I am sorry he has been turned off, but that I can do nothing about my step-papa’s household,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Give him this from me.’

‘I’ll tell him,’ Mrs Gough said truculently. ‘The idea of dunning you in your own house!’ She stumped from the room, the coin clutched in her hand.

Although the baize door to the kitchen was shut, we could hear her voice raised, berating Dench, and his voice shouting in reply. I looked at Mama. Her face was ashen and I realized she was afraid.

‘It’s nothing, Mama,’ I said gently. ‘Mrs Gough has a sharp tongue, and I dare say Dench is just giving as good as he gets. It’s nothing more than that.’

‘He’s a bitter man,’ Richard contradicted me. ‘I hope this matter ends here. I do not like the thought of him coming to the house, nor hanging around the village making trouble against us. Lord Havering says that Acre is a powder-keg of trouble-makers. Dench is just another one to add to the fuel.’

The kitchen door banged loudly and I saw my mama flinch. But I was thinking of Dench, who had done nothing so very wrong and was now out of a job. He had to walk home again, all the way down the drive and the lane towards Acre, with his head down, watching the toes of his boots which would not last for ever with the walking he would have to do to find work.

I excused myself from the room and slipped out into the hall. The front door was unlocked, and I threw on my cloak and let myself out. I could dimly see Dench ahead of me down the drive, walking back to Acre. Even at that distance I could see that his shoulders were slumped. His stride had lost its swing. I ran after him.

‘Dench, I am so sorry!’ I exclaimed. He had stopped when he heard me running after him, but at those words he turned homeward again and trudged on. I fell into step beside him. ‘When my grandpapa comes home, I shall tell him I was in no danger,’ I said. ‘My grandmama misunderstood what happened, and you know how strict she is about me.’

He nodded. ‘No need for you to say nothing,’ he said fairly. ‘I’d never put you in the least danger. Your grandpa knows that. Her la’ship is right, I did not think about you riding astride. And I did not think about Acre. I’m damned if I know what she would have had me do. But I had no chance to ask that. No chance to tell her that I was anxious only to get them searching for Master Richard …’ He broke off. ‘When his lordship comes home, he’ll find me a place,’ he said. ‘But it’s a poor return for twenty years’ work.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said again. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘Aye,’ he said, the first edge of bitterness in his voice that I had ever heard. ‘It’s never fair for those at the bottom. I know who I have to thank for this. I’d rather that horse had dropped dead when Master Richard took his tumble than all this bother. And my sister having to feed me with a houseful of hungry mouths of her own…You’d not understand,’ he said. ‘Go home, Miss Julia. I don’t blame you.’

I stared at him and had no answer. Then I nodded, unsmiling, and turned back for my home, and the candlelit parlour, and the card game.

But I did not forget that he and Jem had said that Scheherazade needed exercise, and when Richard and I were on our way to our beds that night, I stopped him at the foot of the flight of the stairs which led to his bedroom.

‘Richard, would you mind if I asked Mama if I might walk Scheherazade in the paddock and perhaps down the drive and in the woods a little? Not proper riding, of course, just walking her. Jem said this morning that she would need to be walked out until you are ready to ride her again.’

Richard’s face was shadowy in the candlelight. ‘Would you like that?’ he asked.

Oh, yes,’ I said, but I was cautious. ‘If you would not mind. Not otherwise.’

‘Would you like to learn to ride her properly, perhaps? I could teach you while my arm is getting better.’

‘Richard! Would you?’ I exclaimed, and I grabbed his sound hand so the candle bobbed ad the shadows grew and shrank wildly. ‘Oh! I should so love that! Oh, Richard! I knew you would let me ride her! Oh, Richard! you are such a darling, darling, darling to me! And when your arm is better, perhaps my grandpapa will find us a pony for me to ride and we can go out riding together every day. And we can learn to jump! And…oh, Richard!…perhaps he would take us riding to hounds! And we could be famous as neck-or-nothing riders like your mama!’

Richard laughed, but his voice was strained. ‘All right! All right! No need to set the house afire!’ he said. ‘And mind my bad arm! Don’t hug me, whatever you do!’

I stepped back and did a little dance on the spot in delight. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I said. ‘But, oh! Richard!’

‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew you wanted to ride her all along.’

‘You are the best of cousins,’ I told him exuberantly. But then we heard Mama’s tread in the parlour coming towards the hall and the stairs, and we fled to our bedrooms.

I could hardly sleep for excitement, and my sleep was light. Something awoke me in the earliest hours of the morning, just before it grew light. I heard someone on the stairs outside my room and I called out, ‘Who’s there?’

‘Shh,’ said Richard, pushing open my door. ‘It’s me. There’s someone prowling around the stables. I heard a noise and went down and saw him from the library window.’

‘Who?’ I said, muddled with sleep.

‘Too dark to see,’ Richard said. ‘I opened the window and called out and he ran off, whoever he was.’

‘Whoever could it be, and what could he want in the stables?’ I asked. Oh, Richard! The horses are all right, are they? Should we wake Mama?’

‘I could see their heads over the doors of the loose boxes,’ Richard said reassuringly. ‘The only person I could think of was Dench. The figure I saw had the look of him. He could have been visiting Jem and run off when he heard me call. He’d know that he’d not be welcome here after that scene he made yesterday afternoon.’

‘What shall we do?’ I asked. I was warm and cosy in bed and I did not relish the thought of getting out. As long as Scheherazade was safe, I had little interest in midnight prowlers.

Richard yawned mightily. ‘Go back to sleep, I think,’ he said. ‘There’s no harm done that I can see. It did indeed look like Dench, but he certainly ran off out of the stable yard. I’ll tell Mama-Aunt in the morning; there’s no point waking her now.’

‘And in the morning I can go riding!’ I said in sleepy delight. ‘Will you come out and teach me first thing, Richard?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said indulgently. ‘First thing. Until then, little Julia.’

I slid back into sleep immediately, but my excitement about riding Scheherazade woke me early. At once I jumped out of bed and threw on my oldest gown and pattered down the stairs. Mrs Gough was already up, making our morning chocolate. I said I would be straight back for mine, but I had to see Scheherazade first.

Mrs Gough eyed me dourly, but I paid no heed to her and slid out of the kitchen door, scampered to the orchard for a windfall apple and ran back to the stable. I called, ‘Scheherazade!’ as soon as I got to the stable yard, but her head did not come over the half-door at my voice as it usually did. I called her again and felt suddenly uneasy that I did not hear her moving.

‘Scheherazade?’ I said uncertainly. And then I looked over the stable door.

She was lying on the straw. For a moment I thought she must be ill, for she scrabbled with her forelegs like a foal trying to rise when she saw me. But then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw the blood on the straw. The silly thing had cut herself.

‘Oh, Scheherazade!’ I said reproachfully, and I flung open the door and bent under the pole which slides across the entrance. She scrabbled again, pulling her front half up, but her back legs seemed useless. I realized her injury was serious. Her straw was fouled with urine from where she had lain and it was all red, horribly red, in the bright morning light. She must have been bleeding steadily for most of the night. Her beautiful streaming copper tail was all matted with dried blood. Then she heaved herself up again and I caught sight of her wounds. At the side of each back leg was a clean smooth slash.

She looked as if she had been cut with a knife.

I gazed around wildly, looking for a sharp metal feeding bucket, a mislaid ploughshare, something which could have caused two matched injuries. She looked exactly as if she had been cut with a knife. Two neat small cuts, each severing the proud line of tendons on each leg.

She looked as if she had been cut by a knife.

She had been cut with a knife.

Someone had come into this stable and cut Richard’s most beautiful horse with a knife, so that he would never be able to ride her again.

I was dry-eyed; but I gave a great shuddering sob to see her so injured. Then I went, slowly, lagging, back to the house. Someone would have to tell Richard that his horse, his most lovely horse, was quite lame. And I loved Richard so dearly that even in my own grief and horror I knew it had to be no one but me.

Dench had done it.

Richard said it at once. ‘It was Dench.’

Dench who knew that life was unfair.

I could not understand how a man who had spent all his life caring for horses could do such a thing to such a flawless animal. But Mama, her face white and pinched, said that poverty did strange and dreadful things to the minds of the poor and filled men with hatred.

He had been hanging around the stables last night, as Richard said. He had a grievance against the Haverings and against us. He had cursed us in our very own kitchen. Even I had to agree that he was a bitter man.

Mama sent Jem with a message to Ned Smith in Acre, and he came to the bloodstained stables and said that the tendons would not heal and she would never be able to flex her feet again. She would be lame for ever.

‘Best kill her, your la’ship,’ he said, standing awkwardly in the hall, his dirty boots making prints on the shiny floorboards.

‘No!’ Richard said suddenly, too quick for thought. ‘No! She should not be killed. I know she is lamed, but she should not be killed!’

Ned’s broad dark face was flinty as he turned to Richard. ‘She’s good for nothing,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘She’s a working animal, not a pet. If you can’t ride her, then you’d best not keep her. Since she’s ruined, she’s better off dead.’

‘No!’ Richard said again, an edge of panic in his voice. ‘I don’t want that! She’s my horse. I have a right to decide whether she lives or dies.’

Mama shook her head gently and took Richard by his sound arm and led him towards the parlour. ‘The smith is right, Richard,’ she said softly, and she nodded at Ned over her shoulder. ‘She will have to be put down.’

She took Richard into the parlour, but I stayed standing in the hall. Ned the smith gave me one dark glance. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Julia,’ he said gently.

‘She’s not my horse,’ I said miserably. ‘I only rode her the once.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘But I know you loved her well. She was a bonny horse.’

He went, clumsy in his big boots, towards the front door and hefted the mallet he had left outside. He went to her loose box, where she lay like a new-born weak foal in the straw, and he killed her with a great blow from the mallet between her trusting brown eyes, and some men from Acre came and loaded the big awkward body on a cart and drove her away.

‘What will they do with her?’ I asked. I was in the parlour window-seat and could not drag myself from the window. It seemed I had to see the heavily laden cart rocking down the lane. I had to see the awkward body and the legs sticking out.

Mama’s face was grim. ‘In that village, I dare say they will eat her,’ she said, loathing in her voice.

I gave a cry of horror and turned away. Then I went in silence from the parlour, up to my room, to lie on my bed and gaze blankly at the ceiling. I would have gone to Richard, but I knew he wanted to be alone. He was in the library, sitting in the empty room, in the only chair in the room. Sitting with his back to the window which overlooks the yard and the empty stable so that he could not see Jem mucking-out the empty stall and washing it down.

But in Acre there was no sign of Dench.

Ned said so when he came to the back door to wash his hands and get his pay. I supposed that proved his guilt, but I still could not understand it. Ned told Mrs Gough that Dench had disappeared once he heard that the horse was to be killed.

‘He knew where the blame ’ud fall,’ he said.

‘Well, who else would have done it?’ asked Mrs Gough, truculently. ‘No one else in all the county has a grievance against that blessed boy. It’s fair broke his heart. And where’ll he get another horse from? I don’t know! He can’t be a gentleman without a horse to ride, can he?’

‘Can’t be a gentleman if he can’t stay on!’ Ned said, irritated.

‘Now, get you out of my kitchen!’ said Mrs Gough, her brittle temper snapping. ‘You and your spiteful tongue. Get you back to Acre with the rest of ’em. Trouble-makers every one of you! Rick-burners! Horse-maimers!’

And Ned turned away with a sour smile and went back to the village which my grandpapa had called a village of outlaws – just one and a half miles down the lane from where we lived, lonely in the woods.

Grandpapa Havering swore out loud before us all when he finally came home and Mama told him the whole story. Then he turned kindly to Richard and promised him that as soon as Richard’s arm was strong again, he would have another horse. Another horse for his very own.

But Richard was inconsolable. He smiled and thanked my grandpapa, but he said quietly that he did not want another horse, just yet. Not for a while anyway. ‘I don’t think we could ever replace her,’ he said.

The grown-ups shook their heads and agreed with him. And my heart ached for the lovely Scheherazade and for the wonderful ride I had, that once, with her.

But most of all I ached for Richard’s loss; that the horse he loved was dead.

Grandpapa posted bills offering a reward for Dench’s capture. Injuring an animal is a capital offence, and Dench could have been transported or, more likely, hanged. But no one came forward to betray him, and his family in Acre had not heard from him.

‘I’d trust their word!’ said Grandpapa scathingly. ‘Really, m’dear, the sooner your precious John Mac Andrew comes home and sets that village to rights, the happier I’ll be. A gentleman can scarcely sleep in his bed o’ nights with that murdering crew in Acre.’

Mama nodded, her head down for shame that Acre, our village, should be such a place. And I sensed that she did not want Grandpapa to inveigh against the village with me there, listening. The village where the miller’s wife would not turn out her men for a son of Beatrice Lacey’s. There was a deep old enmity between Acre and the Laceys, and Mama would not tell me of it.

I could see all the signs. Mama would not visit in the village. She took every opportunity she could to go to church in Chichester, not to our parish church in Acre. Our boots were made in Midhurst, and the Acre cobbler was idle. Our laundry went to Lavington. It all came down to that odd phrase of the blacksmith’s – that Beatrice had gone bad.

Richard knew of the tension in the village. And Richard spoke of it openly. ‘They’re scum, they are,’ he told me harshly. ‘They’re as filthy as pigs in a sty. They don’t work for anyone else, they don’t even plant their own patches. They’re poachers and thieves. When I am squire, I shall clear the land of the lot of them, and plough that dirty village under.’

I had caught my breath at that and shaken my head in mute disagreement, but I knew that Richard’s words came from bravado. Richard was afraid. He was only a little eleven-year-old boy and he had cause for fear.

The village children were after him. They knew, as well as the two of us, that the village and the Wideacre family were sworn enemies. And after Dench ran away it got very much worse. They would catcall and jeer at him as he went past, his schoolbooks under his arm. They would sneer at his old coat, at his boots, which were worn and getting too tight for him. And always, when they could think of nothing else to say, they shouted loudly to one another that here was someone calling himself a squire and a Lacey, yet he could not stay on a horse.

Richard walked, fearful as a stable cat through the crowd, and his eyes blazed defiance and hatred. He saw them as a mob and thought that if he challenged one, then they would all attack him. I think he feared too that the adults would come out of their cottages to watch Miss Beatrice’s boy being torn apart on the village street and do nothing to help him.

Most of this I guessed. Richard was too proud to tell me. He told me only that he hated to walk through the village; and I saw that if the day was fine – which meant that the children would be out playing in the lane – he would leave early to go up the downland track and around the back of the village so that he could avoid the village street.

He never told Mama. He had a fine sharp courage, my cousin Richard; and he never told Mama that he was afraid. He asked her once what was meant by the phrase ‘a mother’s boy’. Mama was brushing out her hair before her mirror in her bedroom, and Richard was pulling a silk ribbon through his fingers and watching her. I was sitting in the window-seat looking out, out over the trees of Wideacre where the leaves were whirling away into the wintry sky, but at Richard’s question I looked sharply at Mama.

She put down her brush and looked at him, at his pale heart-shaped face and his mop of black hair, at the ribbon in his hand and at the way he was leaning so comfortably at her side. ‘Where have you heard that phrase, my dear?’ she asked steadily.

Richard shrugged. ‘They called it after me in the village today,’ he said. ‘I paid no heed. I never pay any heed to them.’

Mama put out a gentle hand to touch his face. ‘It will get better,’ she said gently. ‘When your papa comes home, it will be better.’

Richard caught her hand and kissed it, as graceful as a courtier. ‘I don’t mind him being away,’ he said. ‘I like it just as we are.’

I said nothing then, I said nothing later. But when he came home one day with his collar torn and face white, I knew it was getting worse.

I don’t know why I thought I might be able to help, but I did not fear Acre like the two of them. I was at home on Wideacre and at odds with no part of it, not even the worst village in Sussex. I knew with such certainty that I belonged on the land, and that included Acre. And I had a clear memory of Ned Smith’s half-smile, and of Mrs Green giving Richard her most precious phial of laudanum.

I used that phial as my excuse, and told Mama that I should return it to the mill. I would walk to Acre with Richard, go on to the mill and meet him from his lessons after my visit.

I had a little grin from Richard as a reward for that, and a surprised glance from Mama.

‘Walking through Acre?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Why not?’ I said boldly. ‘I’ll just call on Mrs Green and then I’ll sit with Dr Pearce’s housekeeper until Richard is ready to come home.’

‘Very well,’ she said. There was a world of reservation behind those level tones. I guessed that she did not want to make me afraid of Acre, and I think she saw also something she did not understand, something she had seen before: the Lacey confidence in the people of Acre. I ran to fetch my coat and bonnet, for Richard was ready to leave.

It was last winter’s coat, and I saw Mama frown as she looked at it. It was too short and uncomfortably tight under the arms and across the back. The sleeves ended too high, and there was a little gap between my gloves and the cuff where my wrist showed bony and cold.

‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said, making a joke of it. ‘I cannot help growing!’

‘Well, I wish you would stop!’ she said, her face lightening. Then Richard and I were off and Mama waved to us from the parlour window as we walked down the drive and turned left down the lane towards Acre.

As soon as we approached the village, I felt Richard’s unease. He was afraid for us both. He transferred his bundle of books to the other arm and felt for my hand. Hand-clasped, we walked steadily down the chalk-dirt track and past the cottage windows, which seemed to eye us as if they did not much like what they saw.

On our left was the cobbler, still sitting idle in his bow-window. Next to him was the carter’s cottage with the wagon they had used to take Scheherazade away. He had sold his horses long ago, but he had managed to keep his wagon. He still waited on in Acre for times to get better. There was nowhere else he could go. If he left the parish, neither he nor his family of six scruffy children could claim the poor rate. If he stayed, he had only a cold house, a dead fireplace and a wagon outside the door with nothing to carry and no horse to pull it.

Next to him was the blacksmith’s yard, the forge still unlit. For who would want horseshoes in a hurry in Acre where no one owned a horse? As we walked along the lane, I peered at every cottage, wondering that so many people could stay alive at all in such a desolate little village. They could eat the game from the Wideacre woods and the rabbits from the common. But they had no seeds to plant for vegetables, and they must need money for clothing, for tools. I was so absorbed in wondering how people survived with no money – no money at all – that I did not notice we were being followed.

There was a little group of ragged urchins trailing along behind us. Not many – about a dozen of them – but a frightening enough mob for Richard and me. They followed us like a half-starved wolf-pack, and they looked at Richard’s books and my shabby coat as though they were unimaginable luxuries.

Richard hardly drew breath until we reached the vicar’s front porch. ‘Don’t go back out, Julia,’ he said in an urgent undertone while we waited for the housekeeper to answer the bell. ‘Wait here until I have finished my lessons. The children will look at you oddly, and they might say something to you.’

I gave him a little smile to hide the fact that my knees were trembling. ‘They’re only little children,’ I said dismissively, ‘and I have to see Mrs Green. I shan’t be long. If they are rude, I shall just run. I bet I can run faster than any of them.’

Richard nodded at that. He knew I was as fleet as a courser. The barefoot hungry children would never be able to catch me, not even running in a pack. ‘I’d rather you waited,’ he said.

‘No, I can go,’ I said decisively, and the door opened. He did not give me a kiss in front of the housekeeper and the watching children but the hand which still held mine gave me a warm squeeze which mattered very much to me. Just that one gesture, that touch of his palm against mine, gave me the courage to turn and face the children, Richard’s tormentors, and walk down the path towards them.

I stopped at the gate and eyed them over it. I was taller than all but the three biggest: two boys and a girl with her hair down her back in a lank plait. All their faces were closed, sullen; but she had her eyes on me. She was examining every stitch of my old dress and my too tight coat as if I were a princess dressed for a ball. I pushed my hands into my pockets and calmly surveyed her. Then, taking my time, I stepped towards the garden gate and opened it, and walked out into the lane.

That surprised them. I think they had thought I would stay in the shelter of the garden and they melted away as I walked through them. But then they fell into step behind me and I led the way down the bridle-path to the common and the new mill with the motley band behind me. When the silence of the wood closed around us, they grew loud and started jeering. Then I heard the older girl’s voice start a chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a carriage! Hasn’t got a carriage!’ Over and over.

I set my teeth and schooled myself to walk at the same pace while the insulting singsong went on – louder and more fearless. Then the big girl changed it: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a horse! Hasn’t got a horse!’

At the mention of Scheherazade my temper rose a few more notches, but I walked on with my head up as if I were alone.

She started another chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a father! Hasn’t got a father!’

‘He died of fright!’ said another voice and there was a ripple of laughter from them; I flinched at the abuse of my papa and the insult to the Laceys.

I was a little afraid. I was afraid, like Richard, that I might be badly hurt in a scrap with them, or that they might surround and bully me. But I knew, as Richard, with all his charm and cleverness, did not, that the children must be faced and fought or we would never be able to walk through Acre. Richard might dream of clearing the land of them, he might plan for a future where every insult was revenged a hundred times over. But I wanted to live in peace on my land with the families who had been here as long as the Laceys. I did not want to clear Acre village, I wanted to set things right. Whether Uncle John came home with a fortune or as poor as when he left, I wanted to be able to walk in Acre, without apologizing. And feel no fear.

I walked on past the mill. At the end of this track there was a great hollow in the ground where they say there was once a grand oak tree uprooted by Beatrice when she turned everywhere into wheatfields like the one behind it which was sprawled all over now with rust-coloured bracken and mauve with heather. But still the odd head of wheat blew spindly-yellow in the wind. I led my tormentors there and at the lip of the hollow where the oak tree had stood I turned and faced them. They fell back like a pack of hungry dogs baiting a badger.

‘What’s your name?’ I said, picking on the girl. She looked at me with sharp black eyes.

‘Clary Dench,’ she said. She would be Dench’s niece, I thought.

‘What’s yours?’ I asked the boy at her side.

‘M-M-Matthew Merry,’ he said, blinking convulsively as he fought against his stammer.

I had to bite back the urge to giggle. The stammer was such a relief, coming from the mouth of such a frighteningly big boy. It made him seem childlike, no threat to me.

‘And yours?’ I said sharply to the only other big boy.

‘Ted Tyacke,’ he said. He looked closely at me, expecting the name to mean something to a Lacey. I had never heard that name before but I felt a shiver down my spine; somehow in the past the Laceys had injured the Tyackes, and hurt them badly. I might not know what we had done, but this lout of a boy knew that we were sworn enemies.

‘I’m Julia Lacey,’ I said as if they had not been making a chant of my name all the way down the track, careful not to give myself the ‘Miss’ which was my right. ‘You’ve been unkind to my cousin,’ I said accusingly. ‘You’ve been bullying my cousin Richard.’

‘And he sent you out to do his fighting for him, I s’pose?’ the girl sneered. I did not flinch back as she pushed her dirty face close to mine.

‘No,’ I said steadily, ‘he went to his schooling today like he always does, and I came down here to see Mrs Green. But you all followed me down so I ask you what you want.’

‘We don’t want nothing from the Laceys!’ said the boy called Ted Tyacke with a sudden explosion of hatred. ‘We don’t want kind words from you. We know your sort.’ The others nodded, and I could feel their mounting anger, and it made me afraid.

‘I’ve said and done nothing to you,’ I protested, and heard my voice sound plaintive. My weakness gave them courage and now they crowded around me, encircled me.

‘We know about the Laceys,’ said Clary spitefully. ‘We all know all about you. You rob the poor of reapers’ rights. You don’t pay your tithes. You set the soldiers on young men. And the Lacey women are witches!’ She hissed out the word and I saw all the children, even the smallest, clench their hands in the sign against witchcraft, the little thumbs held tight between the middle finger and forefinger to make the sign of a cross.

‘That’s none of it true,’ I said steadily. ‘I am not a witch, and neither is Richard. You are talking nonsense. You’ve got no cause against us, and if you say you have, then you are liars.’

Clary sprang forward at that and gave me a push which sent me reeling back. I lost my footing on the slope of the hollow and tumbled down into the bottom. The little children hooted with delight and Clary came scrambling down after me, her dirty face alight with malice.

I bunched myself up like a coiled spring, and leaped on her as soon as she was beside me. With the impetus of my jump from the ground I knocked her down and we rolled over and over, hitting and scratching. I felt her claw-like fingers at my mouth and tasted blood. Then I got hold of the rope of the plait of hair and pulled as hard as I could. She gave a shriek of pain and instinctively leaned back towards the pull. In a minute I had scrambled atop her, and I sat heavily on her bony little chest and felt, for the first time, a rush of pity at how thin and light she was.

‘D’you give up?’ I demanded tersely, using the words Richard so often said to me when he won in our half-playful, half-painful rompings.

‘Aye,’ she said. She spoke without a trace of a sneer, and I got up at once and put out a hand to pull her to her feet. She took it, without thinking, and then stood up, surprised to find herself handfast with me, apparently shaking on a bargain.

‘So you won’t tease Richard any more,’ I said, going directly to my one objective. She smiled a slow grudging smile that showed a couple of blackened teeth.

‘All right,’ she said slowly, the easy Sussex drawl reminding me of Dench and of his kindness to me. ‘We’ll leave him be.’

We dropped hands then, awkwardly, as if we had forgotten how we had come to be standing as close as friends. But she saw my mouth and said, ‘You’re bleeding’ in an indifferent voice. And I was careful to match her tone and say, ‘Am I?’ as if I did not care at all.

‘Come to the Fenny,’ she offered, and all of us walked deeper into the wood to the bank of the River Fenny for a drink and a splash of cold water on our hurts. And this time I walked neither alone in the front, nor encircled, but side by side with different children who came up to me and told me their names. I realized that I had not only won Richard’s safety, I had found some friends.

There were three Smith children: Henry, a stocky eight-year-old, his sister Jilly, and their little brother, who came with them, trotting to keep up with the pace of the older children. He was four. They called him Little ’Un. He had not been expected to live and had been christened Henry like his brother. But his survival, thus far, meant there were two Henrys in the house, so the little boy had lost his name.

It did not matter, Clary told me, her voice dry. They did not expect him to survive the next winter. He coughed blood all the time like his mother had done. She had died after his birth and they had delayed her funeral a week so he could be put in her coffin and they could bury two for the cost of one. But Little ’Un had clung on.

I stared at him. His skin was as pale as skimmed milk, a bluish pallor. When he felt my eyes on him, he gave me a smile of such sweetness that it was like a little candle in a dark corner.

‘You can call me Little ’Un,’ he said, his breath rapid and light.

‘You can call me Julia,’ I said, looking at his thin face and huge eyes with a sense of hopelessness so intense that it felt like pain.

‘I’m Jane Carter,’ said another girl, pushing forward. ‘And this is my sister Em’ly. We’ve got another sister, but she’s at home with Baby. And we’ve got two brothers. And one of them is simple.’

I nodded, trying to take in the rush of information.

‘They’re out snaring rabbits,’ she said defiantly. I noticed the quick exchange of looks among the others to see how I would react to the news of poaching.

‘I hope they’re lucky,’ I said and I told the truth. ‘With six of you to feed you’ll need the meat.’

Jane nodded at the self-evident fact. ‘We poach pheasants too,’ she said. ‘And hare, and grouse.’

It was an open challenge.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘I wish you luck with it.’

They nodded at that, as though I had passed some crucial test, and two cobbler’s children, fair-headed twins, came either side of me and put their little cold hands in mine.

Clary and I glanced at the sun coming higher over the woods, and started on a jog-trot for home without a word exchanged between us. She set a quick pace for a scrawny girl, and the other children trailed away behind us; only Matthew Merry and Ted Tyacke kept up. I tried to control my breath so she would not hear me pant. But then I could tell by the way she was slackening that she was tiring too.

The track to Acre ran uphill. It was stony and bad going for a child with holes in her boots like mine, but worse for barefoot children like the three of them. I pounded on determinedly, my tight coat squeezing me mercilessly across my chest and under my arms. When I reached the top, I was panting for breath, but I got there first.

‘W-W-Well done,’ said Matthew, his stammer worse with no breath left in his skinny frame to say the words. ‘You’re a f-f-fast runner.’

‘My cousin Richard is faster than me,’ I said, dropping to the ground while we waited for Clary and Ted and then the string of little children.

Matthew spat on the ground like a rude grown-up. ‘We d-d-don’t care for him,’ he said dismissively.

I was about to fire up in defence of Richard, but something told me he might be better served by me keeping my peace. ‘He’s nice,’ I said, keeping my voice light. ‘He’s my best friend.’

Matthew nodded, unimpressed. ‘We don’t have best friends in Acre any more,’ he said.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

Clary slumped down beside me, and Ted beside her. She lay on her back on the damp ground and squinted up at the bright sky with the sharp winter sun blazing coldly down on us.

‘They die,’ she said coolly. ‘Last winter my best friend Rachel died. She had got ill.’

‘And my friend Michael,’ offered Ted.

‘And my friend, I’ve f-f-forgotten her name,’ Matthew said.

‘Sally,’ Clary volunteered.

I sat in silence, taking this in.

‘Sally died away from Acre,’ Clary said with a hint of extra resentment. ‘The parish overseer took all the children he could get from their parents to work in the workshops. That’s why we’re the oldest in the village.’

I nodded. ‘I heard about it,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t understand what had happened. Who took the children?’

Ted looked at me as if I were ignorant indeed. ‘In the north,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘Even further away than London. They need children to work there in great barns, with great engines. They order paupers from all the parishes in the country and the parish overseer takes the children whose parents are on poor relief. They took all the big children they could the last time they came. None of them have come back, but we heard that Sal died. She was always sickly.’

I hesitated. I had nearly said again, ‘I am sorry.’ But the stealing of Acre’s children was too great a grief for an easily spoken apology.

‘Th-Th-They didn’t take me!’ Matthew said with pride.

Clary smiled at him, as tender as a mother. ‘They thought he was simple,’ she said to me with a smile. ‘He gets worse when he is frightened and they asked him questions in loud voices and he lost his speech altogether. They thought he was simple and they left him here.’

‘To b-b-be with you,’ Matthew said with a look of utter adoration at his muddy little heroine.

‘Aye,’ she said with quiet pride. ‘I look after him, and I look after all the little ‘uns.’

‘You’re like a squire then,’ I said with a smile.

Ted spat on the ground, as rude as Matthew. ‘No squire we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘No Lacey has ever cared for the village. Squires don’t look after people.’

I shook my head, puzzled. ‘What d’you mean?’ I said. ‘Acre was well cared for when the Laceys had their wealth. When my papa was alive, and Beatrice. It’s only since they died, and since the fire, that things have been bad on the land.’

There was a hiss, like a wind blowing before a storm, at my mention of the name Beatrice, and I saw all the grimy hands clench suddenly into an odd fist with the thumb between the second and third finger. I caught Clary’s hand.

‘Why are you doing that?’ I asked.

She looked at me, her dark eyes puzzled. ‘Don’t you know?’ she demanded.

‘Know what?’ I said. ‘No, I don’t know.’

‘Not about the Lacey magic? And about Beatrice?’ She said the name oddly, as if she were whispering the name of a spell, not the name of my long-dead aunt.

‘What magic?’ I said, scoffing, but then I looked around the circle of intent young faces and I felt myself shiver as though a cold breeze had blown down my spine.

‘Beatrice was a witch,’ Clary said very softly. ‘She knew how to make the land grow, she knew how to make the weather fair. She could call up storms. She could fell trees by casting a spell on them. She took a young man to husband every spring, and every autumn she destroyed him.’

‘That’s not so …’ I stammered. The singsong tone was weaving a spell of its own around me.

‘It was so,’ Clary insisted. ‘One of the men she took from the village was John Tyacke.’

‘My uncle,’ Ted supplemented.

‘Where’s he now?’ Clary continued. ‘Gone!’

‘Or Sam Frosterly, or Ned Hunter! Ask for them in Acre and see what they tell you! Beatrice took them. Took them all.’

I said nothing. I was too bemused to speak.

‘But one she took, the first one she took when she was a girl, was from the Old People too,’ Clary said. ‘His mother was Meg, a gypsy woman, and his father was one of the old gods. No one ever saw him in human shape. She took him, but she could not destroy him. He went into the dark world, into the silence, and he waited until she knew for sure he was coming. And then he came against her.’

‘How?’ I said. My mouth was dry. I knew this was a fairy story made up by ignorant people on long dark nights, but I had to hear the ending.

‘He came in his rightful shape, half-man, half-horse,’ Clary’s voice was a low mesmerizing whisper. ‘And at every hoofprint there was a circle of fire. He rode up the wooden stairs of the great hall, of Wideacre Hall, and everywhere he went the flames took hold. He threw her across his shoulders and rode away with her to the dark world where they both live. And the house burned down behind them. And the fields never grew again.’

The children were utterly silent, though they knew the story well. I stared blankly at Clary, my head whirling with the picture of a black horse and a man riding away with Beatrice to the dark world where she would live with him for ever.

‘Is that the end of the story?’ I asked.

Clary shook her head. ‘They left an heir,’ she said. ‘A child who will have their magic. A child who will be able to make things grow by setting foot to the earth, hand to the ploughshare. The favoured child.’

‘And who is it?’ I asked. I had truly forgotten I had any part in this story. Clary smiled, a wise old smile.

‘We have to wait and see,’ she said. ‘All of us in Acre are waiting for the sign. It could be you, or it could be your cousin Richard. He is her son. But you have the looks of her, and you’re a Lacey. And Ned Smith said the horse knew you were her.’

I shook my head. The air was cold, and I noticed for the first time that the ground was damp and I was chilled. ‘All that is nonsense,’ I said stoutly.

I expected a childish squabble with Clary, but she smiled at me with her eyelashes veiling her eyes. ‘You know it is not,’ she said. And she said no more.

I got to my feet. ‘I must go,’ I said.

‘Home to dinner?’ asked Clary, accepting a return to the prosaic world.

‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of the two or three dishes for the main course and then the pudding, and then the cheese.

‘W-W-What are you having?’ Matthew asked with longing.

‘Nothing much,’ I said resolutely.

‘Do you have tea?’ Little ’Un asked. There was real longing in his voice.

‘Yes,’ I said, not understanding. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We just gets water.’

‘D’you have meat?’ one of the Carter girls asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, and I felt ashamed that I should have been eating so well while less than two miles down our own lane they had been going hungry. I had known that Acre was poor, but I had not understood that they had been hungry for years. I had not understood that these children would never have felt a full belly, that since infancy they had hungered and thought of little else but food. And while I had my dreams of gardens and horse-riding, of balls and parties and gowns, all they dreamed of in reveries, and even in their sleep, was food.

I turned and walked towards Acre, and I heard them scramble to their feet and come after me. Clary caught me up and we walked side by side into Acre like old friends.

‘Goodbye,’ I said as we reached the dirty little lane which is Acre’s main street.

Clary halted. ‘He has apples in his garden, Dr Pearce,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said.

Clary looked at me speculatively. ‘Still on the tree,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t picked them all.’

I nodded again. They were apples on old trees, part blighted and not very good eating.

Little ’Un came up and slipped a thin hand in mine. ‘I can just see them,’ he said in his breathy voice. ‘I’d love ’em.’

I looked at Clary.

‘If we bunked you up …’ she started. Over the side wall into the garden. You could throw them over to us, and then go round to the front and go in the front door, like usual.’

‘Why don’t you go?’ I asked.

‘Cause if they catch me stealing, I could be hanged,’ she said with brutal frankness. ‘If they catch you, it’s not even stealing when gentry does the taking.’

I hesitated.

‘She won’t do it,’ Ted said. The dislike towards me, towards all squires, made his young voice hard. ‘She came out to make it all right for her cousin, not to be with us.’

‘I will do it,’ I said, rising to the challenge.

‘Go over the wall and steal the parson’s apples?’ he sneered.

‘Yes,’ I said. All at once we all got the giggles. Even Ted’s harsh young face crumpled at the thought of setting me to stealing. We skittered around to the vicar’s high back wall, the little children sluggish with merriment, and Ted Tyacke and Matthew Merry linked hands together, and Clary helped me up to stand on them. They staggered at my weight and Clary said, ‘Go on! Throw her!’

I snorted with laughter at that, and grabbed the top of the wall as the two lads staggered with my weight and with the giggles.

‘One…two…three…and up!’ counted Clary, and the insecure footing underneath my boots suddenly heaved me upwards and against the top of the wall. It was topped with sharp flints, and I heard a seam rip. I looked down into the garden, swung my legs over and was readying myself to slide down and jump when I froze.

There was Dr Pearce, almost immediately below me, looking upward, his face a mask of surprise. ‘Miss Lacey?’ he said as if he could not believe his eyes. ‘Miss Lacey? What on earth are you doing?’

I could think of no answer; I turned around to check that Ted and Matthew were still there. ‘Catch me!’ I squealed like a stuck pig and just toppled backwards off the wall towards them.

We went down in a tumbled heap on to the hard ground with the two of them taking the weight of my fall. They jumped up, but I was laughing so much I could not move.

‘What was it? What was it?’ Clary asked, smiling already at my helpless gales.

‘It was Dr Pearce!’ I said. ‘Right below me. He looked up…and he said…“Miss Lacey. What on earth are you doing?”‘

Clary gave a great wail of laughter and fell into Matthew’s arms. Ted put out a hand and pulled me to my feet, his brown round face contorted. The smaller children dropped down where they stood and howled with irrepressible mirth.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, wiping my streaming eyes. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go in the front garden gate and up the path.’

That set us off again even worse than before, and we staggered like a band of drunkards around to the lane.

‘Don’t come with me,’ I begged. ‘I must stop laughing.’

Clary nodded, still chuckling. ‘Come down to Acre again soon,’ she said. Her dirty face was streaked with the tears she had shed, and she still held her sides. ‘We could really use you in the gang. Great thief you are, Julia Lacey.’

I nodded, still unable to speak, and then turned towards the vicar’s front gate. Half-way up the path to the pretty house I stopped and drew in a deep breath. I did not know Dr Pearce well, and I did not think I would face anything worse than a scolding. But I did not want to disgrace myself utterly by bursting out laughing on the doorstep.

A hoot from behind me told me that Clary was watching, but I did not look around. I tapped on the door and the vicar’s housekeeper, Miss Green, opened it. She dipped a curtsy and held it wide, and I stepped into the hall, back into the world where I belonged.

Dr Pearce came out of the library with Richard and nodded to me as if it were the first time he had seen me that morning.

‘Hello, Miss Lacey,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Come to walk home with your cousin? We are just finished.’

For a moment I gaped at him, then I took my cue. Dr Pearce was not a man to seek difficulties. If he could turn a blind eye to them, then he would do so. He really did not want to know what I was doing sitting on his high garden wall with my coat torn and my face muddy and the naughty children of Acre catcalling encouragement from the lane below.

I curtsied demurely. ‘Yes, Dr Pearce,’ I said. I held Richard’s books while he pulled on his coat and hat, and we went back outside and home for dinner.

The children had gone, vanished like idle fox-cubs at the sound of a strange footstep. The weather had changed from the sunny morning. There were thick clouds piled all over the sky. Richard and I started at a jog-trot for home, speeded by a warning scud of rain on our backs.

‘Did you see Mrs Green?’ Richard asked breathlessly.

‘No,’ I said. I was having trouble keeping up for I was tired from my run with the village children and bruised from the fight with Clary and the fall from Dr Pearce’s wall.

‘Why not?’ Richard demanded. His blue eyes were bright. As soon as I had stepped over the vicar’s threshold, he had seen the scratch on my face and my tangled hair. He knew something had happened, but he would not ask me directly.

‘Tell you later,’ I puffed. I had no breath for a long explanation and I wanted time to think about exactly what I would tell Richard. I had a feeling, which I could not have explained, but which I thought was right, that I did not want to tell Richard the strange stories they had invented in the village about his mama. They might distress him. And I was sure, though I could not have said why, that I did not want to tell him of this newly woven fable of a favoured child, the one who was the true heir.

Richard heard the hesitation in my voice and skidded to a sudden stop and grabbed me by the arm so I swung around to face him. The rain stung my right cheek, but we were a little sheltered by the trees which overhung on the Wideacre side of Acre lane. In the field behind me the wind whistled and the rain sliced down on the self-seeded wheat and brambles.

‘Tell me now,’ he said.

I heard the warning note in his voice and I stood, uncomplaining, in the rain and told him of the walk to the wood and the fight with Clary and the truce we seemed to have made. I told him every single word spoken except Clary’s story about Beatrice. Richard’s stillness warned me that I had better sound thorough; and I was. I also omitted the taunt that I fought his battles for him. I did not tell him that Matthew had spat at the mention of his name. And I said nothing about scrumping the apples.

Richard heard me out, although the rain was making his hair curly with the damp so that he looked more like a fallen cherub than ever. ‘Well done, Julia!’ he said warmly when I had finished. ‘You are a brave girl. I am glad that you are not afraid of Acre any more. You were quite right to tackle the children. Now you will not be afraid to come with me when I go to have my lessons.’

I glowed under his approval.

‘I never minded them,’ he said carelessly, ‘but I am glad you have got over your fear.’

He let my arm go and turned to walk on. I hesitated only for a moment. One part of me wanted to correct him, the anxious proud voice in me which wanted to say, ‘But wait, Richard, you were afraid. I tackled the children for you.’ Then I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a lady’s place is second place, and I smiled a little secret smile, kept my peace and strode alongside him. Then the storm came down on our heads and we broke into a run and splashed up the drive in the milky puddles and dived in the back door, calling for towels and clean clothes. We were greeted by a scolding from Mrs Gough for tracking mud all over her clean kitchen floor.