The Favoured Child

19

Mama had held Acre, and all of us in the Dower House, to strict observance of the sabbath, and even in the middle of ploughing she could not be moved from it. To my surprise Ralph Megson agreed with her, and when I had said, ‘Lose a ploughing day?’ he had given me one of his sideways glances and asked, ‘And you would add up all the Sundays worked and give the village a week’s holiday every month and a half would you?’

The carriage took us to church in the morning and back for breakfast, but Mama agreed that provided we stayed inside the boundaries of the estate, we might ride in the afternoon.

‘I have to leave tomorrow first thing,’ Richard said, ‘so will you come out at once, Julia?’

‘Indeed I will,’ I said, ‘but I shall have to change.’

‘Be quick, then!’ he said in his familiar peremptory tone of command.

I fled up to my bedroom. I had a choice of three riding habits now: my original one in cream, now sadly shabby, and the two newer ones, one in a soft grey with a grey tweeded jacket, which matched my eyes and which I thought fearfully smart, and the other a deep purple. When I had first worn the grey one downstairs, John had drawn in his breath with a little hiss and his eyes had met Mama’s in a look I could not fathom.

‘It is just that she always wore her riding dress,’ Mama had said, ‘and she had a grey one that she wore in second mourning after their father died.’

John had nodded, and I knew they were speaking of Beatrice. ‘The resemblance is so striking…’ he started.

‘Not at all,’ Mama had interrupted in a forceful voice without her usual courtesy. ‘It is just the dress.’

‘But is it a nice dress?’ I had demanded, impatient with the past, free from superstition. ‘Don’t you think it a lovely dress, Uncle John?’

‘I think you a very vain Bath miss,’ he had said fondly, ‘fishing for compliments like a hussy. Indeed, it is a very nice dress, and you are a very nice niece, and you have a nice horse. Matched greys, the two of you! Now, go and preen elsewhere, Squire Julia. I have work to do!’

‘I am working too!’ I had said, stung. ‘I am going down to Acre to see if they have gravel and sand ready to put down on the lane if it becomes too boggy.’

‘Squire Julia indeed,’ John had said, smiling. ‘Go and do your work, then, and call in at the hall on your way back. I want to know if they are able to carry on with their work. The foreman yesterday was saying that if the wind got up too high, they would have to stop.’

I had nodded and gone, unperturbed that my resemblance to Beatrice could still make John catch his breath. He and I had agreed that we had to live with the ghost of Beatrice, and we were both increasingly easy with our understanding.

Richard had not seen the riding habit on that day, for he had been away. I could not help wondering if he would think it was pretty too.

He did.

I could tell from the way he looked at me. He was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, and I walked down towards him with the velvet skirts shushing on every step. His eyes narrowed as he watched me, and he lifted my hand from the banister and kissed it, watching my face.

‘You are lovely, Julia,’ he said softly. ‘I can hardly believe it, because I grew up knowing you all my life, but without my noticing, you have grown into the loveliest girl.’

I flushed scarlet up to the roots of my hair and looked at him. I could think of nothing to say. This was a Richard I did not know. I felt oddly uncomfortable. I was used to Richard as my brother, as my friend, as my tormentor and trusted companion, but words of love from him made me uneasy.

‘Thank you,’ I said like a fool, and I gave him an apologetic smile. ‘I feel so silly, Richard,’ I said. ‘I can’t think what to say when you speak to me like that.’

He frowned at that and went before me towards the kitchen door to go out of the house the back way, but Mrs Gough stayed him with a loving hand on his sleeve and made him eat a fresh-baked roll and drink a cup of coffee before he went out into the cold air. ‘For you’re all skin and bone from that lodging-house food of yours,’ she said anxiously. ‘I doubt you are fed as well there as you are at home.’

Richard was charming, and ate what she wanted and praised last night’s dinner and begged for his favourite dish this afternoon. I watched him with a smile. He was always so very persuasive. He could charm his way into any position, into anyone’s heart.

Mrs Gough was wrong, though. He was not all skin and bone. He did look a little taller, and I thought he had grown. He was still a head taller than me, but he had filled out and become broader. He would never be weighty – he would always have that lean, supple look – but he had lost his coltish awkwardness and was no longer a gangling youth.

I turned my eyes down to my own cup of coffee. I could not look at Richard critically and assess the changes in his appearance. He was dazzling. Even at his youngest and most awkward stage, he had had looks which anyone might envy, with eyelashes as long as a girl’s, a complexion as clear and as vital as a healthy child’s, and a rangy leanness.

He had caught my eyes on him and he half raised an eyebrow in a silent question. I tried to smile but found that I was almost trembling. Richard nodded, as if he knew something that I did not, and his smile at me was very, very confident.

‘We must go, Mother Gough!’ he said firmly. ‘I want to ride all around before dinner.’

‘Aye, it’s a fine estate they’re making for you,’ she said, opening the door for us.

‘Just half for me,’ Richard corrected her gently.

‘Ah, nonsense,’ said Mrs Gough roundly, with a smile for me but with her eyes on his face. ‘The hall and land like this need a handsome young squire to run them on his own. You’d want Master Richard to be master here, wouldn’t you, Miss Julia?’

I tried to find some light reply, but I found I was blushing furiously and could not put a sentence together. I stammered something, and got myself out of the kitchen and into the cold garden and towards the stables before Mrs Gough could be even more indiscreet.

Jem had my mare ready for me, but had not known Richard would be riding.

‘How’s this?’ Richard asked. ‘Do you ride every day, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I said. Richard tossed me up into the saddle. ‘We have been so busy on the land and Uncle John is not well enough to be out all day. Mr Megson cannot be everywhere at once.’

‘You are busy,’ Richard said, and his tone was not approving. I felt uneasy and shifted slightly in the saddle.

‘There has been a lot to do,’ I said defensively.

‘And I can see you do it all,’ Richard said. The words sounded like praise, but I knew Richard was not pleased. ‘What a wonderful little miss squire you are, Julia. Acre must adore you.’

‘Stuff,’ I said awkwardly. ‘It is just work, Richard, as Beatrice used to do.’

He would have said more, but Prince came out of the stable with his head thrown up and Jem clinging on to the reins. ‘He’s rather fresh,’ Richard said, and he sounded almost apprehensive.

‘He’s not been ridden very often,’ I said. ‘Jem has taken him out, but John has been too tired to ride much in the cold weather.’

Richard nodded. ‘Hold him still, can’t you?’ he said abruptly to Jem as the animal shifted when he was trying to mount. Jem nodded, but shot a disrespectful wink at me which I pretended not to see.

Once Richard was in the saddle, he seemed more confident, though he was a little pale. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s been out of his stable for a sennight,’ he complained. ‘Really, Julia, if you are squiring it around the estate so much, you might ensure that the horses are properly exercised.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said neutrally. I knew Prince would settle down soon. He was too well mannered to let his enthusiasm for being out overcome his normal steadiness. ‘Mr Megson stables one of his horses here,’ I offered. ‘If you don’t like Prince, you could try him.’

‘I’ll ride our horse,’ Richard snapped, and he let Prince start forward and brushed past me to trot down the drive.

‘Prince is all right,’ Jem said reassuringly. ‘He’s got no vices. If he bolts, he’ll only come home. All Master Richard has to do is to hold on tight and stay on top. I suppose he can do that, Miss Julia.’

‘Thank you, Jem,’ I said repressively, and I trotted out into the sunlit drive after Richard.

I had hoped we would go towards Acre, because I wanted to see what they were planting in the common strips, but Richard turned to the right before we got to the village and led the way up towards the downs.

‘I thought we would ride along the top of the downs and then drop down to the common,’ he said over his shoulder.

‘Yes,’ I agreed. I could at least check the sheep as we rode past the flock. They were out on the high downs at last, and I wanted to see if the lambs were looking well enough and standing up to their first days out.

‘Why do you not know what to say when I tell you how much I admire you?’ Richard asked abruptly as the two horses breasted the rise of the track and came out at the top of the downs, blowing hard.

I coloured again. ‘I suppose because we have known each other for so long…’ I said awkwardly, ‘and been friends for so long, Richard. It just seems so strange to hear you speak to me like that.’

‘But your Bath friends, James Fortescue and the others, no doubt pay you compliments, don’t they?’ Richard continued. ‘Does it sound odd to you from them?’

‘Not from them,’ I said honestly. The horses fell into an easy walk side by side, along the old drovers’ way that runs along the top of the downs. Looking to my left, I could see Acre and the Wideacre woods, the London road and half of Sussex, and Hampshire as well. Looking southwards, I could see the gleam of the sea and the thousand little mud islands of Chichester harbour.

‘Is that because you prefer them to me?’ Richard suddenly demanded. I jumped and switched my eyes from the view to Richard. He was breathing fast; his colour came and went in his cheeks, and his eyes were blazing blue. ‘Tell me, Julia,’ he said urgently. ‘I have to know! You wrote me a letter which I could not begin to understand. That is why I came straight home to see you. I believed us to be betrothed. You have given me your word; and then you write to me as if it were a little piece of gossip and tell me that you are affianced to someone else!’

‘Richard! No!’ I said. I stopped my horse and put my hand out to him. He jumped down from Prince and lifted me down from the saddle. When my feet touched the frosty grass he did not release me, but kept hold of me in a tight grip, looking down at my face.

‘Tell me, then,’ he said huskily, ‘tell me that you have not changed towards me, even though your clothes have changed, and you are so grown-up and confident. Remember how it was when I came to the field just yesterday? Tell me that you still love me.’

‘Of course I do,’ I said simply. ‘I always have done. From as far back as I can remember I have always loved you, Richard. How can you doubt that?’

‘You love me as a cousin, I know,’ he said tightly, ‘but you have promised me more than that, Julia. I love you as a lover, I think you know that. We both know what it means. I am asking you, do you love me too?’

It was not true.

There was a lie, somewhere.

I was not a fool. I had been a fool over Richard many, many times. I had loved him without encouragement and without return. I had always thought there would be a time when he would take me in his arms and say he loved me, and our love would have changed, grown into adult love. Now that time had come.

But it had come too late.

‘I do love you,’ I said slowly, ‘but I am not sure what that love means for us both.’

‘You have promised to marry me,’ Richard pressed. ‘When I am done at Oxford and we are of age, you will marry me, as we always planned.’

‘Richard…’ I said helplessly. His hands on my waist were closed in a hard grip, hardly a caress at all. I was trying to think of words to explain to him that he was my dearest brother and friend, but that the feeling of being in love was quite different, that he should not mistake his feelings for me.

He drew me a little closer to him and his hand slid around my back. I felt my mouth grow dry with apprehension. He put a hand under my chin and turned my face up to him.

He had always done as he wished with me. I had never said no to Richard, I had never even run away from his anger. How could I now learn to pull away from his touch?

‘Richard…’ I said softly.

His hand smoothed my back and I could feel his warm body pressing against mine. One hand stroked my face, my cheek, my neck. But my body did not respond to him. It did not melt to his touch. Instead I heard a buzzing in my head like an angry bee and I could feel the hair on the nape of my neck standing up like the hackles on a frightened dog. For the first time in our lives, when Richard touched me, I drew away. I could not help but draw away. He made my skin crawl.

Richard’s face came down lower and he kissed me lightly on the lips.

I held myself still. Nothing would be gained by pulling away, and anyway I had my back against Misty and could step backwards no further. But when his lips were pressed harder on my passive mouth, I could not help but shudder.

He misunderstood that shiver. He broke from the kiss and smiled down at me. ‘You are hot for me,’ he said confidently. ‘You love me and you want me.’

‘No,’ I said instantly. ‘I am sorry, Richard, but that is not how it is.’

‘You are wanton,’ Richard said coolly. ‘You have always been mine. You would come to me at any time, night or day, if I so much as snapped my fingers. But then you go away to Bath and think you have found another master, another lover. But I have come to claim you back. And here and now I do take you back.’

‘No, Richard,’ I said steadily. I was breathing fast, but there was a very sharp awareness in my mind that what Richard was saying was not true.

‘You are a whore and a wanton,’ Richard said pleasantly. ‘You would go with any man who flattered your monstrous vanity. You played the little squire all around Bath and made a show of yourself with finding the paupers and bringing them home. Now you have some cheap tradesman’s son sniffing around you and I am supposed to believe this is love! It is vanity and lust, Julia. You are my betrothed, and I will take care to keep you.’

I wrenched myself from him and turned my head into Misty’s silver-grey shoulder. The clean smell of her warmth steadied me.

‘None of that is true,’ I said quietly. My temper was rising, but I had endured Dr Phillips’s stripping away of my most private hopes and fears, and I no longer rose to the slightest bait. ‘None of that is true,’ I said again. ‘I am in love with James Fortescue. I went to Bath a free woman. We did play at being engaged when we were children, but neither your papa nor my mama ever encouraged that. Since we have been grown, I have never felt that you loved me in that way. I love you as if you were my brother and I will continue to do so, provided you treat me well. There is no other relationship between us.’

‘Julia!’ Richard cried. His tone was so anguished that I turned back to look at him. His mouth was working, but his eyes were sharp. ‘You are breaking my heart!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have loved you all my life. I have refused invitations to balls and dinners in Oxford because I considered myself a betrothed man. Now you tell me this means nothing to you! Have you forgotten how much we loved each other in childhood, before all of Acre started to come between us? Before Mr Megson came back, before you started going out of the house instead of waiting at home for me.’

It just did not sound right. I pulled back so that I could scan his face. ‘What is the matter with you?’ I asked softly.

‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. He said it too quickly, I heard it.

‘You do not have to love me,’ I said slowly. I spoke almost sadly. ‘You know that I love you and that I shall love you for always, as my dearest friend, as my brother. No one could take that love away from us. No one could replace you in my heart. There is no need for you to pretend you feel desire for me when you do not.’

There was an invitation there if Richard had been the person to hear it, and understand it. But he was not.

It was odd, for I had believed that it was women who were the romantic ones, who cling to lies and pretty mannered courtesies. I would have given every florist’s bloom in the world to have known what was in Richard’s heart on that bright day on the top of the downs. But he would not tell me.

‘I know I do not have to love you,’ he said gently. ‘But I can tell you, I can tell you freely, that I do love you with all my heart and soul.’

He bent his dark head and kissed me again, and I felt such pity for him if he was telling the truth and such confusion about what I should do to help him that I let him kiss me. His breathing was coming faster and he was murmuring my name over and over as his lips went up and down the line of my neck from my collarbone to my ear.

I wrenched my face away from him, and I put both my hands against his shoulders and tried to push him off me. Then I saw his face, quite empty of emotion, not warm and loving nor hot with passion, but with an absolute coldness behind his eyes as he looked at me and measured me.

‘Is it the truth that you no longer want me?’ he asked. His voice was like ice.

I pulled my stock up around my throat and smoothed my jacket down. My hat had come off altogether and I pinned it back on as best I could. I felt rumpled and foolish. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I am sorry. I am betrothed to another man and I love him as a lover. I love you as a brother and that is all.’

‘Then you are faithless and you have broken my heart!’ he cried out and spun around to Prince and vaulted up into the saddle.

‘Richard!’ I said. But he wheeled Prince around so close that the flick of his tail stung me in the face. Richard, high on his back, was scowling. He jerked Prince to face back along the way we had come and then dug his heels in hard and used his whip too. Prince threw up his head and thundered away from us. Misty sidled, anxious, and I grabbed her reins.

I did not hurry to follow. I let him go. I waited on the downs and I wept for the pain I had caused him, and that I should have been so stupid as to think that Richard could readily accept another in his place. I had never known before how much he loved me. I wept for my folly, and for the loss of that love.

I led Misty over to a hummock which I could use as a mounting-block to help me into the high saddle, and I wiped my eyes on the back of my glove and sniffed miserably. Then I turned her head for home and went slowly down the bridle-track to the foot of the downs. And there he was.

He was waiting for me, with Prince held on a short rein, standing very still at the side of the path. He was waiting for me with his sweetest smile.

‘Julia, I beg your pardon,’ he said handsomely, and put his hand out to shake mine.

I was swept with a flood of relief that we were no longer quarrelling. ‘Oh! Richard!’ I said, lost for words.

‘To tell the truth, I am jealous,’ he said frankly, ‘but I make a very poor Othello. All this time I thought of you as a little girl, and you have been growing into a strong and beautiful woman. I only hope your James is worthy of you! But I promise you I will dance at your wedding with a glad pair of heels. And I promise you that you will never hear me reproach you again!’

I dropped Misty’s reins and held Richard’s hand in both of mine. Oh, Richard,’ I said, ‘I do thank you. I am sure I have been thoughtless and selfish in not explaining earlier to you what was happening. It was all so sudden…’

‘Tell me!’ he said invitingly, and we turned our horses downhill at an easy pace. I rode with the companion of my childhood and the best friend of my girlhood and told him about falling in love, and how good a man I had chosen. Richard smiled and asked me about the family and our days in Bath; he pledged himself to love them all for me.

Misty jinked at a rag fluttering in the hedgerow as we slid downhill on the wet mud.

‘She’s fresh,’ I said, gentling her. ‘She missed her gallop on the downs.’

‘Oh, let’s forget the downs!’ Richard said. ‘I behaved like a fool, and like a surly ill-natured fool at that. Let’s take them home by the common and have a good gallop.’

‘Oh, yes!’ I said and we turned to our right at the village lane and trotted around the back of the village, past the squatters, up to the crest of the common where the fire-break had been cut back. It made a grand track of white soft sand, as broad as a river. Sea Mist’s ears went forward.

‘A race?’ I called to Richard. I could tell he was confident on Prince. Richard nodded. We reined in the horses and they sidled and blew out, knowing what was coming.

‘One, two, three, go!’ I yelled, the wind whipping my words from me as the horses leaped forward.

Prince was away first, but Sea Mist drew level and I was beside Richard. We glanced sideways at each other through the flurry of wind and the tossing manes and the sand thrown up. There was a thundering noise of hooves and Prince pulled ahead, and my face was showered in sand and grit as he came past. Sea Mist liked it no more than I, and she instinctively slowed as we chased Prince and Richard round a slight curve and then up a steep hill. The gradient told on the older horse and Prince’s gallop became a canter and then was more and more laboured, while Sea Mist took the deep shifting sand and the steepness of the hill in her stride. We passed Richard at a canter. I was leaning forward and clinging like a louse to Misty’s mane. Then I pulled her up on the pinnacle of the hill and waited for Richard and Prince to come alongside.

Richard’s blue eyes were blazing with pleasure, his face spotted with mud. ‘That was grand!’ he said. ‘I would have won but for the hill.’

‘He’s a lovely old horse,’ I said, leaning over to pat Prince on his sweat-streaked neck. ‘He must have been a fine hunter when he was young.’

‘You ride so well,’ Richard said generously. ‘It must be true, what they say, that you are a natural rider.’

‘It’s in our blood,’ I said. ‘We’re both of Lacey stock.’

Richard smiled at that. ‘You and me,’ he said with quiet satisfaction, ‘you and me.’

‘I’ve got sand in my eyes,’ I said, blinking and rubbing them with the back of my glove. ‘Is my face all muddy?’

‘Yes,’ said Richard with brotherly unconcern, ‘and your hair is all falling down.’

‘Hold my reins,’ I said and handed them to him and pulled my gloves off and felt at the back of my head for hairpins. I pinned up the stray curls and took my reins back from Richard, and we sat in silence, resting the horses and getting our own breath back.

Below us were the growing walls of the new Wideacre Hall, to the left was the little golden box of the Dower House. Further along the valley again was Acre village, although we could only see the church spire and glimpse some of the cottages hidden by the trees of the parkland. Straggling out from the village, along the edge of the common, were the squatters’ huts, half roofed with moss and bracken, little wooden shelters built by people who lived on the very edge of society, always near starvation and always in danger of losing what little rights they had over grazing and cutting turf and firewood, always ill, always accused of thievery or poaching.

In the bad years on Acre the estate had become known as land where there was no squire. New people had come to squat on a corner of the common land and now there was almost a little village – a little community beside Acre – scattered along the margin of the common.

Beyond them again was a neat circle of painted carts and tents, picturesque at this distance, where the gypsies had come for the autumn and winter. They came every year, trusting to a tradition which said Wideacre once belonged to gypsies, back in the earliest years. No one could prove it or deny it, and whether it was true or not hardly mattered. They affected to believe it, and no one would challenge a gypsy man, who would fight to the death over a matter of pride, or a gypsy woman, who could cast a spell on you if she wished.

They claimed they had been camping here, in a little circle of carts and tents, three families living as one, since the time of the Romans. At any rate, Wideacre accepted them as another element in a natural order which sent foot-rot to the sheep in winter and flukes in summer. In the old days the women in Acre would complain that they lost washing off the line, and when there had been vegetable patches, a few turnips or sweet carrots would disappear from the plots. But no one could stop them coming or going as they wished.

Every winter they made their camp in the same place, in the same small circle with a fire in the middle. People said that if they came early, it was a sure sign of a hard winter, that they could tell the seasons as well as the bushes in the hedgerows or the animals. This winter they had come late, and for reasons of their own they had stayed on.

We turned the horses and headed for a track which ran alongside a little woodland. We rode in silence, in quiet companionship. The horses made little noise, their hooves muffled by the sandy soil which was still soggy from the rain. Then Sea Mist threw up her head as a rabbit burst from the wood and scuttered across the path ahead of us. There was a stream of ringing bells, and a goshawk shot out of the wood on the rabbit’s tail, its wings open to break its speed as the taloned feet came forward and it dived on to the rabbit’s neck. The rabbit screamed like a child and bucked, but then dropped still – a quick clean kill. The goshawk settled its wings with a satisfied shrug and looked around. It looked straight at us, frozen in surprise, and then its deep marigold-coloured eyes stared back without fear.

‘Is it Ralph Megson’s?’ Richard asked me softly.

I nodded without speaking. The goshawk’s gaze was holding my own. Then there was a rustling in the undergrowth and a black dog came out. Black as mourning velvet, it was, a lurcher, and it shot out of the undergrowth, nose to the ground, until it saw the goshawk and her kill. It dropped then, splendidly trained, into lying position, front paws out, head up, like a couchant lion on a crest.

Then we heard a soft rustle and Ralph came out of the shadow of the trees, one crutch to steady himself tucked under his arm. He nodded at the two of us but said nothing, and we kept silent also. His eyes were on his hawk. He walked towards her without speaking, pulling something out of a little bag he had at his side. It was a strip of meat, and he held it in his gloved hand and flapped it at her temptingly. She glanced from him to the skull of the rabbit, undecided, and then she opened her wings and half hopped, half flew to his proffered fist. She bent her lovely head and pulled at the meat, straining against it as she gripped with her yellow claws.

Ralph pulled a leash from his belt and fastened it to the jesses on her legs and then looped it carefully into his palm. He nodded at the dog and it scooted forward, picked up the rabbit and brought it to him. Ralph tossed it into his bag and patted the dog’s head and gave it a scrap of meat too. Only then did he turn and smile at us, his hawk balancing on his fist, her cream and grey speckled breast feathers still sleek and smooth with excitement.

‘Good day, Miss Julia, Master Richard,’ he said, smiling at the two of us.

‘Preserving the sabbath and the game at once, Mr Megson!’ I said, delighted to have caught him out.

He smiled his slow warm smile. ‘I’m a godless man indeed,’ he said. ‘But I do have to eat, Miss Lacey!’

‘Good day,’ Richard interrupted stiffly, but then he forgot his dignity. ‘That was a wonderful kill! We saw it! It was right in front of us! I’ve never seen a hawk kill so close before! Right under our noses!’

‘Aye, she’s a beauty,’ said Ralph proudly. ‘Three years I’ve had her, and I’ve yet to see her miss.’

‘What’s the biggest thing she’s ever taken?’ Richard asked.

‘She’s had a couple of hare,’ Ralph said, ‘and she can take a pheasant too. She’ll take grouse without trouble, and duck. A family could eat like royalty on what she’d bring them.’

‘I don’t suppose she’d let anyone else hold her…’ Richard said insinuatingly.

Ralph laughed at him. ‘Yes, you can hold her,’ he said easily. ‘You’ll have to come off your horse, though – she doesn’t like being held on horseback. It’s her only fault, and a great nuisance for me. I can keep up with her on short flights, but I’m very tired by the end of the day, looking for game with her and putting it up.’

Richard was off Prince in a flash, and Ralph put his hand out to hold the reins. He took a spare gauntlet out of the bag and Richard pulled it on.

‘Ever handled a hawk before?’ he asked softly. Richard shook his head. ‘Well, you take her from behind,’ he said. ‘Just rest your hand a little above mine, where you think her ankles would be.’ Richard put his hand out, and the hawk stepped back on to his fist as naturally as she had gone to Ralph.

‘Faithless,’ Ralph said with satisfaction. He handed the leash to Richard and showed him how to loop it into his hand. ‘It feels right like that, and you can’t drop it by accident,’ he said. ‘You always hold a hawk’s leash like that.’

Richard nodded, his face bright with concentration.

I noticed that the fluffy feathers of her breast had gone smooth so that she looked lean, discontented. Her orange eyes were sharp. She made me feel somehow uneasy, and there was a hum in my head like half a dozen people whispering a warning all at once.

‘Want to walk her?’ Ralph offered. Richard nodded again. ‘Just take her down the track a little way,’ Ralph advised. ‘Get the feel of her on your hand.’

Richard moved off delicately, trying to walk smoothly on the rutted sand.

‘No need to be too careful!’ Ralph called after him. ‘She’s used to my limping, and she’ll find you as smooth as a yacht in calm seas.’

Richard walked a little faster, and we could see the hawk bobbing to keep her balance.

Ralph smoothed Sea Mist’s neck and glanced up at me. ‘No trouble at home, after the sowing?’ he asked.

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said.

‘Is he staying long?’ he asked, nodding his head to where Richard was turning and walking back to us.

‘No,’ I said, ‘he’s leaving tomorrow.’

‘We are ploughing the common field tomorrow,’ Ralph said laconically.

‘I’ll be there,’ I said steadily.

Richard came up to us, and I could tell, without knowing how, that the hawk was afraid. I felt a pricking in my thumbs, in the thumbs of both hands, as sharp as darning needles. The sensation was so acute and so sudden that I exclaimed and looked down at my riding gloves to see if I had gorse thorns stuck in the leather. Then I looked back at the hawk and saw her breast feathers tight. She was skinny with fright.

As soon as she saw Ralph, she opened her wings and flung herself towards him. Richard had the leash tight and it jerked on her legs, catching her in mid-flight. In a second she was upside-down, spinning around on the leash, her wings flailing wildly in a panic to get herself upright again.

‘Steady,’ Ralph said quickly; he thrust Prince’s reins at me and took two rolling strides towards Richard.

Richard’s face was murderous. He jerked at the hawk as if she were a doll on a piece of string, not a living creature at all. ‘Back to me!’ he shouted, and he snatched his hand up so she bounced helplessly at the end of the leash.

Prince threw his head up and Misty pulled away, her ears flat against her head. I nearly lost my seat trying to hold the two restive horses.

‘Steady!’ Ralph shouted in a tone I had never heard him use before. He grabbed Richard’s arm and held it still, then he put his other hand under the twisting flailing bird and cradled her breast. Richard still had the leash tight in his hand so Ralph lifted her gently, as gently as if he were holding a fledgling, back to Richard’s glove.

The second her feet were on it she bated again, directly towards Ralph, as in a panic to be with him and away from Richard. Ralph instinctively put his hands out to catch her and released Richard’s arm. Richard jerked hard on the leash, as he would have pulled a dog to heel, and we all heard a horrid crack, crack, like two twigs breaking.

Misty reared up as if the ground had opened beneath her front hooves, and I tumbled from her back with a spinning thud which knocked the breath out of me. I ducked my head down and bunched up small in instinctive fright while she reared over me and wheeled away, then slowed and dipped her head to some fresh heather a few yards away. I had kept my hold on Prince’s reins, and he stood steady, though his eyes showed white.

Ralph snatched the leash from Richard’s fist and looped it quickly around his own. Then he caught his bird, pinning her two wings to her side so she could flutter no more. He held her head into his jacket with one broad hand while he searched in his gamebag with the other. He brought out a little hood, intricately worked and made of exquisite soft leather, with a little crest of hen’s feathers on the top. He hooded her smoothly, pulling the hood tight with his teeth and hand on the leather thongs. Then he pulled out something like a stocking from the bottom of the bag and pulled it over her head so her wings were held to her side; he laid her in the bag, on top of the rabbit she had killed when she had been a proud free hawk and not a trussed bird.

Only then, when she was safely hooded and muffled and lying soft in his bag, did he turn to look at me and ask, ‘All right, lass?’

I nodded and got to my feet. We both stared at Richard who stood, guilty, in front of us.

Ralph eyed him warily. ‘What ails you?’ he asked very low.

Something in the way he said that made me cold.

He was not asking Richard in the way a man with a beloved hawk just injured would speak. He was not shouting in hot anger. He was not even icy with rage. He asked Richard in a voice which put Richard at a distance so that Ralph could inspect him. He spoke as if Richard had some secret dangerous ailment which could infect us all. He stared at him as if he would see into his very soul.

Richard was scarlet to his hairline. ‘I don’t know,’ he said awkwardly. ‘She flew off my wrist and I did not know what to do. I did not know what I was doing.’

There was a desert of silence.

‘I am sorry, Mr Megson,’ Richard said. His voice had gathered strength and I saw him shoot a sideways glance at Ralph. ‘I would not have frightened your hawk for the world. I hope she is not hurt?’

‘You know full well that both her legs are broken,’ Ralph said evenly. ‘You heard them snap when you jerked on the leash. Why did you pull her like that?’

‘I did not!’ Richard said, blustering. ‘That is not so! She simply flew out and I held the leash to keep her safe!’

‘You did not,’ said Ralph, and his voice was like ice. ‘You jerked her back in a rage.’

He hesitated, and he looked at Richard thoughtfully. ‘Many people have held her and she has never bated before,’ he said to himself. There was a long silence while Ralph thought something through. ‘Animals don’t like you, do they?’ he said.

Richard said nothing. I reached out a hand to touch Prince’s thick neck, as if to reassure myself that the real world was still there. The voices in my head had grown in strength like a dozen, twenty people murmuring at me to be warned, to listen, to take care, to know real danger when I saw it. I felt hazed, almost snow-blinded. There was a buzzing in my head as if Beatrice were very near to me, somehow trying to summon me, a hard insistent calling. I should be listening to something, I should have ears to hear her message. The balls of both my thumbs were as sore as if they were bleeding from a hundred tiny pinpricks.

I was distressed for the hawk and afraid of Ralph’s anger, and concerned for Richard.

Ralph turned abruptly to me. ‘You have the sight, Julia,’ he challenged me. ‘You should know. What do you see when you look at Richard?’

I turned my eyes to my cousin and he looked at me with his clear blue stare. The noise in my head was too loud for me to think of anything. I saw Richard, my beloved Richard, my coheir and the playmate of my childhood. And I saw as well some awful danger and fear and horror.

‘I can see nothing. Nothing,’ I said desperately. ‘I can hear nothing and see nothing. I do not have the sight as you think. I cannot see.’ I turned my head from Ralph and spoke to Richard. ‘I want to go home,’ I said, as pettish as a schoolgirl.

Ralph limped over to where Sea Mist restlessly cropped the heather. As she saw him coming, she wheeled around and put her hindquarters to him as if she thought of kicking – Misty, who had never shown an ounce of spite in all the time we had known her.

‘Give over,’ Ralph said gruffly, and walked towards her and took her reins to lead her back to me. He threw me up into the saddle and said not a word more, not to Richard, not to me. We rode away in silence. He let us leave without a word. We left him standing before that little coppice with his gamebag on his back and his black dog lying at his feet. As we left him, I felt his eyes on my back and I felt him brooding, brooding, over the two of us, and watching us all the way home.