The Favoured Child

29

Only that one night, only that once did he come to my bed in the months of my pregnancy. And only that once did he speak of the times which had passed, when all the warning signs had been there if we had been able to see them. I knew then what Acre had known, what every animal he had touched had known, what Ralph had seen on meeting him: that Richard was insane. All the clues had been there, but between an indulgent aunt and a weak girl he had managed to pass them off as eccentricity, or talent, or charm.

I blamed myself. I thought of the times that Richard’s behaviour had been violent or passionate and I had concealed it from my mama. I thought of the times he had threatened me and I had loyally kept it from everyone, even from Clary and the village children. Ted Tyacke would have been glad enough to waylay Richard and give him a thumping to remind him to be gentle with me. But I had never told anyone. Never told them anything at all.

I blamed myself then. I sat on the window-seat and watched the hoar-frost melt on the lawn under the window as the sunshine warmed it on the last days of autumn, and I blamed myself for living in a sweet girlish pretence, believing that the world was kinder than it was, that adults were cleverer than they were, that Richard was normal.

I leafed through the days of my childhood like old watercolour paintings in a folder. And this time I saw everything quite differently. I saw Richard as an impulsive, uncontrollable bully. I saw my mama as wilfully blind: blind to his cruelty to me, blind to his madness, blind because she knew my parentage and guessed at his. She had not the courage to face the Lacey madness in Richard’s eyes. She should have seen it. I should have warned her. And because I had not warned her, she had died most horridly, and left me to live in a long nightmare from which it seemed that I would never be free.

I did not think about the rose pearls, how Richard came to have them, in that slim box which now lay on my dressing-table. Some days, when the sun was shining and the frost was bright and the air sharp and sweet, I would tell myself that he had seen some pearls in a Chichester shop and bought them for me, thinking that I would like them, to remind me of my mama. But at other times near the end of November when the days grew darker and the nights long, I looked into the embers of the fire and saw Richard in a dirty alehouse, paying a man to kill Mama and John. Richard, with that mad absent-minded smile and his blue eyes shining. Richard, as mad as a rabid dog. My brother, my husband, the father of my child.

I blamed myself for not complaining of him, for not warning my mama, for not alerting my Uncle John. But for one thing I blamed myself no longer: that time in the summer-house. I was not to blame. Richard had raped me, as surely and as wrongly as if he had held a gun in my face to do it. I was in a daydream in the summer-house – but I had been thinking of James, not Richard. I had dreamed of love-making there once before, but that was with the sight, and it had been a dream of being Beatrice with Ralph. I had never thought of Richard as my lover and he had no right to court me, and no right to force me.

It made me icy towards him, those days before Christmas. I knew then that I was trapped just as Ralph had warned me. Richard had raped me and isolated me till I had neither lover, nor friend nor parent to turn to. And the child which I was unwillingly carrying was a product of violence and incest.

I think Richard knew that he had pushed me over the boundary into some cold certainty, for he left me much alone. I think he began to fear me, and indeed, when I caught sight of myself twisting the rose pearls around my throat and of my blank horror-struck eyes in a mirror, I could understand his fear.

Stride and Mrs Gough prepared for a quiet Christmas and Richard ordered George to bring in some boughs of holly and a yule-log. They made their preparations around me as if I were some stone goddess, insensate but powerful, who had to be propitiated with the correct ceremonies. The whole household was aware of my growing strangeness and absence, and conspired to blame it on the pregnancy, on the weather, on my mourning for my mama, on anything, rather than face the fact that I was so sick in my heart that I was barely alive at all.

Only Acre dared to tackle the blackness head-on, but Acre was wise in the madness of the Laceys. They had suffered from Laceys before and they knew the signs. I think they feared for me, for I had once been well loved.

‘What ails you, Miss Julia?’ Mrs Tyacke asked me. She had come to see Mrs Gough in the kitchen, and had begged leave to pay her respects to me as I sat idly in the parlour. I had called her out of her cottage before it was crushed by the falling spire. I had been her son’s friend and playmate, and she had not forgotten. They had not forgotten me in Acre. Her sharp eyes were bright on my face, but I could not summon a smile even for her.

I heard her question. I heard it over and over in my head. Then I recognized it. She had used the same words Ralph had used to Richard that day on the common when Richard had broken the legs of his hawk. ‘What ails you?’ he had said then. Wise Ralph had seen the madness of the Laceys in Richard. He had not seen it in me.

‘Is the baby too much for you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said quietly. ‘I am quite well.’

‘We are all afraid for you,’ she said blankly. ‘No one in the village has seen you for so long. You do not come to church and we never see you in Acre. When we ask your husband, he just laughs in his merry way.’

I looked up from the flames flickering around the logs. ‘Does he?’ I said.

‘It’s all gone wrong again,’ she said, and her voice quavered like a disappointed child’s. ‘It’s all gone wrong again.’

I nodded. There was little I could say.

Other places manage,’ she said. Other villages have estates which make a profit and keep a village and have a mill which keeps grinding. Why does it never work for Acre?’

Other places have squires who leave the land alone,’ I said listlessly. ‘Acre has always had squires who care so much for the land that they cannot leave be. Richard wants Wideacre to be the first estate in the land in the new century. He wants it to be the finest inheritance in the land for the son he is hoping will be born.’

‘And you?’ she asked me sharply. ‘You wanted something special for Acre too. You and Ralph Megson made Acre all sorts of promises.’

‘I was a Lacey squire too,’ I said dully. ‘The future I planned for the place was very different from the future it will have under Richard. But I was still a Lacey squire imposing my will on Acre then. Mrs Tyacke, I believe things will be wrong for Acre until there is no Lacey family on Wideacre and no squire in the hall, and no master over the village. I think Ralph was right all along, but much good that thought does the village now I am no longer the squire, but just the squire’s lady. And much good that does Ralph, locked away in some cell in London. And much good that thought does me,’ I added, my voice low.

‘And you’ll be the mother of the next Lacey squire,’ she said. ‘You’ll keep the line going.’

‘No,’ I said with certainty. ‘Not I.’

She nodded at my swelling belly as I sat carelessly, legs half apart to carry the load. ‘Too late to be rid of it now,’ she said. Her face was hard.

‘It’ll be born,’ I said bitterly. ‘I cannot prevent that. But it will never inherit if I can help it.’

She gave a sad, rueful smile, the smile of Acre when it knew it had lost the greatest gamble a landless people can play, when the stakes are land and independence against a servitude of uncertain and low-paid work. It was the smile of a woman legally bound to a master, who cannot prevent conception and cannot stop the birth of a child.

‘you cannot help it,’ she said sadly. ‘We are all trapped now.’

There was silence in the little room, a silence so quiet that the noise of the flames flickering around the logs was quite clear.

‘I’ll be off,’ she said, moving towards the door. ‘My son Ted, and many others in the village, wanted to know how you were. I’m sorry to have no better news for them.’

‘I’ll live,’ I said dourly. ‘You can tell them I do not ail.’

‘I’ll tell them you are sick unto death in your heart,’ she said plainly. ‘And so you are at one with the land again, Miss Julia, and at one with Acre too. For the land is muddy and lifeless, and Acre is cold and hungry and idle and in mourning.’

Our eyes met in one level look which exchanged no warmth except the bleak comfort of shared honesty. Then she was gone.

In all that hard cold month she was my only visitor, Mrs Tyacke, the widow from Acre. No Quality visited me while I sat, idle and plump, in my black mourning. Grandpapa Havering had been taken ill in town and Grandmama had gone up to nurse him. She was afraid she would be away as I neared my time, but I wrote to her that it did not matter, she was not to worry.

Indeed it did not matter.

I thought that nothing mattered very much.

I thought that nothing would ever matter very much again.

The baby grew in my belly, as babies will, unbidden. I slept less and less at nights while the little growing limbs pressed inwards against me, or dug outwards against the soft wall of my belly. Towards the end of December I could sometimes discern a little limb pushing out, and once I felt with my fingertips the outline of a perfect tiny hand as the child flexed against the walls of its soft prison. It put me in mind of Ralph, in a prison where the gates would not open, where it was not warm and dark and safe. But as I sat in my chair, or gazed out of the window, or lay on my back on my bed, I could not even feel that Ralph mattered very much.

Richard was much away from home. I knew that they talked of it, in the kitchen, in the stable. Some nights he did not come home at all but appeared at breakfast, bright-eyed and rumpled, speaking quickly and loudly of a cocking match at Chichester, or once of a bull which someone had brought on to Acre. It had been baited with dogs, and it had killed two fine mastiffs. When Richard told me how it had ripped out the belly of one dog, I turned pale and the breakfast table swam before my eyes. I saw Stride give a quick movement as if he would stop Richard from speaking, but Stride had been in service all his life, and could not stop the squire. No one could stop Richard.

They all feared him, both in our household and on our land. They feared him because he would use the vested legal power of the squire in any way he could. He would cancel their tenancies, stop their wages, throw them out of the parish or have them arrested for insolence. And they feared him because they knew, as all the animals around him had always known, that there was something bad about Richard.

Not I. I had recovered from my fear of him. I feared no one now. I feared neither injury nor death, and if Richard had come to me and tightened his hands around my throat, I would have felt no fear. I would not even have flinched. My mama was dead, Clary was dead, Ralph and Acre were betrayed. I had sworn the baby in my belly should not inherit. If Richard had murdered me on one of the nights he lurched against my door on the way to his own room, he would have done me a favour. I feared him no more. I feared nothing. Everything I had cared for was already gone. If he had opened my door on those nights when I heard him scrabbling on the stairs and giggling drunkenly, if he had stumbled into my room and offered once more to touch me, I think I would have welcomed him and let him lie on me in the hope that he would put his long strong hands around my throat and finish me. But he did not do so. He never touched me again.

He did not like me. He only half knew his own madness; I don’t think he ever clearly saw what he had done. I think that chilling little giggle was the closest he ever came to knowing what it was he had done, or what he could do. But on that one occasion when he had touched me and seen my eyes go dark with horror and then grow like pale glass with madness, he had known then that I was crazed. And knowing I was mad was like an enchanted mirror held up to his own face. Our joint corruption was too strong even for him.

Now I no longer feared him, because he feared me. I carried around with me a great strength and a great power: the magic of my growing belly which housed the child he so badly wanted, and the utter potency of not caring whether I lived or died. Richard could never frighten me again.

But nothing could touch him. In the little world which enclosed the Laceys nothing could touch Richard. With Lord Havering away, Richard’s word was law for miles in every direction. If he had killed again, there would have been no hue and cry after the murderer. Richard was his own master and was safe from every threat I could imagine.

He feared only one thing. Fool that he was, he let that fear show in front of me.

We were at breakfast and Richard was in one of his sulky tired states. I sat at the foot of the table with a letter from my grandmama by my place, sipping tea. Richard had a hearty meal of cold meat, bread, hot potatoes and eggs and small ale. He was reading the newspaper as he ate, careless of the splattering of fat on the pages.

‘Good God!’ he said, around a mouthful of food. Some tone in his voice made me jerk up my head like a pointer in August, with the half-forgotten scent of pheasant on the ground. I think I actually sniffed like a dog. There was a sudden smell of fear in the room, unmistakable. Richard was sweating with fright, and the scent was as good to me as frying bacon to a starving pauper. He shot a quick, furtive look at me, and my gaze was blank. I could have been deaf, I could have been insensible. Then he glanced at Stride, whose face was wooden.

‘Excuse me,’ Richard said, and he crumpled the newspaper in his hand and left the room, his plate abandoned, piled with steaming food, his small ale cold and inviting in his mug.

‘Get me a copy of that newspaper, Stride,’ I said levelly, my eyes on my letter once more.

‘Yes, Miss Julia,’ Stride said, his tone equally neutral.

He must have sent to Midhurst at once, for he had it at coffee-time and brought it to me in the parlour with the silver tray and the coffee service.

I did not have to scan the columns. The story which had sent Richard from the room was on the first page inside. It was headed: ‘Notorious Rioter Escaped’, and it named Ralph Megson as among three men who had broken out of the prison disguised as members of a gypsy family who had been brought in to play for the prison warders. It was thought that the men had fled with the gypsies and would travel with them. There was much lordly huffing and puffing and alerting of the local Justices, but there was also a clear acknowledgement that three men could easily disappear into that secretive underworld and never be seen again. There was a detailed description of Ralph, and of the other two, and a massive reward of two hundred pounds for information leading to the capture of all three.

That reward made me pause and wonder if there could be any safety for Ralph. Then I thought that Ralph was not a man to be taken by surprise, except on that one time when he had been betrayed in Acre. I did not think he would be betrayed by his own people, by his mother’s people, his gypsy family. And I had a shrewd idea that Ralph would know exactly how long they could be trusted to resist the lure of such a fortune, and he would be away on a smuggler’s vessel the day before temptation became too great.

I squeezed each page of the newspaper into a ball and tossed them one by one on to the fire, and watched each little ball flame and blacken before I took up the poker and mashed up the ashes. I did not want Richard to know that I knew about Ralph.

That was the first time in my life I had effectively conspired against Richard.

He did not come home for dinner, and Stride served me in solitary state at the great mahogany table. I sat with a book beside my plate, a novel from the Chichester circulating library, and between mouthfuls I read about Clarinda’s wants and needs, and her unfailing tenderness for the hero. I wondered a little whether I should ever again be a woman who thinks that love, a man’s love, is worth the world, or whether from now on I would always feel that one’s own freedom, one’s own individual pride, is worth so very much more.

I took my novel with me into the parlour, and slouched in my armchair to read it. But I laid it down often and looked into the fire. I had not thought to feel happiness again. But Ralph was free, and some bars had gone from my inner eyes. Ralph could look up at the sky tonight and see the sharp light of the stars which means that it is going to snow. Ralph could see that halo around the moon which warns of frost. Ralph could face north, south, west or east, and go where he willed again.

I hoped he would guess that I had learned my lesson, that although I sat at Richard’s fireside on Richard’s furniture in Richard’s house on Richard’s land, I knew at last that I was dispossessed. And that I had become, at this last, a Lacey woman who knew that it was the ownership of the land which mattered more than the chimera of love.

But I thought also that I was a new version of a Lacey, because I rejected the Lacey right to own the land and its crops, and the people themselves. If it had been mine again, I would have given it away at once, without hesitation and mumbling of profits. I would have given the land to Acre, to the people who work it and live on it. And I wished very much that I could see Ralph just once more to tell him that I at last knew what he had been trying to teach me. That there can be no just squires, no kindly masters. For the existence of squires and masters is so deeply unjust that no gentle benevolence can make it right.

I had had to become a servant, Richard’s servant, before I knew the injustice of servitude. I had had to be a pauper, Richard’s pauper, before I learned that dependence is a death sentence. And the only want that was left me, the only wish I had, was that I might see Ralph once and tell him that I understood, that I too was an outlaw from this greedy world we Quality had made.

Stride tapped at the door and came in with the tea-tray, and Richard walked in behind him. He had been riding and was not dressed for dinner. He asked Stride to bring more candles and sat opposite me on the other side of the fire as though nothing were wrong. But I saw he was as tense as a trip-wire, and he glanced at the curtains when they stirred in the draught.

‘I have been to Chichester,’ he said without preamble when Stride had set a five-branch candelabra on the table and gone. ‘I read some news this morning which disturbed me very much.’

I raised my eyes from the tea things and their gaze was as clear and as warm as the wintry sky.

‘There was a report.’ Richard spoke with some difficulty. ‘There was a report in the paper that some men had broken out of the London prison where Ralph Megson was held. You remember . . .’ He broke off. He had been about to ask if I remembered Ralph Megson, but not even Richard had sufficient gall for that. ‘I went to Chichester to seek more perfect information,’ he said. He took his dish from me and a drop of tea was spilled on the cream hearthrug. Richard’s hand was not steady. ‘It turns out that the report is true,’ he said. I inclined my head, and took up my own dish.

‘Magistrates have been warned to be alert for gypsies,’ Richard went on. ‘Gypsies or travelling folk of any kind, The three men escaped with some gypsy musicians. It’s thought they may try to get to the coast travelling with a gypsy family.’

Richard stopped talking and glanced at me. My face was impassive; he could read nothing from it. ‘Do you think he would come here, Julia?’ he demanded. ‘Do you think he would come here with some sort of idea of revenge? Do you think he would come here and hope that Acre would hide him?’

Richard’s voice had his old charming appeal. He needed me. I had always been at his side when he needed me. Indeed, it had been the joy of my life to have him need me, to have him ask for my help as he was asking for it now.

‘I think he might blame me for his arrest,’ he said with driven candour. ‘I spoke to the magistrates in Chichester, and they said there was little they could do to protect us, us Laceys, Julia! Unless we had some clear idea of where he might be.’

Richard put down his dish of tea and held out his hand to me. ‘Julia?’ he asked. It was as if we were small children again and he was in trouble, as if he were a little boy whose scheme of mischief had gone badly wrong, calling for his best friend, his sister, to help him.

I held my tea with both hands. ‘Yes?’ I asked.

‘Do you think he would come here?’ Richard withdrew his hand and put both hands together on his knees, ignoring the slight.

‘No,’ I said honestly. It is not my way to tease and torment a person. And I spoke with regret. I was very sure I would never see Ralph Megson again, and I thought myself the poorer for it.

‘Not with the gypsies who winter on the common?’ Richard said eagerly. ‘They come from London way, don’t they? And they are late this year! It would not be them who got him from prison, would it? They are musicians too, remember, Julia! We had them to play at Christmas, do you remember?’

I nodded. I remembered. I thought I remembered everything in a great long tunnel of pain back to my childhood and babyhood when I had loved Richard and loved Wideacre with a great constant rooted love which I thought nothing would ever spoil or change.

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘But I should have thought Mr Megson’s safest course would be to take a ship out of London. He had many seafaring friends too.’

‘You don’t think he would come here?’ Richard insisted. His eyes on my face were as urgent as those of a child woken from a nightmare, demanding reassurance.

‘No,’ I said steadily. I was not rescuing Richard from his fears to oblige him. There was that deathly coldness around my heart still which made me think that I would never again wish to help anyone, least of all Richard. But I was too remote from him to tease him either.

‘If he came here, would Acre hide him?’ Richard persisted. ‘They hid Dench the groom, remember, Julia!’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never go to Acre these days, Richard, you know I have not been there since the autumn. You must know better than I what the mood of the village is. Would they hide an enemy of yours? Or do they cleave to the Laceys?’

Richard jumped from his chair in sudden impatience, and some cold quiet part of my mind thought yes, you are truly afraid, are you not, Richard? You who have done so much to make so many people afraid of you. All of Acre, and Clary who must have looked in your face before she died in terror, whose fear is so unbearable to me that it is walled away in a rose-pearled corner of my frozen mind. And now you are most bitterly afraid.

‘I want you to go to Acre,’ Richard said suddenly. ‘I want you to go down there tomorrow. I’ll order out the carriage for you, and if you cannot get there in the carriage, you will have to go in the gig. Or you will have to ride! It surely would not hurt you to ride if the horse only walked, and the groom could even lead it to make absolutely sure that you were safe. I want you to go down there and tell them that Ralph has escaped and that he is a danger to the public safety. There is a big reward on his head, Julia! I want you to tell them that too. I want you to tell them that if he comes to Acre, I personally will give one hundred pounds to anyone who gives us warning. That should do it! Won’t it, Julia?’

‘That depends on how poor the village is at present,’ I said levelly. ‘Are things so bad that they would betray an old friend for a hundred pounds?’

Richard strode impatiently to the windows, but he did not draw the curtains to look out. Ralph was a marksman.

‘ You are supposed to be their great friend,’ he said impatiently. ‘If you ask them to tell if Megson comes to the village, they would do it as a favour to you, would they not?’

‘I cannot say,’ I said. I reached to the bell-pull and rang for Stride to clear the tea things away. ‘I really cannot say, Richard. I am loath even to consider going. I am only two weeks away from when the baby is due. I am sure Mr Saintly would advise against me going far from the house. He told me to stay indoors some months ago, as you may remember.’

Richard spun on his heel, but bit back his reply as Stride came into the room. Stride glanced curiously at the two of us, and I saw him hesitate to leave me alone with Richard.

‘You needn’t wait,’ Richard said rudely.

Stride’s glance went to me, and I nodded. ‘It is all right, Stride,’ I said. He bowed slightly, and went out.

‘You are my wife,’ Richard said, and now he had himself under control. ‘This is a matter of some importance which affects the good running of our lands and, indeed, my personal safety. You will go to Acre because I wish it, Julia.’

I nodded calmly. ‘If you wish it,’ I said. I had nothing to lose. If I was taken ill in Acre, I could go to the vicarage or any one of a dozen cottages for the birth of my child. If I had to ride and the baby was damaged, I had hardened my heart to it. I had sworn I would not rear a squire for Wideacre, and I meant it. I might love the little child who rolled and kicked in my womb, but I would not raise another Lacey to lord it in Acre. I prayed that it would die at birth.

To tell the truth, I prayed that I would die too.

So it mattered little to me if I rode or drove, if my child came early at Acre or in a frozen ditch on the way home. Nothing mattered very much any more. Now Ralph was free, there was nothing I had yet to do, except to get this baby born, and then to get it away from Richard and from Wideacre. It must be hidden, or fostered, or killed.

Besides, an appeal to Acre to betray Ralph was hardly worth the breeze which blew my words away. It was a dream of Richard’s that anyone could turn Acre against Ralph. He was the counterpoint to the discord of the Laceys. He was their black squire. They might give us their loyalty from time to time, they might sell or be robbed of their labour. They might have a season of loving us or of hating us. But Ralph was the man they could trust. If he wanted to stay safe in England, he would come here. There was not enough money minted to buy a betrayal.

The carriage stopped on the village green under the old chestnut tree where the old men gather in the evening, the natural site for a parley. I stood on the steps of the carriage and waited while the cottage doors opened and people came out. I saw the old familiar faces of Acre, and I saw that they were, once more, as I had known them in my girlhood: pinched, wan, cold.

They were not starving – Ralph’s hidden wheat would last till spring as he had planned. They were not ill clothed. They had savings which would last them for a while. But the heart was out of them again, and I thought that this time the winter was even worse for them, because for one sweet year they had learned to hope for better.

Poor fools. Poor silly fools. And I the greatest fool of all to have the chance of such happiness for so many people in my hand and to give it away because I was too much of a coward to stand up and say, ‘I have been cruelly attacked, and it was not my fault.’

They gathered around me in a circle and I knew my face was grim. The child inside my belly stirred and kicked, and I rested one hand on it. I could not help the pang of tenderness I felt every time the little one stirred inside me. But when I saw the eyes of Acre upon me, as leaden as sick cattle, I knew that this child must not be raised here.

This child must not be raised at all.

I should remember what Ralph had said about the French monarchs. I should remember that he said you have to plough before you can sow. The Laceys must be cleaned off Wideacre. The angry ugly French revolutionaries were going to execute their king. I was going to eradicate the Lacey line.

I looked around at the blank faces and I raised my voice. “My husband has ordered me to come and speak to you,’ I said clearly, so that there should be no doubt whose message it was. ‘He has learned that Mr Ralph Megson, who was once manager here, has escaped from prison.’

I looked round quickly, but there was no surprise or delight on any face. They knew already, then. I had thought they would.

‘A reward of two hundred pounds has been offered for information to bring about the capture of Mr Megson and the men who fled with him,’ I said. I was repeating Richard’s words by rote and they would all know well enough that this was an empty formality we were enacting. ‘My husband wishes you to know that if Mr Megson is taken in Acre, he will reward the village handsomely. He will pay one hundred pounds each to every man who assists in the recapture. There will be free flour and free milk for the whole village until sowing time.’

There was a ripple of interest at that, not because they saw the opportunity for earning such wealth, but because they read from that bribe the extent of Richard’s fear. I saw all around me that people were hiding smiles, and I could scarce keep the amused contempt from my own voice.

‘My husband asks me to remind you that Mr Megson was a known rioter, and a dangerous man,’ I said. ‘It is thought that he may be hiding with the gypsies, and you are ordered to report any new gypsy families arriving on the common at once.’

They nodded. I waited a moment, then I turned to go back into the coach. I was unaccountably weary and my back ached. I wanted to drive home as fast as I possibly could and go to bed for the afternoon. I would call for the kitchenmaid to light a fire in my room and watch the flames flicker while the light drained from the window. I just wanted to be in the warm darkness and away from this cold land, and these icy skies and these betrayed people.

‘Miss Julia!’ someone said. I paused. George had folded up the steps, but he paused and held open the door so I could lean forward and see who wanted me.

It was old Mrs Merry.

I flinched away from her worn face as if I feared she might strike me. All my life I had known that round face, as rosy and as wrinkled as a winter apple. But since the loss of her grandson, all the skin had dropped down, and all the lines around her eyes, around her mouth, had lost their habit of smiling.

She came to the front of the crowd and looked up at me, sitting in the rich high-sprung carriage lined with pink silk which Richard had bought for us to replace the bloodstained one abandoned outside Haslemere. I looked down at her like some fairy princess with an old fortune-teller. ‘Yes, Mrs Merry?’

Her pale blue eyes were swimming, and the soft wrinkled skin of her cheeks was wet with her old-woman tears. But I knew that she was not weeping for herself and for her loneliness and the death of her grandson. She was weeping for me. She pitied me.

‘You deserved better than this, sweetheart,’ she said, and her thin voice was full of compassion. A couple within earshot nodded their support and I saw them all looking at me as if I were a victim, as well as Acre. ‘We all hoped for a better world,’ she said. ‘We have been betrayed by the squire, by the power of the gentry. But even though you are gentry yourself, you were not safe. You’re a woman and you have had to learn your master, even as we have learned that lesson again.’

I thought how Richard had mastered me, through my loyalty and love for him, through his violence, and then by the convention of the world which said I had to marry the father of my child.

‘I hate him, Mrs Merry,’ I said. ‘I wish he were dead.’

She nodded, her face showing no shock. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You would do. But don’t waste your courage on hating him. Keep yourself to yourself, dearie. And keep up your courage and think of a healthy baby.’

‘I won’t have another squire for Wideacre,’ I said in swift contradiction. I had raised my voice, and a couple of the men turned and listened to what we were saying. ‘I won’t be the mother of a squire. I won’t set a child to have power over the land, nor power over you people. I won’t do that.’

She nodded. ‘It would be a better world indeed if the masters would refuse to rule,’ she said. ‘All Acre has ever done is refuse to obey, and we have been tricked and betrayed out of that resolve time after time.’

I hung my head. It was my high hopes and my bright plans and my quickly dishonoured promises which had tricked them this time. Everything around me, my love of the land, my love of Richard, seemed to have been corrupted and made bad.

‘I must go,’ I said miserably.

Mrs Merry stepped back and George shut the door, his town-bred face impassive. I pulled down the window strap and leaned out. George turned to get up on the back, out of earshot.

‘What can I do?’ I said urgently to Mrs Merry. ‘How can I stop this?’

Her head came up slowly and her eyes met mine and, surprisingly, flowered into a broad sweet smile. ‘Do?’ she said. ‘You need do nothing, Miss Julia!’ George was on the box, smart in his livery, straining his ears, I guessed. ‘Ralph will do it,’ Mrs Merry said sweetly. ‘Ralph is on his way home again.’

‘What. . .?’ I started, but the horses were moving forward and one of the men had taken Mrs Merry’s arm to hold her safely away from the high carriage-wheels. He saw my face, the astonishment, the dawning hope and he grinned at me, the old Acre grin of complete equality.

It was the grin of conspirators who at last have some hopes of victory. The carriage whirled me away and I fell back against Richard’s silk cushions. I knew I was smiling too, and my heart suddenly became light.

‘What did they say in Acre?’ Richard demanded of me. He was at the garden gate, ready to hand me from the carriage.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I let him lead me up the path and into the hall, but I hesitated when he opened the parlour door. ‘I want to rest in my bedroom, Richard. I am very tired.’

He let me go to the stairs, but he wanted more news. ‘Did you say what I told you to say?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And what did they say?’ he pressed me.

‘They said nothing,’ I said.

‘Did you speak to no one privately? Did no one mention whether the gypsies were on the common yet? Did no one in particular ask about Megson? What about Ned Smith? – he was always very thick with Megson.’

I looked at Richard, standing at the foot of the staircase, and I raised my eyebrows at him. I was insolent and I knew it. But I had a new courage, a new reason for courage, because I knew that there was a clock ticking away under our life in the Dower House, because I knew that soon the hour was going to strike and the clapper would fall and this whole rotten life would smash to pieces. Two events were converging: the child in my belly was moving slowly to be born, and Ralph was travelling the secret ways from London, concealed in a gypsy cart, along little tracks down hidden paths that the gentry did not even know.

‘I spoke to no one privately,’ I said, ticking off Richard’s questions on gloved fingers. ‘No one said whether the gypsies had arrived on the common yet, but since they always come around Christmas, I should think they will be there any day now. No one asked about Mr Megson. Ned Smith was there with the rest of them, but he did not speak out.’

Richard took my hand roughly in a tight grip. ‘What has got into you?’ he demanded. His eyes were sharp, and he looked me over from my suddenly brightened face down to my feet standing squarely on the stair. ‘Someone said something which has made you feel that you can challenge me,’ he said accurately. ‘Someone has made you feel that you can look at me with those impertinent grey eyes. Someone has tried to make you forget what I can do to you.’ He broke off and he looked at me measuringly. I could feel his hand tighten on mine, I could feel the bones shift together and the sinews sing in pain.

‘No one,’ I said. ‘I have lost my fear of you because I can see that you are afraid. I can see that you think that Ralph Megson is on his way back home. And you are afraid that he is coming for you.’

I paused. Richard had gone white, and his grip on my hand was suddenly slack. My bones were throbbing with pain, but my heart was pounding in excitement.

‘I think you are right,’ I said, and my spirits leaped to see how his eyes flashed to my face, alert with fright. ‘If Ralph is indeed coming home, then he will be coming to settle his score with you. I know him well,’ I continued sweetly. ‘And I must say that if I were you and had betrayed him to his death, then I would rather be dead and in the family vault than have Ralph Megson coming after me. For be very sure, Richard, it is the only place you will be safe!’

Richard blenched and dropped his eyes, and I looked at his downcast face for a second before I turned on my heel and went up the stairs to my room. I felt his eyes on my back and I kept my head high as I climbed one weary step after another. Not until I was safe in my room did I lean back against the door and shudder.

I might face Richard down when he was in a twitch of nerves about Ralph, but without the courage given me by one frail old lady I was in a poor state. The baby was heavy in my belly; I was drained by the weight of it and the fatigue of it.

I might talk bravely about ending the line of the squires, but my heart was weak with love for my baby. Knowing its father and our line, I could not help fearing the birth of some dread monstrosity, some freak. Then I thought of the feel of that perfect little hand through my belly wall and I wanted to weep for love of it, a love that I should never be able to show.

The baby had to be sent away and Richard had to be stopped. I had to find some courage from somewhere to face the struggle with Richard, to resist his anger, to resist his corrupt power and somehow to keep free of the sucking madness which Richard had released upon us.

I might talk bravely of dying in childbirth and thus ending the line, but in truth I was very much afraid.

I might talk bravely about fostering the child, or killing it, but my heart was weak for its touch, and I longed to hold its little body.

I might talk bravely about defeating Richard, about hating him, but I had loved him all my life, and I sometimes thought I had imagined the monster which he had become.

I fell into bed like a sickly child and slept while the January sky darkened at my window. I awoke cold, in a darkened room, at neither dawn nor dusk, and I did not know where I was, nor what time it was, and felt afraid.