The Favoured Child

12

‘I don’t understand exactly what you are saying, Mr Megson.’ The voice was my mama’s, and it was the anxiety in her tone which pulled me from my sleep. I opened my eyes and leaned up on one elbow. I was not in my bedroom at home. I blinked at the pretty patterned wallpaper and the pale curtains at the window. The air smelled of smoke.

‘She came to my cottage and said she had a dream.’ Ralph was patient, reassuring. I had heard him use that tone with frightened animals, I had seen him still them with his voice.

I looked around the room. It was the guest bedroom at the vicarage; I was lying on top of the counterpane, covered with a thick wool shawl, still dressed in my damp riding habit. Through the thin walls I could hear Mama as clearly as if we were in the same room.

‘It is not unusual,’ Ralph said gently. ‘She is a very sensitive and perceptive young woman.’

‘Are you saying she had some kind of premonition of the lightning strike?’ That was Uncle John’s voice. He had himself under tight control, but I knew he hated talk of anything outside an ordered universe. He was a logical man, my Uncle John.

Ralph knew that too. ‘Why not?’ he asked easily. ‘Everyone knows that animals can sense a storm coming. Many a farmer will tell you of horses or stock breaking out of a stable before a storm and the stable catching fire. Miss Julia seems to have a gift to sense danger for Acre. That is special, but it is not unheard of.’

There was silence from downstairs. I sat up in bed and put my hand to my head. I felt light-headed and dizzy, but filled with the most enormous elation. The Carter child had not been burned. The baby had not been left inside a blazing cottage. Ted Tyacke and his mother had not been buried under tons of rubble. Acre was safe.

‘It is the illness of that family.’ Uncle John sounded appalled. ‘Julia has the unbalanced nature of the Laceys. I have feared it, I have seen it coming. They bred too close and it has come out in her.’

‘No!’ I heard Mama exclaim. ‘She is my daughter. She is not bred badly. She has been overwrought and distressed. She has been worked too hard. It is our fault for not taking better care of her, John. It is not her fault, nor the fault of her family.’

‘She looked strange…’ Dr Pearce said, his voice very low. ‘For a moment I mistook her, I thought it was…’

‘No!’ my mama interrupted sharply. ‘Julia has been overworked. It is my fault, it is our fault. It has made her look pale and she has got thinner.’

‘Lady Lacey is right,’ came Ralph’s reassuring rumble. ‘And she is a special girl with special gifts. She sensed the thunder coming and she did the right thing. It is nothing more than ships’ captains do at sea every day.’

I sat up in my bed and called out, ‘Mama!’

At once the parlour door opened and I heard her run up the stairs. She came breathlessly into my room. ‘Oh, my darling!’ she said. ‘Awake at last! You were just like the Sleeping Beauty up here. But John insisted you should be left until you were ready to wake. What a fright you have given us all!’ Her smile was forced. ‘Do you have any pain? Do you feel all right now?’ she asked.

‘I am quite well,’ I said, and it was true. ‘Just…’ I stretched like a lazy cat. ‘Just…oh, Mama!…so weary!’

‘We’ll have you home at once,’ she said. ‘The carriage is at the door. John and I came down as soon as Jem had the sense to tell us where you had gone. We’ll have you home at once and out of those wet things and into a warm bed, and you shall sleep all day if you need to.’

I rose to my feet and she steadied me with an arm around my waist. I was full-grown now, and our faces were on a level. It made me feel as if I were her equal, no longer a child. I looked at her shrewdly and saw the strain in her face. ‘It was nothing wrong, Mama,’ I said softly. ‘It was just a dream which came over and over. It did not feel bad, it did not feel frightening. I just knew the storm was coming.’

Her eyes flickered away from my face. She did not want to look at me. ‘No, my darling,’ she lied with her loving courage. ‘No one thinks there is anything wrong at all. You cleared Acre and saved many lives, which is a great blessing for all of us. We’ll talk about it more when you are rested, but now I want you to come home.’

I was too tired to insist and I leaned a little on her and let her help me downstairs. Dr Pearce was at the foot of the stairs, still in his dressing-gown, but with a smile for me which was strained and wary.

Uncle John stepped forward and gave me a hug and put his hand on my forehead to feel if I had a fever. ‘I am glad you slept,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon have you home, and you must rest some more. That little mind of yours has been under too much strain.’

I was about to deny that, but I said nothing, for Ralph Megson came in from the garden, his face alight to see me. Like me, he was still wet from the rainstorm, and he – alone of all of them-was beaming at me with unreserved joy. ‘Julia,’ he said, and his voice was full of love.

‘Ralph,’ I replied, and gave him both my hands as if we were lovers.

He tucked one hand under his arm against his wet fustian jacket, and put an arm around my waist and led me to the door. Miss Green, the vicar’s housekeeper, opened it and I saw it was still raining, a light end-of-storm shower which would soon pass.

Before the vicarage was the wreckage of what had once been the three little cottages, and the roofless ruins of the Smiths’ and Coopers’ homes. The cottage where my friend Ted Tyacke had slept last night was a smouldering ruin, the smoke drifting into the lane.

At the gateway, around the carriage, was every man, woman and child belonging to Acre, and as the door opened and Ralph led me out, they cheered me in a great deafening wall of sound, so loud that I actually flinched; and Ralph laughed and tightened his grip around my waist.

‘Unharness the horses and we’ll pull her home!’ shouted someone, and there was a rush to turn John’s smart carriage into a triumphal chariot.

‘Nay!’ Ralph hallooed as he might order a ploughing team. ‘Julia is weary and she should be home at once in her bed. We’ll honour her another time, not today. She’s just a little lass and she’s wet and cold and tired.’

I smiled at Ralph protecting me – whom he had sent riding up to the downs to check on the sheep in every sort of bad weather-and he glanced down and smiled back. Then he handed me up the carriage steps, and stepped back and gave his hand to my mama. Uncle John climbed in after us, and Jem put the steps in and shut the door.

They did not cheer then, but each one of them called my name and smiled and waved, and the tears stung under my eyelids at my tiredness, and at my sense of wordless love for all of them, for the village, for the estate. And then slowly – with the wheels sticking badly in the mud – we went home.

‘Misty,’ I said as Jem lifted me from the carriage. He carried me up the front steps and all the way up to my bedroom, with my mama following behind and Mrs Gough and Stride making up the procession with a hot posset and hot water to wash, and a hot brick for the bed.

‘Ralph Megson’ll care for her,’ Jem said briefly. ‘I’ll walk down when I’ve stabled the carriage horses and bring her back.’

I nodded and said no more as I let my mama undress me like a baby and tuck me up into my own bed; then I fell asleep.

At once I had a dream, the oldest dream.

It must have come from the storm, from the rain and the storm, but it was not like the dream of the woman waiting for the Culler. Nor was it the dream of the church spire. It was a strange dream, one I knew as if I had dreamed it every night of my life. And it was full of the most anguished pain and sense of loss.

I was hurt, hurt physically, but also heartbroken with a pain. I felt I had lost everything – everyone who was most dear to me, every possession I had ever prized. My bare feet were sore from walking far on stony cold ground, and they were wet with mud, Wideacre mud, and blood from a hundred cuts from the sharp chalk and flint stones. I was cold and dressed only in my nightgown and my cloak, which dragged wet around my ankles. I was stumbling in midnight darkness through the woods near our house towards the river, the River Fenny, and I could hear the roar of its winter-deep waters, louder even than the howling and tossing of the wind in the treetops. It was too dark for me to see my way and I nearly fell in the blackness, stubbing my toes on the stones, gasping with fright when I stumbled, dazzled rather than helped by the shattering blasts of lightning.

I could have walked easier but for my burden. The only warm dry part about me was the little bundle of a new-born baby which I was holding tight to my heart under my cape. I knew that this baby was my responsibility. She was mine. She belonged to me; and yet I must destroy her. I must take her down to the river and hold that tiny body under the turbulent waters. Then I could let her go, and the little body in the white shawl would be rolled over and over by the rushing flood away from my empty hands. I must let her go.

The roaring noise of water got louder as I struggled down the muddy footpath, and then I caught my breath with fear when I saw the river – broader than it had ever been before, buffeting the trunks of the trees high on the banks, for it had burst out of its course. The fallen tree across the river which served as a bridge was gone, hidden by boiling depths of rushing water. I gave a little cry, which I could not even hear above the noise of the storm, for I did not know how I was to get the baby into the river. And she must be drowned. I had to drown her. It was my duty as a Lacey.

It was too much for me, this fresh obstacle on top of my tears and the pain in my heart and the pain in my feet, and I started to struggle to wake. I could not see how to get this warm soft sleeping baby to the cold dashing river water, and yet I had to do it. I was stumbling forward, sobbing, towards the river, which was boiling like a cauldron in hell. But at the same time a part of my mind knew it was a dream. I struggled to be free of it, but it held me. I was imprisoned in the dream, even though I knew also that I was tossing in my bed in my little room and crying like a baby for my mama to come and wake me. But the dream held me, although I fought against it. I knew I was dreaming true. I knew that I saw now what I would one day be: an anguished woman holding a baby warm and safe in her heart, with an utter determination to drown her like an inbred puppy in the cold waters of the river which rushed from the slopes of the downs and through Wideacre and away.

I awoke to daylight and a blue sky with ribbons of clouds tearing northward from the sea winds. The dream of the darkness and despair should have faded before the bright sunlight. But it did not. It stayed with me, a hard lump of prescience and foreboding. I looked wan and low in spirits, and Mama insisted that I stay in bed all that day, and the next, as though I were in the grip of some strange unknown malady. I took her hand and kissed it as she smoothed my forehead. It was as if someone had told me, for the first time in my life, that everyone had to die one day. For the first time in my life I realized that my mama would not always be at my side when I needed her.

She patted my cheek. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘You have been overworked and overtired, and your brain has become feverish. You shall rest and you will soon be well again.’

I felt tears starting to roll down my cheeks. I was as weak as if I were mortally ill. ‘Such a dreadful dream…’ I said. But she would not hear it.

‘No more dreams, my darling,’ she said gently, and bent and kissed my forehead with her cool lips. ‘I do not want to hear about them, and you must forget them as you wake. Dreams are meaningless. They are nothing. Go to sleep now for me, and sleep without dreaming. I shall sit here and do my sewing, and if you have a bad dream I shall wake you.’

She took a little wineglass from my bedside table and gave it to me. ‘John left this for you,’ she said. ‘It will help you to sleep without dreaming. So drink it all up and rest, my darling.’

I took it, obedient as an invalid and drank it up and lay back on my pillows. Through a golden sleepy glow I saw my mama pull a chair over to the window and take up her sewing. She sat beside me, a guardian of my peace, and I watched her until my eyelids closed and I slept.

Mama sat with me all the time as I slept and woke and dozed again. I did not dream. John’s medicine lifted me into a daze of sleepiness. But I did not dream.

On the second day my grandmama, Lady Havering, drove over from Havering Hall for a dish of tea, and stumped heavily up the uncarpeted stairs to my little room to regard me with jaundiced eyes through her lorgnette.

‘You seem to be blooming on it,’ she remarked acidly. ‘Eccentricity always did become the Laceys.’

‘I am not eccentric, Grandmama,’ I said politely. ‘At least, I do not mean to be.’

She smiled at that and gave me a gentle pat on the cheek. ‘No, my dear,’ she said. ‘That would be quite unbearable.’

With that she went downstairs to what was a full family conference, with her and Uncle John and Mama – and even Richard, come home from Oxford on the stage-coach that morning.

‘You’re to go to Bath,’ Richard said smugly. He had come upstairs with my dish of tea and a slice of apricot bread from the tea-tray. ‘They’ve been talking it over since dinner and they’ve decided that you are going to go to Bath with your mama as soon as you are well enough. Your mama says that you are highly strung and need a rest. Papa says that there is bad blood in the Laceys and it is coming out in you. Your grandmama says that the Laceys were always a wild lot, and that the best thing they can do is get you married to someone normal at once. So you’re to leave.’

I clattered my dish of tea on the tray and put out both hands to Richard in alarm. ‘Not for ever!’ I exclaimed. ‘Not for ever, Richard!’

‘No,’ he said, ‘just for a couple of months. Your mama wants you to take the waters, and my papa wants you to see a doctor who is a friend of his, and your grandmama wants you affianced. They think a couple of months in Bath should do all that.’

I looked at him carefully. He was smiling, but it was a tight mean smile. He was angry with me and trying not to show it.

‘And you,’ I asked breathlessly, ‘what did you say?’

‘I said nothing,’ he said. ‘There was little I needed to say. I have my own opinions as to what you were doing, and I shall keep them.’

‘I shan’t go,’ I said.

‘It’s quite decided,’ Richard said blithely. ‘You’ll go with your mama, and the two of you will stay at some dreary lodging-house. I should think it’s fearfully slow. You’re to leave as soon as they confirm the booking of the rooms and as soon as my papa has ordered horses for the journey. You’ll see this friend of his, a specialist. They trained together at Edinburgh, but since that time this doctor has specialized in particular complaints.’ His look at me was radiant. ‘Don’t you want to know what complaints those are?’ he asked.

I hesitated. Some streak of self-preservation in my head warned me that I did not want to know what they were. But I felt as weary and defeated as if that dream had been a promise of my future. ‘What?’ I said.

‘Insanity in young ladies,’ Richard said sweetly. ‘He specializes in young ladies who have gone off their heads. And he is the one you are to see in Bath. For they all think you are mad. They think you are off your clever little head.’

My plate clattered to the floor as I reached out for his hand. ‘No, Richard,’ I choked. ‘I will not go. They are wrong, you know they are wrong.’

He twisted away from my grasp. ‘That’s not all,’ he said. ‘Until you leave, you are not to go into Acre at all.’

I gaped at him. ‘Am I in disgrace?’ I asked. ‘Are they angry with me for what happened in Acre?’

‘They say they are afraid for you,’ Richard said smugly. ‘It’s to be given out that you are unwell. But they all believe that you are going mad.’

I put one hand on the wooden headboard of my bed, and the other hand to my cheek to steady myself. ‘This is nonsense,’ I said weakly. ‘I have always had dreams. This was just a dream like the others. It was a seeing. Everyone knows about seeings.’

‘Dirty old gypsies have seeings,’ Richard said cruelly. ‘Young ladies do not. Unless they are going mad. You have always tried to resemble my mama, Beatrice; they all say that in the end she went mad. Now they are saying it is a family madness. That you are going mad too.’

The room swam around me. ‘No, Richard,’ I said steadily. ‘It is not like that. You know it is not like that.’

‘I don’t know,’ Richard said swiftly. ‘I used to think I knew you, but ever since my papa came home, you have been trying to be his favourite. Ralph Megson arrived in the village and you have tried to make yourself first with him, and first with Acre. Just because you are friends with those stupid little peasants, you are queening it around the whole time trying to play the squire. I get sent to my lessons, but you roam around as you please. Then as soon as I have to leave for Oxford, you are down there all the time, making up to Megson and pretending to work the land as if you were my mama come again. Now you see what comes of it! Much good it has done you! You plotted to make it seem as if you are the favoured child and now no one believes you; they just think you are crazy.’

‘I am not!’ I said, suddenly angry, fighting through the soporific haze of the drug and through my sense of fatigue and defeat. I threw back the bedcovers and started to rise. ‘I have the sight,’ I said defiantly. ‘And it meant I was able to save the village from the falling spire and from the fire. I did not plan to do it. I did not plot. I was drawn down there and I could not help myself. It was Beatrice. It was a seeing.’

He put hard hands on my shoulders and pinned me, seated, to the bed. ‘There are no such things,’ he hissed, his face black with fury. ‘There are no such things as seeings. Beatrice is dead, and what you just said proves that we are all right and you are mad. You are going mad, Julia, and we will have to put you in a madhouse; and you will never live in the new Wideacre Hall, and you will never be the favoured child in Acre.’

I put up my hands to hold his wrists and silence him. But nothing would stop him.

‘You are going mad, and they will send you to Bath, and your mama will take you to see a doctor, and he will know at once that all these dreams and these seeings and these singings in your head are because you are mad, and getting madder every day.’

I screamed.

I took my hands from holding him and punched him hard, punched at his body and screamed at him.

At once he thrust me face down into the pillow and held me there, half stifled, with all his force while I writhed and struggled and tried to push myself up. When I lay limp, he relaxed his grip and turned my face around towards him.

‘Better be quiet,’ he said, and his whisper was infinitely sweet. ‘If they hear you screaming, or think that you are getting violent, it would make it so much worse.’ He smiled at me, untroubled, his face alight with joy. ‘You look mad,’ he said sweetly. ‘And you were screaming just then, quite out of control. You were violent with me, you attacked me, and now you are crying. Anyone who saw you would be certain that you have to be put in a madhouse. Better stay quiet, Julia.’ He stroked my hair from my hot forehead in a terrifying parody of care. ‘There, there,’ he said.

I shuddered under his touch.

He lifted my bare feet from the floor and tucked them under the bed covers again and smoothed the sheet under my chin. ‘Lie still,’ he whispered softly, his mouth very close to my ear. ‘Lie still. Your grandmama is still downstairs, and you would not want her to hear you screaming, would you? Little pet of the family.’

I lay frozen. I did not even move when he kissed me softly on the cheek, gently, as if he loved me. Then he turned his back on me and trod light-footed to the door and shut it behind him.

I lay where he had left me, staring blankly at the ceiling, my cheeks wet with cooling tears, with the start of a secret panic building inside me.

It was like a nightmare, the next few days. Every sweet smile of my mama’s, every time Uncle John looked at me and asked how I was feeling was a confirmation of what Richard had said: they thought I was going mad. I knew my face was strained and my eyes wary. I tried so hard to act normally, to seem like an ordinary girl, but every day my behaviour grew odder and odder.

The weather tormented me, for the wind and the rain had blown away into half a dozen cold sharp days with a frost in the morning and a bright red sun in the afternoon. Misty in her stable ate oats and grew restless, and yet they would not let me ride. I hardly dared glance out of the window for fear that Mama should see some wildness in my face which would appear abnormal. I was afraid even to sit on a stool at her feet and gaze into the log fire in case Uncle John should say gently, ‘What are you thinking, Julia?’

His eyes were on me all the time and when I looked idly into the flames, he watched my rapt face. I was under observation.

Misty was restless in the loose box of the Dower House, for Ralph had brought her back the very next day, loaded with little presents from the children of Acre. They had made me chains of little paper flowers, they had made me a bouquet of twigs with tiny buds as a promise of spring and they had collected farthings and walked to Midhurst to buy me a box of sweetmeats. But Ralph had not been allowed to see me. They had told him, they had told all the callers from Acre, that I was resting and would be leaving for Bath within the week.

My place on the land was taken by Richard.

Every day he ordered Prince out of the stables and rode to Acre to consult with Ralph on what should be done that day. And Ralph – easygoing, imperturbable – accepted the change as our wishes, as my wishes. He knew that Richard had no eye for the cows and did not like to work with the sheep, but January is a slack time of the year and there was little to do on the land. The urgent work was to shore up the west wall of the church to make the roof waterproof and then to rebuild the five wrecked cottages as soon as possible.

Richard knew the builders, knew them better than anyone. Richard had done the round of the local quarries and knew exactly the cost of stone at each one and when they could deliver. Richard could draw a plan himself or adapt one from out of his own library of building books. Richard was the one they needed in Acre in that month, with little farming work to do, but with an urgent need for someone to plan and supervise the repair of the church and the rebuilding of the cottages.

Richard set them to work to rethatch and reroof the Smiths’ and the Coopers’ homes, and he was out in the lane of Acre every day, watching them replace the rafters and lay the thatch. In the afternoon when the light started to fail, he would take them down to the Bush and treat them to great mugs of ale at his own expense.

He did not forget the women or children either. When Little ‘Un was ill, Richard called out the carriage to take him up to the Dower House to see Uncle John and brought him home again, wrapped up warm around the throat and dosed with laudanum against the pain. He always had a handful of ribbons in his pocket for the pretty girls of Acre. He acted like a beloved young squire and showed no preference. Clary was still the leader of the young people of the village, and he always saved the broadest, reddest ribbon for her. Only Ted Tyacke stood out against Richard’s charm. Only Ted refused to drink with him, failed to pull a forelock to him. ‘He’s surly,’ Richard said at dinner, his smile newly confident, ‘but he doesn’t matter. I can manage the village without the blessing of Ted Tyacke.’

It was as if I had died on that night of the church spire falling. Died, and my place taken by Richard. Died and been forgotten.

Mama and Uncle John ordered Stride to deny me at the front door to visitors. In the kitchen they told village callers that I was unwell and resting. If you wanted a decision on the land, you went to Ralph Megson. If you wanted a decision on buildings, or a favour, you went to Richard. It was as if I were not there, as if I had already gone to Bath and would never return.

Mama knew that I was unhappy, but she did not ask me for an explanation, and I was as wary of opening my heart to her as a suspected criminal. The worst thing for me was how they watched me, but also I could not rid myself of that bleak memory of the dream. It was as if I had looked into an enchanted mirror and seen my face, haggard with suffering, lined with age, as if I had been cursed with a glimpse of the future which held no restored Acre, no rebuilt hall, just loneliness and pain and fear, and an unwanted baby which had to be murdered.

If I could have rested, if they could have let me alone, I might have recovered my spirits, I might have looked less strange. But they watched me all the time, with anxious loving eyes. And neither my mama nor Uncle John could conceal their impatience to get me away, off the land, away from my home, exiled. I watched the post-bag and I knew that Uncle John had written to his friend the doctor. The reply came on the same day as the confirmation that the rooms booked by Mama were available.

‘We can leave tomorrow,’ Mama said to Uncle John over the coffee-pot at breakfast-time.

‘And Dr Phillips will see you at your convenience,’ he said.

Both of them were studiously avoiding looking at me. I kept my eyes on my plate. I was afraid to say anything. The room was full of fearful silences.

‘I’ll be off.’ Richard said brightly. We all looked up at him as he pushed back his chair and went towards the door, pausing only to kiss Mama on the top of her lace cap as he went past her. ‘The Smiths and the Coopers should be able to move back in today, and I can start work in earnest on the other three cottages,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You do agree, don’t you, sir, that I need not go back to university until I have seen this work through, and the cottages up again?’

Uncle John nodded approvingly at Richard. ‘Yes, indeed,’ he said. ‘No one else could have drawn up the plans and ordered the goods so quickly. Acre is in your debt. No one could take over now.’

Richard smiled sweetly. ‘I’m glad to help!’ he said. ‘But I don’t think we should let Julia home from Bath until she promises not to pull down any more of Acre. I agree there are times when I could quite cheerfully raze it to the ground, but not in the middle of a thunderstorm in the middle of January!’

The three of them laughed, but only Richard seemed to relish the joke. I could feel my face stiffen in a blank, insincere smile. I knew I looked odd, smiling like that with my eyes filling with tears. Richard was the only one who did not seem to notice. He blew a kiss to me and swung to the door, then he checked with an eye on me. ‘May we have dinner late tonight?’ he asked. ‘I won’t be finished before nightfall.’

Mama smiled at his enthusiasm. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If you are so busy, we can dine later if that suits you, Richard.’

‘Part business, part pleasure!’ he said provocatively, watching me to see how I took it. ‘Getting Acre to work is costing me a fortune in ribbons!’

I kept my eyes down and said nothing while John and Mama bantered with Richard about flirting with the village girls. I knew he had said that to distress me, and it did distress me. They had taken him to their hearts very thoroughly in Acre. Then he said goodbye again and we heard his boots clatter across the wooden floor and then the front door slam.

There was an awkward silence.

‘Can you be ready to leave tomorrow, Julia?’ Mama asked me gently. ‘There is no need to pack very many dresses. I want to buy you some new costumes in Bath.’

I nodded. There was nothing I could say but yes. I took myself out of the room before they wondered aloud at the contrast between my bright healthy cousin and myself.

He was in the ascendant. He was the support of Mama and even of Uncle John, who relied upon him to carry messages to and from Acre. He was employed by Ralph Megson to do some of the tasks I had done. He was indispensable in the rebuilding of the cottages, and he was increasingly popular in the village. In those cold sharp days he was like a ploughing team testing a new harness. He kept trying a little more, he kept stretching his strength.

There was more and more he could do on the land. John’s gentle old hunter was glad of a little ambling exercise, and Richard gained praise from Uncle John for not despising him. In truth, Richard had never looked so happy with a horse as he was on that easy-tempered animal who looked showy and was bred well, but was so near retirement as to be as safe and as comfortable as an armchair.

I had become nothing to Richard. He had the land, he had Acre, he had some village flirtation.

I had become nothing to Acre. I had worked for them and saved them. And now they were ready to rebuild and turn their faces to the future. They would forget me in weeks.

I had become – not nothing, no, I did not imagine that – but I had become a source of worry and unease to my mama and to Uncle John. I was not a favoured child. I was a very troublesome one.

I went into the parlour with my cheeks burning and my eyes bright, and when Uncle John and Mama came in, I caught a glance between the two of them brimful of worry and concern. They thought I was moody, or volatile, or hysterical. Indeed, I felt that I was all three.

I went as close to my mama as I could go, as though her mere presence could keep me safe from the appearance of madness, and from the feelings of madness itself, the panic that I was losing everything and my dread of being that barefoot woman of my dream. I pulled up a footstool and sat at her feet and helped her unpick the hems of gowns which we were taking to Bath to be remodelled. I unstitched like a careful sempstress, detaching the antique lace which would be used to trim new gowns. I took it to the kitchen and washed it and rinsed it with meticulous care, and then patted it with a soft linen cloth and spread it out to dry.

Richard was out at work all day and did not come home until dinner-time. They had ordered dinner to be late to suit his convenience. I was beyond impatience or jealousy or anger. Richard was the squire. He would do as he pleased.

He came home late, as he had said he would, and threw down his cape over the banister and ran up to his room to dress. I could smell the frosty air in the folds of the wool and it called me, as clear as a voice calling my name. I threw on a shawl and went out of the front door and around to the back garden where I could see the dark shadow of the downs, black against a blue-black sky.

The grass was crunchy with the frost, and the sky was an arch of darkness with sharp stars. A shadow went across the sky and I heard an owl call a long clear hunting note. The great cedar tree stood like a splay-fingered giant against the starlit sky. A figure moved out from the shadow and came near to me.

It was Clary Dench. ‘Julia?’ she said. ‘It’s me.’

‘Oh, Clary!’ I said. ‘I am so pleased to see you!. How did you know I needed you so badly?’

‘I was to see Richard,’ she said, ‘after work, in the woods. But I was late and he was gone. I thought it would be a message from you for me. So I came on up here.’

‘You were meeting Richard?’ I asked incredulously. ‘Meeting Richard after dark in the woods?’

Clary gave an unladylike whoop of laughter. ‘Don’t be a fool, Julia,’ she begged me. ‘What d’you think I am? Some daft village slut chasing after the boy squire? He asked me to meet him and I thought it was a message from you. Why else?’

I nodded slowly. It was another thread of Richard’s skein of teasing and misreading which was winding around me and colouring my world.

Oh,’ I said. Oh, but Clary, it’s good to see you!’

I put an arm around her waist and hugged her and felt the familiar warmth of her plump body and the familiar tickle of her long hair against my cheek. We turned and walked across the lawn together, and stopped at the foot of the cedar tree. I rubbed my hand against the bark, feeling the flaky contours, smelling the sweet spicy scent of it.

‘I’m glad you’re here, because I have to say goodbye to you,’ I said. I put my hands out to her. ‘I’ve not been allowed down to Acre since the night of the storm, Clary. They say that I am ill, and in truth they are half-way to making me believe that I am. They are sending me to Bath tomorrow, and I dare say I won’t be allowed down to say farewell to my friends. Tell them in the village that I thought of all of them, and that I sent them my love.’

She held my hands between two cold palms. ‘Going?’ she said blankly. ‘Going from here? What for, Julia? Are you going for long?’

I tried to laugh and say, ‘Oh! Of course not!’

I tried to smile and say, Oh! I shall have such fun in Bath!’

But instead I found I had sobbed aloud, and flung myself into Clary’s arms and said piteously, ‘Oh, Clary! Clary! Just because of the dream and because of the night of the thunderstorm, they think that I am going mad and they are taking me away from here and I don’t know what will happen!’

And I wept for the first time since Richard had warned me that I must not seem odd, and felt the fear and the anxiety ease from me as Clary patted my back, and dried my face on her thin shawl, and then pulled me over to the swing – ghostly on its frozen ropes – and sat me down.

‘What is wrong?’ she asked gently. ‘You are not in the least mad, but I have never seen you so unhappy. You look odd too.’

‘How odd?’ I asked afraid.

‘Older,’ she said, fumbling for words. ‘Sad. As if you knew something awful. What’s happening, Julia?’

I had a lie, a lie for my dear Clary ready on my tongue, and I was poised, one toe on the ground, to set the pendulum swinging so that I could lie, and swing backwards and forwards like a clock telling the wrong time. But I did not launch myself. I kept my toe on the ground and then I slowly eased the swing down into the upright position again. I did not want to lie to her. Whatever might be going wrong, there were some things in my life which went back a long way, which I wanted to keep safe.

‘It’s Beatrice,’ I said slowly. In the still garden, drained of colour, Clary and I faced each other, the horror of what I had said smiling at us both. She shivered, although her shawl was wrapped tight around her; and I knew that same chill inside me.

‘It is Beatrice and her magic,’ I said in a whisper.

Clary’s eyes were dark with fear and I could feel the hairs on the nape of my own neck prickle like a threatened dog’s.

‘Are you seeing her?’ she asked, her voice soft.

‘No,’ I said in an undertone. ‘It is worse than that. I feel as if I am becoming her.’

There was an utter silence between the two of us. The little wind blew the smell of the cold downs to us, but underneath there was the scent of fear, sharp as sage.

‘Was it when Ralph Megson arrived?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He heard her then in my voice. I think he even saw her likeness then in my face.’

She nodded and put out a hand to tighten her shawl around her. With a prickle of fear up my spine I saw that her hand was clenched in the old sign against witchcraft, the thumb between the forefinger and the third finger to make the cross. I leaned forward and put my hand over hers, imploring, accusing. ‘Clary, you make that sign to me?’

She flexed her fingers and dipped her head, and in the starlight her face grew dark as she blushed. ‘Oh! Lord love you, no!’ she said. She turned away from me and went to the trunk of the cedar tree and rested her head against the trunk as if to clear the whirl in her mind by the touch of the bark. ‘No,’ she said, turning back to me and leaning against the tree-trunk. ‘I did not make that sign to you. But I did make it to something I saw. I saw something in your eyes, Julia. It had me scared, I admit it.’

‘You see her in my eyes,’ I said blankly.

She looked at me with the eyes of a friendship which went back to the time when we were just little children playing in the woods. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing more than they’ve been saying in the village all this year. That you are the favoured child. That you are her heir.’

‘It doesn’t feel much like being favoured,’ I said resentfully. ‘I have had a dream, oh, Clary, such a nightmare!’ She said nothing. ‘Not a nightmare like one of my dreams of Beatrice,’ I said. ‘Just a feeling of being utterly alone. So terribly, terribly alone and with no one to love me, and no one to love at all. No one to love except a little tiny baby in a white shawl, and knowing I have to drown her.’

Clary gasped, her face white in the moonlight, then she came towards the swing and knelt on the frozen grass at my feet and put her hands on mine. ‘I will always love you,’ she said in the deep sweet drawl of Acre. ‘I will always be here.’

For a moment I was warmed by the affection in her voice, but even as I started to smile, I heard a noise, like an icy wind blowing from far, far away. ‘No, you won’t,’ I said, and we heard the desolate certainty in my voice.

For a moment Clary’s eyes questioned me, but she was a village girl and wise. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a gleam of her defiant urchin smile. ‘Well, at least I shan’t have to put up with the sight of you lording it as squire, then,’ she said.

It was a weak joke, and our smiles were faint. We were still and silent in the garden a long while.

‘What will you do? Can you refuse to go?’ she asked.

‘I shall have to go,’ I said sullenly. ‘I shall have to go and not know when they will let me come back.’

I tried to smile, but I could manage only a sad little grimace. The wind was icy, blowing down from the stars, but I had a throbbing headache so heavy over my eyes that I could hardly see the garden. I seemed to be well on the way to losing every thing I had ever wanted: Richard, Wideacre and my girlhood. All stolen from me by the lost dead witch of Wideacre. And nothing given to me in their place but a handful of superstitions and a wildness which I could not control.

‘I shall have to do as they all want,’ I said. ‘Mama, Uncle John and Richard. I have to go to Bath.’ I wiped away a couple of tears from my cheek with the back of my hand, gave Clary a watery smile and a kiss; and went towards the house.

She stayed me with a gentle touch on my arm. ‘What if you do have her gifts?’ she asked, her loving courage for me nerving her to speak of Beatrice. ‘What if you have? Can’t they just see that it does not matter? The old people in Acre have said it of you ever since you were a little girl. They always said you were Beatrice come back to set things right. Can’t it just be a secret? A secret for the Laceys and Acre?’

‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘The world is changing, Clary. There is no room for such secrets any more. More and more people come into the village to work, more and more Acre folk work away. Everyone in the outside world is set against seeings and dreams and the things that we know happen. But they have no explanation for it; and so they will not hear of it.’

Clary made a face. ‘They think they are so wise,’ she said scathingly. ‘Men like your Uncle John – good men, who do a good job – but they have to know everything in words.’ She broke off. ‘I’ll go home now, before the clouds come up. But I’ll stop at Ralph Megson’s cottage and tell him you’re to be sent away in the morning. Your precious cousin told no one of it. None of us knew.’

I nodded my thanks for that and put my cheek against hers in a hug. I felt her quiver as I touched her and I knew that she was afraid that the coldness of my cheek was not just the chill of the night air, but the embrace of a ghost. I stepped back from her and tried to smile normally, but I knew my eyes were hazy and fey.

‘Don’t be afraid, Clary,’ I said. ‘I am still the little girl who rolled in the mud with yöu. I may have it all wrong. They may be right that I have no sight at all but just a fever on the brain.’

She nodded, and gave me a pat on the cheek with one grimy hand, then she drew her shawl around her and slid from the garden.

I looked for Ralph Megson that evening, for he knew our time for the tea-tray, and I had thought he might have ridden under the frost-hazed moon to see us. I stayed up an extra half-hour after supper, waiting to see if he would come, and I went to bed and wept in absolute silence into my pillow that he should have failed me and I should have to leave without seeing him.

I should have trusted him. In the morning when Jenny brought me my cup of chocolate, she told me that Mr Megson was in the stable yard, come to bid me safe journey. I threw a wrapper on, and my riding jacket atop for good measure, and went down. The sun was as bright as midsummer, but the ground was hard as rock. It was a brilliant still day, with a sky as blue as ice and Ralph Megson high on his black hunter in the stable yard, smiling down on me.

I walked up to the horse’s neck and stroked him, looking up at Ralph.

‘Have you been ill?’ he asked softly.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was not allowed out. They were afraid to let me.’

‘No need,’ he said gently, and I felt the tension and the pain of the last few days start to let me go, like cords slipping away from around my neck and shoulders.

‘I have to go to Bath,’ I said abruptly. It sounded like a sentence of doom. Ralph glanced at me, his eyes warm, full of sympathy. ‘They will take me to see a doctor,’ I said. ‘They think that I am unbalanced because of the dreams, and because of the night of the storm!’

Ralph made a little grimace. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I suppose they would.’ He said nothing for a moment. ‘No doctor of any sense will meddle with you, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘Anyone can see you are a bright and lovely young woman. Any doctor with half a mind would see that you have special gifts, special powers, and you should be glad of them. You should let them flow through you like a river through the arches of a bridge.’

‘I cannot,’ I said urgently. ‘I am to be a young lady. I cannot be as fey as some half-mad gypsy. I am not the village midwife. I am not a teller of fortunes. All of the seeing and dreaming will have to go. I have to move in society. I have to be the wife of a squire!’

Ralph pursed his mouth as if he were about to spit; but then he remembered where he was and thought better of it. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘For a moment I forgot that you had such a glorious future ahead of you. A young lady in society indeed! Well, that is worth a few sacrifices, I should say!’ He looked down at my wan face, and the harsh humour left his eyes. ‘You are Quality born and bred,’ he said more gently. ‘If you want to run from the wildness that is in you, if you want to knock it out of yourself, then you may be able to do that. You may be able to turn yourself into a bread-and-butter Bath miss. I should think not. But I could be wrong. If anywhere could do it, then Bath can!’

The tone of disgust in his voice was too much for me. I giggled. ‘Have you ever been to Bath?’ I asked smiling.

‘Aye,’ Ralph said. ‘They didn’t make me into a proper young lady either! But they’d have a better chance with you.’ He captured my hand where it was patting his horse’s neck and held it in a comforting clasp. ‘Follow your heart,’ he said gently. ‘I think this land is the place for you, and I think you are Beatrice’s heir. But John and your mama want different things for you. It is you who will have to live the life you choose – none of us. Try the taste of Bath – see how it suits you. Then come home to us if you like Wideacre best.’

I nodded. Ralph’s wisdom was as simple as grass growing.

‘I am afraid of this doctor,’ I confessed.

Ralph’s gentle touch turned into a handclasp as if we were shaking on a deal. ‘While I am alive, no one will coerce you,’ he said briefly. ‘That is a promise.’

I looked up at him and I had a sudden sharp ringing sound in my head. ‘There will come a time when you will not be able to help me,’ I said certainly, in a voice which was not my own. ‘There will come a time when I will not be able to help you.’

I fell silent and Ralph said nothing, waiting patiently in case there was more. ‘That will be a dark hour for the two of us,’ he said. ‘But it is not here now. Don’t be afraid of the future, little Julia. Take your present life and live it.’ He was about to turn his horse away when he checked and put his hand in his pocket. ‘I brought a present for you,’ he said casually. He lifted the pocket flap and brought out something hidden in his broad clenched hand. I reached up for it.

It was a little wooden carved owl, warm from the warmth of his body, carved in a pale wood; hard and smooth-polished.

‘Ralph,’ I said, entranced. ‘Did you make it yourself? For me?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’m a gypsy’s lad, remember? I was up at the camp the other day, and I borrowed their tools for a while. You should be grateful I didn’t bring you a bag of clothes-pegs too.’

I giggled at that. But as my fingers closed around the little wooden owl, I felt a long shudder sway me, a calling from the past, from Beatrice. ‘You gave her an owl,’ I said with certainty.

Ralph’s glance at me was sharp. ‘If you were mad, you could not know that,’ he said. ‘No one knew of it but her and me. No one could have told you. I gave her an owl for love of her, on her birthday the year we were lovers, and she called it “Canny” for wisdom. I sent her a little china owl in hatred one year to frighten her when we were enemies, after she had lost all her wisdom and skill. And now I give a little wooden owl to you, her heir, with my love. To remind you to keep your wisdom as well as you can.’

‘I will,’ I said with all my heart. ‘Thank you, Ralph. You are so…’ I groped for the word. ‘You are so sweet to me.’

Ralph looked utterly thunderstruck. ‘I must be nearing my dotage,’ he said in disgust. ? beddable wench like you finds me sweet? Good God!’ And he turned his horse’s head at once and waved farewell to me, still muttering.

‘Goodbye, Ralph!’ I called after him, happy as only he could make me. ‘I’ll be home for ploughing!’

I don’t know if he heard me. His horse’s hooves were loud on the frost-hard ground, but he left me with a smile on my face, an escape from my fear…and a little wooden owl safe in the palm of my hand.

I went back to the house to pack and dress for the journey. The gong went for breakfast and Mama ate her meal with a list and a pencil by her plate, there was so much to remember.

We were late leaving, the boxes had to be finally corded up and tied on the back of the chaise. Mama forgot a novel she wanted and I had to run back in to fetch it, and she had a hundred things to tell Stride before she was ready to put both hands out of the window to John and say, ‘Goodbye, God bless you, and don’t work too hard.’

He kissed both her hands and then stepped up to the window and kissed her on the lips. ‘God speed, Celia,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t buy a queen’s wardrobe, and come home soon.’

Richard was on my side of the carriage. ‘I hope you will get better,’ he said, his voice light and insincere.

I nodded.

‘If you are unwell and you stay in Bath, they will accept me as the squire in Acre, won’t they?’ he asked. ‘They believe you have the sight, but they know that I am the favoured child?’

I did not have the energy to defend myself. ‘They will come to like you more and more,’ I said wearily, ‘and anyway, they will come to think that the sight means nothing.’

I looked at him, scanning his face for a hint of kindliness towards me, for the love I had trusted all my childhood and girlhood. Richard, stone-faced Richard, smiled again his complacent smile and stepped back from the carriage window. ‘I shall make Acre mine while you are gone,’ he said. ‘I have been waiting for my time. The hall will be how I have planned it, and Acre will come to my hand. I do indeed hope you soon feel well, Julia, but I dare say you will be there for months. Goodbye.’

‘We are joint heirs,’ I said in a sharp undertone. ‘The land will always be partly mine.’

Richard smiled, a smile like midsummer skies. ‘I shan’t regard it,’ he said sweetly. ‘And you don’t know the law, my clever little cousin. If they commit you to an asylum, you are disinherited at once. Did you not know that, my dear? If you go on with your seeings and your dreamings, you will lose everything.’

I could feel my eyes widen until I was blind with terror. ‘No,’ I said under my breath, but already Richard’s face was wavering in a haze. The carriage moved forward before I could call out a denial, a denial of everything he said. All I could do was to lean forward and see Richard, my stunningly handsome cousin Richard, with his dark curls and his bright blue eyes, standing arms akimbo in the lane as if he owned every inch of the land outright.