The Favoured Child

26

We cut that last field in a rush. The clouds were gathering for one of those fast August storms which sometimes come in such heat that there is no rain, but just the crackle of the lightning over the land and the warning rumble of thunder.

But even if this one field had been drenched, we would still have had a harvest which was the envy of the county. The fields had been well rested in the years when Wideacre had gone to the bad, and no place in England had a better work-force.

‘You’ve reason to be proud,’ Uncle John had told Ralph and me in the morning of the last day as the sickles were unloaded from the cart and the reapers fell into line. ‘No one in the country has harvested faster than Wideacre this season, and that with raw workers. They’ll be talking again of Wideacre as they did in the old days as a place where magic can happen.’

Ralph nodded, not troubling to conceal his satisfaction.

‘It proves that it can work our way, the new way,’ Uncle John said. ‘That’s especially important this summer. With the news from France as it is.’

‘Bad?’ Ralph asked, cocking an eyebrow at him.

‘They’re going to put the king on trial,’ John said briefly. ‘My guess is that they’ll find him guilty and execute him. It’ll be a black day for liberty when that happens for it’s the end of the French experiment with freedom.’

Ralph smoothed the blade of a sickle with a careful hand. ‘Not the end,’ he said confidently. ‘They have to be rid of their rulers. There’s no permanent future without being rid of them, and that parcel of parasites would never have gone of their own free will. They’d have plotted, they’d have led armies back into France armed by other monarchs and financed by other parasites. It’s as I’ve always thought here: you can make some little improvements with the blessing of the landlords, but if you want to make a change which will last, the whole landlord class has to go.’

‘You won’t do it with that!’ Uncle John said, pointing to the sickle. ‘No, Mr Megson, you go too far. If it cannot be done by consent and by reason, then it cannot be done at all. You’ll never get the right decision by force.’

Ralph smiled his dark slow smile. ‘You plough before you sow,’ he said. ‘I think the French are just breaking the ground. Here on Wideacre we are not done yet either, not in my lifetime, nor maybe in Miss Julia’s neither; but Acre people have learned they can plan and work without a landlord. And one day, perhaps many years from now, we will learn in this country that nothing matters more than the well-being of the poorest, humblest person.’

‘I’m a radical, not a revolutionary!’ Uncle John protested.

Ralph nodded. ‘You are what you can be,’ he said as if he were consoling John for some failure of will. ‘No landlord could be a revolutionary in his heart. He’d have to have mixed motives. You’re the most honourable landlord I’ve ever known – if that’s any comfort to you . . . He broke off with a smile. ‘And I’m the worst bailiff!’

‘You grow a good crop,’ I said pacifically.

‘Aye,’ Ralph acknowledged, and then turned to John again. ‘You’ll come back to see the crop taken in?’ he asked. ‘And you and Lady Lacey will come down to the mill this evening for the harvest dinner?’

‘We’ll see the wheat taken in, but we’ll not come down to the mill,’ Uncle John said. He was on horseback and he leaned forward and brushed Prince’s mane over to one side, avoiding Ralph’s gaze. ‘Lady Lacey wouldn’t like to come down to the mill,’ he said with difficulty. ‘You wouldn’t know, Mr Megson. The Wideacre riot really started at the harvest supper. We both have bad memories of it . . .’ He paused awkwardly and glanced at Ralph.

He nodded. Of course,’ he said easily. ‘Let it be the young generation, then. The future belongs to them. Miss Julia shall represent you, and there will be few people there who will remember that other harvest home.’

‘Master Richard too!’ John said. I jumped at his name and John smiled at me. ‘I’ve not had a chance to speak to you, Julia, but I had a letter from Richard this morning. He said he’d be coming on the stage today. He’ll certainly be here in time for the harvest supper.’

I felt my face flush and I smiled, but my heart sank. Once Richard was home, I could no longer delay telling John and Mama. Today might be the last day I could work and be respected on the land, and tonight would be the last night for many weary evenings that I would be able to ride home and see my mama’s face light up as I came in the room.

The thought of seeing Richard did not make me feel safe either. I feared that today was my last day of freedom, the last day I would be free to work on the land with the people I knew and loved. My husband and master was coming closer and closer to my home, which he would call his home, and the land which I had planted would yield for him. The heat of the day felt oppressive and threatening to me, and I gave a little shudder.

‘To work, then,’ Ralph said, and gave his clear whistle to the reaper team, which fell into line, with the gleaners behind. ‘You wait and watch here, Miss Julia. I’ll get down to the mill to see all’s ready and check the space in the barns.’

Uncle John tipped his hat to us both and called, ‘Good harvesting!’ to the field and trotted home. I cast a wary eye at the stormy sky, and one at the field, the last field to be cut, the field at the top of the downs.

I should have been proud, I should have been happy, but the baby was growing in my belly, and the only way out I had seen was itself a trap for my undoing. I had known that when this harvest was done, Richard would be home and the trap would be sprung.

All day we worked until the field was shaven like a man’s blond head ready for a wig. All over the field were the little islands of stooks, crooked no longer. Even Sally Miles had learned to tie a straight stook. By the time the dinner break had come there was only a swathe left uncut, the width of two reapers.

I sat in the stubble with them and gave the children their sugared almonds. Mrs Gough had packed me the usual feast, but, although my sickness was gone, I was too apprehensive to eat. I was afraid, but I did not know what I feared. I gave away the dainty little meat pie and I shared the sweet pastries. I drank greedily from the glass-stoppered bottle of lemonade, but it did not ease my throbbing head or cool me.

When we had eaten, we leaned back against the bank and looked at the rest of the field. There was no hurry to cut the last swathe, for I thought the weather would hold, but I was nervous, and for some reason I felt disinclined to call them back to work or to face the fact that the harvest was done, and my girlhood cut down as surely as the corn.

But without my bidding two or three of the men went out into the field and started stacking the stooks.

‘They’re eager to work,’ I said to Sally Miles, who sat near by.

‘Nay,’ she said with a smiling drawl. ‘That’s play they’re after. There’s a game, an old reapers’ game. They make a corn dolly atop the heap of the last stooks and throw the sickles at it. The one whose sickle pierces it wins the luck of the harvest.’

I nodded and tried to smile, my eyes half shut against the glare of the white sky.

‘The dolly’s made in a semblance of the favourite of the harvest,’ said Sally. ‘Maybe it’ll be you, Miss Julia. My grandma makes them. She remembers the skill, but there are others who are learning from her now.’

I glanced over. Old Mrs Miles was tying the last knot on a little corn dolly. I caught a glimpse of the grey ribbon from my riding habit and nodded at the little conspiracy. Then I got to my feet and one of the lads helped me into the saddle. I had heard hoofbeats coming up the track and I wanted to meet Richard away from the bright inquisitive eyes of the harvest field.

I rode a little way down the lane, and then I saw him trotting up towards me, his curly mop of black curls bare to the sun. When he saw me, he broke into a sunny blue-eyed smile. ‘Julia!’ he said in open-faced delight, and pulled his horse up beside me so he could reach over and take my chin in one careless hand and plant a kiss on my mouth.

I let him kiss me, but I did not respond. ‘I have been worried,’ I said abruptly.

He patted my shoulder in an absent-minded way. ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘Your mama and my papa are following in the gig. They wanted to see the last of the corn coming in. Mr Megson is coming behind with the wagons.’

I nodded and pinned a smile of greeting on my face as Mama and Uncle John came up the hill. Mama was hanging on to the side of the gig as it jolted up the narrow path, the fringe on her parasol dancing as the gig swayed and rocked.

‘All done?’ Uncle John demanded jubilantly as soon as they were in earshot. ‘All done, Squire Julia?’

‘All done, except for the reapers’ games,’ I said, trying to make my voice as delighted as his.

I could never hide anything from my mama. Her eyes were on my face and I knew she noted that I was pale, and that I had deep circles around my eyes from the strain and the worry of this summer, which seemed to go on and on and never give me a moment to rest.

‘Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked quietly as the gig went on to the gate and I reined back Sea Mist to ride alongside her.

‘Just tired,’ I said. ‘The heat makes me weary, and the glare off the field hurts my eyes.’

‘I shall be glad to have you back in the parlour!’ she said lovingly. ‘Now Richard is home, he can go out and help Mr Megson. I won’t have you fading before my eyes, little Julia. You were the toast of the season last year; I won’t be robbed of my social triumph next winter.’

I smiled, but I knew very well that next winter there would be no triumph for either of us, but much ill-hidden shame. Next winter I should be near my time and, instead of chaperoning me at my London debut, Mama would see her grandchild, conceived out of wedlock and born too early.

‘What are the men doing?’ John asked.

I glanced around. They were standing at a distance from the heap of stooks, aiming and carefully tossing their sickles. The little corn dolly was perched at the top and I saw my ribbon flutter in the breeze as one of the sickles whistled past it. Instead of smiling at the compliment, I felt a deep unease and a cold finger of fear down my neck that made me shudder in the hot afternoon sun. The anxiety which had been with me all these months seemed to be building into some sort of a crisis.

‘Don’t wait if you find it too hot, Mama,’ I said suddenly.

I wanted her away from the field, though I could not have said why. I wanted her away from the reapers playing their odd ritual game. I wanted her away from this last fruiting of the Wideacre harvest. I feared her seeing the ripeness of the wheat growing at my bidding and somehow knowing that I too was fertile, that the seed inside me was growing too.

‘Go for a little walk down to the beech coppice,’ I said invitingly. ‘It’s so cool down there. Don’t wait here. We’ll be some time before we pack up.’

‘Yes, we could,’ she said agreeably and looked to John.

He did not look at her; he was watching the men throwing their sickles. ‘Very skilful,’ he said to Richard.

In a sudden spasm of impatience I wanted them all away, wanted them clear of the field, my field, before the games ended, before anyone brought the doll closer, before anyone gave her to me. I wanted the little gig and my innocent mama away from this field. I felt ill with the certainty that something, a terrible revealing something, was about to happen.

I searched my mind for some way to persuade John to drive on, but he was intent on the sickles glinting in the glare as they were thrown. I glanced to Richard for help, but he had dismounted and was sitting idly on the top bar of the gate. Though he felt my eyes on him, he did not care enough for me to sense my anxiety. Ralph was coming up the hill; I could hear him swearing at the shire horses pulling the wagons. But he was not close enough to help me.

I could feel my anxiety building up to panic as if I were in a coffin of crystal with a glass lid coming down on me. And even if I screamed aloud for help, no one would hear and no one would know that I needed aid. The fragile shell of the lie which hid me from my mama, and from my Uncle John was about to tumble down about my ears, and no skill of mine would ever mend the shattered pieces. I knew that the truth was coming for me in this bright field. I could not even tell which way the cracks were running, but I could hear the structure of my life creaking and beginning to shift.

There was a shout as Jimmy Dart’s sickle caught the doll and he leaped up the pile to pull his sickle down. He ran to me with the doll still impaled on the point of the blade so he did not see what he was bringing me. No one in the field saw what it was, and I took it from the proferred blade with some thought of hiding it. My fingers were wary of the sharp edge, and Jimmy held the blade carefully still for me, beaming with his pride. I gazed at it, uncomprehending.

Then I turned scarlet with shame in a blush so deep that even the field and the sky seemed to look rosy red. But then the heat suddenly left my face and left me icy and white as I faced the truth, a clean honest truth which would smash the shell of lies at last.

The straw dolly had a face made of the head of a stalk of corn, and my pale-grey bow had been tied around her body to signify it was meant to be me. Her little arms were tied stalks, sticking out sideways, and her legs were two seed heads. Her belly was huge, unmistakably swollen, made of seed heads tied tightly together. She was pregnant, she was bursting with the fertility of Wideacre. She was massively, grotesquely made. She was meant to be a pregnant woman. She was meant to be me.

At the look on my face John rapped out my name and held out his hand to me in imperious demand. Scarcely knowing what I was doing, I handed the dolly to him, past my mama, who sat, still as stone, on the seat of the gig while the evil little thing was passed across her, under her blank brown gaze.

‘Julia .. .’ she said. It sounded like she had never said my name before and was trying out a new word. ‘Julia.’

John dropped the doll on the floor of the gig between his feet and put his boot down on its fat middle to hold it still.

‘Go home at once,’ he said to Richard and me. ‘At once.’

He backed and turned the gig in a skilled manoeuvre and whirled Mama away from the field before I could glimpse more than her face, so deathly pale that I feared she might faint and fall from the gig. Her parasol lurched, she was whiter than the grey satin. She slumped against John and did not hold to the rocking gig. She looked like a broken doll herself; and John drove her down the hill as if he were rushing a mortally wounded person home to die in her own bed.

I gathered the reins into one cold fist and clicked to Sea Mist to follow them. Richard dropped from the gate like a sleep-walker and heaved himself into the saddle. He pulled his horse over beside mine and we started, shoulder to shoulder, down the track in an illusion of unity.

Ralph had the wagon for the stooks pulled over to one side. ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded urgently. ‘Julia! What’s happened in the field?’

‘They know,’ I said. My lips could scarcely move, they were so cold and numb.

Ralph took in my blank face and Richard’s fearful scowl and dropped back.

‘Shall I come with you?’ he offered.

‘No,’ I said, and I rode past him without another word. To tell the truth, I did not see him.

In the field the reapers stood, sickles dangling in their hands, left without orders, left without a word. Once again the ground had cracked beneath the Laceys and once again Acre village, and the livelihood of Acre, would go tumbling into the crevasse. I glanced back at Jimmy Dart, his sickle still upraised where he had held it out to me, frozen like a statue, his blue eyes puzzled, his broad young face uncomprehending, a little afraid.

I did not blame him, the Bath linkboy I had brought safely home. I did not blame old Mrs Miles, whom I had saved from a pitiful death in the poor house. Jimmy Dart had played the game in the old way, and won. He had not known what he was bringing to me. I truly believed that old Mrs Miles had made the dolly with her fingers and with old magic – no thought in her mind at all. She liked me, she would not have injured me. The truth of my pregnancy had come out in her craft. And I knew – from the way I shuddered when I first saw the corn dolly – that it was not the first time that the old magic had welled up, like an unstoppable spring, on Lacey land.

Sea Mist jinked at a fledgling blackbird fluttering in the hedge, and I checked her with instinctive skill, but I felt my grip on the reins was weak and I feared I would drop them.

I knew I was going home to face the end of my girlhood and the loss of the love of my mama. But I felt some dread, almost a superstitious fear, as if there might be something still worse to come. I was shocked and I was afraid, but a still greater dread, like a pair of black dogs, stalked and circled me all the way as I rode home and then tossed the reins to Jem in silence in the stable yard. When I walked up the garden path, it seemed to me that they lay like couchant black lions on the lawn.

John was waiting for us in the parlour, standing by the mantelpiece; Mama was seated in her usual chair at the fireside. Out of habit she had a piece of work in her hands, some broderie anglaise; and she held her little silver scissors ready to snip out the pattern. For one moment everything seemed the same as it had always been. This was still my safe home.

Then I saw with horror that Mama was not following the intricate pattern which she had taken days to copy. She was snipping aimlessly, shredding the expensive lawn, she was snipping random spiky little holes in the jagged material. John had not even noticed.

Richard and I came into the room. The silence and that mad little snip, snip, snipping noise rooted us on the threshold. Richard froze and I took one small step to the parlour table and clung to the back of the chair to steady myself. I felt my knees trembling too helplessly to stand without support. I wanted to run to my mama and throw myself down at her feet, but that detached little snip, snip, snip of the scissors frightened me away from her.

She had her head down, and her eyes were on the fine Irish linen in her hand; she was digging the little silver points into the material with her usual meticulous care, except that the holes were all wrong and she was ruining the work.

I kept my eyes on Uncle John. The only sound was the little snipping noise of the scissors and the nagging nerve-tearing call of the wood-pigeon outside the window in Wideacre wood.

‘Are you with child, Julia?’ John asked, his voice as sharp as Mama’s scissors, empty of emotion. But his face was trembling, his mouth working.

‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly.

‘Have you felt nauseous? Has your monthly flow ceased? Are your breasts tender?’ John rapped out his questions as though I were a kitchenmaid facing dismissal. I nodded like a jointed doll.

‘Mama!’ I said quietly, summoning her help.

Her head stayed down over the work as she enlarged some of the holes she had hacked and trimmed the ragged edges,

‘Excuse me,’ John said with mad politeness, and he crossed the room towards me. I flinched and stepped backwards until I was up against the wall. I gasped in horror when he placed his hand low on my belly and pressed hard.

‘Mama!’ I cried out.

She never even turned her head to see what he was doing to me. He walked back to the fireplace as if I had not spoken. He took out a fine silk handkerchief from his pocket and under my horrified gaze he wiped his hands as if the touch of my riding gown could soil him.

‘I conclude you are the father, Richard?’ John said, his voice an uninterested monotone.

‘Yes, sir,’ Richard said. Something in his voice made me turn to look at him. He was not blank with horror like the rest of us. His eyes were blazing blue. He looked utterly delighted. I could not think what was in his mind. He must be half mad, or perhaps he was rising to the challenge of this horror. Mama was bent industriously over her work, while I was where John had left me, backed against the wall, and John now clung to the mantelpiece. But Richard stood astride in the doorway, a smile on his face.

‘My God,’ said John. He made an odd little retching sound in his throat as though he were going to be sick.

‘And we are married!’ Richard said defiantly. ‘The child, the heir to Wideacre, will be born in wedlock. We were secretly married over a month ago, and you cannot break that. We will inherit Wideacre jointly, just as my mama planned!’

John’s head jerked up, his pale eyes blazing so brightly they looked almost white. ‘Not just your mama,’ he said, hissing through his teeth. ‘My God, you pair of fools! You do not know what you have done!’ he said, recapturing that precise monotone which told of a horror kept in check. ‘You do not know what you have done. She was not just your mama! She gave birth to you both. You have seduced and married your sister, Richard!’

No one said a word. It was as if we were a tableau in some theatre of horror. Then I gave a little sobbing scream and slumped on to one of the chairs at the parlour table.

Richard’s smile was wiped from his face. ‘You’re lying,’ he said uncertainly.

‘No,’ John said. ‘Beatrice conceived Julia with her lover, and she persuaded Celia to take the baby when they were in France on the wedding tour. Harry Lacey never knew the child was not his. Julia was born in France when he was absent. He came home early. The next time Beatrice conceived, she married me. After you were born, I discovered the truth, Richard, the foul truth that you are both Lacey bastards from the same whore.’

Mama’s scissors went snip, snip, snip in the silence. She had not looked up once. She had abandoned the little jagged holes and was slicing along the edge of the cloth in a delicate threadlike fringe.

‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked, utterly bemused.

I could not take my eyes from my mama’s downcast face. She was not my mama. She was not my mama.

‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked again.

John dropped into a chair by the empty fireplace; he seemed too weary to go on much longer. ‘Harry Lacey,’ he said indifferently. ‘Beatrice lay with her brother, Harry, and got you both. You are incestuous bastards, and now the two of you have conceived another.’

Mama’s head came up. ‘Harry’s child?’ she demanded. ‘Julia is Harry’s child? Beatrice’s lover was my Harry?’

‘Didn’t you know it?’ John demanded, his voice as hard as a costerman’s, of the woman he loved. ‘Didn’t you always know it in your secret heart? And you feared it and hid it from yourself, and I conspired with you in that lie.’

Mama dipped her head again to her work. ‘Yes,’ she said very softly. ‘I knew there was something evil between them. I tried not to wonder what it meant.’ She had dropped the scrap of lawn when she looked up, but she did not cease her work. Absent-mindedly she took a handful of the figured silk of her driving dress and started to cut perfectly symmetrical little holes in it. Snip, snip, snip went the scissors, and no ‘one thought to stop her.

Richard stared. ‘So I am Harry Lacey’s son,’ he said slowly. ‘I am the son of the squire.’

Nobody said anything. John’s eyes were on the empty grate. It looked like he was watching flames and glowing embers, but there was nothing there. Mama’s head was bent down over her dress. It was a cream silk with small yellow flowers. She was cutting the flowers out of the material with careful accuracy. The scraps fell around her feet as though she were sitting under a cherry tree shedding its petals.

‘I am the heir,’ Richard suddenly said, his voice strong. ‘I am the Son of the Laceys. Wideacre is my inheritance.’

‘Wideacre!’ John shouted. He jumped from his chair, explosive with rage. He crossed the room in two swift strides and took Richard’s lapels and dragged him close. ???? have got your own sister with child, and all you can think of is Wideacre?’

His blazing pale eyes scanned Richard’s frightened face and then he pushed him away as if he did not want to touch him.

‘You are true Laceys,’ he said bitterly. He looked at us with loathing. ‘Both of you,’ he said. His mouth was twisted as though he had accidentally bitten into something dead and rotting. ‘Both of you bred very true. All you care for is this filthy estate, all you chase is your own lusts. You are both Beatrice’s true children.’

We said nothing. I did not dare look up from the polished surface of the table. I could see my reflection. I was as white as a ghost and my eyes in that darkened mirror were huge and appalled.

John leaned his arm along the mantelpiece. ‘It will have to be annulled,’ he said levelly. The passion had gone from his voice and he sounded tired and old. ‘It can be the last thing I do for the pair of you. I will go to London and get an annulment on the grounds that you are brother and sister, and I shall put the estate on the market while I am there. Wideacre will be sold, and you two will be separated.’

I did not protest. Indeed, I consented.

The nightmare of the Laceys on Wideacre should end, whatever it cost me, whatever it cost Richard. That morning in the summer-house had been even worse than rape. It had also been a perversion. I wanted the Lacey line to be over for ever. I wanted no Lacey on God’s earth again after Richard and me. Most of all, I wanted the fairest part of God’s earth to be free of us. I wanted to be punished. I wanted to be exiled. I wanted the pain of losing Wideacre and the pain of losing my name and my home and the father of my child to tear my heart out so I would never forget that there should be no future for the Laceys, so that I should never hope and plan again. I wanted to be gutted like a river trout and cleansed. ‘Yes,’ I said.

My mama spoke. Her dress was pock-marked with circular holes. ‘Yes,’ she said.

Richard’s blue eyes went from one face to another in the room.

I saw a flicker of hesitation pass across it and then he too nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I’ll start at once,’ John said. ‘Celia, you will have to come with me as Julia’s guardian.’

Mama nodded.

‘Julia, you will go to Havering Hall and stay with your Grandmama Havering,’ John said. ‘You two are not to see each other until we return. Is that clear?’

We nodded in silence.

‘Richard, you will stay here until we get back. We should not be gone more than one night.’

Richard nodded.

John went for the door and my mama followed him.

‘Mama!’ I said pitifully. She paused and looked at me. Her eyes were hard. I had never seen her face as it was then. She looked through me as if she saw a green-eyed whore and not the child she had raised.

I hesitated. There was no appeal I could make. I saw her clear gaze drop down from my face and she looked at my belly where my child was growing.

‘You should change your dress, Mama,’ I said gently.

She glanced down at the gown, speckled with holes. ‘Yes,’ she said, and she left the room.

She did not touch me. She did not say farewell. She was gone before I could say goodbye, or ask for her forgiveness, or ask for her love. And I did not tell her how much I loved her.

Richard brought the news to me at Havering Hall in the evening. He came riding over, and as soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong, for John had ordered him to stay at home and not to see me.

But John was dead, and Richard could do just as he pleased; my mama was dead too.

Richard brought a letter. It was from a Justice of the Peace at Haslemere. The common outside the little town had been troubled with highwaymen. It seemed that a highwayman had held up the travelling coach and ordered Jem to stand to. And then he had shot them dead.

Jem, Uncle John and my mama.

The next travellers along the road saw the coach pulled in at the roadside, the horses grazing on the verge. Jem was dead on the box and John was lying on the floor inside; it seemed he had been trying to shield my mama with his body. My mama had been shot dead.

The cash in John’s travelling box had gone. My mama’s rose-pearl ear-rings and her beautiful Indian rose-pearl necklace, which she had worn every day since John gave them to her, were missing.

The magistrate, Mr Pearson, said he was very sorry. He said he had posted notices for information about the killer, and that if we wished to offer a reward, we should contact him. He said he was making arrangements for the bodies to be sent home. He said he commiserated with us in our grief.

‘What should we do, sir?’ Richard asked Lord Havering, his blue eyes wide. ‘What should Julia and I do?’

‘You’ll stay here, of course,’ my grandmama interrupted. ‘You will stay here with me until we can sort things out. I shall take care of Julia; she is my granddaughter. And there will always be a home for you here, Richard.’

I said nothing. I could think of nothing. In the distant back of my mind was a great gash of pain and longing for my mama and, increasingly, as I sat in silence, a great need of her help. I could not think how I would manage without her. I could not think where I would live or what would become of me, or of my unborn child.

‘Lady Havering,’ Richard said firmly. ‘I have to tell you and his lordship some news which will be a surprise to both of you.’

I did not know what Richard was about to say. I could hardly hear his words. All I could hear was a little cry of pain, as thin as a thread, in the back of my mind, which said, ‘Mama.’

So I sat in silence, and I was passive when Richard walked over to me and drew me to my feet. He held my hand in one hand, the letter announcing my mama’s murder in his other. He tucked my icy right hand under his arm and faced my grandparents.

‘Julia and I are married,’ he said. ‘We will be making our lives together,’

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering. He looked at his wife for prompting and then he looked back at the pair of us. Richard seemed assured and somehow prepared for this scene. I was nothing more than a wan shadow at his side, deprived of speech, deprived of thought. I was calling for Mama inside my head, calling for her in silence.

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering again.

‘Did your father know of this, Richard?’ Lady Havering demanded.

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘Lady Havering, it is useless for us to pretend to you. My papa gave his permission, and Julia’s mama gave her permission, because Julia is with child. I am the father.’

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering once more, and dropped into a chair like a stone.

Lady Havering’s face was as pale as crumpled vellum, but her first thought was not for the conventions but for the daughter she had lost.

‘Oh! My poor Celia!’ she exclaimed. ‘That would have been the last straw for her. That must have broken her heart.’

I dropped my head. I felt I had killed Mama myself. She had left the house without a word of love between us and she had gone to her death. I was ready to believe that when her killer shot her, he was completing the injury I had started when she learned I was unchaste. I was so ashamed I could not speak.

‘I suppose this alters things,’ Richard said with careful courtesy.

‘It does!’ Lord Havering said. ‘It does, by God!’

Lady Havering made a slight gesture and his lordship fell silent. ‘I’ll recognize you,’ she said grimly. ‘Whatever else Julia is, she is my granddaughter, and I’ll do it for Celia’s sake. I’ll acknowledge you, and we’ll announce the marriage in the papers. No one will expect any sort of reception with your parents’ funeral taking place in the same week. We can make it appear that you have been married for some time.’ She hesitated. I did not look up. ‘When’s the baby due?’ she asked.

‘At the end of January,’ Richard said.

‘We’ll say you were married privately in the spring, then,’ she said. Her voice was as hard and dispassionate as a general planning a campaign. ‘In these circumstances, there is no reason why the two of you should not go home at once.’

‘No!’ I exclaimed suddenly. ‘I don’t want to go home!’

Richard’s eyes met mine with unmistakable menace in their blue hardness.

‘Why not?’ demanded my grandmama sharply.

I hesitated. Richard’s eyes were on me, but I trusted my grand-mama’s love for me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly. ‘I just don’t want to, Grandmama. Please let me stay here with you. I don’t want to go home.’

She hesitated, and I knew her long affection was weighing more heavily than her shock and dismay at what I had done. I knew she would keep me with her until I felt strong enough to go home and face Richard and decide what we should do in the wreckage of our lives. I felt I had suddenly found some safe ground under my feet. I knew my grandmama saw the appeal in my eyes, and I knew that I had an ally who was very strong.

‘You may stay if you wish,’ she said slowly. But then she looked away from me. She looked to Richard. ‘But you are a married woman now, Julia. You must do as your husband wishes.’

I gaped at her. I could barely understand her. ‘Richard?’ I queried. I could not believe that she was referring a decision to my childhood playmate. I could not believe that she would permit him to take a decision about me, in her house.

‘You are a married woman, Julia,’ she said. It was as if there were a cell door closing. ‘You are a married woman. It must be as your husband wishes.’

I looked around.

Lord Havering was nodding. My grandmama’s face was strained, but her eyes were steady. Last of all I looked at Richard. His eyes were gleaming in secret triumph.

‘I think we should go home, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘This has been a dreadful shock for us both. I think we should go home and you should have some hartshorn and water and go to bed early. There will be much to arrange tomorrow, and this has been an unbearably distressing day. I think you should come home and rest in your own house.’

I glanced at Grandmama for her help, but her face was impassive. My grandpapa stared sombrely at the carpet between his boots. I looked again at Richard. There was only one way out for me. I could tell them that Richard and I were brother and sister and that the marriage must be annulled. But if I spoke of that, then Grandmama would know that I had lain with my own brother and that the little child, my own little child, was the fruit of a perversion. Worse, she would know that I was not her grandchild at all; that I was the daughter of Beatrice, the witch of Wideacre, and her brother Harry, the fool; that I was no kin.

I could not do it. I could not lose mother and grandmother in one day. I could not tell her she must look on me as a stranger stained with sin. I could not find the words.

‘Very well,’ I said dutifully. I somehow got to my feet. Lord Havering ordered the Havering carriage and I drove home in it alone, while Richard rode behind.

Stride opened the door to me and I could see he had been weeping.

Oh, Stride!’ I said sadly.

There was time for no other words. Richard came in and ordered Stride to send Jenny Hodgett to take me to bed with a bowl of soup and a glass of port. When I was undressed and in my bed, Richard himself came up with a glass of hartshorn and water and said he would sit with me until I slept.

I dropped back on the pillows and closed my eyes so that I should not see him in my window-seat, blocking my view of the late-evening sky and the sighing tree outside the window. My grief for my mama was so strong that I thought it would choke me to hold in the sobs which gathered in great asphyxiating lumps in my throat.

‘Hush, Julia,’ Richard said tenderly. ‘Hush.’

He came to my bedside and stroked my hair back from my forehead as if I were a little child. I tried to pretend it was my mama’s hand, and that none of this nightmare was happening, that I should very soon wake up and find myself safe and beloved again.

Richard spent that night in my room thus. And whether he was there as a brother in mourning, as a husband, or even as a gaoler, I never really knew.