The Favoured Child

28

I heard of it from my maid, Jenny Hodgett, the gate-keeper’s daughter. She was walking out with Bobby Miles from the village. Bobby had been in the Bush tavern when the two soldiers had ridden down the street with the carriage behind them.

They had pulled up outside Ralph’s cottage in the pearly-grey twilight of the Wideacre evening, soft and quiet with the birds going to roost and the stars coming out. An officer with the county militia had got out of the coach and gone into Ralph’s cottage without knocking on the door.

By this time everyone who had been drinking in the Bush was outside staring, of course. All the women were at their doorways, and all the children were out in the lane, their mouths agape.

There was no noise inside the cottage, there were no raised voices. Only a few minutes passed before Ralph came out, pulling on his brown jacket, with the gentleman walking very close at his shoulder. Ralph had glanced around at the faces and hesitated, as if he would say something, but then the gentleman tapped his shoulder with his cane – a bit impertinent, Bobby Miles had thought. Ralph had shrugged off the touch, given a little smile to Acre and climbed awkwardly on his wooden legs into the carriage.

‘He smiled?’ I asked Jenny, for it mattered a great deal to me.

‘Bobby said so,’ she confirmed. ‘He said he gave the little grin he has when something has gone badly wrong on the land, and he says, “Damnation,” but does not blame anybody. Begging your pardon, Miss Julia,’ she added.

I nodded. ‘But what can they have taken him for? I demanded.

She looked at me forlornly as if it was her own lover which had gone. ‘Don’t you know, Miss Julia?’ she asked.

I gazed at her blankly. I had a dreadful cold frightened feeling that I did know. I shook my head in denial.

‘He was a rioter,’ she said, ‘when he was young. He led a gang in Kent, and a riot in Portsmouth. Nobody was ever hurt,’ she said swiftly. ‘It was just to get a fair price, Miss Julia. You know how they used to have riots for a fair price.’

I nodded. I knew.

‘And then he went to be a smuggler,’ she said softly. ‘He was pressed as a sailor too.’ She hesitated and looked at me. ‘Then he went against the gentry for a while,’ she said. ‘They called him the Culler.’

‘I knew of that,’ I said. ‘He told me himself.’

Jenny’s head was down, and she took one glancing sideways look at me. ‘No one in Acre would ever have betrayed him, not if we’d been burned alive,’ she said passionately. ‘Miss Julia, who can have called out the Chichester magistrate to take him in like that? Do you know?’

My hands were as cold as ice.

I knew.

‘What will become of him?’ I asked, my voice very low.

‘They’re certain to be able to prove at least some of the riots against him,’ she said.

I nodded. There were not many black-haired cripples riding horses in riots. ‘But they could not prove he came against the Laceys,’ I said as if my loyalty were with him, as if it were not my family he had attacked, as if it were not my own blood-mother he had killed.

‘No,’ said Jenny. She had her apron up to mop her eyes. ‘But just one witness from the other riots will be enough to finish him,’ she said with a little wail. ‘They’ll hang him for sure, Miss Julia!’

‘My God,’ I said. Jenny sobbed noisily into her pinny, and I sat in my chair with my hand on my belly, feeling the little comforting movement of the baby for which Richard longed as the next squire.

If he was indeed the next squire, he should not have waiting for him this inheritance of hatred and suspicion, and of fear. I could give my baby little indeed when I gave him Wideacre, but I could give him the chance to live on the land without the blood on his head of the best man in the village.

I looked at Jenny with sudden determination. ‘I won’t have it!’ I said. ‘I won’t have Ralph Megson hanged now for something he did years ago. I won’t have him hanged when everyone knows that he did the right thing, the thing that anyone would do if their family and friends were starving. He rid Acre of that generation of Laceys and there is no one who does not think that Beatrice was in the wrong and earned that riot. I won’t have Ralph Megson hanged.’

Jenny looked at me. She was in two minds about me. I had held command in Acre and she remembered the days when I was the only heir on the land, and I could call out a ploughing team. But when she looked at me now, she saw a young woman with her belly curving with motherhood. She saw a young wife, newly married, with a husband whom men feared. She saw a girl trapped into marriage and stripped of her wealth. I was no longer a figure of power.

‘How can you stop it?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘I’ll think of something. I’ll think of some way. I’ll go out for a walk down the drive to the hall and I’ll think of something.’

She bobbed a curtsy and held the door for me, and I went out to take the air and to think. But though I walked all the way to the hall and watched the work there for a while, and though I walked all the way home again, no plan came to me.

When I went to bed that night, I knew that Ralph would see the wide yellow harvest moon criss-crossed with the bars across his window. I thought of his face turned up to the light, and his faint rueful smile as he faced the likelihood of his death. I tossed on the pillows all night until I heard the cocks crowing at dawn. I did not sleep at all.

And while I was thinking, while I was walking and walking, like a ghost up and down the drive to the hall, walking with faster and faster strides as if my urgency could make a plan come into my head, the Chichester magistrates transferred the case to Winchester, because they feared a riot if Ralph was tried so near to his home. And the Winchester magistrates, no braver than their Chichester colleagues, transferred the case to London, where they said he could be kept more secure while witnesses were found who had seen riots of twenty years ago.

I knew he would need a lawyer, and I knew a London lawyer would cost a great deal of money. I had been poor all my childhood; I had worn shoes which were too tight as my feet grew, I had patched my gowns, I had done without gloves. But I never knew myself to be poor until I looked out of the window at the rich autumn colours of my trees on my land, and knew I had no money to help Ralph.

I could have asked Richard for some, but I knew he would guess why I needed it, and I knew he would refuse. I went to my grandmama.

‘Two hundred pounds!’ she repeated in amazement. ‘Julia, whatever can you need two hundred pounds for?’

I stumbled, trying to explain, but as soon as she understood it was men’s business she frowned. ‘You are no longer in control of Wideacre,’ she said. ‘And your former manager’s concerns are not yours. Have you asked Richard if he would pay for the man’s defence?’

‘No,’ I said quietly.

‘I dare say you have your reasons for that,’ she said, and there was a world of understanding in her voice. ‘But if you cannot ask your husband for a sum of money, it is unlikely you will be able to obtain it anywhere else, Julia. If I had it, I would give it to you. But my own fortune is tied up and his lordship does not provide me with that sort of sum as pin-money.’

She paused, and I saw her swallow her pride like a lump in her throat. ‘I have only twenty-five pounds’ pin-money a quarter,’ she said, her voice very low. ‘I have spent this quarter’s allowance, and I have no savings.’

I nodded. I was blinking hard, for there were tears in my eyes. ‘How do married women get money if their husbands will not give them enough?’ I demanded. I had some vague idea of loans, or of jewellers who would buy a trinket.

Grandma looked at me as if I were a little child once more and she was teaching me how to hold my fish-knife. ‘If their husbands do not provide for them, they have no money,’ she said blankly. Of course, a wife is dependent upon her husband’s goodwill.’

I looked at her as if I were a fool who could not understand plain English. I was seventeen years old and I still had not learned that I had no rights in the world. I had no money of my own and I had no land. Everything around me, the water I drank, the food I ate, belonged to Richard, for in marrying him I had made it over to him entire. And whether I wanted three halfpence of what I had once called my own, or whether I wanted two hundred pounds, I had to apply to him. And he could refuse me.

He did refuse me.

I buried my pride and told him I thought Ralph Megson wrongly accused and that I should like to send him some money to pay for a lawyer. Richard looked at me with a sparkle in his eyes as though I had said something most extremely funny.

‘Oh, no, Julia,’ he said, his voice very warm and indulgent. ‘Most certainly not.’

The days got colder, and it was grey when I awoke in the mornings and dark by dinner-time in the afternoon. I did nothing to help Ralph Megson in a prison far away in London. Jenny Hodgett told me they had put their savings together in the village and asked Dr Pearce to send them to him in London. Dr Pearce, torn between his horror at law-breakers and murderers and his pity for the distress of Acre, added to the little fund on his own account, and contacted his own cousin and asked him to see Ralph in gaol and keep the fees low.

I knew then that the time I had seen was here, the time when Ralph would not be able to help me and I would not be able to help him.

I was very lonely.

In autumn the countryside is very beautiful. A Wideacre autumn is a season when the world seems full of colour and you cannot believe that the bright leaves could ever fade. The hedgerows are full of glossy berries: the tulip-shaped scarlet hips and haws, the fat black bobbles of blackberries. The hawthorn trees are dotted with berries of a deep, dark redness, and the ivy flowers with waxy green delicate bouquets.

As the chestnut leaves started falling in great yellow fans on to the drive, I took to walking in the woods opposite the Dower House, going quite far in random sweeps, but staying under the trees as if they could give me some sort of comfort which the empty common lands could not.

Sometimes on my walks I would back against a tree and look up at the blue sky patterned all over with the copper, yellow and orange leaves. I would eat a handful of blackberries or crack beech-nuts open and eat the little sweet kernels. I would put my hands behind me and feel the rough bark of the tree and try to hear the beat of the land. But I could hear nothing at all.

I tried to count my blessings, but something must have been wrong with my arithmetic, for I could not make it come right. I knew I loved Richard with a long love with its roots in my earliest childhood and its flower in my belly, but I could find no happiness in knowing that we were at last where we had longed to be: a married couple on Wideacre.

I thought that was because Wideacre felt like my familiar home no more. Acre had changed already, and would change again when Richard was out on the land with the ploughing teams. I would be indoors with the new baby so there would be no smiles for me, and no calling of ‘Speed the plough!’

But I knew also that there would be no smiles for Richard. The special magic of Wideacre – that masters and men could try to work together in unity – had quite gone. Never again would the fastest reaping gang in the country celebrate their triumph in the Bush at Acre. Next year there would be hired hands, paid labourers. Never again would they stand waist-deep in their own corn and laugh for joy at the richness of the land which had grown such a crop, and boast of their own skill in cutting it.

Acre was different, and I was different too.

I was mourning my mama still. Even now it had been less than two months. I was haunted by her in dreams which made me happy while I was asleep, but made me weep and weep when I awoke. I dreamed once that I was sitting before my mirror and pinning on my hat when she walked into the room as though she had been out in the garden picking flowers. In my dream I said, ‘Mama! Oh, Mama! I thought you were dead!’ and she said with such a sweet smile, Oh, no my darling. I’d never leave you in such a pickle!’ I was so persuaded that she was alive and loved me still that I could not believe it when I woke in the quiet early-morning house and remembered she would never call me her darling again.

I dreamed she walked into the parlour and asked me where her clothes had gone. I stammered that I had given them away because I had thought she was dead. Then she laughed, a clear easy laugh, and called out of the window to John to share the joke. I gazed from one bright laughing face to another and was as certain as I could be that there had been some foolish mistake and my lovely mama was still alive.

It was pointless for me to try to accept her death. Grandmama Havering urged me to come to terms with it and put it behind me. I smiled vaguely and did not reply.

I did not try to accept it, but neither did I try to escape it. I simply could not believe that I would never see her again. And, although I often wept for her on my long walks and found that I was crying from longing for her hand on my forehead, her smile and the love in her voice, I could think two sad, silly thoughts at once: that I would never see her again, and that it was not possible that she could have left me for ever.

I was very lonely.

She had been my companion and best friend, and I had never noticed before how the autumn kept us so much indoors. When it grew colder and my walks grew shorter, I found I was spending most of the days in the parlour. Sometimes I would sit before the roaring fire and try to be glad that I was inside warming my toes, and sometimes I would sit in the window-seat and press my face to the glass and watch the rain sluicing down the cold windows, and wait for dusk, and wait for night and sleep, and then lie sleepless and wait for morning.

As I grew heavier and more and more tired, I was not glad of the rest, but impatient with this lumpish body which kept me isolated in the little room in the little house while Richard could ride down to Acre or up on the downs, or across the common and drop into any tenant’s house and take a pot-luck dinner.

He was popular only with our wealthy neighbours. The poorer farmers saw their interests as at one with Acre. They depended on wage-work to supplement their farming and they needed Wideacre to be a generous employer. They bought much wheat from us, and fodder and straw; and they needed Wideacre to sell at a fair price in the local market. But the bigger farmers nearby were happy to farm hard and sell high, they liked the lordly way Richard condemned ‘new-fangled levelling notions’.

There was always a place ready for the handsome young squire at their tables, and Richard came home from these dinners in good humour, tipsy with port, flattered by deference, bursting with charm and conceit.

He had grown so strong since he had become owner of Wideacre. No one had been able to stand against him, and the complaints about him in the village were so soft that only I could hear them.

He had grown so confident. I, who used to laugh at the people who called me Squire Julia, had become a fat tired woman who sat alone in her parlour and longed for her mama who was dead, and for her friend who was in a London gaol, and feared the birth of her child as another Lacey to run the land.

But I had one friend yet.

I thought of him. I had thought of him almost daily since the death of my mama. I had thought of him without shame. I was not thinking of a man as a married woman should not think. I was thinking of a young man who was part of my careless childhood when Mama had been happy, and I had been happy, that short season in Bath.

I was thinking of James.

He was young, he was wealthy, and I knew he would do me a favour if I asked him.

I left the fireside chair and lit one of the candles at the mantelpiece. I went to the library and opened the drawer for paper, an envelope and sealing-wax. Then I took pen and ink and went back into the parlour, the women’s room of the house. I had thought the letter would give me some trouble to write, but I wrote it as easily and as simply as I had talked to him all those months ago when we had driven and walked and danced in Bath.

Dear James,

You will be surprised to hear from me, but I know you will understand that I am writing to you because I need your friendship. Not for myself, but for a friend of mine who finds himself in some trouble.

You may remember Ralph Megson, our family’s farm manager? He was taken up for an old alleged offence of rioting and transferred to London before I could aid him. I believe he may have a lawyer, but I am anxious for him.

You will relieve my mind very much if you could see him and ascertain that he has adequate advice and adequate funds to secure his acquittal.

Any monies he needs I would repay you, as soon as I can, if you were to be kind enough to help him now while the case is urgent.

I beg your pardon for calling on your aid, but there is no one else who will help me.

Your friend,

Julia MacAndreiv (née Lacey)

I could do no better than that in a hurry, in my worry for Ralph. I sealed the letter with the Lacey seal, and I called Jenny to the parlour.

‘It’s about Mr Megson,’ I said to her. I knew Richard was out, but I still kept my voice low. She glanced to see that the door was shut tight. ‘Take this letter down to the village,’ I said. ‘Take it to Jimmy Dart, and tell him to make sure that Mr James Fortescue receives it. He’d best take it to their home in Bristol. I hope that Mr Fortescue will help Ralph Megson.’

Jenny nodded. ‘Your young man,’ she said wistfully.

‘Yes,’ I said. Then I drew a deep breath. ‘My husband would not wish me to write to him,’ I said. I flushed scarlet with the shame of what I was saying. ‘Keep it hid, Jenny. It’s for Ralph’s defence.’

She nodded, her eyes sharp. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I’ll take it down now. Mrs Gough won’t notice I’m gone if you don’t ring for an hour.’

‘I won’t,’ I said. I went to my writing-desk. ‘Give Jimmy this guinea,’ I said, ‘for his journey. And tell him to be as quick as he can.’

She nodded, a little smile behind her grave eyes. ‘We’ll get him free, Miss Julia!’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it!’

I nodded and let her go. A few minutes later I saw her trotting down the lane, her skirts held in one hand, the other one holding her shawl, and the letter hidden, if I guessed right, under her pinny.

Then I set myself to wait for the reply.

I thought James Fortescue might wait until he had seen Ralph before he wrote back to me, so I warned myself that I must be patient for at least a week. But I could look forward to the return of Jimmy. I thought he would come to the Dower House at once to tell me what James had said. I waited three days patiently. I waited for the fourth with concern. The fifth day I ordered out the carriage and went down to Acre.

Ralph Megson’s cottage, where Jimmy now lived alone, was shuttered, the door barred. Jimmy was not yet back, then. With my hood pulled up against the cold drizzle I crossed the road, walking carefully in the greasy mud, to Rosie’s little cottage.

Her door was open, and Nat stood helplessly by a doused fireplace. Rosie was tying a knot in a shawl which was lumpy with what I guessed were all her clothes and perhaps a little food.

‘What is happening?’ I asked.

They had turned as they heard my foot on the doorstep. Neither of them smiled nor said a word of greeting. Rosie looked through me as if I were not there.

Nat struggled to answer my question.

‘It’s Jimmy,’ he said. His voice was still hoarse from the years of soot, and harsher now with bad news. ‘He’s been taken up by the Winchester magistrates for vagrancy. They’re holding him in the poor house. Rosie’s going to get him out.’

I looked blankly from one hard face to the other.

‘At Winchester?’ I asked. ‘When?’

‘We don’t know,’ Nat said. ‘He said he had a message to take to Bristol, that he wouldn’t tell no one about. He could have been taken on his way home.’

I nodded. ‘This is my fault,’ I said sorrowfully. ‘I sent him with a message. But I gave him a guinea for his fare. They can’t arrest a man with a guinea for his fare.’

‘He could have refused to be press-ganged,’ Nat suggested. ‘Or not taken his hat off when bid. They can arrest you for nigh on anything, Miss Julia, if they want to.’

‘What will you do, Rosie?’ I asked.

She spoke to me for the first time. ‘Dr Pearce has given me a letter to show them,’ she said. ‘And three guineas, which must be enough to get him off whatever charge it is against him.’

‘And then you’ll bring him back here,’ I said. I looked around the room. Rosie’s few goods were packed, the hearth was empty of her pan.

‘I’ve been given notice to quit,’ she said. ‘Jimmy too. I had a letter today, from your husband, the squire. I’ve to leave at once, and Jimmy’s tenancy is cancelled too.’

‘Richard is turning you out?’ I asked, disbelieving.

She looked at me and her face was hard. I had never seen her look at me like that before. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘It seems like only yesterday that you brought us here. I was glad of it then, but now it seems almost worse to have been here, to have planned for the future, and now to have to lose it all.’

‘I’ll speak to him ..,’ I said quickly.

Her shrug seemed to suggest my promises were worthless. ‘We all know you can do nothing, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘You married the wrong man to give your baby a name. We all understand that. I don’t expect any good from you now.’

‘Rosie!’ I said. It was a cry for her forgiveness.

She smiled her weary smile at me and said, ‘It’s no good, Miss Julia.’ And she picked up her kerchief bundle and handed it to Nat, who hefted it over his shoulder and went out before her into the grey dampness.

‘Where will you go?’ I asked.

She turned in the doorway to answer me. Outside the drizzle had turned to sleet, lancing sheets of wet ice.

‘Back to Bath,’ she said. ‘We can get free passage there, and I can embroider gloves again. I know I can sell them in Bath and we know the city.’

I said nothing. There was nothing I could say.

She nodded at me in silence. Then she pulled her shawl over her bowed head and went out over the threshold into the cold.

I called the carriage over and rode home dryshod.

The weather worsened. We had a long week of fog when not even Richard got out often, and then we had three days of rain. Every day Richard’s new groom, George, came trudging through the mire, or rode on his skidding horse, with the post; but he brought no message for me from James.

I thought of everything.

My worst fear was that Jimmy had been arrested on his way to Bristol, that he had been stopped on his way. But I had faith in Jimmy. He would have walked across the Avon for Ralph, and he trusted James as a worker of miracles. He would have gone to great lengths to get the message through. And he had wit enough to get it into the post – even from prison.

But I also feared that the message had come too late. Maybe Ralph was already hanged, and James could not bear to tell me. I hoped desperately that Ralph had escaped, and James was looking for him and not writing until he had clear news. Possibly James and Ralph had met and Ralph had forbidden James to send me news until the case was heard. I even wondered if James would simply ignore my letter. But I put that fear aside. I knew he would not. He had liked and admired Ralph. And he was always generous to me.

I thought I had thought of everything.

I thought of every option except the obvious one. As silly as a child, I did not think of that at all.

I took to rising early in the morning and putting on my wrapper, which enfolded me less and less as I grew broader, and going quietly downstairs to drink my morning chocolate in the parlour so I could watch the drive for George coming from the London stage with the mail.

He never came much before seven or eight, so I could as well have stayed in my room; but in some hopeful corner of my heart I thought I was keeping a sort of vigil. As the grey mist cleared away down the lane, I thought that perhaps Ralph was sitting up on some dirty straw in a London cell and opening his eyes knowing that James Fortescue had engaged a good lawyer for him, and knowing for certain that I had stood his friend and that my friendship could make a difference.

Richard saw me there one morning and asked me what I did. I told him I was just sitting, looking at the misty garden, doing nothing. I smiled deprecatingly to suggest it was a whim of pregnancy, and Richard nodded and went out through the kitchen door to the stable yard.

I heard Mrs Gough laugh as he went through the kitchen and I thought resentfully that she always had liked him best.

The next day he was up early again and saw me at the parlour window.

Again I told him that I felt restless, that I wanted to be sitting in the window-seat watching Jenny light the fire, her routine disarranged by my capriciousness. Richard nodded as if he understood, and his smile was a gleam of white, with a little hint of mischief at the back.

On the third day he was there when George rattled the doorknocker and I heard Stride cross the hall and open the door.

There were letters for the household.

There was a letter for me.

Stride brought it in on the silver salver and Richard paused on his way to the door. ‘Who could be writing to you, Julia?’ he asked, interested.

I flushed up to my forehead. ‘I think Sarah Collis, from Bath,’ I said. And the lie slid easily off my tongue, making me blush again.

Richard’s eyes were very warm and confident.

Open it, then,’ he said, and his voice was silky.

I should have been warned by that special sweetness of tone, but the letter was thick in my hand and I could only think that it would have news of Ralph.

‘I’ll open it later,’ I said, getting up and going to the door.

As I went past Richard, he caught my wrist and held me, rooted where I stood. I instinctively clutched the letter close to me and caught my breath. His face was not angry; it seemed there was nothing to fear. His smile was as sweet as a May morning.

Open it here,’ he said. ‘Read your letter here. I know girls have secrets. I shall not ask to see it, for I am going out now. Sit and read it here, my love.’

My eyes flashed to his face, for I was surprised at the endearment. He pressed me into the chair by the table and stood back, leaning against the wall, as I put my finger under the flap and broke the seal.

I did not look carefully at the seal.

There was no letter inside. There were eight pieces of torn paper and a torn envelope, a bulky package. I forgot Richard was watching and tipped the eight thick jagged scraps out on the table before me, and pieced them together.

It was my writing on the envelope. It read: ‘James Fortescue, Esq.’

I slumped against the back of my chair, and my heart pounded so fast I was afraid for the little child who lay quiet inside me and depended on my body for its safety. But this is a dangerous world for little children. It is a dangerous world for grown men. I gave a little moan of distress.

My first thought was that James Fortescue had recognized my hand and had torn up the letter in a temper, and sent it back to me in spite.

But then I hesitated, and I knew I did him a disservice. James would never be spiteful. James was always generous.

I knew only one man who would post scraps of paper to me.

I raised my grey eyes to Richard’s face, and saw his deep, dangerous resentment.

‘You wrote to another man,’ he said.

I said nothing. My thumbs burned. I could hear a humming in my head. I could smell danger like smoke on the wind.

‘You wrote to another man. You thought to hide that letter from me,’ he said. His voice was soft and infinitely menacing. ‘I had to have Jimmy Dart arrested,’ he said. ‘I had been watching him a long while. I knew you would try and betray me. I was ready for your infidelity.’

I gulped like a landed fish. ‘Richard…’ I said beseechingly.

His eyes were like sapphires. He was my husband and my master. He was the squire, and he knew it. Oh, he knew it.

‘I won’t have it, Julia,’ he said simply.

He could invent rules for Wideacre, for Acre, for me, until the world ended. Richard was the squire and he had the power of God.

‘I won’t have it,’ he said, and I knew his word was law. ‘You wanted to be married,’ he said, his voice exultant. ‘I did as you wished. Now we are married, and you will behave as a proper wife to me. You will not write to other men, and you most certainly will not discuss our business with them. There are means I can take to ensure you do not write to other men, or indeed to anyone.’

He hesitated to see if I would complain. But I said nothing. The scraps of paper lying on the table told me mutely that I was defeated. I looked blankly at them and thought of the little letter inside them which I had hoped would save Ralph. I knew then that nothing could save me, but I had hoped to help Ralph away from the wreck which was Wideacre.

‘You must learn your place, Julia.’ Richard said softly.

I bowed my head slavishly. I knew I must learn it indeed.

From that moment I rebelled not at all. The Chichester accoucheur advised against any long walks, and the weather was bad, so that I looked for no help from the dripping beech trees or the sorrowful burble of the Fenny. I did not mind being confined at home.

I no longer got up early for the post. On some days I did not feel like getting up at all. I lay in Mama’s bed in Mama’s bedroom, for Richard had insisted that I make the change to the best bedroom in the house, and I watched the grey ceiling turning pale with dawn, and yellow with the midday light, and some days I watched it growing dark again with twilight and never moved the whole day.

No one disturbed me. No one troubled me any more with the news of Acre. I heard nothing of Ralph. I knew nothing about the land. I lay like a whale beached on some desolate shore and I did not stir.

The greatest effort I made was to rise and get down to the parlour in time for Richard’s return to dinner so that he would not come to my room. Even then I could not be troubled to ring for candles but sat in firelight, watching the flames flicker, and I would wonder what would become of me when the waiting time was over, and whether this feeling of floating, of drowning, would ever end at all.

‘Sitting in darkness?’ Richard demanded. The parlour door had opened so quietly that his voice made me jump and made my heart thud with nervousness.

‘I must have dozed off by the fire!’ I exclaimed. ‘How very dark it is!’

‘They say there’s a storm coming,’ he said.

He came towards the fire and pulled up his riding jacket so he could warm the seat of his fawn breeches. I was sitting in Mama’s favourite low chair and he towered above me. His riding and his work had broadened him. He was breathtakingly handsome, with eyes as blue and as careless as a child’s, and that dark curly hair as soft and bouncy as a lamb’s fleece.

‘I met Dr Pearce in the lane,’ Richard said. He leaned over me and pulled the bell for them to bring candles. ‘He had a young curate friend with him. I asked them both to dinner.’

‘Today?’ I asked languidly. Mrs Gough had a menu for the week, but she would welcome the opportunity to exert herself to please Richard.

‘Yes,’ said Richard. ‘They said they’d come at about four o’clock and we could have a game of whist afterwards.’

I glanced at the clock over the mantelpiece. It said ten past three. ‘I’ll tell Mrs Gough,’ I said. Richard put a careless hand down to me and hauled me out of my chair. ‘And then I’d better change,’ I said.

‘Do,’ he said. ‘I’m tired of seeing you in that dull black gown all the time. And the fatter you get the worse it looks.’

I checked on my way to the door. It must have been my condition and the fact that I had just woken, but the hardness in his voice made tears start in my eyes. With Mama gone, and Ralph gone, I could not bear it if Richard was in a mood to bully me.

‘Oh, Richard,’ I said reproachfully. ‘I am not fat, it is just the shape of the baby. It is just a large baby.’

Richard stood astride in front of the fireplace. The flickering flames made his shadow leap, large as a giant, on the wall behind me. ‘Well, you look damned fat to me,’ he said cruelly. ‘Run and see Mrs Gough and then put on a proper evening gown, and wear some jewellery to set it off. We’re dining at home, after all, and Dr Pearce won’t mind.’

‘I don’t really have any jewellery,’ I said in a low voice. I was thinking of Mama’s rose-pearl necklace which the highwayman had taken. She told me that she would leave it to me in her will. And now she was dead, and the necklace was probably in some horrid little shop pawned for drink, and I would never see it, or my mama, ever again.

‘Wear that nice shiny watered silk anyway,’ Richard commanded. TU come up to your room when I’m washed and changed.’

I nodded, as humble as a drudge, and slipped out of the room. I spoke to Mrs Gough and saw her explode into a frenzy of activity. By the way she clattered the pans I knew she would produce a dinner fit for a table of princes, but in the meantime the kitchen was an unsafe territory.

I went upstairs and called Jenny to help me wash. I missed my hot baths, but since my belly had grown so broad it was impossible for me to fit into the tub. Now I stood upright while Jenny tipped water down over my shoulders and let it cascade off the bump of my belly into the hip-bath.

‘You surely have your dates wrong, Miss Julia,’ she said. ‘Such a big child as it is. It surely will be soon.’

‘No,’ I said. I could hardly have my dates wrong with that May Day morning in my mind. ‘It will not be born for another two months at least,’ I said. ‘It is due at the end of January. I have all of December to get through yet.’

She shook out the black silk gown and helped fasten the buttons at the back. It was rather grand for a dinner party at home with no one invited but the vicar and his friend, but I might as well wear it as Richard had requested. I would not have another chance. No one else visited us in the evenings, and Richard and I never went out to dinner. The roads were so bad, the nights were so dark, and everyone in the county knew that I was pregnant after a marriage which had been announced almost as the baby started to show. I was not disgraced – my grandmama had seen to that – but we certainly were not the most sought-after couple in the county.

That would be remedied when the spring came and we could drive out and around visiting, when the baby was born, and when our great new house was roofed and nearly ready. I had learned enough in Bath to know that no one would ignore us when the estate grew more profitable and we moved into the big house and employed dozens of servants and went to London for the season. I thought for a moment then of what that season would be like with Richard at my side, without my mama to help me, without my girlhood friends to greet me.

Without James.

I shrugged. There was an ache in my heart, a steady constant ache in my heart. I was in mourning for my mama. I was in mourning for the death of my girlhood and the loss of the only man I would ever love. I was happy to wear black, and if I wanted to wear my black evening dress, it would have to be at home. It might as well be tonight.

‘Lovely,’ said Jenny. ‘Just lovely, this dress, Miss Julia.’

I turned and looked at myself in the glass. The deep lustre of the watered silk made my face look shadowed and remote. The folds spread evenly across the front of the high waist concealed the pushing weight of my belly. The only indication of my pregnancy was my plumper breasts, which were pressed into two rounded half-moons at the square neck of the bodice.

I stepped closer to the mirror and looked at myself curiously.

I saw again the girl who had been called the prettiest girl in Bath. In my sadness for my mama, and my loneliness, in my mistrust of my body which had so betrayed me with its fertility, I had forgotten that I was a beautiful girl. But in this hard autumn I had become a beautiful woman.

The curves of my breasts were a sensual promise; even the shifting sliding hints of the prow of my belly were a proof of sweet fertility. The dark mysterious silk accentuated the slimness of my back and the creaminess of my skin, and put shadows in my grey eyes. I smiled at my reflection in genuine surprise. The fine clear lines of my cheek-bones, the lilting upturned corners of my mouth were familiar, but the shadows in the eyes were new, and it was these which had transformed me from a promising girl into a beautiful and desirable woman.

‘You do pay dressing,’ Jenny said. ‘Shall I do your hair?’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, and I sat down at my mama’s dressing-table and watched my face in the glass as she brushed out my light curling hair in long sweeps from the top of my head down almost to my waist, and then started to pile it up in gentle folds.

Behind her, in the darkness of the room, reflected in the glass, I saw the door open and Richard come in. He did not realize I had seen him, for he was watching Jenny carefully brushing and lifting one swath of thick hair after another. There was an expression on his face which made me give a little shiver, although the room was warm. I wondered, even as the hairs all down the nape of my neck lifted in a shuddery life of their own, what imaginary shadow had crossed my mind.

He moved, and Jenny jumped and gave a little squeak. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon, sir, I did not know you had come in!’

I heard a note in her voice I had never heard before, and I said nothing for a moment while I considered it. Then I recognized that slightly too quick speech, that slightly too high pitch. She was afraid of Richard. The whole household, the village and the estate were afraid of Richard. And I – his wife, his dependant -I was afraid of him too.

He smiled. ‘You can go now, Jenny, if your mistress is finished with you.’

I nodded my head, not turning from my place before the mirror, and Jenny bobbed a curtsy with her hand held to her neck in an odd gesture, strangely protective of her throat. Then she took herself out of the room. Richard walked towards me and stood behind me, where Jenny had stood brushing my hair. I met his eyes in the mirror, and I wondered what he wanted of me.

‘I like that gown,’ he said. His fingers brushed my neck, the smooth sloping naked line from my shoulder up to the exposed lobe of my ear. I shivered at his touch and I could see in the mirror that the pupils of my eyes had enlarged, making my eyes darker.

‘I have brought something for you,’ Richard said softly. ‘Something I know you will like.’

He smiled.

I considered that smile, watching his face in the mirror which had once reflected my Mama. It was not the smile he used to hide his anger, so I should have nothing to fear. It was not the smile which was his genuine laughing smile. It was affectionate, tender. But there was some joke at the back of it which I thought I would not enjoy.

I nodded warily.

Richard lifted the flap of his pocket and delved in its depths. His jacket was black velvet, his linen cream lawn; the pocket flap was trimmed with black satin ribbon. I was watching his reflection in my mirror so carefully that I noticed how the sheen on the ribbon caught the light from the candles on either side of my mirror.

‘I hope you will like it,’ Richard said sweetly. His voice quavered on a little giggle of suppressed laughter. ‘Indeed,’ he said, his voice shaking, ‘I know you will like it!’

My eyes flew to his reflected face in my mirror. His eyes were dancing with boyish merriment. Then I felt the cool touch of a necklace around my throat.

The cool touch of rounded perfectly matched pearls.

Rose pearls.

Mama’s rose pearls.

Mama’s rose pearls, which were taken by the highwayman who shot her and left her to die on the highway.

I put my hand up to touch them as if to confirm that they were real. I could not believe they were real. I had not thought to see them ever again.

‘How well they suit you,’ Richard said pleasantly. There was a ripple of amusement under his voice. ‘How pretty you look in them, my dear.’

My eyes met his, my grey level stare to his dancing blue twinkle.

‘Mama’s pearls,’ I said, prosaically.

‘Mama’s pearls,’ he confirmed. The joy never left his face. ‘Or, at any rate,’ he amended, ‘something very like them.’

There was a noise of carriage-wheels outside as Dr Pearce and his friend arrived.

‘Early!’ Richard said, crossing to my window to look out. ‘Come then, Julia!’ He held out an imperative hand to me as I sat frozen at the glass.

For a moment I thought I could not move. I sat in silence and looked at Mama’s rose-pearl necklace and at the matching earrings which Richard had tossed down before me.

‘Oh, yes!’ he said, following my gaze. ‘Put the ear-rings on too! You can’t imagine the trouble I had getting them!’

It was that nonchalant mention of his trouble in getting them that tipped me from my frozen crystal of disbelief into a well of horror which I recognized.

At last I knew the horror for what it was: Richard’s murderous madness.

Richard’s hand was held out to me, and Dr Pearce was knocking at the door. I was a woman entirely dependent on one man, that man my brother, seven months pregnant with his child, without a friend in the world who could help me stand against him.

I knew him then as Clary’s murderer, the entrapper of Matthew Merry, the betrayer of Ralph Megson, the murderer of Jem the groom, of his own papa, John MacAndrew, and of my beloved mama.

I looked at him as if I had never seen him before; but there was no fear on my face. I was beyond fear, in a pit of such horror that I could think nothing and say nothing.

Mechanically I pushed the studs of the ear-rings through the little holes in my ear-lobes.

They stung.

Then I took Richard’s hand and went down the stairs with him to greet Dr Pearce and Mr Fowler, and sat at the foot of the table, with my husband at the head, while Stride served a dinner of which I could be proud.

Afterwards we played cards, and Dr Pearce and I won. We took tea and then the two of them went home. Richard and I were alone in the parlour.

‘It’s good to have company,’ Richard said, yawning. ‘We spend too much time alone. It will make you dull, Julia. You were blooming tonight.’

My hand was at my throat on the necklace. Richard glanced at it.

‘It’s remarkable how well those pearls set off your skin tones,’ he said. ‘They make you look like a bowl of warm cream.’

He put out his hand to me to help me to my feet, and out of habit, before I could think what I was doing, I let him pull me up out of the chair and found myself standing close beside him on the hearthrug.

His hand came down under my chin and lifted my face up. For no reason he squeezed my chin until I could feel the strength in his long fingers, killer’s fingers. The blood drummed in my head, but I did not speak and my grey eyes on his face never wavered.

‘I think I shall come to your room tonight,’ he said with a little sigh. ‘I think I should like to lie with you.’

There were a few moments of utter silence while my reeling head tried to take in what he was saying.

‘You cannot!’ I said stupidly. ‘Richard! You are my brother!’

Richard’s hand left my chin and lingered on my bare shoulder, caressing the slope of my neck, one finger negligently trailing down to touch the warm rounded top of my breast.

‘Oh, I don’t regard it,’ he said idly. ‘It was just something they said to frighten us.’

‘No,’ I said. I tried to step back, but Richard’s other arm was around my waist holding me tight beside him. ‘No, they meant it, Richard. It was the truth, I am sure of it.’

I was still not afraid – I was too stunned to be afraid. My brother, and the killer of my mama, had me held tight to his side and was stroking my breast and my neck with confident, bloodstained fingers.

‘I don’t regard it,’ Richard said again. ‘I do not think we need regard it. They will not be saying it again, after all!’ He gave me one of his most charming smiles, as if that were the wittiest sally he could make, and he put one hard finger under my chin and tipped my face up to receive his kiss.

In the pit of madness which was all that was left of my will, there was nothing to stop him. His mouth came down upon mine and I gritted my teeth to stop myself retching, and I put my hands on his waist to hold myself steady while the world reeled around me.

‘Whore,’ he said gently, and put me from him. ‘Go and get into bed. I shall have you tonight.’

My will was broken and my mind was dead.

I went up the stairs to my bedroom for there was nowhere else I could go. Jenny Hodgett undressed me in silence and looked anxiously at my face so pale that it was deathly. I slipped between the sheets of my bed and blew out my candle. Then I lay in the half-darkness with the firelight flickering on the looming furniture of the room; an owl was calling and calling outside.

He was late coming to bed. In my strange calm state I even dozed while I waited for him. I was afraid no longer. I had lost my fear. I was not a virgin – I did not think it would hurt. I could not cry for help and shame Richard, and shame our family name, and shame myself. When he pulled the covers roughly off me, I lay as still as a corpse. Only the little hairs on my arms and my legs lifted and prickled at the cold night air. But I held still.

The bed dipped with his weight as he came in beside me. His night-time candle showed his face still rosy and young. There was the smell of spirits on his breath – brandy. His hair smelled of cigar smoke.

He was at a loss to know how to begin. I opened my eyes and looked at him steadily, expressionless, not moving. He fidgeted with the things on my bedside table, shifted the glass of water, knocked over the little wooden owl Ralph had given me.

‘D’you remember Scheherazade?’ he asked unexpectedly.

I held my face blank, but my mind was racing.

‘You really loved her, didn’t you?’ he asked. His voice was a little stronger. It held some resonance of his old childhood hectoring tone. ‘You were heartbroken when she was killed, weren’t you, Julia?’

My silence irritated him.

‘Weren’t you?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ I said. I was unwilling to speak and I did not know why he asked. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You cried for her,’ Richard reminded me. ‘And yet you could never really believe that Dench had cut her.’

I sighed. It was all such a long time ago and the losses then had been mere forerunners of what came later.

‘Yes,’ I said.

Richard rolled on to one elbow, the better to see my face. ‘The horse was cut, then they smashed her in the face with a hammer,’ he said. ‘And Dench was sacked and had to run for his life. Remember? If Grandpa Havering had caught him, he would have had him hanged for sure.’

‘I remember,’ I said.

Richard was getting excited, his eyes sparkling, his face bright. ‘It was me!’ he said exultantly. ‘All along! And none of you ever guessed. None of you ever came near to guessing. I cut Scheherazade and I made sure all the blame would fall on Dench. So that stopped you riding my horse all right! And I made sure that I would never have to ride her again, and I got rid of Dench who was ganging up with you against me. I did all of that on my own! And I made you cry for weeks, didn’t I?’

I lay very still, trying to absorb what Richard was saying. But trying even harder to understand Richard’s sudden elation. Then he moved closer towards me and I understood. He fumbled under the covers for the hem of my shift and pulled it up. I checked my movement to grab for it and hold it down. If it came to a struggle, then Richard would win. And I knew, with some secret perverse knowledge which I did not want, that he would like to feel me fighting against him.

‘And the goshawk…’ Richard’s breathing was fast; he had pulled his own nightshirt out of the way and was rearing up Over me. ‘Ralph Megson’s precious goshawk. When she bated from my fist, I pulled her back. The first time it was an accident, but she made me so angry when she would not sit still. The second time I wanted to hurt her, and I knew if I pulled her hard enough and quick enough, I would break her legs. D’you remember how they went click, Julia?’

I was sweating, and the inside of my thighs were damp. Richard pushed inexpertly towards me and put a clumsy hand down to part my legs. He clambered, impeded by the bedclothes, on top of me. He giggled like a conceited schoolboy when he pressed down and his hard flesh met mine.

‘But you didn’t dare touch the sheep,’ I said. I spoke almost idly. My mind and my body were numb with fear and disgust and the horror of what Richard had told me, and my acceptance as I recognized the truth at once: that I had, in some deep and guilty way, always known; that I should have said something, done something; that once again I was Richard’s unwilling accomplice.

But the sheep had gone against him.

‘D’you think they knew you were bad?’ I asked.

Richard hesitated.

‘They went against you,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen sheep do such a thing. They mobbed you in the barn on the downs. D’you remember that, Richard? D’you remember how very afraid you were then?’

‘I wasn’t. . .’ Richard said quickly. ‘I’ve never been afraid.’

‘Oh, yes, you were,’ I said certainly. ‘You were afraid of Scheherazade from the moment you first saw her, and you were afraid of the sheep.’

Richard glared at me, but he was losing his potency. I could feel his hardness melting away and I was filled with elation, with a sense of triumph.

‘You were scared to death of Scheherazade,’ I said. ‘That was why you cut her. Not just because you were jealous of me riding her. But you would have done anything not to ride her yourself. And the sheep were like a nightmare.’

‘It’s not so . . .’ he said. His eyes were sharp with dislike at my tauntings. He looked as he used to look when he was about to explode into one of his childhood rages. I knew I had defeated him and he would not touch me. But I was not ready for his instantaneous spite.

He thrust his forefinger hard into me in a sharp jabbing movement, and I gave a muffled cry of pain and shock. The pain was sharp; it felt as if he were scratching me inside. I bit back the cry and made no sound. I shut my eyes and lay as still as a stone carving. Richard took his hand away and fumbled down to touch himself. He was starting to breathe heavily and I could feel him pulling at himself, rubbing himself against my legs.

I opened my eyes and smiled at him. ‘It’s no good, Richard,’ I said coolly in a voice just like my mama’s when she sent him early to bed for spilling jam at the tea table. ‘It is no good. You cannot touch me now and you will never be able to touch me. You had much better go to your own bed.’

I pushed his spiteful hands away from me and rolled over on my side to present my back to him, indifferent to whether he stayed or went.

I did not even open my eyes as he left the room.