The Favoured Child

30

Richard was not at home for dinner that afternoon. Stride said that he had ridden in to Chichester and would not be back until late. I thought I knew where he had gone. He came into the parlour when Stride brought in the tea, and he confirmed my guess. He had ridden to Chichester and been all day at the barracks. He had brought home with him half a dozen soldiers to be quartered at the Bush in the village.

‘I told them that Acre cannot be trusted, and that Ralph may come here and try to start a riot against us,’ Richard said. He waved away a dish of tea and rang the bell for a mug of ale.

He had not eaten since breakfast; his eyes were very bright. Richard, the lovely brave child of my girlhood, was a very frightened man. I watched him over my dish and my heart was torn between triumph and sadness for the boy that had gone.

‘I had a deal of trouble making them take me seriously,’ he said. His face was sulky with worry. ‘If it hadn’t been for the first riot here, I think they would have refused me,’ he said. ‘It’s too bad! I wish Grandpapa Havering was here; they’d have to listen to him.

‘All they would tell me was that they thought it most unlikely that Megson would stay in the country, and that there was good intelligence from London that he and the others had taken ship to the Americas. They simply would not credit the fact that I believe he will come here.’

I nodded and said nothing.

‘The gypsies have arrived,’ Richard said. ‘I told the soldiers to keep close watch on them. It is just the usual families. But you never can tell with those people.’

I nodded again. Richard went to the parlour door and hallooed towards the kitchen for another mug of beer. He was thirsty. I imagined he had been drinking Hollands in Chichester for courage, after his visit to the barracks.

‘Why did you lie to me about your visit to Acre?’ he said suddenly.

I jumped, and spilled a little tea on my dark gown. ‘I didn’t,’ I said, too quickly.

‘You did,’ he said. He was smiling slightly now. It always cheered Richard to catch me out. He came back inside the room and went to his favourite chair. Stride, his face a frozen mask of disapproval, brought in the second mug of ale on a silver tray and placed it by Richard’s elbow. Now his humiliation at the barracks and his fear of Ralph were half forgotten in the pleasure of bullying his servants and his wife. ‘You spoke privately with one of the old women,’ he said. ‘Who?’

I heard the hectoring tone of the bully of my childhood and my old craven spirit quailed. Then I thought of Ralph coming slowly along the secret paths towards Acre, and my baby coming along the secret tunnels to the world.

And I thought also, at last, of myself. My survival in these lonely times depended on my finding some rock in my own life which I could build on. I had lost Clary and my mama. I had lost Ralph. I had lost my land and the power of being the heir to Wideacre. From somewhere in my own heart I had to find some base in my own life. If I trembled every time Richard was crossed, he would master me indeed. He would master me for ever.

‘I did speak privately with one of the old women,’ I said steadily. ‘It was nothing which need concern you. It was not business.’

Richard looked at me askance. ‘I hear you mentioned my name,’ he said. ‘I’m told you spoke against me.’ Richard looked shifty. He trusted neither his informant, nor his wife, nor the village which was his own.

I paused with a sudden fear. Surely there could be no friend to Richard in Acre? No paid informant who had spoken against me? Someone who would inform against Ralph? In all my confidence of Acre’s loyalty I had always been certain that Acre could not be suborned. But someone had listened to me talk to Mrs Merry. And someone had reported that speech to Richard.

George.

Richard’s smart new groom, George.

It could be no other. He was a newcomer from out of the county, hired by Richard for his sly face and his quick ears to replace Jem. He did not know one old woman of Acre from another, so the report he brought to Richard was vague.

I looked at Richard with contempt. And he, in his morass of suspicion, saw only that I was unafraid and thought that George had lied to him, that he could trust no one, not even his paid spy.

‘You listen to servants’ tittle-tattle and you’ll get false reports,’ I said disdainfully. Richard flushed dark red. ‘I spoke to no one,’ I said coldly. ‘But you need not reprimand your spy for getting things wrong. He will not again ride behind me when I drive. Not to Acre, not to a bishop’s tea-party. I won’t have a dirty little spy in my employ. So you can dismiss him, or, if he is on the box, you will be alone in the carriage.’

My head held as high as a princess’s, I swept from the room and did not stop until I reached my bedroom door and shut it tight behind me. It was a gamble. No one knew that better than I.

But if I could face Richard down when he was afraid of the rumour of Ralph’s return, if I could look at him with eyes of burning scorn when he had, indeed, caught me out, then I thought I might have some sort of future on the land.

Acre was smiling again. Acre had once more the impertinent grin of a community which knows itself to be badly mastered and recks little what the masters say. I thought that even I, in the big house, in the bed of the squire of Acre, might learn that courage too.

I undressed, but I kept on Mama’s rose-pearl necklace and her ear-rings. They comforted me a little as I slid between the cold sheets. Since the baby had grown so large, I had taken to sleeping on my back with my rounded moon-shaped belly pointing at the ceiling. I sprawled out in the bed and sighed as the little kicks and wriggles started, making my own body leap like a net of eels. Sometimes I loathed this child as the misbegotten heir of Wideacre, sometimes I adored it as the fruit of my body, my own child. And sometimes, like now when I was tired, I just sighed like any pregnant woman and wished the hours away and the sleepless night over.

The baby was quieter than usual, and I fell asleep by candlelight, forgetting to blow out the flame. So Richard was in my room, and naked in my bed, before I was awake and before I could stir myself to protest.

He had one hand over my mouth in case I should cry out, and the other, urgently, pulled at my nightgown. I could have bitten his hand, I suppose. The palm was salty against my teeth, and it felt dirty. But I did not think of doing it.

I did not think of doing it.

I was shamed that I did not think.

I thrashed a little, under the sheets, encumbered by the great belly on me and the tucked-in covers. I gave a little smothered moan behind his hard hand, and he saw my eyes widen in distress and darken with horror. But he smiled his blue-eyed devil’s smile, and I knew then that the madness was on Richard and that it might – at last, at last – be the end for me tonight.

It was not lust for him. It was not love or desire, nor any hot half-forgivable sin. It was power and cruelty which were driving Richard onward. He had seen the tilt of my head, he had seen the bright courage in my eyes, and he had waited until I was asleep and unguarded, and then he had come for me. He was in my bed, his hand hard on my face, his other hand pulling up my nightdress and his weight coming down on top of me.

He drew the hem of the gown up to my neck, and I froze as his hand brushed across my throat, across the pearls. I knew he was thinking longingly of throttling me as I lay there, eyes wide with fear, beneath him.

When I saw him smile, I knew I was lost.

I was ready. I had promised Mrs Tyacke, I had promised Mrs Merry with all of Acre listening. I would not give them another squire to rule over them. I would end the line of the Laceys. If Richard killed me tonight, that would be the end of me and of Richard’s heir – and of Richard too, for they would have to take him up for my murder. I gritted my teeth at the discomfort of the weight of him on top of my rounded belly, and at the distasteful hand against my mouth. And I gritted my teeth for courage and said a swift farewell in my mind to the things I had loved-to James, to Wideacre, to Mama. For I was readying myself for death.

He was heavy. He was half on me, half beside me. The weight of the unborn child kept me pinned to the bed. He put his hand back on the great swelling of my belly and stroked down the slope when his devil-begotten child shifted uneasily as if it knew my fear.

Oh, Julia,’ he said longingly, half to himself. ‘I had forgotten this. It is only this that saves your life tonight.’

I tried to keep my face impassive.

‘I meant to strangle you,’ he said dreamily. ‘I am sick of your long face around the house. There are other women I could have here if you were gone. There are other girls I could marry. I wanted you because you had Wideacre, but now it is mine, and I want you no more.’

The candle guttered, throwing menacing shadows on the ceiling above me. But nothing was more menacing than the shadow which was in my bed, which spoke such obscenities in such an intimate whisper.

‘I did love you once,’ he said as if he needed to reassure himself. ‘When we were very little children, before we knew who we were, or what we were to inherit. I think I loved you then.’ He broke off. He was talking to himself; it seemed he was in a dream of other times.

‘I loved Mama-Aunt too,’ he said. His voice was suddenly higher in pitch, childlike. I realized with an instinctual shudder that Richard had gone. He was back in the sunlight of his Wideacre childhood with an aunt who adored him and a cousin who would cross the world for him. The world where he had been the beloved little tyrant.

‘I loved Mama-Aunt so much,’ he said sweetly. A shadow crossed his face. ‘But you were always trying to be first in Acre,’ he said, cross as a petulant child. ‘Always trying to come between me and Mama-Aunt. You would push in where you were not wanted, Julia. And though I could forgive you if you were very, very sorry, I could not help but be so angry, so very angry, with the people you tried to take away from me . . . Are you listening to me, Julia?’ Richard said with quick irritation.

I nodded, as obedient as a child in school. His grip had tightened on my mouth again. I feared I was going to retch at the smell of his hand against my teeth and gums, the odour of horse-sweat, cigar smoke, Hollands gin. And beneath it all the heart-wrenching smell of Richard, the cousin I had loved for so many years. So very many years.

‘I killed her,’ he said, speaking, at last, the unspeakable. ‘Your friend Clary. I tried and tried to be friends with her. I even tried pretending I was in love with her. She laughed in my face!’ His voice was shocked. ‘She said you were worth ten of me.’ He paused. ‘I knew I’d pay her out for that.’

I watched him, and said nothing. His blue eyes had become hazy.

‘She saw us,’ he said, ‘when I raped you in the summer-house. I looked up and saw her. I think she was going to nm towards us, to help you. But she saw my face. She ran off as fast as she could towards Acre. I expect she thought to get help. I caught her at the Fenny,’ he said languidly. ‘I put my hand around her throat. She was like you, actually, because she was quite strong too. But do you know, she was so afraid, she hardly fought at all. She just choked and then her tongue and her eyes came out. Rather horrible. She looked so nasty I pushed her in the river and went home. I knew it would be all right for me. Everything always is all right for me.’

He sighed quietly. ‘I killed your mama too,’ he said. A petulant expression crossed his face; I could see the droop of his disappointed mouth in the firelight. ‘She was running off with John. That was so horrible for her to do such a thing. She had joined with John against me. She sent me away as soon as he came home. I had thought she was a beautiful woman, a wonderful woman. A woman like an angel. But she was just a whore like all of them. Like you. As soon as my father came home, she was running after him like a bitch in heat. She forgot all about me. It was his idea to disinherit me, and she was going to do anything he wanted. She was going to overturn our marriage, and I would have been disinherited.’ He paused. His face became calm again, his words measured, judicious. ‘That was a very bad thing to do. You do not understand business, Julia, because you are just a woman, but that was a very meddlesome thing for Mama-Aunt to do.’ He paused again. ‘I am surprised she dreamed of it,’ he said simply, with grave respect. ‘She was, apart from that, such a feminine sort of woman.’

I lay as still as stone. I could feel my heart beating and I knew that in a moment the sound would remind Richard that underneath him, in his power, was another woman who had forgotten her place, who had tried to meddle with the ownership of the land.

‘It hurt her, I am afraid,’ he said regretfully. I half closed my eyes. I had to hang on to some shred of myself, some remnant of sanity not to cry out, not to scream at these words, as Mama’s murderer lay on top of me and told me in his sweetest voice the horror that I had tried all these months to evade.

‘It hurt her,’ he said again. ‘I shot Jem at once, you know. And then, with the other pistol, I shot John through the window. He had opened the door and was coming out at me. Rather brave of him, really. He was trying to protect Mama-Aunt, I expect. The shot threw him back into the carriage, over her knees, actually. She screamed. I expect the blood frightened her. But she didn’t do anything.’ He hesitated. ‘Well, there was nothing she could do really,’ he said fairly. ‘I was reloading, but that doesn’t take long. Then I waited.’

His hand was slack on my mouth again, his mad blue gaze dreamy in the candlelight. This time I could not have moved. I was frozen with horror and with a macabre fascination at his story.

‘I waited,’ he said. ‘Then I got off the horse and opened the carriage door. The carriage horses were grazing at the verge, quite unafraid, even though there had been two shots. Funny that. I let my horse go beside them. Well, they’re usually turned out in the field together. But it looked odd to see the three grazing off the hedge outside Haslemere with Jem dead on the box, and John dead in the carriage, and your mama so silent inside.

‘I wanted to know what she was doing. Just that. Nothing more than that, really,’ he said confidentially. ‘I opened the carriage door with one hand. She was holding John’s head in her lap. He had bled all over the carriage floor, and there was blood on her dress too. It made me so angry that she should spoil her dress with his blood. You know, Julia, it just made me so angry that she should be sitting with his dead head in her lap when I was in such trouble with you, and the baby, and the marriage, and Wideacre.’ He broke off with a little reminiscent smile.

‘She knew me at once!’ he said, pleased. ‘As soon as I opened the carriage door, she said, “Oh, Richard, what have you done!” And I said’ – Richard’s smile turned into a grin of delight as if he were coming to the enormously amusing conclusion of a tremendously funny story – ‘I said, “I’ve killed you all, Mama-Aunt!” And then I shot her! I shot her right in the face!’

He laughed aloud, the happy laugh of the best-loved child of the household, and then he broke off in the middle of the peal of laughter to look down into my face. ‘You’re not laughing!’ he said, instantly suspicious. ‘You don’t think it’s funny.’

He took his hand from my mouth and my lips were stiff from being pushed back for so long.

‘No,’ I said, pursing my lips down over my gums again. ‘I don’t find it very funny, Richard.’

‘It is funny,’ he said, madly insistent.

And I saw then – as bright as a knife-blade in a lightning strike – what I had to do.

I went for my death.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I said softly, provocatively. ‘I don’t think you did that. I don’t think you would dare do that!’

‘I did!’ said Richard. His voice was that of an aggravated child.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not you! You like to do things in secret. I know you, Richard. You like dark woods where you strangled Clary. You like breaking the legs of a little hawk. You like night-time stables to cut the tendons of your horse. You’d never hold up a carriage in broad daylight. You’re a coward, Richard. And everyone always knew.’

I was taking him up into insanity. I saw his eyes go blank with rage, as bright as sapphires.

‘I did it!’ he insisted.

‘Prove it,’ I said instantly. ‘Put both hands around my neck and look me straight in the eye. You’re a coward and you dare not do it!’

He put his hands at once on my throat, but his grip was slack.

‘You are not the favoured child,’ I said, goading him. ‘You never were! Everyone always loved me, and they loved Mama. You were only ever in second place.’

‘No!’ he said.

‘Oh, yes,’ I said sweetly. ‘What do you think Grandpapa Havering thinks of you, when everyone saw you could not ride? What d’you think Acre thinks of you, when everyone could see you were afraid of little village children? What d’you think Ralph thought of you? And Uncle John? They all despised you. Clary and I despised you! You killed Clary, but you dare not kill me!’

That did it. His hands on my throat clenched hard in a convulsive spasm of rage, and I shut my eyes and prayed to God that it would be quick and clean and that once I was dead, everyone would know it had been Richard and he would be hanged.

The land would be free of us Laceys for ever.

‘Coward,’ I croaked through my closing throat. ‘Show me you’re not a coward!’

Then there was an agonizing pain deep, deep inside me, right up high where I carried the baby who would die inside a dead womb. My whole body quivered like a terrier shaken by a rat. And I knew I had lost my chance to die.

Richard’s incestuous rape-conceived bastard was moving on its way to be born. My little girl was ready for her birth.

Richard, heavy on my belly, felt the sudden movement and slackened his grip.

I would have kept silent and let him do it. I thought I had the will for it. I knew I had the will for it. But he suddenly released my neck and said in a frightened whisper, ‘What is it? Is it the baby?’

And like a fool I nodded and said, as well as I could for a bruised throat, ‘Yes.’

He bundled out of my bed at once in real fright, and I smiled wryly at the sight of him looking so like a husband with his bride about to give birth. Then the imperative needs of my body overcame thought, and I could feel and know nothing but the baby making her own potent way to the world. There was a sudden strange feeling, like an explosion of wetness, and the sheet below me was soaked with warm wet liquid, red as blood but clear as good wine.

Richard said, ‘Ugh’ in utter distaste, and his face was appalled.

‘Get dressed,’ I said, staring at the spreading stain. ‘And go for the accoucheur.’

‘I’ll send Jenny to stay with you,’ Richard said, tearing the door open in his hurry for help and in his hurry to leave my room with its sweet insistent smell of birth.

‘No,’ I said with quiet, mean cunning.

I knew what I would do next. I think I had known it from the day in Acre when I said I would not give birth to the next squire.

In France they would kill the King and end the line.

I was going to do the same.

But I could not stop the heir being born; I gritted my teeth on my terror of being alone and on my horror at the way my body was suddenly racked with a pain which seemed to last for ever for long unbelievable seconds. Then the pains came as insistently as waves sucking at a shingle bank with an unforgivable undertow. Jenny came in and found me squatting on the floor like some pauper outside an almshouse, and begged me to get back into bed. But then she saw the mess on the sheets and took me to the window-seat. I could see the moonlight ghostly and silver on the tops of the bare trees of the Wideacre woods and I heard an owl cry that seemed to say, ‘Whooo, ooooh’ for my pain.

In the room behind me I heard the bustle as she changed the sheets and the clang of the brass jug filled with hot water, but I did not look around. Then Stride was at the door with a basket full of wood to make up my bedroom fire. All the ordinary work went on around me and I was a little island of loneliness in the middle of it all with these sudden grips like a savage animal eating me, its teeth in my belly.

I started walking as if I could get away from the pain, walking in the cramped little space of the room along the far wall past the fireplace, into the bow of the window, turning before the dressing-table, and then back again. My nightdress brushed Jenny as I hobbled past her. I had to hold myself very tall not to grab her arm and cling to her and beg her not to leave me, for there were moments when I felt I was nothing but a young girl too small and too slight to give birth, with a terror in her mind and a baby in her belly, both of them tearing her apart.

‘I’m afraid!’ I said, with a little hopeless gasp.

Jenny looked at me with pity and rose from the fireplace. A thin flickering yellow flame lit the room and made the shadows bounce on the walls. The pain gripped me again and I gave a little gasp and started pacing. I had never felt so alone.

‘The master has sent to Chichester,’ she said. ‘He’s in the library. Shall I ask him to come and sit with you?’

I looked at her scathingly. ‘I’d rather sit with the devil,’ I said fiercely, and then my pain doubled me up with agony for long hard seconds and I could not catch my breath for another word.

‘Would you see Mrs Merry from Acre?’ Jenny asked diffidently. ‘She’s old, but she saw my ma through all of us.’

‘No,’ I said as I straightened up and wiped the sweat off my face with the back of one careless hand. Mrs Merry knew her business too well to leave me alone with the child when I had sworn to end the line. ‘No,’ I said. ‘But go and get things ready, Jenny.’

She shot one scared glance at me and nodded and fled from the room.

Almost as soon as she had gone, the pain came again and I clung to the post of the four-poster bed for a moment. There was another wave of agony which threw me to the floor, my face in the carpet, and then I rolled on my back and felt my belly stand up like a hard box as my child fought its way through corrupt flesh to see the world.

I grabbed the foot of the bed and tried to haul myself into it, but as I reared up towards it, I could feel the passage between my legs opening like some magic cave and a feeling seized me as strong as lust. I sat on the floor with my back to the foot of the bed and pushed as hard as a man setting in fence posts.

I felt its head come out into the world.

Alone, in the darkened bedroom, with half the house running like mad things but no one with the wit to come to me, I held its little head, and then in a rush like thunder, my child, my little baby, slithered out kicking on to the carpet, and I picked it up in my arms.

I felt the cord, purple and slithery, pulsing with my blood. I took the corner of my nightgown and wiped the little mucky eyes and the face and the mouth. The child squirmed and opened its mouth and gave a little wail of protest, and coughed, and began to breath.

It was alive, then.

She was alive.

I held one of the skinny stick legs and saw the little pink female slit, and then I caressed the tiny foot, and ringed the small ankle with my forefinger and thumb.

‘Sarah,’ I said. And she opened her eyes and looked into my face.

She was my child, in that moment. I knew her as well as I knew the horizon around Wideacre. And she was not mad, nor sick, nor corrupt, nor evil. She was just a little baby who needed nothing more than a chance to grow and live and be happy. She had some kind of right to that, as surely as every poor child born in Acre had a right to life.

I struggled to my feet, and as I did so a great frightening slithery blob of flesh came away and fell to the floor. I froze, aghast, but I did not seem to be mortally wounded, though there was a great pool of blood where I had been. Then I saw the cord and realized, foolish Quality miss that I was, that it was the afterbirth and I could nibble off the cord in safety. My child was truly born and separate.

I put my mouth down, as natural as a lambing ewe, and nipped away at the cord and put a clean handkerchief over the little trail of blood on her belly. Then I took a woollen shawl from the drawer and wrapped her up like a trussed chicken, and then another shawl on top again, for she and I were going out into the darkness of the night, and I could hear the storm getting up.

Holding her tiny body firmly in the crook of my arm, I opened my cupboard door and pulled out my winter cape, a thick one of navy-dyed wool, and swung it around us both, and pulled the hood up. My bloodstained nightdress flapped at my ankles, but I paid little heed to it. I was barefoot, but it did not trouble me.

The baby, pressed against my warmth, seemed quiet, sleepy. I held her tight, and then I opened my bedroom door and listened.

Stride and Jenny were in the kitchen, for I could hear Jenny’s high-pitched anxious voice as they waited for the great brass pans to boil so they could bring more hot water to the room. Mrs Gough was in the bedroom above mine, clumping around in her slippers getting the cradle ready and the fire lit, and the linen aired. I tilted my head to listen, but I could not hear Richard.

I shrugged as if it did not really matter, as if this madness could not be stopped by mischance. I held the precious slight bundle a little tighter under my cloak, and slid like a ghost to the top of the stairs.

Then I heard it. The clink of a decanter against a glass. Richard was in the library, drinking and waiting. Waiting for the accoucheur from Chichester. Waiting for him to come down the stairs with the new heir to Wideacre in his arms and say, ‘Squire, your child has been born,’ like the last page of a happy novel.

But that would never happen.

I knew I could pay the price. I had faced it when I was ready to die in my own bed with a murderer’s hands on me. I was ready even now, with my most precious little girl held close to me. I had to pay a price for being a Lacey. She was the price that had to be paid.

Richard would never see his child.

Wideacre would never have an heir.

Quiet as a shadow I crept down the stairs, my bare feet absolutely silent on the thick carpet. As I stepped delicately and quietly from one stair to another, little drops of blood ran down my legs and stained my feet so I left a spoor like a wounded animal.

The tracks would lead Richard, sniffing blood like some predator, across the hall and to the front door. But outside it was dark and the wind was tossing the trees around. Soon it would rain and all trace of me and my little child would be gone. The Fenny would be up, the waters very high. You can hide anything in the Fenny when it is in flood. Richard, of all people, who had thrown a young woman’s body into the river, should have remembered that.

The front-door latch clicked, but the noise was masked by the squeak of the tree branches rubbing together in the wind outside. The gusts of air whipped into the hall, but the library door was tight shut, and Richard did not know his house was wide open to the storm. He did not know that his front door was open to the wind, to anyone. And that the child he longed for was out in the rain, and would never come back.

I gasped as the rain slapped my face like an unforgiving enemy.

A great scud of water, hard as hailstones, smacked me in the face, and stayed like tears on my cheeks. I shook my head like a dog coming out of a river and tucked the baby more securely into my side.

My feet stung with the cold as I crept down the garden path and out of the gate into the drive. I was a fool to go barefoot, but I was not thinking. I was not thinking at all. I was on my way to the Fenny, and neither the stony drive nor the nettles and old brambles of the Wideacre wood footpaths would stop me.

I was biting my lip to stop myself whimpering with the pain as I walked up the drive, stumbling on the chalk stones and splashing in the puddles until the cape and the nightdress were drenched. There was only one dry spot on me and that was the warm little bundle in my left arm. I could feel her breathing softly and sweetly, and some distant thought in my mind said to her, ‘This is Wideacre, and you are a Lacey.’ But no words crossed my lips. This child, my daughter, would go out of the world as she had come into it – owning nothing.

As I turned under the shelter of the trees, the rain stopped beating in my face and I could breathe a little better. My feet had stopped hurting, for they were numb with cold. When I glanced down at them, I thought they were black with mud in the moonlight, but then I realized that they were cut and bleeding. The birth and the loss of blood, the pain of my feet and the storm had all made me light-headed, and instead of stumbling and struggling down to the Fenny, I felt I was gliding, dancing along the little path. Some old strange magic of Wideacre was singing in my head, and I knew with utter certainty that I was at last in command of myself and in tune with the land around me.

I stumbled over a tree root, and there was the Fenny before me, and I gasped. I had been out so little, I had not seen it since this year’s rain had started swelling it and making the waters flow faster and faster. It was frightening. It was boiling like a great dangerous flood, up to the very rim of the steep banks, and threatening to swell over at any moment and drown the whole Wideacre valley. The tree behind me seemed to be trembling with fear at the thought of that flood, and I put my hand out on the trunk to reassure myself that the dry land and the tall trees were safe.

The river roared like some great animal; it was not like the safe waters where I had played. I would hardly dare come to the bank now for fear that it would give way beneath me. Nothing, least of all a little baby, could go into the flood and come out alive.

I looked upstream for the fallen tree which spans the river and serves as a crossing point. I could not see it at all and I thought it must have been swept right away. Then I looked downstream and could see the great spouts of water where the river had overflowed at a weak part of the bank and was engulfing even the trunks of the big trees and slamming against them in great rocking waves. Above the roar of the river and the noise of the creaking branches and the rush of the wind I heard myself give a little sob of fear.

But I knew what I had come to do.

And nothing, now, could stop me.

I knew what I had to do: to set myself free, to set Acre free, to finish the Laceys and to destroy Richard.

I left the shelter of the oak tree and went as near as I dared to the bank. I could feel the ground shudder with the water rushing past it and as I watched, a huge lump of riverbank was peeled away and fell with a splash into the torrent. The ground beneath me seemed to be shaking, and I put out a hand to steady myself on the root of a fallen tree.

I balanced myself against the tree and put my cold hand carefully in under my cape. Sarah sighed as I lifted her clear of my protecting warmth and opened her eyes and looked directly at me. I held her to my cold rain-washed face and then I bent down to the flood and lowered her towards it as tenderly as I might have put her in a cradle.

The sound of the river was as deafening as if I were drowned myself and it was flowing through my head, so I heard nothing; but I saw, like a silent ghost, a woman detach herself from the shadow of the trees on the other side of the river.

I froze. Sarah was just inches away from the water, her eyes wide, her mouth opened, crying, but I could hear nothing above the awful roar, roar, roaring of the hungry river.

The woman came to the bank of the river on the other side; she crossed over and came to me. I stared at her as if she were a ghost. From my position, bent low over the water, it looked like she had just walked across the river, walking lightly on the flood as if it were as safe as a dancefloor, but as I straightened up, I saw she had been walking on the tree-bridge. It was half covered with water and in shadow, so I had not seen it properly.

She moved back to the bridge, and then she turned and walked away from me again. I stared after her, and then, not knowing why, I raised Sarah up and tucked her into my side again. I scrambled to my feet and went up river till I came to the bridge. I clung to Sarah with one hand and then stepped cautiously into the swirling, ankle-deep water and picked my way on the slippery wood, clinging to the branches of the tree to keep me steady.

She was waiting for me on the other side. She had glided across as if she knew the bridge and the woods even better than I did, or as if she were indeed a ghost which need not fear death by drowning in a tumbling river.

As soon as I reached the bank, she turned and walked away from me and I followed her in a dream. The storm was still blowing loudly enough, but here in the shelter of the woods I could scarcely hear anything. The noise of the river died away behind us as the deep-green curtains of spruce and pine enfolded us. I followed her, stumbling, but she did not stumble. She walked lightly and did not seem to touch earth.

She was leading me towards the common, and I wondered with sudden hope if she was taking me to Ralph, if Ralph had come back to Wideacre not for vengeance at all but to rescue me. To take me away.

We came out of the shelter of the trees to the little gate in the park wall and she opened it and glided through. As I followed her, I caught a glimpse of her face in the moonlight.

She was beautiful; a young woman, with hair as red as a chestnut horse’s mane, and eyes as green as downland grass, set slanting in her oval face. She reminded me of someone, but I could not think who. I stared at her, trying to trace some memory, to find some family resemblance to someone I knew well.

Then she smiled at me, a rueful familiar smile, and I gave a little gasp. She reminded me of myself, and that smile was the one that had called them out in Acre. It was the Lacey smile. It was Beatrice.

I put out a hand to stay her, but she was gone, walking lightly ahead of me as if she could see the path as clear in moonlight as in daytime. I followed her, a ghost like her, a witch like her. I was not even surprised when she led me up the steep cold heather-covered hills and I saw she cast no shadow on the silvery sand.

I had to watch my bruised feet as I staggered up the track. The wet sand was heavy going, and I was afraid of falling with Sarah. Besides, I could feel that I was bleeding more heavily; a warmth was running down the inside of my legs, warning me that I had gone nearly as far as I could go that night. I still had not done what I had come for. When I reached the crest of the hill and struggled to the top, I looked around for her, but she was gone.

There was no slight figure to follow, there was no lingering, inscrutable smile. She had gone as suddenly and as inexplicably as she had come. I had followed a will-o’-the-wisp and was now almost two miles from home and the Fenny; and Sarah was still alive and on Wideacre.

I gave a little sob of despair then, that I should get it all wrong again, and I half turned to go back down the path, back towards the Fenny, to drown Sarah and to drown myself, when a movement caught my eye. It was a ring of carts, loaded up and packed and ready to leave, a ring of gypsy carts in the usual sheltered hollow of the common. I was a few hundred yards from them with my child in my arms and Mama’s rose pearls around my neck.

I went down the hill in a sliding dreamlike rush and approached the nearest cart. A man was at the horse’s head, tightening the leathers and adjusting the harness. On the driver’s seat there was a woman.

She was a young woman, about my age, with a scarf tied down over her hair and a piece of sacking around her shoulders to keep out the rain. In the cart behind her were the family belongings, with the tent lashed down over them to keep them dry. In her arms, feeding at her breast, was a small baby. She had milk.

I stumbled on my hurt feet up to the side of the cart and she looked down at me without surprise. I fumbled in the fold of my cloak and lifted Sarah up to her, holding her awkwardly so she awoke and cried to find herself suddenly cold, and suddenly in mid-air without an arm around her.

The woman reached out and gathered my baby in to her without a word as if she had been waiting for me. I glanced around at the circle of carts. It seemed like they were all waiting. It seemed like they had packed and readied themselves for one of their unknowable wanderings, and then waited. They had waited in the rain and the dark for someone to come to them out of the shelter of the Wideacre woods.

I put my hands up to my neck and took off Mama’s rose-pearl necklace. The woman put her hand out for it and slid it into a pocket hidden in her layers of clothing. As if I had bought my child her rights, she immediately uncovered the other breast and gave my baby suck. The feet of the Lacey heir and the gypsy child kicked in unison as they fed from the same woman.

I stepped back. It was a dream. There was nothing I could say, there was no need to say anything.

The man at the horse’s head tightened a final strap and glanced up at the woman sitting high on the cart. At her nod he clicked to the horse and started to walk beside it. The horse lowered its head against the load and pulled hard at the weight of the cart in the softness of the sand. The side of the cart was painted, but in the moonlight and shadow as the storm-clouds blotted out the light, I could not see the patterns nor any colour. The scene was all silver and grey and black; it was a scene out of a dream without colour, in some moonlit landscape as desolate as a white desert.

The other carts had moved away first, the pans swinging at the sides, lashed on with pieces of twine. Many carried baskets of pegs and carved wooden flowers, or little ornaments, all tied on to the sides for easy sale. As the carts jolted away, the pans clinked together, making insane music, and the flowers jogged like dream dancers. The line of six carts moved off, and I suddenly came out of my reverie and realized what I had done.

The woman raised her hand to me and I took a hasty step forward, but the cart stuck, and then lurched too fast for her to hear me call. A horn lantern swinging on the side of the cart illuminated the pure white of the shawl around my baby’s head, but even as I stared, the light flickered and went out and I could not see her. The cart was going away from me too fast.

I took half a dozen hasty paces after it, but my blood was flowing and my head was light, and the stars and the storm-clouds seemed to be whirling around between me and my child, between me and my daughter. And I knew that it was no dream. I had given her away and I should never see her again.

‘Her name is Sarah!’ I screamed towards the back of the cart and I tried to run again, but my knees gave way beneath me and I sank down into the sand, crying and crying, trying to catch my breath so that I might call loud enough for them to hear me. ‘Her name is Sarah!’ I shouted to the dark jolting cart which was going away so quickly into the night. ‘Sarah Lacey of Wideacre!’

I don’t know how long I stayed there, after that call to the jolting cart. I watched them go until my eyes were hot with staring into the darkness and so filled with hopeless tears that I could see nothing, not even the whiteness of the shawl around my little girl’s head. I stayed kneeling in the wet sand, with the great drops of rain pouring down upon me, and then for a little while I think I pitched forward and wept.

I lifted my head and saw that it was getting lighter. A whole long night had passed. I was free.

Richard had no hold on me that he could ever use again. I had seen him for what he was, and I had conquered my fear of him. Richard was a madman, a cunning charming madman; and he would have killed me last night if I had not begun to give birth to his child.

I had done my duty to Wideacre when I threw away the heir, my lovely, lovely little girl. I would go home and do one further duty. I would face my Grandpapa Havering and tell him that Richard had shot Jem, and Uncle John, and my mama, and I would show him the fraudulent marriage licence as proof of motive, and the rose-pearl ear-rings as evidence. They would take him to Chichester and they would hang him. Then I would pull down the walls of the new Wideacre Hall and live in one of the cottages on the green, alone, mourning, lonely for all I had lost, glad for all I had saved.

I was the squire, the last squire. My last job was to rid Wideacre of Richard.

I pulled my drenched heavy cloak around me and got to my feet. I staggered with weariness and for a moment feared that indeed I might not get home at all. I might collapse out here and be dead of cold and loss of blood before anyone thought to look for me on the common.

Then I gritted my teeth and turned my face for home. I put one bruised and bloody foot before another for a hundred counted paces, and then a hundred more, and then a hundred more. It was the only way to get home I could think of, so I counted my way like a little child. I went back into the dark woods of Wideacre, over the perilous river bridge, where the counted numbers were little gasps of fear as my feet slipped and the river tugged at my heavy cloak and nearly pulled me down to drown, and then, counting, counting, counting, down the little footpath where I had run so easily as a child with my beloved cousin before me. I was counting, counting, counting the paces back to my home where there would be someone – surely there must be someone-to help me to bed, so I could rest and ready myself to tell Richard that I had destroyed his heir and that I would destroy him too.

As I came out of the woods on to the drive, it was nearly dawn; the sky was growing pale, though the storm-clouds were still black over the downs. The wind was high, sighing in the treetops. But above the noise of the wind I thought I heard people shouting in the woods.

I supposed they were all out looking for me. I hoped very much Richard was out too, then I could get to my room and sleep and sleep before I had to face him. Richard had to die. Richard had to be utterly destroyed. And I knew I was not yet strong enough to do it.

The front door stood open as I limped up the path, and the house was deserted. It was as I thought: everyone was out in the woods searching for me, and I might be able to creep upstairs and rest before I had to face Richard.

But I was a Lacey, not a silly child, and I thought that the least I could do was to write a note and pin it to the front door so that the men out in the rain could be sent home and would not spend all day looking for me while I lay safe and snug abed. I went into the library to fetch paper and pen to write my note before I went to bed.

Richard was in the carved heavy chair at the head of the table, in his breeches and linen shirt. His chair was tipped back on its two back legs with his weight.

His face was like a skull, his lips drawn back in a terrible piteous grin of fear, his eyes staring, looking to me as his rescuer, as the only person in the world who could save him from certain death.

Ralph was behind the chair, one hand pulling Richard’s head back with a tight grip on Richard’s curling hair, the other hand holding a long sharp knife against Richard’s throat.

They were both watching the doorway. They had heard me come in and the slap, slap, slap of my wet nightgown and cloak as I crossed the hall. I took in the scene in one swift glance and quickly pushed the door shut behind me so that no one else could come in, so that no one but us would know. And I leaned back against it.

Richard’s whole face trembled in a pitiful appeal. ‘Julia!’ he said, and I could hear him trying to put his charm into his voice. ‘Julia!’

I looked at him out of my red-rimmed weary eyes. I looked at him, the brother I had loved all my life, and I knew I would never cease loving him. My brother, my blood, my kin.

I raised my head and Ralph’s dark, understanding eyes met mine.

Ralph waited in silence for my decision.

‘Kill him,’ I said.

Ralph’s sweep of the knife was as clean as a butcher’s.