The Favoured Child

I shivered although the sunlight was bright. It sounded ominous, a bleak prophecy. But I knew in my loving, trusting heart that she was wrong. She had married fifty years ago in obedience to her father and, when widowed, married again to win a home for herself and her child. Of course marriage seemed to her a contract – and one which carried severe penalties. But Richard and I were quite different. Our marriage would be a natural extension of our childhood love. When the dream of a rebuilt Wideacre became finally true, I knew I would never have to search my heart for a sense of my own individual pride to bear me up through shame and pain. All I ever needed to define myself was the knowledge that I loved Richard and that I was Richard’s love. I would never need anything more.

Something of this certainty must have shown in my face, for my grandmama gave a harsh laugh and bent and kissed me once more. ‘There’s no telling anyone,’ she said, resigned. ‘Everyone has to learn their own way. Goodbye, my darling, and don’t forget to give those receipts to your mama.’

I nodded, and hugged her, and jumped up the step to the seat of the gig while Dench swung himself in beside me. Then I waved to her and smiled at her with love. I knew that she was a fine woman, a brave woman. But I had no thought that I would ever wonder where her courage came from; that I would ever need that courage for myself.

‘Home, then?’ Dench said.

‘Yes,’ I said. Sitting high in the gig beside Dench was comfortable. I could see over the hedges to where the self-seeded fields of Wideacre blew in a rippling autumn wind. I liked Dench, I liked the drawl of his downs accent and the way his face stayed still so that if you did not know him you might think he was cross, but then his eyes twinkled. And I knew, in the way that children always know, that he liked me.

‘Glad to be going back to your mama?’ he asked kindly.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And my cousin Richard too. Is he riding much, do you know, Dench?’

‘Aye,’ he said. He gathered the reins in one hand as we turned left down the lane towards Acre. ‘But Jem tells me his hands are as heavy as ever. He’ll ruin that mare’s mouth. I don’t know what m’lord was thinking of.’

‘She’s his horse!’ I said, instantly on the defence.

‘Aye,’ Dench said, wilfully misunderstanding me. ‘You don’t get a chance, do you, Miss Julia?’

‘Ladies often don’t learn to ride until they are married and their husbands teach them,’ I said, quoting the wisdom of my mama without much conviction.

‘Ever sat on her back at all?’ Dench asked me with a swift sideways glance. ‘Not sneaked into her stable and climbed on from the door?’

‘Yes,’ I said, incurably truthful. ‘But Richard caught me.’

‘Oh, aye?’ Dench said invitingly, and waited for me to go on. But I did not.

Richard had come into the stable just as I had swung a leg over Scheherazade’s back, having lured her to the door with two windfall apples in a bucket. She had thrown her head up and moved back when I had launched myself from the half-door on to her back. But once she had felt my weight she had dipped her head to the bucket again. My skirts up, sitting astride, I was a proper hoyden and I knew it. But, oh! the delight of feeling that smooth warm skin and the fretwork of muscles beneath it. And to be so high in the stable! And when she lifted her head, I saw her column of neck and that great wave of her mane! I adored her. I dropped my face into her mane and hugged her neck in passion.

I did not hear the footsteps come across the yard. I did not even hear the stable door open and close.

‘Get down.’ Richard’s tone was icy. I sat up and looked around wildly. Richard had come into the stable and closed the door behind him. He was standing at the back of the stable in the shadows, the saddle and bridle held before him, his riding crop stuck under the stirrup leather.

‘Get down,’ he said again. His voice was light, but I am no fool. I saw his eyes were blazing; even in the darkness of the stable I could see the heat behind them.

I clung to the mane and swung my leg over and slid down Scheherazade’s smooth flank, loving the touch of her shoulder against my cheek.

As soon as I dropped on the straw, I turned to face him. ‘Richard …’ I said apologetically.

He had put down the saddle and bridle while I was dismounting and he dragged me away from the shelter of Scheherazade’s side. He held my wrist in one hard unforgiving hand and pulled me into the corner of the stable. Scheherazade threw her head up and shifted uneasily, and Richard gave a little gasp and swung us around so that I was between him and the restless animal.

‘Scheherazade is my horse,’ he hissed, his face very close to mine. ‘Lord Havering gave her to me. He taught me to ride on her. You may be a Lacey, but it is my papa who pays the bills here. Lord Havering may be your grandpapa, and not mine, but he gave the horse to me. And I warned you not to touch her, didn’t I?’

My lips were trembling so much that I could not speak. It was worse than the pretend water-snakes in the river all those years ago in childhood. It was the worst it had ever been. ‘Richard…please …’ I said pitifully.

‘Didn’t I?’ he insisted.

‘Y-Yes,’ I said. ‘But Richard …’

‘I warned you, Julia,’ he said authoritatively. ‘I told you that you would learn to ride when I was ready to teach you. And I told you to keep away from my horse.’

I could not stop the tears from coming, and they rolled down my face, making my cheeks as wet as if I were out in a rainstorm, while I looked and looked at Richard, hoping he would see them and release the hard grip on my wrist and catch me up to him, and kiss me kindly, as he always did.

‘Didn’t I warn you?’ he shouted.

‘Yes! Yes!’ I sobbed. There seemed nothing I could do to break the spell of this shadowed misery. Mama was far away in the house, Jem was cleaning tack in the tack room or sitting in the kitchen. Richard had me at his mercy, and he had no mercy. He had indeed warned me. He had told me not to touch his horse and I had disobeyed him. He had warned me that if I did, he would be angry. And I had foolishly, irresistibly gone to Scheherazade and now I had to face Richard’s blazing blue-eyed wrath. Then, suddenly, my own temper went.

‘You don’t even like her!’ I said. ‘You never did like her as much as me! You promised you’d teach me to ride her, but I don’t believe you ever will. All you ever cared about was your stupid singing! You can’t do that any more! And you can’t ride either!’

Richard grabbed me and spun me around, his full weight throwing me against the stable wall. ‘I’ll kill you!’ he said in the total rage of a child.

I had both hands braced against the wall. For a moment I was literally too frightened to move. He took advantage of that second’s immobility to snatch up his riding crop from the floor beside his saddle, and then he grabbed me in a hard one-armed embrace and brought the twangy well-sprung crop down with all his strength on my back.

He meant to cane me – as Stride very occasionally was ordered to beat him. But I twisted in his grip and the blow fell on my side. Even through my jacket it stung, and I screamed with the shock of it, and the hurt of it. Three times he whipped me, before I wriggled free from his hold and dashed to the shelter of Scheherazade’s side. She was frightened, her hooves shifting nervously, her eyes rolling and showing their whites. Without a second’s thought I dived under her belly and came up on the other side so that she was between Richard and me, and I peeped at him from under her tossing neck.

The rage had gone from Richard’s face; he looked ready to weep. ‘Oh, Julia!’ he said, his voice choked.

But I was beyond reconciliation. Shielded by the horse, I turned for the stable door, struggled with the lock and dashed out of the stable, banging the door behind me.

I did not go to the house, though I could see the light from the parlour window spilling out over the drive. I ran instead to where I could be alone, to the hayloft above the stables where the few bales of hay were stored. I flung myself face down on one of them and wept as if I could not stop; I wept for the pain and the humiliation, and for the fright that my own anger had given me, that had made me taunt Richard and had made him wish me dead.

I gave little screaming sobs, muffled by a fist pressed against my mouth, for I wanted no one to hear me. He had hurt me so! And he could not love me at all if he could treat me thus! And the flame of my own anger burned inside me and said that I should not love him, not ever, not ever again. That we should not even be friends. He had bullied me long enough. This wicked attack would be the last time he would ever make me cry.

The hay scratched my cheek and grew hot and damp while I wept my heart out into its tickly dryness…and then I felt the sweetest touch in all the world – Richard’s hand upon my shaking shoulder.

He pulled me up, gently, oh, so gently, and he turned me around towards him. ‘Oh, little Julia,’ he said in a voice of such tenderness and pity; then he cupped his hands either side of my cheeks and kissed every inch of my wet flushed face, so that my cheeks were dried with his kisses.

And I sobbed again and said, ‘Richard, you should not treat me so!’ I could hardly get the words out. ‘You should not, Richard! I will not love you if you bully me like that. You are wrong to treat me so, Richard.’

‘I know,’ he said remorsefully. ‘I know I should not do it. But, Julia, you must forgive me. You know I do not mean any harm. It is just an accident.’

‘An accident!’ I exclaimed. ‘Richard, that was no accident! You beat me as hard as you could! Three blows! Not even my own mama has ever beaten me like that! And you said you would kill me!’

‘I know,’ he said again, his voice warm with his charm. Richard’s easy charm. ‘I beg your pardon, Julia, and I swear I will never hurt you again.’ He knelt beside me on the straw. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘I am on my knees to you, begging you to forgive me.’

I hesitated. The pain was fading and Richard’s appealing, worried face was too much for me.

‘Say you forgive me!’ he entreated in a low whisper, his arms out to me.

‘I won’t,’ I said sullenly. ‘You are cruel, Richard, and I had done nothing but sit on her in the stable.’

He was silent at that for a moment, still kneeling at my feet. ‘A true lady accepts an apology,’ he observed. ‘I have said that I am sorry, Julia. And I am sorry. I am offering you an apology.’

My mama’s training, the lessons of my grandmama, the world we lived in and my own loving heart were too much for my sense of grievance. ‘Oh, Richard, all right!’ I said and I burst into tears afresh for no reason at all and he threw his arms around me and hugged me and kissed my wet cheeks and dried my eyes on his own white linen handkerchief.

We sat in silence then, in the shadowy hayloft, while the night air grew colder and the first pinpricks of stars came out like sparkles of frost in the autumn sky. And Richard said softly, reasonably, ‘I just don’t like people taking my things, Julia.’

And I had said – for in a way it was all my fault – ‘I know you do not, Richard. And I promise I will never sit on Scheherazade again.’

I would have promised more, but a slim new moon came out from behind a wisp of dark cloud and its light shone in my eyes, and I heard a sweet high singing which I always think of as the music of the very heart of Wideacre, which used to ring through Richard’s voice. This night it was not thin and peaceful, but somehow ominous. For some reason, I did not know why, it seemed like a warning, as if the moon were telling me that Richard’s expectations and Richard’s need to own things outright were not good qualities in a young boy, that I should not concede everything to him.

Then the moment passed, and I was just a tearful girl in a hayloft with a loving bullying playmate.

‘Master Richard don’t like you to even touch his horse, then?’ Dench said curiously.

‘No,’ I said, coming out of my reverie. I had not touched Scheherazade again, and Richard had forgotten his anger. He had taken to riding every day after that evening, and I had seen little of him.

‘Dog i’ the manger,’ said Dench briefly. ‘I reckon you’d ride well enough without teaching, Miss Julia. You’re the true-bred Lacey, after all.’

‘No,’ I said. I sat straighter on the seat beside Dench. ‘I do not wish to learn until I am grown-up, Dench.’

Oh, aye,’ he said, hearing the reproof in my voice and taking little heed. Then he clicked to the horse to lengthen its stride and we bowled under the great trees of the Wideacre woods.

‘Want to take the reins?’ Dench said casually.

‘Oh, yes!’ I said. Jem had let me drive our solitary ageing carriage horse, but this was the first time I had ever been in control of one of the smooth-paced Havering horses.

‘Here, y’are,’ Dench said generously, and handed the double reins into my small hands. ‘Hold them lightly.’ He watched as I clicked confidently to the horse as I had heard him do, and saw how my little hands held the fistfuls of leather as if they were precious ribbons.

‘Good hands,’ he said approvingly. ‘You have Miss Beatrice’s hands.’

I nodded, but I hardly heard him. The sunlight was dappled on my face as we drove under the branches of the woods. The wind, as sweet as birdsong, blew in my face. A great flock of starlings was chattering in a hundred tones in the hedge to our right, and over the derelict wheatfield the rooks were flapping like dusters and calling hoarsely.

‘No need to go straight home,’ Dench said, observing my rapt face. ‘We can take the gig around by the mill and home through the woods if you wish. The ground is hard enough for the wheels.’

I hesitated. We would have to drive through Acre and I was still afraid of the barely understood story of the ‘taking’ of the children. But Richard went to Acre for his lessons, and Mama had never specifically told me not to go there alone.

‘All right,’ I said and we went on down the lane past the Wideacre gates, which stood drunkenly open, rusting on their hinges, and whirled away towards Acre. The village street was deserted, the front doors closed against the wind. There were white faces at a few unglazed windows as we trotted by, and Dench raised a careless hand to the smith’s cottage and to the cobbler who sat idle before an empty last in his window. Then we turned left at the church down the smooth grassy lane towards the common land, past the idle mill with weed greening the water wheel, and deeper and deeper into the woods, into the very heart of Wideacre.

‘We can canter here if you like,’ Dench said, eyeing the smooth turf of the track, and without thinking I lightened my touch on the reins and felt the carriage leap forward as the rhythm of the hooves speeded up and the bars of sunlight on the grass came flickering over me.

‘Like it?’ Dench said, his voice raised over the rush of the wind and the jingle and creak of the carriage and tack.

‘Oh, yes!’ I yelled, and my voice was like a sweet call to the horse to go faster, and he pricked his ears, blew air out in a snort and plunged forward.

‘Woah!’ Dench yelled in sudden alarm and grabbed the reins from me. He nearly knocked me from my seat with his desperate lunge, and elbowed me hard to hold me in.

‘What…?’ I said as he hauled roughly and the horse and gig skidded to a slithering standstill. Dench abruptly backed the horse, and I saw what he had seen down one of the grassy rides to our left: Scheherazade, loose in the woods, her saddle askew, her reins broken. When she saw the carriage, she raised her head to whinny at the horse and came trotting towards us.

‘Damnation,’ said Dench levelly. ‘Where’s that cow-handed youngster?’

I tumbled from the gig and caught one trailing rein. Scheherazade whickered and snuffed at me. ‘Richard!’ I called into the woodland. ‘Richard! Where are you?’

There was no reply. A jay called harshly and a woodpecker whooped as it flew dipping up and down, away from us. The wood-pigeons cooed as if all were well. But there was no answering call from Richard.

I glanced back at the gig for guidance. Dench was scowling.

‘Cow-handed,’ he said, making it sound like an oath. I led Scheherazade back to the gig. He glanced briefly at her, a comprehensive raking survey. ‘Not hurt,’ he said. ‘So chances are he fell off all on his own.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Where does he usually ride?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly. ‘The common, up on the downs. In the woods. Different places.’

‘Could be anywheres,’ Dench said sourly, scowling at the ragged field to our right and the hill of purple heather of the common land beyond. ‘Could have gone home, walked home. Picked himself up and walked home,’ he said more cheerfully. Then his face lowered again. ‘Cow-handed,’ he said under his breath. He turned abruptly and swung down from the seat of the gig and went to the carriage horse. He started undoing its tack and took the horse from the shafts.

‘Hold him,’ he said briefly to me, and he took Scheherazade’s reins from me. He knotted the break in her reins and pulled her saddle aright. He glanced at me and shortened the stirrups, Richard’s stirrups, by guess. Then he brought Scheherazade to me, where I was standing by the carriage horse’s head.

‘You’re to ride home,’ he said. ‘Stop at the mill on the way, see if there’s anyone there and tell ‘em Richard had a fall and they’re to turn out and look for him. Stop at Acre and tell Ned the smith, he’ll know what to do. I’ll ride towards the Dower House along the bridle-track and see if he’s walking home or if he fell there.’

I gaped at him. ‘I cannot ride,’ I said. ‘I told you! Richard never taught me!’

Dench swore under his breath and motioned to me to put one foot up so he could heave me into the saddle like a stable lad. I went astride, my gown bunched around me, my ankles and even my calves exposed.

‘Course you can ride,’ Dench said. ‘You’re a Lacey.’

He tossed the reins up to me and turned his back as if he need say no more and had no interest in watching for my safety. I sat as though frozen. But Scheherazade’s ears were forward and she felt solid beneath me. The ground was very far away, but I knew she was gentle, well mannered. I felt her at peace with me on her back, alert for my bidding. I leaned over and tugged my skirts down to cover my legs as well as I could, and then I straightened up and squeezed gently. Scheherazade moved forward with her smooth rolling walk back down the lane towards Acre. I felt completely at ease. I felt I had come home.

And I knew how to ride her. I knew it as easily and as sweetly as I had known how to hold the reins to drive the carriage horse. It might have been that I had listened so intently to Richard’s lessons that I had learned to ride sitting on the fence. But when Scheherazade moved and I went with her, as smoothly as perfectly matched dancers, I knew it was something else. I came from a long line of famous horse riders, and to be on horseback in the Wideacre woods was my natural place. Driving a horse on Wideacre had been bliss indeed, but riding Scheherazade up a grassy track with the afternoon sun on my cheek was a most earthly paradise.

Except that Richard…with a sudden gasp I remembered that Richard was missing, perhaps lying somewhere hurt. Without meaning to signal to the horse, I had tensed, and instantly obedient Scheherazade broke into a trot, a springy pace which nearly unseated me. I grabbed on to the pommel of the saddle and gritted my teeth as I banged up and down in the saddle, sliding hopelessly from one side to another and trying to right myself. I could remember Grandpapa bellowing to Richard to rise and sit with the trot, and I tried, without much hope, to rise in the stirrups and to sit down again. Almost at once I caught the rhythm. Scheherazade was long-legged and her pace steady. The awful teeth-rattling bumping stopped and I felt safe again. We were travelling fast, too, and were nearly at the gate to the mill, and I sat down in the saddle and gently tightened the reins. Scheherazade slowed at once, and stopped at the garden gate of the miller’s house.

‘Miller Green! Miller Green!’ I called, giving him his title, though he had ground no wheat in ten years, not since the night when the hall had been burned and looters had robbed the grain wagons stored in his yard.

The door opened slowly. Old Mrs Green put her head out. ‘Not here,’ she said, surly. ‘They’re all at the fair, looking for work.’

She had been a proud woman once, mistress of the mill with her own pew in the church. The loss of their livelihood had broken her spirit. Four big sons in the house and a husband to feed, and no money coming in from any of them. A river flowed past the garden to turn the mill wheel, but there was no wheat to grind. Not one of them had seen farm meat on the table for ten years, nor fresh fruit except the wild berries in season, nor white flour once they had scraped the millstone clean of dust.

‘There’s been an accident,’ I called to her. ‘My cousin Richard may be lying hurt in the woods, or on the common. When your men come home, will you send them out to look for Richard, Mrs Green?’

She looked at me dully. ‘Miss Beatrice’s son?’ she asked me, and then she scowled. ‘Nay,’ she said with grim satisfaction. ‘I won’t do that. I wouldn’t send my men out to do a favour for the Laceys. Least of all when they come home tired after a day on the tramp looking for work, when there’s no work to be had.’

I stared at her blankly, with growing fright. If Richard was injured, perhaps with broken bones, he should be found at once. If Mrs Green would not help, if Acre would not help, it might take hours to find him. Without thinking of anything except the desperate need to get help to Richard, I dropped down from Scheherazade’s high back and looped her reins over the gate. Mrs Green was old, stooped, and I was lanky and growing tall for my age. I went up to her and she was barely a head taller than me. She looked down into my child’s face and saw an unchildlike determination.

‘He may be Beatrice’s son,’ I said, ‘but he’s my cousin. And I love him more than anything else in the world. Please help him.’

Some of the hardness went out of her face when she saw me-not a Lacey on horseback, but a girl at her cottage door, white-faced, begging for aid.

‘Eh, well,’ she said resignedly. ‘They’ll be back within the hour. I dare say they’ll turn out for him then.’

I felt my eyes suddenly fill with tears of relief. ‘Thank you,’ I said huskily. Then I turned and walked down the little path and used her tumbledown garden wall as a mounting block to reach Scheherazade’s saddle high above me. I trotted back down the track to Acre and I knew she was watching and that the incomprehensible hardness had gone from her face.

Without thinking of it, I had been riding easily, confidently, and as we rounded the corner to Acre I sat down deeper in the saddle and let Scheherazade canter. We moved together, and I felt not a trace, not a flicker of fear, but only a delight in the rush of the wind and the thudding of her hooves and the sense of speed. We thundered up Acre lane like a regiment of cavalry, and I pulled her up at the smith’s yard with a yell of pure elation.

‘Ned Smith!’ I called, and he came out, throwing on his tattered apron, his thin face lit-up, hoping for work.

‘There’s no shoeing needed,’ I said quickly. ‘I am sorry. But there has been an accident, and Richard has come off his horse. John Dench is looking for him and he said you would help.’

The smith pulled his apron off again and tossed it over the empty anvil by the cold forge. ‘Aye,’ he said dully. ‘Some of the men will come out if they’re promised a penny for it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. Then I added awkwardly, ‘I am sorry there was no work for you today. I am sorry you heard the hooves and must have been hopeful. I am sorry we can pay no more than a penny a man.’