The Favoured Child

‘Dench, I am so sorry!’ I exclaimed. He had stopped when he heard me running after him, but at those words he turned homeward again and trudged on. I fell into step beside him. ‘When my grandpapa comes home, I shall tell him I was in no danger,’ I said. ‘My grandmama misunderstood what happened, and you know how strict she is about me.’

He nodded. ‘No need for you to say nothing,’ he said fairly. ‘I’d never put you in the least danger. Your grandpa knows that. Her la’ship is right, I did not think about you riding astride. And I did not think about Acre. I’m damned if I know what she would have had me do. But I had no chance to ask that. No chance to tell her that I was anxious only to get them searching for Master Richard …’ He broke off. ‘When his lordship comes home, he’ll find me a place,’ he said. ‘But it’s a poor return for twenty years’ work.’

‘I am sorry,’ I said again. ‘It isn’t fair.’

‘Aye,’ he said, the first edge of bitterness in his voice that I had ever heard. ‘It’s never fair for those at the bottom. I know who I have to thank for this. I’d rather that horse had dropped dead when Master Richard took his tumble than all this bother. And my sister having to feed me with a houseful of hungry mouths of her own…You’d not understand,’ he said. ‘Go home, Miss Julia. I don’t blame you.’

I stared at him and had no answer. Then I nodded, unsmiling, and turned back for my home, and the candlelit parlour, and the card game.

But I did not forget that he and Jem had said that Scheherazade needed exercise, and when Richard and I were on our way to our beds that night, I stopped him at the foot of the flight of the stairs which led to his bedroom.

‘Richard, would you mind if I asked Mama if I might walk Scheherazade in the paddock and perhaps down the drive and in the woods a little? Not proper riding, of course, just walking her. Jem said this morning that she would need to be walked out until you are ready to ride her again.’

Richard’s face was shadowy in the candlelight. ‘Would you like that?’ he asked.

Oh, yes,’ I said, but I was cautious. ‘If you would not mind. Not otherwise.’

‘Would you like to learn to ride her properly, perhaps? I could teach you while my arm is getting better.’

‘Richard! Would you?’ I exclaimed, and I grabbed his sound hand so the candle bobbed ad the shadows grew and shrank wildly. ‘Oh! I should so love that! Oh, Richard! I knew you would let me ride her! Oh, Richard! you are such a darling, darling, darling to me! And when your arm is better, perhaps my grandpapa will find us a pony for me to ride and we can go out riding together every day. And we can learn to jump! And…oh, Richard!…perhaps he would take us riding to hounds! And we could be famous as neck-or-nothing riders like your mama!’

Richard laughed, but his voice was strained. ‘All right! All right! No need to set the house afire!’ he said. ‘And mind my bad arm! Don’t hug me, whatever you do!’

I stepped back and did a little dance on the spot in delight. ‘Oh, sorry!’ I said. ‘But, oh! Richard!’

‘There,’ he said. ‘I knew you wanted to ride her all along.’

‘You are the best of cousins,’ I told him exuberantly. But then we heard Mama’s tread in the parlour coming towards the hall and the stairs, and we fled to our bedrooms.

I could hardly sleep for excitement, and my sleep was light. Something awoke me in the earliest hours of the morning, just before it grew light. I heard someone on the stairs outside my room and I called out, ‘Who’s there?’

‘Shh,’ said Richard, pushing open my door. ‘It’s me. There’s someone prowling around the stables. I heard a noise and went down and saw him from the library window.’

‘Who?’ I said, muddled with sleep.

‘Too dark to see,’ Richard said. ‘I opened the window and called out and he ran off, whoever he was.’

‘Whoever could it be, and what could he want in the stables?’ I asked. Oh, Richard! The horses are all right, are they? Should we wake Mama?’

‘I could see their heads over the doors of the loose boxes,’ Richard said reassuringly. ‘The only person I could think of was Dench. The figure I saw had the look of him. He could have been visiting Jem and run off when he heard me call. He’d know that he’d not be welcome here after that scene he made yesterday afternoon.’

‘What shall we do?’ I asked. I was warm and cosy in bed and I did not relish the thought of getting out. As long as Scheherazade was safe, I had little interest in midnight prowlers.

Richard yawned mightily. ‘Go back to sleep, I think,’ he said. ‘There’s no harm done that I can see. It did indeed look like Dench, but he certainly ran off out of the stable yard. I’ll tell Mama-Aunt in the morning; there’s no point waking her now.’

‘And in the morning I can go riding!’ I said in sleepy delight. ‘Will you come out and teach me first thing, Richard?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said indulgently. ‘First thing. Until then, little Julia.’

I slid back into sleep immediately, but my excitement about riding Scheherazade woke me early. At once I jumped out of bed and threw on my oldest gown and pattered down the stairs. Mrs Gough was already up, making our morning chocolate. I said I would be straight back for mine, but I had to see Scheherazade first.

Mrs Gough eyed me dourly, but I paid no heed to her and slid out of the kitchen door, scampered to the orchard for a windfall apple and ran back to the stable. I called, ‘Scheherazade!’ as soon as I got to the stable yard, but her head did not come over the half-door at my voice as it usually did. I called her again and felt suddenly uneasy that I did not hear her moving.

‘Scheherazade?’ I said uncertainly. And then I looked over the stable door.

She was lying on the straw. For a moment I thought she must be ill, for she scrabbled with her forelegs like a foal trying to rise when she saw me. But then my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I saw the blood on the straw. The silly thing had cut herself.

‘Oh, Scheherazade!’ I said reproachfully, and I flung open the door and bent under the pole which slides across the entrance. She scrabbled again, pulling her front half up, but her back legs seemed useless. I realized her injury was serious. Her straw was fouled with urine from where she had lain and it was all red, horribly red, in the bright morning light. She must have been bleeding steadily for most of the night. Her beautiful streaming copper tail was all matted with dried blood. Then she heaved herself up again and I caught sight of her wounds. At the side of each back leg was a clean smooth slash.

She looked as if she had been cut with a knife.

I gazed around wildly, looking for a sharp metal feeding bucket, a mislaid ploughshare, something which could have caused two matched injuries. She looked exactly as if she had been cut with a knife. Two neat small cuts, each severing the proud line of tendons on each leg.

She looked as if she had been cut by a knife.

She had been cut with a knife.

Someone had come into this stable and cut Richard’s most beautiful horse with a knife, so that he would never be able to ride her again.

I was dry-eyed; but I gave a great shuddering sob to see her so injured. Then I went, slowly, lagging, back to the house. Someone would have to tell Richard that his horse, his most lovely horse, was quite lame. And I loved Richard so dearly that even in my own grief and horror I knew it had to be no one but me.

Dench had done it.

Richard said it at once. ‘It was Dench.’

Dench who knew that life was unfair.

I could not understand how a man who had spent all his life caring for horses could do such a thing to such a flawless animal. But Mama, her face white and pinched, said that poverty did strange and dreadful things to the minds of the poor and filled men with hatred.

He had been hanging around the stables last night, as Richard said. He had a grievance against the Haverings and against us. He had cursed us in our very own kitchen. Even I had to agree that he was a bitter man.

Mama sent Jem with a message to Ned Smith in Acre, and he came to the bloodstained stables and said that the tendons would not heal and she would never be able to flex her feet again. She would be lame for ever.

‘Best kill her, your la’ship,’ he said, standing awkwardly in the hall, his dirty boots making prints on the shiny floorboards.

‘No!’ Richard said suddenly, too quick for thought. ‘No! She should not be killed. I know she is lamed, but she should not be killed!’

Ned’s broad dark face was flinty as he turned to Richard. ‘She’s good for nothing,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘She’s a working animal, not a pet. If you can’t ride her, then you’d best not keep her. Since she’s ruined, she’s better off dead.’

‘No!’ Richard said again, an edge of panic in his voice. ‘I don’t want that! She’s my horse. I have a right to decide whether she lives or dies.’

Mama shook her head gently and took Richard by his sound arm and led him towards the parlour. ‘The smith is right, Richard,’ she said softly, and she nodded at Ned over her shoulder. ‘She will have to be put down.’

She took Richard into the parlour, but I stayed standing in the hall. Ned the smith gave me one dark glance. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Julia,’ he said gently.

‘She’s not my horse,’ I said miserably. ‘I only rode her the once.’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘But I know you loved her well. She was a bonny horse.’

He went, clumsy in his big boots, towards the front door and hefted the mallet he had left outside. He went to her loose box, where she lay like a new-born weak foal in the straw, and he killed her with a great blow from the mallet between her trusting brown eyes, and some men from Acre came and loaded the big awkward body on a cart and drove her away.

‘What will they do with her?’ I asked. I was in the parlour window-seat and could not drag myself from the window. It seemed I had to see the heavily laden cart rocking down the lane. I had to see the awkward body and the legs sticking out.

Mama’s face was grim. ‘In that village, I dare say they will eat her,’ she said, loathing in her voice.

I gave a cry of horror and turned away. Then I went in silence from the parlour, up to my room, to lie on my bed and gaze blankly at the ceiling. I would have gone to Richard, but I knew he wanted to be alone. He was in the library, sitting in the empty room, in the only chair in the room. Sitting with his back to the window which overlooks the yard and the empty stable so that he could not see Jem mucking-out the empty stall and washing it down.

But in Acre there was no sign of Dench.

Ned said so when he came to the back door to wash his hands and get his pay. I supposed that proved his guilt, but I still could not understand it. Ned told Mrs Gough that Dench had disappeared once he heard that the horse was to be killed.

‘He knew where the blame ’ud fall,’ he said.

‘Well, who else would have done it?’ asked Mrs Gough, truculently. ‘No one else in all the county has a grievance against that blessed boy. It’s fair broke his heart. And where’ll he get another horse from? I don’t know! He can’t be a gentleman without a horse to ride, can he?’

‘Can’t be a gentleman if he can’t stay on!’ Ned said, irritated.

‘Now, get you out of my kitchen!’ said Mrs Gough, her brittle temper snapping. ‘You and your spiteful tongue. Get you back to Acre with the rest of ’em. Trouble-makers every one of you! Rick-burners! Horse-maimers!’

And Ned turned away with a sour smile and went back to the village which my grandpapa had called a village of outlaws – just one and a half miles down the lane from where we lived, lonely in the woods.

Grandpapa Havering swore out loud before us all when he finally came home and Mama told him the whole story. Then he turned kindly to Richard and promised him that as soon as Richard’s arm was strong again, he would have another horse. Another horse for his very own.

But Richard was inconsolable. He smiled and thanked my grandpapa, but he said quietly that he did not want another horse, just yet. Not for a while anyway. ‘I don’t think we could ever replace her,’ he said.

The grown-ups shook their heads and agreed with him. And my heart ached for the lovely Scheherazade and for the wonderful ride I had, that once, with her.

But most of all I ached for Richard’s loss; that the horse he loved was dead.

Grandpapa posted bills offering a reward for Dench’s capture. Injuring an animal is a capital offence, and Dench could have been transported or, more likely, hanged. But no one came forward to betray him, and his family in Acre had not heard from him.

‘I’d trust their word!’ said Grandpapa scathingly. ‘Really, m’dear, the sooner your precious John Mac Andrew comes home and sets that village to rights, the happier I’ll be. A gentleman can scarcely sleep in his bed o’ nights with that murdering crew in Acre.’

Mama nodded, her head down for shame that Acre, our village, should be such a place. And I sensed that she did not want Grandpapa to inveigh against the village with me there, listening. The village where the miller’s wife would not turn out her men for a son of Beatrice Lacey’s. There was a deep old enmity between Acre and the Laceys, and Mama would not tell me of it.

I could see all the signs. Mama would not visit in the village. She took every opportunity she could to go to church in Chichester, not to our parish church in Acre. Our boots were made in Midhurst, and the Acre cobbler was idle. Our laundry went to Lavington. It all came down to that odd phrase of the blacksmith’s – that Beatrice had gone bad.

Richard knew of the tension in the village. And Richard spoke of it openly. ‘They’re scum, they are,’ he told me harshly. ‘They’re as filthy as pigs in a sty. They don’t work for anyone else, they don’t even plant their own patches. They’re poachers and thieves. When I am squire, I shall clear the land of the lot of them, and plough that dirty village under.’

I had caught my breath at that and shaken my head in mute disagreement, but I knew that Richard’s words came from bravado. Richard was afraid. He was only a little eleven-year-old boy and he had cause for fear.

The village children were after him. They knew, as well as the two of us, that the village and the Wideacre family were sworn enemies. And after Dench ran away it got very much worse. They would catcall and jeer at him as he went past, his schoolbooks under his arm. They would sneer at his old coat, at his boots, which were worn and getting too tight for him. And always, when they could think of nothing else to say, they shouted loudly to one another that here was someone calling himself a squire and a Lacey, yet he could not stay on a horse.

Richard walked, fearful as a stable cat through the crowd, and his eyes blazed defiance and hatred. He saw them as a mob and thought that if he challenged one, then they would all attack him. I think he feared too that the adults would come out of their cottages to watch Miss Beatrice’s boy being torn apart on the village street and do nothing to help him.

Most of this I guessed. Richard was too proud to tell me. He told me only that he hated to walk through the village; and I saw that if the day was fine – which meant that the children would be out playing in the lane – he would leave early to go up the downland track and around the back of the village so that he could avoid the village street.

He never told Mama. He had a fine sharp courage, my cousin Richard; and he never told Mama that he was afraid. He asked her once what was meant by the phrase ‘a mother’s boy’. Mama was brushing out her hair before her mirror in her bedroom, and Richard was pulling a silk ribbon through his fingers and watching her. I was sitting in the window-seat looking out, out over the trees of Wideacre where the leaves were whirling away into the wintry sky, but at Richard’s question I looked sharply at Mama.

She put down her brush and looked at him, at his pale heart-shaped face and his mop of black hair, at the ribbon in his hand and at the way he was leaning so comfortably at her side. ‘Where have you heard that phrase, my dear?’ she asked steadily.

Richard shrugged. ‘They called it after me in the village today,’ he said. ‘I paid no heed. I never pay any heed to them.’

Mama put out a gentle hand to touch his face. ‘It will get better,’ she said gently. ‘When your papa comes home, it will be better.’

Richard caught her hand and kissed it, as graceful as a courtier. ‘I don’t mind him being away,’ he said. ‘I like it just as we are.’

I said nothing then, I said nothing later. But when he came home one day with his collar torn and face white, I knew it was getting worse.

I don’t know why I thought I might be able to help, but I did not fear Acre like the two of them. I was at home on Wideacre and at odds with no part of it, not even the worst village in Sussex. I knew with such certainty that I belonged on the land, and that included Acre. And I had a clear memory of Ned Smith’s half-smile, and of Mrs Green giving Richard her most precious phial of laudanum.

I used that phial as my excuse, and told Mama that I should return it to the mill. I would walk to Acre with Richard, go on to the mill and meet him from his lessons after my visit.

I had a little grin from Richard as a reward for that, and a surprised glance from Mama.

‘Walking through Acre?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Why not?’ I said boldly. ‘I’ll just call on Mrs Green and then I’ll sit with Dr Pearce’s housekeeper until Richard is ready to come home.’

‘Very well,’ she said. There was a world of reservation behind those level tones. I guessed that she did not want to make me afraid of Acre, and I think she saw also something she did not understand, something she had seen before: the Lacey confidence in the people of Acre. I ran to fetch my coat and bonnet, for Richard was ready to leave.

It was last winter’s coat, and I saw Mama frown as she looked at it. It was too short and uncomfortably tight under the arms and across the back. The sleeves ended too high, and there was a little gap between my gloves and the cuff where my wrist showed bony and cold.

‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said, making a joke of it. ‘I cannot help growing!’

‘Well, I wish you would stop!’ she said, her face lightening. Then Richard and I were off and Mama waved to us from the parlour window as we walked down the drive and turned left down the lane towards Acre.

As soon as we approached the village, I felt Richard’s unease. He was afraid for us both. He transferred his bundle of books to the other arm and felt for my hand. Hand-clasped, we walked steadily down the chalk-dirt track and past the cottage windows, which seemed to eye us as if they did not much like what they saw.

On our left was the cobbler, still sitting idle in his bow-window. Next to him was the carter’s cottage with the wagon they had used to take Scheherazade away. He had sold his horses long ago, but he had managed to keep his wagon. He still waited on in Acre for times to get better. There was nowhere else he could go. If he left the parish, neither he nor his family of six scruffy children could claim the poor rate. If he stayed, he had only a cold house, a dead fireplace and a wagon outside the door with nothing to carry and no horse to pull it.

Next to him was the blacksmith’s yard, the forge still unlit. For who would want horseshoes in a hurry in Acre where no one owned a horse? As we walked along the lane, I peered at every cottage, wondering that so many people could stay alive at all in such a desolate little village. They could eat the game from the Wideacre woods and the rabbits from the common. But they had no seeds to plant for vegetables, and they must need money for clothing, for tools. I was so absorbed in wondering how people survived with no money – no money at all – that I did not notice we were being followed.

There was a little group of ragged urchins trailing along behind us. Not many – about a dozen of them – but a frightening enough mob for Richard and me. They followed us like a half-starved wolf-pack, and they looked at Richard’s books and my shabby coat as though they were unimaginable luxuries.

Richard hardly drew breath until we reached the vicar’s front porch. ‘Don’t go back out, Julia,’ he said in an urgent undertone while we waited for the housekeeper to answer the bell. ‘Wait here until I have finished my lessons. The children will look at you oddly, and they might say something to you.’

I gave him a little smile to hide the fact that my knees were trembling. ‘They’re only little children,’ I said dismissively, ‘and I have to see Mrs Green. I shan’t be long. If they are rude, I shall just run. I bet I can run faster than any of them.’

Richard nodded at that. He knew I was as fleet as a courser. The barefoot hungry children would never be able to catch me, not even running in a pack. ‘I’d rather you waited,’ he said.

‘No, I can go,’ I said decisively, and the door opened. He did not give me a kiss in front of the housekeeper and the watching children but the hand which still held mine gave me a warm squeeze which mattered very much to me. Just that one gesture, that touch of his palm against mine, gave me the courage to turn and face the children, Richard’s tormentors, and walk down the path towards them.

I stopped at the gate and eyed them over it. I was taller than all but the three biggest: two boys and a girl with her hair down her back in a lank plait. All their faces were closed, sullen; but she had her eyes on me. She was examining every stitch of my old dress and my too tight coat as if I were a princess dressed for a ball. I pushed my hands into my pockets and calmly surveyed her. Then, taking my time, I stepped towards the garden gate and opened it, and walked out into the lane.

That surprised them. I think they had thought I would stay in the shelter of the garden and they melted away as I walked through them. But then they fell into step behind me and I led the way down the bridle-path to the common and the new mill with the motley band behind me. When the silence of the wood closed around us, they grew loud and started jeering. Then I heard the older girl’s voice start a chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a carriage! Hasn’t got a carriage!’ Over and over.

I set my teeth and schooled myself to walk at the same pace while the insulting singsong went on – louder and more fearless. Then the big girl changed it: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a horse! Hasn’t got a horse!’

At the mention of Scheherazade my temper rose a few more notches, but I walked on with my head up as if I were alone.

She started another chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a father! Hasn’t got a father!’

‘He died of fright!’ said another voice and there was a ripple of laughter from them; I flinched at the abuse of my papa and the insult to the Laceys.

I was a little afraid. I was afraid, like Richard, that I might be badly hurt in a scrap with them, or that they might surround and bully me. But I knew, as Richard, with all his charm and cleverness, did not, that the children must be faced and fought or we would never be able to walk through Acre. Richard might dream of clearing the land of them, he might plan for a future where every insult was revenged a hundred times over. But I wanted to live in peace on my land with the families who had been here as long as the Laceys. I did not want to clear Acre village, I wanted to set things right. Whether Uncle John came home with a fortune or as poor as when he left, I wanted to be able to walk in Acre, without apologizing. And feel no fear.

I walked on past the mill. At the end of this track there was a great hollow in the ground where they say there was once a grand oak tree uprooted by Beatrice when she turned everywhere into wheatfields like the one behind it which was sprawled all over now with rust-coloured bracken and mauve with heather. But still the odd head of wheat blew spindly-yellow in the wind. I led my tormentors there and at the lip of the hollow where the oak tree had stood I turned and faced them. They fell back like a pack of hungry dogs baiting a badger.