The Favoured Child Page 31

  I nodded slowly. It was another thread of Richard’s skein of teasing and misreading which was winding around me and colouring my world.

  Oh,’ I said. Oh, but Clary, it’s good to see you!’

  I put an arm around her waist and hugged her and felt the familiar warmth of her plump body and the familiar tickle of her long hair against my cheek. We turned and walked across the lawn together, and stopped at the foot of the cedar tree. I rubbed my hand against the bark, feeling the flaky contours, smelling the sweet spicy scent of it.

  ‘I’m glad you’re here, because I have to say goodbye to you,’ I said. I put my hands out to her. ‘I’ve not been allowed down to Acre since the night of the storm, Clary. They say that I am ill, and in truth they are half-way to making me believe that I am. They are sending me to Bath tomorrow, and I dare say I won’t be allowed down to say farewell to my friends. Tell them in the village that I thought of all of them, and that I sent them my love.’

  She held my hands between two cold palms. ‘Going?’ she said blankly. ‘Going from here? What for, Julia? Are you going for long?’

  I tried to laugh and say, ‘Oh! Of course not!’

  I tried to smile and say, Oh! I shall have such fun in Bath!’

  But instead I found I had sobbed aloud, and flung myself into Clary’s arms and said piteously, ‘Oh, Clary! Clary! Just because of the dream and because of the night of the thunderstorm, they think that I am going mad and they are taking me away from here and I don’t know what will happen!’

  And I wept for the first time since Richard had warned me that I must not seem odd, and felt the fear and the anxiety ease from me as Clary patted my back, and dried my face on her thin shawl, and then pulled me over to the swing – ghostly on its frozen ropes – and sat me down.

  ‘What is wrong?’ she asked gently. ‘You are not in the least mad, but I have never seen you so unhappy. You look odd too.’

  ‘How odd?’ I asked afraid.

  ‘Older,’ she said, fumbling for words. ‘Sad. As if you knew something awful. What’s happening, Julia?’

  I had a lie, a lie for my dear Clary ready on my tongue, and I was poised, one toe on the ground, to set the pendulum swinging so that I could lie, and swing backwards and forwards like a clock telling the wrong time. But I did not launch myself. I kept my toe on the ground and then I slowly eased the swing down into the upright position again. I did not want to lie to her. Whatever might be going wrong, there were some things in my life which went back a long way, which I wanted to keep safe.

  ‘It’s Beatrice,’ I said slowly. In the still garden, drained of colour, Clary and I faced each other, the horror of what I had said smiling at us both. She shivered, although her shawl was wrapped tight around her; and I knew that same chill inside me.

  ‘It is Beatrice and her magic,’ I said in a whisper.

  Clary’s eyes were dark with fear and I could feel the hairs on the nape of my own neck prickle like a threatened dog’s.

  ‘Are you seeing her?’ she asked, her voice soft.

  ‘No,’ I said in an undertone. ‘It is worse than that. I feel as if I am becoming her.’

  There was an utter silence between the two of us. The little wind blew the smell of the cold downs to us, but underneath there was the scent of fear, sharp as sage.

  ‘Was it when Ralph Megson arrived?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He heard her then in my voice. I think he even saw her likeness then in my face.’

  She nodded and put out a hand to tighten her shawl around her. With a prickle of fear up my spine I saw that her hand was clenched in the old sign against witchcraft, the thumb between the forefinger and the third finger to make the cross. I leaned forward and put my hand over hers, imploring, accusing. ‘Clary, you make that sign to me?’

  She flexed her fingers and dipped her head, and in the starlight her face grew dark as she blushed. ‘Oh! Lord love you, no!’ she said. She turned away from me and went to the trunk of the cedar tree and rested her head against the trunk as if to clear the whirl in her mind by the touch of the bark. ‘No,’ she said, turning back to me and leaning against the tree-trunk. ‘I did not make that sign to you. But I did make it to something I saw. I saw something in your eyes, Julia. It had me scared, I admit it.’

  ‘You see her in my eyes,’ I said blankly.

  She looked at me with the eyes of a friendship which went back to the time when we were just little children playing in the woods. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing more than they’ve been saying in the village all this year. That you are the favoured child. That you are her heir.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel much like being favoured,’ I said resentfully. ‘I have had a dream, oh, Clary, such a nightmare!’ She said nothing. ‘Not a nightmare like one of my dreams of Beatrice,’ I said. ‘Just a feeling of being utterly alone. So terribly, terribly alone and with no one to love me, and no one to love at all. No one to love except a little tiny baby in a white shawl, and knowing I have to drown her.’

  Clary gasped, her face white in the moonlight, then she came towards the swing and knelt on the frozen grass at my feet and put her hands on mine. ‘I will always love you,’ she said in the deep sweet drawl of Acre. ‘I will always be here.’

  For a moment I was warmed by the affection in her voice, but even as I started to smile, I heard a noise, like an icy wind blowing from far, far away. ‘No, you won’t,’ I said, and we heard the desolate certainty in my voice.

  For a moment Clary’s eyes questioned me, but she was a village girl and wise. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a gleam of her defiant urchin smile. ‘Well, at least I shan’t have to put up with the sight of you lording it as squire, then,’ she said.

  It was a weak joke, and our smiles were faint. We were still and silent in the garden a long while.

  ‘What will you do? Can you refuse to go?’ she asked.

  ‘I shall have to go,’ I said sullenly. ‘I shall have to go and not know when they will let me come back.’

  I tried to smile, but I could manage only a sad little grimace. The wind was icy, blowing down from the stars, but I had a throbbing headache so heavy over my eyes that I could hardly see the garden. I seemed to be well on the way to losing every thing I had ever wanted: Richard, Wideacre and my girlhood. All stolen from me by the lost dead witch of Wideacre. And nothing given to me in their place but a handful of superstitions and a wildness which I could not control.

  ‘I shall have to do as they all want,’ I said. ‘Mama, Uncle John and Richard. I have to go to Bath.’ I wiped away a couple of tears from my cheek with the back of my hand, gave Clary a watery smile and a kiss; and went towards the house.

  She stayed me with a gentle touch on my arm. ‘What if you do have her gifts?’ she asked, her loving courage for me nerving her to speak of Beatrice. ‘What if you have? Can’t they just see that it does not matter? The old people in Acre have said it of you ever since you were a little girl. They always said you were Beatrice come back to set things right. Can’t it just be a secret? A secret for the Laceys and Acre?’

  ‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘The world is changing, Clary. There is no room for such secrets any more. More and more people come into the village to work, more and more Acre folk work away. Everyone in the outside world is set against seeings and dreams and the things that we know happen. But they have no explanation for it; and so they will not hear of it.’

  Clary made a face. ‘They think they are so wise,’ she said scathingly. ‘Men like your Uncle John – good men, who do a good job – but they have to know everything in words.’ She broke off. ‘I’ll go home now, before the clouds come up. But I’ll stop at Ralph Megson’s cottage and tell him you’re to be sent away in the morning. Your precious cousin told no one of it. None of us knew.’

  I nodded my thanks for that and put my cheek against hers in a hug. I felt her quiver as I touched her and I knew that she was afraid that the coldness of my cheek was not j
ust the chill of the night air, but the embrace of a ghost. I stepped back from her and tried to smile normally, but I knew my eyes were hazy and fey.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Clary,’ I said. ‘I am still the little girl who rolled in the mud with yöu. I may have it all wrong. They may be right that I have no sight at all but just a fever on the brain.’

  She nodded, and gave me a pat on the cheek with one grimy hand, then she drew her shawl around her and slid from the garden.

  I looked for Ralph Megson that evening, for he knew our time for the tea-tray, and I had thought he might have ridden under the frost-hazed moon to see us. I stayed up an extra half-hour after supper, waiting to see if he would come, and I went to bed and wept in absolute silence into my pillow that he should have failed me and I should have to leave without seeing him.

  I should have trusted him. In the morning when Jenny brought me my cup of chocolate, she told me that Mr Megson was in the stable yard, come to bid me safe journey. I threw a wrapper on, and my riding jacket atop for good measure, and went down. The sun was as bright as midsummer, but the ground was hard as rock. It was a brilliant still day, with a sky as blue as ice and Ralph Megson high on his black hunter in the stable yard, smiling down on me.

  I walked up to the horse’s neck and stroked him, looking up at Ralph.

  ‘Have you been ill?’ he asked softly.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I was not allowed out. They were afraid to let me.’

  ‘No need,’ he said gently, and I felt the tension and the pain of the last few days start to let me go, like cords slipping away from around my neck and shoulders.

  ‘I have to go to Bath,’ I said abruptly. It sounded like a sentence of doom. Ralph glanced at me, his eyes warm, full of sympathy. ‘They will take me to see a doctor,’ I said. ‘They think that I am unbalanced because of the dreams, and because of the night of the storm!’

  Ralph made a little grimace. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I suppose they would.’ He said nothing for a moment. ‘No doctor of any sense will meddle with you, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘Anyone can see you are a bright and lovely young woman. Any doctor with half a mind would see that you have special gifts, special powers, and you should be glad of them. You should let them flow through you like a river through the arches of a bridge.’

  ‘I cannot,’ I said urgently. ‘I am to be a young lady. I cannot be as fey as some half-mad gypsy. I am not the village midwife. I am not a teller of fortunes. All of the seeing and dreaming will have to go. I have to move in society. I have to be the wife of a squire!’

  Ralph pursed his mouth as if he were about to spit; but then he remembered where he was and thought better of it. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘For a moment I forgot that you had such a glorious future ahead of you. A young lady in society indeed! Well, that is worth a few sacrifices, I should say!’ He looked down at my wan face, and the harsh humour left his eyes. ‘You are Quality born and bred,’ he said more gently. ‘If you want to run from the wildness that is in you, if you want to knock it out of yourself, then you may be able to do that. You may be able to turn yourself into a bread-and-butter Bath miss. I should think not. But I could be wrong. If anywhere could do it, then Bath can!’

  The tone of disgust in his voice was too much for me. I giggled. ‘Have you ever been to Bath?’ I asked smiling.

  ‘Aye,’ Ralph said. ‘They didn’t make me into a proper young lady either! But they’d have a better chance with you.’ He captured my hand where it was patting his horse’s neck and held it in a comforting clasp. ‘Follow your heart,’ he said gently. ‘I think this land is the place for you, and I think you are Beatrice’s heir. But John and your mama want different things for you. It is you who will have to live the life you choose – none of us. Try the taste of Bath – see how it suits you. Then come home to us if you like Wideacre best.’

  I nodded. Ralph’s wisdom was as simple as grass growing.

  ‘I am afraid of this doctor,’ I confessed.

  Ralph’s gentle touch turned into a handclasp as if we were shaking on a deal. ‘While I am alive, no one will coerce you,’ he said briefly. ‘That is a promise.’

  I looked up at him and I had a sudden sharp ringing sound in my head. ‘There will come a time when you will not be able to help me,’ I said certainly, in a voice which was not my own. ‘There will come a time when I will not be able to help you.’

  I fell silent and Ralph said nothing, waiting patiently in case there was more. ‘That will be a dark hour for the two of us,’ he said. ‘But it is not here now. Don’t be afraid of the future, little Julia. Take your present life and live it.’ He was about to turn his horse away when he checked and put his hand in his pocket. ‘I brought a present for you,’ he said casually. He lifted the pocket flap and brought out something hidden in his broad clenched hand. I reached up for it.

  It was a little wooden carved owl, warm from the warmth of his body, carved in a pale wood; hard and smooth-polished.

  ‘Ralph,’ I said, entranced. ‘Did you make it yourself? For me?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’m a gypsy’s lad, remember? I was up at the camp the other day, and I borrowed their tools for a while. You should be grateful I didn’t bring you a bag of clothes-pegs too.’

  I giggled at that. But as my fingers closed around the little wooden owl, I felt a long shudder sway me, a calling from the past, from Beatrice. ‘You gave her an owl,’ I said with certainty.

  Ralph’s glance at me was sharp. ‘If you were mad, you could not know that,’ he said. ‘No one knew of it but her and me. No one could have told you. I gave her an owl for love of her, on her birthday the year we were lovers, and she called it “Canny” for wisdom. I sent her a little china owl in hatred one year to frighten her when we were enemies, after she had lost all her wisdom and skill. And now I give a little wooden owl to you, her heir, with my love. To remind you to keep your wisdom as well as you can.’

  ‘I will,’ I said with all my heart. ‘Thank you, Ralph. You are so…’ I groped for the word. ‘You are so sweet to me.’

  Ralph looked utterly thunderstruck. ‘I must be nearing my dotage,’ he said in disgust. ? beddable wench like you finds me sweet? Good God!’ And he turned his horse’s head at once and waved farewell to me, still muttering.

  ‘Goodbye, Ralph!’ I called after him, happy as only he could make me. ‘I’ll be home for ploughing!’

  I don’t know if he heard me. His horse’s hooves were loud on the frost-hard ground, but he left me with a smile on my face, an escape from my fear…and a little wooden owl safe in the palm of my hand.

  I went back to the house to pack and dress for the journey. The gong went for breakfast and Mama ate her meal with a list and a pencil by her plate, there was so much to remember.

  We were late leaving, the boxes had to be finally corded up and tied on the back of the chaise. Mama forgot a novel she wanted and I had to run back in to fetch it, and she had a hundred things to tell Stride before she was ready to put both hands out of the window to John and say, ‘Goodbye, God bless you, and don’t work too hard.’

  He kissed both her hands and then stepped up to the window and kissed her on the lips. ‘God speed, Celia,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t buy a queen’s wardrobe, and come home soon.’

  Richard was on my side of the carriage. ‘I hope you will get better,’ he said, his voice light and insincere.

  I nodded.

  ‘If you are unwell and you stay in Bath, they will accept me as the squire in Acre, won’t they?’ he asked. ‘They believe you have the sight, but they know that I am the favoured child?’

  I did not have the energy to defend myself. ‘They will come to like you more and more,’ I said wearily, ‘and anyway, they will come to think that the sight means nothing.’

  I looked at him, scanning his face for a hint of kindliness towards me, for the love I had trusted all my childhood and girlhood. Richard, stone-faced Richard, smiled again his complacent
smile and stepped back from the carriage window. ‘I shall make Acre mine while you are gone,’ he said. ‘I have been waiting for my time. The hall will be how I have planned it, and Acre will come to my hand. I do indeed hope you soon feel well, Julia, but I dare say you will be there for months. Goodbye.’

  ‘We are joint heirs,’ I said in a sharp undertone. ‘The land will always be partly mine.’

  Richard smiled, a smile like midsummer skies. ‘I shan’t regard it,’ he said sweetly. ‘And you don’t know the law, my clever little cousin. If they commit you to an asylum, you are disinherited at once. Did you not know that, my dear? If you go on with your seeings and your dreamings, you will lose everything.’

  I could feel my eyes widen until I was blind with terror. ‘No,’ I said under my breath, but already Richard’s face was wavering in a haze. The carriage moved forward before I could call out a denial, a denial of everything he said. All I could do was to lean forward and see Richard, my stunningly handsome cousin Richard, with his dark curls and his bright blue eyes, standing arms akimbo in the lane as if he owned every inch of the land outright.

  13

  The journey from Wideacre to Bath took two days of hard travelling. If I had not been sick to my very heart and missing my home from the moment we left the estate, I should have enjoyed it: the bustle of the coaching inns when we changed the horses, the steep wide slopes of the great plain around Salisbury, the rocking motion of the carriage which lulled me to sleep and then woke me again with a jolt, and Mama, fresh in a new bonnet, stepping into coffee-rooms and dining-rooms as if she had been a lady of means every day of her life.

  The best part of the journey was across the humped back of southern England. It was good country, not unlike our downland scenery. Lower, of course; for whoever could build a carriage road over the top of my high and lovely downs? But rolling, and sweet and green, with that special springy grass which grows when the roots are in pale earth on a bedrock of chalk. The streams were clear and sweet too, with the clarity of water flowing cleanly off chalk. My mouth watered to taste them and I had a sudden pang of longing for a glass of Wideacre water.