The Favoured Child (11 page)

I excused myself from the room and slipped out into the hall. The front door was unlocked, and I threw on my cloak and let myself out. I could dimly see Dench ahead of me down the drive, walking back to Acre. Even at that distance I could see that his shoulders were slumped. His stride had lost its swing. I ran after him.

‘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.’