The Favoured Child (82 page)

‘I remember,’ I said. ‘But I should have thought Mr Megson’s safest course would be to take a ship out of London. He had many seafaring friends too.’

‘You don’t think he would come here?’ Richard insisted. His eyes on my face were as urgent as those of a child woken from a nightmare, demanding reassurance.

‘No,’ I said steadily. I was not rescuing Richard from his fears to oblige him. There was that deathly coldness around my heart still which made me think that I would never again wish to help anyone, least of all Richard. But I was too remote from him to tease him either.

‘If he came here, would Acre hide him?’ Richard persisted. ‘They hid Dench the groom, remember, Julia!’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I never go to Acre these days, Richard, you know I have not been there since the autumn. You must know better than I what the mood of the village is. Would they hide an enemy of yours? Or do they cleave to the Laceys?’

Richard jumped from his chair in sudden impatience, and some cold quiet part of my mind thought yes, you are truly afraid, are you not, Richard? You who have done so much to make so many people afraid of you. All of Acre, and Clary who must have looked in your face before she died in terror, whose fear is so unbearable to me that it is walled away in a rose-pearled corner of my frozen mind. And now you are most bitterly afraid.

‘I want you to go to Acre,’ Richard said suddenly. ‘I want you to go down there tomorrow. I’ll order out the carriage for you, and if you cannot get there in the carriage, you will have to go in the gig. Or you will have to ride! It surely would not hurt you to ride if the horse only walked, and the groom could even lead it to make absolutely sure that you were safe. I want you to go down there and tell them that Ralph has escaped and that he is a danger to the public safety. There is a big reward on his head, Julia! I want you to tell them that too. I want you to tell them that if he comes to Acre, I personally will give one hundred pounds to anyone who gives us warning. That should do it! Won’t it, Julia?’

‘That depends on how poor the village is at present,’ I said levelly. ‘Are things so bad that they would betray an old friend for a hundred pounds?’

Richard strode impatiently to the windows, but he did not draw the curtains to look out. Ralph was a marksman.

‘ You
are supposed to be their great friend,’ he said impatiently. ‘If you ask them to tell if Megson comes to the village, they would do it as a favour to you, would they not?’

‘I cannot say,’ I said. I reached to the bell-pull and rang for Stride to clear the tea things away. ‘I really cannot say, Richard. I am loath even to consider going. I am only two weeks away from when the baby is due. I am sure Mr Saintly would advise against me going far from the house. He told me to stay indoors some months ago, as you may remember.’

Richard spun on his heel, but bit back his reply as Stride came into the room. Stride glanced curiously at the two of us, and I saw him hesitate to leave me alone with Richard.

‘You needn’t wait,’ Richard said rudely.

Stride’s glance went to me, and I nodded. ‘It is all right, Stride,’ I said. He bowed slightly, and went out.

‘You are my wife,’ Richard said, and now he had himself under control. ‘This is a matter of some importance which affects the good running of our lands and, indeed, my personal safety. You will go to Acre because I wish it, Julia.’

I nodded calmly. ‘If you wish it,’ I said. I had nothing to lose. If I was taken ill in Acre, I could go to the vicarage or any one of a dozen cottages for the birth of my child. If I had to ride and the baby was damaged, I had hardened my heart to it. I had sworn I would not rear a squire for Wideacre, and I meant it. I might love the little child who rolled and kicked in my womb, but I would not raise another Lacey to lord it in Acre. I prayed that it would die at birth.

To tell the truth, I prayed that I would die too.

So it mattered little to me if I rode or drove, if my child came early at Acre or in a frozen ditch on the way home. Nothing mattered very much any more. Now Ralph was free, there was nothing I had yet to do, except to get this baby born, and then to get it away from Richard and from Wideacre. It must be hidden, or fostered, or killed.

Besides, an appeal to Acre to betray Ralph was hardly worth the breeze which blew my words away. It was a dream of Richard’s that
anyone
could turn Acre against Ralph. He was the counterpoint to the discord of the Laceys. He was their black squire. They might give us their loyalty from time to time, they might sell or be robbed of their labour. They might have a season of loving us or of hating us. But Ralph was the man they could trust. If he wanted to stay safe in England, he would come here. There was not enough money minted to buy a betrayal.

The carriage stopped on the village green under the old chestnut tree where the old men gather in the evening, the natural site
for a parley. I stood on the steps of the carriage and waited while the cottage doors opened and people came out. I saw the old familiar faces of Acre, and I saw that they were, once more, as I had known them in my girlhood: pinched, wan, cold.

They were not starving – Ralph’s hidden wheat would last till spring as he had planned. They were not ill clothed. They had savings which would last them for a while. But the heart was out of them again, and I thought that this time the winter was even worse for them, because for one sweet year they had learned to hope for better.

Poor fools. Poor silly fools. And I the greatest fool of all to have the chance of such happiness for so many people in my hand and to give it away because I was too much of a coward to stand up and say, ‘I have been cruelly attacked, and it was
not
my fault.’

They gathered around me in a circle and I knew my face was grim. The child inside my belly stirred and kicked, and I rested one hand on it. I could not help the pang of tenderness I felt every time the little one stirred inside me. But when I saw the eyes of Acre upon me, as leaden as sick cattle, I knew that this child must not be raised here.

This child must not be raised at all.

I should remember what Ralph had said about the French monarchs. I should remember that he said you have to plough before you can sow. The Laceys must be cleaned off Wideacre. The angry ugly French revolutionaries were going to execute their king. I was going to eradicate the Lacey line.

I looked around at the blank faces and I raised my voice. “My husband has ordered me to come and speak to you,’ I said clearly, so that there should be no doubt whose message it was. ‘He has learned that Mr Ralph Megson, who was once manager here, has escaped from prison.’

I looked round quickly, but there was no surprise or delight on any face. They knew already, then. I had thought they would.

‘A reward of two hundred pounds has been offered for information to bring about the capture of Mr Megson and the men who
fled with him,’ I said. I was repeating Richard’s words by rote and they would all know well enough that this was an empty formality we were enacting. ‘My husband wishes you to know that if Mr Megson is taken in Acre, he will reward the village handsomely. He will pay one hundred pounds each to every man who assists in the recapture. There will be free flour and free milk for the whole village until sowing time.’

There was a ripple of interest at that, not because they saw the opportunity for earning such wealth, but because they read from that bribe the extent of Richard’s fear. I saw all around me that people were hiding smiles, and I could scarce keep the amused contempt from my own voice.

‘My husband asks me to remind you that Mr Megson was a known rioter, and a dangerous man,’ I said. ‘It is thought that he may be hiding with the gypsies, and you are ordered to report any new gypsy families arriving on the common at once.’

They nodded. I waited a moment, then I turned to go back into the coach. I was unaccountably weary and my back ached. I wanted to drive home as fast as I possibly could and go to bed for the afternoon. I would call for the kitchenmaid to light a fire in my room and watch the flames flicker while the light drained from the window. I just wanted to be in the warm darkness and away from this cold land, and these icy skies and these betrayed people.

‘Miss Julia!’ someone said. I paused. George had folded up the steps, but he paused and held open the door so I could lean forward and see who wanted me.

It was old Mrs Merry.

I flinched away from her worn face as if I feared she might strike me. All my life I had known that round face, as rosy and as wrinkled as a winter apple. But since the loss of her grandson, all the skin had dropped down, and all the lines around her eyes, around her mouth, had lost their habit of smiling.

She came to the front of the crowd and looked up at me, sitting in the rich high-sprung carriage lined with pink silk which Richard had bought for us to replace the bloodstained one
abandoned outside Haslemere. I looked down at her like some fairy princess with an old fortune-teller. ‘Yes, Mrs Merry?’

Her pale blue eyes were swimming, and the soft wrinkled skin of her cheeks was wet with her old-woman tears. But I knew that she was not weeping for herself and for her loneliness and the death of her grandson. She was weeping for me. She pitied me.

‘You deserved better than this, sweetheart,’ she said, and her thin voice was full of compassion. A couple within earshot nodded their support and I saw them all looking at me as if I were a victim, as well as Acre. ‘We all hoped for a better world,’ she said. ‘We have been betrayed by the squire, by the power of the gentry. But even though you are gentry yourself, you were not safe. You’re a woman and you have had to learn your master, even as we have learned that lesson again.’

I thought how Richard had mastered me, through my loyalty and love for him, through his violence, and then by the convention of the world which said I
had
to marry the father of my child.

‘I hate him, Mrs Merry,’ I said. ‘I wish he were dead.’

She nodded, her face showing no shock. ‘Aye,’ she said. ‘You would do. But don’t waste your courage on hating him. Keep yourself
to
yourself, dearie. And keep up your courage and think of a healthy baby.’

‘I won’t have another squire for Wideacre,’ I said in swift contradiction. I had raised my voice, and a couple of the men turned and listened to what we were saying. ‘I won’t be the mother of a squire. I won’t set a child to have power over the land, nor power over you people. I won’t do that.’

She nodded. ‘It would be a better world indeed if the masters would refuse to rule,’ she said. ‘All Acre has ever done is refuse to obey, and we have been tricked and betrayed out of that resolve time after time.’

I hung my head. It was my high hopes and my bright plans and my quickly dishonoured promises which had tricked them this time. Everything around me, my love of the land, my love of Richard, seemed to have been corrupted and made bad.

‘I must go,’ I said miserably.

Mrs Merry stepped back and George shut the door, his town-bred face impassive. I pulled down the window strap and leaned out. George turned to get up on the back, out of earshot.

‘What can I do?’ I said urgently to Mrs Merry. ‘How can I stop this?’

Her head came up slowly and her eyes met mine and, surprisingly, flowered into a broad sweet smile. ‘Do?’ she said.
‘You
need do nothing, Miss Julia!’ George was on the box, smart in his livery, straining his ears, I guessed. ‘Ralph will do it,’ Mrs Merry said sweetly. ‘Ralph is on his way home again.’

‘What. . .?’ I started, but the horses were moving forward and one of the men had taken Mrs Merry’s arm to hold her safely away from the high carriage-wheels. He saw my face, the astonishment, the dawning hope and he grinned at me, the old Acre grin of complete equality.

It was the grin of conspirators who at last have some hopes of victory. The carriage whirled me away and I fell back against Richard’s silk cushions. I knew I was smiling too, and my heart suddenly became light.

‘What did they say in Acre?’ Richard demanded of me. He was at the garden gate, ready to hand me from the carriage.

‘Nothing,’ I said. I let him lead me up the path and into the hall, but I hesitated when he opened the parlour door. ‘I want to rest in my bedroom, Richard. I am very tired.’

He let me go to the stairs, but he wanted more news. ‘Did you say what I told you to say?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘And what did they say?’ he pressed me.

‘They said nothing,’ I said.

‘Did you speak to no one privately? Did no one mention whether the gypsies were on the common yet? Did no one in particular ask about Megson? What about Ned Smith? –
he
was always very thick with Megson.’

I looked at Richard, standing at the foot of the staircase, and I
raised my eyebrows at him. I was insolent and I knew it. But I had a new courage, a new reason for courage, because I knew that there was a clock ticking away under our life in the Dower House, because I knew that soon the hour was going to strike and the clapper would fall and this whole rotten life would smash to pieces. Two events were converging: the child in my belly was moving slowly to be born, and Ralph was travelling the secret ways from London, concealed in a gypsy cart, along little tracks down hidden paths that the gentry did not even know.

‘I spoke to no one privately,’ I said, ticking off Richard’s questions on gloved fingers. ‘No one said whether the gypsies had arrived on the common yet, but since they always come around Christmas, I should think they will be there any day now. No one asked about Mr Megson. Ned Smith was there with the rest of them, but he did not speak out.’

Richard took my hand roughly in a tight grip. ‘What has got into you?’ he demanded. His eyes were sharp, and he looked me over from my suddenly brightened face down to my feet standing squarely on the stair. ‘Someone said something which has made you feel that you can challenge me,’ he said accurately. ‘Someone has made you feel that you can look at me with those impertinent grey eyes. Someone has tried to make you forget what I can do to you.’ He broke off and he looked at me measuringly. I could feel his hand tighten on mine, I could feel the bones shift together and the sinews sing in pain.