I could think of no answer; I turned around to check that Ted and Matthew were still there. ‘Catch me!’ I squealed like a stuck pig and just toppled backwards off the wall towards them.
We went down in a tumbled heap on to the hard ground with the two of them taking the weight of my fall. They jumped up, but I was laughing so much I could not move.
‘What was it? What was it?’ Clary asked, smiling already at my helpless gales.
‘It was Dr Pearce!’ I said. ‘Right below me. He looked up…and he said…“Miss Lacey. What on earth are you doing?”‘
Clary gave a great wail of laughter and fell into Matthew’s arms. Ted put out a hand and pulled me to my feet, his brown round face contorted. The smaller children dropped down where they stood and howled with irrepressible mirth.
‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, wiping my streaming eyes. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go in the front garden gate and up the path.’
That set us off again even worse than before, and we staggered like a band of drunkards around to the lane.
‘Don’t come with me,’ I begged. ‘I must stop laughing.’
Clary nodded, still chuckling. ‘Come down to Acre again soon,’ she said. Her dirty face was streaked with the tears she had shed, and she still held her sides. ‘We could really use you in the gang. Great thief you are, Julia Lacey.’
I nodded, still unable to speak, and then turned towards the vicar’s front gate. Half-way up the path to the pretty house I stopped and drew in a deep breath. I did not know Dr Pearce well, and I did not think I would face anything worse than a scolding. But I did not want to disgrace myself utterly by bursting out laughing on the doorstep.
A hoot from behind me told me that Clary was watching, but I did not look around. I tapped on the door and the vicar’s housekeeper, Miss Green, opened it. She dipped a curtsy and held it wide, and I stepped into the hall, back into the world where I belonged.
Dr Pearce came out of the library with Richard and nodded to me as if it were the first time he had seen me that morning.
‘Hello, Miss Lacey,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Come to walk home with your cousin? We are just finished.’
For a moment I gaped at him, then I took my cue. Dr Pearce was not a man to seek difficulties. If he could turn a blind eye to them, then he would do so. He really did not want to know what I was doing sitting on his high garden wall with my coat torn and my face muddy and the naughty children of Acre catcalling encouragement from the lane below.
I curtsied demurely. ‘Yes, Dr Pearce,’ I said. I held Richard’s books while he pulled on his coat and hat, and we went back outside and home for dinner.
The children had gone, vanished like idle fox-cubs at the sound of a strange footstep. The weather had changed from the sunny morning. There were thick clouds piled all over the sky. Richard and I started at a jog-trot for home, speeded by a warning scud of rain on our backs.
‘Did you see Mrs Green?’ Richard asked breathlessly.
‘No,’ I said. I was having trouble keeping up for I was tired from my run with the village children and bruised from the fight with Clary and the fall from Dr Pearce’s wall.
‘Why not?’ Richard demanded. His blue eyes were bright. As soon as I had stepped over the vicar’s threshold, he had seen the scratch on my face and my tangled hair. He knew something had happened, but he would not ask me directly.
‘Tell you later,’ I puffed. I had no breath for a long explanation and I wanted time to think about exactly what I would tell Richard. I had a feeling, which I could not have explained, but which I thought was right, that I did not want to tell Richard the strange stories they had invented in the village about his mama. They might distress him. And I was sure, though I could not have said why, that I did not want to tell him of this newly woven fable of a favoured child, the one who was the true heir.
Richard heard the hesitation in my voice and skidded to a sudden stop and grabbed me by the arm so I swung around to face him. The rain stung my right cheek, but we were a little sheltered by the trees which overhung on the Wideacre side of Acre lane. In the field behind me the wind whistled and the rain sliced down on the self-seeded wheat and brambles.
‘Tell me now,’ he said.
I heard the warning note in his voice and I stood, uncomplaining, in the rain and told him of the walk to the wood and the fight with Clary and the truce we seemed to have made. I told him every single word spoken except Clary’s story about Beatrice. Richard’s stillness warned me that I had better sound thorough; and I was. I also omitted the taunt that I fought his battles for him. I did not tell him that Matthew had spat at the mention of his name. And I said nothing about scrumping the apples.
Richard heard me out, although the rain was making his hair curly with the damp so that he looked more like a fallen cherub than ever. ‘Well done, Julia!’ he said warmly when I had finished. ‘You are a brave girl. I am glad that you are not afraid of Acre any more. You were quite right to tackle the children. Now you will not be afraid to come with me when I go to have my lessons.’
I glowed under his approval.
‘I never minded them,’ he said carelessly, ‘but I am glad you have got over your fear.’
He let my arm go and turned to walk on. I hesitated only for a moment. One part of me wanted to correct him, the anxious proud voice in me which wanted to say, ‘But wait, Richard, you were afraid. I tackled the children for you.’ Then I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a lady’s place is second place, and I smiled a little secret smile, kept my peace and strode alongside him. Then the storm came down on our heads and we broke into a run and splashed up the drive in the milky puddles and dived in the back door, calling for towels and clean clothes. We were greeted by a scolding from Mrs Gough for tracking mud all over her clean kitchen floor.
4
That was the start of a friendship for me – my friendship with Clary Dench – which did so much to reconcile me to my task of becoming a young lady of Quality. Not because Clary knew my world, or cared anything for its arcane restrictions, but because with her I had an escape and a hiding-place from the standards of my mama and from the discipline I had imposed on myself by my determination to be a good daughter and, in the future, a good wife.
With Clary I could be myself. I loved her despite the differences in our lives, despite the fight at our first meeting and our regular quarrels thereafter. We forged an unquestioning friendship, in that we took enormous pleasure in each other’s company without ever wondering why we liked each other so much. I just found that it suited me very well to go every morning to the vicarage with Richard, to leave him there for his lessons and then to meet Clary and spend an hour or two of my leisured empty days with her.
We often walked together, past the mill down to the Fenny. Old Mrs Green always had a smile for me now, and sometimes I would beg a twist of tea in a piece of paper from the Dower House larder, and Clary and I would go and sit by the tiny fire in the huge fireplace while Mrs Green made tea and told our fortunes in the tea-leaves. It was all a game – I think she had no real skill. She was copying what the gypsies did when they pitched their wagons on the common land for winter and came around to the houses, selling little wooden toys and whittled flowers, and offering to tell fortunes.
When the weather was good, Clary and I would walk on the common, or down to the Fenny. During the long hot summertime we would strip down to our shifts and bathe in the deeper pools of the river. Neither of us could swim properly, but if Clary held my chin above water-level with one brown hand over my mouth to keep the water out, I could kick along for a few yards before sinking inelegantly in splashes and gales of laughter.
Clary was better. Within the week she could splash from one side of the pool to the other, and she even learned to plunge underwater and swim for half the length before coming up gasping, hair streaming. ‘I must have been born with a caul!’ she said. ‘I shan’t never drown at any rate.’
I was lazing in the s
hallows, in bright sunlight, but I shivered as if a cold wind had suddenly blown over me. A shadow came over the sun as she spoke, and every hair on my body stood up and pimpled the surface of my skin.
‘What is it?’ she asked me. ‘Your face has gone all pale and funny.’
‘It’s nothing,’ I said hastily. I had suddenly seen her face deathly white and her hair washing around it, and water, river water, oozing from her mouth. ‘Ugh!’ I said. ‘A horrid picture in my head. Come out, come out of the water, Clary.’
‘All right,’ she said equably and swam towards me and heaved herself out on to the bank to dry beside me in the sunshine, our naked bodies as white and shiny as the breasts of doves.
‘Promise me something,’ I said, suddenly serious, that picture of her face, soaked and sodden, still vivid in my mind. ‘Promise me you’ll never swim alone.’
She twisted around propped on one elbow. ‘Why’s that, Julia?’ she asked. ‘Why d’you look so odd?’ And then, seeing my face, she said, ‘All right! All right! I promise. But why do you look so strange?’
‘I saw…’ I said, but I was vague and the picture was fading from my mind. ‘I thought I saw something,’ I said.
‘It’s the sight,’ she said, portentously. ‘I heard my ma talking to Mrs Green. They were talking about you and Richard. They say whichever one of you is the true heir is going to have the sight. One of you’ll get it as soon as you’re grown.’
‘That’s Richard,’ I said definitely. I rolled on my front and picked a grass stem to chew. The pith of the stalk was as sweet as nectar.
‘They say in the village that it could be you,’ Clary said warningly. ‘They say you’re the spit of Beatrice as a girl when she used to come riding into the village with her pa. They say you’re her all over again. They say that you’ll be the one.’
I sat up and pulled my crumpled gown on over my head. ‘No,’ I said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t want it if it was offered to me on a plate. Richard is her son. Richard is her heir. Together we will be Laceys on the land again, but Richard will be the squire and I will be his lady. I want that, Clary!’
‘Aye,’ she nodded, and smiled her slow smile. ‘Does he kiss you, Julia?’
‘No, not really,’ I said. ‘I suppose it’s not like that for Quality, Clary. He’s more like a brother to me. Sometimes we’re very close, sometimes we quarrel. But it’s not like in novels.’
Clary looked sceptical and worldly-wise. ‘Wouldn’t do for me, then, Quality life,’ she said boldly. ‘Matthew and me hold hands and kiss often. And we’ve plighted our troth and carved our names in a tree, and everything. But he’s not strong,’ she said anxiously. ‘I wish there was more money in the village. I’m afraid for him. He coughs so much in winter, his gran thought she’d never rear him.’
‘Maybe he’ll get work indoors,’ I said helpfully. ‘You say yourself he’s thoughtful and clever. Maybe he’ll become a clerk or something and work in Midhurst! Or even Chichester! I’d like to see you in a fine town house, Clary!’
We laughed at that, but Clary tossed her head. ‘I’d not leave Wideacre,’ she said. ‘But my Matthew is clever enough for anything. Even when we were little children, he taught himself to read, and he’s always written and read letters for people in the village. And he can make rhymes as good as in books.’
I nodded, impressed; and then I turned for her to button up the back of my gown so that I could arrive at the vicarage to go home with Richard looking at least half presentable.
I had laughed off her belief in the sight and in Beatrice’s heir. But the way they looked at me in the village and the story of the old god of Wideacre stayed with me all the time I was growing and trying to be an ordinary girl in the Dower House. All the time in the back of my mind was the thought of Beatrice and the dark god who came for her and the legacy of magic she had left for her special heir, whichever one of us it was.
I tried to shrug off the Acre legend. I always knew it was some fanciful version of the night of the Wideacre fire, all exaggeration and pretence. Mama had scolded me often enough for being scared out of my wits by Richard’s ghost stories. I should not be made fearful by some silly village gossip.
But I could not forget it. It haunted me: the story of the man who was one of the old gods, who came for Beatrice. And Beatrice, who was the beautiful cruel goddess-destroyer. I carried that picture of her in my head, despite myself. It was so unlike Mama’s version of those days – Beatrice and Harry working the land in harmonious partnership. Half a dozen times I shrugged my shoulders and told myself it was forgotten. But the horse which left flaming hoofprints up the oak stairs rode into my dreams every night.
And then I started dreaming a special dream.
It was like the other – the dream I have of the woman who was me, and the baby who must be taken to the river. But this time the woman was not me. Even in my sleep I knew I was seeing through her eyes and smiling her smile. But I knew she was not me.
I first had the special dream a few nights after Clary had held me spellbound in the woods with her fairytale. But then I dreamed it again, and again. Each time the colours were a little brighter. Each time the sounds were a little clearer – like a scene in mist which is burned off by the morning sun as you watch. Every time my heartbeat went a little faster as the terror and the delight of the dream grew stronger. Then, the night before my sixteenth birthday, I dreamed it as brightly and as vividly as if I were living it.
In the dream I was in an empty house. A large house, a beautiful house, one I had never visited in my waking life. I did not know the house, and yet it was the most familiar, the most beloved, the most precious place in the world. It was a large house, a gracious house, the home of a landowner who lived on fertile lands. I was entranced by the silence of the house, of this house which was my home. I sighed in my delight that it was at last mine, all mine, and my breath was the only thing which stirred in the great echoing hall, the only thing which moved in the still silent rooms.
I walked from room to room like a ghost, like a dream of a ghost. I was as silent as a cat, with a cat’s unwinking stare, looking, looking, looking, as if I had to see everything now, every beloved inch of my home, as if I would never be able to see it again. I was printing the picture of it on my mind as if I were about to go into exile, or to fall under an enchantment. And I was imprinting myself on the place, so that this place, my home, would never, never forget me. I belonged here. I should be here for ever.
It was all so still. I made no sound, not even the quietest footfall. The silence held echoes of people who were here – but I could not be quite sure who they were. There were echoes of people who had only just left: loud voices and bitter words and the slam of a distant door. But now the house was empty. It was mine at last.
I touched things, touched like a priestess at a shrine, a worshipper of these smooth sweet things. The carved newel post at the foot of the sweep of the stairs had intricate pictures beneath my caressing fingertips, pictures of a land ripe with fertility, a cow in calf, a sheep’s fleecy side, sheaves of wheat. I knew it was my land which was celebrated here in wood smelling of beeswax, and it was warm and silky as if it loved my caress.
Opposite the newel post in the shadows of the wall was a gilt mirror, and I turned from the stairs to face it. But it was not my reflection in the dark glass. It was not my childish round-faced prettiness, my light hair, my grey eyes. It was the face of a stranger, a woman I had never met in my waking life. Yet I knew her face as well as I knew my own; for in the dream that vivid chestnut hair and those slanty green eyes were my features, and her vague half-mad look was mine. I stared at the reflection of the stranger, which was my face, for long unblinking moments, and then I dropped my eyes with a secret sly smile.
Beneath the mirror was a mahogany table. I placed my palm upon it and felt the coolness of the wood warming under my touch. There was a silver bowl on the table, filled with drooping cream roses, heavy headed, looking down at their own reflecti
ons in the polished surface. I brushed one flower with the tip of a careless finger and it shed its petals in a swift flurry like a creamy snowdrift. In my head I heard a voice – a voice just like my mama’s but in a tone I had never heard from her – saying, ‘You are a wrecker, Beatrice.’ Her voice was full of disdain.
Further up the hall was a great china bowl of potpourri and I stood beside it and dipped my hand in to feel the papery rose petals, the spiky lavender seeds, and bent to smell the sweet dried hay scent. The lighter petals and the dust spilled over the floor as I carelessly took a handful to sniff. It did not matter. Soon nothing would ever matter again.
A storm had been rumbling in the distance and now it was louder, rolling back over the head of the downs and coming close over the woods to this house. I thought of the two children, the little girl and the baby boy, fleeing from this house in a carriage with the rain drumming on the roof and the horses in a panic of fear at the storm. I knew they would be safe. They were on my land, and they were the bone of my bone and they were my blood. They would inherit Wideacre, and one of them would surely learn to hear the heartbeat of the land. One of them would make the magic of the harvest as I once did. One of them would be the favoured child.
The wallpaper was soft underneath my fingertips, rich. The velvet drapes at the window of the parlour were as silky soft as the fleece of a new-born lamb. The thick glass in the windows was icy cold from the rain pouring down outside. I leaned my forehead against its coolness and smiled.
The house was filled with silence. I could hear the parlour clock tick with a light metallic tick…tick…tick. In the hall the grandfather clock had a deeper wooden tone, tock…tock…tock. And I could hear another sound. There was the deep rumble of the storm but that noise did not alarm me. Above that rumble there was another sound, a new sound. I was listening carefully for it, as sharp-eared as a rat in a dark hole.