He gave a great shudder at the pinnacle of the very worst of it and then he collapsed and dropped his weight upon me as if I were nothing more to him than a bale of straw.
I lay spreadeagled on the dusty floor, where once I had dreamed of passion, with the tears pouring down my cheeks in a morass of pain and misery. I could feel I was bleeding, I could feel a bruise forming on my thigh where he had knelt upon me; but I could not comprehend the pain inside me.
He rolled off me and then was suddenly alert, looking out of the open doorway. He jumped to his feet, without a word to me, and, hitching his breeches, ran down the steps into the rose garden as if all the fiends of hell were after him. He ran from me as if he had murdered me indeed and he was leaving a sprawled body. I lay still, as he had left me, and I stared at the white roof and at the little hole in the timbers where the blue sky showed through, and I felt a little trickle of blood between my legs.
My belly seemed to have gone into some sort of regular spasms of pain, for every now and then it eased, but then there was a great wave which came over me and made me gasp and bite the back of my uninjured hand so as not to cry out. My broken wrist was throbbing, and I could see it was bruised black and swelling.
I lay on the dusty floor with my pretty cream riding habit pulled up to my waist and my hair tumbled down and spread in the dust, and I knew myself to be so broken and destroyed that it would have been better for me if Richard had completed his threat and strangled me while I lay there.
I don’t know how long it was before I sat up. I did not think, I did not think at all about what had happened, or what I could do. All I could think of was an urgent, passionate need to be home. I wanted to be in my bedroom with the door locked. I wanted to be in my bed with the covers up over my head. I sat up, and then I took hold of the doorjamb and heaved myself to my feet. I staggered, but I did not fall. I seemed to have stopped bleeding. My dress was unmarked. I held tight to the door and took one shallow step at a time into the rose garden.
Misty was gone. I shut my eyes and then opened them again in the hopes that I was mistaken, that she was where I had left her. But she had pulled her reins free and taken herself off home.
I sobbed at that, the first sound I had made since I had said, ‘Richard, no!’ in a voice which would not have halted a mouse. Misty was gone and I could not see how I could ever get home. All I wanted, all I wanted in the whole world, was to be home and asleep.
My head was swimming, and my knees buckled and I collapsed on to the step of the summer-house. I rested my head in the crook of my elbow and let the spring sunshine warm my back. I did not think I would ever feel warm inside again. I stayed like that, quite still, for what seemed like a lifetime of numb misery.
Then I heard, in the woods, voices calling my name, over and over again, and a little silence between the calling while they listened for me. I heard hoofbeats on the drive, and Jem’s voice, harsh with anxiety calling, ‘Miss Julia! Miss Julia!’
‘I’m here!’ I said in a pathetic little voice. ‘Here, Jem! At the summer-house!’ I got to my feet and went down the drive to meet him.
He was riding Prince, and I saw the horse suddenly leap forward when Jem caught sight of me. He was beside me in an instant.
‘Did you take a fall?’ he said. ‘Sea Mist came home with a broken rein and her saddle too loose. I guessed you’d come off her.’
I nodded, too weary to speak and too full of pain and confusion to say the unsayable, to accuse.
And anyway, I felt that it was me who was in the wrong.
‘Could you ride?’ he asked me, ‘or shall I go home and send for the carriage?’
I nodded dumbly towards Prince. ‘I want to go home,’ I said pitifully. Jem lifted me up on to Prince’s back, and then vaulted up behind me. His arms were around me, holding me safe and steady, but for a moment’s madness I was suddenly afraid of him, of Jem, whom I had known all my life and who had come out calling and looking for me.
I bit my bottom lip to keep myself from crying out. I knew I had nothing to fear from Jem.
I had not smiled and walked with him. I had not kissed him before all Acre. And I had not promised that we should be married. All these things I had done with Richard, and then I had lied to him about my plans. I had never told him about the plan to live on Wideacre with James. I had never lied outright indeed; but I had kept silent.
And when he had first kissed me in the summer-house, I had smiled.
And when I had first felt his weight upon me, I had put my arms around his neck and opened my mouth for the taste of his tongue.
‘I’m going to be sick,’ I said abruptly to Jem, and turned my head away from him as I retched over Prince’s shoulder.
Nothing came but a mouthful of bile with the acid taste of fear.
Jem turned Prince’s head for home and took us down the drive at a steady walk. ‘Your ma stayed at home in case you were found, or walked home,’ Jem said gently. ‘Everyone else is out looking. I’ll sound the gong when we get in so they know. And someone will pull the school bell to tell ’em you’re safe found.’
I nodded. Prince was walking on the soft turf in the centre of the drive. Even that smooth walk jolted my broken wrist and my clenched stomach almost more than I could bear. But the Dower House was in sight, and I gritted my teeth and kept silent.
The front-garden gate was open, and Jem rode Prince right up the path to the door and shouted, ‘Holloa!’ through the open doorway.
I could see a figure coming out from the front hall, and I could feel myself longing for my mama’s safe touch.
But it was not my mama. It was Richard. My mama was behind him, but it was Richard who was first out down the steps and who reached up to lift me down from the horse, and who carried me in his arms like a little child come safe home to him.
‘Julia! Thank God!’ he said. ‘I’ll take her, Jem. There. Gently with that hand.’
Then Mama was at his side and her cheek was cool against mine. ‘Poor darling!’ she said gently. ‘Did you fall?’
I opened my mouth; Richard’s arms around me tightened slightly, imperceptibly. I glanced up at his familiar face, so close to mine. Richard, who had been my dearest love since my earliest childhood. His eyes were shining, he was smiling at me with such warmth, but a little hint of devilry lay at the back of his blue eyes.
‘Tell your mama, Julia,’ he said, and his voice was warm with laughter. ‘Tell us what happened and how you came to hurt your hand like this.’
It was impossible.
I could no more have told her the truth than I could have shouted obscenities at her. I would have been too shamed. Shamed for her, shamed for Richard and shamed for me.
My throat tightened and the tears poured down my face. ‘I fell,’ I said. My throat was still sore and my voice was croaky. ‘I fell from Misty and she ran off.’
Richard turned at once and took me towards the house, Mama holding my sound hand in hers as we went up the stairs to my room. Richard put me gently on the little bed and turned for the door. He paused in the doorway and looked at me, his face alight with amusement, and he closed one eye in a wink as if we shared a most delightful secret. Then he was gone.
I slept until early afternoon when I woke to the noise of my bedroom door opening, and Mama came in with a tray in both hands and her eyes on the level of the milk in the jug.
‘Tea,’ she said. ‘Tea for the invalid. Julia, my darling, I cannot tell you what a fright you gave us all!’
I tried to smile. But I had no smile. And when I sat up in bed, I found my lips were trembling so that I could scarcely speak.
‘My wrist hurts,’ I said childishly.
Mama looked at it. ‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘It looks badly bruised, or even broken.’ She put down the tray and went straight away out of the room. I heard her footsteps running down the stairs and then I heard her and John come back up together.
He looked at my hand, half clenched against the pain, blue
as an iris. ‘Broken,’ he said across me to my mama. ‘You’d best go out, Celia – this is something Julia and I will be better doing alone.’
My mama looked to me. ‘Shall I stay?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I said, though I was past caring.
‘I’ll get my bag,’ Uncle John said.
Setting the broken bone in my wrist was a painful business. Brutish. But in some odd way I welcomed the pain. It was clear, forceful. It was one of the few things left in the world which I could be sure of. The pain of a broken wrist. The small square of Wideacre sky seen from my window. And Richard’s sly, naughty smile.
‘You’ll stay abed for dinner,’ Mama said, looking at my white face when John allowed her back in the room.
‘Yes,’ I said feebly.
‘Would you like anything now?’ she asked.
I drew a breath. I knew I had to tell her. Of course she had to know. ‘Mama…’ I started.
‘Richard said he would have his dinner up here with you,’ Mama offered. ‘I expect you would like the company, wouldn’t you, darling?’
I hesitated. The birdsong outside seemed to go quiet with me.
I could not say it. I could not tell her what he had done to me. I could not tell her how I had lain back and smiled and let it happen. I could not tell them that John’s son and the part heir to Wideacre was a rapist.
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘Richard can have his dinner up here.’
‘Good,’ Mama said, businesslike. ‘He’s out in the stables now, seeing to your horse.’
Something broke in my head at that – through the haze of laudanum and the heaviness of my sin. I sat up in bed, and I spoke across Uncle John to my mama. ‘No!’ I said. ‘Mama, please! Please don’t let him touch Misty.’
She shot a bewildered look at John as if this might be some symptom of a blow on the head or high temperature.
‘Please!’ I said urgently. ‘Promise me, Mama! Don’t let him touch my horse.’
‘No, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘Not if you do not wish it. I will go down to the stables now and tell him to come away from her, and leave her to Jem if that is what you wish.’
‘It is,’ I said, and sank back on the pillows.
‘Now sleep,’ John said authoritatively. ‘Sleep until dinnertime. There will be no more pain and there is nothing to worry you, so sleep, Julia.’
I smiled towards him, but I could barely see his face; the room was wavering before my eyes. I think I was asleep before the two of them had left the room.
I slept until dinner.
Richard came upstairs and Jenny Hodgett served our meal and stood discreetly at Richard’s elbow throughout.
I ate little, for I was not hungry. And every now and then I would look at Richard and feel my eyes fill with useless, inexplicable tears. I felt that it was my fault. My fault that it had happened. My fault that I had not told at once, the minute I was home, that through my cowardice Richard and Mama, Uncle John and I would all be living a lie. I had not told when I should have told. And now I could say nothing. I could not even stop Richard smiling at me in that familiar, conspiratorial way.
When Jenny brought up a dish of tea for me, she had a message from Uncle John: if ‘I felt well enough, Mr Megson was downstairs and would speak with me. Richard left the room and Jenny helped me from my bed and into my wrapper. I knew it must be something important for Ralph to come to the house at this time of night, and I paused before my mirror to push my hair back and tie it with a ribbon. I knew that I would not be able to tell Ralph either. I wondered if he would know without being told that I had lost my honesty, that I was a liar.
Ralph and Uncle John were downstairs in the library. He smiled at me and asked after my accident, and apologized for calling me downstairs when I was unwell. I nodded. Ralph and I had always been mercifully brief with each other.
‘Clary Dench is missing,’ he said shortly. ‘I’m trying to discover when she was last seen and if she had plans to go away for the holiday.’
I took a deep breath. I could scarcely understand what he was saying. ‘I saw her on the downs, at the maying,’ I said. ‘She said she was going home, and she left early. She was planning no holiday away from Acre.’
Ralph nodded. ‘I can’t believe she’d go off without a word to anyone,’ he said, half to Uncle John, half to me.
‘D’you think some harm has befallen the girl?’ Uncle John demanded.
Ralph grimaced and glanced at me in case I could help him. ‘It’s always hard to tell with wenches,’ he said. ‘I’ll not turn out the village to hunt for her on a fool’s errand. It’s their first holiday in years and they’ve been out once today already looking for Miss Julia.’
‘Clary’s not flighty,’ I said. The words I was speaking were echoing coldly as if I were speaking down a well. I knew I had seen true on the downs in the morning. I had tried to keep Clary with me then. I had been afraid to tell her how dark a shadow I saw on her. I seemed to be afraid to tell the truth to anyone. ‘She’d have told someone if she was going off. And I don’t believe she’d have left her family without a word like that.’
Ralph nodded. The door opened and Richard came in quietly and stood at one end of the long table, at the carver chair, where the head of the household would sit.
‘What would you wish?’ Ralph asked the air midway between Uncle John and me. He did not even glance at Richard.
‘Take two or three men and look around the woods for her,’ Uncle John said, his eyes on me.
I nodded. ‘Start at the Fenny,’ I said. ‘Clary always went down to the river when she was sad. And she was very sad today.’
Ralph nodded. ‘She had quarrelled with Matthew?’
‘Yes,’ I said, taciturn.
‘I’ll have a few out to look for her,’ he said. ‘But it’s a nuisance. I had promised Acre they would have a couple of days free of work. Now I shall have to order some men out when they will want to be dancing.’
‘I’ll help,’ Richard said suddenly. We all turned and looked at him. He was very bright. ‘I’ll help. There’s little I can do to help on the land,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’d be glad to save you some trouble, Mr Megson, and help with finding Clary.’
‘Thank ’ee,’ Ralph said slowly. He was looking at Richard very hard, no smile in his eyes. ‘That would be a help. I’ll send the men down to you tomorrow morn, as soon as it is light, unless the lass turns up home before then.’
‘I’ll be ready,’ Richard promised.
Ralph turned to me. ‘And you, Miss Julia? Will you be resting tomorrow or will you be well enough then to come down and at least watch the dancing?’
I was about to say that I would be well enough to go down to Acre tomorrow, but a pang in my belly made me gasp and my eyes filled with ineffectual tears. ‘I’m tired,’ I said weakly. ‘I’ll come down to the village when I feel better, Mr Megson.’
‘Aye,’ Ralph said generously. ‘Don’t come before you’re well. I’m surprised you fell at all, but then, good riders often fall the hardest. I’m truly sorry it was a fall from a horse I’d chosen for you!’
‘It was not her fault,’ I said. My lips had grown cold and stiff and I could hardly speak. ‘It was all my own fault, Ralph. It was all my fault. I should have known better.’
‘Now that’s enough,’ said Richard kindly. ‘I’ll fetch your mama to put you to bed.’ He turned to Ralph. ‘She’s still shocked from her fall,’ he said.
Ralph stepped backwards one pace and bowed. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ he said awkwardly.
I held my hand out to him. I wanted to say that he was not intruding, that he would never intrude. I wanted to beg him to look for Clary, to tell him of my foreboding for her, to make him see with the sight that something was badly wrong. But it was no good. I could not tell him that truth. I could not tell him that I had not fallen from my horse. I could do no more than look towards Ralph with one long imploring glance – and then the tears welled up in my eyes and r
olled down my cheeks.
‘I am sorry,’ I said in a voice choked with weeping. ‘I am so sorry. I cannot seem to stop crying.’
‘Bedtime,’ John said with kind firmness. Richard came in with Mama and she helped me up the stairs to my bedroom and tucked me up in bed as if I were a little girl again. All the time the tears were rolling down my face and she wiped them with her own cool handkerchief which smelled of lilies, and then tucked it under my pillow and left me with one candle for a light.
I lay on my back and felt the tears roll outwards from the corner of my eyes and down my temples in drying little lanes of desolation. Then I gasped and sat up in my bed as I remembered that my petticoat and shift were stained with blood.
Wearily I got out of bed and went to the chest where I had bundled them, and I pulled them out. The blood was brown – old and inoffensive now. I folded them up and stuffed them on the embers of my bedroom fire. They smouldered and burned as I tumbled back into bed and slept, and it was doubtless the smoke from the fire that made me dream uneasy dreams about an empty house, and men coming with torches, and a fire which burned down the whole house and left nothing but ruin on the land.
Clary was dead.
I had guessed it. I had seen her in danger ever since I had looked along the lines of the raspberry-cane weeders and shuddered because she was not there.
No one knew who had done it, no one could think who would do such a thing to pretty Clary. But Richard said that they had found Matthew Merry beside the body. He was wet through and they guessed he had gone into the Fenny and pulled her out. She was in the river; she had floated down river to the weir above the new mill, but she had not drowned. They thought she had been strangled first and then thrown in the river. Clary would never drown. We had learned to swim together all those hot summers ago.
It looked bad for Matthew. He would not say how he had found her. He would not say how he had come to be beside the river before the search party was out. He would not say or do anything except cradle her distorted face in his arms and weep and stammer her name over and over.