They all feared him, both in our household and on our land. They feared him because he would use the vested legal power of the squire in any way he could. He would cancel their tenancies, stop their wages, throw them out of the parish or have them arrested for insolence. And they feared him because they knew, as all the animals around him had always known, that there was something bad about Richard.
Not I. I had recovered from my fear of him. I feared no one now. I feared neither injury nor death, and if Richard had come to me and tightened his hands around my throat, I would have felt no fear. I would not even have flinched. My mama was dead, Clary was dead, Ralph and Acre were betrayed. I had sworn the baby in my belly should not inherit. If Richard had murdered me on one of the nights he lurched against my door on the way to his own room, he would have done me a favour. I feared him no more. I feared nothing. Everything I had cared for was already gone. If he had opened my door on those nights when I heard him scrabbling on the stairs and giggling drunkenly, if he had stumbled into my room and offered once more to touch me, I think I would have welcomed him and let him lie on me in the hope that he would put his long strong hands around my throat and finish me. But he did not do so. He never touched me again.
He did not like me. He only half knew his own madness; I don’t think he ever clearly saw what he had done. I think that chilling little giggle was the closest he ever came to knowing what it was he had done, or what he could do. But on that one occasion when he had touched me and seen my eyes go dark with horror and then grow like pale glass with madness, he had known then that I was crazed. And knowing I was mad was like an enchanted mirror held up to his own face. Our joint corruption was too strong even for him.
Now I no longer feared him, because he feared me. I carried around with me a great strength and a great power: the magic of my growing belly which housed the child he so badly wanted, and the utter potency of not caring whether I lived or died. Richard could never frighten me again.
But nothing could touch him. In the little world which enclosed the Laceys nothing could touch Richard. With Lord Havering away, Richard’s word was law for miles in every direction. If he had killed again, there would have been no hue and cry after the murderer. Richard was his own master and was safe from every threat I could imagine.
He feared only one thing. Fool that he was, he let that fear show in front of me.
We were at breakfast and Richard was in one of his sulky tired states. I sat at the foot of the table with a letter from my grandmama by my place, sipping tea. Richard had a hearty meal of cold meat, bread, hot potatoes and eggs and small ale. He was reading the newspaper as he ate, careless of the splattering of fat on the pages.
‘Good God!’ he said, around a mouthful of food. Some tone in his voice made me jerk up my head like a pointer in August, with the half-forgotten scent of pheasant on the ground. I think I actually sniffed like a dog. There was a sudden smell of fear in the room, unmistakable. Richard was sweating with fright, and the scent was as good to me as frying bacon to a starving pauper. He shot a quick, furtive look at me, and my gaze was blank. I could have been deaf, I could have been insensible. Then he glanced at Stride, whose face was wooden.
‘Excuse me,’ Richard said, and he crumpled the newspaper in his hand and left the room, his plate abandoned, piled with steaming food, his small ale cold and inviting in his mug.
‘Get me a copy of that newspaper, Stride,’ I said levelly, my eyes on my letter once more.
‘Yes, Miss Julia,’ Stride said, his tone equally neutral.
He must have sent to Midhurst at once, for he had it at coffee-time and brought it to me in the parlour with the silver tray and the coffee service.
I did not have to scan the columns. The story which had sent Richard from the room was on the first page inside. It was headed: ‘Notorious Rioter Escaped’, and it named Ralph Megson as among three men who had broken out of the prison disguised as members of a gypsy family who had been brought in to play for the prison warders. It was thought that the men had fled with the gypsies and would travel with them. There was much lordly huffing and puffing and alerting of the local Justices, but there was also a clear acknowledgement that three men could easily disappear into that secretive underworld and never be seen again. There was a detailed description of Ralph, and of the other two, and a massive reward of two hundred pounds for information leading to the capture of all three.
That reward made me pause and wonder if there could be any safety for Ralph. Then I thought that Ralph was not a man to be taken by surprise, except on that one time when he had been betrayed in Acre. I did not think he would be betrayed by his own people, by his mother’s people, his gypsy family. And I had a shrewd idea that Ralph would know exactly how long they could be trusted to resist the lure of such a fortune, and he would be away on a smuggler’s vessel the day before temptation became too great.
I squeezed each page of the newspaper into a ball and tossed them one by one on to the fire, and watched each little ball flame and blacken before I took up the poker and mashed up the ashes. I did not want Richard to know that I knew about Ralph.
That was the first time in my life I had effectively conspired against Richard.
He did not come home for dinner, and Stride served me in solitary state at the great mahogany table. I sat with a book beside my plate, a novel from the Chichester circulating library, and between mouthfuls I read about Clarinda’s wants and needs, and her unfailing tenderness for the hero. I wondered a little whether I should ever again be a woman who thinks that love, a man’s love, is worth the world, or whether from now on I would always feel that one’s own freedom, one’s own individual pride, is worth so very much more.
I took my novel with me into the parlour, and slouched in my armchair to read it. But I laid it down often and looked into the fire. I had not thought to feel happiness again. But Ralph was free, and some bars had gone from my inner eyes. Ralph could look up at the sky tonight and see the sharp light of the stars which means that it is going to snow. Ralph could see that halo around the moon which warns of frost. Ralph could face north, south, west or east, and go where he willed again.
I hoped he would guess that I had learned my lesson, that although I sat at Richard’s fireside on Richard’s furniture in Richard’s house on Richard’s land, I knew at last that I was dispossessed. And that I had become, at this last, a Lacey woman who knew that it was the ownership of the land which mattered more than the chimera of love.
But I thought also that I was a new version of a Lacey, because I rejected the Lacey right to own the land and its crops, and the people themselves. If it had been mine again, I would have given it away at once, without hesitation and mumbling of profits. I would have given the land to Acre, to the people who work it and live on it. And I wished very much that I could see Ralph just once more to tell him that I at last knew what he had been trying to teach me. That there can be no just squires, no kindly masters. For the existence of squires and masters is so deeply unjust that no gentle benevolence can make it right.
I had had to become a servant, Richard’s servant, before I knew the injustice of servitude. I had had to be a pauper, Richard’s pauper, before I learned that dependence is a death sentence. And the only want that was left me, the only wish I had, was that I might see Ralph once and tell him that I understood, that I too was an outlaw from this greedy world we Quality had made.
Stride tapped at the door and came in with the tea-tray, and Richard walked in behind him. He had been riding and was not dressed for dinner. He asked Stride to bring more candles and sat opposite me on the other side of the fire as though nothing were wrong. But I saw he was as tense as a trip-wire, and he glanced at the curtains when they stirred in the draught.
‘I have been to Chichester,’ he said without preamble when Stride had set a five-branch candelabra on the table and gone. ‘I read some news this morning which disturbed me very much.’
I raised my eyes from the tea
things and their gaze was as clear and as warm as the wintry sky.
‘There was a report.’ Richard spoke with some difficulty. ‘There was a report in the paper that some men had broken out of the London prison where Ralph Megson was held. You remember . . .’ He broke off. He had been about to ask if I remembered Ralph Megson, but not even Richard had sufficient gall for that. ‘I went to Chichester to seek more perfect information,’ he said. He took his dish from me and a drop of tea was spilled on the cream hearthrug. Richard’s hand was not steady. ‘It turns out that the report is true,’ he said. I inclined my head, and took up my own dish.
‘Magistrates have been warned to be alert for gypsies,’ Richard went on. ‘Gypsies or travelling folk of any kind, The three men escaped with some gypsy musicians. It’s thought they may try to get to the coast travelling with a gypsy family.’
Richard stopped talking and glanced at me. My face was impassive; he could read nothing from it. ‘Do you think he would come here, Julia?’ he demanded. ‘Do you think he would come here with some sort of idea of revenge? Do you think he would come here and hope that Acre would hide him?’
Richard’s voice had his old charming appeal. He needed me. I had always been at his side when he needed me. Indeed, it had been the joy of my life to have him need me, to have him ask for my help as he was asking for it now.
‘I think he might blame me for his arrest,’ he said with driven candour. ‘I spoke to the magistrates in Chichester, and they said there was little they could do to protect us, us Laceys, Julia! Unless we had some clear idea of where he might be.’
Richard put down his dish of tea and held out his hand to me. ‘Julia?’ he asked. It was as if we were small children again and he was in trouble, as if he were a little boy whose scheme of mischief had gone badly wrong, calling for his best friend, his sister, to help him.
I held my tea with both hands. ‘Yes?’ I asked.
‘Do you think he would come here?’ Richard withdrew his hand and put both hands together on his knees, ignoring the slight.
‘No,’ I said honestly. It is not my way to tease and torment a person. And I spoke with regret. I was very sure I would never see Ralph Megson again, and I thought myself the poorer for it.
‘Not with the gypsies who winter on the common?’ Richard said eagerly. ‘They come from London way, don’t they? And they are late this year! It would not be them who got him from prison, would it? They are musicians too, remember, Julia! We had them to play at Christmas, do you remember?’
I nodded. I remembered. I thought I remembered everything in a great long tunnel of pain back to my childhood and babyhood when I had loved Richard and loved Wideacre with a great constant rooted love which I thought nothing would ever spoil or change.
‘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.
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