Wideacre

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘I work alone,’ he said proudly. ‘There’ll be no gossip in the village, no tongues wagging, no fingers pointing. I would not risk that for myself, and I would especially not risk it for you, Beatrice. I did it alone. No one but you and I know.’

  He touched my face with his fingertips in one of his rare, precious caresses. I saw in his eyes and in his gentle smile his tenderness for me, and the slow and steady growth of a love that would last as long as our two hearts were beating in time with Wideacre. Despite my anger, I felt tears prickle behind my eyes and my mouth quivered when I tried to smile back at his loving face. How could I help but love him — whatever he was? He was my first love and had risked everything to give me the greatest gift any man would ever be able to give me: Wideacre.

  I lost my childhood on the road on that damp spring day when my papa spoke of my banishment. I lost my contented, easy childhood in the moment when I realized he would take Wideacre from me, would take it to favour Harry, with no thought of me and my pain at all. But that hurt was healed when I lay in Ralph’s arms and knew he had gambled everything to have me and Wideacre. And my tears rose at the thought of the reckless, gallant gamble he had so utterly lost.

  Ralph had a dream, a hopeless, impossible dream, that only a very young lover could have. The two of us, married despite the conventions, as if the world were some paradise from romance where people may marry the love of their hearts and live where they wish. As if all that truly matters is love and passion and loyalty to the land.

  It was a dream of the future that could never have been, and the only stupid mistake I ever saw Ralph make was to forget that however often we tumbled in straw, grass or bracken, or whatever I called out in my fainting pleasure at the strength and skill of his hard force, he was just a servant, the son of a slattern. And I was a Lacey of Wideacre. If it had been any other land I swear I would have sacrificed it for Ralph. If it had been any other house I believe I would have schemed to put him into it. Any other house in the land and Ralph should have slept in the master bed and sat at the head of the table. Any other land in the country could not have hoped for a better master than Ralph.

  But it was not any land or any house. It was my beloved Wideacre. And no damned gypsy’s brat would ever rule there.

  The gulf between Ralph and me was as wide as the Fenny in flood, and as deep as the green millpond. I might take Ralph for pleasure, but I would never be his woman, his wife. The moment Ralph thought to rule me, he made our end certain.

  Besides — how could he have forgotten? — he was of gypsy stock; he understood he was my father’s assassin. And I would never, ever forgive him.

  In my mind was a vivid, angry picture of my father, the brave, bright Squire, being pulled down and clubbed to death like a brawling common man in a back-street fight. The man with Lacey blood on his hand would never live on Wideacre. The poor man who attacked the gentry would never hide here. The upstart who planned to climb the ladder to the master bedroom through lust and bedding and blood should be destroyed, like any vermin on the land, at once.

  When one says at once at fifteen one means at once. That meant my father died the day after Ralph’s ugly egg of a plan hatched its nightmare brood. That meant Ralph must die with my father’s blood still wet on his hands.

  ‘It is our secret then,’ I said. ‘And it dies when we die. And now, I must be going.’ He helped me to my feet and dusted my black mourning dress. The straws clung to it and he knelt and with meticulous care picked off every incriminating speck.

  ‘It will be better when I have Tyacke’s cottage,’ he said impatiently. ‘See to it that your brother expels the Tyackes first thing in the morning. I can’t wait for the old man to die. He can die in the poorhouse if he wishes. I’d like to move in there this quarter day, and there’s no cause to wait now. See to it in the morning, Beatrice.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said submissively. ‘Is there anything else while I’m speaking with Harry?’

  ‘Well, I’ll need a horse soon,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps one of your father’s hunters? I suppose brother Harry won’t be riding out for a while, and your mother can hardly want to keep your father’s favourite in the stables after the accident? He’s a good animal. I made sure he wasn’t hurt. You could tell Harry he should be given to me.’

  The thought of Ralph riding one of my father’s high-bred horses made me flush with anger and an icy cold rage was steady behind my eyes, but my smile did not flicker. It was only words and plans.

  ‘Of course, Ralph,’ I said gently. ‘There will be many changes you will want to make.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And when I’m master here, even more.’

  The word ‘master’ on his lips made my skin crawl, but my eyes stayed fixed on his face and their green hazel gaze never wavered.

  ‘I must go,’ I said again and he held out his arms to me in farewell. We kissed goodbye, a long sweet kiss, and I broke from it with a sob to turn my face into his shoulder. His rough fustian jacket smelled so good — of woodsmoke and clean sweat and the inimitable heart-wrenching smell of his skin. The familiar pain of first love mounted inexorably and ached at my heart. My arms tightened around his waist in a fierce hard hug of farewell to the strong, lovely body I had known so well and loved so much.

  With my head against his chest I heard his quickened breath, and his heart speeding, as his desire for me rose again at my closeness. He kissed the top of my head hard, and turned my face up with a pinch on my chin.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said tenderly. ‘Tears?’ He dropped his head and, gently as a mother cat, licked each wet eyelid in turn. ‘There’s no need for tears now, my bonny Beatrice. No need for your tears ever again. Everything is going to be different from now on.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, speaking from a heart so full of pain I could believe it might break. ‘I know everything will be different. That’s what made me sad. My love, my darling Ralph. Nothing will ever be the same again.’

  ‘But it will be better, Beatrice!’ He looked questioningly at me. ‘You surely regret nothing?’

  I smiled then. ‘I regret nothing,’ I confirmed. ‘Now or later. What has been done you did for me and for Wideacre. What is going to happen is also going to happen for Wideacre. I have no regrets.’ But my voice quavered as I spoke and Ralph’s grip on me tightened.

  ‘Wait, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘Don’t go while you are so sad. Tell me what is wrong.’

  I smiled again to reassure him, but the ache under my ribs was growing into such a pain of grief I was afraid I might weep.

  ‘Nothing is wrong. Everything is as it should be, as it has to be,’ I said. ‘Now goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye, my darling.’

  I really thought I should never find the courage to leave as he looked at me so tenderly, so concerned and so trusting in my love for him. I kissed him once more — a gentle, final kiss on the lips — and then I pulled myself from his arms. I felt as if I had left half my soul with him. I walked away and then turned to see him. He raised a hand to me and I whispered, ‘Goodbye, my love, my only love,’ so low he could not hear me.

  Then I saw him turn into his cottage and stoop his dark head under the low door. I drew into the thick bushes at the side of the track and counted a slow and careful three hundred. Three hundred in counted seconds. Then I waited. My love and my anger were one mesh of pain and rage in my head. I was half blind with the conflict. It was as if the Furies were in my head — not after Ralph at all — but tearing me apart with two loyalties, two loves, two hatreds. I gave a little silent groan of physical pain and then saw on my closed eyelids once again the stare of my murdered papa carried past me into the darkness of the Hall. Then I took two deep shuddering breaths, opened my mouth and screamed as loud, as shrill, as panic-stricken as I could:

  ‘Ralph! Ralph! Help me! Ralph!’

  The door of the cottage exploded open and I heard the noise of his sprinting feet up the track. I screamed again and heard him swerve from the trac
k towards my guiding voice. I heard his feet pounding through the deep leaves and then the deep and dreadful twang of the mantrap’s forged iron spring, and simultaneously the sound of his legs breaking — a clear and unmistakable snap! snap! like chopping wood — and Ralph’s hoarse, incredulous scream of pain. I dropped to the ground as my knees buckled under me and waited for another scream. My head against a tree trunk I waited and waited. None came. My own legs were useless, but I had to see him. I had to know I had done it. I clawed my way up the beech tree’s comforting grey trunk, clinging to it for support and so that its rough bark pressed against my face would keep me from fainting before I had seen — because I had to see.

  There was still no sound.

  For long minutes I clung to the tree, feeling, but not aware of, the reassuring sun-warmed bark under my fingers, and the familiar, safe smell of dry leaves. The silence seemed as if the world that had been cracked apart by Ralph’s shriek was quietly rebuilding itself.

  Somewhere, a blackbird started to sing.

  Then I ceased to take comfort from Ralph’s long quietness and was filled with a horrid senseless fear. What was happening only yards away from me, hidden in the bushes? My legs moved as stiff as a cripple. As I left the beech tree I staggered and nearly fell, but I had to see him.

  I parted the bushes and gave a whimper of horror as I saw my lover caught like a rat in the trap I had baited with love. He was slumped over the upright jaws. He had fainted from the pain of his crushed knee bones, and the teeth of the trap held his legs as stiff as a marionette’s, while the top half of his body slumped like a doll’s. One of the sharpened teeth of the trap seemed to have severed a vein and the steady flow of blood darkened his breeches and soaked down his leg into the black earth.

  Faced with the wreck of my lover, my knees buckled again and I put out my hands to save myself as I collapsed before him. My hands clenched on the dark peaty earth as if I was hanging to a rope to pull me from a crevasse of horror. Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet again, and then, as quietly and as carefully as I had come, as if I feared to wake a beloved, weary husband, I walked backwards, one stiff, courtly step at a time, with my eyes never moving from his crumpled body while his lifeblood drained into the earth; left to die like vermin.

  I crept home like a criminal and slipped in by the open kitchen door. Then, remembering, I went back to the little store room and fetched the owl, Canny, and carried him up the back stairs to the landing outside my room. I met no one. I glanced out of my window at the rising moon, a sad thin sickle of a waning moon with a little rejected teardrop of a star beside it. Ten lifetimes ago I had sat at the window and felt Ralph’s eyes shining on me, laughing at me. Now I could not face starlight. I wondered with one sharp corner of my mind if he was dead yet, or if he was lingering, like a rat in a gintrap, in unrelieved pain. If he had recovered consciousness and was crying my name, hoping I would come and help him, or if he guessed it was my trap and was facing his death, staring grim-faced into the darkness.

  Canny was perched, wide-eyed, alert on the top of the wardrobe. He was fully fledged, nearly ready to fly. Ralph had promised to hack him back to a wild life in the woods, to feed him little by little until he had learned to hunt. Now he would have to fend for himself. In this new harsh world lit by the sickly yellow moon, we all had to learn how to survive, and there was no help. Trust I had felt for my papa in the golden summer of my childhood, or Ralph had in my smiles, for my lying direct eyes, trust and keeping faith had gone. So I lifted him down, his talons gentle and feathery on my bare hand, and untied the jesses on his bony legs. His foot, which had been up inside his fluffed-out feathers, was endearingly hot. I opened the window and held him out. The night breeze ruffled his feathers.

  ‘Go then, Canny,’ I said. ‘For I do not know love and wisdom any more.’

  His grip tightened as the wind rocked him, and his head bobbed as his body moved, but he stayed quiet, looking around him.

  ‘Go!’ I said, and I cruelly tossed him, aiming him direct at the moon as if he could fly away and take all the pain and sorrow with him. Instead he fell, tumbling like a feather duster over and over down from my second-floor window and I gasped to see him fall. But even as I gripped the sill I hardened myself. I had learned one thing in this painful struggle into adulthood: that everything you do, and everything you say, everything has a consequence. That if I threw a newly fledged bird into the night he might fall and break his neck. If I nodded to a killer then bloody murder would follow. If I called my lover into a trap he would be caught by his legs and bleed and bleed.

  The owl tumbled over and over but spread his wings before he hit the ground. He glided down towards the kitchen garden and clattered into a currant bush. His feathers were pale in the moonlight and I watched him as he sat still, perhaps surprised to find himself free. Slowly I relaxed the hand that was gripping on to my window sill. But my other hand held something. I could not think what it was. The cramped fingers unfolded and showed me a handful of earth and leaves. I had clenched my hand on it when I had gripped the forest floor in my mindless vigil waiting for a second cry from Ralph. Now I still held tight to it as Canny spread his wings and flew low over the kitchen garden towards the waiting wood like a message of my loss of wisdom, of my loss of love.

  I slept with that handful of leaves and earth under my pillow, still gripped in my cold hand, soiling the clean Irish linen Ralph had coveted so. I slept easily, like a good child, and dreamed no dreams. In the morning, I wrapped it in curl-paper and put it in my jewel box. An odd thing to do. But that morning I felt odd: light-headed and unreal as if the previous night and all the days of the summer had been a strange dream I was still dreaming. At first it seemed to me like a talisman, to ward off the fear that followed me home like a black dog. It is all I have left of Ralph; the only thing I have from him now his owl has flown. A handful of earth from the place of his death. A handful of our land, Wideacre.

  The next day I waited for the news of Ralph’s death. I was certain it would be brought to the Hall by some gossip from the village and waited for my mother or for Harry to repeat the story of the dreadful accident at breakfast. I waited for the story at dinner. I waited for the story at tea. I waited for the story as we sat in Mama’s parlour in the evening … Nothing.

  ‘You’ve not eaten a thing all day, Beatrice,’ my mother said gently. ‘You must try, my dear. And you seem so overwrought.’

  Harry looked up, his attention now drawn to my evident paleness and strain.

  ‘She is grieving, Mama,’ he said. He got up from his chair on the other side of the parlour fire to cross to me and sit beside me on the sofa. He took my hand gently in his own. ‘Poor Beatrice, you must try not to be so sad. Papa would not wish it.’

  I smiled, but my heart was cold. Then the thought flashed through my head that Harry knew Ralph was dead, and was keeping the news from me, to protect me.

  ‘I just have this feeling that something awful is going to happen,’ I said. I shrugged. ‘I don’t know why. I think I should feel better if an accident did happen, and then I could believe the bad luck had passed.’

  ‘Like happenings in threes.’ My mother spoke foolishly, but her eyes were sharp. ‘But nothing has happened, has it, Harry?’

  Harry patted my hand; his sympathy and gentleness could not reach my cold isolation. ‘No, Mama. No, Beatrice. What could happen? Beatrice is just overtired, and you, Mama, are full of fairy tales. We shall all feel better in the morning.’

  I did not feel better in the morning. Nor the next morning, nor the morning after. Surely someone had found him by now? His mother, Meg, must have come home and found the cottage empty, the front door banging. She would call his name and then follow the track along and then back. Surely she would call someone to help her search for her boy, and surely they would find him soon, doubled up over his trapped legs. Dead? I sat in the window seat of my room looking out over the garden unconsciously kneading my hands until my wrists showed red mar
ks. What could they be doing, so slow and so lazy that they had not found him now? How could Meg pretend to be a loving mother with her fey fears for her son if she had not yet sensed that something was wrong and found him?

  Over and over my mind pictured the scene: the message to the village, and the village carpenter making the coffin. The gossip brought to the Hall by a friend or relation of one of the servants. Told to my brother, or even my mother, or perhaps whispered to me by Lucy, my maid. Surely the story even now was the talk of the kitchen and one of the servants would tell one of us soon. I had to be patient. And I had to watch myself with every care so that not a flicker of this turmoil showed. But surely they had found him by now!

  I rose to leave my bedroom and join Harry and Mama for breakfast. Another day — the fifth day — and still no news. It had to be today. I had to be ready. My hand on the door of my room, I turned and looked at myself in the glass. My eyes were an opaque green that showed nothing of my distress. My skin was pale, pale cream against the blackness of my dress. I was a beautiful daughter grieving for her dearly loved papa, no trace of the vengeful goddess showed in my face. No trace of the secret strain showed, although my skin felt too tight on my head and around my eyes. I missed my papa; I missed him so badly that tears rolled down my cheeks when I was alone. And I missed Ralph, too, with a feeling of physical sickness. Always, beneath my ribs, I carried this deep gulf of longing and desire, and always my heart ached for the two men who had made that golden summer perfect. That easy summer world when my papa had loved and protected me, and when Ralph had loved me, and teased me, and lay beside me every long lazy afternoon.

  So what if a few years had brought me exile and misery? If I could have wakened this morning and had breakfast with my beloved papa, and ridden out in the afternoon to hide in the woods with my dark and clever lover, I should have wakened happy. And I should have been free of this pain of emptiness and longing and grieving and lost love.