Wideacre

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘He would surely like to see his first grandchild,’ said Celia helpfully. She leaned towards the ever-open workbox, which stood between us, and selected a thread. The altar cloth was half completed and I was employed in stitching in some blue sky behind an angel. A task not even I could spoil, especially since I made one stitch and laid down the work every time I wanted to think or speak.

  ‘Aye, he’s a family man. He would fancy himself the head of a clan,’ John said agreeably. ‘But I would have to kidnap him to get him away from the business during the busiest time of year.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’ I said, as if the idea had, that second, struck me. ‘Why do you not go and fetch him? You said yourself you were missing the sweet smells of Edinburgh — Auld Reekie! Why not go and fetch him? He can be here for the birth and stand sponsor at the christening.’

  ‘Aye.’ John looked uncertain. ‘I would like to see him, and some colleagues at the university. But I would rather not leave you thus, Beatrice. And I would rather make a visit later when we could all go.’

  I threw up my hands in laughing horror.

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said. ‘I have travelled with a newborn child already. I shall never forgive Celia for that trip with Julia. Never again will I travel with a puking baby. Your son and I shall stay put until he is weaned. So if you want to visit Edinburgh inside two years, it had better be now!’

  Celia laughed outright at the memory.

  ‘Beatrice is quite right, John,’ she said. ‘You can have no idea how dreadful it is travelling with a baby. Everything seems to go wrong, and there is no soothing them. If you want your papa to see the baby it will have to be him who comes here.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ said John uncertainly. ‘But I would rather not leave you during your pregnancy, Beatrice. If anything went wrong I would be so far away.’

  ‘Ah, don’t worry,’ said Harry comfortingly from the deep winged chair by the fireplace. ‘I will guarantee to keep her off Sea Fern and Celia can promise to keep her off sweetmeats. She will be safe enough here, and we can always send for you if there is any trouble.’

  ‘I should like to go,’ he confessed. ‘But only if you are sure, Beatrice?’ I poked my needle in an embroidered angel’s face to free my hand to hold it out to him.

  ‘I am sure,’ I said, as he kissed it tenderly. ‘I promise to ride no wild horses, nor get fat, until you return.’

  ‘And you will send for me if you feel in the least unwell, or even just worried?’ he asked.

  ‘I promise,’ I said easily. He turned my hand palm up, in the pretty gesture he had used in our courtship, and pressed a kiss into it, and closed my fingers over the kiss. I turned my face to him and smiled with all my heart in my eyes.

  John stayed only for my nineteenth birthday on the fourth of May when Celia had the dining room cleared of furniture and invited half-a-dozen neighbours in for a supper dance to celebrate. More tired than I cared to show, I danced two gavottes with John and a slow waltz with Harry before sitting down to open my presents.

  Harry and Celia gave me a pair of diamond ear-drops, Mama a diamond necklace to match. John’s present was a large heavy leather box, as big as a jewel case with brass corners and a lock.

  ‘A mineful of diamonds,’ I guessed, and John laughed.

  ‘Better than that,’ he said.

  He took a little brass key from his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me. It fitted the lock and the lid opened easily. The box was lined with blue velvet, and nestling securely in its bed was a brass sextant.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Mama. ‘What on earth is it?’

  I beamed at John. ‘It is a sextant, Mama,’ I said. ‘A beautiful piece of work and a wonderful invention. With this I can draw my own maps of the estate. I won’t have to rely any more on the Chichester draughtsmen.’ I held out my hand to John. ‘Thank you, thank you, my love.’

  ‘What a present for a young wife!’ said Celia wonderingly. ‘Beatrice, you are well suited. John is as odd as you!’

  John chuckled disarmingly. ‘Oh, she’s so spoiled I have to buy her the strangest things,’ he said. ‘She’s dripping with jewels and silks. Look at this pile of gins!’

  The little table in the corner of the dining room was heaped with brightly wrapped presents from the tenants, workers and servants. Posies of flowers from the village children were all around the room.

  ‘You’re very well loved,’ said John, smiling down at me.

  ‘She is indeed,’ said Harry. ‘I never get such a wealth of treats on my birthday. When she’s twenty-one I shall have to declare a day’s holiday.’

  ‘Oh, a week at least!’ I said, smiling at the hint of jealousy in Harry’s voice. Harry’s summer as the pet of the estate had come and gone too quickly for him. They had taken him to their hearts that first good harvest, but when he had come home from France they had found that the Squire without his sister was only half a Master, and a silly, irresponsible half at that.

  My return from France had been a return into pride of place and the presents and the deep curtsies, bows, and loving smiles were the tribute I received.

  I crossed to the table and started opening the gifts. They were small, home-made tokens. A knitted pin cushion with my name made out of china-headed pins. A riding whip with my name carved on the handle. A pair of knitted mittens to wear under my riding gloves. A scarf woven from lamb’s wool. And then a tiny package, no bigger than my fist, wrapped, oddly, in black paper. There was no message, no sign of the sender. I turned it over in my hands with an uneasy sense of disquiet. My baby stirred in my belly as if he felt some danger.

  ‘Open it,’ prompted Celia. ‘Perhaps it says inside who has sent it to you.’

  I tore the black paper at the black seal, and out of the wrapping tumbled a little china brown owl.

  ‘How sweet,’ said Celia readily. I knew I was staring at it in utter horror and tried to smile, but I could feel my lips trembling.

  ‘What is the matter, Beatrice?’ asked John. His voice seemed to come from a long way off; when I looked at him I could hardly see his face. I blinked and shook my head to clear the fog and the buzzing sound in my ears.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, my voice low. ‘Nothing. Excuse me one minute.’ Without a word of explanation I turned from the pile of unopened gifts, and left my birthday party. In the hall, I rang the bell for Stride. He came from the kitchen doors smiling.

  ‘Yes, Miss Beatrice?’ he said.

  I showed him the black wrapping paper balled in my hand, I had the little china owl tight in the other hand. I could feel the coldness of the porcelain and it seemed to make me shiver all over.

  ‘One of my presents was wrapped in this paper,’ I said abruptly. ‘Do you know when it was delivered? How it came here?’

  Stride took the crumpled paper from me and smoothed it out.

  ‘Was it a very little package?’ he asked.

  I nodded. My throat was too dry to trust my voice.

  ‘We thought it must have been one of the village children,’ he said with a smile. ‘It was left under your bedroom window, Miss Beatrice, in a little withy basket.’

  I gave a deep shuddering sigh.

  ‘I want to see the basket,’ I said. Stride nodded, and went back through the green baize door. The coldness of the little owl seemed to chill me through and through. I knew well enough who had sent it. The crippled outlaw who was all that was left of the lad who had given me a baby owl with such love four years ago. Ralph had sent me this ominous birthday gift as a signal. But I did not know what it meant. The dining room door opened, and John came out exclaiming at my white face.

  ‘You are overtired,’ he said. ‘What has upset you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said again, framing the word with numb lips.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ he said, drawing me into the parlour. ‘You can go back to the dancing in a minute. Would you like some smelling-salts?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, to be rid of him for a moment. �
�They are in my bedroom.’

  He scanned my face, and then left the room. I sat cold and still and waited for Stride to bring me the little withy basket.

  He put it in my hands and I nodded him from the room. It was Ralph’s work, a tiny replica of the other basket I had pulled up to my window seat in the dawn light on my fifteenth birthday. The reeds were fresh and green, so it had been made in the last few days. Wideacre reeds perhaps, so he could be as close to the house as the Fenny. With his basket in one hand, and his horrid little present in the other, I gave a moan of terror. Then I bit the tip of my tongue and pinched my cheeks with hard fingers to fetch some colour to them, and when John came back into the room with my smelling-salts I had a hard laugh ready, and I waved them away. Smelling-salts, questions, grave looks of concern, I dismissed airily. John watched me, his eyes sharp and anxious, but he pressed no questions on me.

  ‘It is nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing, I just danced too much for your little son.’ And I would say no more.

  I dared not give him reason to stay. With my baby due in three or four weeks, I had to have him away. So I hid my fear under a bright brave front, and I packed his bags for him with a light step and an easy smile. Then I stood on the steps and waved his chaise out of sight, and I did not let myself tremble for fear until I had heard the hoofbeats of the horses cantering away down the drive.

  Then, and then only, I leaned back on the sun-warmed doorpost and moaned in fright at the thought of Ralph daring enough to ride or, even more hideous, to crawl right up to the walls of the Hall, and hating enough to remember what he had given me for a present four years before.

  But there was no time for me to think, and I blessed the work and the planning that I had to do, and my tiredness during the days and my heavy sleep at nights. In my first pregnancy I had revelled in slothful inactivity in the last few weeks, but in this one I had to pretend to three pairs of watchful eyes that I was two months away from my time. So I walked with a light step and worked a full day, and never put my hands to my aching back and sighed until my bedroom door was safely shut and I could confess myself bone-tired.

  I had expected the birth at the end of May, but the last day of the month came and went. I was so glad to wake to the first of June. It sounded, somehow, so much better. I recounted the weeks on my fingers as I sat at my desk with the warm sun on my shoulders and wondered if I should be so lucky as to have a late baby who hung on to make my reputation yet more secure. But even as I reached for the calendar a pain gripped me in the belly, so intense that the room went hazy and I heard my voice moan.

  It held me paralysed for long minutes until it passed and then I felt the warm wetness of the waters breaking as the baby started bis short perilous journey.

  I left my desk and tugged one of the heavy chairs over to the tall bookcase where I keep the record books that date back to the Laceys’ first seizure of the land seven hundred years ago. I had rather feared that it would hurt me to climb on to the seat and to stretch up to the top shelf. And I was right. I gasped with the pain of stretching and tugging at the heavy volumes. But the scene had to be set, and it had to be persuasive. So I pulled down three or four massive old books and dropped them picturesquely around the chair on the floor. Then I turned the chair over with a resounding crash and lay down on the floor beside it.

  My maid, tidying my bedroom above, heard the noise of the falling chair and tapped on the door and came in. I lay as still as the dead and heard her gasp of fright as she took in the scene: the overturned chair, the scatter of books and the widening stain on my light silk skirt. Then she bounded from the room and shrieked for help. The household exploded into panic and I was carried carefully and tenderly to my bedroom where I regained consciousness with a soft moan.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Mama, taking my cold hand. ‘There is nothing to fear, darling. You had a fall from a chair in your study and it has made the baby come early. But we have sent for the midwife and Harry will send post to John.’ She leaned over the bed and stroked my forehead with a handkerchief that smelled of violets. ‘It is too soon, my darling,’ she said gently. ‘You must prepare yourself for a disappointment this time. But there will be other times.’

  I managed a wan smile.

  ‘I am in God’s hands, Mama,’ I said, blaspheming easily. ‘Does it hurt very much?’

  ‘Ah, no,’ she said tenderly. ‘It will not hurt you, my brave girl. You have always been so full of courage and so dauntless when you faced pain or fear. And besides, it will only be a small baby for it is early.’

  I closed my eyes as the familiar grip of the pain closed on me.

  ‘Mama, could I have some lemonade like you used to make when we were ill?’ I asked, as soon as it had passed.

  ‘Of course, my darling,’ she said, and bent to kiss me. ‘I’ll go at once and make some. But if you need me you can ring, and Celia will stay with you. Mrs Merry, the midwife, is on the way, and a groom is riding for Mr Smythe, the Petworth accoucheur, so you will be well attended, my darling. Rest now, as much as you can. It all takes a long, long time.’

  I lay back and smiled. It would not take a long, long time, and Mr Smythe had better stir himself or he would miss his fee. Second babies always come more quickly, I knew, and I could feel the pains growing ever more intense and with less time to rest between them. Celia sat beside my bed and held my hand as she had done once before.

  ‘It is like waiting for Julia,’ she said, and I noticed her eyes were filled with tears. She was deeply moved at the prospect of birth, this pretty, barren woman. ‘You did so well then, dearest, I know you will manage wonderfully now.’

  I gave her an absent-minded smile, but it seemed already as if she were far, far away. I could think of nothing but the struggle going on inside me between the child battling to be free, and my tense body refusing to yield easily. A sudden rush of pain made me groan, and I heard a clatter as a housemaid dropped her end of the family cradle outside the door. Every single servant in the house was dashing around to get a nursery ready for the new unexpected baby: the first of this generation to be born at Wideacre into the Wideacre cradle.

  The pains came faster, except they had ceased to be pain and were more like a great strain of heaving a chest of drawers upstairs or pulling on a rope. Mrs Merry was in the room but I scarce heeded her as she bustled around tidying, and tying a twisted sheet from one bedpost to another. My only response was to snap at her when she urged me to pull on it. I wanted none of that lunging, shrieking women’s toil when inside me was a secret, private progress, which was my son edging his way through my reluctant tunnels. She took no offence, Mrs Merry. Her wise old wrinkled face smiled at me and her shrewd eyes took in my curved back and the cooing, moaning sounds I was unconsciously making, and the rocking of my body.

  ‘You’ll do,’ she said, as I would speak to a brood mare. And as calmly as I could wish she unpacked some darning and sat at the foot of the bed until I needed her aid.

  It did not take long.

  ‘Mrs Merry!’ I said urgently. Celia flew to hold my hand, but my eyes sought the knowing smile of the wise woman.

  ‘Ready now?’ she asked, rolling her dirty sleeves up.

  ‘It is … it is …’ I gasped like a floundering salmon as the power of birth once again grabbed my rigid heaving belly like an osprey and shook me in its talons.

  ‘Push!’ yelled Mrs Merry. ‘I can see the head.’

  A spasm overwhelmed me, and then I paused. Another great thrust and I could feel Mrs Merry’s skilled, grimy ringers poking around, gripping the baby, and helping it to force its way out. Then another shove of muscle and flesh came, and the thing was done, and the child was free. A thin burbly wail filled the room and from behind the closed door I heard a ripple of exclamations as every servant who could possibly be in the west wing heard the cry.

  ‘A boy,’ said Mrs Merry, swinging him by his ankles like a newly plucked chicken and dumping him without ceremony on the quivering mound of my
belly. ‘A boy for Wideacre; that’s good.’

  Celia’s guileless, suspicionless eyes were on the new baby.

  ‘How lovely,’ she said, and her voice was full of love and longing, and unshed tears.

  I gathered him up into my arms and smelled the sweet strong unforgettable smell of birth on him. In a rush, suddenly, scalding tears were pouring down my cheeks and I was sobbing and sobbing. Weeping for a grief I could name to no one. For his eyes were so very dark blue and his hair so very black. And in my tired and foolish state I thought he was Ralph’s baby. That I had given birth to Ralph’s son. Mrs Merry scooped him out of my arms and bundled him, wrapped in flannel, towards Celia.

  ‘Out of the room altogether,’ she advised briefly. ‘I’ve a hot posset brewing for her that will have her right as a trivet. It’s good for her to have a weep now — it gets it out early rather than later.’

  ‘Beatrice crying!’ said Mama with amazement in her voice as she bustled into the room and stopped still at the sight of me face down amid the rumpled sheets.

  ‘It’s all been too much for her,’ said Celia gently. ‘But look at Baby. What a miracle. Let’s settle him down and come back to Beatrice when she is rested.’

  The door closed behind them and I was alone with my sudden inexplicable sorrow, and with sharp-eyed old Mrs Merry.

  ‘Drink this,’ she said, and I choked on a herbal posset that smelled sweetly of mint, lavender and, probably most fortifying of all, gin. I drained the mug and the tears stopped rolling down.

  ‘A seven-month-old child, eh?’ she asked, eyeing me, bright with her secret knowledge.

  ‘Yes,’ I said steadily. ‘Brought on by a fall.’

  ‘Large baby for seven months,’ she said. ‘Came fast for a first, too.’

  ‘What’s your price?’ I asked, too weary to fence with her and too wise to try to lie.

  ‘Nay,’ she said. Her face creased with her smile. ‘You’ve paid me all you need by calling me in. If the bright young doctor’s wife sticks to the old ways then half the ladies of the county will do so too. You’ve given me my living back, Miss Beatrice. They won’t be so quick to call in Mr Smythe when they know I delivered you on my own.’