The Favoured Child (12 page)

I had caught my breath at that and shaken my head in mute disagreement, but I knew that Richard’s words came from bravado. Richard was afraid. He was only a little eleven-year-old boy and he had cause for fear.

The village children were after him. They knew, as well as the two of us, that the village and the Wideacre family were sworn enemies. And after Dench ran away it got very much worse. They would catcall and jeer at him as he went past, his schoolbooks
under his arm. They would sneer at his old coat, at his boots, which were worn and getting too tight for him. And always, when they could think of nothing else to say, they shouted loudly to one another that here was someone calling himself a squire and a Lacey, yet he could not stay on a horse.

Richard walked, fearful as a stable cat through the crowd, and his eyes blazed defiance and hatred. He saw them as a mob and thought that if he challenged one, then they would all attack him. I think he feared too that the adults would come out of their cottages to watch Miss Beatrice’s boy being torn apart on the village street and do nothing to help him.

Most of this I guessed. Richard was too proud to tell me. He told me only that he hated to walk through the village; and I saw that if the day was fine – which meant that the children would be out playing in the lane – he would leave early to go up the downland track and around the back of the village so that he could avoid the village street.

He never told Mama. He had a fine sharp courage, my cousin Richard; and he never told Mama that he was afraid. He asked her once what was meant by the phrase ‘a mother’s boy’. Mama was brushing out her hair before her mirror in her bedroom, and Richard was pulling a silk ribbon through his fingers and watching her. I was sitting in the window-seat looking out, out over the trees of Wideacre where the leaves were whirling away into the wintry sky, but at Richard’s question I looked sharply at Mama.

She put down her brush and looked at him, at his pale heart-shaped face and his mop of black hair, at the ribbon in his hand and at the way he was leaning so comfortably at her side. ‘Where have you heard that phrase, my dear?’ she asked steadily.

Richard shrugged. ‘They called it after me in the village today,’ he said. ‘I paid no heed. I never pay any heed to them.’

Mama put out a gentle hand to touch his face. ‘It will get better,’ she said gently. ‘When your papa comes home, it will be better.’

Richard caught her hand and kissed it, as graceful as a courtier. ‘I don’t mind him being away,’ he said. ‘I like it just as we are.’

I said nothing then, I said nothing later. But when he came home one day with his collar torn and face white, I knew it was getting worse.

I don’t know why I thought I might be able to help, but I did not fear Acre like the two of them. I was at home on Wideacre and at odds with no part of it, not even the worst village in Sussex. I knew with such certainty that I belonged on the land, and that included Acre. And I had a clear memory of Ned Smith’s half-smile, and of Mrs Green giving Richard her most precious phial of laudanum.

I used that phial as my excuse, and told Mama that I should return it to the mill. I would walk to Acre with Richard, go on to the mill and meet him from his lessons after my visit.

I had a little grin from Richard as a reward for that, and a surprised glance from Mama.

‘Walking through Acre?’ she asked tentatively.

‘Why not?’ I said boldly. ‘I’ll just call on Mrs Green and then I’ll sit with Dr Pearce’s housekeeper until Richard is ready to come home.’

‘Very well,’ she said. There was a world of reservation behind those level tones. I guessed that she did not want to make me afraid of Acre, and I think she saw also something she did not understand, something she had seen before: the Lacey confidence in the people of Acre. I ran to fetch my coat and bonnet, for Richard was ready to leave.

It was last winter’s coat, and I saw Mama frown as she looked at it. It was too short and uncomfortably tight under the arms and across the back. The sleeves ended too high, and there was a little gap between my gloves and the cuff where my wrist showed bony and cold.

‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said, making a joke of it. ‘I cannot help growing!’

‘Well, I wish you would stop!’ she said, her face lightening. Then Richard and I were off and Mama waved to us from the parlour window as we walked down the drive and turned left down the lane towards Acre.

As soon as we approached the village, I felt Richard’s unease. He was afraid for us both. He transferred his bundle of books to the other arm and felt for my hand. Hand-clasped, we walked steadily down the chalk-dirt track and past the cottage windows, which seemed to eye us as if they did not much like what they saw.

On our left was the cobbler, still sitting idle in his bow-window. Next to him was the carter’s cottage with the wagon they had used to take Scheherazade away. He had sold his horses long ago, but he had managed to keep his wagon. He still waited on in Acre for times to get better. There was nowhere else he could go. If he left the parish, neither he nor his family of six scruffy children could claim the poor rate. If he stayed, he had only a cold house, a dead fireplace and a wagon outside the door with nothing to carry and no horse to pull it.

Next to him was the blacksmith’s yard, the forge still unlit. For who would want horseshoes in a hurry in Acre where no one owned a horse? As we walked along the lane, I peered at every cottage, wondering that so many people could stay alive at all in such a desolate little village. They could eat the game from the Wideacre woods and the rabbits from the common. But they had no seeds to plant for vegetables, and they must need money for clothing, for tools. I was so absorbed in wondering how people survived with no money – no money at all – that I did not notice we were being followed.

There was a little group of ragged urchins trailing along behind us. Not many – about a dozen of them – but a frightening enough mob for Richard and me. They followed us like a half-starved wolf-pack, and they looked at Richard’s books and my shabby coat as though they were unimaginable luxuries.

Richard hardly drew breath until we reached the vicar’s front porch. ‘Don’t go back out, Julia,’ he said in an urgent undertone while we waited for the housekeeper to answer the bell. ‘Wait here until I have finished my lessons. The children will look at you oddly, and they might say something to you.’

I gave him a little smile to hide the fact that my knees were
trembling. ‘They’re only little children,’ I said dismissively, ‘and I have to see Mrs Green. I shan’t be long. If they are rude, I shall just run. I bet I can run faster than any of them.’

Richard nodded at that. He knew I was as fleet as a courser. The barefoot hungry children would never be able to catch me, not even running in a pack. ‘I’d rather you waited,’ he said.

‘No, I can go,’ I said decisively, and the door opened. He did not give me a kiss in front of the housekeeper and the watching children but the hand which still held mine gave me a warm squeeze which mattered very much to me. Just that one gesture, that touch of his palm against mine, gave me the courage to turn and face the children, Richard’s tormentors, and walk down the path towards them.

I stopped at the gate and eyed them over it. I was taller than all but the three biggest: two boys and a girl with her hair down her back in a lank plait. All their faces were closed, sullen; but she had her eyes on me. She was examining every stitch of my old dress and my too tight coat as if I were a princess dressed for a ball. I pushed my hands into my pockets and calmly surveyed her. Then, taking my time, I stepped towards the garden gate and opened it, and walked out into the lane.

That surprised them. I think they had thought I would stay in the shelter of the garden and they melted away as I walked through them. But then they fell into step behind me and I led the way down the bridle-path to the common and the new mill with the motley band behind me. When the silence of the wood closed around us, they grew loud and started jeering. Then I heard the older girl’s voice start a chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a carriage! Hasn’t got a carriage!’ Over and over.

I set my teeth and schooled myself to walk at the same pace while the insulting singsong went on – louder and more fearless. Then the big girl changed it: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a horse! Hasn’t got a horse!’

At the mention of Scheherazade my temper rose a few more notches, but I walked on with my head up as if I were alone.

She started another chant: ‘Julia Lacey! Julia Lacey! Hasn’t got a father! Hasn’t got a father!’

‘He died of fright!’ said another voice and there was a ripple of laughter from them; I flinched at the abuse of my papa and the insult to the Laceys.

I was a little afraid. I was afraid, like Richard, that I might be badly hurt in a scrap with them, or that they might surround and bully me. But I knew, as Richard, with all his charm and cleverness, did not, that the children must be faced and fought or we would never be able to walk through Acre. Richard might dream of clearing the land of them, he might plan for a future where every insult was revenged a hundred times over. But I wanted to live in peace on my land with the families who had been here as long as the Laceys. I did not want to clear Acre village, I wanted to set things right. Whether Uncle John came home with a fortune or as poor as when he left, I wanted to be able to walk in Acre, without apologizing. And feel no fear.

I walked on past the mill. At the end of this track there was a great hollow in the ground where they say there was once a grand oak tree uprooted by Beatrice when she turned everywhere into wheatfields like the one behind it which was sprawled all over now with rust-coloured bracken and mauve with heather. But still the odd head of wheat blew spindly-yellow in the wind. I led my tormentors there and at the lip of the hollow where the oak tree had stood I turned and faced them. They fell back like a pack of hungry dogs baiting a badger.

‘What’s your name?’ I said, picking on the girl. She looked at me with sharp black eyes.

‘Clary Dench,’ she said. She would be Dench’s niece, I thought.

‘What’s yours?’ I asked the boy at her side.

‘M-M-Matthew Merry,’ he said, blinking convulsively as he fought against his stammer.

I had to bite back the urge to giggle. The stammer was such a relief, coming from the mouth of such a frighteningly big boy. It made him seem childlike, no threat to me.

‘And yours?’ I said sharply to the only other big boy.

‘Ted Tyacke,’ he said. He looked closely at me, expecting the name to mean something to a Lacey. I had never heard that name before but I felt a shiver down my spine; somehow in the past the Laceys had injured the Tyackes, and hurt them badly. I might not know what we had done, but this lout of a boy knew that we were sworn enemies.

‘I’m Julia Lacey,’ I said as if they had not been making a chant of my name all the way down the track, careful not to give myself the ‘Miss’ which was my right. ‘You’ve been unkind to my cousin,’ I said accusingly. ‘You’ve been bullying my cousin Richard.’

‘And he sent you out to do his fighting for him, I s’pose?’ the girl sneered. I did not flinch back as she pushed her dirty face close to mine.

‘No,’ I said steadily, ‘he went to his schooling today like he always does, and I came down here to see Mrs Green. But you all followed me down so I ask you what you want.’

‘We don’t want nothing from the Laceys!’ said the boy called Ted Tyacke with a sudden explosion of hatred. ‘We don’t want kind words from you. We know your sort.’ The others nodded, and I could feel their mounting anger, and it made me afraid.

‘I’ve said and done nothing to you,’ I protested, and heard my voice sound plaintive. My weakness gave them courage and now they crowded around me, encircled me.

‘We know about the Laceys,’ said Clary spitefully. ‘We all know all about you. You rob the poor of reapers’ rights. You don’t pay your tithes. You set the soldiers on young men. And the Lacey women are witches!’ She hissed out the word and I saw all the children, even the smallest, clench their hands in the sign against witchcraft, the little thumbs held tight between the middle finger and forefinger to make the sign of a cross.

‘That’s none of it true,’ I said steadily. ‘I am not a witch, and neither is Richard. You are talking nonsense. You’ve got no cause against us, and if you say you have, then you are liars.’

Clary sprang forward at that and gave me a push which sent
me reeling back. I lost my footing on the slope of the hollow and tumbled down into the bottom. The little children hooted with delight and Clary came scrambling down after me, her dirty face alight with malice.

I bunched myself up like a coiled spring, and leaped on her as soon as she was beside me. With the impetus of my jump from the ground I knocked her down and we rolled over and over, hitting and scratching. I felt her claw-like fingers at my mouth and tasted blood. Then I got hold of the rope of the plait of hair and pulled as hard as I could. She gave a shriek of pain and instinctively leaned back towards the pull. In a minute I had scrambled atop her, and I sat heavily on her bony little chest and felt, for the first time, a rush of pity at how thin and light she was.

‘D’you give up?’ I demanded tersely, using the words Richard so often said to me when he won in our half-playful, half-painful rompings.

‘Aye,’ she said. She spoke without a trace of a sneer, and I got up at once and put out a hand to pull her to her feet. She took it, without thinking, and then stood up, surprised to find herself handfast with me, apparently shaking on a bargain.

‘So you won’t tease Richard any more,’ I said, going directly to my one objective. She smiled a slow grudging smile that showed a couple of blackened teeth.

‘All right,’ she said slowly, the easy Sussex drawl reminding me of Dench and of his kindness to me. ‘We’ll leave him be.’

We dropped hands then, awkwardly, as if we had forgotten how we had come to be standing as close as friends. But she saw my mouth and said, ‘You’re bleeding’ in an indifferent voice. And I was careful to match her tone and say, ‘Am I?’ as if I did not care at all.