The Favoured Child Read online

  It was Jimmy Dart, with his arm around Rosie. She was flushed from the walk but scarcely out of breath. I could not have recognized in her the pale girl who coughed over her work in the dirty cellar. She laid her head on Jimmy’s shoulder; the love between them was as strong and as warm as the night breeze blowing.

  ‘Are you robbing Ralph Megson of his apprentice?’ I accused her in mock severity. She and Jimmy exchanged a glance and laughed.

  ‘It’s from his being a linkboy,’ she explained. ‘He can’t stop himself crossing the road.’

  I laughed too. Ralph’s cottage was on the other side of Acre lane from the little cottage where Rosie lived, and Jimmy crossing from one side of the lane to the other was a regular sight.

  ‘We’re betrothed,’ Rosie said shyly. ‘We’ll marry when we’re sixteen. Mr Megson has promised us a cottage of our own.’

  I nodded, smiling. Ralph had mentioned it to me, and I had written the news to James. ‘No more glove-making,’ I said with satisfaction.

  Rosie looked sly. ‘Just one last pair,’ she said. ‘I’ve started them already, but I don’t know when they’ll be needed.’ She gleamed at me. ‘Your wedding-day gloves, Miss Julia! For the day you marry Mr Fortescue. I’m making you special Wideacre gloves, with a sheaf of wheat on them!’

  Oh, Rosie!’ I said in delight. ‘Thank you! But you know the engagement has not been announced yet. Mr Fortescue and I are not betrothed.’

  Jimmy laughed aloud at that. ‘Not formally engaged!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why the first time I ever met you, he wouldn’t have a light because he wanted to walk you home from the Pump Room in the dark!’

  ‘Come on,’ Richard interrupted suddenly. ‘Come on, Julia!’ His arm slid round my waist and his face was so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his breath on my hair. ‘Come on, my springtime lady, and let us search for your hawthorn bush,’ he said softly, drawing me away from the others. We walked slowly to the right along the hilltop, seeking the darker shadow of a hawthorn bush.

  Richard was wearing his driving cape and as we walked arm in arm, he swung the side of it around me in a gesture which both warmed and claimed me for his own. I felt light-headed and sure-footed, walking on my land in the darkness.

  We startled a ewe and her lamb, and they jumped up before us with a complaining bleat and scurried off into the darkness. The patch of grass where they had been lying was warmed and smelled of fleece. Richard tossed his cape down and I sat on a corner, then he wrapped the rest around me.

  I was tense, remembering the last time we were on the downs together when he had kissed me without invitation and touched me against my will. But he held true to his word, and his arm around my shoulders was friendly, brotherly, nothing more.

  We sat in silence for a time while the morning skies grew pearly; all around us the grass seemed at first grey, then it slowly grew green as the colour seeped into it with the morning warmth.

  ‘I love you, little Julia,’ Richard said softly, his voice tender. ‘I wish you would forget your city friends and come back to me, come back to me and to Wideacre.’

  I looked at his hazy smiling eyes and saw my old love, the love of my childhood and girlhood.

  ‘It’s too late,’ I said, half regretfully. ‘You will understand when you fall in love, Richard. You will understand then.’

  His smile in the brightening light was rueful. ‘I think I will never love anyone but you,’ he said sweetly. Then he said no more.

  The sky was growing brighter now, and the first tentative notes of birdsong were growing louder, with more birds waking and singing too. All about us couples were rising up and out of the hollows, brushing off their clothes and smiling at each other, sly-eyed with stolen pleasures.

  Everyone was making their way towards the head of the downs where the hills looked down into Acre. There was an outcrop of chalk there which could be seen from anywhere on Wideacre, like a white stripe up the forehead of the downs. They called it Chalky Streak, and when Richard and I were little children and had lost our sense of direction, we could always find our way home by putting Chalky Streak directly before us and walking towards it. Now the young people from Acre and Richard and I stood at the top of it and waited for the sun to rise.

  We faced the east, and the rising sun turned our faces rosy with its pink light. They sang the song again. I had learned the chanting little tune now and I could sing it with them. I was happy there, in the sunlight, with Richard holding my hand and the young people of Acre around me. But my heart was heavy, thinking of Clary, and when I looked around for Matthew, I saw that he was gone too. I shuddered. Some shadow touched me.

  We finished our song with a little ripple of half-embarrassed laughter, and then turned towards the gate to walk back down the footpath to Acre. They had brought Misty for me, and Richard cupped his hands for me and tossed me up into the saddle. She was a carnival horse, with a wreath of hawthorn around her neck. They gave me a flower crown and a peeled wand to carry in my right hand and told me to lead them down the track to Acre. Misty tossed her head – disliking the flowers around her neck – and I had my usual trouble with riding side-saddle in a walking dress. I pulled my skirt down as well as I could. Ted Tyacke gave me a cheeky wink at seeing my ankles, but I could not play the Bath miss at dawn on the top of the downs.

  They sang as we came down the track, and together we brought the spring home to Acre and the springtime jokes with us. In the old tradition the young people went around the village with their branches and played little tricks on the villagers. A spinster who loved a boy who did not care for her knew her secret was a public joke when she opened the door and found a stripped wand of willow on the step. A husband who was ruled by his wife was left a branch and a hen’s feather to take in to her when he prepared the breakfast that morning. A father whose discipline of his son seemed too stern to the crowd had an ash twig pinned to his door, and a wife who smiled too easily at the young men of Acre had the dubious compliment of a hawthorn branch with red ribbons left at her gate.

  On Clary’s doorstep they put one half of a flowering branch of hawthorn, and the matching half was pinned to Matthew’s door. The most popular couple in Acre was blessed with the crowd’s goodwill. Only I felt uneasy and saw them as funeral flowers, not good-luck charms at all. Only I knew that this very day the betrothal which had started in the bad days of Acre would be ended just when things were coming right.

  21

  Mama was sitting up in bed, drinking her morning chocolate, when I tapped at her door after changing into my riding habit and brushing the hawthorn petals from my hair.

  ‘Good morning!’ she said as I came in. ‘The Queen of the May herself! Do you have magical powers this morning, my dear? Could you give me eternal youth and beauty, please?’

  I laughed. ‘I think you have it already, Mama,’ I said, sitting on the foot of her bed. ‘You have looked quite unfairly pretty ever since Uncle John came home.’

  Mama smiled. ‘That is from being happy,’ she said lightly. ‘But how are you? Are you tired after your dawn chorusing?’

  I stretched. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Feeling lazy, but not tired, though it is a longer walk than I thought. I always ride up that hill; I’ve never walked it before.’

  ‘You could have a rest before breakfast,’ Mama offered. ‘Or perhaps you should go back to bed and I will wake you at noon.’

  I got up from the bed and went across to her window-seat. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ I said. ‘If the village is merrymaking, it is my job to check the animals. I shall go up to the downs after breakfast and see the sheep, and then down to the Fenny fields to see that the cows are well.’

  Mama nodded and threw back the bed covers and slipped out of bed. ‘You put me to shame,’ she said. ‘I had thought we would all take a holiday!’

  The garden gate banged.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked, pulling on a wrapper and coming over to the window to stand beside me.

  ‘Jem is just back from