The Favoured Child Read online

  He pulled his horse up at the garden wall and I went down the path towards him. He touched his hat to me, but his face was unsmiling. ‘I’ve come to tell you that I’ve given orders to bring Matthew Merry’s body home from Chichester gaol to be buried here. They’ve released the body at last.’

  I nodded, as formal as he. ‘Can he be buried in the churchyard?’ I asked.

  ‘Nay, he’s a suicide,’ Ralph said. ‘It will have to be Miss Beatrice’s Corner for him.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ I asked swiftly. The corner of grass by the church gate was called Miss Beatrice’s Corner, but no one had ever told me why, of all the land which my aunt had made her own, that little patch had been named for her.

  ‘It’s the corner of the ground nearest to the graveyard, on t’other side of the church wall,’ Ralph said. ‘When Miss Beatrice ruled here, there were two suicides. They buried them there in unsanctified ground but as close to the church as they could get. They called it Miss Beatrice’s Corner in a tribute to the last Lacey squire who brought death to the village. Now there will be another grave there. It’s a new generation of Laceys and Acre is still dying for them.’

  I gasped and the ready tears came to my eyes. I looked up at Ralph. High on his black horse, he was an inexorable judge, but there was something more than anger in his face. There was also despair.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ I said feebly. I could feel my eyes filling with tears and I was afraid they would start rolling down my cheeks.

  ‘Come out on the land, Julia,’ Ralph said urgently. ‘It’s going wrong, but you could catch it, even now, if you came out on the land with your sight and your skills. I can hold Acre together, but I cannot hold them to this trial of sharing with the squires if you and your family stay inside your great house and behave as if you think the village too lowly for you.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ I said instantly.

  ‘What is it, then?’ he demanded. ‘Why are you not in Acre these past few days? Why does Richard do all the work that you used to do? We would all rather work with you. No one likes Richard, and everyone blames him for what happened to Matthew. Ted Tyacke will not even speak to him.’

  ‘It was not his fault Matthew died,’ I said.

  ‘Matthew died by his own hand, I know,’ Ralph said steadily, ‘but no one in the village thinks he killed Clary. There are two Acre deaths and no murderer taken, and they all believe that you know who the murderer is.’ Ralph’s black look at me was intent. ‘They all swear that you can see him with the sight.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said rapidly. I could feel my heart fluttering with anxiety.

  ‘They all say you would be sure to be able to see her killer,’ Ralph said, ‘as a Lacey girl with the sight, as her best friend. They all swear that if you looked with the sight, then you would see him, whoever he is. Then we could have him taken up, and hanged, and Clary and Matthew would be avenged and would sleep quiet in their graves. And you would be restored to the village.’

  ‘I can’t, Ralph,’ I said piteously. ‘I have a dream when I think he is coming nearer, but I dare not see his face.’

  Ralph’s horse shifted impatiently as his grip on the reins tightened. ‘For God’s sake, Julia,’ he said roughly. ‘This is not a question of what you wish or what you dare. All our work here is falling apart and you must save it. Go into your dream, take the courage you inherited from Beatrice. Look Death in the face and come back and tell me his name and I will do the rest. Then you’ll be the squire in very truth. Then Acre can grow and trust again.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, my voice wavering higher. ‘I’ve told you already. I cannot do it! They may say I can, but they are wrong. I cannot do it, Ralph. You should not ask it of me.’

  ‘Then you are a coward and a traitor to Acre,’ he said harshly, ‘and I am ashamed of you.’

  His horse wheeled on its hind legs as he whirled it around, the reins so tight that its mouth gaped, and then it leaped forward and threw up its head as it felt the whip. It took three wide paces of a canter, then jinked and shied in sudden fright at some weed blowing bright on the top of our garden wall. Ralph jerked it to a standstill and looked back at me, standing alone in my pretty garden.

  ‘You are bad blood, you Laceys!’ he shouted. And behind the anger in his voice I heard a bitter despair that he had trusted us and had again been betrayed, and that because of the mistake of his trust Clary was dead, and young Matthew too. ‘You are bad cursed blood, and I hate the whole race of you!’ he yelled, as angry as a rebellious youth. Then he was gone, round the bend in the track and hidden by the trees.

  But I stayed as if I could still see him, staring at the track as if he were still there. I stayed without moving, without making a sound. My heartbeat was thudding in my ears and I was damp with sweat under my gown. I knew it had all gone wrong. It was my fault, and all I could say, over and over, was, ‘Oh, I am so sorry. I am so very, very sorry.’

  They buried Matthew the next day, and Mrs Merry seemed to become yet older as they stamped the earth down on the little grave. It could have no headstone, but the carpenter made a little board with Matthew’s name and age on it, and the date. Dr Pearce said nothing when it appeared at the head of the fresh earth, nor did Uncle John.

  We had to go to church past the little mound, and I saw that Mama turned her head and looked out of the other window. I was on that side of the carriage as we drew up at the lich-gate and I could not help but see it.

  The wooden board was light; it would be rotted and gone in a few years. The little mound of earth was bare. They might plant it with flowers later, or it might simply grow over with weeds and grass like the two neighbouring unmarked graves.

  The three little mounds seemed to accuse me as I stepped from the carriage. They were mute witnesses to the power of the Laceys. We went through the gate and I glanced back at the fresh grave. There were two smooth prints where Mrs Merry had knelt on the earth and pressed it flat, the marks of her knees. I knew then, as I had only thought before, that whatever it cost me in money, I might be better off if I did not own Wideacre. Ralph might be right about the ownership of the land and that it should not be trusted to the Laceys, or to any one family, that a squire on Wideacre could do so much wrong.

  Uncle John’s face was grim as we went into the church, and there were no smiles for us as we walked up the aisle. The pew where Clary used to sit, supervising her brothers and sisters in a row of diminishing figures, was empty. None of the Dench children had come to church this Sunday. I felt the tears prickle under my eyelids at that empty plain wooden pew, and I glanced at Richard for a little comfort.

  He was smiling.

  He must have been thinking of something else. He must have been miles away in his thoughts. For as we walked up the aisle of that church, between the villagers who were grieving for a murdered girl and a hanged lad, Richard’s blue eyes were dancing with mischief and he was beaming at some private joke.

  My hand was on his arm, and I pressed it gently.

  ‘Richard,’ I said softly, ‘what are you thinking of?’

  He glanced down at me and the delight was wiped from his face at once. ‘You are quite right,’ he said. ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ and he at once looked grave and solemn and sad, and stepped back for me to precede him into the pew. Ralph Megson’s stony gaze was on me and I felt party to Richard’s deceit, as if I too had been laughing and then donned a mask of gravity.

  We did not wait to chat after church and no one stayed Uncle John or me with a friendly hand as we walked back to the carriage. In the last few months a villager, or a tenant, or a worker had often stopped me on the way to the carriage to ask me something, or to complain about one of the hundred little problems which come from farming the land. On this day the churchyard was silent.

  We walked past the tenants and labourers with no word spoken, and I saw Mama’s head was down and her eyes were on her feet. Uncle John looked weary to death. Only Richard’s head was up and his face