The Favoured Child

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘Yes, if I may,’ Richard said, beaming. You would have thought him a boy utterly incapable of disobedience. ‘Mama told me of her at dinner, Lord Havering, and I am ashamed to say I could not wait until tomorrow.’

  My grandpapa chuckled indulgently at his favourite, Richard. ‘Bring her out,’ he said to Dench and bent down to me. ‘And you? Little Miss Julia? Came in Richard’s shadow as usual, did you?’

  I blushed and said nothing. I lacked Richard’s ease with adults. I wanted to explain that I too had come because I wanted to see the horse. I had wanted the hard steady run from one side of the estate to the other. And I wanted to tell my grandpapa that Richard was not to be blamed for my coming. But not one of these things did I say. I just shuffled my feet and looked silly, and kept my eyes down.

  Dench brought the mare clattering on the cobbles out of her stable at the end of the row. She was a lovely animal, a rich russet chestnut with a mane and tail of a darker shade of unpolished copper. She had a white blaze down her nose and deep brown eyes. Dench had a firm hand on her head collar, but she stood gently beside him and looked at us.

  Her eyes, as warm as melted chocolate, seemed to invite me to her side and, without waiting for Richard to approach her, I went straight past my grandfather, straight past Richard, and put my hand up to her.

  She whickered softly as I came close and bent her head to nuzzle at my pocket. I had nothing for her, but Dench slipped me a handful of oats out of his own capacious breeches. Her lips on my flattened hand were discriminating, gentle, as if she were taking care not to nip my thin fingers. I reached up a shy hand and rubbed her behind the ears, where mares nuzzle their foals. She blew out of her nostrils at my touch and sniffed at the front of my dress. Without thinking what I was doing, I dropped my face down and sniffed rapturously at her damp oat-smelling breath, and blew gently back. It was love at first sight for me.

  ‘Make haste, Richard, or you’ll lose your horse,’ said Grandpapa, who had been watching me with appreciation. ‘Your cousin is there before you. You seem to have the Lacey magic with horses, m’dear,’ he said genially. ‘Your Aunt Beatrice could charm a horse out of the field, and your papa was a grand rider too. And your grandpapa and I had some rides together which I still have nightmares about! Laceys have always been horse-mad.’

  I stepped back and let Richard get to his horse. ‘What’s she called?’ I asked, finding my voice for once.

  ‘Scheherazade,’ my grandpapa said in tones of deep disgust. ‘I call her Sally.’

  ‘Scheherazade,’ I whispered to myself. ? princess from the Arabian Nights.’

  ‘She may have a touch of Arab in her,’ my grandpapa said, mishearing my awed murmur. ‘Good hunting stock, though. I chose her myself from poor old Tiley’s sale. His daughter used to ride her, so she’s used to novices. She’s used to a lady’s saddle too!’ he said as the thought struck him. ‘No reason why I should not teach you to ride at the same time as Richard, m’dear.’

  ‘Julia doesn’t have a habit,’ Richard said firmly. He was trying to offer Scheherazade a couple of green apples he had picked from the Wideacre orchard, holding them outstretched at the full length of his arm. Not close to the horse at all. ‘Julia’s mama would not let her ride without a habit.’

  ‘No,’ said my grandpapa. ‘Pity. Still, I expect we can find one for you if you’d like to try, missy.’

  Richard shot me a look. Just one look.

  ‘No,’ I said regretfully. ‘No, thank you, Grandpapa.’

  I said nothing more. I had no quick excuse or explanation. But my grandpapa did not question my refusal. He raised a disdainful eyebrow at my rejection of his offer and went towards Richard, and Richard’s lovely horse, and held her head while Dench gave Richard a leg-up on to her back.

  ‘How’s that?’ Grandpapa shouted, and led Richard around the stable yard, Richard clinging tightly to the copper mane, Scheherazade mincing over the cobbles.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Richard said, but his face was white.

  We would have stayed for Richard’s first lesson, but my grandpapa caught sight of the stable clock on Richard’s second circuit of the yard.

  ‘Your mama will be after me,’ he said ruefully. ‘Dench, get out the little trap and take these two home. They shouldn’t have come without permission in the first place. If they’re out after dark, Celia will have me skinned alive.’

  Dench pulled Richard down without ceremony and took Scheherazade back to the stable. I trailed along behind, unwilling to see her go, and wanting to see her stable and smell the straw and the sweet grassy scent of hay.

  ‘When will you learn then, Miss Julia?’ Dench asked me, his brown eyes bright with curiosity. He had seen my face when she fed from my hand, he had seen how she dipped her head for my caress.

  ‘When Richard has learned,’ I said certainly. I knew Richard would claim the lovely Scheherazade as his own, and I longed to see him ride her. But I knew also that if I did not challenge him and awaited my turn, there would be no one in the world more generous and thoughtful than Richard. We always shared our playthings, and if I was quick to return them and always gave Richard first turn, then we never quarrelled. He would give me unending rides on Scheherazade providing we both knew that she was his horse.

  Dench nodded and flung long reins and a bridle over the carriage horse in the stall next door. ‘Master Richard first, eh?’ he said, shooting a look at me. ‘And you don’t mind, Miss Julia?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ I said, and the smile I gave him was as clear as my thoughts. ‘I want to see Richard ride. I have been looking forward to it for months.’

  Dench said something under his breath, perhaps to the horse, and then led her out of the stable and backed her into the shafts of the trap in the carriage-house. Richard and I sat either side of him on the little bench seat and my grandpapa waved his cigar in farewell.

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ he said jovially. ‘And mind you make your apologies to your mama!’

  We did not have to confess. Mama had guessed at once where we had gone and was sitting down to her supper in solitary splendour when the trap came trotting up to the garden gate in the dusk. Before her was a plate of toast and a little jar of potted meat, and she did not look up from buttering her toast when we crept into the dining-room. ‘Your supper is in the kitchen,’ she said, her voice cool. ‘Children who run off like stable lads should eat in the kitchen.’

  There was nothing we could say. I curtsied low – a placatory gesture – and backed out of the room in silence. But Richard stepped forward and laid a single red rose, openly thieved from the Havering garden, beside her plate.

  Her face softened at once. ‘Oh, Richard!’ she said lovingly. ‘You are so naughty! Now go and eat your suppers and have your baths and go to bed or there will be no riding for you tomorrow, new horse or not!’

  And then I let out a sigh of relief for I knew we were forgiven, I could sleep sound in my bed that night, since the two people I loved most dearly in the whole of the unsafe uncertain world were under the same roof as I, and neither of them was angry with me.

  ‘You shall have a riding habit,’ Mama said softly to me when she kissed me goodnight. ‘I shall find an old gown of my sisters’ at Havering Hall. Or I shall make you a new one.’

  ‘You shall learn to ride,’ Richard promised me on the stairs as we went up to bed, our candle-flames bobbing in the draughts which came up the stairwell and through the gaps in the bare floorboards. ‘As soon as I have learned, I shall teach you, dear little Julia.’

  Oh, thank you,’ I said and turned my face to him for his goodnight kiss. For once, instead of a token buss on the cheek, he kissed me tenderly on the lips.

  ‘Good Julia,’ he said sweetly, and I knew my refusal of lessons from my grandpapa had been seen and was being rewarded. Plentifully rewarded; for I would rather have had Richard’s love than anything else in the world.

  2

  Richard’s long-awaited first riding lesson was tedious for my g
randfather, humiliating for Richard and two long hours of agony for me. At first I could not understand what was wrong.

  When Richard went to mount the horse in the stable yard in the warm end-of-summer sunlight, I saw that his face was so white that the freckles on his nose were as startling as spots in an illness. His eyes were brilliant blue with a sheen on them like polished crystal. I thought he was excited. I thought he was bridle with excitement at the prospect of his first proper ride on a horse of his own.

  Scheherazade knew better. She would not stand still when he put his foot to the stirrup, she wheeled in a nervous circle, her hooves sliding on the cobbles. She pulled at the bit while Dench was holding the reins, trying to steady her. She threw up her head and snorted. Richard, one foot up in the stirrup, one foot on the ground, hopped around trying to get up.

  Grandpapa gave an unsympathetic ‘Tsk!’ under his breath and called to Dench, ‘Throw Master Richard up!’

  Dench clapped two dirty hands under Richard’s hopping leg and threw him up with as little ceremony as if Richard were a sack of meal.

  My grandpapa was mounted on his hunter, a beautiful dappled grey gelding which stood rock steady, like a statue of a horse in pale marble against the background of the green paddock and the rich whispering trees of the Havering-Wideacre woods.

  ‘Remember her mouth is soft,’ Grandpapa told Richard. ‘Think of the reins like silk ribbons. You must not pull too hard or you will break them. Use them to remind her what you want, but don’t pull. I said, “Don’t pull!”‘ he snapped as Scheherazade side-stepped nervously on the cobblestones and Richard jabbed at her mouth.

  Dench put a hand out and held her above the bit without a word of prompting. I watched uncritically. I had never seen a novice rider before and I thought Richard looked as grand as a Sussex huntsman, as gallant as one of Arthur’s knights. I watched him with eyes glowing with adoration. Richard on his own could do no ill in my eyes; Richard on Scheherazade was a demigod.

  ‘Let’s walk out into the paddock,’ said my grandpapa. There was an edge to his voice.

  Dench led Richard out behind Grandpapa, his steady hand on the reins. He was talking to Scheherazade as they went past me, and I sensed that Scheherazade was anxious and felt uneasy. Richard on her back felt insecure. His touch on the reins fidgeted her.

  I waited until they were some paces ahead of me before following. I did not want Scheherazade unsettled by footsteps behind her. It was Richard’s first riding lesson and I wanted everything to be perfect for him.

  But it was not. I sat on the ramshackle fence and watched my grandpapa riding his hunter around at a walk and a trot in a steady assured loop and circle, and then calling to Richard to follow him.

  But Scheherazade would not go. When Dench released her she threw up her head as if Richard’s hands were heavy on the reins. When he squeezed her with his legs, she sidled, uneasy. When he touched, just touched, her flank with his whip, she backed infuriatingly, while Richard’s pallor turned to a scarlet flush with his rising temper. But she would not do as she was bid.

  My grandpapa reined in his hunter and called instructions to Richard. ‘Be gentle with her! Gentle hands! Don’t touch her mouth! Squeeze with your legs, but don’t pull her back! No! Not like that! Relax your hands, Richard! Sit down deeper in the saddle! Be more certain with her! Tell her what you want! Oh, hell and damnation!’

  He jumped down from his hunter then and strode towards Richard and Scheherazade, tugging his own horse behind him. He tossed his own reins to Dench, who stood stoical, his face showing nothing. Grandpapa pulled Richard down from Scheherazade like an angry landowner taking a village child out of an apple tree, and, spry as a young man, swung himself into the saddle.

  ‘Now, you listen here, Sally-me-girl,’ he said, his voice suddenly tender and warm again. ‘I won’t have this.’ And Scheherazade’s ears, which had been pointy and laid back, making her head all bony and ugly, suddenly swivelled around to face front again and her eyes glowed brown and stopped showing white rims.

  ‘Now, Richard,’ said Grandpapa, keeping his voice even. ‘Like I told you in the yard, if you pull on the reins, you mean “stop” or “back”.’ He lifted his hands a fraction and Scheherazade moved forward. He pulled his hands a shade back towards his body, and she stopped as soon as she felt the tension on the reins. He drew the reins towards him again and she placed one hoof behind the other, as pretty as a dancer, and backed for three or four steps.

  ‘If you squeeze her with your legs, that means “forward”,’ Grandpapa said. He dropped his hands and invisibly tensed his muscles. At once Scheherazade flowed forward in a smooth elegant gait. She was as lovely as a fountain in sunlight. She rippled over the ground in a wave of copper. I clasped my hands under my chin and watched her. I ached with love for her. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

  ‘But if you tell her to stop and go at once, then you will muddle her,’ Grandpapa said, letting her walk the circle while he spoke. ‘She feels you telling her to stop, and she feels you telling her to go. That upsets her. You should always be clear with animals – with people too!’ he said with a wry grin, taking his attention from her for a fraction of a moment. ‘She’s got a lovely pace,’ he said. ‘She’s a sweet goer. But she needs gentleness. Sit down deep in the saddle so that she can feel you there. And tell her clearly what you want. She’ll do anything in the world for you if you treat her well.’

  He brought Scheherazade up to a mincing halt beside Richard and swung himself down from the saddle. ‘Up you go, lad,’ he said gently. ‘She knows her business. But you have to learn yours.’

  He helped Richard into the saddle, and Richard got one foot into the stirrup, but he could not find the stirrup on the far side. He dug for it with his toe, trying to get his foot into the metal loop. Scheherazade at once side-stepped and bumped my grandpapa, who swore.

  ‘Calm down!’ he said to horse and rider. ‘You two will have to learn to calm down together. You are like a pair of violin strings wound too tight. What the hell’s the matter with your stirrup, Richard?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Richard said; his voice was thin. It was the first thing I had heard him say since he had mounted, and with a shock I realized his voice was strained and he sounded afraid. ‘I could not find it at first,’ he said, ‘but I have it now.’

  ‘Well, learn to find it without digging your toe into her,’ Grandpapa said unsympathetically. ‘Don’t bother the animal. She needs to be gentled. Not kicked about.’ He twitched the reins out of Dench’s hands and a look passed between them which I was too far away to read. Dench turned and came towards me, his face as expressive as a lump of chalk.

  ‘Now,’ said Grandpapa, back in his own saddle. ‘Ride towards me.’

  Richard dropped his hands in a stiff motion and Scheherazade minced forward. She walked as if she feared the earth were hollow, as if it might open up underneath her hooves. Seeing her gait, I sensed her unease and found I was clenching my hands in two fists under my chin, as wary as she was.

  She did not like Richard.

  That was the reason for the look between my grandpapa and Dench. That was why Scheherazade flinched when Richard was in the saddle’ That was why Richard sat awkwardly and his face was white. Something about him bothered the animal. She was as irritable as a cat with its fur rubbed up the wrong way from head to toe. She was sparky with her dislike. She was not easy, and I could smell her sweat, sharp with fear.

  I could watch no more. When Richard stopped her with a short jab on the mouth and my grandpapa leaned over from his mount and loosened the reins between Richard’s fingers, I flinched in sympathy. When Scheherazade followed my grandpapa’s lead around the field, with Richard sitting stiffly on top of her, as awkward as though he were on a cart seat, I could feel my own shoulders slump as I willed him to be easy with her, to sink into the saddle so that she might feel his weight.

  Then I could not stand to see any more of it. Richard’s fa
ce had lost its flush of temper and was pale again, his eyes narrowed with concentration, his face set. He did not look like a knight from a story book any more. He made me uneasy. I slid down from the fence, careful to guard my muslin dress from the splinters of the rotting timbers, and went back to the house, to the parlour, where ladies, in any case, should be.

  I knew that Richard’s much heralded first lesson had not been a success, because I had seen it, but I would never have known it from Richard. When he came in for dinner, changed and washed, his smile was bright and his answers to Mama were confident. She believed him delighted with the mare, and I thought perhaps things had gone better after I had left my seat on the fence.

  ‘He’s heavy-handed,’ Grandpapa said dourly to Mama’s inquiry. ‘But riding’s in his blood. He should do well enough. And Harry Lacey – the old squire – had hands like mutton chops too. We used to laugh about it! I’d never let him touch one of my horses. But he taught Beatrice, y’know, and Harry. And Beatrice had the best pair of hands I’ve ever seen in this country. None to match ’em.’ He broke off, his smile reminiscent; perhaps he could see on the faded wallpaper of the parlour a bright redheaded girl who could whisper a horse out of a field. ‘She was a rider!’ he said. Odd that her son’s so awkward.’ He glanced over at Richard, who was straining to hear the conversation while he talked with Grandmama. ‘He’ll get accustomed,’ he said.

  But Richard did not get accustomed. He had a round dozen of lessons from my grandpapa at Havering Hall and rode out with him in the Havering woods and up over the common. But he was never easy with Scheherazade. He sat on her back as if she were a tinder-box which might accidentally burst into flames. He and Scheherazade simply could not deal together. I saw it, and I wondered at it, but I could not have described it. Grandpapa was brutally frank.