The Favoured Child

by Philippa Gregory

  It was the sound of many feet, bare feet, on the drive, coming to the house. I could hear it before it was more than a distant shuffle, because I was expecting to hear it. I had been waiting for it. I knew this dream; and I knew what happened next. I could not stop it. I could not halt it. There was no escape for me. For what was coming for me was my destiny. What was coming for me was rough justice. What was coming for me was the village I had tried to destroy and the man I had attacked. For I was Beatrice. Beatrice Lacey of Wideacre Hall, with a wild smile on my lips, staring into the storm-drenched darkness. I was Beatrice, waiting in the darkened house. I was Beatrice and I was alone at Wideacre, waiting for the men who were coming from Acre led by a god who was half-man and half-horse, who would ride up the oak stairs, leaving hoofprints of fire, and take me away to the secret world of his own.

  I awoke in terror, but with a feeling also of mad elation, as though the world were ending, but ending by my will. The excitement and the fear drained from me as I looked around my room, and my real life – plain ordinary Julia Lacey’s life – came back to me. I was no copper-headed witch. I was plain ordinary Julia Lacey in her patched nightgown in her cold room.

  I turned and lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling, which was pale yellow in the spring dawn. The dream faded from me, and the richness of the colours and the delight of the textures went with it. It was a dream, it was nothing but a dream. But it left me longing to know the woman who had been Beatrice, longing to know her life and her death. And it left me confused, and somehow dissatisfied with this little house and my quiet pleasures and my bending to Richard’s will and to Mama’s gentle rule. It left me with a feeling that the woman who was Beatrice would never have tolerated the indoors life which I was teaching myself to enjoy. She would have snapped her fingers at it, insisted on having her own horse and ridden out every day. She would not have let her inheritance go to rack and ruin – she would have borrowed money to plant the fields, to buy stock. And her skill and determination and her magic would have made it work.

  I sighed. I knew I was not like that. I was too loving and obedient to my mama to overrule her, or even to challenge what she said. And I was too much Richard’s faithful betrothed to think an independent thought. It seemed I had been set in a mould before I had time to make a choice. I was a docile, ordinary young lady and I must take my little enjoyments indoors and with proper decorum.

  But then I suddenly remembered what day it was, and I forgot my passing irritation with my life. Today was not a plain ordinary day at all. It was the day of my sixteenth birthday. The dream slid away from me and I jumped out of bed and pattered to the window to see what sort of day it was. I wrapped myself in a shawl and waited for my morning chocolate and for the day to begin.

  I expected some changes. But I had expected slight, trivial, delightful changes. I thought that the most exciting things would be Mama coming to my room after breakfast, with her tortoise-shell hairbrushes and a box full of pins, and seating me before my little spotted looking-glass and pinning up my hair. My thick ripple of light-brown hair was to be pinned up for ever. And my skirts were to be longer. I was to be a young lady. In so far as Mama could do it – with no money, and no London season, and no ball – I was Out.

  Richard banged at the door. ‘Am I allowed to watch?’ he called.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Mama said, her mouth full of hairpins. ‘You may wait in the parlour in awed silence until we are ready.’

  ‘I don’t want Julia to look all different,’ he said mutinously.

  ‘She is going to look like a lady and not like a hoyden,’ Mama said firmly. ‘Now, go away, Richard!’

  We heard the clatter of his boots as he went downstairs, and I met my mama’s eyes in the mirror and smiled.

  ‘I can’t do it very well,’ she said apologetically. ‘You should really have it cut properly. But hairdressers are very dear, I’m afraid. I so wish that you could have had a party and we could have gone to the Assembly Rooms. But there is little point waiting. You are sixteen, and it has to be now, with just me as your dresser and dinner this afternoon as your coming-out ball.’

  I nodded, not minding, impressed already with the changes she was making. Mama had swept up my thick mass of hair and was coiling it like a fat snake round and round and pinning it skilfully on my head. On either side of my face she parted the hair and trimmed it shorter, twisting it with her fingers into soft waves. She was intent upon my hair and did not look into the mirror to see the overall effect until she had her pins firmly in place. Then she looked up to see me and the smile faded from her face and she was suddenly pale.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded. I was smiling; I thought myself at the very pinnacle of style.

  Mama swallowed. ‘It is nothing,’ she said. She smiled, but she did not seem happy. ‘It is that you are suddenly so grown-up,’ she said. She dropped a kiss on the top of my head.

  ‘When I was a girl, hair was worn powdered. But I think it is prettier left in its natural fairness,’ she said. ‘Especially in the summer when it goes lighter and you are quite fair.’ She gathered up her brushes and pins and swept from the room as if she were in a hurry to leave. I watched her abrupt departure, puzzled; but then I looked back at my mirror.

  I knew at once whom she had seen.

  She had seen Beatrice.

  I looked like the face in the dream. The plaits I usually wore had hidden the clear lines of my profile, had blurred the shape of my face. Now, with my hair swept up and the teasing little waves around my face, you could see my high cheek-bones and the odd little slant to my eyes which I had inherited – as clear as a voice calling across a generation – from my aunt. My face was still round, distressingly chubby, I thought. I smiled an experimental smile at myself in the glass. In a few years’ time I could count on being pretty. But if I became beautiful, it would be Beatrice’s clear loveliness shining through.

  Perhaps it should have troubled me, but I was just sixteen and I wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be a pretty girl. If I had inherited the notorious beauty of Beatrice, then my delight in that outweighed my fear of the woman in the dream. I smiled again at my reflection.

  I did not look so very much like the woman in the dream, I thought. I did not want to think of the dream today. Today I wanted everything to be joyful and normal and ordinary. I did not want to be a haunted Lacey heir reaching adulthood. I wanted to be Julia, finally old enough to wear her hair up, and with a very good chance of a pair of silver-backed hairbrushes of her very own wrapped in pretty paper by her place at dinner that afternoon.

  ‘Julia! Aren’t you done yet?’ Richard called from the foot of the stairs. ‘If you don’t hurry and come, we won’t get to Havering Hall and back again in time for dinner!’

  ‘Coming!’ I called back, and I looked once more at myself in the mirror and ran from the room, banging the door behind me and clattering down the uncarpeted stairs.

  I had hoped that Richard would fall back on his heels at the change in my appearance. I was young enough and silly enough and vain enough to think that he might think me pretty, perhaps even beautiful. But he just grinned when he saw me. ‘Very smart,’ he said. ‘Very grown-up. I s’pose you’re too grown-up now to run through the wood to Havering and we’ll have to walk around by the road?’

  I grinned back and lost my disappointment in my relief that nothing had changed between us. ‘No,’ I said. ‘We can go through the woods. But if my hair falls down, you’ll have to pin it up before we go in to Grandmama, Richard, for I’ve not learned how to do it yet.’

  ‘No worse than tying knots, I suppose,’ Richard said, and we stepped out of the front door into a spring day of sunlight as bright as peach wine.

  Wideacre glowed like a gift for me. It had rained overnight and the buds on the trees and the grassy banks were glittering with raindrops. The hedges were pale green with buds as if someone had thrown a gauze veil over the black twigs and branches. Pale strips of clouds lay on the
horizon and the sweet wind of Wideacre blew in my face, saying welcome from the land to a Lacey. To my left the downs reared up, up to the pale sky, streaked with chalk scree and covered in the sweet green colour of chalk-grown grass. And ahead of us, like a wall of tree-trunks, were the thick woods of Wideacre Park.

  Without another word Richard and I turned up the drive towards Wideacre Hall and then plunged into the woods following the little track which would take us to Havering.

  The Fenny was in spate, flooded with the winter rain and the bubbling little chalk springs from the downs. As we walked beside it, we said nothing, listening to it singing over the stones which glowed golden in the depths. Bits of wood, twigs and last year’s brown leaves tumbled over and over in the current. We paused for a moment to toss in some bracken fronds and watch them whirl away down river, past the Greens’ idle mill, over the weir, past Acre, southwards to the sea.

  The bridge we used was a felled tree. Once there was a path clearly marked across it, for people from Acre used to walk this way and take the short cut over the tree-bridge to Wideacre Hall. But it had been many years since the poor of Acre would seek out a Lacey, and few people went to the hall after it was burned, except Richard and me and the Lacey ghosts. The path was overgrown and I had to pull my gown away from brambles and burrs as we walked. Mama had let down the hem for me, and I saw, as she had warned me, that I might not always relish the change.

  ‘Wait, Richard,’ I said impatiently. ‘I’m going to hitch it up.’

  Richard chuckled and held my coat out of my way as I kilted up my skirt. ‘You’re a hoyden,’ he said, smiling. ‘Not a young lady at all.’

  ‘I am a young lady,’ I said grimly, and my picture of Beatrice was bright in my mind. ‘But I cannot always be a perfect young lady on Wideacre.’

  I walked easier after that, and we balanced our way across the slippery tree-trunk, holding on to the branches without mishap. Then it was a stroll down a grassy ride to the Havering estate, where Grandmama congratulated me on my new hairstyle and was generous enough to overlook that my newly lengthened gown was very muddy around the hem. We stayed for a dish of tea and then Grandmama ordered the carriage out to take us home.

  ‘We can walk, Lady Havering,’ Richard said courteously.

  She smiled. ‘My granddaughter is a young lady today,’ she said. ‘I think she should certainly ride home in a carriage.’

  So we arrived home in fine style in the shabby carriage with the faded crest on the door, and Mama waved to us from the parlour window and hastened out on to the front step.

  ‘My second carriage visitor today!’ she said, and her eyes were shining. ‘We have a guest for dinner! You two, upstairs at once and change. I won’t have you in my parlour in all your dirt. Hurry now!’ And she whisked back into the parlour with a ripple of laughter as if she were a young girl, refusing to respond to our bemused faces, running from our questions.

  Richard turned at once for the kitchen. The place was in chaos. The fire was burning fiercely, and Mrs Gough’s white cap was askew and she was alarmingly red in the face.

  ‘Who is here?’ Richard demanded. ‘Mrs Gough, who is the extra place at dinner?’

  ‘Wait and see!’ she said tersely, slapping a mound of pastry on the floured table. ‘But your ma said to tell you, Miss Julia, to change into your best gown, and you are to put on your Sunday suit, Master Richard!’

  ‘Lord Havering,’ I hazarded. Mrs Gough pressed her lips together, rolled out some of the pastry and turned it a quarter of the way around to keep it smooth.

  ‘Lady de Courcey!’ Richard guessed.

  Oh, get along, do!’ she said with the tolerance in her voice which was always there for Richard. ‘Can’t you see that I’m rushed off my feet! Go and get dressed, Master Richard! And you, Miss Julia, be a good girl and go into the yard and see if Jem is back yet. He’s fetching some fruit and vegetables and some game for me from Midhurst, and I cannot get on without it!’

  I nodded and went obediently to the back door, but Richard stood his ground and went on guessing. Jem still had not come, and the rising flush on Mrs Gough’s pink cheeks warned even Richard that her temper was about to boil over. We made ourselves scarce, creeping through the green baize door into the hall. A gentleman’s hat was on the hall table with tan gloves beside it, good-quality leather. We could hear the murmur of voices in the parlour and suddenly Mama’s laugh rang out as clear as a flute. I had never heard her laugh so joyously in all my life before.

  Richard would have listened at the door, but Stride came out of the dining-room and shooed us upstairs.

  ‘Who is it, Stride?’ I asked in a whisper as I hovered on the stairs.

  ‘The sooner you are dressed for dinner, the sooner you will know,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘Now, go, Miss Julia!’

  I dropped my muddy things on my bedroom floor and drew my new cream silk gown out of the chest. ‘New to you,’ Mama had said ruefully. It was cut down from an old gown from Mama’s half-sister, and the seams showed pale where the colour had faded. But the main silk of the gown was shiny and yellow, bright as the heart of a primrose, and I felt taller and older as soon as the ripple of sweet-smelling silk eased in a flurry over my head. I stood on tiptoe to see as much of it as I could in my little mirror and saw how the colour made my face glow warm and my eyes show hazy and grey. Then Richard banged on my door and I spun around to slip into my best shoes and we went downstairs to see who was the guest for dinner so important that his identity was an exciting secret and Mrs Gough was allowed to buy fruit and game for his meal.

  It was John MacAndrew.

  I knew it the second the door opened. Not because he was standing, tall but slightly stooping, at the fireplace as close to the hot fire as he could get, needing the heat, but because I saw Mama’s face, pink and rosy like a girl’s, glowing with a happiness I had never seen before.

  ‘Julia! This is…’

  ‘My Uncle John!’ I interrupted, and ran into the room with both hands held out to him. He beamed at my welcome and caught both hands in his and drew me to him for a hug. Then he set me back and kissed my forehead like a blessing, and stepped back to see me.

  Suddenly the easy smile went cold on his lips and his pale blue eyes lost their warmth. He looked at me as if he were seeing an enemy, not his own niece. He looked over my head to Mama, who had risen from her chair and was watching his face with something like fear in her face.

  ‘What is it, John?’ she asked, her voice urgent.

  ‘She reminded me so…she reminds me so…’ he said, searching for words, his eyes fixed on my face. He looked afraid. I stepped awkwardly away from him, towards my mama, and looked to her for prompting.

  ‘No!’ she said abruptly, and I jumped at the sharpness in her voice. ‘She is nothing like Beatrice!’

  At the mention of her name Uncle John breathed out.

  ‘She is not like Beatrice at all,’ Mama said again, like some brave rider going for a difficult fence. ‘She has quite different hair colour, quite different eyes. Quite different altogether. You have been away too long, John. You have had the picture of Beatrice in your mind for too long. Julia is not in the least like her. She is very much my daughter. She is very like me. She is naughty sometimes, and Wideacre-mad! But all children are naughty at times and it means nothing. Julia is my little girl. If you had seen her yesterday – before she put up her hair – you would not have thought her a young lady at all!’

  Uncle John shuddered and shook his head to clear his mind. Of course,’ he said, and he smiled at me, drawing strength from Mama’s common sense. Of course. It was the way she ran into the parlour, and her voice, her smile, and the set of her head…but she will have learned that grace from you, Celia, I know.’

  ‘I am glad you think so,’ Mama said. ‘For I think her a most mannerless hoyden!’

  He smiled at that and I saw the warmth in his eyes which made me glad for Mama. I could see at once that he loved her. And the first picture I h
ad – of a man stooped and tired, yellow-faced and ill – faded before the sparkle in his eyes and the way his mouth made a little secret smile as though he could not help laughing but was trying to stay serious.

  ‘Uncle John,’ I said shyly. ‘Here is Richard too.’

  John turned swiftly towards his son, and I saw his shoulders suddenly straighten, taking on a burden that he had long promised himself. He put out a hand as Richard came into the room, and his voice and his smile were practised. ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘I am very glad to see you’, and he put his arm around Richard’s shoulders and hugged him hard, and then, still holding him, turned to Mama and laughed. ‘Celia, all this while I have been picturing you with little children, and here is Richard nearly as tall as me and Julia up to my shoulder.’

  Mama laughed too, and I knew that she had expected that hesitation from Uncle John and was skilfully glossing over it before it could be noticed. ‘And the clothes they need! And the shoes!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I see I shall need all my rubies and diamonds,’ Uncle John beamed.

  ‘Do you have rubies and diamonds, sir?’ Richard asked quickly.

  ‘Minefuls of ’em!’ Uncle John replied promptly.

  Mama beamed at him. ‘We shall spend them all,’ she promised. ‘But do sit down now, John, and rest before Stride serves dinner. And tell us your news. You can unpack your elephants later!’

  The dinner was the best that Mrs Gough could rush together and was served on the Havering china with the crest; and we used the best crystal glasses. Lady Havering had spared no trouble when Jem had been sent out again after his return from Midhurst to tell her that Dr MacAndrew was home. She had even packed a cold bottle of champagne, and we drank it with the pudding and toasted all our futures.

  ‘We must talk, Celia,’ said Uncle John when Mama rang for Stride to come and clear the plates.

  ‘We can talk later,’ she offered with a loving concerned glance at his pale face.