‘But one she took, the first one she took when she was a girl, was from the Old People too,’ Clary said. ‘His mother was Meg, a gypsy woman, and his father was one of the old gods. No one ever saw him in human shape. She took him, but she could not destroy him. He went into the dark world, into the silence, and he waited until she knew for sure he was coming. And then he came against her.’

‘How?’ I said. My mouth was dry. I knew this was a fairy story made up by ignorant people on long dark nights, but I had to hear the ending.

‘He came in his rightful shape, half-man, half-horse,’ Clary’s voice was a low mesmerizing whisper. ‘And at every hoofprint there was a circle of fire. He rode up the wooden stairs of the great hall, of Wideacre Hall, and everywhere he went the flames took hold. He threw her across his shoulders and rode away with her to the dark world where they both live. And the house burned down behind them. And the fields never grew again.’

The children were utterly silent, though they knew the story well. I stared blankly at Clary, my head whirling with the picture of a black horse and a man riding away with Beatrice to the dark world where she would live with him for ever.

‘Is that the end of the story?’ I asked.

Clary shook her head. ‘They left an heir,’ she said. ‘A child who will have their magic. A child who will be able to make things grow by setting foot to the earth, hand to the ploughshare. The favoured child.’

‘And who is it?’ I asked. I had truly forgotten I had any part in this story. Clary smiled, a wise old smile.

‘We have to wait and see,’ she said. ‘All of us in Acre are waiting for the sign. It could be you, or it could be your cousin Richard. He is her son. But you have the looks of her, and you’re a Lacey. And Ned Smith said the horse knew you were her.’

I shook my head. The air was cold, and I noticed for the first time that the ground was damp and I was chilled. ‘All that is nonsense,’ I said stoutly.

I expected a childish squabble with Clary, but she smiled at me with her eyelashes veiling her eyes. ‘You know it is not,’ she said. And she said no more.

I got to my feet. ‘I must go,’ I said.

‘Home to dinner?’ asked Clary, accepting a return to the prosaic world.


‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of the two or three dishes for the main course and then the pudding, and then the cheese.

‘W-W-What are you having?’ Matthew asked with longing. ‘Nothing much,’ I said resolutely.

‘Do you have tea?’ Little ‘Un asked. There was real longing in his voice.

‘Yes,’ I said, not understanding. ‘Don’t you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We just gets water.’

‘D’you have meat?’ one of the Carter girls asked me.

‘Yes,’ I said, and I felt ashamed that I should have been eating so well while less than two miles down our own lane they had been going hungry. I had known that Acre was poor, but I had not understood that they had been hungry for years. I had not understood that these children would never have felt a full belly, that since infancy they had hungered and thought of little else but food. And while I had my dreams of gardens and horse-riding, of balls and parties and gowns, all they dreamed of in reveries, and even in their sleep, was food.

I turned and walked towards Acre, and I heard them scramble to their feet and come after me. Clary caught me up and we walked side by side into Acre like old friends.

‘Goodbye,’ I said as we reached the dirty little lane which is Acre’s main street.

Clary halted. ‘He has apples in his garden, Dr Pearce,’ she said.

I nodded. ‘I know,’ I said.

Clary looked at me speculatively. ‘Still on the tree,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t picked them all.’

I nodded again. They were apples on old trees, part blighted and not very good eating.

Little ‘Un came up and slipped a thin hand in mine. ‘I can just see them,’ he said in his breathy voice. ‘I’d love ’em.’

I looked at Clary.

‘If we bunked you up…’ she started. Over the side wall into the garden. You could throw them over to us, and then go round to the front and go in the front door, like usual.’


‘Why don’t you go?’ I asked.

“Cause if they catch me stealing, I could be hanged,’ she said with brutal frankness. ‘If they catch you, it’s not even stealing when gentry does the taking.’

I hesitated.

‘She won’t do it,’ Ted said. The dislike towards me, towards all squires, made his young voice hard. ‘She came out to make it all right for her cousin, not to be with us.’

‘I will do it,’ I said, rising to the challenge.

‘Go over the wall and steal the parson’s apples?’ he sneered.

‘Yes,’ I said. All at once we all got the giggles. Even Ted’s harsh young face crumpled at the thought of setting me to stealing. We skittered around to the vicar’s high back wall, the little children sluggish with merriment, and Ted Tyacke and Matthew Merry linked hands together, and Clary helped me up to stand on them. They staggered at my weight and Clary said, ‘Go on! Throw her!’

I snorted with laughter at that, and grabbed the top of the wall as the two lads staggered with my weight and with the giggles.

‘One…two…three…and up!’ counted Clary, and the insecure footing underneath my boots suddenly heaved me upwards and against the top of the wall. It was topped with sharp flints, and I heard a seam rip. I looked down into the garden, swung my legs over and was readying myself to slide down and jump when I froze.

There was Dr Pearce, almost immediately below me, looking upward, his face a mask of surprise. ‘Miss Lacey?’ he said as if he could not believe his eyes. ‘Miss Lacey? What on earth are you doing?’

I could think of no answer; I turned around to check that Ted and Matthew were still there. ‘Catch me!’ I squealed like a stuck pig and just toppled backwards off the wall towards them.

We went down in a tumbled heap on to the hard ground with the two of them taking the weight of my fall. They jumped up, but I was laughing so much I could not move.

‘What was it? What was it?’ Clary asked, smiling already at my helpless gales.


‘It was Dr Pearce!’ I said. ‘Right below me. He looked up…and he said…“Miss Lacey. What on earth are you doing?”‘

Clary gave a great wail of laughter and fell into Matthew’s arms. Ted put out a hand and pulled me to my feet, his brown round face contorted. The smaller children dropped down where they stood and howled with irrepressible mirth.

‘I’ve got to go,’ I said, wiping my streaming eyes. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go in the front garden gate and up the path.’

That set us off again even worse than before, and we staggered like a band of drunkards around to the lane.

‘Don’t come with me,’ I begged. ‘I must stop laughing.’

Clary nodded, still chuckling. ‘Come down to Acre again soon,’ she said. Her dirty face was streaked with the tears she had shed, and she still held her sides. ‘We could really use you in the gang. Great thief you are, Julia Lacey.’

I nodded, still unable to speak, and then turned towards the vicar’s front gate. Half-way up the path to the pretty house I stopped and drew in a deep breath. I did not know Dr Pearce well, and I did not think I would face anything worse than a scolding. But I did not want to disgrace myself utterly by bursting out laughing on the doorstep.

A hoot from behind me told me that Clary was watching, but I did not look around. I tapped on the door and the vicar’s housekeeper, Miss Green, opened it. She dipped a curtsy and held it wide, and I stepped into the hall, back into the world where I belonged.

Dr Pearce came out of the library with Richard and nodded to me as if it were the first time he had seen me that morning.

‘Hello, Miss Lacey,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Come to walk home with your cousin? We are just finished.’

For a moment I gaped at him, then I took my cue. Dr Pearce was not a man to seek difficulties. If he could turn a blind eye to them, then he would do so. He really did not want to know what I was doing sitting on his high garden wall with my coat torn and my face muddy and the naughty children of Acre catcalling encouragement from the lane below.


I curtsied demurely. ‘Yes, Dr Pearce,’ I said. I held Richard’s books while he pulled on his coat and hat, and we went back outside and home for dinner.

The children had gone, vanished like idle fox-cubs at the sound of a strange footstep. The weather had changed from the sunny morning. There were thick clouds piled all over the sky. Richard and I started at a jog-trot for home, speeded by a warning scud of rain on our backs.

‘Did you see Mrs Green?’ Richard asked breathlessly.

‘No,’ I said. I was having trouble keeping up for I was tired from my run with the village children and bruised from the fight with Clary and the fall from Dr Pearce’s wall.

‘Why not?’ Richard demanded. His blue eyes were bright. As soon as I had stepped over the vicar’s threshold, he had seen the scratch on my face and my tangled hair. He knew something had happened, but he would not ask me directly.

‘Tell you later,’ I puffed. I had no breath for a long explanation and I wanted time to think about exactly what I would tell Richard. I had a feeling, which I could not have explained, but which I thought was right, that I did not want to tell Richard the strange stories they had invented in the village about his mama. They might distress him. And I was sure, though I could not have said why, that I did not want to tell him of this newly woven fable of a favoured child, the one who was the true heir.

Richard heard the hesitation in my voice and skidded to a sudden stop and grabbed me by the arm so I swung around to face him. The rain stung my right cheek, but we were a little sheltered by the trees which overhung on the Wideacre side of Acre lane. In the field behind me the wind whistled and the rain sliced down on the self-seeded wheat and brambles.

‘Tell me now,’ he said.

I heard the warning note in his voice and I stood, uncomplaining, in the rain and told him of the walk to the wood and the fight with Clary and the truce we seemed to have made. I told him every single word spoken except Clary’s story about Beatrice. Richard’s stillness warned me that I had better sound thorough; and I was. I also omitted the taunt that I fought his battles for him. I did not tell him that Matthew had spat at the mention of his name. And I said nothing about scrumping the apples.

Richard heard me out, although the rain was making his hair curly with the damp so that he looked more like a fallen cherub than ever. ‘Well done, Julia!’ he said warmly when I had finished. ‘You are a brave girl. I am glad that you are not afraid of Acre any more. You were quite right to tackle the children. Now you will not be afraid to come with me when I go to have my lessons.’

I glowed under his approval.

‘I never minded them,’ he said carelessly, ‘but I am glad you have got over your fear.’

He let my arm go and turned to walk on. I hesitated only for a moment. One part of me wanted to correct him, the anxious proud voice in me which wanted to say, ‘But wait, Richard, you were afraid. I tackled the children for you.’ Then I thought of my grandmama’s warning that a lady’s place is second place, and I smiled a little secret smile, kept my peace and strode alongside him. Then the storm came down on our heads and we broke into a run and splashed up the drive in the milky puddles and dived in the back door, calling for towels and clean clothes. We were greeted by a scolding from Mrs Gough for tracking mud all over her clean kitchen floor.

4

That was the start of a friendship for me – my friendship with Clary Dench – which did so much to reconcile me to my task of becoming a young lady of Quality. Not because Clary knew my world, or cared anything for its arcane restrictions, but because with her I had an escape and a hiding-place from the standards of my mama and from the discipline I had imposed on myself by my determination to be a good daughter and, in the future, a good wife.

With Clary I could be myself. I loved her despite the differences in our lives, despite the fight at our first meeting and our regular quarrels thereafter. We forged an unquestioning friendship, in that we took enormous pleasure in each other’s company without ever wondering why we liked each other so much. I just found that it suited me very well to go every morning to the vicarage with Richard, to leave him there for his lessons and then to meet Clary and spend an hour or two of my leisured empty days with her.