The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon

My brother nodded and smiled at me. There was no malice or triumph in his smile. His friendship with Ralph had brought him a new confidence but no arrogance. His smile was still that of a cherubic schoolboy, his eyes still the clear blue of a happy child.

‘He will be pleased,’ he said serenely.

I realized then that this was Ralph’s idea, Ralph’s arguments, Ralph’s very words. He had given me pleasure and possessed me, but he held my brother in the palm of his hand. Through my brother he could influence my father and I knew, because I knew Ralph, that he was after more than the pretty little Tyacke cottage to rent. He was after land, and then more land. More to the point, he was after our land. Few people ever move more than five miles from the village where they are born. Ralph was born on Wideacre land; he would die here. If he wanted land, it was our land he was after. The cottage was just a first step for him and I could not imagine where his hunger would end. I understood it as clearly as I understood myself. I would have done anything, committed any crime, any sin, to own our fields and woods. With a growing fear I wondered if Ralph also had the same desire, and how my besotted brother would ever stand against him.

I excused myself from the table and slipped out to the stables, ignoring my mother’s murmured instructions. I needed to see Ralph, no longer as a lover needs to see the man she loves, but to see if I could feel in him the passion for the land that he had seen in me. If he wanted Wideacre as much as I wanted it – the serene and lovely house, the warm gardens, the folds of the hills and the rich, peaty earth with the silver traces of sand – then my family was lost. Harry’s enthusiasm would admit a cuckoo that would throw us mercilessly to one side and claim the golden kingdom for himself. My mare trotted swiftly down the track to the cottage that was suddenly not good enough for Ralph, and then shied, nearly unseating me, as a bush near the path swayed and rustled.

‘Ralph!’ I said. ‘You nearly had me off!’

He grinned. ‘You should ride on a tighter rein, Beatrice.’

I turned the head of my horse and urged her forward so I could see what Ralph was doing. He was pegging out the jaws of a huge mantrap, a vicious weapon, on to the ground. It yawned like a great clam, custom-made in a London workshop for the protection of the gentry’s sport. Nearly four feet wide, made of sharpened, spiky iron with a spring as quick as the crack of a whip.

‘What a horrid thing,’ I said. ‘Why aren’t you putting it on the path?’

‘I can see the path from the cottage,’ said Ralph. ‘They know that. Just here, before the path bends, they creep through the bushes to get to the pheasants roosting. I’ve seen the prints of their boots. I reckon this will give them a welcome they weren’t expecting.’

‘Does it kill a man?’ I asked, visualizing the jaws snapping shut.

‘Can do,’ said Ralph, unconcerned. ‘Depends on his luck. In the great estates in the north they stake them out round the walls and check them once a week. If a man is caught, he may bleed to death before the keeper comes round. Your father wouldn’t allow such a thing here. If the man is lucky, he has two broken legs; if he is unlucky and it has cut a vital path of blood, he bleeds to death.’

‘Won’t you be there quick enough to save him?’ I asked, repelled by the weapon spread like a deadly invitation in the leaves.

‘Nay,’ Ralph drawled, unconcerned. ‘You’ve seen me cut a deer’s throat. You know how quick an animal dies when the blood is gushing. It’s the same with a man. But chances are they’ll just walk a little slowly for the rest of their days.’

‘You’d better warn your mother,’ I cautioned.

Ralph laughed. ‘She was away as soon as she saw it,’ he said. ‘She’s fey, you know. Said it smelled of death. Begged me to have nothing to do with it.’ He glanced at me sideways. ‘I sleep alone here during the afternoons and I watch at night.’

I ignored the unspoken invitation, though a prickling on my skin reminded me of what a long afternoon in Ralph’s cottage would have meant in the time that had gone.

‘You’re very thick with Master Harry,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘He’s learning his way round the woods,’ he said. ‘He’s got no feeling for the land like you, but he’ll make a good enough Squire in time with the right bailiff.’

‘We’ve never had a bailiff,’ I said swiftly. ‘We don’t have bailiffs at Wideacre.’

Ralph, still kneeling, gave me a long, cool look. His eyes were as bright and sharp as the teeth of the trap.

‘Maybe the next Squire will have a bailiff,’ he said slowly. ‘Maybe that bailiff will know the land well, better than the Master even. Maybe that bailiff will love the land and be a good Master to it, better than the Squire himself. Isn’t that the Master the land should have? Isn’t that the sort of man you’d like to see here, at your side?’

I slid off my mare and hitched the reins to a low branch, carefully away from the trap.

‘Let’s walk to the river,’ I said. ‘Leave that.’

Ralph kicked a few more concealing leaves over the trap and turned to follow me. I swayed towards him as we walked and my cheek brushed his shoulder. We walked in silence. The River Fenny, our river, is a sweet clean trout stream you can drink in safety over every inch of our land. The salmon reach this far in summer, and you can always have a trout or a bowlful of eels for half an hour’s netting. The pebbles here are golden and the river is a streak of silver in the sunlight with mysterious amber pools under the shades of the trees. We watched the endless flow of water over the stones and said in unison, ‘Look! A trout!’ and smiled that we should speak together. Our eyes met in a shared love of the trout, the river and the sweet Sussex earth. The days of absence slid away from us, and we smiled.

‘I was born and bred here,’ Ralph said suddenly. ‘My father and his parents and their parents have been working this land for as long as we can trace back. That gives me some rights.’

The river babbled quietly.

A fallen tree trunk spanned the river. I stepped on to it and sat, my legs dangling over the water. Ralph balanced down the trunk and leaned against one of the branches looking at me.

‘I can see my way clear now,’ he said quietly. ‘I can see my way clear through to the land and the pleasure. D’you remember, Beatrice, when we spoke that first time? The land and the pleasure for both of us.’

A trout plopped in the river behind him, but he didn’t turn his head. He watched me as close as my owl watched me at night, as if to read my thoughts. I looked up, a slanting, sliding glance out of the corner of my tilted eyes.

‘The same land and the same pleasure. We share them both?’

He nodded. ‘You’d do anything to be Mistress of Wideacre, wouldn’t you, Beatrice? You’d give anything you owned, make any sacrifice there was, to be the Mistress in the Hall and be able to ride over the land every day of your life and say, “This is mine.”’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘But you’ll be sent away,’ he said. ‘You’re not a child any more. You can tell what your future will be – sent to London and married to a stranger who will take you far away, perhaps to a different county. The land, the weather and the farming will be all different. The hay won’t smell the same; the earth won’t be the same colour. The milk and cheese will taste different. Harry will marry some high-bred girl who will come and queen it here and take your mother’s place. You’ll be lucky if you’re allowed a visit once a year at Christmas.’

I said nothing. The picture was too clear, all too likely. Ralph had been planning while I had been dreaming. Everything he said was right. I would be sent away. Harry would marry. Wideacre would not be my home for ever; I would be far away in some unknown part of the country. Perhaps, even worse, I would have to live with some fashionable husband in London and never smell new-mown hay again. I said nothing, but I hurt inside and I was afraid.

The bedroom my mama would not redecorate for me, the warning my papa had given me, the love they both showed for Harry all told me, as clear as a tolling bell, where I was going. I was on my way to exile, and all my will and all my passion could not save me.

Ralph turned his head from my shocked face and watched the stream. The slim, silver trout was finning gently, nose pointing upstream as the sweet water flowed all over him.

‘There is a way to stay here and be the Lady of Wideacre,’ he said slowly. ‘It is a long and crooked way, but we win the land and the pleasure.’

‘How?’ I said. The ache of loneliness in my belly made my voice as quiet and as low as his. He turned back to me and sat beside me, our heads together like conspirators.

‘When Harry inherits you stay beside him. He trusts you and he trusts me,’ Ralph said. ‘We cheat him, you and I. As his bailiff, I can cheat him on his rents, on his land, on his harvests. I tell him we have to pay more taxes and I bank the difference. I tell him we need special seed corn, special animals, and I bank the difference. You cheat him on his accounting. In his wages for the house servants, the house management, the home farm, the stables, the dairy, the brewery. You know how it could be done better than I.’ He waited and I nodded. I knew. I had been involved in the running of the estate since my earliest years when Harry was away at school or staying with relatives. I knew I could cheat him of a fortune in the household accounts alone. With Ralph acting with me I calculated that Harry would be bankrupt inside three years.

‘We ruin him.’ Ralph’s voice was a whisper, mingling with the clatter of the stream. ‘You’ll have a jointure protected, or probably a dower house protected, or funds. Your income is safe, but we make him bankrupt. With the money we’ve saved I buy the estate from him. And then I’m the Master here and you’re what you deserve to be, the Mistress of the finest estate and house in England, the Squire’s Lady, the Mistress of Wideacre.’

‘And Harry?’ I asked, my voice cold.

Ralph spat contemptuously to the riverbank. ‘He’s clay to anyone’s moulding,’ he said. ‘He’ll fall in love with a pretty girl, or maybe a pretty boy. He could hang himself or become a poet. He could live in London or go to Paris. He’ll have some money from the sale; he won’t starve.’ He smiled. ‘He can visit us if you like. I don’t think of Harry.’

I smiled in return, but my heart was beating faster with mingled hope and anger.

‘It could work,’ I said, neutrally.

‘It would,’ he said. ‘I have been many nights planning.’

I thought of him, hidden among the ferns in the woods, his dark eyes staring brightly into the darkness, watching for poachers and yet looking beyond the shadows to the future when there would be no cold, uncomfortable nights. When other men, paid men, would do his watching for him, and he could drink and dine and stand before a roaring fire and speak of the slackness of servants and the problems with rent rolls, and the state of the crops, and the incompetence of the government; and gentlemen would listen to him and agree.

‘It would work, except for one thing,’ I said.

Ralph waited.

‘My father’s healthy, strong as an ox. He could sire another son tomorrow and provide the child with trustees and guardians. Apart from that possibility, Harry may be fascinated with you now, but I doubt you’ll hold him for twenty years. My father’s forty-nine. He could live another forty years. By the time he’s dead, I’ll have been married thirty-five years to some fat old Scottish nobleman with a pack of barefoot children, maybe future dukes and duchesses, and probably grandchildren on the way too. Harry’s wife, whoever she may be, will have settled in nicely, growing fat and comfortable with two new heirs out of short clothes. The most you can hope for is Tyacke’s cottage. And the most I can hope for’, my voice quavered on a sob, ‘is exile.’

Ralph nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s the difficulty. It would work, but it would only work now, this summer. If it’s to happen it’s got to be done while Harry’s at a loose end, trailing around after me, or mooning around after you. In love with both of us and afraid of both of us. It has to be now while we are land-hungry and love-hungry. I don’t want to wait, Beatrice.’

His eyes on my face were bright. He was in love with me and with my land, a heady mixture for a labourer, the son of a labouring man. But the bleak reality of my life away from Wideacre as it must be, as it was bound to be, was a stark contrast to this dream future that Ralph saw, that Ralph thought we could win: as Lady of Wideacre.

‘My father looks well,’ I said drily.

There was a long pause as our eyes met in clear mutual knowledge of how far we were prepared to go to achieve Ralph’s dream, my dream.

‘There are accidents.’ Ralph’s words fell into a silence as ominous and deep as the still millpond. Like a stone tossed in deep water the idea spread widening ripples in my mind. I measured the appalling loss of my beloved, my delightful, papa against the certainty of my loss of Wideacre.

The precious, essential presence of my vital, noisy papa against the certain loneliness and coldness of my exile, which would come as surely as my sixteenth birthday would come, and at much the same time. I looked at Ralph unsmiling.

‘Accidents,’ I said flatly.

‘It could happen tomorrow,’ he said, as cold as me.

I nodded. My mind searched like a skilled spinner over a tangled skein of wool to find the ideas and threads of ideas that would lead me through a maze of sin and crime, and out of the maze into the broad sunshine of my home. I measured in silence how much I needed my papa against how much I needed that security; considered Harry’s infatuation with Ralph and how far it would lead him. Thought of my mama and how the loss of my father would make me more vulnerable to her, but ever and again came back to that picture of me in a comfortless northern castle far away from the land where I belonged, pining my heart out for the sound of a Wideacre morning. Always seeing my papa’s profile as he turned his face from me to watch his son. He had betrayed me before I ever dreamed of betraying him. I sighed. There could only ever have been one answer.

‘It could work,’ I said again.

‘It would work now,’ Ralph corrected me. ‘Harry could change in a year, in a couple of months. If he is sent away to prepare for university we will both lose our hold on him. It would work only this summer. It would work tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I said with a flash of irritation. ‘You say tomorrow. Do you really mean tomorrow?’

Ralph’s dark eyes were black with the knowledge of what we were saying.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do.’

I gave a gasp. ‘Why so soon?’ I said in instinctive fear. Yet my heart had leapt at the thought of moving quickly, of securing my future in an instant; of making something happen at once.

‘Why wait?’ said Ralph with cruel logic. ‘Nothing will change for me. I trust your mettle, Beatrice. If you are for Wideacre, if you wish to live there, if you are as determined as I think you are – why wait?’ His eyes were narrowed, measuring me, and I knew that together we were an explosive combination of elements. Without me this plan would never have been in his mind. Without me it could not have worked. Without his urgent pressure I could not have gone ahead. We led each other on like a pair of falling angels spinning down into hell. I breathed a deep sigh to slow the pace of my heart. The river bubbled neutrally beneath us.

4

I woke with a jolt in the pearl-grey light of a summer dawn and knew that today I had to do something – that I had woken myself early because I had something to do. But for a few dozy, sleep-drenched moments I could not for the life of me recall what it was. Then I gave a little gasp as yesterday came back to me – bright as an enamelled picture – Ralph and me sitting with the Fenny flowing beneath us, talking madness, talking death, talking treason.

Ralph had caught me while I was off balance; he had touched me on the raw of my jealous, exclusive heart, which says – which always said – ‘Love me. Love me only.’ The sight of my papa loving someone else, choosing another to ride with him, to chat with him, to run the land with him, had thrown me into such churning rage that I simply wanted to lash out – to hurt everyone as much as I was hurt. If I could have dropped Harry dead to the ground with a wish, I would have done so, for usurping my place with Papa. But the deep core of my resentful grief was directed against the father who had turned against me, the fickle and worthless man, after I had loved him without fail and without faltering for all of my life. It was his lack of fidelity to me that laid me open to any alliance. It was his failure to honour the love and trust between us that sent me spinning, rootless, amoral, into the world where any chance thought or vengeful plan could catch and hold me. It was as if I had sworn him fealty and he had broken his oath as liege lord. Disappointment and grief were the least of it – I had been betrayed.

And Ralph had made my counter-attack sound so easy. Ralph had made it sound so gentle. Ralph had made it sound so sensible. A well-schemed, cool-headed plan anyone would be wise to undertake. So logical that I could not fault it. It would work. It would give me what I needed – Wideacre – and it would revenge me for the pain my papa had caused me.

I shook my head on the pillow in the grey light of my whitewashed bedroom. I had been mad for a few seconds there, back on the tree trunk with Ralph’s persuasive voice gentle in my ear. I had been mad to listen and doubly mad to appear to consent. The thought of my papa in pain and realizing at last that he needed me was a sweet picture. The thought of him magically gone, and Harry magically gone, leaving me alone, in sole control, was another fine picture. But I was not fool enough to think such things could happen because I willed them. They were the dreams of a hurt child. I had been dangerously close to believing them.

To set such a course in motion was madness, and yesterday I had been mad with my jealousy and fear of the future. But today, with the dew falling and the sun not yet hot and the birds not yet singing, was another day. As soon as the servants were up and had unbolted the kitchen doors I should slip down to Meg’s cottage in the woods and tap on Ralph’s window and tell him I did not mean it. I would not have long to wait for they work long hours in the kitchen and the youngest maid would be stoking the kitchen fire and bringing in the logs in less than an hour. Until she opened the back door I could not get out without leaving an unbolted door behind me, and that would lead to questions that might take some answering. I had only to wait a few minutes, slip on some clothes, tiptoe downstairs and slide out while her back was turned. If Ralph had been out for poachers last night I might even meet him on his way home.

I snuggled a little lower under the covers, relishing the warmth in the knowledge that in a few moments I would have to leave the cosy softness of my bed and get dressed in a cold room and washed in cold water. I would set things right with Ralph and we would think of some other way. Perhaps things would come right of their own accord. If Harry left early for university, or even went to stay with some of Mama’s family for a few weeks, I would have the time to win back Papa’s attention. He might turn from me now, but I knew in his heart he loved me. He would tire of Harry; he would tire of teaching him. He would want the wordless instinctive companionship he and I had developed over years of riding the land together. Then he would look for me, and I would be at his side, and Harry would be the one who was left out and unwanted. Comforted by the thought I dozed and woke to check the brightness of the window. I listened for the kitchen maid but there was no sound. It was too early. If I fell asleep I would wake the moment I heard the back door open or the girl bring the logs in. I dozed, then I slid into a deeper sleep.

I awoke with a jump to see my window bright with early morning sunshine and my bedroom door opening as my maid brought in hot water for me to wash and an early morning cup of chocolate.

‘You slept late, Miss Beatrice,’ she said cheerily and clattered the cup at my bedside table. I threw back the covers and ran to the window. It was full day.

‘What time is it, Lucy?’ I asked urgently, splashing water on my face and throwing off my shift.

‘Eight o’clock,’ she said, as if it did not matter. As if it did not matter at all.

I gasped. Pointless to reproach myself for oversleeping on this one vital morning. ‘Help me,’ I said peremptorily. ‘I’m in a dreadful hurry.’

She moved like a dolt but I was dressed in minutes and racing down the stairs to the hall. No need for the kitchen door; the front door stood wide open. I caught sight of my papa eating his breakfast as I dashed past. He called good morning to me and I called back but did not stop. There still might be time to catch Ralph.

There still might be time, I thought as I ran, through the rose garden, through the little gate, across the paddock, the burrs catching at my long skirt, which I held bunched up in one hand. Then I was in the wood and settled down to a steady pace along the riverbank. A hundred things could delay Ralph at home and make him late setting out today. If he had been out late last night he might oversleep as I had. If he had stayed out all night he might now be having breakfast before going out again. He might still be out and on his way home. Or – and I had some faith in this – he might know, as lovers and young people often do know, that I was desperate and anxious; he might be waiting for me because he could somehow sense my urgency to see him, to tell him I had changed my mind, that I had been mad for a few moments – for an afternoon and a night only! – and that I knew now, as I had always known really, that of course my papa was sacred. On his own land he was the Squire and could not be touched. As my papa he was my dearest love – dearer to me than my own life I thought. What I said against him was spoken out of grief and hurt. I had never meant it for more than one foolish afternoon and one night.

My breath was coming in gasps and my tight-fitted dress was soaked with sweat under my arms and down my back but I did not dare stop. I thought I was as fit as a hunter in training but I was hampered by my skirts and by the rough ground under my boots. And it is a long way. But I did not dare stop. At this very moment Ralph might be pulling a jacket on, reaching for his cap and going out into the woods where I could not find him.

I had not asked him for a plan so I did not know, had no idea where he would then go. How he planned to meet my father, how he planned to do the act to which I consented – but did not mean. So I gasped at the burning pain under my ribs and panted for breath but ran on. It was like one of those nightmares when you run faster and faster but can get no purchase on the earth. My beloved Wideacre earth seemed to be turning to clay underneath my boots and though my legs were running I could feel that I was slowing, slowing; that my strides were not so long, that they were not so quick: I was losing time because I could not run, because I could not fly, and every second that passed might make the difference between seeing Ralph at the edge of the wood at the back of his cottage – or not seeing him at all.

I burst into the sunlight by the little cottage, speechless with lack of breath, banged through the garden gate and staggered, half drunkenly, up to the front door. I thumped on it with both clenched fists, then doubled up on the threshold whooping for breath, near sick with the strain of running so hard and so far. I heard footsteps inside and I felt dizzy with relief that I was in time. It would be all right. I had caught him, and the madness of yesterday’s conversation would be something we would both laugh about in a few moments. When he would say, ‘You did not think I really would have?’ and I would be able to laugh and laugh and say, ‘No, of course not.’ The door opened, and there was Meg.