The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon. Philippa Gregory
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and for miles around. It had reached the ears of the Quality through a thousand tattling maids and valets. When John wished to return to the normal world of visits and parties and dinners he would find doors closed against him. There would be no entry for him into the only world he knew unless I reintroduced him with all my charm and power.
He was not even summoned as a doctor to the yeoman farmers’ homes or to the Chichester and Midhurst tradesmen. Even the families of the middling sort had heard the gossip and there would be black looks for him in every village for a hundred miles around: for his drunken incompetence with Lady Lacey, and for grieving Miss Beatrice, the darling of the county.
My grief for a few days was real indeed. But as my fear of him and my sense of shame about his knowledge grew, I found I became colder and colder towards him. By the day of Mama’s funeral, only one week after I had threatened him with a hanging if he tried to betray me, I knew I hated him, and I would not rest until he was off Wideacre and silenced for good.
I had hoped he would be drunk on the day of the funeral, but as Harry handed me into the carriage John came out of the front door into the bright June sunlight. He was meticulously dressed in a neatly cut suit of black, his hair perfectly powdered, his black tricorn trimmed with black ribbon. He was pale, pale and cold, despite the hot sun. Or at least he shivered when his eyes met mine. But he had taken no more than he needed to face the day, and to judge from the hardness in his eyes, he was determined to see it through. Beside him, Harry looked plump and bloated and self-indulgent. John came towards the carriage steady-paced like some white-faced avenging angel, and stepped in to seat himself opposite me, without a word to any of us. I felt a touch of fear on my heart. John drunk was a public humiliation for me, his wife. But John sober and vengeful could ruin me. He would have every legal right to order and control me. He could legally watch my every movement. He would know if my bed had been slept in. He had a legal right to come into my room, into my bed, at any time, day or night. Worse, and even more unbearable – I clasped my black-gloved fingers in my lap to keep them from trembling – he could move away from Wideacre and sue me for public divorce if I refused to go with him.
In stealing his name for my fatherless child I had also robbed myself of the freedom any man, married or single, could take for granted. Both my days and nights had to be lived under the supervision of this man, my husband, my enemy. And if he wished he could imprison me, beat me, or take me from my home with the full blessing of the law of the land. I had lost even the limited privilege of my spinsterhood. I was a wife – and if my husband hated me, then I faced the certainty of a miserable future.
He leaned forward and patted Celia’s little hands clasped over her prayerbook.
‘Do not be too sad,’ he said tenderly. His voice was hoarse from the lack of sleep and the continual drinking. ‘She died a peaceful, easy death, and while she lived she had great happiness in your company and with little Julia. So do not be too sad. We could all hope for a blameless life of love as she had, and a peaceful, easy death.’
Celia bowed her head and her black-gloved hand returned John’s touch.
‘Yes, you are right,’ she said, her voice low with the effort of controlling her tears. ‘But it is a sad loss for me. Although she was only my mama-in-law I felt I loved her as much as if I had been her daughter.’
I felt John’s hard, ironic gaze on my face at this artless confession from Celia. Behind my veil my cheeks burned with rage at him, and at this whole sentimental conversation.
‘Just as much,’ John agreed, his eyes still hard on me. ‘I am sure Beatrice thinks so too, don’t you, Beatrice?’
I struggled to find a tone of voice that was free from either the rage or the fear I felt at this deliberate baiting of me. He was sliding like a clever skater on the thin ice of the truth. He was daring me; he was frightening me. But I had some power too, and he had best remember it.
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said levelly. ‘Mama always said that she was so lucky in the choices that Harry and I made. Such a lovely daughter-in-law, and so fine a doctor for a son-in-law.’
That hit him, as I had known it would. One word from me and his university would scratch his name from their records. One word from me and it would be the hangman’s noose for him and not all his clever spite could save him. He had best remember that, if he drove me to it, I would face down the scandal and the gossip that an accusation of murder would cause, and I would publicly claim that he overdosed Mama while he was drunk. And no one could gainsay me.
He sat back in the carriage beside Harry, careful not to let any part of his coat touch him. And I saw how he bit his lips to keep them from trembling, and clasped his hands to keep them still. He needed a drink to keep his private world of horrors at bay.
All four of us gazed dumbly out of the windows as the tall trees of the drive slid past, and then the fields, and then the little cottages of Acre village. The funeral bell was tolling, one resounding stroke after another, and in the fields I saw the day labourers pulling off their hats and standing still as we drove by. As soon as the carriage was past they set to work again and I was sorry for the old days when every man on the estate would have had a day’s paid holiday to pay his respects to the passing of one of the gentry. But the tenants, even the very poorest of cottagers, had given up a morning’s work to crowd into the church to be present at Mama’s funeral.
She was all there was left of the old Squire, my papa, and with her sudden, unexpected death, the land and the house now belonged to the young generation. There were plenty in the church and in the graveyard to say that Mama’s death was the passing of the old days and old ways. But there were even more who said that my papa lived on while I ruled. That on Wideacre at least there was no need to fear change and an uncertain future, for the real power at Wideacre did not rest with the Squire who, gentry-like, was mad for change and profit, but was with the Squire’s sister, who knew the land like most ladies know their own parlour, and was more at ease in a meadow than a ballroom.
We followed the coffin into church for the heavy, ominous service, and then we followed it out again. They had opened the Wideacre vault and Mama was placed next to Papa, as if they had been a loving, inseparable couple. Later on, Harry and I would erect some sort of monument to her beside the marble monstrosity already in place on the north wall dedicated to Papa. The Vicar, Pearce, reached the end of the service and closed the book. For a moment I forgot where I was, and I threw up my head like a pointer scenting the wind, and said, with a landowner’s fear in my voice, ‘I can smell burning.’
Harry shook hands with the Vicar, and nodded to the sexton to close the vault. Then he turned to me.
‘I don’t think you can, Beatrice,’ he said. ‘No one would be burning stubble or heather at this time of year. And it is too early for accidental wood fires.’
‘I can,’ I insisted. ‘I can smell burning.’ I strained my eyes in the direction of the west wind. A glow on the horizon, little larger than a pin head, caught my eye.
‘There,’ I said pointing. ‘What’s that?’
Harry’s eyes followed the direction of my finger and said in doltish surprise, ‘Looks like you are right, Beatrice. It is a fire! I wonder what it can be? It looks like quite a wide area – too big for a barn or a house fire.’
Other people had heard me say, ‘There’ and had seen the ominous redness on the skyline – pale in the sunlight but bright enough to be seen all these miles away. I listened to the murmur and I was quick – perhaps too quick – to identify something more than the usual country curiosity. The cottagers behind me had a tone almost of satisfaction in the low gossiping voices. ‘It’s the Culler,’ they said. ‘The Culler promised he would come. He promised it would be this day. He said it would be seen from Acre churchyard. The Culler is here.’
I turned sharply, but the group of closed faces revealed nothing. Then there was a clatter of hoofs and a sweating shire-horse came thundering down Acre street, still harnessed for work, with a little lad bouncing like a cork on its broad bare back.
‘Papa! It’s the Culler!’ he called in ringing tones which brought