Ned turned away with a sour smile and went back to the village which my grandpapa had called a village of outlaws – just one and a half miles down the lane from where we lived, lonely in the woods.
Grandpapa Havering swore out loud before us all when he finally came home and Mama told him the whole story. Then he turned kindly to Richard and promised him that as soon as Richard’s arm was strong again, he would have another horse. Another horse for his very own.
But Richard was inconsolable. He smiled and thanked my grandpapa, but he said quietly that he did not want another horse, just yet. Not for a while anyway. ‘I don’t think we could ever replace her,’ he said.
The grown-ups shook their heads and agreed with him. And my heart ached for the lovely Scheherazade and for the wonderful ride I had, that once, with her.
But most of all I ached for Richard’s loss; that the horse he loved was dead.
Grandpapa posted bills offering a reward for Dench’s capture. Injuring an animal is a capital offence, and Dench could have been transported or, more likely, hanged. But no one came forward to betray him, and his family in Acre had not heard from him.
‘I’d trust their word!’ said Grandpapa scathingly. ‘Really, m’dear, the sooner your precious John Mac Andrew comes home and sets that village to rights, the happier I’ll be. A gentleman can scarcely sleep in his bed o’ nights with that murdering crew in Acre.’
Mama nodded, her head down for shame that Acre, our village, should be such a place. And I sensed that she did not want Grandpapa to inveigh against the village with me there, listening. The village where the miller’s wife would not turn out her men for a son of Beatrice Lacey’s. There was a deep old enmity between Acre and the Laceys, and Mama would not tell me of it.
I could see all the signs. Mama would not visit in the village. She took every opportunity she could to go to church in Chichester, not to our parish church in Acre. Our boots were made in Midhurst, and the Acre cobbler was idle. Our laundry went to Lavington. It all came down to that odd phrase of the blacksmith’s – that Beatrice had gone bad.
Richard knew of the tension in the village. And Richard spoke of it openly. ‘They’re scum, they are,’ he told me harshly. ‘They’re as filthy as pigs in a sty. They don’t work for anyone else, they don’t even plant their own patches. They’re poachers and thieves. When I am squire, I shall clear the land of the lot of them, and plough that dirty village under.’
I had caught my breath at that and shaken my head in mute disagreement, but I knew that Richard’s words came from bravado. Richard was afraid. He was only a little eleven-year-old boy and he had cause for fear.
The village children were after him. They knew, as well as the two of us, that the village and the Wideacre family were sworn enemies. And after Dench ran away it got very much worse. They would catcall and jeer at him as he went past, his schoolbooks under his arm. They would sneer at his old coat, at his boots, which were worn and getting too tight for him. And always, when they could think of nothing else to say, they shouted loudly to one another that here was someone calling himself a squire and a Lacey, yet he could not stay on a horse.
Richard walked, fearful as a stable cat through the crowd, and his eyes blazed defiance and hatred. He saw them as a mob and thought that if he challenged one, then they would all attack him. I think he feared too that the adults would come out of their cottages to watch Miss Beatrice’s boy being torn apart on the village street and do nothing to help him.
Most of this I guessed. Richard was too proud to tell me. He told me only that he hated to walk through the village; and I saw that if the day was fine – which meant that the children would be out playing in the lane – he would leave early to go up the downland track and around the back of the village so that he could avoid the village street.
He never told Mama. He had a fine sharp courage, my cousin Richard; and he never told Mama that he was afraid. He asked her once what was meant by the phrase ‘a mother’s boy’. Mama was brushing out her hair before her mirror in her bedroom, and Richard was pulling a silk ribbon through his fingers and watching her. I was sitting in the window-seat looking out, out over the trees of Wideacre where the leaves were whirling away into the wintry sky, but at Richard’s question I looked sharply at Mama.
She put down her brush and looked at him, at his pale heart-shaped face and his mop of black hair, at the ribbon in his hand and at the way he was leaning so comfortably at her side. ‘Where have you heard that phrase, my dear?’ she asked steadily.
Richard shrugged. ‘They called it after me in the village today,’ he said. ‘I paid no heed. I never pay any heed to them.’
Mama put out a gentle hand to touch his face. ‘It will get better,’ she said gently. ‘When your papa comes home, it will be better.’
Richard caught her hand and kissed it, as graceful as a courtier. ‘I don’t mind him being away,’ he said. ‘I like it just as we are.’
I said nothing then, I said nothing later. But when he came home one day with his collar torn and face white, I knew it was getting worse.
I don’t know why I thought I might be able to help, but I did not fear Acre like the two of them. I was at home on Wideacre and at odds with no part of it, not even the worst village in Sussex. I knew with such certainty that I belonged on the land, and that included Acre. And I had a clear memory of Ned Smith’s half-smile, and of Mrs Green giving Richard her most precious phial of laudanum.
I used that phial as my excuse, and told Mama that I should return it to the mill. I would walk to Acre with Richard, go on to the mill and meet him from his lessons after my visit.
I had a little grin from Richard as a reward for that, and a surprised glance from Mama.
‘Walking through Acre?’ she asked tentatively.
‘Why not?’ I said boldly. ‘I’ll just call on Mrs Green and then I’ll sit with Dr Pearce’s housekeeper until Richard is ready to come home.’
‘Very well,’ she said. There was a world of reservation behind those level tones. I guessed that she did not want to make me afraid of Acre, and I think she saw also something she did not understand, something she had seen before: the Lacey confidence in the people of Acre. I ran to fetch my coat and bonnet, for Richard was ready to leave.
It was last winter’s coat, and I saw Mama frown as she looked at it. It was too short and uncomfortably tight under the arms and across the back. The sleeves ended too high, and there was a little gap between my gloves and the cuff where my wrist showed bony and cold.
‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I said, making a joke of it. ‘I cannot help growing!’
‘Well, I wish you would stop!’ she said, her face lightening. Then Richard and I were off and Mama waved to us from the parlour window as we walked down the drive and turned left down the lane towards Acre.
As soon as we approached the village, I felt Richard’s unease. He was afraid for us both. He transferred his bundle of books to the other arm and felt for my hand. Hand-clasped, we walked steadily down the chalk-dirt track and past the cottage windows, which seemed to eye us as if they did not much like what they saw.
On our left was the cobbler, still sitting idle in his bow-window. Next to him was the carter’s cottage with the wagon they had used to take Scheherazade away. He had sold his horses long ago, but he had managed to keep his wagon. He still
