The Complete Wideacre Trilogy: Wideacre, The Favoured Child, Meridon. Philippa Gregory
horse as the groom led it round from the stable and then the clip-clop as he rode away. He rode away as if love and passion meant nothing. He rode away because he was a fool. I had put my heart in the keeping of a fool.
My mama looked at me.
‘You must not mind, Beatrice,’ she said. ‘A young man is bound to be thoughtless of his family when he is engaged to be married. You cannot blame him for preferring Celia’s company to ours. We will all be more settled when this time of waiting is over. I am sure he will find time to ride with you tomorrow.’
I nodded and moved my face muscles into a semblance of a smile.
I held that smile all the long day.
In the afternoon Mama was going calling, but she had enough sympathy with my forlorn state not to force me to go with her. As soon as her carriage had vanished, I took my horse out and rode down to the River Fenny – not near the old cottage where Ralph used to live – but upstream to a deep, clear pool where Harry sometimes tried to catch fish. I tied the horse to a bush and lay face down on the ground.
I did not weep or sob. I lay silent and let the great waves of jealousy and misery wash over me. Harry did not love me as I loved him. Sensuality for him was an occasional pleasure – necessary in that second of desire, but swiftly enjoyed and forgotten. To me it was a way of life, the very kernel of myself. Harry had his outside life: his newspapers, his journals, his books, his men friends, his engagement to Celia and his visits to the Haverings. All I had to dream of, to fill my life, to keep me alive and glowing, was Wideacre. Wideacre and Harry.
And at this moment I had only Wideacre. My cheek lay on the damp, dark leafmould of the forest floor, and when I opened my eyes I could see small, spindly plants with heart-shaped leaves pushing their narrow stems up through the dark peat. Beyond their bowed little heads was the sheen of the Fenny, gleaming like pewter. It flows almost silently here between deep banks, overhung with maidenhair fern and lit by brilliant lanterns of kingcups – as bright above the water as their reflections on the shiny surface.
In the centre of the river one can see two worlds. The reflected world of air and winds, the tossing trees and cloudy sky, and the underworld of the riverbed, a mixture of pure white sand and stones as yellow as gold. In the dark curves of the river where ponds have formed the filtered scraps of peat make the hollows black and ominous, but in the main stream the riverbed glows like sunshine. The bright green weed tossing in the current hides young trout, baby eels and a few salmon. The green ferns at the bank mask the holes of water shrews and otters.
I lay in silence until the thud of my own angry and resentful heart had stilled and until I could hear the safe steady beat of the heart of Wideacre. Deep, deep in the earth, so deep most people never hear it, beats the great heart, steady and true. It spoke to me of endurance and courage. Of setting my heart on the land and staying with the land. Of being full of sin and blood to get thus far, and of other sins which would take me steadily further.
I saw them pass before me without blinking. The death’s head of my father’s agonized face; the scream from Ralph; even the fluttering fall from my window of the owl we had called Canny. Wideacre spoke to me in my loneliness and my longing for love and the beat of its heart said, ‘Trust no one. There is only the land.’ And I remembered Ralph’s advice – which he himself had fatally forgotten – to be the one who is loved. Never to make the mistake of being the one who does the loving.
I listened to that secret beat, that hard wise secret, for a long, long time, until my cheek took the impress of the dead leaves and the front of my grey habit was darkened with the damp of the soil. The chill cooled me and hardened me, like a new-forged weapon of iron. Then I mounted my horse and trotted at a ladylike pace for home.
We dined early for there was no point in waiting for Harry. I poured Mama’s tea for her in the parlour and she told me about her calls and the latest women’s tittle-tattle of the neighbourhood. I took care to nod and look interested. When she rose to go to bed, I threw another log on the fire and said I would stay and read for a few minutes longer. She kissed me goodnight and left. I sat stock-still, like an enchantress in a fairy story, my eyes on the burning log in the grate.
The front door opened quietly. Harry made no noise crossing the hall, thinking the whole house was asleep. He saw the light under the parlour door and came in. I saw at a glance that it was as I had hoped. He had been drinking and was unsatisfied. His walk had a quickness and an alertness. His blue eyes sparkled.
‘Beatrice!’ He said my name as a thirsty man might say, ‘Water!’
I smiled and, more like an enchantress than ever, said nothing, but let the magic of my body and face draw him from the doorway across the room to kneel at my feet before the fire.
‘I felt we should be apart today,’ he said hesitantly, apologetically. ‘I needed to think.’
My face showed no sign of my impatience at his silly lie. Harry think indeed! I knew he had lost his nerve and – afraid of my sensuality, afraid of his own, afraid of the sin, afraid of the consequences – had fled to Celia’s coolness to escape the heat of home. And I knew well enough what had happened there. Celia and her pretty young sisters had petted and teased him all afternoon; Lord Havering’s good wine and generous glasses of port had made him bold again. He had begged a moonlit walk in the garden with Celia and her frightened, struggling refusal of a kiss had set him on fire again with unsatisfied desire and brought him back to my feet. But it was not love with Harry. And it should not be love with me.
‘I hope you did not mind,’ he asked tentatively. He looked up at me and took one still, unresponsive hand. I looked as if I had no idea why I should mind. My hazel eyes fixed on the fire were wide open with detached and polite interest in Harry’s conversation.
‘I was afraid of us as lovers,’ he confessed honestly, his eyes fixed on my face. Still I said nothing. My confidence was growing but I was still chilled inside from my sad vigil in the wood. And I would never love a man who did not love me more.
He fell silent and I let the silence stretch.
‘Beatrice,’ he said again. ‘I will do anything …’
It was a clear plea. I had won.
‘I must go to bed,’ I said, standing. ‘I promised Mama I would not stay up late. We did not expect you back so soon.’
‘Beatrice,’ he said again, looking up at me.
If I had slackened my control and allowed so much as one of my fingers to touch one of the curls of his head, I should have been lost. I would have collapsed to the hearth rug with him and he would have taken me that night and left me the following morning for Celia on a pendulum that would have swung every day of a miserable life. I had to win this struggle with Harry. If once I lost him, I lost not only the love of the one man I wanted, but I also lost Wideacre. I had staked my life’s happiness on this indecisive, conscience-ridden creature and I had to win. Against his own good conscience and against his own good, sweet betrothed, I had set his passionate nature and the taste of perverse pleasure he had with me – my whip on his thigh, the taste of blood when I bit his lips, which he would never have with gentle Celia.
I smiled down at him but took care not to touch him.
‘Goodnight, Harry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps we will ride on the downs together tomorrow.’
I undressed slowly in a dream by candle-light, hardly knowing whether my desperate gamble had won me security or whether I had lost everything. Was Harry even now on his knees at his bedside praying like a good child for God to keep him pure? Or was he still kneeling by my chair in the parlour burning with desire? I slid between the sheets and blew out the candle. In the dark I could hear the house settle in the silence but I lay wakeful, reliving the scene downstairs and aching for my lover. I waited for sleep but I expected to lie awake. My aroused heart beat fast and every muscle in my body quivered in expectation.
In the silence of the night I heard an odd, soft noise and I held my breath to listen. I heard it a second time – the creak of a board in the passage outside my door and then – the most welcome sound