Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked, utterly bemused.

I could not take my eyes from my mama’s downcast face. She was not my mama. She was not my mama.

‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked again.

John dropped into a chair by the empty fireplace; he seemed too weary to go on much longer. ‘Harry Lacey,’ he said indifferently. ‘Beatrice lay with her brother, Harry, and got you both. You are incestuous bastards, and now the two of you have conceived another.’

Mama’s head came up. ‘Harry’s child?’ she demanded. ‘Julia is Harry’s child? Beatrice’s lover was my Harry?’

‘Didn’t you know it?’ John demanded, his voice as hard as a costerman’s, of the woman he loved. ‘Didn’t you always know it in your secret heart? And you feared it and hid it from yourself, and I conspired with you in that lie.’

Mama dipped her head again to her work. ‘Yes,’ she said very softly. ‘I knew there was something evil between them. I tried not to wonder what it meant.’ She had dropped the scrap of lawn when she looked up, but she did not cease her work. Absent-mindedly she took a handful of the figured silk of her driving dress and started to cut perfectly symmetrical little holes in it. Snip, snip, snip went the scissors, and no ‘one thought to stop her.

Richard stared. ‘So I am Harry Lacey’s son,’ he said slowly. ‘I am the son of the squire.’

Nobody said anything. John’s eyes were on the empty grate. It looked like he was watching flames and glowing embers, but there was nothing there. Mama’s head was bent down over her dress. It was a cream silk with small yellow flowers. She was cutting the flowers out of the material with careful accuracy. The scraps fell around her feet as though she were sitting under a cherry tree shedding its petals.

‘I am the heir,’ Richard suddenly said, his voice strong. ‘I am the Son of the Laceys. Wideacre is my inheritance.’

‘Wideacre!’ John shouted. He jumped from his chair, explosive with rage. He crossed the room in two swift strides and took Richard’s lapels and dragged him close. ???? have got your own sister with child, and all you can think of is Wideacre?’

His blazing pale eyes scanned Richard’s frightened face and then he pushed him away as if he did not want to touch him.

‘You are true Laceys,’ he said bitterly. He looked at us with loathing. ‘Both of you,’ he said. His mouth was twisted as though he had accidentally bitten into something dead and rotting. ‘Both of you bred very true. All you care for is this filthy estate, all you chase is your own lusts. You are both Beatrice’s true children.’

We said nothing. I did not dare look up from the polished surface of the table. I could see my reflection. I was as white as a ghost and my eyes in that darkened mirror were huge and appalled.

John leaned his arm along the mantelpiece. ‘It will have to be annulled,’ he said levelly. The passion had gone from his voice and he sounded tired and old. ‘It can be the last thing I do for the pair of you. I will go to London and get an annulment on the grounds that you are brother and sister, and I shall put the estate on the market while I am there. Wideacre will be sold, and you two will be separated.’

I did not protest. Indeed, I consented.

The nightmare of the Laceys on Wideacre should end, whatever it cost me, whatever it cost Richard. That morning in the summer-house had been even worse than rape. It had also been a perversion. I wanted the Lacey line to be over for ever. I wanted no Lacey on God’s earth again after Richard and me. Most of all, I wanted the fairest part of God’s earth to be free of us. I wanted to be punished. I wanted to be exiled. I wanted the pain of losing Wideacre and the pain of losing my name and my home and the father of my child to tear my heart out so I would never forget that there should be no future for the Laceys, so that I should never hope and plan again. I wanted to be gutted like a river trout and cleansed. ‘Yes,’ I said.

My mama spoke. Her dress was pock-marked with circular holes. ‘Yes,’ she said.

Richard’s blue eyes went from one face to another in the room.

I saw a flicker of hesitation pass across it and then he too nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I’ll start at once,’ John said. ‘Celia, you will have to come with me as Julia’s guardian.’

Mama nodded.

‘Julia, you will go to Havering Hall and stay with your Grandmama Havering,’ John said. ‘You two are not to see each other until we return. Is that clear?’

We nodded in silence.

‘Richard, you will stay here until we get back. We should not be gone more than one night.’

Richard nodded.

John went for the door and my mama followed him.

‘Mama!’ I said pitifully. She paused and looked at me. Her eyes were hard. I had never seen her face as it was then. She looked through me as if she saw a green-eyed whore and not the child she had raised.

I hesitated. There was no appeal I could make. I saw her clear gaze drop down from my face and she looked at my belly where my child was growing.

‘You should change your dress, Mama,’ I said gently.

She glanced down at the gown, speckled with holes. ‘Yes,’ she said, and she left the room.

She did not touch me. She did not say farewell. She was gone before I could say goodbye, or ask for her forgiveness, or ask for her love. And I did not tell her how much I loved her.

Richard brought the news to me at Havering Hall in the evening. He came riding over, and as soon as I saw him, I knew something was wrong, for John had ordered him to stay at home and not to see me.

But John was dead, and Richard could do just as he pleased; my mama was dead too.

Richard brought a letter. It was from a Justice of the Peace at Haslemere. The common outside the little town had been troubled with highwaymen. It seemed that a highwayman had held up the travelling coach and ordered Jem to stand to. And then he had shot them dead.

Jem, Uncle John and my mama.

The next travellers along the road saw the coach pulled in at the roadside, the horses grazing on the verge. Jem was dead on the box and John was lying on the floor inside; it seemed he had been trying to shield my mama with his body. My mama had been shot dead.

The cash in John’s travelling box had gone. My mama’s rose-pearl ear-rings and her beautiful Indian rose-pearl necklace, which she had worn every day since John gave them to her, were missing.

The magistrate, Mr Pearson, said he was very sorry. He said he had posted notices for information about the killer, and that if we wished to offer a reward, we should contact him. He said he was making arrangements for the bodies to be sent home. He said he commiserated with us in our grief.

‘What should we do, sir?’ Richard asked Lord Havering, his blue eyes wide. ‘What should Julia and I do?’

‘You’ll stay here, of course,’ my grandmama interrupted. ‘You will stay here with me until we can sort things out. I shall take care of Julia; she is my granddaughter. And there will always be a home for you here, Richard.’

I said nothing. I could think of nothing. In the distant back of my mind was a great gash of pain and longing for my mama and, increasingly, as I sat in silence, a great need of her help. I could not think how I would manage without her. I could not think where I would live or what would become of me, or of my unborn child.

‘Lady Havering,’ Richard said firmly. ‘I have to tell you and his lordship some news which will be a surprise to both of you.’

I did not know what Richard was about to say. I could hardly hear his words. All I could hear was a little cry of pain, as thin as a thread, in the back of my mind, which said, ‘Mama.’