Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

So I sat in silence, and I was passive when Richard walked over to me and drew me to my feet. He held my hand in one hand, the letter announcing my mama’s murder in his other. He tucked my icy right hand under his arm and faced my grandparents.

‘Julia and I are married,’ he said. ‘We will be making our lives together,’

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering. He looked at his wife for prompting and then he looked back at the pair of us. Richard seemed assured and somehow prepared for this scene. I was nothing more than a wan shadow at his side, deprived of speech, deprived of thought. I was calling for Mama inside my head, calling for her in silence.

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering again.

‘Did your father know of this, Richard?’ Lady Havering demanded.

‘Yes,’ Richard said. ‘Lady Havering, it is useless for us to pretend to you. My papa gave his permission, and Julia’s mama gave her permission, because Julia is with child. I am the father.’

‘Good God!’ said Lord Havering once more, and dropped into a chair like a stone.

Lady Havering’s face was as pale as crumpled vellum, but her first thought was not for the conventions but for the daughter she had lost.

‘Oh! My poor Celia!’ she exclaimed. ‘That would have been the last straw for her. That must have broken her heart.’

I dropped my head. I felt I had killed Mama myself. She had left the house without a word of love between us and she had gone to her death. I was ready to believe that when her killer shot her, he was completing the injury I had started when she learned I was unchaste. I was so ashamed I could not speak.

‘I suppose this alters things,’ Richard said with careful courtesy.

‘It does!’ Lord Havering said. ‘It does, by God!’

Lady Havering made a slight gesture and his lordship fell silent. ‘I’ll recognize you,’ she said grimly. ‘Whatever else Julia is, she is my granddaughter, and I’ll do it for Celia’s sake. I’ll acknowledge you, and we’ll announce the marriage in the papers. No one will expect any sort of reception with your parents’ funeral taking place in the same week. We can make it appear that you have been married for some time.’ She hesitated. I did not look up. ‘When’s the baby due?’ she asked.

‘At the end of January,’ Richard said.

‘We’ll say you were married privately in the spring, then,’ she said. Her voice was as hard and dispassionate as a general planning a campaign. ‘In these circumstances, there is no reason why the two of you should not go home at once.’

‘No!’ I exclaimed suddenly. ‘I don’t want to go home!’

Richard’s eyes met mine with unmistakable menace in their blue hardness.

‘Why not?’ demanded my grandmama sharply.

I hesitated. Richard’s eyes were on me, but I trusted my grand-mama’s love for me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly. ‘I just don’t want to, Grandmama. Please let me stay here with you. I don’t want to go home.’

She hesitated, and I knew her long affection was weighing more heavily than her shock and dismay at what I had done. I knew she would keep me with her until I felt strong enough to go home and face Richard and decide what we should do in the wreckage of our lives. I felt I had suddenly found some safe ground under my feet. I knew my grandmama saw the appeal in my eyes, and I knew that I had an ally who was very strong.

‘You may stay if you wish,’ she said slowly. But then she looked away from me. She looked to Richard. ‘But you are a married woman now, Julia. You must do as your husband wishes.’

I gaped at her. I could barely understand her. ‘Richard?’ I queried. I could not believe that she was referring a decision to my childhood playmate. I could not believe that she would permit him to take a decision about me, in her house.

‘You are a married woman, Julia,’ she said. It was as if there were a cell door closing. ‘You are a married woman. It must be as your husband wishes.’

I looked around.

Lord Havering was nodding. My grandmama’s face was strained, but her eyes were steady. Last of all I looked at Richard. His eyes were gleaming in secret triumph.

‘I think we should go home, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘This has been a dreadful shock for us both. I think we should go home and you should have some hartshorn and water and go to bed early. There will be much to arrange tomorrow, and this has been an unbearably distressing day. I think you should come home and rest in your own house.’

I glanced at Grandmama for her help, but her face was impassive. My grandpapa stared sombrely at the carpet between his boots. I looked again at Richard. There was only one way out for me. I could tell them that Richard and I were brother and sister and that the marriage must be annulled. But if I spoke of that, then Grandmama would know that I had lain with my own brother and that the little child, my own little child, was the fruit of a perversion. Worse, she would know that I was not her grandchild at all; that I was the daughter of Beatrice, the witch of Wideacre, and her brother Harry, the fool; that I was no kin.

I could not do it. I could not lose mother and grandmother in one day. I could not tell her she must look on me as a stranger stained with sin. I could not find the words.

‘Very well,’ I said dutifully. I somehow got to my feet. Lord Havering ordered the Havering carriage and I drove home in it alone, while Richard rode behind.

Stride opened the door to me and I could see he had been weeping.

Oh, Stride!’ I said sadly.

There was time for no other words. Richard came in and ordered Stride to send Jenny Hodgett to take me to bed with a bowl of soup and a glass of port. When I was undressed and in my bed, Richard himself came up with a glass of hartshorn and water and said he would sit with me until I slept.

I dropped back on the pillows and closed my eyes so that I should not see him in my window-seat, blocking my view of the late-evening sky and the sighing tree outside the window. My grief for my mama was so strong that I thought it would choke me to hold in the sobs which gathered in great asphyxiating lumps in my throat.

‘Hush, Julia,’ Richard said tenderly. ‘Hush.’

He came to my bedside and stroked my hair back from my forehead as if I were a little child. I tried to pretend it was my mama’s hand, and that none of this nightmare was happening, that I should very soon wake up and find myself safe and beloved again.

Richard spent that night in my room thus. And whether he was there as a brother in mourning, as a husband, or even as a gaoler, I never really knew.

27

In the morning there was business to be done. Richard went down to Acre to tell Ralph Megson what had happened, and to instruct him to announce the deaths in Acre.

While he was out, I went into my mama’s room. It was a hot summer morning and someone had half opened the sash window, but the curtains were drawn. Every room in the house would be in shadow for this week. In sudden impatience with the conventions of grief I pulled the curtains back and the sunlight and the warmth spilled into the room, making the rose and blue pattern on the carpet suddenly bright.

I gazed carefully around the room as if I were trying to print it on to my memory, as though I could keep the people I loved by clinging to their objects. I felt somehow my mama was still here. Her ghost, like the faint light smell of lilies which she always wore, seemed to linger. Her hairbrush had a few fair hairs tangled in the bristles; there was water in the ewer beside the basin; her nightgown was folded up at the foot of the bed.

The room looked as if she had just stepped out for a moment. I could even see the dent in the cushions of her stool at her dressing-table. She must have sat there to pin her bonnet before she left with John.