Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

‘I remember,’ I said.

Richard was getting excited, his eyes sparkling, his face bright. ‘It was me!’ he said exultantly. ‘All along! And none of you ever guessed. None of you ever came near to guessing. I cut Scheherazade and I made sure all the blame would fall on Dench. So that stopped you riding my horse all right! And I made sure that I would never have to ride her again, and I got rid of Dench who was ganging up with you against me. I did all of that on my own! And I made you cry for weeks, didn’t I?’

I lay very still, trying to absorb what Richard was saying. But trying even harder to understand Richard’s sudden elation. Then he moved closer towards me and I understood. He fumbled under the covers for the hem of my shift and pulled it up. I checked my movement to grab for it and hold it down. If it came to a struggle, then Richard would win. And I knew, with some secret perverse knowledge which I did not want, that he would like to feel me fighting against him.

‘And the goshawk…’ Richard’s breathing was fast; he had pulled his own nightshirt out of the way and was rearing up Over me. ‘Ralph Megson’s precious goshawk. When she bated from my fist, I pulled her back. The first time it was an accident, but she made me so angry when she would not sit still. The second time I wanted to hurt her, and I knew if I pulled her hard enough and quick enough, I would break her legs. D’you remember how they went click, Julia?’

I was sweating, and the inside of my thighs were damp. Richard pushed inexpertly towards me and put a clumsy hand down to part my legs. He clambered, impeded by the bedclothes, on top of me. He giggled like a conceited schoolboy when he pressed down and his hard flesh met mine.

‘But you didn’t dare touch the sheep,’ I said. I spoke almost idly. My mind and my body were numb with fear and disgust and the horror of what Richard had told me, and my acceptance as I recognized the truth at once: that I had, in some deep and guilty way, always known; that I should have said something, done something; that once again I was Richard’s unwilling accomplice.

But the sheep had gone against him.

‘D’you think they knew you were bad?’ I asked.

Richard hesitated.

‘They went against you,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen sheep do such a thing. They mobbed you in the barn on the downs. D’you remember that , Richard? D’you remember how very afraid you were then?’

‘I wasn’t. . .’ Richard said quickly. ‘I’ve never been afraid.’

‘Oh, yes, you were,’ I said certainly. ‘You were afraid of Scheherazade from the moment you first saw her, and you were afraid of the sheep.’

Richard glared at me, but he was losing his potency. I could feel his hardness melting away and I was filled with elation, with a sense of triumph.

‘You were scared to death of Scheherazade,’ I said. ‘That was why you cut her. Not just because you were jealous of me riding her. But you would have done anything not to ride her yourself. And the sheep were like a nightmare.’

‘It’s not so . . .’ he said. His eyes were sharp with dislike at my tauntings. He looked as he used to look when he was about to explode into one of his childhood rages. I knew I had defeated him and he would not touch me. But I was not ready for his instantaneous spite.

He thrust his forefinger hard into me in a sharp jabbing movement, and I gave a muffled cry of pain and shock. The pain was sharp; it felt as if he were scratching me inside. I bit back the cry and made no sound. I shut my eyes and lay as still as a stone carving. Richard took his hand away and fumbled down to touch himself. He was starting to breathe heavily and I could feel him pulling at himself, rubbing himself against my legs.

I opened my eyes and smiled at him. ‘It’s no good, Richard,’ I said coolly in a voice just like my mama’s when she sent him early to bed for spilling jam at the tea table. ‘It is no good. You cannot touch me now and you will never be able to touch me. You had much better go to your own bed.’

I pushed his spiteful hands away from me and rolled over on my side to present my back to him, indifferent to whether he stayed or went.

I did not even open my eyes as he left the room.

29

Only that one night, only that once did he come to my bed in the months of my pregnancy. And only that once did he speak of the times which had passed, when all the warning signs had been there if we had been able to see them. I knew then what Acre had known, what every animal he had touched had known, what Ralph had seen on meeting him: that Richard was insane. All the clues had been there, but between an indulgent aunt and a weak girl he had managed to pass them off as eccentricity, or talent, or charm.

I blamed myself. I thought of the times that Richard’s behaviour had been violent or passionate and I had concealed it from my mama. I thought of the times he had threatened me and I had loyally kept it from everyone, even from Clary and the village children. Ted Tyacke would have been glad enough to waylay Richard and give him a thumping to remind him to be gentle with me. But I had never told anyone. Never told them anything at all.

I blamed myself then. I sat on the window-seat and watched the hoar-frost melt on the lawn under the window as the sunshine warmed it on the last days of autumn, and I blamed myself for living in a sweet girlish pretence, believing that the world was kinder than it was, that adults were cleverer than they were, that Richard was normal.

I leafed through the days of my childhood like old watercolour paintings in a folder. And this time I saw everything quite differently. I saw Richard as an impulsive, uncontrollable bully. I saw my mama as wilfully blind: blind to his cruelty to me, blind to his madness, blind because she knew my parentage and guessed at his. She had not the courage to face the Lacey madness in Richard’s eyes. She should have seen it. I should have warned her. And because I had not warned her, she had died most horridly, and left me to live in a long nightmare from which it seemed that I would never be free.

I did not think about the rose pearls, how Richard came to have them, in that slim box which now lay on my dressing-table. Some days, when the sun was shining and the frost was bright and the air sharp and sweet, I would tell myself that he had seen some pearls in a Chichester shop and bought them for me, thinking that I would like them, to remind me of my mama. But at other times near the end of November when the days grew darker and the nights long, I looked into the embers of the fire and saw Richard in a dirty alehouse, paying a man to kill Mama and John. Richard, with that mad absent-minded smile and his blue eyes shining. Richard, as mad as a rabid dog. My brother, my husband, the father of my child.

I blamed myself for not complaining of him, for not warning my mama, for not alerting my Uncle John. But for one thing I blamed myself no longer: that time in the summer-house. I was not to blame. Richard had raped me, as surely and as wrongly as if he had held a gun in my face to do it. I was in a daydream in the summer-house – but I had been thinking of James, not Richard. I had dreamed of love-making there once before, but that was with the sight, and it had been a dream of being Beatrice with Ralph. I had never thought of Richard as my lover and he had no right to court me, and no right to force me.

It made me icy towards him, those days before Christmas. I knew then that I was trapped just as Ralph had warned me. Richard had raped me and isolated me till I had neither lover, nor friend nor parent to turn to. And the child which I was unwillingly carrying was a product of violence and incest.