Philippa Gregory - The Favoured Child

‘It is not possible, Julia,’ she said. ‘I know how much you love learning, and indeed, my dear, you are so bright and clever that I wish I had learned Latin so that I could have helped you to teach yourself. But it is just an amusement for ladies. For gentlemen, for Richard, it is essential.’

‘He doesn’t even want an education, Mama! All he wants is a music master and to be taught how to sing!’ I started, but the sight of her frown silenced me.

‘All the more credit to him for being prepared to go,’ she said gently. ‘And if he is prepared to go over his work with you in the evening, you may well learn a lot that way. But you must not tease him to teach you, Julia. John is sending money from his salary for Richard’s education, not yours.’

In the event I did very well. Richard was generous with his homework and shared it with me. When he came home with his books – old primers once used by Dr Pearce – he let me stand at his elbow in respectful silence while he tried to puzzle out the verbs and declensions.

‘What a bother it is,’ he would say impatiently and push the book towards me. ‘Here, Julia, see if you can make head or tail of this. I have to translate it somehow and I cannot make out what they’re saying.’

Trembling with excitement I would take the book and turn to the back for the translated words and scribble them down in any order.

‘Here, let me see,’ Richard would say, repossessing his goods with brutal suddenness. ‘I think I know what to do now.’ And then he would complete the sentence in triumph and we would beam at each other with mutual congratulation.

Mama was glad to see us content, to see the different treatment of us so well resolved. She tried very hard to treat us fairly, to treat us alike. But she could not help favouring Richard, because he needed so much more. He took the best cuts of meat and the largest helpings, because he was growing so fast and was always hungry. He had new clothes; Mama could always cut down and turn her gowns for me, but she could not tailor jackets, so Richard’s clothes were made new. He had new boots more often as he grew quicker, and then he had proper schooling. If I had loved him any less, if I had not tried to be as good as a sister to him, I think I would have envied him. But I only ever begrudged him one thing for more than a moment, the only thing he ever had which I desired, which I could not help desiring: Scheherazade.

She was Richard’s horse – the horse we had both been promised off and on since we were children by my Grandpapa Havering, that feckless charming rogue who breezed into the county half a dozen times a year on a repairing lease from London. On one of his visits, in June, when I was twelve and Richard eleven, he finally got around to honouring his promise. I first learned of it when he sent a message to my mama. She opened it in the parlour while I sat at her feet, my head leaning against her knees, idly gazing out of the window at the tossing trees which crowd so close around the little sandstone box of a house, waiting for Richard to come home from his lessons. Mama broke the seal on the note and then paused. ‘What is that singing?’ she asked Stride.

He cleared his throat, embarrassed. ‘It’s Master Richard,’ he said. ‘He came in by the kitchen door, and Mrs Gough stopped him and asked him for a song. She loves to hear him sing.’

Mama nodded and listened in silence. The clear pure arc of sound swept unstoppably through the house. Richard was singing an Italian song – one he had despaired of teaching me to play aright – but I had guessed at an English version of the words for him, and he was singing them. His high sweet voice had a more tremulous tone than usual: ‘If there is ever a favourite – then let it be me,’ came the chorus. And then more quietly, more entreatingly, to the cruel gods who are never just to needy mortals: ‘If there is ever a favourite – oh, let it be me!’

Stride, Mama and I were as still as statues until the last echo of the last note had died, then Stride recollected the dinner table not yet laid and left the room, closing the door behind him.

‘It is a great gift,’ Mama said. ‘Richard is fortunate.’

‘Does Uncle John realize how good Richard is?’ I asked. ‘If he really understood, surely he would find the money from somewhere for Richard to have a music master?’

Mama shook her head and spread out the note on her knee. ‘Music is a luxury we cannot afford, my darling. Richard has to enter the university and obtain the degree he will need to make his way in the world. That must come before the polishing of an amateur gift.’

‘If he could give concerts, he could earn enough money so that Uncle John could come home,’ I said stoutly.

Mama smiled. ‘If everyone was as readily pleased as you and I and Mrs Gough, we would be wealthy in no time,’ she said. ‘But Richard would need a long training before he could give a concert. And neither his papa nor I would wish it. Singing in the parlour is one thing, Julia, but no gentleman would ever go on a stage.’

I paused. I wanted to pursue the matter further. ‘He could sing in church,’ I suggested. ‘He could train with a choir.’

My mama dropped her sewing in her lap and put her hand down to my head and turned my cheek so that I looked up and met her eyes. ‘Listen, Julia,’ she said earnestly, ‘I love him dearly and so do you. But we should not let our affections blind us to nature. Richard has a lovely voice, but he plays at music as if it were a toy. He is skilled in drawing, but he takes it up and puts it down as a hobby. He is like his uncle, your own papa, who had many fine talents but lacked the greatest gift of concentration. Richard would never work and struggle and strive in the way that a great musician has to do. Richard likes things to be easy for him. Of the two of you, it is you who works hardest at music – you practise longer hours than he does so that you can accompany him. If Richard had the dedication of a true musician, he would sing all the time – not when it suits him.’

I scanned her face, considering what she had said, and hearing also an old judgement made years ago on my papa, the man who liked to play at farming while his sister ran the land.

Then the door opened and Richard came in, his eyes bright blue and his cheeks rosy with the praise he had received in the kitchen. ‘Did you hear me singing even in here?’ he asked. ‘Stride said you did. Yet the kitchen door and the baize door were tight shut. Fancy!’

‘Yes, we did,’ Mama said and she smiled kindly at his bright face. ‘It was lovely singing, Richard, I should like to hear it again after dinner. But now go and wash your hands, my darling, while I read this note from Julia’s grandpapa.’

We went from the room together, and not until dinner did she tell us what the note said, and then it was the last thing we expected.

‘I have had a note from Havering,’ she said while Stride served the thin soup. ‘Lord Havering writes that he has a horse which might suit the two of you.’

Richard’s head jerked up from his plate, his eyes bright on her face. She smiled at him. ‘I said we would all go over tomorrow so that you could try its paces,’ she said. ‘You may ride in your ordinary boots, Richard.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Richard. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘But we have no habit for you, Julia,’ Mama said, turning to me. ‘I dare say you would have liked to learn, but I cannot see how to contrive it.’

‘It is all right, Mama,’ I said, my voice strained. ‘It doesn’t matter. Richard wants to ride so much more than I do. He can learn now, and perhaps I will learn later.’

I had a warm smile from my mama for that little piece of generosity, but Richard scarcely noticed it.