The Favoured Child. Philippa Gregory

me early on, and she tried with her love and her persevering gentle discipline to make me into a child in her own image. A child who could sit still, who could stay in clean clothes, who could sit in a small room without fretting for the smell of the South Downs’ wind in her face.

      She failed. When the ground was covered with the thin white of a hoar-frost, or when the spring winds were blowing, I could not stay indoors, I had to go. I had to go, but the fine lines of worry around my mama’s eyes made me pause.

      ‘I know you long to be out, Julia,’ she said to me gently. ‘But young ladies cannot always do exactly as they wish. There is your sampler, which you have not touched this week, and some darning to be done as well. You may have a little walk this afternoon.’

      ‘It is not a walk that I want, Mama,’ I replied, forced into words by the sound of birdsong, so temptingly close in the woods outside the closed window. ‘I need to be out there, out on the land. The spring is here and I have hardly seen it this year. I have only been in the garden and the woods. But there is the common, and the downs. I have not seen the bracken coming out, nor the spring flowers on the downs.’ Then I stopped, for I saw her looking at me oddly as if she could not understand me, looking at me sadly as if my love for my home somehow distressed her.

      ‘I know,’ she had said gently and put her hand on my skinny shoulder. ‘I know that you love the land. But it is a wasted love, Julia. You would do better to love God and love those that love you. Loving land brings little pleasure and can bring much pain.’

      I nodded, and tried to look obedient. I lowered my eyes so that she should not be hurt by my immediate contradiction of her good sense. I could no more help loving the land than I could help loving my cousin Richard. I could never be free of my love for them. I would never want to be free of my love for them.

      But I knew that my mama was right about wasted love! When I saw the cornfields of Wideacre self-seeded and the meadow-lands grown high since there was no stock to graze them and no haymaking, I knew then that a love for the land without money and good sense behind it was worthless love indeed. And when Richard tormented me to tears and back again, I felt that my love for him was wasted too, for it brought more pain than pleasure.

      But there was no other land but Wideacre.

      And there was no one else but Richard.

      So when Richard called me, I went. Even when I knew I should not. And he was so certain of this, so certain of my love for him, that he could trot down the drive without even troubling to look back, certain that he would hear my boots pattering along behind him.

      It was a long way to Havering Hall, even going cross-country and splashing through the Fenny at the boundary of the two estates. When we arrived at the stables, breathless and sweating from our run, Lord Havering was looking over his horses before going to his supper.

      ‘Good Lord,’ he said in his rich voice, warm as port, thick as cigar smoke. ‘Look what the wind has blown our way, Dench.’

      The Havering chief groom looked over the half-door of the loose box and smiled to see us. ‘Come to see the new mare?’ he asked Richard softly in his Sussex drawl.

      ‘Yes, if I may,’ Richard said, beaming. You would have thought him a boy utterly incapable of disobedience. ‘Mama told me of her at dinner, Lord Havering, and I am ashamed to say I could not wait until tomorrow.’

      My grandpapa chuckled indulgently at his favourite, Richard. ‘Bring her out,’ he said to Dench and bent down to me. ‘And you? Little Miss Julia? Came in Richard’s shadow as usual, did you?’

      I blushed and said nothing. I lacked Richard’s ease with adults. I wanted to explain that I too had come because I wanted to see the horse. I had wanted the hard steady run from one side of the estate to the other. And I wanted to tell my grandpapa that Richard was not to be blamed for my coming. But not one of these things did I say. I just shuffled my feet and looked silly, and kept my eyes down.

      Dench brought the mare clattering on the cobbles out of her stable at the end of the row. She was a lovely animal, a rich russet chestnut with a mane and tail of a darker shade of unpolished copper. She had a white blaze down her nose and deep brown eyes. Dench had a firm hand on her head collar, but she stood gently beside him and looked at us.

      Her eyes, as warm as melted chocolate, seemed to invite me to her side and, without waiting for Richard to approach her, I went straight past my grandfather, straight past Richard, and put my hand up to her.

      She whickered softly as I came close and bent her head to nuzzle at my pocket. I had nothing for her, but Dench slipped me a handful of oats out of his own capacious breeches. Her lips on my flattened hand were discriminating, gentle, as if she were taking care not to nip my thin fingers. I reached up a shy hand and rubbed her behind the ears, where mares nuzzle their foals. She blew out of her nostrils at my touch and sniffed at the front of my dress. Without thinking what I was doing, I dropped my face down and sniffed rapturously at her damp oat-smelling breath, and blew gently back. It was love at first sight for me.

      ‘Make haste, Richard, or you’ll lose your horse,’ said Grandpapa, who had been watching me with appreciation. ‘Your cousin is there before you. You seem to have the Lacey magic with horses, m’dear,’ he said genially. ‘Your Aunt Beatrice could charm a horse out of the field, and your papa was a grand rider too. And your grandpapa and I had some rides together which I still have nightmares about! Laceys have always been horse-mad.’

      I stepped back and let Richard get to his horse. ‘What’s she called?’ I asked, finding my voice for once.

      ‘Scheherazade,’ my grandpapa said in tones of deep disgust. ‘I call her Sally.’

      ‘Scheherazade,’ I whispered to myself. ‘A princess from the Arabian Nights.’

      ‘She may have a touch of Arab in her,’ my grandpapa said, mishearing my awed murmur. ‘Good hunting stock, though. I chose her myself from poor old Tiley’s sale. His daughter used to ride her, so she’s used to novices. She’s used to a lady’s saddle too!’ he said as the thought struck him. ‘No reason why I should not teach you to ride at the same time as Richard, m’dear.’

      ‘Julia doesn’t have a habit,’ Richard said firmly. He was trying to offer Scheherazade a couple of green apples he had picked from the Wideacre orchard, holding them outstretched at the full length of his arm. Not close to the horse at all. ‘Julia’s mama would not let her ride without a habit.’

      ‘No,’ said my grandpapa. ‘Pity. Still, I expect we can find one for you if you’d like to try, missy.’

      Richard shot me a look. Just one look.

      ‘No,’ I said regretfully. ‘No, thank you, Grandpapa.’

      I said nothing more. I had no quick excuse or explanation. But my grandpapa did not question my refusal. He raised a disdainful eyebrow at my rejection of his offer and went towards Richard, and Richard’s lovely horse, and held her head while Dench gave Richard a leg-up on to her back.

      ‘How’s that?’ Grandpapa shouted, and led Richard around the stable yard, Richard clinging tightly to the copper mane, Scheherazade mincing over the cobbles.

      ‘Wonderful!’ Richard said, but his face was white.

      We would have stayed for Richard’s first lesson, but my grandpapa caught sight of the stable clock on Richard’s second circuit of the yard.

      ‘Your mama will be after me,’ he said ruefully. ‘Dench, get out the little trap and take these two home. They shouldn’t have come without permission in the first place. If they’re out after dark, Celia will have me skinned alive.’

      Dench pulled Richard down without ceremony and took Scheherazade back to the stable. I trailed along behind, unwilling to see her go, and wanting to see her stable and smell the straw and the sweet grassy scent of hay.

      ‘When will you learn then, Miss Julia?’ Dench asked me, his brown eyes bright with curiosity. He had seen my face when she fed from my hand, he had