Wideacre. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ he said quietly. ‘I can see my way clear through to the land and the pleasure. D’you remember, Beatrice, when we spoke that first time? The land and the pleasure for both of us.’

      A trout plopped in the river behind him, but he didn’t turn his head. He watched me as close as my owl watched me at night, as if to read my thoughts. I looked up, a slanting, sliding glance out of the corner of my tilted eyes.

      ‘The same land and the same pleasure. We share them both?’

      He nodded. ‘You’d do anything to be Mistress of Wideacre, wouldn’t you, Beatrice? You’d give anything you owned, make any sacrifice there was, to be the Mistress in the Hall and be able to ride over the land every day of your life and say, “This is mine.”’

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      ‘But you’ll be sent away,’ he said. ‘You’re not a child any more. You can tell what your future will be – sent to London and married to a stranger who will take you far away, perhaps to a different county. The land, the weather and the farming will be all different. The hay won’t smell the same; the earth won’t be the same colour. The milk and cheese will taste different. Harry will marry some high-bred girl who will come and queen it here and take your mother’s place. You’ll be lucky if you’re allowed a visit once a year at Christmas.’

      I said nothing. The picture was too clear, all too likely. Ralph had been planning while I had been dreaming. Everything he said was right. I would be sent away. Harry would marry. Wideacre would not be my home for ever; I would be far away in some unknown part of the country. Perhaps, even worse, I would have to live with some fashionable husband in London and never smell new-mown hay again. I said nothing, but I hurt inside and I was afraid.

      The bedroom my mama would not redecorate for me, the warning my papa had given me, the love they both showed for Harry all told me, as clear as a tolling bell, where I was going. I was on my way to exile, and all my will and all my passion could not save me.

      Ralph turned his head from my shocked face and watched the stream. The slim, silver trout was finning gently, nose pointing upstream as the sweet water flowed all over him.

      ‘There is a way to stay here and be the Lady of Wideacre,’ he said slowly. ‘It is a long and crooked way, but we win the land and the pleasure.’

      ‘How?’ I said. The ache of loneliness in my belly made my voice as quiet and as low as his. He turned back to me and sat beside me, our heads together like conspirators.

      ‘When Harry inherits you stay beside him. He trusts you and he trusts me,’ Ralph said. ‘We cheat him, you and I. As his bailiff, I can cheat him on his rents, on his land, on his harvests. I tell him we have to pay more taxes and I bank the difference. I tell him we need special seed corn, special animals, and I bank the difference. You cheat him on his accounting. In his wages for the house servants, the house management, the home farm, the stables, the dairy, the brewery. You know how it could be done better than I.’ He waited and I nodded. I knew. I had been involved in the running of the estate since my earliest years when Harry was away at school or staying with relatives. I knew I could cheat him of a fortune in the household accounts alone. With Ralph acting with me I calculated that Harry would be bankrupt inside three years.

      ‘We ruin him.’ Ralph’s voice was a whisper, mingling with the clatter of the stream. ‘You’ll have a jointure protected, or probably a dower house protected, or funds. Your income is safe, but we make him bankrupt. With the money we’ve saved I buy the estate from him. And then I’m the Master here and you’re what you deserve to be, the Mistress of the finest estate and house in England, the Squire’s Lady, the Mistress of Wideacre.’

      ‘And Harry?’ I asked, my voice cold.

      Ralph spat contemptuously to the riverbank. ‘He’s clay to anyone’s moulding,’ he said. ‘He’ll fall in love with a pretty girl, or maybe a pretty boy. He could hang himself or become a poet. He could live in London or go to Paris. He’ll have some money from the sale; he won’t starve.’ He smiled. ‘He can visit us if you like. I don’t think of Harry.’

      I smiled in return, but my heart was beating faster with mingled hope and anger.

      ‘It could work,’ I said, neutrally.

      ‘It would,’ he said. ‘I have been many nights planning.’

      I thought of him, hidden among the ferns in the woods, his dark eyes staring brightly into the darkness, watching for poachers and yet looking beyond the shadows to the future when there would be no cold, uncomfortable nights. When other men, paid men, would do his watching for him, and he could drink and dine and stand before a roaring fire and speak of the slackness of servants and the problems with rent rolls, and the state of the crops, and the incompetence of the government; and gentlemen would listen to him and agree.

      ‘It would work, except for one thing,’ I said.

      Ralph waited.

      ‘My father’s healthy, strong as an ox. He could sire another son tomorrow and provide the child with trustees and guardians. Apart from that possibility, Harry may be fascinated with you now, but I doubt you’ll hold him for twenty years. My father’s forty-nine. He could live another forty years. By the time he’s dead, I’ll have been married thirty-five years to some fat old Scottish nobleman with a pack of barefoot children, maybe future dukes and duchesses, and probably grandchildren on the way too. Harry’s wife, whoever she may be, will have settled in nicely, growing fat and comfortable with two new heirs out of short clothes. The most you can hope for is Tyacke’s cottage. And the most I can hope for’, my voice quavered on a sob, ‘is exile.’

      Ralph nodded. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘That’s the difficulty. It would work, but it would only work now, this summer. If it’s to happen it’s got to be done while Harry’s at a loose end, trailing around after me, or mooning around after you. In love with both of us and afraid of both of us. It has to be now while we are land-hungry and love-hungry. I don’t want to wait, Beatrice.’

      His eyes on my face were bright. He was in love with me and with my land, a heady mixture for a labourer, the son of a labouring man. But the bleak reality of my life away from Wideacre as it must be, as it was bound to be, was a stark contrast to this dream future that Ralph saw, that Ralph thought we could win: as Lady of Wideacre.

      ‘My father looks well,’ I said drily.

      There was a long pause as our eyes met in clear mutual knowledge of how far we were prepared to go to achieve Ralph’s dream, my dream.

      ‘There are accidents.’ Ralph’s words fell into a silence as ominous and deep as the still millpond. Like a stone tossed in deep water the idea spread widening ripples in my mind. I measured the appalling loss of my beloved, my delightful, papa against the certainty of my loss of Wideacre.

      The precious, essential presence of my vital, noisy papa against the certain loneliness and coldness of my exile, which would come as surely as my sixteenth birthday would come, and at much the same time. I looked at Ralph unsmiling.

      ‘Accidents,’ I said flatly.

      ‘It could happen tomorrow,’ he said, as cold as me.

      I nodded. My mind searched like a skilled spinner over a tangled skein of wool to find the ideas and threads of ideas that would lead me through a maze of sin and crime, and out of the maze into the broad sunshine of my home. I measured in silence how much I needed my papa against how much I needed that security; СКАЧАТЬ