In the field the reapers stood, sickles dangling in their hands, left without orders, left without a word. Once again the ground had cracked beneath the Laceys and once again Acre village, and the livelihood of Acre, would go tumbling into the crevasse. I glanced back at Jimmy Dart, his sickle still upraised where he had held it out to me, frozen like a statue, his blue eyes puzzled, his broad young face uncomprehending, a little afraid.

I did not blame him, the Bath linkboy I had brought safely home. I did not blame old Mrs Miles, whom I had saved from a pitiful death in the poor house. Jimmy Dart had played the game in the old way, and won. He had not known what he was bringing to me. I truly believed that old Mrs Miles had made the dolly with her fingers and with old magic – no thought in her mind at all. She liked me, she would not have injured me. The truth of my pregnancy had come out in her craft. And I knew – from the way I shuddered when I first saw the corn dolly – that it was not the first time that the old magic had welled up, like an unstoppable spring, on Lacey land.

Sea Mist jinked at a fledgling blackbird fluttering in the hedge, and I checked her with instinctive skill, but I felt my grip on the reins was weak and I feared I would drop them.

I knew I was going home to face the end of my girlhood and the loss of the love of my mama. But I felt some dread, almost a superstitious fear, as if there might be something still worse to come. I was shocked and I was afraid, but a still greater dread, like a pair of black dogs, stalked and circled me all the way as I rode home and then tossed the reins to Jem in silence in the stable yard. When I walked up the garden path, it seemed to me that they lay like couchant black lions on the lawn.

John was waiting for us in the parlour, standing by the mantelpiece; Mama was seated in her usual chair at the fireside. Out of habit she had a piece of work in her hands, some broderie anglaise; and she held her little silver scissors ready to snip out the pattern. For one moment everything seemed the same as it had always been. This was still my safe home.

Then I saw with horror that Mama was not following the intricate pattern which she had taken days to copy. She was snipping aimlessly, shredding the expensive lawn, she was snipping random spiky little holes in the jagged material. John had not even noticed.

Richard and I came into the room. The silence and that mad little snip, snip, snipping noise rooted us on the threshold. Richard froze and I took one small step to the parlour table and clung to the back of the chair to steady myself. I felt my knees trembling too helplessly to stand without support. I wanted to run to my mama and throw myself down at her feet, but that detached little snip, snip, snip of the scissors frightened me away from her.

She had her head down, and her eyes were on the fine Irish linen in her hand; she was digging the little silver points into the material with her usual meticulous care, except that the holes were all wrong and she was ruining the work.

I kept my eyes on Uncle John. The only sound was the little snipping noise of the scissors and the nagging nerve-tearing call of the wood-pigeon outside the window in Wideacre wood.

‘Are you with child, Julia?’ John asked, his voice as sharp as Mama’s scissors, empty of emotion. But his face was trembling, his mouth working.

‘I don’t know,’ I said weakly.

‘Have you felt nauseous? Has your monthly flow ceased? Are your breasts tender?’ John rapped out his questions as though I were a kitchenmaid facing dismissal. I nodded like a jointed doll.

‘Mama!’ I said quietly, summoning her help.

Her head stayed down over the work as she enlarged some of the holes she had hacked and trimmed the ragged edges,

‘Excuse me,’ John said with mad politeness, and he crossed the room towards me. I flinched and stepped backwards until I was up against the wall. I gasped in horror when he placed his hand low on my belly and pressed hard.

‘Mama!’ I cried out.

She never even turned her head to see what he was doing to me. He walked back to the fireplace as if I had not spoken. He took out a fine silk handkerchief from his pocket and under my horrified gaze he wiped his hands as if the touch of my riding gown could soil him.

‘I conclude you are the father, Richard?’ John said, his voice an uninterested monotone.

‘Yes, sir,’ Richard said. Something in his voice made me turn to look at him. He was not blank with horror like the rest of us. His eyes were blazing blue. He looked utterly delighted. I could not think what was in his mind. He must be half mad, or perhaps he was rising to the challenge of this horror. Mama was bent industriously over her work, while I was where John had left me, backed against the wall, and John now clung to the mantelpiece. But Richard stood astride in the doorway, a smile on his face.

‘My God,’ said John. He made an odd little retching sound in his throat as though he were going to be sick.

‘And we are married!’ Richard said defiantly. ‘The child, the heir to Wideacre, will be born in wedlock. We were secretly married over a month ago, and you cannot break that. We will inherit Wideacre jointly, just as my mama planned!’

John’s head jerked up, his pale eyes blazing so brightly they looked almost white. ‘Not just your mama,’ he said, hissing through his teeth. ‘My God, you pair of fools! You do not know what you have done!’ he said, recapturing that precise monotone which told of a horror kept in check. ‘You do not know what you have done. She was not just your mama! She gave birth to you both. You have seduced and married your sister, Richard!’

No one said a word. It was as if we were a tableau in some theatre of horror. Then I gave a little sobbing scream and slumped on to one of the chairs at the parlour table.

Richard’s smile was wiped from his face. ‘You’re lying,’ he said uncertainly.

‘No,’ John said. ‘Beatrice conceived Julia with her lover, and she persuaded Celia to take the baby when they were in France on the wedding tour. Harry Lacey never knew the child was not his. Julia was born in France when he was absent. He came home early. The next time Beatrice conceived, she married me. After you were born, I discovered the truth, Richard, the foul truth that you are both Lacey bastards from the same whore.’

Mama’s scissors went snip, snip, snip in the silence. She had not looked up once. She had abandoned the little jagged holes and was slicing along the edge of the cloth in a delicate threadlike fringe.


‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked, utterly bemused.

I could not take my eyes from my mama’s downcast face. She was not my mama. She was not my mama.

‘Who is my father?’ Richard asked again.

John dropped into a chair by the empty fireplace; he seemed too weary to go on much longer. ‘Harry Lacey,’ he said indifferently. ‘Beatrice lay with her brother, Harry, and got you both. You are incestuous bastards, and now the two of you have conceived another.’

Mama’s head came up. ‘Harry’s child?’ she demanded. ‘Julia is Harry’s child? Beatrice’s lover was my Harry?’

‘Didn’t you know it?’ John demanded, his voice as hard as a costerman’s, of the woman he loved. ‘Didn’t you always know it in your secret heart? And you feared it and hid it from yourself, and I conspired with you in that lie.’

Mama dipped her head again to her work. ‘Yes,’ she said very softly. ‘I knew there was something evil between them. I tried not to wonder what it meant.’ She had dropped the scrap of lawn when she looked up, but she did not cease her work. Absent-mindedly she took a handful of the figured silk of her driving dress and started to cut perfectly symmetrical little holes in it. Snip, snip, snip went the scissors, and no ‘one thought to stop her.

Richard stared. ‘So I am Harry Lacey’s son,’ he said slowly. ‘I am the son of the squire.’

Nobody said anything. John’s eyes were on the empty grate. It looked like he was watching flames and glowing embers, but there was nothing there. Mama’s head was bent down over her dress. It was a cream silk with small yellow flowers. She was cutting the flowers out of the material with careful accuracy. The scraps fell around her feet as though she were sitting under a cherry tree shedding its petals.

‘I am the heir,’ Richard suddenly said, his voice strong. ‘I am the Son of the Laceys. Wideacre is my inheritance.’

‘Wideacre!’ John shouted. He jumped from his chair, explosive with rage. He crossed the room in two swift strides and took Richard’s lapels and dragged him close. ???? have got your own sister with child, and all you can think of is Wideacre?’

His blazing pale eyes scanned Richard’s frightened face and then he pushed him away as if he did not want to touch him.

‘You are true Laceys,’ he said bitterly. He looked at us with loathing. ‘Both of you,’ he said. His mouth was twisted as though he had accidentally bitten into something dead and rotting. ‘Both of you bred very true. All you care for is this filthy estate, all you chase is your own lusts. You are both Beatrice’s true children.’

We said nothing. I did not dare look up from the polished surface of the table. I could see my reflection. I was as white as a ghost and my eyes in that darkened mirror were huge and appalled.

John leaned his arm along the mantelpiece. ‘It will have to be annulled,’ he said levelly. The passion had gone from his voice and he sounded tired and old. ‘It can be the last thing I do for the pair of you. I will go to London and get an annulment on the grounds that you are brother and sister, and I shall put the estate on the market while I am there. Wideacre will be sold, and you two will be separated.’