She was leading me towards the common, and I wondered with sudden hope if she was taking me to Ralph, if Ralph had come back to Wideacre not for vengeance at all but to rescue me. To take me away.

We came out of the shelter of the trees to the little gate in the park wall and she opened it and glided through. As I followed her, I caught a glimpse of her face in the moonlight.

She was beautiful; a young woman, with hair as red as a chestnut horse’s mane, and eyes as green as downland grass, set slanting in her oval face. She reminded me of someone, but I could not think who. I stared at her, trying to trace some memory, to find some family resemblance to someone I knew well.

Then she smiled at me, a rueful familiar smile, and I gave a little gasp. She reminded me of myself, and that smile was the one that had called them out in Acre. It was the Lacey smile. It was Beatrice.

I put out a hand to stay her, but she was gone, walking lightly ahead of me as if she could see the path as clear in moonlight as in daytime. I followed her, a ghost like her, a witch like her. I was not even surprised when she led me up the steep cold heather-covered hills and I saw she cast no shadow on the silvery sand.

I had to watch my bruised feet as I staggered up the track. The wet sand was heavy going, and I was afraid of falling with Sarah. Besides, I could feel that I was bleeding more heavily; a warmth was running down the inside of my legs, warning me that I had gone nearly as far as I could go that night. I still had not done what I had come for. When I reached the crest of the hill and struggled to the top, I looked around for her, but she was gone.

There was no slight figure to follow, there was no lingering, inscrutable smile. She had gone as suddenly and as inexplicably as she had come. I had followed a will-o’-the-wisp and was now almost two miles from home and the Fenny; and Sarah was still alive and on Wideacre.

I gave a little sob of despair then, that I should get it all wrong again, and I half turned to go back down the path, back towards the Fenny, to drown Sarah and to drown myself, when a movement caught my eye. It was a ring of carts, loaded up and packed and ready to leave, a ring of gypsy carts in the usual sheltered hollow of the common. I was a few hundred yards from them with my child in my arms and Mama’s rose pearls around my neck.

I went down the hill in a sliding dreamlike rush and approached the nearest cart. A man was at the horse’s head, tightening the leathers and adjusting the harness. On the driver’s seat there was a woman.

She was a young woman, about my age, with a scarf tied down over her hair and a piece of sacking around her shoulders to keep out the rain. In the cart behind her were the family belongings, with the tent lashed down over them to keep them dry. In her arms, feeding at her breast, was a small baby. She had milk.

I stumbled on my hurt feet up to the side of the cart and she looked down at me without surprise. I fumbled in the fold of my cloak and lifted Sarah up to her, holding her awkwardly so she awoke and cried to find herself suddenly cold, and suddenly in mid-air without an arm around her.

The woman reached out and gathered my baby in to her without a word as if she had been waiting for me. I glanced around at the circle of carts. It seemed like they were all waiting. It seemed like they had packed and readied themselves for one of their unknowable wanderings, and then waited. They had waited in the rain and the dark for someone to come to them out of the shelter of the Wideacre woods.

I put my hands up to my neck and took off Mama’s rose-pearl necklace. The woman put her hand out for it and slid it into a pocket hidden in her layers of clothing. As if I had bought my child her rights, she immediately uncovered the other breast and gave my baby suck. The feet of the Lacey heir and the gypsy child kicked in unison as they fed from the same woman.

I stepped back. It was a dream. There was nothing I could say, there was no need to say anything.

The man at the horse’s head tightened a final strap and glanced up at the woman sitting high on the cart. At her nod he clicked to the horse and started to walk beside it. The horse lowered its head against the load and pulled hard at the weight of the cart in the softness of the sand. The side of the cart was painted, but in the moonlight and shadow as the storm-clouds blotted out the light, I could not see the patterns nor any colour. The scene was all silver and grey and black; it was a scene out of a dream without colour, in some moonlit landscape as desolate as a white desert.

The other carts had moved away first, the pans swinging at the sides, lashed on with pieces of twine. Many carried baskets of pegs and carved wooden flowers, or little ornaments, all tied on to the sides for easy sale. As the carts jolted away, the pans clinked together, making insane music, and the flowers jogged like dream dancers. The line of six carts moved off, and I suddenly came out of my reverie and realized what I had done.

The woman raised her hand to me and I took a hasty step forward, but the cart stuck, and then lurched too fast for her to hear me call. A horn lantern swinging on the side of the cart illuminated the pure white of the shawl around my baby’s head, but even as I stared, the light flickered and went out and I could not see her. The cart was going away from me too fast.

I took half a dozen hasty paces after it, but my blood was flowing and my head was light, and the stars and the storm-clouds seemed to be whirling around between me and my child, between me and my daughter. And I knew that it was no dream. I had given her away and I should never see her again.

‘Her name is Sarah!’ I screamed towards the back of the cart and I tried to run again, but my knees gave way beneath me and I sank down into the sand, crying and crying, trying to catch my breath so that I might call loud enough for them to hear me. ‘Her name is Sarah!’ I shouted to the dark jolting cart which was going away so quickly into the night. ‘Sarah Lacey of Wideacre!’

I don’t know how long I stayed there, after that call to the jolting cart. I watched them go until my eyes were hot with staring into the darkness and so filled with hopeless tears that I could see nothing, not even the whiteness of the shawl around my little girl’s head. I stayed kneeling in the wet sand, with the great drops of rain pouring down upon me, and then for a little while I think I pitched forward and wept.

I lifted my head and saw that it was getting lighter. A whole long night had passed. I was free.


Richard had no hold on me that he could ever use again. I had seen him for what he was, and I had conquered my fear of him. Richard was a madman, a cunning charming madman; and he would have killed me last night if I had not begun to give birth to his child.

I had done my duty to Wideacre when I threw away the heir, my lovely, lovely little girl. I would go home and do one further duty. I would face my Grandpapa Havering and tell him that Richard had shot Jem, and Uncle John, and my mama, and I would show him the fraudulent marriage licence as proof of motive, and the rose-pearl ear-rings as evidence. They would take him to Chichester and they would hang him. Then I would pull down the walls of the new Wideacre Hall and live in one of the cottages on the green, alone, mourning, lonely for all I had lost, glad for all I had saved.

I was the squire, the last squire. My last job was to rid Wideacre of Richard.

I pulled my drenched heavy cloak around me and got to my feet. I staggered with weariness and for a moment feared that indeed I might not get home at all. I might collapse out here and be dead of cold and loss of blood before anyone thought to look for me on the common.

Then I gritted my teeth and turned my face for home. I put one bruised and bloody foot before another for a hundred counted paces, and then a hundred more, and then a hundred more. It was the only way to get home I could think of, so I counted my way like a little child. I went back into the dark woods of Wideacre, over the perilous river bridge, where the counted numbers were little gasps of fear as my feet slipped and the river tugged at my heavy cloak and nearly pulled me down to drown, and then, counting, counting, counting, down the little footpath where I had run so easily as a child with my beloved cousin before me. I was counting, counting, counting the paces back to my home where there would be someone – surely there must be someone-to help me to bed, so I could rest and ready myself to tell Richard that I had destroyed his heir and that I would destroy him too.


As I came out of the woods on to the drive, it was nearly dawn; the sky was growing pale, though the storm-clouds were still black over the downs. The wind was high, sighing in the treetops. But above the noise of the wind I thought I heard people shouting in the woods.

I supposed they were all out looking for me. I hoped very much Richard was out too, then I could get to my room and sleep and sleep before I had to face him. Richard had to die. Richard had to be utterly destroyed. And I knew I was not yet strong enough to do it.

The front door stood open as I limped up the path, and the house was deserted. It was as I thought: everyone was out in the woods searching for me, and I might be able to creep upstairs and rest before I had to face Richard.

But I was a Lacey, not a silly child, and I thought that the least I could do was to write a note and pin it to the front door so that the men out in the rain could be sent home and would not spend all day looking for me while I lay safe and snug abed. I went into the library to fetch paper and pen to write my note before I went to bed.