‘He was a tenant farmer in Kent and was bought out by an improving landlord at a considerable loss to himself,’ Uncle John said. He answered her as if the matter of Richard’s opinion was of small moment. ‘Losing his land like that would have made a lesser man bitter. It made him think about the rights of the landlord, and the rights of the tenants and workers. He’s a radical, of course, but I don’t mind that at all! I’m glad to have a manager who thinks of the good of the people, rather than simply the profits of the estate. And I don’t think a grasping man would last long in Acre anyway!’


‘No,’ Mama said. ‘As long as they will do as they’re bid…

Uncle John smiled down the table at me. ‘They were falling over themselves to please him when we left,’ he said. ‘If he remains that popular I should think they’ll plough up their kitchen gardens for Lacey wheat at his request. He seemed an absolute hero, didn’t he, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed, and I said no more.

‘Odd I never heard of him,’ Mama said. ‘He must have left Acre many years ago, for I never met him. I wonder how he can be so popular since he left when he was just a lad.’

I shifted uneasily in my chair and Richard came out of his brown study and shot a swift hard look at me. The very question I had feared had been raised on this first afternoon of Mr Megson’s return home. I had his life in my hands. All I had to do was to repeat what he had told me and he would be taken to Chichester and hanged. It would hardly matter that the fire had taken place fourteen years ago. Ralph Megson was a fire-raiser roaming free on Wideacre, and only I knew it. It should be me who gave the warning.

He had told me a secret which would hang him, and many of the villagers as well. And he had told it me in utter freedom and in jest and daring, and he had known, he must have known, that it would place me in the position I was in now: I had to choose between the claims of my family, my Quality family, and the preferences of Acre.

Before the whole village he had told me that he was an arsonist and a murderer, and I had not cried out against him then. I had not rushed to Uncle John and told him. I had not taken Uncle John to one side before we reached home and told him the appalling news. Mr Megson’s warm smile, his dazzling defiance of the law and the outside world and his matchless confidence had won me into complete complicity. Now I had to decide whether to lie outright to my mama or to betray Mr Megson, a stranger and a murderer.

I never lied to my mama.

I had hoped I never would lie to my mama.


I had hoped there would never be a single thing I could not tell her.

‘I’ve heard he left when he was quite young,’ I said. ‘The reason that he is so popular is that he used to send money back to people in the village during the bad years. Prize money,’ I said, improvising wildly. ‘From when he was at sea.’

Richard looked at me, his face impassive. He knew from my paleness, and from the way the tablecloth twitched before me as I pleated and twisted it under the cover of the table, that I was lying. And lying not at all well. And he knew I was lying to protect Mr Megson. Mr Megson – whom Richard had named as his enemy.

‘How very creditable,’ said Mama lightly. She took her shawl from the back of her chair and draped it around her shoulders.

‘Yes, and most unlikely,’ Uncle John said.

I had risen, and I whirled around to face him, my face suddenly white. ‘What do you mean?’ I demanded, and I knew my eyes were blazing.

‘My dear Julia,’ Uncle John said in faint surprise, ‘I mean only that I suspect that it is a respectable version of the man’s life history. I should imagine that an early apprenticeship with smugglers would be more like it. And the favours he could do Acre as a local smugglers would certainly be worth remembering.’ He smiled at my scared face. ‘No need to look so shocked,’ he said gently. ‘It makes little odds. Smuggling will always take place while we have absurd excise laws, and if he can command a gang of smugglers, he can certainly organize a ploughing team, I should think!’

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘I was only repeating what I heard in the village. But if he was a smuggler and now he has stopped smuggling, there could be nothing against him, could there?’

Uncle John held the door open for Mama and me. ‘I don’t think the law gives much credit to people who retire from a life of crime to a life of comfort,’ he said with a smile. ‘But there is obviously no one who would betray him in Acre. And I do not hold it against him. What I will do is have a quiet word with Lord Havering and one or two other Justices of the Peace locally, and see if there is anyone of Mr Megson’s description wanted. I don’t mind having a retired smuggler on my land, but I would object to an ex-privateer or a retired highwayman.’

‘Good gracious, yes!’ said Mama, settling herself in her chair in the parlour. ‘Why can Acre never be normal! Surely John, you could have found a manager who was not a criminal? Even if he is a retired one?’

‘A poacher turned gamekeeper is the best man to guard the game,’ Uncle John quoted with a smile. ‘Acre has always been an eccentric sort of village, my dear. I fear it will continue that way. And when it is set to rights, it may be that some of its finer sons come home again. There was an exile back today, wasn’t there, Julia? The man who had come all the way from Petersfield for the dinner.’

The guilty look on my face was as clear as a bell to Richard. I knew it as soon as our eyes met. But I was sitting at Mama’s feet at the fireside and I could not hide my face.

‘Who from Petersfield?’ he asked, seeming to care very little.

‘I don’t recall the name,’ Uncle John said. But then he remembered. ‘Tayler, Dan Tayler, was it not, Julia?’

‘Yes,’ I said, monosyllabic, my eyes on the fire.

‘Who is he?’ Richard asked blankly.

‘Don’t you know?’ Uncle John asked. ‘I should have thought you two knew Acre inside out. Julia seems quite expert. Who is he, Julia?’

‘He is…he is…’ I could improvise nothing with Uncle John’s guileless pale eyes on me and Richard’s gaze darkening with suspicion.

‘There is no Tayler family in the village,’ Richard said.

‘There is!’ I said quickly. ‘In the shanties, the cottagers.’ I knew Richard knew nothing of the families who lived on the outer limits of Acre, scraping a living off the common land. No one could ever say with certainty who was there. Only the gypsies who lived further out on the common were more wild.

‘Never heard of them,’ Richard said stubbornly. ‘Who is this man, anyway?’


Mama’s eyes were on me, and Uncle John’s. Richard was sharp and alert. I had told one lie and then another, and now I was being forced into a whole string of untruths. If they discovered the identity of the man who had nearly bumped into us with his saucepan, Richard would never forgive me for a lie and that would be bad enough; but Dench would be taken.

I might brave Richard’s anger, or even Mama’s mystified disapproval. But if I let slip Dench’s name, Uncle John would order his coachman (a London man with no local loyalties) down to Acre to arrest Dench. And at the next quarter sessions he would be tried and hanged. I could not let that happen.

The lie I had already told that day to protect Mr Megson had been weak enough. I leaned my head back against my mama’s knees to draw some strength from the feel of her satin gown on the back of my bare neck. Richard saw my fatigue and pressed me for answers.

‘Where did you meet a cottager, Julia?’ he asked. His tone was concerned and his eyes went to Mama, as if to remind her that I should not be let free to wander in the most notorious village in Sussex. ‘Did he approach you when you were walking after having left me at the vicarage? Is he a friend of that common little village girl you keep going to see? Why did you never tell us?’

‘I met him when I was walking with Clary, and Matthew Merry and some of the other Acre young people,’ I said. Uncle John held his hands to the fire and nodded, but Richard could smell a lie like a hound smells blood from a fresh wound and was hot on my trail.

‘When was this?’ he demanded. ‘You never told me. And why were the Acre children talking to one of the cottagers?’

‘Oh, I don’t know! I don’t remember!’ I said in sudden impatience and in real fear that they would get the truth out of me. I had to get myself out of the room. I jumped up from my seat at Mama’s feet and took a hasty few steps towards the door.

‘What is he doing now, this mysterious cottager?’ Richard harried me. ‘And how did he get to Acre so quickly?’


‘Can’t we just forget all about him!’ I exclaimed with as near a tone of petulance as I could manage when my heart was in my mouth to hide Dench’s identity from Mama and Uncle John. My courage nearly failed me when I saw Mama’s astonished face and then caught her look at John, as if she were ashamed that I should be so rude in front of him. But I was trapped and I could see no way to go but forward.

‘Honestly, Richard! You and Mama treat me as if I were a child! I won’t be cross-questioned! I met the man in Acre, where I know many people. Mama! Please excuse me!’ I said and I whirled towards the door.

Stride was coming in with the tea-tray in his hand and he stood on the threshold and gaped to see me striding from the room in temper. He hesitated, not knowing whether to put down his burden to hold the door for me or to let me push past him in defiance of good manners.

‘Miss Julia!’ he said in a reproachful undertone. I flashed an angry glance at him and saw his friendly face full of concern.