Richard was pressed flat against the wall at the far end of the barn. His hat had fallen off and in the gloom he appeared as white as a ghost; his eyes, huge in his pale face, were black with terror.

The sheep were around him in a great semicircle, standing shoulder to shoulder in a big wedge of a flock, impenetrable. I looked wildly around the barn for the shepherd, for his dog, for I had never seen sheep go so close, except when driven or perhaps protecting a ewe with a new-born lamb from some danger. But there was no one there except Richard and this arch of sheep some twenty feet away from him, packed as tight as if they were in a cart.

And they were getting closer to him.

As I watched, incredulous, the tup, a heavy-shouldered animal, stamped his cloven hoof down once, twice, and dropped his head. In a half-visible surge they moved forwards, their fleeces pressed a little tighter, their mad yellow eyes a little brighter and their white rounded faces with the dark slits of noses a little closer, just a little closer, to where Richard was backed up to the wall of the barn.

They were mobbing him, in the way that an angry upset flock will mob a little dog. But these sheep were mobbing a human.

For a moment I felt the terror which had pinned Richard to the back wall. That deep primeval terror of something one does not understand, something which is against nature or, at the least, against everything one has ever seen and known before. If I had been a superstitious woman, I should have thought them possessed by the devil, and when the ram stamped his pointy little hoof – as he did again – I should have fled in fright.

As it was I sniffed in abruptly – as if the very air of Wideacre could give me courage – and said, ‘No!’ – as if you could command sheep as you would a dog. ‘No!’ I said, and Richard’s head snapped around towards the door and he squinted against the bright square of it and me standing in the doorway.

‘Julia!’ he said, and his voice was a hoarse whisper of utter terror. ‘Julia! Get help! The sheep have gone mad!’

‘No!’ I said again, and I took a fistful of my riding habit in my hand to give me courage and walked straight towards them in my new boots with the yellow tassels.

They parted as I came. Of course they did. Sheep always do. They flurried out of the way and left my way clear right through the flock to Richard. The tup lowered his head at me and presented his horns, but I heard my voice say, ‘No!’ and he backed away on his dainty cloven hooves to the other side of the barn.

Richard did not move until I was beside him, and then he reached out his arms and clung to me as though he were drowning and going under for the third time.

I held him tight and we walked together, Richard half stumbling, towards the doorway. As he swung a leg over the hurdle, the tup and a couple of the ewes beside him came a little closer, their blank yellow eyes fixed on Richard. I said, ‘Shoo!’ like a farmgirl to her hens, and they stopped. I glanced around the barn. Richard had not fed them. There was a bucket of meal left beside the door. I picked it up and poured it into their trough and they went to it eagerly enough and paid me no more mind. I pushed through them towards the door and slid the hurdle aside so I could get out.

Richard was sitting outside in the sunlight, his eyes shut, his face turned up to the light and the heat. I went and sat down beside him on the springy turf of the downs, saying nothing. I did not know what had taken place in that dark barn.

But what I had seen was impossible.

‘They came for me,’ Richard said very low. ‘I went in to feed them and water them, and they made a ring around me. I put the buckets of feed down, thinking they were going for the pails, but they were not. They came for me.’

‘Where’s the shepherd?’ I asked.

‘He sent his child up to say he was ill,’ Richard said, shaking his head, for he could not believe what had happened. ‘I said it didn’t matter. I knew I could feed them and water them on my own. I was going to give them some hay too. But as soon as I was inside the barn, over the hurdle, they made a ring around me, and they started coming towards me. I stepped backwards, and still they kept coming. I went backwards and backwards and backwards, and still there were more of them between me and the door. And then I was back against the wall and they started coming closer.’ He gave a shudder and put his head down on to his knees. ‘Sheep don’t do that,’ he said.

I said nothing. I put an arm around Richard’s shoulder, and my fingers slipped under the collar of his jacket. His linen shirt underneath was damp with sweat. He had been terrified. In a sudden moment of clear memory I had a picture of Richard in the stable yard the day he first saw Scheherazade, and remembered how she had shied and put her ears back when Richard had come close to her.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said softly. There was nothing I could say. The scene in that darkened barn had been a nightmare, one of those insane nightmares where the most normal objects become infinitely menacing.


‘No,’ Richard said as if he wanted to forget as quickly as he could those moments of abject fear. ‘It doesn’t matter at all.’

‘Would you like to go home?’ I asked. I glanced at the sun and reckoned it was nearing half past two.

‘In a minute,’ Richard said. ‘What should we do about the sheep?’

‘I’ll open the doors and let them out into the field,’ I said, getting to my feet. ‘I’ll check them as they come out and Giles Shepherd can look at them properly when he is well again.’

‘I’ll close the gate for you,’ Richard said. He went to fetch the horses and I saw him glance back nervously at me. I stayed still so that he would know that I would not release the sheep until I saw he was through the gate with it closed safe behind him. Prince stood rock-steady while Richard untied his reins, but Sea Mist threw up her head and sidled. He led the two horses through the gate and then closed it behind him. Only when he had swung into the saddle and nodded towards me did I move towards the barn.

In the gloom inside I saw the whiteness of the faces which turned to me. For a moment I felt a flash of the terror which had made it possible for them to herd Richard, the terror which every animal feels at being trapped or outnumbered.

‘No,’ I said again; and behind my own certainty was a line of power and knowledge which I knew came from the Laceys. I threw my head up like proud, red-headed Beatrice herself with her natural arrogance. ‘Certainly not,’ I said to the flock firmly, and dragged back the hurdle just wide enough to let one through at a time.

They dithered, but the sight of the downland turf was too much for them, and the old tup dipped his head and went quickly past me. Then the others scuttered after him until there was only one foolish one left, too afraid to go forward and nervous at being on her own. I opened the hurdle wide and shied an old turnip at her bobbing rump as she dashed past me. I was glad I hit her. I had been scared too.

‘AH done,’ I said cheerfully to Richard as I climbed over the gate. He led Sea Mist up alongside so I could step from the gate into the stirrup.

‘I hate sheep,’ Richard said lightly. ‘I shall tell my papa that I will never make a shepherd and that I don’t propose to try. I shall tell him I won’t supervise that flock. I’d rather concentrate on building the hall anyway. And there’s enough work to do there, Lord knows!’

‘Is there?’ I said, and we turned the horses and our minds away from the barn and the flock of sheep. ‘How near are you to finding the stone the architect wants to use?’

‘I think it will have to be Bath stone,’ Richard said. ‘The stone they can quarry here is much too soft, he thinks. I was hoping we could get some a little closer to home because of the cost of transport. Indeed, I am sure we can. But the design of the house does call for that yellow sandstone.’

‘I love the colour when it’s new,’ I said. ‘Can he use much of the old stone of the hall?’

‘That’s the other problem,’ Richard said. ‘I am trying to persuade him to follow the outlines of the hall as much as possible to save labour, so we don’t have to dig new cellars and foundations, and to reuse the stones and incorporate the walls which are still standing. But, of course, he wants to start from scratch.’

I nodded, and when the track broadened I brought Sea Mist up beside Prince and let Richard talk about the hall all the way home. We never mentioned the flock left on the lower slopes of the downs. Richard took a few moments alone with his papa before dinner to tell him that he would not work with livestock.

Uncle John – a town-bred man, and the son of a line of traders – did not think it odd. The sheep and the little herd of dairy cows became my responsibility from that day onwards. Someone had to do the work. Mama had her school, Uncle John had the health of the village and the business side of the estate, Ralph Megson supervised everything on the land, Richard took charge of the hall and I was out every day looking at the animals, and the fields, and the crops. I was busy, and weary…and very much a Lacey on her land.


Richard did not deal with livestock.

Richard did not deal with the land and the crops.

Richard did not deal with the tenants, and the copy-holders, and the cottagers and the labourers and the intricate details of land ownership and land sharing on Wideacre.

Richard’s great love, his great project, was his work on the hall. And Mama and I, and even Uncle John, had to accept that he knew more and more about the rebuilding of our home every day. Only Richard had the love – almost a passion – to pursue the right colour of stone through twenty quarries until he found one he thought fit.