It was a weak joke, and our smiles were faint. We were still and silent in the garden a long while.

‘What will you do? Can you refuse to go?’ she asked.

‘I shall have to go,’ I said sullenly. ‘I shall have to go and not know when they will let me come back.’

I tried to smile, but I could manage only a sad little grimace. The wind was icy, blowing down from the stars, but I had a throbbing headache so heavy over my eyes that I could hardly see the garden. I seemed to be well on the way to losing every thing I had ever wanted: Richard, Wideacre and my girlhood. All stolen from me by the lost dead witch of Wideacre. And nothing given to me in their place but a handful of superstitions and a wildness which I could not control.

‘I shall have to do as they all want,’ I said. ‘Mama, Uncle John and Richard. I have to go to Bath.’ I wiped away a couple of tears from my cheek with the back of my hand, gave Clary a watery smile and a kiss; and went towards the house.

She stayed me with a gentle touch on my arm. ‘What if you do have her gifts?’ she asked, her loving courage for me nerving her to speak of Beatrice. ‘What if you have? Can’t they just see that it does not matter? The old people in Acre have said it of you ever since you were a little girl. They always said you were Beatrice come back to set things right. Can’t it just be a secret? A secret for the Laceys and Acre?’

‘No,’ I said wearily. ‘The world is changing, Clary. There is no room for such secrets any more. More and more people come into the village to work, more and more Acre folk work away. Everyone in the outside world is set against seeings and dreams and the things that we know happen. But they have no explanation for it; and so they will not hear of it.’

Clary made a face. ‘They think they are so wise,’ she said scathingly. ‘Men like your Uncle John – good men, who do a good job – but they have to know everything in words.’ She broke off. ‘I’ll go home now, before the clouds come up. But I’ll stop at Ralph Megson’s cottage and tell him you’re to be sent away in the morning. Your precious cousin told no one of it. None of us knew.’

I nodded my thanks for that and put my cheek against hers in a hug. I felt her quiver as I touched her and I knew that she was afraid that the coldness of my cheek was not just the chill of the night air, but the embrace of a ghost. I stepped back from her and tried to smile normally, but I knew my eyes were hazy and fey.

‘Don’t be afraid, Clary,’ I said. ‘I am still the little girl who rolled in the mud with yöu. I may have it all wrong. They may be right that I have no sight at all but just a fever on the brain.’


She nodded, and gave me a pat on the cheek with one grimy hand, then she drew her shawl around her and slid from the garden.

I looked for Ralph Megson that evening, for he knew our time for the tea-tray, and I had thought he might have ridden under the frost-hazed moon to see us. I stayed up an extra half-hour after supper, waiting to see if he would come, and I went to bed and wept in absolute silence into my pillow that he should have failed me and I should have to leave without seeing him.

I should have trusted him. In the morning when Jenny brought me my cup of chocolate, she told me that Mr Megson was in the stable yard, come to bid me safe journey. I threw a wrapper on, and my riding jacket atop for good measure, and went down. The sun was as bright as midsummer, but the ground was hard as rock. It was a brilliant still day, with a sky as blue as ice and Ralph Megson high on his black hunter in the stable yard, smiling down on me.

I walked up to the horse’s neck and stroked him, looking up at Ralph.

‘Have you been ill?’ he asked softly.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I was not allowed out. They were afraid to let me.’

‘No need,’ he said gently, and I felt the tension and the pain of the last few days start to let me go, like cords slipping away from around my neck and shoulders.

‘I have to go to Bath,’ I said abruptly. It sounded like a sentence of doom. Ralph glanced at me, his eyes warm, full of sympathy. ‘They will take me to see a doctor,’ I said. ‘They think that I am unbalanced because of the dreams, and because of the night of the storm!’

Ralph made a little grimace. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘I suppose they would.’ He said nothing for a moment. ‘No doctor of any sense will meddle with you, Julia,’ he said gently. ‘Anyone can see you are a bright and lovely young woman. Any doctor with half a mind would see that you have special gifts, special powers, and you should be glad of them. You should let them flow through you like a river through the arches of a bridge.’


‘I cannot,’ I said urgently. ‘I am to be a young lady. I cannot be as fey as some half-mad gypsy. I am not the village midwife. I am not a teller of fortunes. All of the seeing and dreaming will have to go. I have to move in society. I have to be the wife of a squire!’

Ralph pursed his mouth as if he were about to spit; but then he remembered where he was and thought better of it. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘For a moment I forgot that you had such a glorious future ahead of you. A young lady in society indeed! Well, that is worth a few sacrifices, I should say!’ He looked down at my wan face, and the harsh humour left his eyes. ‘You are Quality born and bred,’ he said more gently. ‘If you want to run from the wildness that is in you, if you want to knock it out of yourself, then you may be able to do that. You may be able to turn yourself into a bread-and-butter Bath miss. I should think not. But I could be wrong. If anywhere could do it, then Bath can!’

The tone of disgust in his voice was too much for me. I giggled. ‘Have you ever been to Bath?’ I asked smiling.

‘Aye,’ Ralph said. ‘They didn’t make me into a proper young lady either! But they’d have a better chance with you.’ He captured my hand where it was patting his horse’s neck and held it in a comforting clasp. ‘Follow your heart,’ he said gently. ‘I think this land is the place for you, and I think you are Beatrice’s heir. But John and your mama want different things for you. It is you who will have to live the life you choose – none of us. Try the taste of Bath – see how it suits you. Then come home to us if you like Wideacre best.’

I nodded. Ralph’s wisdom was as simple as grass growing.

‘I am afraid of this doctor,’ I confessed.

Ralph’s gentle touch turned into a handclasp as if we were shaking on a deal. ‘While I am alive, no one will coerce you,’ he said briefly. ‘That is a promise.’

I looked up at him and I had a sudden sharp ringing sound in my head. ‘There will come a time when you will not be able to help me,’ I said certainly, in a voice which was not my own. ‘There will come a time when I will not be able to help you.’


I fell silent and Ralph said nothing, waiting patiently in case there was more. ‘That will be a dark hour for the two of us,’ he said. ‘But it is not here now. Don’t be afraid of the future, little Julia. Take your present life and live it.’ He was about to turn his horse away when he checked and put his hand in his pocket. ‘I brought a present for you,’ he said casually. He lifted the pocket flap and brought out something hidden in his broad clenched hand. I reached up for it.

It was a little wooden carved owl, warm from the warmth of his body, carved in a pale wood; hard and smooth-polished.

‘Ralph,’ I said, entranced. ‘Did you make it yourself? For me?’

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I’m a gypsy’s lad, remember? I was up at the camp the other day, and I borrowed their tools for a while. You should be grateful I didn’t bring you a bag of clothes-pegs too.’

I giggled at that. But as my fingers closed around the little wooden owl, I felt a long shudder sway me, a calling from the past, from Beatrice. ‘You gave her an owl,’ I said with certainty.

Ralph’s glance at me was sharp. ‘If you were mad, you could not know that,’ he said. ‘No one knew of it but her and me. No one could have told you. I gave her an owl for love of her, on her birthday the year we were lovers, and she called it “Canny” for wisdom. I sent her a little china owl in hatred one year to frighten her when we were enemies, after she had lost all her wisdom and skill. And now I give a little wooden owl to you, her heir, with my love. To remind you to keep your wisdom as well as you can.’

‘I will,’ I said with all my heart. ‘Thank you, Ralph. You are so…’ I groped for the word. ‘You are so sweet to me.’

Ralph looked utterly thunderstruck. ‘I must be nearing my dotage,’ he said in disgust. ? beddable wench like you finds me sweet? Good God!’ And he turned his horse’s head at once and waved farewell to me, still muttering.

‘Goodbye, Ralph!’ I called after him, happy as only he could make me. ‘I’ll be home for ploughing!’

I don’t know if he heard me. His horse’s hooves were loud on the frost-hard ground, but he left me with a smile on my face, an escape from my fear…and a little wooden owl safe in the palm of my hand.

I went back to the house to pack and dress for the journey. The gong went for breakfast and Mama ate her meal with a list and a pencil by her plate, there was so much to remember.

We were late leaving, the boxes had to be finally corded up and tied on the back of the chaise. Mama forgot a novel she wanted and I had to run back in to fetch it, and she had a hundred things to tell Stride before she was ready to put both hands out of the window to John and say, ‘Goodbye, God bless you, and don’t work too hard.’

He kissed both her hands and then stepped up to the window and kissed her on the lips. ‘God speed, Celia,’ he said gently. ‘Don’t buy a queen’s wardrobe, and come home soon.’