Under my pillows in the great bed were two things hidden. One, hard and square, was the tinderbox. I had taken the flint from it, and the tinder, for I had a fear now of fire, and every night I would insist that Harry went around the fireplaces of the Hall to check that they were all safely doused. Inside it I kept a twist of curl-paper with a handful of Wideacre earth in it. It was the earth I had clenched in my hand all the trembling walk home; I had kept it in the bottom of my jewel box all these long years. Now I put it with the tinderbox the Culler had sent me. Ralph’s earth in the Culler’s box. If I had been the witch they called me, I would have made magic with them. And the magic I would choose would have made me a girl again and this pain and hunger and death would not have been.

I lay like a tranced princess in a daydream of death. But Celia, pitying, forgiving Celia, laid little plans for me and tempted me from my bed.

‘Harry said the wheat was looking very well,’ she said one morning towards the end of May as she sat in the window seat of my bedroom and gazed over the rose garden and paddock to the woods and the high, high downs behind.

‘Yes?’ I said languidly. I did not even turn my head. Above me was the carved roof of the bed showing corn standing tall, fat sheep, cows in calf and a tumble of fruit and sheaves of wheat from a great twirly shell. A carving to bless the master of the land with a constant reminder that the land was fertile and easy.

‘It is high and silvery-green,’ Celia said. Somewhere, among the mist in my mind, the shape and colour of the rippling fields came back to me.

‘Yes,’ I said with more interest.

‘He says that the Oak Tree Meadow and Norman Meadow are growing a crop the like of which has never been seen in the country. Great fat heads of wheat and straight tall stalks,’ said Celia, her eyes on my suddenly brightening face.

‘And the common field?’ I asked, raising myself a little in bed and turning to look at Celia.

‘That is doing very well,’ said Celia. ‘It is so sunny there, that Harry says it will ripen early.’

‘And the new fields we enclosed up to the slopes of the downs?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Celia slyly. ‘Harry did not say. I do not think he has been up that far.’

‘Not been up that far!’ I exclaimed. ‘He should be up there every day. Give those damned idle shepherds one chance and they’ll let the sheep in to graze it down to the root to try and show us that the downs should be left for sheep! Let alone the rabbits and the deer. Harry should be checking the fences around the corn fields every day!’

‘That is bad,’ said Celia ingenuously. ‘If only you could go and see for yourself, Beatrice.’

‘I’ll go,’ I said without thinking, and tossed back the covers and slid from my bed. The three long weeks in bed had made me weak, and my head swam when I leaped up. But Celia was at my side, and when Lucy came into the room they had my pale grey riding habit laid out for me.

‘Shouldn’t I still be in black?’ I asked, pausing at the sight of the pretty dress in the lighter material.

‘It has been nearly a year,’ Celia said, temporizing. ‘One would not wish to be lacking in attention but it is far too hot for your black velvet riding habit, Beatrice. And you always looked so lovely in this one. Wear it today, you are not going off the estate, and you will feel so much better in it.’

I needed no persuasion but slid the silk skirts over my head and buttoned the smart jacket. Lucy brought the little velvet cap that matched the outfit and I piled my chestnut curls into it carelessly, and pinned it securely. Celia gave a half-sigh as I stood before the mirror.

‘Beatrice, you are so beautiful,’ she said earnestly. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror.

My eyes looked back at me, the mouth curved in my quizzical smile. As I grew older and harder I had lost the magical prettiness that had been mine when Ralph loved me, and my beauty was like a luminous sunbeam in a dark barn. But the new lines around my mouth and the little trace of lines above my nose on my forehead from scowling had not robbed me of the beauty that comes to women with clear, lovely bones under smooth, glowing skin. I would be a beauty from now until the day of my death. Nothing would ever rob me of this. But in many ways it was changing. In some ways it was soured. The new lines did not matter, but the expression did.

Ignoring Lucy and Celia, I stepped closer to the mirror so my reflected face and my real one were just inches apart. The bones, the hair, the skin were as perfect as ever. But the expression had changed. When Ralph had loved me, my face was as open as a poppy on a summer morning. When I had desired Harry my secrets did not shadow my eyes. Even when John followed me, and courted me, and held my wrap for me after dancing, the smile on my mouth showed warm in my eyes and turned his heart over when he saw me. But now my eyes were cold. Even when my mouth was smiling, or when I was laughing, the eyes were as cold and sharp as splinters. And my face was closed in on the secrets I had to carry. My mouth had new lines because the lips pressed together, even in repose. My forehead had new lines because I frowned so often. With surprise I realized that when I was old, my face would fall into the expression of a discontented woman. That I should not look as if I had enjoyed the best childhood anyone could have, and a womanhood of power and passion. I might think I had made a life to give me every sort of pleasure. But my face when I was forty would tell me that my life had been hard and my pleasures all paid for.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Celia gently. She had slipped from her window seat and come to stand beside me, her arm around my waist, her eyes on my face.

‘Look at us,’ I said, and she turned to look in the mirror as well. It reminded me of the day we were fitting for her wedding and my bridesmaid’s dress, so long ago at Havering. Then I had been a pattern for any man’s desire, and Celia had been a pale flower. Now as we stood side by side I saw she had worn the years better than I. Her happiness had put a bloom in her cheeks, a constant upturning of her mouth. She had lost the scared look she had worn at Havering Hall, and was ready to laugh and sing like a carefree bird. The battle she had fought and won, over John’s drinking, against her husband and Lord, Harry, and against her best friend, me, had put an aura of dignity around her. She still had her childlike prettiness, but she had cloaked that vulnerable girlishness with the dignity of knowing her mind when others did not. And being able to judge, and judge rightly, when those around her were ready to do wrong. She would be an old lady beloved for her charm, but also for her uncompromising moral wisdom.

It was not in Celia’s nature to be unforgiving, but she would never forget the selfishness I showed and Harry showed when John trembled at the sight of a bottle, and we drank before him and praised the wine. She no longer depended on me, and she would never trust me again. There was a little distance between us that not even Celia’s loving spirit would attempt to bridge. And as she watched my eyes in the glass I could no longer predict with certainty what she was thinking.

‘I think you could ride to see the wheat crop,’ she said temptingly. ‘I do think you could, if you wanted to, Beatrice.’

‘Yes,’ I said, smiling. ‘It has been nearly a year. I should love to ride up to the downs again. Tell the stables to get Tobermory ready for me.’

Celia nodded and took her dismissal from the room, pausing only to gather her sewing. Lucy handed me my grey kid gloves and my whip.

‘Better already,’ she said, and her voice was cool. ‘I have never known a lady who could recover like you, Miss Beatrice. Sometimes I think that nothing will stop you.’

My weeks in bed had rested me well. I took Lucy by the arm, just above the elbow in a hard, pinching grip, and I pulled her a little towards me.

‘I don’t like the tone of your voice, Lucy,’ I said confidentially. ‘I don’t like it at all. If you want to look for a new place without a reference, with a week’s wages in your purse, and far away from here, then you have only to say.’

She looked back at me with villager’s eyes. Hating and yet craven.

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Beatrice,’ she said and her eyes fell below my blazing green ones. ‘I meant no harm.’

I let her go with a little push and swung out of the door and pattered down the stairs to the stable door. John was just outside, watching the tumbler pigeons on the stable roof.

‘Beatrice!’ he said, and his cold eyes scanned my face. ‘You are better,’ he said definitely, ‘at last.’

‘I am!’ I said, and there was a gleam of triumph in my face that he could no longer look on me as a patient that he was nursing to a slow and painful end. ‘I am rested and well again, and I am going out riding,’ I said.

One of the lads led Tobermory from the stable door. In the hot sunshine his coat gleamed exactly the colour of my own chestnut hair. He whickered when he saw me and I stroked his nose. I gestured to John and there was nothing for him to do but to cup his hands for me to put my booted foot in then, and to toss me up into the saddle. I had a thrill of pure joy when I felt his white hands, doctor’s hands, under my boot, and I beamed down on him from Tobermory’s high back, as if I loved him.

‘Do you see Death in my face today, John?’ I said teasingly. ‘You were in rather a hurry to think that I would die to please you, weren’t you?’

John’s face was serious and his eyes were as cold as flints.

‘You’re healthy as ever,’ he said. ‘But I still see Death coming for you. You know it, and so do I. You feel well now because the sun is shining and you are out on horseback again. But things are not the same for you, Beatrice. And you are not such a fool you do not know when everything around you has been destroyed, and that the only thing left to die is you.’