‘And my friend Michael,’ offered Ted.
‘And my friend, I’ve f-f-forgotten her name,’ Matthew said.
‘Sally,’ Clary volunteered.
I sat in silence, taking this in.
‘Sally died away from Acre,’ Clary said with a hint of extra resentment. ‘The parish overseer took all the children he could get from their parents to work in the workshops. That’s why we’re the oldest in the village.’
I nodded. ‘I heard about it,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t understand what had happened. Who took the children?’
Ted looked at me as if I were ignorant indeed. ‘In the north,’ he said, his voice hard. ‘Even further away than London. They need children to work there in great barns, with great engines. They order paupers from all the parishes in the country and the parish overseer takes the children whose parents are on poor relief. They took all the big children they could the last time they came. None of them have come back, but we heard that Sal died. She was always sickly.’
I hesitated. I had nearly said again, ‘I am sorry.’ But the stealing of Acre’s children was too great a grief for an easily spoken apology.
‘Th-Th-They didn’t take me!’ Matthew said with pride.
Clary smiled at him, as tender as a mother. ‘They thought he was simple,’ she said to me with a smile. ‘He gets worse when he is frightened and they asked him questions in loud voices and he lost his speech altogether. They thought he was simple and they left him here.’
‘To b-b-be with you,’ Matthew said with a look of utter adoration at his muddy little heroine.
‘Aye,’ she said with quiet pride. ‘I look after him, and I look after all the little ‘uns.’
‘You’re like a squire then,’ I said with a smile.
Ted spat on the ground, as rude as Matthew. ‘No squire we’ve ever had,’ he said. ‘No Lacey has ever cared for the village. Squires don’t look after people.’
I shook my head, puzzled. ‘What d’you mean?’ I said. ‘Acre was well cared for when the Laceys had their wealth. When my papa was alive, and Beatrice. It’s only since they died, and since the fire, that things have been bad on the land.’
There was a hiss, like a wind blowing before a storm, at my mention of the name Beatrice, and I saw all the grimy hands clench suddenly into an odd fist with the thumb between the second and third finger. I caught Clary’s hand.
‘Why are you doing that?’ I asked.
She looked at me, her dark eyes puzzled. ‘Don’t you know?’ she demanded.
‘Know what?’ I said. ‘No, I don’t know.’
‘Not about the Lacey magic? And about Beatrice?’ She said the name oddly, as if she were whispering the name of a spell, not the name of my long-dead aunt.
‘What magic?’ I said, scoffing, but then I looked around the circle of intent young faces and I felt myself shiver as though a cold breeze had blown down my spine.
‘Beatrice was a witch,’ Clary said very softly. ‘She knew how to make the land grow, she knew how to make the weather fair. She could call up storms. She could fell trees by casting a spell on them. She took a young man to husband every spring, and every autumn she destroyed him.’
‘That’s not so …’ I stammered. The singsong tone was weaving a spell of its own around me.
‘It was so,’ Clary insisted. ‘One of the men she took from the village was John Tyacke.’
‘My uncle,’ Ted supplemented.
‘Where’s he now?’ Clary continued. ‘Gone!’
‘Or Sam Frosterly, or Ned Hunter! Ask for them in Acre and see what they tell you! Beatrice took them. Took them all.’
I said nothing. I was too bemused to speak.
‘But one she took, the first one she took when she was a girl, was from the Old People too,’ Clary said. ‘His mother was Meg, a gypsy woman, and his father was one of the old gods. No one ever saw him in human shape. She took him, but she could not destroy him. He went into the dark world, into the silence, and he waited until she knew for sure he was coming. And then he came against her.’
‘How?’ I said. My mouth was dry. I knew this was a fairy story made up by ignorant people on long dark nights, but I had to hear the ending.
‘He came in his rightful shape, half-man, half-horse,’ Clary’s voice was a low mesmerizing whisper. ‘And at every hoofprint there was a circle of fire. He rode up the wooden stairs of the great hall, of Wideacre Hall, and everywhere he went the flames took hold. He threw her across his shoulders and rode away with her to the dark world where they both live. And the house burned down behind them. And the fields never grew again.’
The children were utterly silent, though they knew the story well. I stared blankly at Clary, my head whirling with the picture of a black horse and a man riding away with Beatrice to the dark world where she would live with him for ever.
‘Is that the end of the story?’ I asked.
Clary shook her head. ‘They left an heir,’ she said. ‘A child who will have their magic. A child who will be able to make things grow by setting foot to the earth, hand to the ploughshare. The favoured child.’
‘And who is it?’ I asked. I had truly forgotten I had any part in this story. Clary smiled, a wise old smile.
‘We have to wait and see,’ she said. ‘All of us in Acre are waiting for the sign. It could be you, or it could be your cousin Richard. He is her son. But you have the looks of her, and you’re a Lacey. And Ned Smith said the horse knew you were her.’
I shook my head. The air was cold, and I noticed for the first time that the ground was damp and I was chilled. ‘All that is nonsense,’ I said stoutly.
I expected a childish squabble with Clary, but she smiled at me with her eyelashes veiling her eyes. ‘You know it is not,’ she said. And she said no more.
I got to my feet. ‘I must go,’ I said.
‘Home to dinner?’ asked Clary, accepting a return to the prosaic world.
‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of the two or three dishes for the main course and then the pudding, and then the cheese.
‘W-W-What are you having?’ Matthew asked with longing.
‘Nothing much,’ I said resolutely.
‘Do you have tea?’ Little ’Un asked. There was real longing in his voice.
‘Yes,’ I said, not understanding. ‘Don’t you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We just gets water.’
‘D’you have meat?’ one of the Carter girls asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said, and I felt ashamed that I should have been eating so well while less than two miles down our own lane they had been going hungry. I had known that Acre was poor, but I had not understood that they had been hungry for years. I had not understood that these children would never have felt a full belly, that since infancy they had hungered and thought of little else but food. And while I had my dreams of gardens and horse-riding, of balls and parties and gowns, all they dreamed of in reveries, and even in their sleep, was food.
I turned and walked towards Acre, and I heard them scramble to their feet and come after me. Clary caught me up and we walked side by side into Acre like old friends.
‘Goodbye,’ I said as we reached the dirty little lane which is Acre’s main street.
Clary