Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) (95 page)
Read Wideacre (Wideacre Trilogy) Online
Authors: Philippa Gregory
It will take more than a spring for the children and Celia and John to recover. Celia went in the night from the Squire’s Lady to an impoverished widow, living in the little Dower House. She is in mourning for another year, but her face beneath the black veil is serene. The children are a quaint pair, solemn in their black clothes. They hold hands on their long walks and their little heads are close together when they pray: Julia’s brown hair glinting with a tinge of copper, Richard’s curls glossy as a black horse. John MacAndrew also lives in the Dower House, to care for his son and help the widow adjust to her new life. All he has is an allowance from his father. There is some rumour that Miss Beatrice squandered his money on an entail and an unbreakable contract for his son. But in this part of Sussex there is nothing they would not say against Miss Beatrice.
She has passed into legend. The Wideacre witch, who turned the land to gold for three sweet seasons, and then scraped it dry in two cold years. How, when she walked in a field as a young girl, you could see the seeds growing in her footprint. How the fish swam to the bank when she walked along the Fenny. How the game was fat and easy to shoot when she had been in the woods. How she was a very goddess of Wideacre, as sweet and as bitter and as unpredictable as all goddesses.
So when she turned against the land men died. When she stopped loving, the sweetness of Wideacre went sour and people went hungry. No vegetables grew. The footpaths closed. And an old oak tree crashed down, rootless, when she lost her temper under it one uneasy summer’s day.
No man could have stopped her. Acre would have died of hunger in her second cold winter. Only another of the old gods, a legless man, half-horse, half-man, could have ridden like a centaur to the window of her house and plucked her out like a lover his lass. He rode away with her across his saddle and they found her body, but never heard of him again. He was gone.
Back to some secret place where the old gods live. Back to some heartbeating core of the earth where he and Miss Beatrice are golden once more, and smile on the land.
Wideacre Hall faces due south. It is a ruin now, and no one goes there. No one except little Richard MacAndrew and Julia Lacey who like to play in the broken summerhouse. Sometimes Julia looks up at the ruin with her wide child’s eyes. And she smiles as if it were very lovely to her.
WIDEACRE
Philippa Gregory is an established writer and broadcaster for radio and television. She holds a PhD in eighteenth-century literature from the University of Edinburgh. She has been widely praised for her historical novels, including
Earthly Joys
and
A Respectable Trade
(which she adapted for BBC Television), as well as her works of contemporary suspense.
The Other Boleyn Girl
won the Parker Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2002 and it has recently been adapted for BBC Television. Philippa Gregory lives in the North of England with her family.
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The Wideacre Trilogy
WIDEACRE
THE FAVOURED CHILD MERIDON
Historical Novels
THE WISE WOMAN
FALLEN SKIES
A RESPECTABLE TRADE
EARTHLY JOYS
VIRGIN EARTH
Modern Novels
MRS HARTLEY AND THE GROWTH CENTRE
PERFECTLY CORRECT
THE LITTLE HOUSE
ZELDA’S CUT
Short Stories
BREAD AND CHOCOLATE
The Tudor Court Novels
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL
THE QUEEN’S FOOL
THE VIRGIN’S LOVER
THE CONSTANT PRINCESS
THE BOLEYN INHERITANCE
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
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This paperback edition 2001
5
First published in Great Britain by Viking 1987
Copyright © Philippa Gregory Ltd 1987
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978 0 00 723001 3
ISBN-10: 0 00 723001 X
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EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-38336-8
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