The Secret Years

by Judith Lennox

Genres: Family Life; Historical Fiction; Women's Fiction; Romance; Historical Romance

Synopsis

An epic novel of a great house and the love that consumed it... Judith Lennox's The Secret Years is a moving story about life in the East Anglian Fens after the First World War. Perfect for fans of Rachel Hore and Kate Morton. During the golden summer of 1914, four young people played in the gardens of Drakesden Abbey. Nicholas and Lally were the children of the great house, set in the bleak and magical Fen country; Thomasine was the unconventional niece of two genteel maiden aunts in the village; Daniel was the son of the local blacksmith, a fiercely independent, ambitious boy who longed to break away from the stifling confines of his East Anglian upbringing. As the drums of war sounded in the distance, the Firedrake, a mysterious and ancient Blythe family heirloom disappeared, setting off an uncontrollable chain of events. The Great War changed everything, and both Nicholas and Daniel returned from the front damaged by their experiences. Thomasine, freed from the narrow disciplines of her childhood, and enjoying the new hedonism which the twenties brought, thought that she could escape from the ties that bound her to both Nicholas and Daniel. But the passions and enmities of their youth had intensified in the passing years, and the four friends had to experience tragedy and betrayal before the Firedrake made its reappearance and, with it, a new hope for the future. What readers are saying about The Secret Years : 'Judith Lennox writes wonderful stories which are compelling and beautifully descriptive ' 'What a page turner -a twisty turny tale! ' 'A wonderfully written story... Couldn't put this book down '

Release date: April 9, 2015

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 640

Sample

The distant hills melted into a coppery sunset. Thomasine, kneeling in the dust, looked up for a moment and was blinded by the sun. The wind traced a ghostly path through the elephant grass; in the valley a few skinny cows pulled yellowed leaves from the trees. The child shaded her eyes with her hand and let her sight blur, so that the hills seemed to dissolve and flatten, the rays of the African sun changing into narrow bands of golden water.

There had been other farms, in other places. Every journey, Daddy said, was to a better place, the right place. Once there had been a whole herd of cows (Thomasine had given them all names), but now there were only a handful.

In a storm the thatched roof blew from the hut, but Daddy and the boy just collected the scattered straw and tied it back on again. The boy explained to Thomasine that the land they had rented from the chief was bad land, ju-ju land, which was why no-one had farmed it before. Thomasine asked her mother about the ju-ju land. God created the world in seven days, said Patricia Thorne. How therefore could a single inch of it be evil? But, in exchange for a lock of Thomasine’s auburn hair, the boy showed her the caves that the witch-doctor used. The caves were cold and echoing with memories, their entrances doorways into different worlds. Outside in the light again, she sawed off a length of red hair with the boy’s knife, and he looked at it with awe and dread before twisting it into a knot and placing it inside the amulet he wore around his neck.

A man and a lady from the Baptist mission visited the Thornes. Daddy had slaughtered one of the skinny cows, so they ate meat that day. The beef was tough and tasteless. The boy and his father dined with them, just as they always did, but when the men went to work and Patricia Thorne was making tea, the missionary lady said, ‘But they are dirty, my dear Mrs Thorne. There have been several cases of yellow fever in the past month. And we must surely teach them their place.’ Patricia poured the tea, and said, ‘But we are all equal, are we not, Miss Kent, in the sight of God?’

One evening, the boy took Thomasine to the village to watch the dancing. The moonlight and the fires illuminated the bodies that swayed like reeds in the wind, that wove stories on the dusty ground. The men wore masks: enlarged and exaggerated distortions of the human face. The beating of the drums echoed through the earth so that Thomasine, too, had to dance. When the music stopped she fell to the ground, overcome with a sense of abandonment. One of the women picked her up and gave her a drink. Another gave her a present of beads and a length of scarlet cloth. A third stroked her long loose hair with blue-black hands, chattering to the other women in a language the child could not understand.

With her mother’s help, Thomasine made the scarlet cloth into a skirt. The skies remained blue and empty of clouds. The wheat, that had been up to Thomasine’s knees, stopped growing. She questioned her father, pulling at the tails of his shirt as he walked through the blighted field. The rains have not come, and the soil is not right, said Thomas Thorne. Ju-ju land, thought Thomasine, and shivered. A few days later, she picked a stalk of wheat and rubbed it between her fingers, and it crumbled like old paper.

There were only three cows left, and none gave any milk. The sky was hard and metallic, like a brass bowl. Thomasine helped her father carry water from the stream, but the stream was thick and greenish, the mud bed cracked into mosaic. The people left the village, their animals following in a long train behind them, the brightly coloured robes of the women a mere memory in a landscape of dust and ochre. The boy and his father went with them.

Thomasine’s father grew thinner, her mother grew fatter. Thomasine couldn’t understand why Mama grew fatter, because there never seemed to be much to eat any more. Then one morning there was a little baby on the pillow beside her mother. Thomasine didn’t know who had given them the baby, and she dreaded having to give her back. They called her Hilda, after Mama’s favourite sister. Mama had shown Thomasine a photograph of her three sisters: Hilda and Rose and Antonia. They lived far away, in England.

Her father was sick one night, and the following morning he set off for the mission hospital to fetch them all medicine. He took the big horse, the bad-tempered one that he would never allow Thomasine to ride. Before he left he bade her take care of her mother and her sister. She waved her handkerchief in farewell, and watched him ride along the valley towards the hills.

She sat beside her mother’s bed all day. Patricia Thorne had not risen for six weeks, since Hilda was born. The baby slept and fed, nestled in shawls. Thomasine loved to touch the warm velvety head, loved to watch the little starfish hands. The baby was smaller than her big rag doll.

When Thomas Thorne did not return by nightfall, Thomasine cut up root vegetables and mixed them with maize and made soup. Crouched outside over the fire, stirring the pot, she reminded herself that the mission was eight miles away, that the bad-tempered horse might have thrown a shoe. Yet the sky and the land seemed very dark, very empty.

Her mother swallowed only a mouthful of the soup, Thomasine ate the rest herself. The baby cried a lot, and Mama’s cheeks were flushed, her forehead shiny with sweat. Thomas Thome did not return the next day, nor the next. Mama did not understand when Thomasine asked her whether she should ride out after Daddy, or whether she should stay and look after the baby. Mama’s skin was a peculiar yellowish colour, and her eyes seemed to have sunk into her head. Her face looked like one of the masks that Thomasine had seen in the village. Thomasine tried to persuade her to drink water, but the only water she could find was the brackish stuff from the creek. It trickled from Mama’s mouth down her chin and neck, on to her nightgown. The baby stopped crying and slept most of the time.

On the third day Thomasine was woken by the silence. When she went over to the bed, she thought at first that Mama was asleep, but when she touched her hand it was cold. She understood that she was quite alone now, except for the baby. She could still feel the gentle tiny rise and fall of the baby’s chest. She guessed that little Hilda was hungry too, and knew that she had nothing with which to feed her.

Thomasine dressed in the scarlet skirt, put all their most precious belongings into a bag and saddled the horse. She rode with the baby cradled on her back, African-fashion, towards the mission hospital, and her father.

Southampton wasn’t like Port Harcourt at all. It was greyer and colder, and the sky was laced with a fine drizzle. Like walking through the edge of a waterfall, thought Thomasine.

The aunts were waiting for her by the harbour. In the bustle of ships and sailors and passengers she did not think she would ever find them, but Miss Kent, black beady eyes glaring above a sharp nose, dragged her through the crowds and brought her face to face with the three women in Mama’s photograph. She was exclaimed over, enveloped in hugs and kisses.

Thomasine heard Miss Kent say, ‘We gave a Christian burial to the parents, and to the little baby.’

‘Baby,’ said the red-haired aunt. (Thomasine, unable to remember which name belonged to which, had immediately labelled them the big aunt, the little aunt, and the red-haired aunt.)

‘There was an infant,’ said Miss Kent.

‘She was called Hilda,’ said Thomasine.

The big aunt blinked and began to polish the rain from her spectacles. One of the ships made an enormous hooting sound, and Thomasine, in her thin black coat and dress, shivered.

‘Yellow fever, as I explained in my letter, Miss Harker.’

‘This poor child is cold.’

‘Miss Kent – we are so inexpressibly grateful. You will dine with us?’

To Thomasine’s relief, the missionary lady shook her head. Thomasine was obliged to endure a last violet-scented peck on the cheek, and then she was led away from the dock, her hands tucked around the arms of two of her aunts.

In the tea-shop, while the aunts bickered amiably, she managed to sort out their names. The red-haired one was Antonia, the big one was Hilda, and the little one was Rose.

‘A career is so important,’ whispered Antonia. ‘The poor little mite is an orphan, after all.’

‘I am not suggesting, Tony, dear, that Thomasine should not have a career. It is merely the choice of career that I am disputing.’

‘Dancing is perfectly respectable, Hilda. All the girls from my school are carefully chaperoned when they work in theatres.’

‘I can give Thomasine a thorough grounding in mathematics, literature and geography. So much more choice for a girl, if she can pass her school certificate.’

‘She has a dancer’s body. Look at her feet – her hands—’

‘Surely,’ Rose’s voice trembled slightly as she poured everyone another cup of tea, ‘country air would be so good for Thomasine. And she is only a child … only ten …’

Aunt Rose passed Thomasine the plate of cakes. She chose one shaped like a cow’s horn, full of cream and jam. The ground, after her long sea voyage, was beginning to rock a little less, and she felt very hungry.

‘Perhaps,’ said Hilda firmly, ‘Thomasine should live with Rose and I, but she should have long holidays with Antonia. We have always loved children, haven’t we, Rose? And to look after a child would be difficult for you, Tony, now that you are on your own.’

Antonia looked as though she was about to argue, but then her kid-gloved hand folded over Thomasine’s. ‘You shall come and stay with me very often, won’t you, darling? I shall buy you a pair of slippers and a tunic.’

The countryside, glimpsed through the window of the train, flattened out and became threaded with strips of water. In the weak sunlight everything glittered green and blue and silver. As Hilda and Rose began to pack away thermos flasks and rugs and books into a battered carpet bag, Thomasine exclaimed, ‘Do you live in a lake?’

Hilda glanced out of the window. Only water was visible, the railway embankment slicing above it. She smiled.

‘No, dear. Some of the fields have flooded because of the heavy rain this winter.’

When they disembarked at Ely station, the train hissed and hooted and blew out a great deal of steam. A porter carried their bags outside, and Hilda fumbled in her purse for pennies.

‘It is a long walk to Drakesden, dear.’

‘I like to walk.’ Thomasine had been confined in the ship, in the train, for too long. ‘Daddy always said that you had to walk to really know the land.’

Hilda carried both the aunts’ bag and Thomasine’s. Rose held the child’s hand as they followed the narrow paths that led from Ely to the village. The soil was black, and was criss-crossed with water like a chequerboard. Several times they had to walk narrow teetering planks that spanned the swollen ditches. Hilda crossed first, so that Thomasine was safely passed from one aunt to the other. Thomasine’s boots were covered with mud, but, walking fast to keep up with Hilda, she began to feel warm for the first time since she had arrived in England.

Drakesden wasn’t much bigger than the African village that the boy had taken her to. The houses were thatched, and made of a yellowish brick. There was a church and a shop, and a few children playing in the street, who stared open-mouthed at Thomasine as she passed.

Hilda went up to the front door of one of the cottages, and put down the bags as she turned the handle. Thomasine read the name painted over the doorway, ‘Quince Cottage’, and followed her aunt indoors.

She shut Africa and Mama and Daddy and the baby away in a little box of memory. It was easier that way. In the mornings she had lessons with Aunt Hilly, and in the afternoons she explored Drakesden. Sometimes she walked, sometimes she borrowed the rector’s pony and rode. The village children still stared at her, especially when she wore the red skirt.

At church, she disgraced herself by walking out of the building first, straight after the rector. Everyone else was just standing still: there was a shuffling ahead in the pews behind the choir stall, but that was all. Desperate to leave the dark dank building, Thomasine picked up her prayer-book and ran outside. She couldn’t understand the expression on Mr Fanshawe’s face as she said goodbye to him, but later Aunt Rose explained that the Blythes always left church first. Next Sunday, Thomasine noticed that Mr Fanshawe smiled most at the Blythes, and least at those who left church last. She and Aunt Hilly and Aunt Rose were somewhere in the middle.

She asked questions of everyone: Mrs Carter who ran the shop, the tenant farmers, the men and women who worked in the fields. She discussed with Mr Naylor, who worked Chalk Farm, the problems of growing wheat with too little water, and he laughed and told her there was too much water in the Fens. She helped Aunt Rose in the vegetable garden, digging up tiny new potatoes from the dark crumbly earth, and collected warm brown eggs from the hen-house, placing them carefully in a basket of straw.

She rode alongside the dyke one day, and wandered through a copse of patchy laurel bushes and thorn, and found herself on the edge of a velvety lawn. When she looked up she saw Drakesden Abbey, the Blythes’ house. It was huge, bigger than the mission hospital. Then she looked again and saw all the people staring at her: Lady Blythe in a floaty white gown and big flat hat, a dark-haired boy, a fair-haired boy and girl. Mortified, she mumbled her apologies and turned the pony about. Back at the dyke, she met Daniel Gillory, who cackled with laughter when she told him how she had interrupted the Blythes having tea in the Abbey gardens.

It was Daniel who explained to her about the dykes and ditches and windmills and pumps. Daniel was the blacksmith’s eldest son. Thomasine had tried to talk to Jack Gillory about how he fixed shoes to the horses’ hooves, but he hadn’t been a good talker. Daniel was a good talker, though. Daniel, said Aunt Hilly, was an extremely bright boy. He had just won a scholarship for the Grammar School in Ely. Aunt Hilly often lent him books. Daniel was a few months older than Thomasine, and he had fair hair that was halfway between curling and straight, eyes that were halfway between green and hazel. Riding through the fields one afternoon when his father was at The Otter, Daniel explained to Thomasine how the water was pumped from the land into the dykes, and from the dykes into the sea. How both the dykes and the roads were high above the fields because the drained peat had sunk. How, a long time ago, all the Fens had been marsh and lake, an endless watery landscape. Fenmen had webbed feet in those days, Daniel added, his green-gold eyes solemn as he looked at Thomasine. Then laughed uproariously as he admitted the tease, and raced her all the way along the drove, their borrowed ponies’ hooves kicking up the dust.

Slowly, she became accustomed to the changing of the seasons. The heat and the cold, the wind and the drought. Her first sight of snow, floating like white blossom from a leaden sky, and in the summer dust devils that briefly reminded her of that other land.

She wore the red skirt and an old white blouse of her mother’s, too large for her, to have tea with the Dockerills. Thomasine liked the Dockerills: the three-roomed cottage was always busy and noisy.

Mrs Dockerill admired her skirt and her beads. Some of the ten little Dockerills crowded round the scarred table, their elbows all touching, the others perched on stools and boxes and planks. Mrs Dockerill lifted the bacon pudding out of the pot and unwrapped the muslin. She cut it into twelve pieces and placed them on an assortment of plates and bowls. A big piece for Mr Dockerill and Harry and Tom, who worked on the land, middle-sized pieces for Jane and Sal, who were in service but had the afternoon off, and little pieces for the children. The new baby slept in a box in the corner of the room. The smell of the bacon pudding was irresistible.

They had all started eating when there was the sound of footsteps outside. Harry Dockerill opened the door, and Lady Blythe stood there, her son Nicholas and daughter Marjorie behind her. Lady Blythe had brought some old sheets for Mrs Dockerill to cut up for the new baby. Thomasine watched as Lady Blythe came into the cottage and lifted the lids from the pots on the stove one by one, inspecting their contents. The noisy, cheerful Dockerills became suddenly silent. They had put down their knives and spoons and forks, and sat rigidly, uncomfortably upright as their food went cold on their plates. Thomasine, who was aware of feeling cross, but wasn’t exactly sure why she felt cross, defiantly stabbed a piece of bacon with her fork.

‘White cabbage, Mrs Dockerill?’ enquired Lady Blythe, peering into the biggest pot. ‘Kale is just as nutritious, and much more economical.’

Then she caught sight of Thomasine. The chill blue eyes met Thomasine’s sea-green ones, just as they had outside the church, just as they had when she had trespassed on Drakesden Abbey’s lawns.

‘Put down your fork, child. Have you no manners? Do you not know how to behave in front of your betters?’

Anger, bubbling and uncontainable, welled up inside her. A memory of her mother pouring out tea for the missionary lady resurfaced.

‘All of us are equal in the sight of God, Lady Blythe,’ said Thomasine clearly. Her face was hot, but as she looked away her eyes momentarily met those of Lady Blythe’s dark-haired son, and she thought she detected not criticism, but amusement.

That time, Daniel Gillory didn’t laugh when Thomasine told him what had happened. He stood on the edge of the dyke, bouncing flat stones across the clear cold water.

‘The Blythes own most of the cottages in Drakesden,’ he explained. ‘Most of the land, too. And the farms. So people have to behave themselves. If they don’t, they find themselves without a home and without work. That’s the way it is round here.’

‘Your cottage, Daniel?’

‘Our cottage – and the land – belongs to my mother. Her grandfather bought it from the Blythes for a bushel of potatoes. It floods badly in spring, so I expect that’s why they sold it.’ He began to walk along the top of the dyke, Thomasine following after him. ‘That’s why I want to stay at school. If I can get my School Certificate, then I won’t have to work for the Blythes, and I won’t have to work for my father.’

‘Don’t you want to be a blacksmith?’ Thomasine was surprised. She rather liked the forge – the horses, the hiss as the hot metal was plunged into water.

‘My father belts me,’ said Daniel simply.

Thomasine knew that Jack Gillory drank too much – all the village knew that – and she had frequently seen Daniel with a black eye or cut lip. When they had swum together in the millpond the previous summer, she had glimpsed pink weals across his back. Anger welled up in her again.

Daniel said, ‘What will you do, Thomasine?’

‘Aunt Hilly wants me to be a teacher. She says I’m good at mathematics. Aunt Rose thinks I’ll marry.’

And yet neither prospect particularly appealed to her. She could not explain to Daniel Gillory, who had been born in the Fens, how sometimes the landscape trapped and confined her. How the narrowness of the village, with its rigid striations of class, irked her. How, sometimes, she longed for hills and colour and music.

‘Or I might go and live with my Aunt Tony,’ she said, voicing a secret dream. ‘She has a dancing school in London. She took me to a ballet at the Alhambra last year, Daniel. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful.’

The summer of 1914 was a curious one, when Thomasine seemed to alternate constantly between elation and intense boredom. Her lessons with Hilda, that she had previously enjoyed, became sometimes tiresome, and the evenings when she did not ride or see Daniel seemed painfully long. She had read every book in Quince Cottage and all the interesting books from Ely Lending Library.

Within the small village she was isolated. The village children had never quite rid themselves of their original suspicion of her and, besides, those of her age were now either in service or working on the land. Only Daniel could she describe as a friend, because Daniel too, by winning the scholarship, had marked himself out from his fellows. Although she had grown to love her aunts, their lives, as unmarried women, seemed especially restricted. She found herself arguing with Hilda once, asking why her cleverest aunt had not become a teacher or a nurse, but had immured herself in Drakesden.

‘Because my father did not believe that women should work,’ said Hilda quietly, ‘and as Rose and I did not marry we were obliged to live with him.’ Only Patricia and Antonia had escaped, through marriage.

And yet, when she rode or wandered through the fields, or when she lost herself in a really good book, then she was utterly content. At the Whitsun supper, when Thomasine danced with the rest of the villagers in a wide circle, threading in and out of one another like ribbons on a maypole, she was happy.

For Thomasine’s fifteenth birthday, at the end of June, Aunt Rose made a pink iced cake and Aunt Hilly gave her a volume of Housman’s poems. After Thomasine had finished the household accounts (her regular weekly task for two years now), and after she had watered the vegetable patch and eaten a slice of the pink cake, she walked out of the village and down the drove to where she had arranged to meet Daniel.

She had not asked the rector for the loan of his pony, because she was wearing the new dress that Aunt Rose had helped her sew. The dress was of white muslin with a pale blue sash, and was unsuitable for riding. She had dressed her hair in a new way, caught in at the nape of her neck with a wide blue ribbon, instead of plaits. She trod carefully along the drove, avoiding the worst of the mud.

When she heard horses’ hooves she looked up, expecting to see Daniel returning a newly-shod horse to one of the farmers. But it was not Daniel riding pell-mell down the drove, but Nicholas Blythe. She stood aside to let him pass, but he reined in his horse, kicking up bits of grass and mud.

‘I say, Miss Thorne. I’m awfully sorry. Didn’t see you there. Did I give you a fright?’

Thomasine shook her head. ‘Not at all.’ She squinted at him. Nicholas Blythe and his elder brother Gerald were usually absent from Drakesden from April to August. ‘I thought you were at school, Mr Blythe.’

‘I was smitten by the plague. Chicken-pox. I’m supposed to be in quarantine. Gerry had it a couple of years ago, so he’s still at Winchester, poor devil. Only it’s damned dull at the Abbey just now – Mama and Pa and Marjorie are in London, so there’s only Lally and me.’

‘What a lovely horse.’ Thomasine stroked the black velvety nose.

‘He’s called Titus. Do you ride, Miss Thorne?’

She nodded, and fished inside her pocket for the sugar-lumps she always carried. The horse’s velvety lips nuzzled at her palm.

‘Mr Fanshawe lets me borrow his pony.’

‘Oh – that old thing. Wouldn’t go faster than a trot unless you set off a cannon behind her.’

Thomasine grinned and looked up at him. Nicholas Blythe was dark-haired, dark-eyed, his face a chiselled succession of straight lines and planes. ‘Bluebell’s a bit of a plodder,’ she conceded.

‘I say – you should try one of the Abbey nags, Miss Thorne.’

Thomasine had caught sight of Daniel, running towards them down the drove from the blacksmith’s cottage.

‘Tomorrow evening?’ added Nicholas. ‘In the meadow by the copse?’

She looked again at him, surprised. It occurred to her that Nicholas Blythe, too, might be bored. The prospect of new company and a ride on one of Drakesden Abbey’s superb horses was irresistible. ‘That would be lovely. Daniel can come too, can’t he, Mr Blythe?’

Daniel had slowed and scuffed his feet as he approached them. Standing slightly apart from them, he bobbed his head almost imperceptibly to Nicholas Blythe.

‘Of course. Well, toodle-oo, then,’ said Nicholas to Thomasine. ‘Till tomorrow.’ He kicked the horse into a canter.

‘Did you get the boat?’ asked Thomasine, when she and Daniel were alone.

For her birthday, Daniel had promised to borrow Mr Naylor’s flat-bottomed boat so that they could further explore the river. Daniel’s only reply was a grunt and a shrugging of his shoulders. He walked ahead of her, silent, down the drove.

She knew that he was moody, touchy sometimes. She put it down to the long hours that he worked: the five-mile walk to and from school, the hours after school in the blacksmith’s shop. She ran to catch up with him. Eventually he said, ‘I didn’t know you were friendly with Nicholas Blythe.’

‘I’m not. I shouldn’t think I’ve exchanged much more than half a dozen words with him before today. He just apologized for nearly riding into me, that’s all.’

He had paused at last, and she gave his arm a gentle shake. ‘Oh, Daniel, don’t be cross. Not today.’

Just for a moment then, her eyes met his. Then he fished inside his pocket and drew something out.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said.

When she unwrapped the fragment of tissue paper, she found a filigree brooch in the shape of a butterfly. ‘It’s not new,’ said Daniel quickly. ‘I bought it at Ely market. But it’s all right, isn’t it?’

It occurred to Thomasine that this was the first time that someone who wasn’t related to her had bought her a present. ‘It’s lovely, Daniel. It’s absolutely lovely.’ She let him pin the brooch to her blouse.

Nicholas Blythe was already waiting in the meadow when Thomasine and Daniel arrived the following evening. He was astride the huge black stallion he had been riding the previous day, and had another horse on a leading rein beside him.

‘I brought the paired blacks,’ he said. ‘This chap’s called Nero. After the Roman emperor, you know,’ he added to Daniel.

Daniel’s face darkened, but he said nothing.

Nicholas said, ‘Shall I give you a leg up, Miss Thorne? I say, you didn’t want a side-saddle like Marjie and Mama, did you?’

Thomasine shook her head. ‘Of course not. And it’s Thomasine, not Miss Thorne.’

From the elevated height of Nero’s back she had a new and exciting view of Drakesden. The meadow clung to the lowest slope of the island upon which Drakesden Abbey was built. It was not a real island, of course, just a low hillock of comparatively solid ground in the sea of black peat that made up most of the Fens. Between the meadow and the walls that surrounded Drakesden Abbey was the copse, one of the few pockets of woodland in a landscape where the winter winds discouraged the growth of trees.

Thomasine trotted Nero round the circumference of the meadow and then urged him into a canter. The speed was exhilarating. The trees and the froth of flowers that surrounded the meadow all blurred into one. When, finally, she reined the stallion in, she was laughing.

‘That was terrific!’

‘You were terrific.’ Nicholas held out his hand to help Thomasine out of the saddle. Then he handed the reins to Daniel. ‘Have a go, won’t you, Gillory?’

Daniel climbed into the saddle. Nicholas called out, ‘He’s a jumper, Gillory!’ and Daniel edged the horse back to the furthermost corner of the field, and put his heels to Nero’s flanks. The stallion gathered up speed, faster and faster, the noise of the hooves like thunder. Then horse and rider soared into the air, clearing the top of the fence by a foot.

Nicholas rode home through the wood. The trees shut out the pale blue sky. The horse’s hooves crushed the wild garlic that bordered the path, and the scent was intoxicating. The sunlight filtering through the trees made chains of gold from the sky to the undergrowth.

He could still feel the touch of Thomasine’s hand. It was strange how the sensation had lingered, as though, helping her out of the saddle, her fingers had impressed themselves permanently on his hand. As though his skin remembered her skin. It was not something he had ever experienced before. He knew that some of the fellows at school reacted in a similar way towards the older boys, but Nicholas, reminded of the sins his housemaster vaguely warned him against every term or so, had always rather despised such sentiment.

He heard a rustle in the undergrowth and he looked up. Squinting in the darkness, Nicholas saw two round dark eyes, a small white face, fat black plaits. ‘Lally.’

Reluctantly, his younger sister stood up. Her white blouse was stained with green and the hem of her skirt was dusty.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Watching you.’

Nicholas stared at her.

‘Watching you,’ she repeated, ‘and Miss Thorne, and Daniel Gillory.’

Nicholas said, amazed, ‘You were there the whole time?’

‘I was behind the tree. I saw everything. You should have let me come. It isn’t nice to leave people alone so much.’

‘It isn’t nice,’ said Nicholas coldly, ‘to sneak. To spy. Spies are shot in wartime – did you know that, Lally?’

He saw her eyes grow wide, and she glanced fearfully round the wood. Her thumb slammed into her mouth. Even though Lally was almost thirteen, four years younger than Nicholas, Nicholas was sometimes