The House Of Lanyon

“Look round,” said Gareth, grinning, and they turned in their saddles to find that Nicholas Weaver and Father Meadowes had pulled up behind them.

Nicholas rode forward. To Liza’s astonishment he didn’t even look at her, but instead made straight for Christopher. “Have you taken her? Is that what slowed you down on the road? Come on! I want to know!”

“We kept missing our way and then turned aside to look for shelter,” said Liza in a high voice. “We’ve taken vows to each other, but we haven’t…Christopher hasn’t…”

“I’m glad to hear it, but no doubt it was just a pleasure postponed,” said Nicholas. He spurred his horse right up to Christopher’s pony and his fist shot out. It landed with immense force on Christopher’s jaw and the younger man reeled sideways, out of his saddle. His pony plunged. Christopher, who had clung on to the reins, scrambled up again, his spare hand pressed to his face.

“Father, don’t!” Liza cried it out in anguish. “Oh, please let us go! Let me go with Christopher! I can’t marry Peter Lanyon. I can’t. I tried, so hard, to make myself willing to marry him, but I can’t do it. It has to be Christopher…and we’ve bound ourselves…oh, why won’t you understand?”

“I understand that you’re talking nonsense and one day you’ll know it, my girl. I’ve come to take you home,” said Nicholas.

CHAPTER NINE

REARRANGING THE FUTURE

“Go to her, Margaret,” Nicholas said. “Bring her downstairs and get her thinking about her bride clothes. She’s got to at some point. Saints in heaven!”

His normal robust heartiness was dimmed. He was sitting by the kitchen hearth while Margaret and Aunt Cecy helped the maids with supper, and he could hear his young sons, Arthur and Tommy, laughing over some game or other in the adjacent living room, but just now these pleasant things could not comfort him. His shoulders were hunched and his face drawn with misery, and the two maids, aware of it, were unusually quiet.

“We never had this sort of trouble with either of our girls,” said Aunt Cecy righteously. “Maybe that was because we walloped them when they needed it instead of bein’ soft, the way you two are.”

“We haven’t been soft this time!” Margaret snapped, and continued obstinately stirring a pan of pottage.

“No, we haven’t!” Nicholas agreed irritably. “But at least we had good reason. Cecy, you used to slap your girls for a bit of careless stitching or a speck of flour dropped on the floor, as if there weren’t worse things! Reckon they were glad to be pushed off when they was barely ripe!”

“Well, really!” said Aunt Cecy. Nicholas ignored her.

“There’s never been anything really truly bad in this house in my time, till now. I never thought our Liza would do this to us! I never thought I’d…I’ve never raised a hand to her, all her life, afore this and to have to take a stick to her…it broke my heart and I’m half afraid it’s broken hers.”

“Then the sooner she’s married and away, the better,” Aunt Cecy said sharply. “We’ll all be happier, her included.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it of her either,” said Margaret, still stirring. “It’s a mercy we got her back in time and that there’s been no more gossip.” She eyed the maids, who had become very busy about the cooking. “And if I hear of you tattling, either of you, you’re out! I mean it.”

“If you ask me, half of this business is Peter Lanyon’s fault,” said Nicholas. “And you’ve said it, too, Margaret. He should have come to see her and done a little wooing! Margaret and I hardly knew each other before we were betrothed, but once it was agreed between the families, I came courting, didn’t I, Margaret? You had your share of stolen kisses. I don’t know what young Peter thinks he’s about, and that’s the truth!”

“Bah! She ought to do as she’s bid, with wooing or without. A few more days in the attic ’ud do her no harm,” said Aunt Cecy. “And Margaret here thinks the same, even if she won’t say so.”

“I don’t care what either of you think!” shouted Nicholas. “I’m her father and I’m the one who’s giving the orders this time! She’s had enough days up there, enough time to study her conscience and get over things, so do as I tell you, leave that damned pan you’re stirring, Margaret, and fetch her down here, and let’s pretend things are normal even if she don’t ever smile at me again. Go on!”

“Oh, very well,” said Margaret, threw down her spoon and went.

When she entered the small room under the thatch, where Liza had been locked in now for six days, she found her daughter, as she had found her every time she went up there to take food in or remove the slop pail, lying on the bed and staring at the wall. “Time to get up,” she said. “Your father says so. He’s heartbroken, let me tell you, over what he had to do to you. To run off like that, and with a priest…well, I always thought I was the one who cared about bein’ respectable, but the state your father’s in—sayin’ he’s heartbroken is hardly sayin’ enough!”

Liza looked at her miserably but said nothing.

“Forget all about this clerk,” Margaret said. “He’s to finish his studies in St. George’s monastery. Your father and I have seen him—went to the castle and all, and he said to us that he was sorry for the grief he’s caused us all. So that’s the end of it.”

“We swore oaths, taking each other as man and wife…” Liza began, but her words sounded empty, even to her.

“Moonshine and you know it!” Margaret snapped. “A man in orders is no more free to swear oaths about marriage than a married man is. Now then. Master Richard Lanyon’s sent us a message by that big hulkin’ fellow of his, Higg. He’s sorry that Peter’s not been over to see you, but there’s been so much to do on the farm. We’ve fixed a weddin’ day in November. So you get off that bed, and put on fresh things and come down to supper. No one’ll say anythin’ to you. No one knows outside the family, or ever will. We’ve not gossiped and the maids daren’t, believe me. Master Luttrell’s promised he’ll order his men not to talk. Everythin’ll be just as usual. You’ll see.”

There was a long pause. Then Liza said, “You don’t understand how it was between Christopher and me. What it was like. What it is like!”

“Maybe not, but there’s something you don’t understand either, my girl.” Margaret’s tone was kinder. She could not, she found, turn against her own daughter as she had turned against the Webbers. “You think you’ll never love Peter, but you wait till you’ve lived with ’un awhile. The day’ll come when he’ll be tired and frettin’ over something and you’ll look at his weary face and your heart’ll ache inside you with sorrow for him, and wantin’ to put it right, whatever it is. Marriage has its own power. Now, you comin’ downstairs?”

“I don’t want to go to Allerbrook,” said Liza dismally. “It’ll never be home.”

“You’ll be surprised. Now, there’s things to talk about—or do you mean to take your vows in old clothes?”

There was a silence. Then Liza sighed and, at last, sat up. She did it because she had to. To get up from this bed meant giving in; it meant yielding herself to the stream of wedding preparations and, ultimately, to Peter Lanyon, but she had known her fate from the moment her father had caught up with her and Christopher outside Nether Stowey. Nicholas hadn’t had to explain; there were things one knew. If she refused to marry, she would either be shut up in this room until she gave in, or else she would be deposited in a nunnery. Those were the customary methods of dealing with wayward daughters. Her face was stiff with unhappiness, but nevertheless, she slid off the bed and stood up.

“All right,” she said.

She didn’t say it gladly or willingly or even submissively. It came out in a flat tone that might have meant anything. But she said it.

The week that Liza had spent in her parents’ attic, Richard Lanyon had spent making his mind up and then unmaking it again.

It was all very well to rearrrange the future inside his head, but what if seventeen-year-old Marion didn’t take to the notion of marrying thirty-eight-year-old Richard Lanyon? Or even if she did, would her parents allow it? And if she did and they did, what if Peter kicked up, refused to marry Liza, and set about wrecking his father’s new marriage?

Well, let him do his worst! Good God, no decent lad ever made eyes at his own stepmother; it was against all the laws of God and man. Peter might rage and scowl and slam doors, but he’d know that Marion was out of reach. He’d come around.

At this point in his inner dialogue, something inside Richard would snap ferocious jaws, like a pike catching a minnow. Peter would damned well have to come around. Peter was going to marry Liza Weaver, and why should he object to her? He’d known the girl most of his life and she was a fine-looking, good-tempered wench. He was lucky to get her and it was to be hoped that he would have the simple good manners not to sulk to her face. Liza was for Peter and Marion was for Richard and that was that.

Whenever he thought of Marion, he felt as though a hot, damp hand had clutched at his innards, both maddening and weakening him. At the idea of approaching her, he became anxious, wondering what to do, what to say to her, how to please her. He was like a youth again, bewildered by those strange creatures, girls.

On the Monday following Richard’s visit to Lynmouth they fetched the sheep in from the moorland grazing, and having done so, counted them, because on these occasions there were nearly always a few missing. Sure enough, the count was half a dozen short. Good, thought Richard. I can make use of that.

That evening, in the farmyard, he took Higg into his confidence.

“Tomorrow I’m sending Peter out to look for the strayed sheep and I want you to go with him and make sure he looks for the sheep and don’t go slipping off anywhere. I’ve had a bit of worry with him. There’s a girl in Lynmouth that he’s being a bit foolish about.”

“Yes, Master Lanyon,” said Higg, and from his tone, Richard gathered that Higg, Roger, Betsy and Kat all knew the situation and were probably discussing it avidly out of his hearing.

“Most young men have their adventures before they get wed,” Richard said offhandedly. “But Peter’s getting married soon and it’s time this stopped. Tuesdays are likely days for him to go dodging off to Lynmouth, so I’m charging you to see he doesn’t. Understand?”

“Ah,” said Higg, grinning, and added a comment for once. “Could work out well. A bride’s best off with a groom as knows what he’s about.”

“I daresay,” said Richard coldly. “Go over Hawkridge way and search there. I’m going the other way, up to the high moor. Between us, we’ll find them, I hope.”

In the morning he gave his orders, watching Peter intently. Peter glowered, opened his mouth as if to protest, but then shut it again as he met his father’s stern eye. He shrugged, and after breakfast went off with Higg as instructed, taking Silky, the sheepdog bitch, with them. “She’s still mournful, missing my father,” Richard said. “The more work she does, the better. Leave Blue to guard the house.”

When Peter and Higg were out of sight, Richard asked Betsy for some bread and cold meat—“I could be out of the house at noon, if the sheep have wandered far.” He then saddled Splash, swung himself astride, called his own dog Ruff and set off westward, to the coast and Lynton.

It was a mild day, the sky a mingling of blue patches and good-natured brown-and-white cloud, carried on a light west wind. The rolling moors, which from a distance looked so smooth that their colours could have been painted on them, were patched pale gold with moor grass and dark where the heather grew. Here and there were the green stains of bogs, and in places there were gleams of bright yellow, for always there was gorse in bloom somewhere.

Splash was fresh and they made good time. Richard found himself almost at the Valley of the Rocks while the morning was still quite young. He drew rein and looked round. That must be the cottage where the grandmother and aunt lived, standing a little back from the road; he could see its thatched roof, just visible above some apple trees. He hesitated. Would Marion be here yet? She would have quite a long walk from home, up the steep path which linked Lynmouth to Lynton, and then through Lynton itself. Should he wait, or go straight to the cottage and knock, or…?

Then he saw her, walking toward him, her basket on her arm. He knew her at once. It was as though during that one brief meeting a week ago he had memorised her, head to footsoles, every line and movement of her. He rode toward her.

“Marion Locke!”

She stopped, looking up at him in surprise, and he saw that she didn’t recognise him and was startled, although, as she looked into his face, he also saw appreciation there. Marion responded to the sight of a handsome man as instinctively as a flower opening in the sun. Ruff ran up to her, wagging his tail, and she stooped to pat him.

“I’m Richard Lanyon,” he said. “Peter Lanyon’s father.”

She’d recognised him now. She straightened up and smiled and he doffed his cap. “You saw me last week, when I called at your parents’ home. I brought you a disappointment, I think. My son is betrothed already, my dear. But I wish to talk to you. Will you ride with me a little way before you go to see your grandmother?”

She got up behind him without the slightest hesitation and neatly enough, despite the basket on her arm, putting her left foot on his and accepting a hand to help her on. For the first time he touched her, and the contact burned him like white fire. More prosaically, a smell of fish arose from the basket and Splash snorted disapprovingly. “Your horse don’t like the scent of herring,” said Marion, laughing. “But they taste all right.”

“Not to him,” said Richard, also amused. “Hold tight!” He put Splash into a trot on purpose, so that she would have to hold on and he would feel her hands grip his waist.

“Where we goin’?” Marion enquired.

“Into the valley. We can get down and stroll awhile and have some private talk, if you will. It’s a pleasant morning.”

Marion laughed again. Bumping and jogging, they made their way along the rough track and into the valley, with Ruff running at Splash’s heels. Once there, Richard drew rein again, dismounted and helped Marion down. He removed Splash’s bridle and hung it on a small tree, eased the girth, hobbled the animal’s forefeet and told Ruff to stay on guard. He offered Marion his arm. “Shall we walk?”

In the priory of St. George’s in Dunster, Christopher Clerk stood in a small monk’s cell, looking about him. He had made it plain that he had no intention of taking vows as a monk, but Father Hugh Meadowes hadn’t cared.

“Take vows as a monk or not—that’s up to you as long as you take vows as a priest. That’s your business in life and you know it. You’ve a vocation, my son. I know one when I see one, and what will your father have to say if you abandon yours? He’s proud of you! You’re not going to let him down and you’re not going to let me down and above all, you’re not going to let God down. You young lunatic! If you hadn’t been willing to swear on a crucifix that you didn’t sleep with the girl, I’d have had to go to the bishop. Do you realise how serious that would have been? Forget her! Forget any oaths you thought you swore. Forget you ever thought you loved her. I doubt it, myself. What sort of a life were you going to drag her into? She’s going to marry someone else, who’ll give her a better future than you ever could!”

“I’d have made my way. I’d have made a life for both of us!”

“And one day your call to the priesthood would have risen up and poisoned it. I know about these things. You’ll finish your studies in the priory and then you’ll stay there and serve the monks and the parishioners. Liza Weaver won’t be among them. She’s leaving the parish. No more argument, my son. I don’t want to repeat what I had to do when you were brought back to the castle, but if I have to, I will.”

His back was still marked from Father Meadowes’s whip. He could only hope that Liza had not been similarly treated. He had not dared to ask, not even when her parents came to see him, to hear him apologise and promise to put Liza from his mind forever. He had had little chance to say anything beyond the apology and the promise. Nicholas had done most of the talking. Some of his remarks had burned more bitterly than Meadowes’s lash. Callow young wantwit. Trying to lead my girl into a life of concealment and poverty. She doesn’t know enough of the world to realise what was ahead. And you say you loved her. Bah!

But all the time, all through that diatribe from Nicholas, and all through Meadowes’s beating, he had prayed inside his head for Liza, hoping that God would let him suffer for them both.

He sat down slowly on the hard, narrow bed. He was thinking about the past. At the beginning it had been his own idea to enter the church. He believed he had been called. Their own parish priest, back in Bristol, had given a homily one Sunday on what a privilege a vocation was; how it was like a summons to a holy army, and how priests and monks followed the banner of Christ just as knights followed the banner of their overlord. The soldiers of Christ fought battles of the spirit, not of the body, and their purpose was to save the souls of their fellow creatures from damnation. There was no nobler calling on earth, said the priest ardently.

Christopher had thought about that homily many times during the following weeks and he had gone to talk to the priest privately, and before very long he had become convinced that he was among those who had been summoned to take Christ for his suzerain. His father had been delighted.

His mother, a practical woman, was less so, and expressed regret that her second son would not marry and have a family. They were willing to help him, she said; he could go as an apprentice to another merchant and could in time become a merchant in his own right, could succeed in the world. But he shook his head and said he must leave the world, in that sense, behind, and his father told her to stop making objections; this was a great honour and he was proud of Christopher.

And he, Christopher, had been proud of himself, sure of himself, had thought of himself as a good soldier of God. And then, as he’d roamed through the fair at Dunster on that spring day, he’d stopped to watch as a dishonest weaver was paraded past for swindling his customers, and realised that the girl standing beside him hated seeing someone put on display like that. She had left the people she was with and walked off alone into the crowd and he had followed, concerned for her in such a gathering, with so many strangers about. She had suspected his intentions and looked sharply around at him, and he had spoken to her, meaning to show kindness, as a priest ought to do, and their eyes had met, and the whole world had changed.

He had known then, in that moment, that his vocation was a horrible mistake, that he was made for the ordinary life of a man, that he was on the wrong path entirely. He’d fought the knowledge off and might have won the fight if Elizabeth Luttrell’s wretched little dog hadn’t run away, and he hadn’t found himself chasing after it and coming face-to-face with Liza Weaver once again. After that, there was no more resisting. His vocation had been nothing but a dream, a youthful ardour trying to find somewhere to put itself and making the wrong choice.

And there was no way back.

He looked around him, at the stone walls of the little cell, at the prie-dieu in the corner, with its embroidered cloth—the only splash of colour in the room. Whatever revelations had struck him when he met Liza, he had ended up here. His vocation might seem unreal to him now, might have faded into nothingness as far as his emotions were concerned, but he was bound to it just the same, a soldier plodding across an arid desert, sworn to the service of his lord whether he liked it or not.

Liza was lost to him and he had been a fool ever to think they could escape together and create any kind of life worth living. She had been rescued from that and from him and probably it was the best thing for her. He understood that now.

What none of them knew, however—though God presumably did—was that what he felt for Liza, and what she felt for him, was real and would remain real all the rest of their lives, even if they never met again. They were sworn to each other, whatever Father Meadowes and the Weavers might say. He said aloud, “I will go on praying for her all my days.”

Yes, he would! And there was nothing anyone could do to interfere with either his private prayers or his memories.

Meanwhile, this priory and this cell were to be his home. Very well. His future had been ruthlessly reorganised and his life sold away. Soldier of God? No, he was a slave, and for life. But his love was unchanged and would remain so until he died.

CHAPTER TEN

CLOUD BLOWING IN

The Valley of the Rocks was a curious place. On the moor and among its surrounding, greener foothills, the water had sculpted the land and was still doing so. Streams ran through nearly every one of the deep, narrow combes that dented the hills as though a giant had repeatedly pressed the side of his hand deep into a collection of vast and well-stuffed cushions. The valley, by contrast, was dry.

It didn’t run down to the sea, but lay parallel to it. Its floor was flat and broad, but on either side, hillsides of bracken and goat-nibbled grass rose steeply to curious crests where grey rock outcrops, weathered into extraordinary shapes, adorned the skylines. Richard knew that the hills to his right were a thin wall between valley and sea, with a drop of hundreds of feet from the hillcrests to the water, most of it sheer cliff with broken rock at its feet.

Ahead, the seaward hillside broke in one place, though even from there, the drop below was still hair-raising. The heights resumed with a tall conical hill topped by an extraordinary mass of rock which looked, from a distance, so like the ruins of an old fortress that most people called it Castle Rock.

There was no one about, except for a goatherd encouraging his flock from one piece of grass to another, up on the slope to the left. He was high up and moving away from them, and showed no sign of having seen them. He certainly wouldn’t disturb them. “Mistress Locke,” said Richard, “as I said, I wish to talk with you. I came here today to find you. I have something to tell you and something to ask you. I hope you will listen.”

“Well, what might all that be about?” asked Marion.

She said it with a smile in her voice, and provocation, too, and when he turned to look at her face, that provocation was in her eyes, as well. The white fire leaped again, shockingly, filling him up. Her hand burned on his arm. He hardly knew how to go on just talking to her. He wanted to throw words and politeness and every last vestige of civilised behaviour away and her clothing with them and his own as well and turn this bleak, lonely valley into a Garden of Eden, with him and Marion as Adam and Eve.

To steady his mind, he quickened the pace, leading her toward the foot of the goat path that wound its way up and around Castle Rock. With a great effort he kept his voice normal as he said, “Mistress Locke, you must understand, even if it disappoints you, that I’ve plans for my son Peter and that there can be no question of a marriage between you. However, I can see very well why he’s lost his heart and his head over you. You are as lovely a wench as I ever saw.”

It was a poor description of her, he thought, nearly as inadequate as when her mother called her pretty. Marion Locke was no conventional beauty. His first impression had been the right one. She was ripe, like a juicy plum. She gave off the very scent of ripeness, of readiness.

“Tell me,” he said, still keeping his voice even with the greatest difficulty, “what if I asked you to think about me instead? I’m a widower these many years and I’d like a wife. Specially, I’d like a wife like you.”