The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  “He’s grieving,” said Peter awkwardly to the priest.

  “Yes, I know. You’d better go with him. Look after him.”

  “If I can,” said Peter, and set off in his father’s wake.

  Kat and Betsy had a meal ready in the farmhouse. Richard ate it in a stormy silence, which Peter decided not to break. Afterward, when the two women had left for their own cottages, father and son repaired to the big main room where a good fire had been lit. Some saddlery in need of cleaning lay on the floor, to provide occupation for the evening. They lit candles, since it was October and darkness was closing down already. With only the two of them in the house, it had an echoing, empty feel.

  “It’s time we had more folk about this place, more helping hands and a mistress for our home.” Richard broke his silence at last. He picked up a bridle and put some oil on a cleaning cloth, but fixed his eyes on Peter, in no kindly fashion. “Now I’ve something to say to you. What with Deb dying, I’ve not spoken to you again about Liza Weaver, but nothing’s changed. You’ll marry Liza and I’ll hear no more talk of this girl Marion. Understand?”

  Peter, in the act of reaching for a saddle, put it down again and drew a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, Father, I truly am, but…”

  “Look here, boy!” Richard glared at him and his voice became aggressive. “I want to make something of this family, to wipe the lofty looks off those damned Sweetwater faces, even if we can’t chop their heads off their shoulders. Last century, before my time, let alone yours, there was a big rising in the southeast of England. It got put down, but it left its mark. Higg and Roger would have been villeins then, with no right to leave Allerbrook and go somewhere else, but they’re free men now and they can go if they want to. The rising was because—”

  “I thought it was the plague that set men free,” said Peter. “So many folk died that villeins were left without masters and no one could stop them going where they liked—and asking wages when they found masters who had no one to work the land and weren’t in any position to argue.”

  “The plague and the rising together made the difference, so I’ve heard,” said Richard. He moderated his tone, trying to be patient. “The one made the other stronger. But the rising was about people like us getting bone weary of having people like the Sweetwaters lord it over us. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? That’s what the rebels used to chant. What makes the Sweetwaters think they’re so wonderful? My father sent me to school, though he could have used my hands on the land by then, because he wanted me to have a chance in life and not speak so broad that no one could understand me that wasn’t born in the west country. Later I sent you, too—and paid through the nose for it!”

  “Yes, Father, I know, and I’m grateful, but—”

  “No buts, if it’s all the same to you. We can read and write, just about; we can talk proper English and understand the Paternoster in Latin; we can add up our accounts and we know a bit of history. What have the Sweetwaters got that we haven’t? Land and money, that’s all. Well, that’s what I’m after, and seeing my only son hitch himself up with a fisher girl ain’t going to help. Liza Weaver’s another matter. We could gain a lot from that, could start saving. I’m relying on you making a good marriage to give us a leg up in the world. You can just forget Marion!”

  “But, Father…” Peter, too, was now trying to be calm and patient. “We’ve said the words that make it a contract.”

  “Without witnesses, and her a maiden in her father’s house? Those words were never said, my boy, and that’s that.”

  “But they were said, and they’re binding.”

  “I see. You’ll challenge me, will you? The young stag’s lowering his antlers at the herd leader, is he?” Richard abandoned patience, rose to his feet, laying aside his own work, and unbuckled his belt. Peter also stood up. He was taller than his father and though not as broad, he had in him the coiled-spring vitality of youth. The two of them faced each other.

  “Father Bernard told me to look after you,” said Peter seriously. “So I wouldn’t want to hurt you, but if you try that, I might. I’ll fight. I mean it.”

  “My God!” Richard stared at him. The candlelight was shining on Peter’s face. “You’ve had her, haven’t you? There’s nothing turns a boy into a man the way that does. She’s let you…and you still want to marry her?”

  Peter was silent, remembering. September, it had been; not the day of the heavy mist, which had been a brief and chilly meeting, but the time before, which was in warm, sunny weather. They had met as usual close to Lynton, the village at the top of the cliff, and wandered into the nearby valley, with its curious rock outcrops. He had left his pony to graze while he and Marion took a goat path up the hillside, through the bracken, untroubled by the flies which in summer would have surrounded them in clouds.

  On a patch of grass, hidden from the path below by a convenient rock, they sat down to talk and caress. They had done as much before, but this time it went further. Marion made no protest and soon he was past the point of no return, far adrift on the dreamy seas of desire and at the same time full of energy and the urgent need for pleasure.

  The memory of it, of Marion, of her curves and warmth and moistness, her murmurs and little cries of excitement, her arms around him like friendly ropes, the rustle of a stray bracken frond under his left knee, the scent of warm grass and Marion’s hair, which she had surely washed with herbs, and then the splendour of his coming, were beyond putting into words and, in any case, they were not for anyone else to share.

  “Yes,” he said now. “I want to marry her. I intend to.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Richard. “I’m going to Lynmouth tomorrow, to find the Lockes. I’ll see what they have to say! And now I’m going to bed and you can damned well finish cleaning the saddlery. And you can tell that priest that I don’t need looking after!”

  His father, thought Peter bitterly as Richard stalked out of the room, was turning out as big a bully as George Lanyon had ever been.

  The sky the next day was dull but dry and Richard left Allerbrook at dawn, a nosebag for Splash on his shoulder. He rode down the combe, through Clicket and then out over the moor, following the ancient tracks made by the vanished people who had buried their chieftains in hilltop barrows and had raised the strange standing stones one saw here and there amid the heather.

  The tracks led across the high moor and brought him at last to the East Lyn River—which his besotted son could not conceivably have mistaken for the Barle, since the high ridge known as the Chains lay between them. He rode downhill beside the tumbling stream, on a steep path through bracken and trees, came to a fork, took the branch that bypassed Lynton village at the top of the cliffs and went on down to its sister village, Lynmouth, at the foot.

  Here there was a harbour, with a quay and a square stone building with a smoking vent, where herring were dried. The tide was in and so were a couple of big ships and a fleet of small boats, which were being unloaded. Both men and women were bringing netting and baskets of fish onto the quay, and buyers were already clustering around them. Close by stood the thick-walled thatched cottages of the fisherfolk.

  He looked for a roof decorated with birds made of twisted straw, and found it at once. It was one of the larger cottages, which suggested that the Locke family was comparatively prosperous. But still nowhere near as well-off as he was, he thought grimly. This was not the place to find a new mistress for Allerbrook farm, even if the girl Peter had in mind was respectable, which he doubted.

  There was a hitching post beside the cottage. He secured Splash, loosened the girth and ran up the stirrups, gave the horse his nosebag and went purposefully to knock at the door of the cottage. It was ajar and opened when he rapped, but he paused politely, waiting for someone to come. The door opened straight into a living room and kitchen combined; he could see a trivet and pot, set over a fire, and a woman stirring the pot. Another woman was standing over a whitewood table close to
a window, no doubt for the sake of the light, and gutting fish with a ferocious-looking knife. A third, broom in hand, was now advancing to ask him his business. He knew at once that this was Marion.

  Peter had said she was beautiful, but it was the wrong word. Inside his head Richard struggled to find the right one and found himself thinking luscious, like the pears and plums which grew beside the southernmost wall of Sweetwater House. It was sheltered there, with good soil, and the fruit was always so full of juice that it seemed about to burst through the skin.

  Village boys were employed as bird scarers and when the fruit was ready to harvest, they were paid with a basketful each. Richard himself, as a lad, had sometimes helped to frighten off the starlings, and been paid with pears and plums, the taste of which he had never forgotten.

  This girl called them to mind. Her working gown was a dull brown garment, but within it, her shape was so rich and full that he had hard work not to stare rudely. He saw, too, that her hair, which was not concealed by any cap or coif, was extraordinary. It wasn’t so much curly as wiry and it was an astonishing pale gold in colour. She had pulled it back and knotted it behind her head, but much of it was too short for that and stood out around her head in a primrose cloud. It was clean hair, too. She looked after it.

  Beneath it, her face was round, but there were strong bones within that seeming softness and she had long, sloe-blue eyes, full and heavy with knowledge and an unspoken promise to impart it.

  And she was aware of him, of his dark good looks, and young as she was—sixteen, seventeen?—she knew something about men. He couldn’t blame Peter for falling for this. But all the same…good God, Peter was welcome to his wild oats. No one in their senses grudged a young man that. But marriage—that was different.

  “Are you Marion Locke?” It came out harshly, as though he were angry with her.

  “Yes, that I be.” Her accent was thick. Her looks might be remarkable but he doubted if she knew A from B.

  “My name is Richard Lanyon. I believe you know my son, Peter. Is your father at home?”

  “Aye. Down on the quay, he be. You want to talk to ’un?”

  “I certainly do…ah!”

  The woman who had been stirring the pot had put her spoon aside and come toward them. “What is it, Marion?”

  “Gentleman axin’ for dad. Name of Lanyon.” Marion smiled beguilingly, as though she imagined he was here to settle the marriage arrangements. You’re wrong, my wench, said Richard to himself.

  “Then go and fetch ’un,” said the woman. “He’m unloading the boat. You can take over from ’un. And ax the gentleman in!”

  “I’ll want to come back with ’un,” said Marion querulously, standing aside to let Richard enter. “With Dad, I mean. I’ve met the gentleman’s son and it’ll be about me.”

  “All the more reason for you to keep out of it. Send your father back here and you stop down there and get that there boat emptied. Go on!”

  Marion clearly didn’t want to go, and pouted. Her mother stared at her fixedly, however, and after a moment she left.

  “I don’t want to offend anyone, least of all a man and wife in their own home.” Richard, sitting by the fire with his hat on his knees, was conscious of being on someone else’s territory. Not that it was much of a territory. It seemed to consist of this main room, half the size of the one at Allerbrook, an upper half-floor, reached by a ladder, where he could see some pallet beds, and a small back room, partly visible through a half-open door. In there, he could see a workbench with what looked like some half-made garment thrown over it.

  A wise arrangement, no doubt, if one wanted to keep bits of thread out of the cooking and bits of fish out of the stitchery. Dried fish hung from the beams above his head, and there were scales and innards all over the table. His farmhouse was plain, but it had a decent oak front door and two spare bedchambers and even a parlour. They weren’t used much, but they were there. This place was squalid. It also reeked of fish. The smell was far stronger and much more disagreeable than the woolly odours of Nicholas Weaver’s home.

  Manners, however, were manners. “I’m here on an awkward errand,” he said, “but likely enough, you’ll feel the same way as I do. You’ll be Master Locke, I think?” He addressed the elder of the two men who had come up from the quay shortly after Marion had left. The younger one had the same pale, wiry hair as Marion. The hair probably came from the father, if the older man were he, though his mop was turning grey. “And you—” he looked at the woman who had been tending the pot “—are Mistress Locke?”

  “That’s right,” the older man said. “That’s my wife, Mary, and this here’s my son Art and this is my daughter-in-law Sue.” Sue was the one who had been gutting fish. She had left her work and joined the rest of them on seats by the fire. She had a smiling pink face, and by the look of her, was expecting a baby in a few months’ time.

  “And the wench who came to fetch us,” said Master Locke senior, “is my daughter Marion. I’ve a notion it’s her you want to talk about. She said it could be. She said she knows your son.”

  Art said glumly, “Here we go again.”

  “She does know him,” said Richard, plunging straight to the point, “and it’s difficult. But I’m Richard Lanyon from Allerbrook farm, far over the moor. I rear sheep and grow corn and sell wool. It’s a different life from yours. My boy Peter met your Marion at last summer’s Revel and he says they’ve agreed to marry but…there’s no use going all round the moor about it. I’ve other plans for Peter. Besides, I don’t think he’s right for your girl, or she for him. What do you think?”

  “I suppose the lad claims they’ve betrothed themselves?” said Master Locke. He didn’t sound surprised.

  “More or less, yes.”

  “That’ll be the third time,” said Marion’s mother crossly. “All the lads go after her, she’s got such a pretty face.” Richard heard this understatement with amazement. Did these people, who lived together as a family, never actually look at each other? Pretty? A girl as striking as Marion? You might as well say the sea was wet.

  “Aye, she’ll promise anything to anyone and go further, very likely,” Art said. “Reckon she did go further last year, with that young sailor off that ship from Norway that had some foreign name. Fjord-Elk, that’s it. Dunno what it means. She’s in port again now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Marion isn’t on the lookout for that young fellow now this minute.”

  “You don’t need to worry,” Master Locke assured Richard. “She needs to be married and soon will be, but to someone like ourselves. There’s a likely boy in Porlock, along the coast. Too many folk round here are cousins of ours and the priest won’t have that. You did right to come and warn us, but nothing’s going to come of this. Two silly young people get together and say things, but we don’t need to take no notice. I say nothing about your son, but Marion’s always saying things to young men, mostly the wrong ones. Will you take a dish of stew and a drop of ale with us?”

  “I’ll take our share down to Marion,” said Art, “and we’ll eat and drink together and I’ll tell her I’m tired of her foolishness.”

  “It’s natural, at her age. She’s barely seventeen,” his father said tolerantly. “We’re an easy-natured lot,” he said. “We don’t watch each other. Marion’s daft and the boys round here turn her head with their sweet talk, but I’ll see it don’t come to anything.”

  “She b’ain’t in the family way yet,” Mistress Locke said. “That I do know. And she’d better not be, till she’m wed.”

  “He meets her in Lynton when she goes visiting there, so my son says,” Richard said cautiously, concealing his relief at learning that Peter had at least not got his sweetheart into trouble. He had wondered, but it was a difficult question to ask.

  “Aye.” Marion’s father nodded. “My mother-in-law and my wife’s sister that’s crippled with the joint evil live up there—they’ve got a cottage and a bit of land at the far end, just outside that valley with the
funny-looking rocks in it. Maybe you know it…?”

  “Yes, I went there once,” said Richard. It had been long ago, when he was young and had gone to the Revel, just as Peter had done in the summer. He’d taken a girl into the Valley of the Rocks, as many people called it. “I know where you mean,” he said.

  “Marion takes fish to my mother and sister twice a month and brings back eggs and goat cheese for us. They keep hens and pasture a few goats in the valley—there’s others do the same—and their maidservant does the milking and makes the cheese,” said Mary Locke. “I wouldn’t like to stop Marion’s visits. They’d be hurt if she didn’t go regular, as they’re fond of her, and they like the fresh fish. And we’d miss the eggs and cheese. I’ve no time to go up there, mostly, and Sue here can’t just now. But don’t fret. It’ll lead nowhere. It don’t do for fisherfolk and farming folk to marry. We don’t understand each other’s lives. That pot of stew’s about ready. It’s not fish.” She grinned, displaying gaps in her teeth but a wealth of good nature. “Last time Marion went, she bring down a nice plump chicken as well, all plucked and drawn ready. Chicken stew, this is. Sue, get the ale.”

  Richard reached home to find that Peter’s friend Ned Crowham had ridden in and that as usual, Kat and Betsy, impressed by his velvet doublet and silk shirt and the polish on his boots, had put him in the parlour, lit a fire especially for him and plied him with mutton pie and the best cider.

  “Good day, sir,” said Ned civilly as Richard walked in. “I thought you might be out driving ponies off the moor or something of that kind at this time of year, but I took a chance and I found Peter here, though he’s had to go out to the fields now. Kat and Bet said I must eat before I set out for home again.” He chuckled. “As though I hadn’t flesh enough already! They said you’d gone to Lynmouth.”

  “Yes. You’d nearly guessed right about the ponies, though. We’ll be bringing them in tomorrow. We fetched the cattle two weeks back.” Richard helped himself to cider.