The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  “I said, let me prove it. Let me show you!” He had hold of her again and when Marion tried once more to shout no! he muffled the sound by crushing her mouth with his. Not that there was anyone who could have heard her, anyway, for the goatherd was now out of both sight and hearing, even if the cloud all around them hadn’t become as dense as a damp grey fleece. “There!” said Richard, lifting his head at last. “Doesn’t that tell you all you need to know? Don’t you know now that you can’t refuse me?”

  “No, I don’t!” Marion shrieked, kicking him again. He pulled her hard against him and this time she lowered her head and sank her teeth into his wrist. He swore, and she stamped on his foot. They wrestled, swaying back and forth. The cloud, as much drizzle as vapour, got in their hair and their mouths and confused their vision. For one moment, with the greyness all around them, they couldn’t even see the looming wall of the outcrop. It was only feet away, but they couldn’t have told in which direction. Marion, struggling, kicking, shouting, “No, no, no!” at last broke free and threw herself sideways to avoid his clutching hands.

  And then was gone.

  It was as sudden, as total, as incredible as that. One moment she had been there, a crazed harpy, fighting him; the next, he was alone on Castle Rock, in a world that seemed to be made of blowing cloud and wetness. But not a silent world, or not immediately, for as she felt herself go over the edge, the rock and grass vanishing from under her feet, Marion screamed.

  Till the day he died, he would never forget that scream. Throughout all the years to come, it would echo in his ears. It went on for what seemed an eternity, fading downward but continuing, continuing—and then abruptly ceasing, as though a blade had cut it off.

  Seconds ago she had been here, with him, alive and shouting and struggling against him. He couldn’t believe that she was just—gone.

  And gone forever, at that. The capricious wind tore a rent in the vapours and he walked, trembling, to the edge to look downward. Stupidly, pointlessly, he shouted her name. “Marion! Marion, Marion!” There was no answer. Between the wisps of cloud blowing past beneath him—how unnatural, to look down upon cloud!—he glimpsed, briefly and horribly, the sea and rocks at the bottom. His head swam. He staggered backward to safety, before that yawning drop could drag him to oblivion, as well. It occurred to him, thinking of that final struggle, that it could have been him just as easily as Marion.

  In which case, he would have been dead, as she was. No one could survive that fall. The tide at the cliff foot was rising; he had seen the white foam boiling in over the fallen rocks, which were a peril to ships all along this coast. Marion had fallen into that. The rocks had broken her and the sea had swallowed her up. She had been wiped out of the world, and if he hadn’t actually pushed her, well, he had frightened her into falling. It was a poor distinction.

  He slumped down with his back against the outcrop. The cloud closed in again. He still struggled with disbelief, but the silence slowly brought it home. He was, as near as made no difference, a murderer.

  No one knew he was here, though. He had not told anyone he was coming here; he was supposed to be out looking for sheep. He had ridden over the moor, taking the shortest way, and not seen a soul on the way. He hadn’t ridden through Lynton, either. And in this weather he wasn’t likely to meet many people on the way back. In fact, he’d be glad of Splash’s homing instinct. People got lost in mists easily, but horses didn’t.

  He could go home. He could pretend he had never come near Lynton or this valley. At least there was one thing. He couldn’t marry Marion now, but neither could Peter. He almost felt a sense of relief, as though she had put a spell on him, which was now lifted. Perhaps she had been a witch, and in that case the world was well rid of her.

  He repeated this to himself, firmly, several times. Then, careful of his footing in the bad visibility, he started down the winding path around Castle Rock. Down on the floor of the valley it was drizzling, but it was below the cloud itself and he could once more see where he was going. He glanced back once at the Rock. It stood tall, wreathed in the drifting vapours, but with an air of menace, as though it was aware of him and was ill-wishing him. Hurriedly he turned his back and made off to where he had left Splash. Ruff was lying down but got up at his master’s approach, whining with pleasure. Splash, too, seemed glad to see him. He bridled the horse, removed the hobbles, tightened the saddle girth and mounted, to begin the journey home.

  It would take time but that was all the better, for his hands had trembled as he bridled his mount. He needed time to recover. Thank God no one had seen him. Thank God no one knew he had ever been here.

  The goatherd, a lad of fifteen, had in fact seen Richard and Marion arrive, leave the horse and walk on along the valley to start climbing the Rock. He had noticed that the woman had remarkable hair, and a very attractive, not to say come-hither way of walking, and that they had a dog with them and that their horse was an odd colour, with dark grey dapples all running into each other. He had never seen any of them before as far as he knew. Most of his life was spent in the valley, along with his master’s goats; even Marion had not hitherto crossed his path. Few people ever came into the valley. He wondered what they were doing there, but his business, after all, was to look after the goats.

  The horse and dog had gone when, after settling his charges on fresh grass and attending to a cut on the leg of a limping nanny, he came down the hillside to escape the weather and eat his midday bread and cheese in a little shelter he had built for himself. The strangers had presumably come back, collected their animals and left.

  A month or so later, local gossip reached him about a Lynmouth girl who had run away from home, but he made no connection between the gossip and the couple he had seen.

  Richard’s route home took him high onto the moors and back into the mist. He let Splash take his time and ate his bread and meat in the saddle. As at last he approached Allerbrook, he was both surprised and pleased to come across his own missing sheep, their fleeces spangled with damp, nibbling dismally at the thin autumn grasses and not at all unwilling to be rounded up by Ruff and shepherded home to the better pastures lower down.

  Another half hour and he was there, riding in with them, a respectable farmer and shepherd who had gone out on the moor to look for missing stock, found them and brought them back.

  Peter came home shortly afterward, complaining that he had not found any sheep. Richard described how he had searched in vain in the mist for hours and then discovered them just after he had given up trying.

  All the rest of that day the talk was of nothing but sheep. In the morning, however, Richard remarked to Peter that they ought to ask Nicholas Weaver to bring Liza over for a visit to her future home, and a formal betrothal.

  Peter, without answering, swallowed his final mouthful of breakfast and stalked out of the kitchen to go about his day’s work. Richard glared at his son’s retreating back, but for the moment held his tongue. Clearly he would have to think about this.

  “The master’s got something on his mind,” Betsy said to Higg three nights later as they settled to sleep on the straw-filled mattress in their cottage. “He’s been goin’ around all grim-faced and hardly hears what’s said to him. He don’t look like he sleeps at night. And it’s plain as the nose on your face that him and Master Peter b’ain’t hardly on speakin’ terms.”

  “Not much we can do about it,” said Higg tersely.

  “I don’t like the look of things. Peter don’t want this marriage the master’s planned for ’un, and you know what Master Richard is like for getting ’un’s own way. Just like his father, he’s turning out to be. He’ll have his way, mark my words, but whether it’ll be a happy house afterward or not, I wouldn’t like to guess.”

  “Let’s worry about that when it happens,” said Higg stolidly.

  The fact that Marion no longer existed meant that she couldn’t now marry Peter, but Peter didn’t yet know this. Somehow or other he must be informed, and t
hen coaxed into standing before a priest with Liza Weaver. But how? Richard asked himself, lying awake on his bed.

  It was all too true that he was sleeping badly. Hour after hour, every night, slumber eluded him, while he relived that ill-fated walk through the Valley of the Rocks, and when at last he did sleep, he dreamed of it. Night after night, Marion’s last scream echoed for him again. What had it been like for her, throughout that long fall, knowing that she was still herself, healthy and alive, but would in the next few seconds be smashed and dead and that there was no miracle in the world that could save her? Sometimes he dreamed that he was the one who was falling.

  She had died because he had tried to force his will on her. It seemed that compelling people to do one’s bidding could be disastrous. How then was he to force his will on Peter? Well, once Peter knew that Marion had disappeared, he might decide to be sensible of his own accord. With luck, he would. But how on earth was he to be told?

  No one must suspect that Richard knew more than he should. Only, time was pressing and mustn’t be wasted. The betrothal to Liza ought to happen soon or Nicholas would be raising his eyebrows, and he’d expect the wedding to take place soon after. How much time would Peter need to get over the shock of learning that Marion was gone forever?

  He’d killed her…no, she’d died in an unfortunate accident last Tuesday. Bit by bit, a scheme emerged.

  On October 27, the following Saturday, as he and Peter went out after a breakfast at which neither had spoken to the other, he said, “Look here, boy, I’m tired of your dismal face round here. So be it. You go to Lynmouth and see Master Locke and ask him for Marion if you’re so determined. I don’t fancy he’ll agree and it’ll be for him to say. But maybe after you’ve talked to him, you’ll see that she’s not for you, and you can stop treating me as if I were a leper.”

  “And what if he says yes?”

  “Then he says yes. But you’d better bring her here before you handfast yourself to her. She might not like the look of Allerbrook. No betrothal until she’s seen what she’s coming to. Saddle your pony and go.”

  Fifteen minutes later Peter was on his way, with a leather flask of spring water and a rabbit pasty for his midday meal, and hope in every line of his retreating back.

  He returned in the afternoon, riding slowly. Richard, who had arranged to be close to the farmhouse all day, wandered into the farmyard to meet him as he was unsaddling. “So you’re back. How did it go?”

  The face that his son turned to him was the face of grief, bloodless and stricken. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”

  “Can’t believe what?”

  “She’s gone! Just gone. The last time she went to take some herrings to her grandmother and her aunt, she never got there! But last year she was seen at times with a sailor from some Norwegian ship or other, and that ship’s been back in Lynmouth harbour lately and Marion was seen talking to the sailor again, on the quay. Seems his ship sailed on the very day that Marion set out and didn’t come back. They reckon she’s gone with him. Her father said she was flighty. He said he’d rather she had married me—at least it would be an honest marriage into an honest family! But it’s too late now. She’s…gone!”

  And you don’t know how thoroughly and completely she’s gone, Richard said to himself.

  “And even if she ever came back…” Peter said, but couldn’t finish the sentence.

  Richard, carefully, said, “I’m sorry. You mightn’t believe me, but I am. You’re taking this hard and I’m truly sorry.” You have no idea how sorry or why, and pray God you never will.

  “She never…” Peter began, and then stopped short again.

  “Never loved you?” Richard said it quietly, though.

  “Can’t have done, can she?”

  “You’d best come inside. Did you eat your rabbit pasty?”

  Peter took off the bag he had slung onto his back. It still bulged as it had when he rode away. “No.”

  “Let’s see what Betsy can find for you. You need a hot meal.”

  “You’re talking to me like a mother!” said Peter, half-angrily.

  “Well, your mother’s not here, after all. Come on, boy. You fill your belly with good victuals. The world won’t look so dark after that.” He did not mention Liza. There was no need. The right moment would come.

  It came three days later. “I suppose,” said Peter, late in the evening, when he and his father, having made sure that the poultry were shut up safely where foxes couldn’t get at them, were lighting candles so as to see their way to bed, “I suppose I may as well marry Liza Weaver. She’s a nice enough wench.”

  “Yes. She is. You won’t regret it, my lad,” said his father.

  Nor, thought Richard, will you have a chance to back out, boy. I’ll ride to Dunster tomorrow and have the Weavers and Liza back here the day after. We’ll get the betrothal official and start having the banns called next Sunday.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  NEW BEGINNING

  There came a time, Liza had realised, when one could no longer fight. Christopher was gone. Not far in the physical sense, since he was only a few minutes away in St. George’s Priory, but it had been made clear to her that she would never see him face-to-face again, not if her parents and the Luttrells and Father Meadowes had any say in the matter.

  She thought of Christopher often. Inside her head she talked to him, even raged at him for letting himself be knocked out of his saddle instead of somehow seizing her mount’s bridle and getting them both away. But at other times he seemed unreal because everyone around her kept behaving as though he had never existed. She might never have fled through the night, never have been fetched back and dragged up to that horrible little room under the thatch, never have been made to weep with pain and grief, never bolted in as a prisoner.

  She was a bride-to-be. The ceremony, her mother told her as they stood in the bedchamber Liza shared with her little sister Jane and looked at a roll of light blue silk, would take place in the third week of November. Her mother sounded as cheerful and fond as though Liza were insanely in love with Peter Lanyon and could hardly wait for the wedding day.

  “When you’ve taken your vows, everyone’ll come back here for the feast, and your father and I’ll move downstairs for the night so as you two can have our chamber. It’ll be too far to get back to Allerbrook that night. You’ll ride off in the morning. Now, this silk is for you to wear to church. Cost a fortune, bein’ silk and blue bein’ such a costly dye, but we don’t grudge it. I’m having a new gown, crimson, but using our own cloth and having it dyed by this new man Herbert Dyer who’s come to Dunster from Taunton and taken over our old dyer’s business.”

  “I heard that Hal Redman wanted to give up,” Liza said listlessly.

  “Yes, poor old man. He can live on the money he got for the business and this man Herbert charges less than Hal did. Now, the wedding feast. I’ll need your help with the cooking.”

  “And Cecy can’t make light pastry if her life depended on it. I can hear you sayin’ it even if you aren’t sayin’ it,” remarked Aunt Cecy, putting her sharp nose in at the door.

  “Well, you can’t,” said Margaret matter-of-factly. “Though I never can see why not. It’s not that difficult.”

  “I can never see why it matters. My weaving’s good enough,” said Aunt Cecy, and walked away.

  It was all, Liza thought bemusedly, so normal, so ordinary. For as long as she could remember, her mother and Aunt Cecy had had exchanges like that. It was part of the atmosphere of home, of everyday life, the same everyday life which was rolling over the episode with Christopher Clerk like a team of harvesters scything their way across a barley field. When the harvesters were done, the field was nothing but stubble.

  She went like a sleepwalker through the rituals of preparation for marriage. There was a flurry of coming and going between Allerbrook and Dunster. On the last day of October Richard Lanyon came to visit the Weavers, and on the following day Liza an
d her parents rode back with him to Allerbrook for the betrothal. They dined at the farmhouse and in the presence of Richard Lanyon and Liza’s parents, who were all beaming, Peter took her hand, promised to marry her and kissed her. He was the Peter Lanyon she had always known, looking older now and oddly tired, as indeed did his father. She supposed the work on the farm had for some reason been extra hard this year.

  They both said how welcome she would be at Allerbrook. “You won’t have to work in the fields much,” Peter assured her as they sat down to dinner, “except that everyone lends a hand at harvest time if they can. But otherwise, it’ll be taking care of the chickens, and helping with dairy work and bread making. Betsy’ll be glad of an extra pair of hands.”

  “Won’t you mind me coming in and…well, interfering?” Liza asked doubtfully, looking at Betsy.

  “No, that I won’t,” said Betsy, handing her a platter of oatcakes and cream. “I’ve got too much to do and so has Kat. If ’ee can make butter and set the cream, I’ll see to the cheese. Can ’ee milk a cow?”

  “Yes. Father has two cows and I often milk them.”

  “All the better!” said Kat, and gave her a smile.

  They were kind, those two flaxen, middle-aged farm women who looked so alike. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad.

  The first banns were called the very next Sunday. Her parents were wasting no time in getting her to the church door, Liza thought ironically, unaware that Richard Lanyon was hurrying Peter to the point with equal anxiety and for similar reasons. On November 20, she changed her name to Lanyon.

  Peter and his father spent the eve of the wedding at the inn in Dunster, and on the day itself, wearing their best clothes, were waiting in the churchyard amid a crowd of the Weavers’ interested neighbours when Liza and her family arrived. Gleaming in blue silk, with a train which small Jane had been allowed to carry on the way to the church, Liza stood at the church door beside Peter and in front of the priest who had led the Sunday prayers for so many years of her life. Christopher was somewhere near, within these very walls, but another bridegroom stood at her side and there was no escape.