The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  “Babies,” said Betsy shortly. “I’d bet the next clip on it. It’s got nothin’ to do with putting on airs. She’s expectin’ or I’m Queen She-Wolf, and that I’m not.”

  “You are? Oh, Liza! Liza!”

  For the first time, Liza found her husband looking into her eyes with something like joy, as though she actually mattered to him. “I’m sorry I upset everyone over the pig,” she said. “I’ll be more sensible another time—I’ll get used to things.”

  “Never mind about any of that. We’ve got to look after you now. This is the best of news.”

  Peter himself was surprised by the comfort it brought him. Marion had enchanted him and then failed him, but here was this sensible, honest Liza, trying to please him, trying to please everyone, and carrying his very own child. Liza wouldn’t betray him and nor would their offspring.

  Richard, his temper now magically restored, said that Liza must do no work at all that was in the least heavy. It wasn’t the time of year for butter making, but when the cows were in milk again in the spring, Liza was not to do any churning, nor was she to help with the lambing, not this time.

  “You were brought up to weave, weren’t you?” he said. “Try and get my wife’s old loom and spinning wheel working again. You’ll come to no harm with that. Nor with making rabbit pies,” he added with a grin.

  For two weeks there was peace in the house, albeit with a little nervousness because Richard had decreed that wheat would be planted, whatever the Sweetwaters said; he had the seed and would brook no argument. Then came the morning when Liza woke to find an all too familiar ache in her lower stomach, and by the end of the day she knew the hope of a child was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE HOWL OF THE SHE-WOLF

  “So that’s that! Twice!” said Richard furiously, standing beside Liza’s bed and looming over her, his face dark with fury. “Twice! You’ve gone and lost another and before you’d got well started, at that! The wheat’s sprouting in Quillet, but what’s the good of the wheat growing if the family doesn’t? You’ve let us down, wench!”

  Liza, her hair tangled and streaks of tears on her pale face, shrank away from him, wishing she could bury herself in the sheets. It was May, and warm, and she felt not only wretched but feverish. But there was no pity in her father-in-law’s angry eyes.

  “I’m sorry. How could I help it?” she said wretchedly.

  “What’s wrong with you,” Richard demanded, “that you can’t do a simple thing like this? You’re as bad as my wife Joan was. You were a good strong girl, I thought. You do your work and you go off walking on the moor as well—funny sort of habit, that, but it looked as if you were healthy. All right, you lost one, but it was the first—these things happen. I reckoned that this time it ’ud be all right, but no, it’s hardly begun and then this!”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” She made herself try to fight back against the bullying. “You tell me how I could have helped it! What did you expect me to do?”

  “Father!” Peter strode into the room. “What’s this? Leave Liza alone! Betsy and Kat say she’s had a nasty time and she’s still bleeding. I won’t have you shouting at her and blaming her! Go away!”

  “You don’t order me out of a room in my own house, boy!”

  “Out of this room I do!” Peter retorted. “She can’t get better with you standing over her, shouting. Do you think she did it on purpose? It’ll be all right in the end. Betsy had the same thing happen to her, but she had children later.”

  “All right. I hope you’re better soon, girl, and I hope next time’ll be different.” Richard gave Liza a last glare and walked out of the room. Peter followed him and tramped angrily down the stairs behind him. At the foot, Richard turned to face him.

  “Sometimes I almost wish I’d let you marry Marion Locke.”

  “It’s not Liza’s fault! She’s heartbroken. She prays each night, on her knees by our bed, asking God and Our Lady for a healthy child. We thought her prayers had been heard when we knew she’d quickened again. It’s no help when you say things to her like hope you’ll finish the job this time and what we need is half a dozen sons. You ever thought it might be something in us? Happens sometimes with animals, so why not people? Remember that ram that kept siring weakly lambs?”

  “You’re strong enough.” Richard’s voice, however, was suddenly tired. He had realised that his feelings had just betrayed him into mentioning Marion, and that was something he should never do, ever. The trouble was that now and then, he didn’t seem able to help it.

  He still sometimes dreamed of her death and heard her scream inside his head. Again and again he told himself that in the eyes of Peter and her family she had run off with another man and that he should tell that story to himself until he believed it. Except that he would never believe it. Always and forever he would know it for the lie it was, and one day he was afraid he would talk in his sleep and somebody would overhear.

  More quietly he said, “You can tell her I spoke in the heat of the moment, and that I mean it when I say I wish her better.” He led the way into the living room and added, with a change of tone, “Seen the wheat in Quillet? Looks good, if we can keep the deer out. The ditches just aren’t wide or deep enough.”

  “Let’s go and look at it,” said Peter, willing to make peace if his father would, and also thankful to get his father away from Liza.

  Long ago, when the Norman conqueror, William, first made Exmoor a royal forest, the land now occupied by the Sweetwater farms had been already under cultivation, and at that time it had lain outside the boundaries of the forest, as it did now. But in between, another Norman king, King John, had greedily enlarged the forest, moving the boundary so that the farmers on what was now the Sweetwater land found themselves inside, and subject to forest law, under which fences were forbidden. Deer must be able to move about freely and if this inconvenienced anyone, Norman kings didn’t care.

  When the boundary was changed again and the Sweetwater estate once more fell outside it, the law against fencing lapsed, but the Sweetwaters had made it plain enough that they held the same views as the Norman kings had done. Richard and Peter stood beside the growing crop, looking at the ditches which were allowed for purposes of drainage but which weren’t nearly enough to discourage hungry and determined deer. “When the corn starts to ripen, could we tether the dogs out here?” Peter suggested.

  “Deer aren’t stupid,” Richard said. “They’ll soon work out how far the tether stretches. Then they’ll take whatever they can out of the dogs’ reach. It’s growing well, though. I was right about the soil.” He hesitated and then said, “Think Liza’ll be well enough to get to church in Clicket on Sunday? It’s the May Day competition, if the weather’ll let us shoot this time. A bit late, but we’d have drowned if we’d tried to have the contest on May Day. Wettest first of May for years, I’d say.”

  “I hope she’ll be up and about in time. I worry about her.”

  “So do I! I like the wench. If only…”

  “Let’s drop the matter.” Peter did not wish to start the quarrel again and his eye had been caught by something in the sky, high above the barley. “There’s a falcon up there, hovering. Can you see?”

  “Where? Oh, yes. It’s not a kestrel. Looks like a peregrine. There it goes! It’s after that wood pigeon! Look at that! What a strike!”

  The falcon had swooped, vertically, headfirst, a living arrow, straight onto the back of an incautious pigeon and borne it down to the ground. At the same moment there came a thunder of hooves and two riders came tearing up from the combe.

  “Oh, damnation!” said Richard.

  Coming level with the Lanyons, they checked and curvetted around them, colourful scalloped reins gripped in gauntleted hands, spurred boots gleaming, fantastic headgear on well-barbered heads. Richard and Peter gritted their teeth but removed their caps, since arguing with these two arrogant young men was unwise.

  Then Reginald and Walter Sweetwater laughed
, swung their horses away and put them at the ditch. The big horses leaped it side by side, manes and tails flying, and galloped on, headlong, this time across the wheat, to slow down in the middle and stop, while one of them dismounted and went to pick up the falcon.

  “They did it on purpose!” Richard snarled, glaring across the field at them. “They know wheat when they see it and I daresay they know their father told me not to plant it! So they trample it for their sport and to put me in my place. Showing off with a damned great peregrine falcon, too. I swear,” he added, “I swear that one of these days I’ll turn things round. One day they’ll take off their caps when they see me coming!”

  “You won’t be well enough to go to Clicket on Sunday.” Betsy said. “You lie flat and still and, except when nature calls, you stay in that bed until that there bleeding stops. Wretched time you’ve had.”

  “And nothing to show for it,” said Liza, turning her head away. “Nothing!”

  “Sleep you need,” said Betsy firmly, “and no goin’ to church this week, let alone hangin’ round they butts watchin’ longshafts fly!”

  Liza tried to take an interest in the archery. “I think they’re having a crossbow contest, as well. Father-in-law is good with the crossbow.”

  “We’ll bring ’ee all the news. Kat’s said she’ll stay here on Sunday, so she’ll be within call.” Outside the room, encountering Kat, who had just come up with a posset, she said, “The mistress is brightenin’ up. Showin’ interest in the shootin’ next Sunday. That’s a good sign. Just keep Master Richard out of there, that’s all.”

  Liza thanked Kat for the posset, and once left alone, tried to sip it quietly and be what she knew her mother would have called “sensible.” Tears and self-pity would worry Peter and annoy his father more than ever. She was grateful that Peter had not been angry. After Betsy had told him that it was all over, he had come to ask how she fared and done so in a kindly tone of voice. Later he had ordered his father to leave her alone, and got Richard out of the room, for which she was infinitely grateful.

  If she had never set eyes on Christopher she could easily have loved Peter, and in a way, she did. The glittering spark that had been between her and Christopher wasn’t there and nothing could put it there, but Peter was her real world, the company she would have to keep until one of them died, and there was much in him to value. Except that nearly all the time, Peter was ruled by his father. It was Richard who counted most in this house.

  She lay there, puzzling over her own feelings, wondering why what she felt for Christopher was so very different from the mild affection she had for Peter. It was the difference between a leaping waterfall and a placid meandering stream; the difference between a bright fire and a dull red ember.

  With Christopher she could have had a healthy child. She knew it.

  The spring had been wet, but the following Sunday began with sunshine. Liza, lying on her bed after everyone except Kat had gone off to church and the archery competition, taking midday food with them, imagined how the grass and the cow parsley would be springing along the sides of the sunken lanes. In the most sheltered places there might even be some early foxgloves, adding their soft red to the green and white of the verges. Birds were singing. They were nesting.

  Oh, dear God, they were nesting, rearing their young. Only Liza Lanyon, apparently, was not allowed to do that. She heard Kat coming to look in on her and turned on her side, closing her eyes. Kat was apt to want to talk and Liza didn’t feel like it. Better look as though she were asleep.

  She let Kat give her a meal at noon, but said she was still drowsy and put on another pretence of sleep to keep Kat at bay. The sunshine had gone by then and rain was beating on the windows. She wondered if it had spoiled the archery competition. She fell asleep in earnest then, but woke later to find that the bleeding had almost stopped, and that there were hooves and voices in the farmyard below. Then came the tramp of feet on the stairs. Pulling her pillow up behind her, she propped herself into a sitting position just as Richard and Peter came in.

  As cheerfully as possible, she said, “I am better. I’ll be up soon. Did you have your archery in spite of the rain?”

  “I won the crossbow competition,” said her father-in-law. “Harry Rixon won the longbow final, with Sim Hannacombe second. Peter here only got third. The rain started just afterward. We’ve something to tell you, though.”

  They came to her bedside and looked down at her, their faces solemn. Richard said, “Father Bernard made an announcement at the end of the service. He said that news has come that the king’s mind has gone cloudy again but the queen, Queen Marguerite, is raising a host in his name, to keep the York family out of power. The She-Wolf is howling for the pack to gather, that’s what Father Bernard said, and the Sweetwaters will answer the call. Sir Humphrey and Reginald are going, Reginald being a widower with no children, while Walter’s got a wife and youngsters. Walter’s staying home. But Master Humphrey’s calling up men from the Sweetwater tenants.”

  Liza stared at them.

  “They all came to the archery butts—the Sweetwaters, I mean,” Peter said. “They watched the competition and then called us together. Just then the downpour started, so they hurried us all off the green, just as if they were herding a flock of sheep, and right into Sweetwater House to talk to us in their great hall.”

  Richard nodded. “I’ve never been inside that house before. From outside, you can see the gatehouse and that lookout tower with battlements round the top, and there are all those windows like lance heads, all with glass in, but it’s plain inside. The hall’s quite small! There’s panelling, but nothing fancy about it, and only a couple of tapestries. The rest of the wall’s full up with a lot of antlers, and weapons hanging in patterns. I got the feeling the Sweetwaters aren’t as rich as they’d like us to think. Just hanging on the skirts of the gentry, that’s them.”

  Liza, wondering if her father-in-law had paid any attention whatsoever to what was said or done inside the Sweetwaters’ hall, or had spent all his time there memorising his surroundings, said, “But when you were in there, what happened?”

  “They sorted us out,” said Peter. “They still want their land tilled and the village trades to go on, so they’re not taking all the men. But they’re taking Edward Searle’s son Toby. Geoffrey Baker’s going and so are Harry Rixon and Sim Hannacombe, and some of their farmhands and from here at Allerbrook, either I must go, or Father. They don’t want Higg or Roger.”

  “Both too old,” Richard said, “and Roger too bent-backed anyhow. But even with Higg and Roger still here, we’d be shorthanded if Peter and I both went. We haven’t men enough on this farm as it is, since Betsy’s boy took his family away. All Kat’s young ones were girls. The Sweetwaters know all that. We’ll just take one of you, Sir Humphrey said to me, meaning me or Peter here. We can choose which. Generous of him! Dear God, we’ve got to follow the Sweetwaters to war whether we like it or no, just because we rent their land! It’s enough to make a man puke.”

  “But which of you…?” Liza’s mouth had gone dry. Peter was the younger man, the stronger one. The thought of being left at Allerbrook with her father-in-law and no Peter for an unknown length of time was terrifying.

  “I said I’d go,” Richard told her. Relief flooded through her, only to be stemmed a moment later when he added, “I’m fit enough and Peter’s got work to do here. I said to him, you stay home and make a few more efforts to get this place populated. I’ll do the fighting. My father went to war a couple of times and there’s an old helmet of his somewhere. I’ve got my crossbow and I’ve been given a dagger. They handed out weapons from the ones they had hanging on their walls. We leave in two days.”

  It was more than two years before he came back, and by then they had all but given him up for dead.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HOPE AND FEAR

  Throughout those two years they rarely had reliable news. They never knew for sure what was happening or where. Scraps
of information filtered in sometimes, of course. Since her marriage, Liza had managed to get away from the farm only on rare occasions, and before Richard went away she had visited her parents in Dunster only once. However, Nicholas came to Allerbrook each year to collect his wool, sometimes bringing Margaret, too. They both came during the first summer of Richard’s absence, a couple of months after his departure, and they had a little news.

  “We get ships in Dunster harbour,” Nicholas said. “Smaller than they used to be, on account of the silting up, but some of them have come from London. The rumour is that Queen Marguerite means business and hates the Yorkists and wants to see every last man of them dead. King Henry’s woollier than your sheep and has nothing to say in the matter, and the Yorkists claim they’re loyal to him, but if they can’t convince Queen Marguerite of that, it won’t help them. Our cousin young Laurie has gone to join her forces, my dear,” he added to Liza, “and two of his brothers and a couple of our other cousins. The Luttrells called them up. She-Wolf or no, Luttrell said, while the king’s ill, the queen represents him and the Luttrells follow their legal lord. Or lady, as the case may be.”

  But none of that amounted to much, and after it came a long silence until Walter Sweetwater received word from his father and brother, and passed the information on to Father Bernard to announce from the pulpit. It was unhappy news. There had been fighting in the southeast of England and Harry Rixon would not return to his home. Nor would the two farmhands who had gone with him.

  A full two years had passed before Father Bernard announced one Sunday that the war was over, that they were now ruled by Yorkist King Edward IV, that King Henry VI with the wandering wits was a prisoner in the Tower of London, that the She-Wolf had fled the country with her son and the conflict was at an end. But still no word came from or about Richard Lanyon of Allerbrook, and the Sweetwaters did not come home, either.