The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  This was interesting, even rousing Peter at times from his fog of homesickness. The king, of whom he caught several glimpses, was a tall, blond, good-looking man with considerable presence and a broad smile, but the Duke of Gloucester was spare and dark and hazel eyed and though he was now the youngest brother of a king, in his boyhood he had more than once been a fugitive and at the age of twelve he had been riding around the country in armour, raising men and arms for Edward.

  The result was that he looked older than his years. Gloucester had a worried face which rarely smiled and an overdeveloped right shoulder, usually visible because he preferred lighter armour, for the sake of mobility. He said that the thickened shoulder came from being determined from boyhood to learn to handle a sword as big as Edward’s. He was known to have a great devotion to Edward. His motto was Loyalty Binds Me.

  The news was that Warwick was on his way south to enter London, and had sent orders to the London City Council to be ready to receive him. Edward had sent spies into the city, who reported that the City Council were in a frightened dither and the mayor had taken to his bed with a (presumably) diplomatic illness.

  “We’ll see what they all do when I’m at their gates,” said King Edward, addressing his troops, and when he tried it, what the City Council did was fling the gates open and welcome the king inside.

  After that, Warwick arrived, and Easter Sunday, which should have been a day of rejoicing and church bells ringing and happy congregations singing praise for the resurrection, instead was the scene of the Battle of Barnet, outside the city to the north.

  When he’d left Allerbrook, Peter had said to himself that if he had to fight in a battle, he would do his best. But he had never imagined either the horror or the sheer confusion of the reality. The Battle of Barnet, which had taken place in a thick morning fog on the edge of a marsh, had been as chaotic as this present campaign at Tewkesbury was.

  Peter had been brought along as an archer, but archers were of little use in such bad visibility and when their lines were attacked, all sense of order was lost. Everything dissolved into mist and muddle. Standards appeared and disappeared and were mistaken for other standards. Friend and foe could hardly be distinguished in the confusion and men on the same side attacked each other. The fully armoured knights, who should have been kept back ready to ride down enemy foot soldiers once they were running, somehow got into the fray. It was at that point that Peter seized his chance and an armoured enemy leg and acquired the horse he now wished he’d left alone.

  At the time, he was glad to get into the saddle because it felt safer. On foot, one was too vulnerable and too near, much too near the horrors that kept appearing and echoing out of the murk: the wet puddles which were not water but scarlet blood, the severed limbs, the piles of entrails, the trampled bodies, the maimed things that crept and wailed; all the dreadful sounds of despair and agony and death.

  Then, somehow or other, Richard of Gloucester, though wounded in the arm, materialised from the vapours with his trumpeter and standard-bearer still beside him. Familiar trumpet calls pulled his men together and there was something like an organised charge on the part of the royal forces, and as the sun at last struggled through the mist, King Edward was triumphant.

  And Warwick was dead.

  Thank God for that, had been Peter’s main thought. Now we can all go home. In a day or two, the king will disband us.

  Forty eight hours later a frantic messenger rode headlong into London with the news that no one wanted to hear. There was another army to fight. Queen Marguerite had landed in Devon, with her son Edouard of Lancaster and a force of French soldiers. There would be no disbanding. They must march for the west, and at once.

  Here at Tewkesbury they were supposed to be confronting the Lancastrian right wing, led by the Duke of Somerset (which to Peter felt odd, since he was a Somerset man himself). Still, unless they could escape from this labyrinth of sunken lanes, he couldn’t see how they were ever going to confront anybody. However, a surge of movement ahead and a glimpse of Gloucester, his waving right arm beckoning them onward, suggested that their leader at least had some idea of where he was going. He was taking them into a lane going westward, toward a small wooded hill.

  With a tightening of the stomach muscles, Peter saw glints of metal among those trees. There were armed men up there.

  Then they were out of the lane, with almost open meadow between them and the hill, except for a few elm spinneys and clumps of bush. Trumpets spoke. Men sorted themselves out—horsemen this way, foot soldiers that way, fully armoured knights to the rear, archers to one side, front row down on one knee, back row standing, all with bows drawn or wound. Peter found himself near Gloucester, with the two Sweetwaters only a few yards away. “See you give a good account of yourself!” Walter Sweetwater shouted at him across the gap. “Seeing you’ve got yourself a warhorse when you ought to be on your feet like the rest of my lot!”

  The stallion, sensing battle, plunged against the bit and Peter nearly replied that Walter could have the damned animal and welcome, but thought better of it in case he was taken at his word and summarily ordered out of his saddle so that Walter or Baldwin could have a spare mount and Peter be left once more among the foot soldiers, who in the eyes of mounted warriors were corn to be cut down.

  There was no time for more. There were other trumpets, distant ones, among the trees. The glints of metal were moving, were coalescing, were emerging from the green shadows…were charging straight down toward them. There were enemy archers hidden somewhere, too, the same, no doubt, whose volley into the lane had done such damage. From a spinney to the north came another flight of arrows, intended to wreak havoc in Gloucester’s forces before the main charge reached them. A shaft bounced off Peter’s helm. Another went straight into the flank of Gloucester’s horse, which reared with a scream and was at once struck by a second arrow, which went into its throat.

  The horse fell, kicking, and Gloucester extricated himself just in time, snatching his legs clear and throwing himself aside before the horse could roll on top of him. He rolled almost under the hooves of Peter’s stallion, which curvetted sideways to avoid him. Walter Sweetwater was one thing. Richard of Gloucester was quite another. Without pausing to think, Peter was out of his saddle. “You need a horse, sir. Take this one.”

  “My thanks!” Gloucester gasped, getting to his feet and grabbing the reins that Peter was offering him. “Who are you?”

  “Peter Lanyon, sir, of Allerbrook farm in Somerset.”

  “I won’t forget,” said Gloucester, already up and astride. Then he was gone, shouting to his trumpeter, and a moment later the enemy was on them. Peter, dashing aside to join the foot soldiers after all, wondered why he had done it, but found himself more relieved to be rid of that diabolical horse than afraid of his fate on foot.

  “Did you see that? Typical Lanyon!” Walter Sweetwater shouted to his son as the charge crashed into them. “I was going to give Gloucester my horse!” With a savage swipe of his heavy sword, he swept an enemy horseman out of his saddle. “Likely enough I’d have got another! Now Peter Lanyon’s going to get commended instead of me…!”

  “None of the Lanyons know their place!” Baldwin shouted back.

  The scrimmage was short. Somehow or other Gloucester’s forces held their shape, giving ground a little but not enough to matter. At the end of it, the Lancastrians retreated, Richard of Gloucester’s trumpets sounded yet again and this time it was Gloucester who was charging.

  Ten minutes later Edward of York’s standard, The Sun in Splendour, appeared behind the Lancastrians, borne at full gallop, with Edward and his standard-bearer leading a shouting, weapon-waving force straight at the Lancastrian rear.

  The Duke of Somerset’s forces wheeled in disorder, beset before and behind, broke and fled.

  It was over. Peter was not at all sure how he had managed to survive but here he was, still alive, with dents in his helmet, other men’s blood on his sword, a lot of
bruises but otherwise a whole skin. On this warm, velvety May night he was not lying dead on the field, but sitting by a campfire with half a dozen other men, including Ned Crowham, who had been with the king in that final charge from the rear, and Sim Hannacombe, who had stayed with Gloucester’s archers. Both had come through unscathed. They had all found each other afterward and as dusk fell, they had made their own campfire and were frying veal steaks in a pan along with chunks of bread, knowing that no further battle awaited them tomorrow.

  A figure loomed up from the twilight, cloaked and unremarkable except that its right shoulder was bulkier than its left. It squatted down beside Ned, who started, peered at the stranger’s face and then hurriedly got up and bowed, exclaiming, “My lord of Gloucester!”

  “Oh, sit down, all of you,” said Gloucester as the rest of them started to follow Ned’s example. “We’re all tired soldiers, aren’t we? We’ve all been frightened half out of our wits and wondered if we’d finish the day with our heads still on our shoulders.” He touched his left hand to his right upper arm and Peter realised that the bulkiness under the cloak was partly due to a padded dressing, over the wound that Richard had received at Barnet. He had marched to Tewkesbury and fought this long day through with a swordcut still not healed.

  “The news will be proclaimed tomorrow,” Richard said, “but I can tell you now that Edouard of Lancaster, the son of Queen Marguerite, is dead, and that the queen herself has been taken. She had fled to a house of nuns. The She-Wolf is caged and her cub is slain. The Duke of Somerset is a prisoner, too. Meanwhile, I am looking for a man called Peter Lanyon, of Allerbrook farm in Somerset.”

  “I am Peter Lanyon,” Peter said.

  “You gave me your horse.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s a good horse and it’s still alive and well. Do you want it back?”

  “Frankly, no, sir. I am not a knight. I found the beast nearly unmanageable,” Peter said, amid laughter from the others.

  “I’ll give you its price, then. Here.” A hand came out from under the cloak, with a leather bag in it, and Peter heard the coins inside clink before he felt their edges through the bag. “But there’ll be more, when we get to London. In giving me that horse, you rendered service far beyond the animal’s value in the market. I’ve spoken to the king and there’ll be a reward in accordance. We ride for London soon. You’ll ride with us.”

  It was an accolade but also a command.

  He was still homesick for his native combes, but he wouldn’t be seeing them again yet. Ned Crowham, who knew him well enough to guess at his feelings, said softly, “It’ll keep you from Allerbrook a while longer, but you won’t be empty-handed when you get there. Well done.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” said Peter to Gloucester.

  “That’s Lanyon that Gloucester’s talking to.” Baldwin Sweetwater, seated by a neighbouring fire with his father, nudged Walter and pointed. “I saw Gloucester’s face in the firelight just now when he went to join them.”

  “And he’s making a pet of Lanyon. God rot the Lanyons,” said Walter. “Richard Lanyon’s already got a hall the size of ours and a swollen head to go with it and the talk round Clicket is that he has dreams of one day building himself a house to outdo ours, never mind a mere hall!”

  “I’ve heard that,” Baldwin agreed. “But you’re his landlord. You can forbid it.”

  “I certainly will! You know,” said Walter, “it’s high time we finally got your sister Agnes married. A good marriage for her could carry us up in the world and put us beyond the reach of any Lanyon impertinence. Negotiations have fallen through twice, but somehow or other it’s got to be done. If I’d been quick enough to hand my horse to Gloucester before Peter Lanyon did, I might have asked for a rich marriage for her as a reward!”

  “The Courtenays or the Carews might have a connection in the marriage market,” Baldwin remarked. “Or there are the Northcotes in Devon—they’re a wealthy family. We haven’t tried in that direction, have we? We’ll enquire when we get back.”

  “I wonder,” said Walter thoughtfully, “what will happen now to poor deposed King Henry? If I were King Edward, I’d get rid of him. Just by existing, he’s a breeding ground for trouble, like a corpse collecting flies.”

  “Poor old Henry,” said Baldwin cynically. He added, “I wonder if the She-Wolf ever loved him?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Love’s for peasants—if it ever really happens at all, which I doubt,” said Walter Sweetwater.

  At Allerbrook the last tasks of the day were finished. Liza wanted to go to bed and made for the stairs, which meant crossing her workroom, since the stairs came down into one corner of it. She found Richard sitting at her desk and drawing something by candlelight.

  She knew what he was doing, for she had seen him at this before. She sighed a little. Like her quarrel with her mother and her lack of a second child, this was one more thing to worry about. Richard had been doing this a good deal in Peter’s absence and it would upset Peter if he knew. No, she silently corrected herself, when he knew. When he returned. “Are you designing another house, Father-in-law?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t look up but with his quill and the straight edge of a box, began to draw a careful, straight line across the paper in front of him.

  “But we have our beautiful hall.” She spoke very gently and with caution, afraid of annoying him, but impelled to speak through sheer anxiety. “Do we really need any more than that? We…we’re not…”

  “Not gentry like the Sweetwaters, you mean? But I intend us to be one day, my lass.” He tapped his drawing with the end of the quill. “I had some new ideas last night. If I can’t sleep, I often refresh my plans for the house I’m going to build one day. I mean it, you know. It’s the best way I can think of to make the Sweetwaters pay for the things they’ve done. In gnashed teeth, if nothing else!”

  “But even if you do build it, Father-in-law,” said Liza cautiously, “won’t it cost a lot? And won’t the Sweetwaters put up the rent? Or forbid you to build, even!”

  “It won’t be cheap, but I’m saving. It might take years but I’ll get there in the end. You’re right to fret about the Sweetwaters, though. I’ve been cudgelling my brains over them, my girl. Walter Sweetwater let me build my hall because he didn’t think I’d ever finish it! When I did, he made his gesture with that rabbit rent, damn him, and left it at that. But a whole house…yes, he might well forbid me.”

  In view of the likely cost, Liza rather hoped so but wisely held her tongue.

  “What I need to do,” said Richard, “is buy Allerbrook from the Sweetwaters—buildings and land. The freehold, in fact. Then I can put up what buildings I like. Only I’ve still got to find a way of making them sell!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  OUT OF THE PAST

  “Is there any news of my mother?” Liza asked across the supper table.

  Richard Lanyon, who had just returned from visiting Dunster, shook his head as he sat down. “Your brothers say they send gifts to her sometimes and get messages back—by word of mouth. She says she’s well. But they have to send by a servant. She won’t see family. Her messages say that she has a call to religion and is living in permanent retreat.”

  “She has a kind of loyalty to Herbert Dyer, I suppose,” Liza said. “It’s plain she hasn’t told them what really happened.”

  “He still sends money to support her, to be fair to him,” Richard said. “I fancy she’s afraid to see her family in case they worm the truth out of her. Not that he’s stepped out of line since then. How he hates the sight of me when I turn up in Washford. I laugh to myself, watching him curdle like milk in thundery weather with the effort of being polite to me.”

  “Did all go well in Dunster, Master?” Roger wanted to know as Betsy and Kat served out the food.

  “Aye, good enough. The Weavers are pleased with our clip and they’ve got two extra looms. I fancy our share of the profits could go up. I took a look at o
ur hay meadow before I came in and it’s about ready for scything. We’ll have a surplus to sell if the weather holds. Pity Peter’s not here to lend a hand.”

  There was a silence. Richard glanced across the table at Roger and Higg. Higg had lost weight in the past year or two. He was not the oxlike individual he had once been and his formerly tow-coloured tangle of hair was grey. As for Roger, his stoop was more pronounced than ever and his back was humped at the top of the spine.

  “Peter ought to be here!” Richard said abruptly. “Fighting’s over, so we heard, finished last month, and the Sweetwaters are home and so is Sim Hannacombe, but all we’ve had is Sim telling us that Peter hasn’t been released from service yet. He’s alive at least, which is a mercy. I’m thinking to ask Sim if his two younger sons could come and work here. They’ll have to leave home anyway once they’re grown. They’re thirteen and eleven now and big enough to be useful and I’d pay ’em something. Not much because I’m saving, but something.”

  “That ’ud help,” Higg agreed.

  Richard started to say, “If only…” and then stopped, glancing at Liza and then to where four-year-old Quentin, who had had supper earlier, was seated in one of the hall window seats, solemnly experimenting with a spindle. A kitten was beside her and she was gently discouraging it from wanting to play with the thread. At four, Quentin already had a way with animals. Liza, recalling how the ponies at Dunster had come to her call, thought that Quentin was very much a Weaver, in more than one way.

  Richard’s mind seemed to be running on similar lines. “Looks like Quentin’s going to be handy at spinning and weaving, Liza,” he was remarking. “Just like you. She’s getting to look like you, too. She’s a good child. Maybe if that elder Hannacombe boy shapes well, we could make a match between them one day. Sim would like that. The boy’s future would be made and if he and Quentin stop here, the Lanyon blood’ll go on, if not the name.”