The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  Higg looked at her unhappily and coughed. When he had finished coughing, he said, “Wish Betsy were here. Can’t ’ee send for Betsy?”

  Liza found Tommy at the foot of the attic stairs, waiting for her to come down. “He shouldn’t be left alone,” she said.

  “He won’t be. We’ll see someone watches by him. How do you think he is?”

  “Very ill. He wants his wife. Tommy…”

  “We’ve a customer staying at the inn and setting off today for home—and that’s in Hawkridge. Allerbrook’s hardly out of his way. I’ll ask him to take a message.”

  “Thank heaven,” said Liza, “that the shearing’s over and we’ve got the hay in.”

  “There’s my sensible sister! And now,” said Tommy, scanning her thoughtfully, “I think you’ve had misery enough, what with our mother, and hearing the news about Arthur and Dickon, and now all this worry about Higg. We’ll look after him. You go out and walk the way you did before you were married. I remember even though I was so young! Take the air and leave Higg to us. I’ll see that word goes to Allerbrook, never fear.”

  “I still like to walk,” Liza said. “At Allerbrook, when I have a little time to myself, I go walking on the moor and I enjoy gathering bilberries there when it’s the season. Yes, I’ll go out. Just for a while.”

  The air was fresh after the rain, as though the two wet days had washed the air clean. If she were not so anxious about Higg, walking through the village would be a delight and it was pleasant even as things were. She knew her family could be trusted to give Higg the best of care for an hour or so. Stepping out briskly, Liza made her way through the narrow street around the foot of the castle, and wandered on over the crossroads where the track came down the castle hill and continued on to Alcombe.

  She had set out with no particular aim but her feet, as if they knew where they were going, took her down West Street, and turned off across the flat little bridge over the mill leat, which had been made before William the Norman ever set foot in England. She walked on beside the gurgling water in its narrow channel, passing the mill, its wheel turning slowly in the leat which farther on rejoined the Avill River. Crossing another small bridge, she found herself turning into a tiny path on her left. It led into a dell that earlier in the year would have been full of bluebells. It was just a grassy place now, with a few daisies and yellow dandelions in it.

  On the far side was a fallen tree, not the one on which she and Christopher had once sat, but very like it. It wasn’t recent, though, for its bark was gone, exposing the smooth grey wood below. Being sheltered by overhanging trees, it was also dry, despite yesterday’s rain. It was just as good a seat as the other had been and a man was sitting on it now, studying a book. The sun had laid a shaft on his head, as if deliberately. He had a tonsure, but it was ringed with thick, springy hair the colour of fire.

  It was as though she had known he would be there and had come to meet him.

  “Christopher?” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  LOVE AND DEATH

  Christopher stood up, closing his book. “Liza!”

  They stood for a long moment, speechless, until he said hesitantly, “It is Liza, isn’t it? It’s been so long….”

  “Of course I’m Liza. Have I changed so much?”

  “No. Hardly at all. It’s just that…I come here quite often. I think I do it so as to sit and read in a place where the memories would keep me company. But now the memory has become real and taken me by surprise. What brought you here?”

  “I think I was looking for memories, too. Or did I know you’d be here? I can’t tell. My feet just brought me.”

  “How are you? You’re married, of course? Yes, I can see your wedding ring. Are you happy? With—Peter Lanyon, is that the name?”

  “Yes. He’s kind and I’m fond of him. He’s away at the war now.”

  “And you pray for his safety every night?”

  “He is safe. We know that now. He just hasn’t been released from service. But yes, I prayed every night and every morning until the fighting was over,” said Liza.

  She walked across the dell and they sat down, side by side, on the log. Christopher put his book down at his feet and turned to her. “I’m glad things have gone well for you. Have you children?”

  “A daughter, four years old. Quentin, we called her, after my grandmother. I had…some bad luck with children.”

  “Some families do, and no one knows why. I sometimes think God doesn’t want the human race to multiply too fast.”

  “Are you still at St. George’s?” Liza asked.

  “No. I’m back in the castle now, chaplain to the steward and servants there. When I first left the priory I thought, perhaps now I can make some enquiries—find out how you were. But I kept hesitating, wondering if I should. I’m a full priest now. I have been for years.”

  “Yes. I supposed that would happen. Is the castle very different, without the Luttrells?”

  “The castle is a disgrace!” said Christopher with energy. “That’s how it always is when landlords stay away. I’ve urged the servants to attend to their duties better, but I’m not the steward and the man who is is bone idle. The land is nearly as bad and so is the village. So many roofs in need of repair! You’re visiting your family, I suppose? Are they well?”

  “Not all of them.” Liza began to explain. With kindness in his eyes, Christopher listened to her account of her mother’s illness and the deaths of her brother and cousin, and now of Higg’s illness, too. She did not mention Herbert Dyer’s dishonesty but kept to the story her mother had chosen to tell, of a desire to retire from the world and take refuge in an abbey. Christopher asked no awkward questions.

  “Everything hasn’t gone well for you, after all. You have many troubles,” he said. “I am sorry. I will pray for Higg’s recovery.”

  “Christopher, are you happy as a priest? Was it the right thing for you after all?”

  “I suppose so. I’ve given myself to it. Sometimes I think that what I took to be a call, back when I was a boy, was just a case of a passionate youth looking for somewhere for passion to go. Like a river seeking the sea. I’m not sure I found the right sea in the end, no. But I have done my best. There’s no going back, Liza. Not for me, or for you.”

  “No, I know. I’m glad we’ve met again, though. Oh!”

  “What is it?”

  Liza was looking at his left hand. “You still have my ring. You’re wearing it on your little finger.”

  “Yes. I had it on a chain round my neck while I was in the priory, but now I wear it openly. No one has ever questioned it.”

  There was silence while she absorbed the significance of that. “I’ve often thought of you, you know, wondered what you were doing, whether you were in good health and if…whether…”

  “Whether I ever thought of you?” Christopher asked, and suddenly there it was again, that tough grin which had always made her insides turn somersaults. “Well, now you know that I have. As your ring testifies.”

  There was another silence until Liza said, “I’ve been over twelve years married and I’ve no complaint of Peter. And you’re a priest. I’m glad we’ve met again, glad you didn’t forget me, but…”

  “I know,” said Christopher, and stood up, holding out his hand to her. “Come. Let us part as friends and remember each other in our prayers. I am happy to know you’re safe, and loved by your husband.”

  “I wish you well in your efforts to make the castle servants work properly!”

  “Hah! Absentee landlords!” Christopher said, and they parted, with a handclasp, an exchange of smiles and one backward glance from Liza as she walked away.

  Her step was light and her heart sang all the way back to the Weavers’ house, although her mood changed quickly when she got there, for Tommy met her at the door, his normally cheerful young face unnaturally solemn.

  “Higg is very unwell indeed,” he said. “I didn’t use our customer as a messenger to
Allerbrook after all. I’ve sent one of Laurie’s boys to Allerbrook to fetch his wife, at once.”

  Betsy was in Dunster by suppertime that same evening. She was well over fifty now and she was drawn with exhaustion by the time she arrived, on a broad-backed Allerbrook pony from which she toppled rather than dismounted. She refused, however, to sit down or take any food or drink or even remove her cloak before she had seen Higg. Liza took her to the attic.

  Higg was lying on his back, his mouth half-open and his face sunken. He was barely conscious and his breathing now was very bad, in spite of all Elena’s herbal remedies and the steam inhalations recommended by the physician who had been called.

  “He’s all dry-skinned. He b’ain’t sweating,” said Betsy, feeling his forehead. “He did ought to sweat. Higg, can you hear me, love?” His eyes half opened and a weak hand stretched out to her. Betsy seized it. “You got to sweat. It’ll mean being very hot but it’s best for ’ee. We’ll put more covers on ’ee and see if that does it, that and this June weather.”

  “If only we hadn’t been caught in that rain,” said Liza desperately. “I feel it’s my fault.”

  “He could of got wet through out in the fields, just the same,” said Betsy. “He often has, only it never used to matter. Thirty-five years we’ve been wed. Oh, Higg!”

  Her face creased suddenly, and Liza put an arm around her. “We’ll get him through. Come. Let’s fetch some more covers.”

  Elena helped to carry extra rugs up to the attic and spread them over the patient. “I’ll brew some more medicines and fetch another bowl of hot water. The physician gave us something to put in it, some sort of balsam, he says it is, to clear the chest. And I’ve an ointment to rub in.”

  “And water,” said Betsy. “He should have water. Feverish like that, he’ll have a thirst. Have you got well water?”

  “Yes. I’ll fetch a jugful. Now, you take off that cloak and come down for some supper, even if you eat it quick. You’ve had a long journey. You can sleep up here if you want. We’ll put another pallet down. But one of us’ll be here and awake all night. Don’t worry.”

  The warm June night descended, with stars in a sky so clear that the recent downpour seemed unbelievable. The window was closed against draughts and a candle was set on the sill to light the vigil.

  Betsy, wearied beyond bearing, slept on the second pallet alongside Higg’s, while Liza sat up, relieved by Elena at half past three in the morning. From time to time they gave Higg water to drink, or doses of Elena’s medicine, and Elena, coming on duty, brought a towel and a basin full of hot water mixed with the physician’s aromatic balsam. Deftly she sat Higg up so that with his head under the towel to keep the steam in, he could breathe the scented vapour.

  Liza returned in the morning after a snatched breakfast. She found Betsy and Elena sitting one on either side of him, their faces anxious. “Has the fever broken yet?” she asked.

  Miserably, Betsy shook her head.

  It went on all that day and all the next night. Betsy kept vigil that night, refusing to rest although Elena was there with her. At daybreak both of them took some hurried food and then collapsed into exhausted sleep while Liza, who had slept, took over. This, the third day of Higg’s illness, wore wretchedly on. Hot and dry, drawing breaths that sounded as though they were rattling over shingle, he lay and tossed but no sweat came. Toward evening, Tommy went to fetch the parish priest.

  The last rites were spoken over Higg, who managed to croak some weak responses. The priest was still there when Higg, who had been propped up on pillows to ease his breathing, was seized with a paroxysm of coughing and could not stop. It grew worse and worse and his eyes became huge and dark as he fought for breath. When he began to cough up blood, spraying the covers and the wall beside him, the priest said, “Take his wife away,” and Liza, though Betsy resisted her, somehow persuaded her out of the room and kept her out until it was all over.

  When he had been tidied by some of the other women and moved to another room where there were no bloodstains, Elena and Liza took Betsy, weeping, to say goodbye to him. She clung to his hand and called his name as though still hoping that he would answer, and it took some time before they could coax her to leave him. They took her to the bedchamber Liza was using, where they induced her, though still with difficulty, to eat something, and gave her a drink of honeyed wine which Elena said would help her to rest. Then they put her to bed and stayed with her until she slept.

  Liza shared the bed with Betsy that night, and when they both woke in the dead hours of the night, shared her tears.

  In the usual course of events, Higg would have been buried in Clicket, with people who knew him well to gather at the graveside. As it was, he was laid in the churchyard of St. George’s, and few of those present knew him at all. There were plenty of them, however. The Weavers turned out in force and so, in neighbourly solidarity, did many other Dunster folk.

  “Well, he went off with an escort I’m proud of,” Betsy said to Liza when the funeral refreshments, arranged in the Weavers’ house, had been consumed and the crowd had gone. She had got over her tears and borne herself with dignity all through the ceremony, though Liza saw, with sadness, that overnight she seemed to have grown bent and lined. “Now we’ll have to go home, I suppose. Can’t leave Kat and Roger and your father-in-law to manage all alone.”

  “Father-in-law was talking of bringing in the two younger Hannacombe boys,” Liza said. “They’re old enough to be useful.”

  Betsy sat heavily down in the window seat of the Weavers’ big room. “I can’t do the ride tomorrow, not so soon. I’ve got to do it sometime but I’d be that thankful for another day, to get my breath back, like.”

  “Of course you shall have another day,” said Liza. “Spend tomorrow how you like. Sleep, or walk in the garden, whatever you want. My family won’t mind. We’ll go home the day after.”

  The weather, as though that one rainstorm had cleared the air of trouble, had since then remained pleasant—warm without being hot. In the morning Betsy went back to the churchyard to stand for a while beside the filled grave. “I want to be near ’un. Can’t help thinkin’ he’ll be lonely when I go home.”

  Liza went with her, but sensing that Betsy wanted to be alone, said that she would go for a walk by herself and call at the churchyard on the way back, to see if Betsy were still there. “We can go back to dinner together,” she said.

  “All right. Just let me be. I want to cry a bit on my own.”

  “I’ll come back soon,” Liza said, and moved away toward the churchyard gate into West Street. Presently she reached the lane by the mill leat and once again, she took the track toward the dell. Once again, it was as though her feet were choosing where she should go.

  And once again, Christopher was sitting, reading, on the fallen log. As before, he stood up as she came toward him, and another shaft of sunlight shining from behind Liza’s head turned the ring of springy hair around his shaven poll to the colour of flame.

  “I hoped you’d be here,” Liza said and her voice shook, so that he came to take her arm and steer her to the log, to seat her on it.

  “Liza, what’s happened? Something is wrong. I can tell.”

  “Higg died. We buried him yesterday.”

  “Ah. Yes, I wondered. I visited the monks yesterday—some of them are my friends and I wanted to see how their herb garden did now that I’m not there to look after it—and when I left them, I passed the churchyard and saw that a burial was taking place. I suppose it was his. I’m sorry.”

  “He was kind. He was always kind. When I first went to Allerbrook—that’s the name of our farm—I felt so strange, so far from home. He made me a carved wooden platter as a gift, my first Christmas. His wife, Betsy, is kind, too, and she’s heartbroken. She’s sitting by his grave now. She didn’t want me to stay with her. They’d been married for thirty-five years. We tried so hard to save him. We tried and tried but…”

  “Liza. Dear Liza. Don’t
you go breaking your heart. You’re still too young for that.”

  “Everyone’s dying!” Liza cried out. “My brother Arthur’s been killed, and my cousin Dickon and though I know now that Peter is alive, it seems to me that I spent forever wondering if I’d see him again. And my mother…I’m afraid for her! I didn’t tell you everything. She’s not herself anymore. She’s turned her back on life while she’s still living it. I know she’s in good hands. I know I should be more sensible. I’m fortunate in so many ways. I’m alive and well and have a good home and a daughter and Peter will come back. But it’s all so dreadful. If I’m breaking my heart, I can’t help it. Sometimes one just can’t be sensible.”

  “No, I know,” said Christopher, and his arms went around her instinctively. She never afterward recalled deciding to put hers around him in turn; they went there by themselves. She and Christopher clung together as they had done in the old days, but more strongly, more intensely. Their mouths locked. He pushed her coif off just as he used to do and his fingers were in her hair and hers deep in the circle of his thick red locks, rejoicing in their texture, their vitality.

  The grass in front of the log was short and soft. They slid down to it easily. Liza found herself staring into his eyes, thinking once again how beautiful, how rare was that warm amber brown, those golden flecks. She freed her mouth and said, “We shouldn’t, we mustn’t, but I need you to hold me. I need someone…”

  “And I need you. Liza, my only love, there has never been a day when I didn’t think of you. My dear and my sweetheart, we should have been married. We were meant to be married. They shouldn’t have dragged us apart.”

  “There’s been too much death,” said Liza brokenly. “Just too much.”

  “I know.”

  All the time their bodies, driven on by the need to outwit death, to perform the one act which could create life, to fling a challenging gauntlet at the old man with the skull face and the scythe, were finding ways to reach each other. Clothing was pushed aside, untied. As they glided together, a tangle of unspoken emotions blazed into life; all the old desire, all the old frustration at its denial; all the bitter grief and secret rage they had felt at being wrenched away from each other. Their union began with a vigour which was near to violence, with anger in it as well as passion; almost a vengefulness.