The storm passed, dissolving into simplicity and love; Christopher nuzzling, comforting, murmuring endearments, giving himself as a gift; Liza laughing and crying, clinging and giving herself in reply, seeking to engulf him as he sought to be engulfed.
Never had it been like this with Peter. Peter had given her satisfaction and sometimes enjoyment, but not like this, this fury melting into tenderness, this growing, spreading tree of joy within her and this unbelievable bursting into bloom at the finish; a flowering the colour of fire, which flamed and died softly away, to leave her marvelling.
They lay entangled, holding each other, until at last it seemed time to get up, to resume their garments and to sit down, wonderingly, side by side on the dry grey log and look into each other’s faces.
“I didn’t mean that to happen,” said Christopher. “But…”
“I’m glad it did. Glad. I’ve wanted it to happen ever since…I think ever since we met at the fair. Do you remember? Oh, Christopher, how can I go back to Allerbrook now? Though I must,” said Liza, bewildered. “I can’t, but I must. There’s Quentin, my daughter. I’ve a life there. And…you must go back to the castle. There’s no way forward for us. There was just this…this one morning.”
“It’s real, you know,” said Christopher. “What I feel for you. It always was. It’s as though it comes from outside, drawn up into me as a tree draws up sap from the earth. Today it burst into leaf and blossom.”
“You see it as that? I had such a picture in my mind just now, when we were together!”
“Did you? It seems we think together. Our minds must be linked. I believe they would be linked even if one of us were removed to Cathay.”
“I shall have to remove to Allerbrook soon. Darling, I must go. How long have we been here?”
“I don’t know. Half an hour? Most of eternity?”
“Do I look dishevelled? Am I fit to be seen?”
“Your coif isn’t straight and there’s mud on your face!”
“There’s mud in your hair!”
They parted, clasping hands once more in farewell, looking at each other with longing but managing, bravely, to smile. Liza made her way slowly back up West Street, wondering how it was possible to be filled with loss and sorrow but also to be insanely happy, all at once. She found Betsy still sitting alone beside Higg’s resting place.
“Betsy, please come. I’m sure that grass is damp, out in the open like this.” The grass in the dell wasn’t damp. It was cool and soft and a perfect bed for lovers. Don’t think about that! She helped Betsy up, took her arm and led her out of the churchyard by the main gate.
“Where did you walk to?” Betsy asked as they went.
“Oh, just down to the river. I stood there awhile and looked at the water. One can watch flowing rivers for hours, though I don’t have much spare time to watch the Allerbrook, of course.”
“We won’t have much spare time now Higg’s gone, Mistress.”
“No,” Liza agreed, “I don’t suppose we will.”
They walked on, arm in arm, two unremarkable women with their plain headdresses and workaday dresses. One of them was still in a nightmare of bereavement and the other had just been to heaven and back, but no one would have guessed it.
Christopher, returning to the castle, knew that he should be racked with guilt. He had betrayed his vocation, his priesthood, his celibacy. Shame should be drowning him. Instead, he felt as though strength and energy were pouring through him. Liza was gone. They might never meet again. But they had met; just once in their lives they had met as fully as two human beings ever could and he was glad, glad, glad. Whoever thought he should feel guilty did not know what living was.
The castle’s state of neglect struck him anew as he went into the hall. He had made repeated attempts to stir the servants up, but Master Hilton never gave him any support and they always slid back into their old ways before long. Eventually he had given up. This, he suddenly decided, was going to change.
Catching sight of the steward, Christopher advanced on him. “Master Hilton!”
“Ah. Father Christopher. I have been looking for you. I have heard of a most interesting devotional book for sale, which—”
“Never mind that now,” said Christopher. “There’s something I want to say to you. The Earl of Pembroke is dead, but he has heirs. One of these days, a new landlord may well descend on this castle. What do you imagine he will think of it?”
“I don’t understand,” said Hilton disdainfully. He had sought the services of Father Christopher, but since Christopher’s arrival, he had sometimes wished he’d chosen differently. There was something positively crude in Christopher’s energy. Priests were supposed to be gentlemen and they should be quiet, refined, devoted to prayer and worthy conversation. Priests shouldn’t stride about pulsating with redheaded vitality. It was not the way either a man of the cloth or a gentleman should behave.
Christopher, on his side, eyed the elegantly dressed Hilton with annoyance, wondering how a man so plainly fastidious in his person could tolerate such squalid living conditions.
“What he or they will think,” said Christopher, kicking the mouldy rushes at his feet, “is that these rushes stink, that the hangings are rotting and no one has as much as brushed them, let alone repaired them, for the last hundred years. That every floor in this place needs a broom and every cooking pan needs some sand and a whole lot of elbow grease, and every table and settle and chest needs a taste of beeswax! The only decently kept room in the castle is the chapel! The rest is something a half-witted peasant wouldn’t want to live in!”
“My good man, I’ve said to you before, you’re here to lead us in prayer, not to set us a housewifely example! You have no authority to speak to me in this fashion.”
“Authority? Well, if necessary, I can and will write to Pembroke’s family and report the lax way you perform your duties. I expect they’d be interested, whoever read the letter. I’ve got another form of authority, too.”
“Which is?”
Christopher grinned. Liza would have recognised that grin. “I’m not taller than you are,” he said sweetly. “But I’m stronger and sturdier than you. It’s probably due to all the gardening I did at the priory.” He flexed a biceps and regarded it complacently. “I advise you to cooperate with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A MATTER OF A DOWRY
“So once again,” said Agnes Sweetwater bitterly, “I am not good enough. It’s always the same. They come and look me over, as though I were a mare they might want to buy. At times I expect them to look at my teeth and feel my legs! And then comes the little matter of money—and land.”
Walter Sweetwater regarded his daughter unhappily. She was a good girl, with no foolish, romantic notions. She was a Sweetwater through and through—cool grey eyes, bushy brown hair which her maid had to thin out and shave at the front, a build that would one day turn to flesh but not, please God, until after she had produced a flourishing family of brown-haired, well-built, cool-eyed youngsters. Unluckily, before she could start producing the family she needed a husband, and the kind of man he wanted for her always expected more dowry than the Sweetwaters could provide.
The ladies’ solar at Sweetwater House was upstairs, at the southwest end of the building, with windows on three sides, providing views of farmland, river and village. It possessed a wide hearth, comfortable, cushioned seats, a table and some shelves to hold such things as lutes, packs of cards, workboxes and a backgammon set. The beamed ceiling was high and the light was good. The room was big enough for a dozen ladies, but at the present time it was used by only four, for Agnes Sweetwater’s mother had been dead for a year or more, and two girl cousins who had lived with the Sweetwaters for a time had been retrieved by their parents and married off. Married well, moreover. Their parents had been more skilled at such negotiations than the Sweetwaters were, it seemed. The remaining four were Baldwin’s kittenish wife, Catherine, Agnes herself, and their maids. Cat
herine, head bent over her embroidery, was keeping out of the conversation and her maid was not there, but Agnes’s woman, Maude, was seated by her mistress.
“I am sorry for your disappointment,” Walter said awkwardly. He was never quite at ease in the feminine surroundings of the solar. They always made him want to be out practising martial skills on his warhorse, or else in the fields discussing sheep with Edward Searle. “Young Northcote is half a Carew and both families are rising in the world and have an eye to gain, it seems. They want land. I would settle land on you gladly if I had it to spare, but I haven’t. You liked Giles Northcote, then?”
“Yes, Father. I did, as it happens.”
Maybe his daughter wasn’t as free of romantic nonsense as he had supposed. Her voice was sad and the maid gave her mistress a worried glance. Maude was attached to Agnes and had done much to comfort her during the sad days after the death of his wife. She was also pockmarked and gossipy and he didn’t, personally, like her much, but when Agnes did marry, Maude could go with her and then he wouldn’t have to see that pitted face about the place anymore. If only there were a way to bring this marriage off!
“Do you think Giles took to you, as well?” he asked.
“I think so, yes,” Agnes said.
Well, and why not? Agnes had good health, clear skin and a pleasant smile. Any young man might find her attractive. But Giles Northcote, like Agnes, was only twenty-one and his parents expected him to do as he was told. If Agnes’s dowry were not up to standard, he would be told that he couldn’t marry her and he would have no say in the matter.
If only that damned Peter Lanyon hadn’t got to Gloucester’s side with his confounded horse so quickly at Tewkesbury. If only Walter Sweetwater had got in first!
Three days overdue, Liza thought. She had checked over and over again, counting on her fingers, but there it was. Seventeen days ago she and Christopher had made love in the dell at Dunster, and seen, in their minds, an image of a flowering tree. The flowers, it seemed, had seeded.
Had Kat or Betsy noticed anything? Neither of them now needed the cloths which younger women required at regular intervals unless they were carrying, and Liza looked after hers discreetly, soaking used ones in a lidded pail of salt water which she kept in a corner of the kitchen, changing the salt water night and morning, wringing out cloths when the salt had done its work and putting them in a pail of clean water, and finally, when it was all finished this time around, boiling the whole lot with some soap and drying them on some bushes at the back of the farmhouse if the weather was good, or around the little hearth in her room if not.
Liza didn’t think that the other women had realised the long gap since last time. Betsy was too sunk in her grief to notice anything at all and Kat was distracted by anxiety about Betsy. Neither was much good at keeping track of time, anyway. If either of them did mention it, she would say that all the distress over her mother, and Higg, and the news of her brother’s death had upset her. That would stave off disaster for a while.
But what then? Discovery was bound to come in the end unless nature released her. That was possible, even likely, given her history. But if nature failed her…
So many times she had prayed to God, to the saints, to let her carry a child to term. Now she must pray that she would not and that she would lose it soon enough to pass the matter off as a normal course, keeping secret the pain and the violence of the bleeding. If nothing happened…
If nothing happened, then there would be no shelter anywhere, no hope, no future. She would be cast out by the Lanyons and the Weavers alike, perhaps paraded through Clicket as a whore. She would do better to make some excuse to go out on a pony one day, and ride to the distant coast, where there were cliffs, and cast herself into the sea.
Meanwhile, she must appear as normal as she could. It was natural that she should seem downcast, of course. Seeing her mother in such an unhappy state had distressed her; so had the news about Arthur and Dickon, and so had Higg’s tragedy.
“But life goes on,” Richard had said at breakfast, only that morning. “No use looking so dismal, my girl. Death’s always with us. If it isn’t war, it’s illness and if it isn’t illness, it’s accident. Will Hudd managed to be down with a fever when the Sweetwaters were mustering, so he didn’t have to go off to fight, but then what happened at the very next haymaking? He gets careless with a scythe and takes the top off his left forefinger. Life’s full of trouble. I’ve got those two Hannacombe lads—Eddie and Jarvis—coming before the harvest, by the way. You’d better think about where they’re to sleep.”
Liza spent much of the day planning for them. They could lodge with Betsy, which would give her something to do. She need not feed them; they could have meals at the farmhouse. Betsy, approached on the matter, was agreeable, if agreeable were the word for mere acquiescence.
“Just as you say, mistress. Just as you say.” Every word that Betsy spoke sounded like a clod falling on a coffin. It would be an even chance whether the young Hannacombes brought cheerfulness back to Betsy, or Betsy’s sorrow crushed their youthful high spirits forever. Even Peter’s lively dog Rusty looked depressed when Betsy was about.
Liza tried to laugh about it with Richard. It was a huge effort, but he said with approval, “That’s better. You sound more like yourself. You’re a sensible wench.”
Sensible. That word again! Her parents had reared her to be sensible; then one day at a fair in Dunster a redheaded young man had noticed that she didn’t like seeing Bart Webber being exhibited as a cheat, and there went common sense, wiped out of existence like food stains from a dish. She’d tried to be sensible over the matter of Herbert Dyer, and look what had come of that! But if only she’d been sensible seventeen days ago in Dunster! Maybe tomorrow…
On waking next morning, she checked herself. There was nothing, except a tightness in her stomach and a slight sense of nausea.
Eighteen days since she and Christopher had been together.
Four days overdue.
“I’ve heard some pretty gossip down in Clicket,” Richard announced, arriving back from a foray into the village to meet Sim Hannacombe and Will Hudd in the White Hart and discuss details of whose barley was going to be reaped first when the time came. He sauntered into the kitchen, where supper was giving off fragrant smells. “What’s this? Pottage with fresh meat in it?”
“Chicken,” Liza said. “That hen that seems to have stopped laying. I decided we’d better eat her. I’ve put her in a stew and cooked cabbage to go with her and there’s fresh cheese and dumplings, too.” Sound cheerful, Liza. Why, oh why won’t nature set me free when she’s done it so often before?
“Get it on the table, and I’ll tell you my tale,” Richard said. “Betsy, leave scraping those pots and come and help me off with my boots, and don’t burst into tears this time because you’ll never take Higg’s boots off for him again. Mourning’s one thing, but it can’t go on forever.”
“He’s not been gone a month,” said Betsy resentfully, though she wiped her hands and went to help him as he sat down by the hearth.
“It feels like a year. Never seen such a lot of long faces in all my life. You ought to be happier, Liza. We know that Peter’ll be home one of these days. Thanks, Betsy. Just let me get some supper inside me, and then I’ll tell you my tale.”
A few minutes later, breaking bread into his stew, he said, “It’s more than one tale, as it happens, but they’re both about marriage. Gilbert Lowe was in the White Hart today, in a vile temper. That put-upon daughter of his, Martha, well, for all she’s not far short of forty, she’s run off with a sheepshearer, a widower fellow, about her own age. Gone off with him to Barnstaple, where he comes from, and wed him, too, all right and proper, and left Tilly Lowe to do all the work of the house unless Gilbert loosens his purse strings and takes on a maid or two. Whole tavern was laughing, except for Gilbert!”
“Well!” said Liza, determinedly showing the interest that would be expected. “I never would h
ave thought Martha would have so much spirit! But you said there was more than one tale?”
“Indeed there is. Before Gilbert came in with his long face as though his girl were dead instead of wed, the talk in the Hart was that the Sweetwaters have had another try at marrying off their girl, Agnes, and been turned down again. Same reason as before—her dowry’s too small. Adam Turner said they aim too high, and I reckon he’s right.”
“How did all that come to be known?” Liza asked. “Who spreads the Sweetwater business round the tavern?”
“Agnes has a maid with a tongue that wags like Rusty’s tail—or at least like Rusty’s tail when he hasn’t got it between his legs because Betsy’s making him sad. We all valued Higg, Betsy, but he did die cared for and with a priest at hand and that’s not so for everyone.”
It hadn’t been so for a girl on Castle Rock, years ago, but better not think of that.
Betsy, on the verge of weeping, rose and went to the kitchen, banging the door after her. Richard looked after her and sighed. “I suppose she’ll get over it one day. Getting back to my story—Agnes Sweetwater’s chatty tirewoman is partial to a tankard of ale now and again and that’s the way word gets round the White Hart. It seems that the man they had in mind is a Northcote—they’re a wealthy Devon family—and he’s related to another one, the Carews. His people want land as part of the dowry, but though Walter has more than just Clicket and the farms round here, he still hasn’t enough going spare and he can’t afford to buy more. That’ll be the third time the girl’s been said no to.” He sounded pleased about it.
“Well, I be sorry for her, if you’re not.” Kat didn’t care for Richard’s ruthless attitude to Betsy’s grieving and seized the chance to argue. “’Tweren’t her fault that her men went huntin’ and crashed into your dad’s funeral. It’s no good thing for a wench to be left unwed, like a dusty old bowl on a potter’s shelf that no one wants to buy. Martha Lowe was lucky to escape. Another couple of years and she’d have been past praying for. Agnes Sweetwater’s got as much right to a good man as any other, and once ’ee’ve got one, it’s the best thing in the world, even if it don’t last forever.” She gave a kindly glance toward Roger, who was so stooped now that his nose was almost in his pottage. “Better to have and lose than never have at all.”
The House of Lanyon Page 29