The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  He did not mentally put any of these things into words. They merely boiled inside his head, in bubbles that came and went, but one thing did emerge plainly and that was that he was damned if he would draw rein and let Peter cross that bridge in peace.

  Peter was already two thirds of the way over. Baldwin, however, rode onto the bridge at his end, blocking the way, and halted. So did Peter. Across the intervening space they glowered at each other.

  “Lanyon,” called Baldwin, as one who identifies the face of a foe. “Go back, if you please!”

  “Why? I was on the bridge first!” Peter retorted. Not long ago he had actually been glad to think that Baldwin and Walter had escaped from Bosworth, that they were not the two westcountrymen who had hanged for supporting their crowned king. Now all his normal dislike of the Sweetwaters and his resentment of the things they had done to his family surged up in him. He sat still, Plume’s reins in his left hand and his right hand placed aggressively on his hip.

  “Just go back!” Baldwin barked.

  “No, it’s my right of way. I’ll be across and out of your road in a matter of seconds. Back off yourself, Sweetwater!”

  To turn on the bridge would be difficult if not impossible, but though two thirds of the bridge was a long way for a horse to back, any pony bred wild on the moor, as Plume had been, could get out of trouble tailfirst if necessary. Baldwin’s mount had only just set hoof on the bridge. Either could have moved out of the other’s way quite easily. Neither did so.

  There was a pause, during which the fury inside Baldwin mounted, wiping out, for a moment, not only the throb of his wound but even the memory of it. Here, at last, was the thing he wanted: an enemy with whom he could engage, hand to hand, as murderously as he chose. Suddenly, violently, he swung himself to the ground, removing his sword belt, which he tossed over his saddle. He walked toward Plume.

  “Get down and fight it out. Put your weapons aside. I’m not crossing swords with you. That’s the way gentlemen settle their accounts and you’re merely a peasant with feet too big for his boots. Besides, it wouldn’t be a fair fight,” he added disagreeably. “I’ve had real training in arms and you have not.”

  “So courteous,” Peter said coldly. “Such knightly manners, just like your grandfather had.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Nicky! Get down, tether your pony and come here. Take charge of Plume and my weapons.”

  Nicky obeyed but looked worried. “Father! Should you?” he asked as he came forward to take Plume’s bridle.

  “I’m going to, anyway,” said Peter, handing his sword and dagger to Nicky. The Earl of Oxford had given his bow to somebody else and the poleaxe was probably still lying on Bosworth Field. He hadn’t seen it since the moment he was knocked out. “Take those, and move Plume back.”

  “You Lanyons always did think far too much of yourselves. This is where I show you your place,” said Baldwin, and launched himself.

  It should have been a fairly even contest. It was true that Baldwin had been trained in arms and he was the younger of the two by some years. Peter, however, had spent his life plodding behind ploughs, herding stock on horseback, cutting down trees, shearing sheep, scything corn and slaughtering pigs. Had Baldwin not been injured, they would have been virtually equals.

  Peter, unaware of the injury, assumed that they were, and Baldwin had briefly forgotten his wound. Both threw their strength into the fight. It was all in a confined space, the narrow width of the bridge. Blue Lyn, accustomed to human beings fighting one another, stood solidly. Plume, already being coaxed backward by Nicky, flattened his ears and backed faster, dragging Nicky with him. Baldwin’s preference was to use his fists, Peter’s to wrestle. Nicky tried to soothe Plume, but was himself nervous, afraid for his father.

  The combatants made little noise, beyond grunts, until the moment when Baldwin’s right fist on Peter’s chin sent Peter reeling backward and Baldwin tried to follow it up with his left. Then the wound in his left arm blazed into agony. He cried out and his arm dropped. At the same moment Peter recovered himself and leaped forward again, grabbing for Baldwin’s arms and closing powerful fingers right on top of the injury.

  In the brief struggle that followed, Baldwin’s curses sent birds flying in alarm from the trees. Somehow he broke that agonising grip, wrapped his arms around Peter and tried to heave him backward over the parapet of the bridge. Peter, savagely resisting, once more unknowingly closed his fingers over the wound and Baldwin, one arm suddenly paralysed, could not stop him from turning them both over so that now Peter was on top.

  They hung, struggling, half over the parapet and the ten-foot drop below. The parapet was grinding into Baldwin’s back and his left arm was useless. Peter, realising this though he didn’t understand it, used the edge of his left hand to chop at Baldwin’s right arm, momentarily paralysing that, as well. Twisting aside, he tried to shove Baldwin over and Baldwin, shaking life furiously back into his right arm, clutched at Peter and swung his legs up to encircle Peter’s calves. For one terrible moment it seemed that they must both go into the river.

  Then Nicky let go of Plume and ran to Peter’s aid, yanking Baldwin’s crossed ankles apart, seizing Peter’s feet and dragging him back. Baldwin finally slithered from under his enemy and fell, his heavy body hitting the water with a loud splash while Nicky hauled his father to safety.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Nicky!” Peter said, gasping, as he sat down with a thud on the floor of the bridge.

  “You could have been killed. I wasn’t going to let you be! And he started it! Oh, Father!”

  Peter got up and looked over the bridge. The river was fairly deep, certainly sufficient to break a fall. It wasn’t lethally deep, however, and it was mercifully free of boulders. Baldwin, dripping, had got to his feet. His right hand was clutching at his left arm above the elbow. He stumbled to the bank, but seemed unable to climb it. He stood there, head drooping, thigh-deep in cold peat water. At a run, Peter left the bridge.

  “Here.” He slithered down the bank, grabbed at Baldwin’s right elbow and hauled. Baldwin swore and shouted at him, but Peter merely retorted, “Don’t be a bloody fool. What do you take me for?” And as Baldwin was now too shaken and hurt to resist, Peter succeeded in dragging him up to dry land again. Once there, however, his opponent angrily wrenched himself free.

  “I’m all right. I’ve got wet, that’s all.”

  “Then go home and get dry!” said Peter, and went himself to fetch Baldwin’s horse. By the time he had brought it, Master Sweetwater had pulled himself together. He glared at Peter, face suffused with angry crimson under an interesting array of red bruises from Peter’s fists. He snatched Blue Lyn’s reins, although Peter noticed that he seemed able to use only his right hand, and tried to mount. He was so awkward, his left arm evidently useless, that Peter gave him a helpful leg up, which produced more curses. Once up, he gathered his reins in his right hand and rode off without ceremony, going back the way he had come, leaving a trail of drops from his wet clothes like a spoor behind him.

  Plume had backed himself right off the bridge and into the comforting company of the chestnut. Their owners went together to get them. “I think Master Sweetwater hurt himself, falling,” Nicky said.

  “It looked like it,” Peter agreed as he mounted, somewhat stiffly.

  “What about you?” Nicky asked with concern.

  “Only bruises and scrapes. He’ll have made for home by the straightest track, I suppose. We’d better use a different one! If he’s hurt, he might slow down and I don’t want to overtake him.”

  “All right,” said Nicky, getting into his saddle.

  They took a path they knew would bring them home, although it wasn’t straight, since it was a sheep track and meandered a good deal. Plume was still upset, tossing his head and pulling. He cantered ahead until a sharp drop in the ground ahead slowed him down. The path led down into a cup-shaped hollow thickly grown with golden moor grass, with the soft red of foxgloves here and t
here.

  It was dry and sheltered, a pleasant place, and others clearly thought so too, for it was occupied. A bay horse and a mealy-nosed moor pony, both saddled, were grazing quietly on the farther bank, tethered to the same small bush. Close to them, a man and a woman sat on the grass, side by side. They were not young and they were not making love. His arm was around her and she was leaning back into it as though against a pillow, but it was in a most companionable fashion. They had the air of friends, content to sit together.

  Peter halted his pony and looked at them. They saw him and looked back, their eyes widening in shock. They stood up, just as, with a thudding of hooves, Nicky rode up beside his father and halted there.

  Peter stared across the dell at the man with whom his wife Liza had been sitting, in that attitude of such hateful intimacy and peace. He turned his head and looked at his son.

  His world ended.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  FALLING APART

  So it has happened, Liza thought. She watched Peter as he looked, again and again, from Christopher to Nicky and back, and stared at her husband’s face, and knew that the long deception was over. There was no escape now. Without warning, not giving her even a moment in which to prepare, the truth had sprung from the grass to confront them all. She felt the blood drain from her face, knew that her very features had shrivelled.

  Nicky and Christopher themselves, as yet, only looked puzzled. Well, how often did Nicky gaze into a mirror? Presumably Christopher, as well, saw his own reflection only rarely. But they, too, were seeing Peter’s horror as he glanced between them and understanding had begun to dawn.

  Peter felt as though the breath had been punched out of him. The stranger at Liza’s side was in middle life, and what was left of his tonsured hair (tonsured—dear God, Margaret had said that Liza had once been in love with a priest of some kind!) was mostly a faded sandy, but there were a few traces of the original colour and they were a blazing red, just like the red of Nicky’s hair.

  Nor was that everything; far from it. The well-defined eyebrows, the unusual golden-brown eyes were identical. There was something dreadfully familiar about the shape of the man’s left hand, which had been curved around Liza’s shoulder. Peter’s eyes, drawn to the little finger by the silver ring which encircled it, recognised that shape at once. Familiar, too, were the planes of the face, the snub nose, the freckles—faint, as freckles usually were in older people, but there—the strong chin, and even the cluster of freckles on the chin. Nicky had them, too. This was Nicky’s face, as it would be, half a century hence.

  The awful silence had to be broken. Liza, with a dry mouth, took it upon herself to break it. “This…this is…is Master Christopher Clerk,” she said. “We met by chance.” She heard the defiance, the lie, in her own voice. “We are friends, that’s all,” she said desperately.

  “This is the man you once tried to run away with?” Peter asked coldly. Liza, shivering, put a hand to her mouth to stop herself from uttering a wail. Tears sprang into her eyes.

  “You, I take it, are Master Peter Lanyon?” said Christopher.

  “Yes. You had your arm round my wife. Not for the first time, I think.” There was a silence. Then Peter said, “Nicky was born as soon as was even remotely possible after I came back from Tewkesbury. I suppose you were carrying him already, Liza, my love. You must have been so relieved to see me ride in. In fact, now that I look back, you were.”

  Christopher had grasped the full situation by now. His wide eyes were fastened on Nicky’s face with an aching intensity. “But…” he said. And then stopped.

  “You are a priest,” Peter remarked.

  “Yes.” Christopher recovered himself. “Priests are men, you know.”

  Before he could stop himself, Peter had remembered Father Bernard and the tales about the parentage of Geoffrey Baker. He passed a hand across his face, and touched the places where Baldwin’s fists had landed.

  “Peter,” said Liza, “what’s wrong with your face?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Nicky had not been as quick-witted as Christopher. “I don’t understand,” he said. Peter turned to him. It hurt, far more than the bruises did. He had loved Nicky, for himself as well as because he was an heir for Allerbrook. He had sold his integrity at Bosworth to protect this boy—and on that bridge, not half an hour ago, this son of his had seized his feet and saved him from crashing headfirst into the river. Only, it seemed now that Nicky was no son of his at all. It felt as though something inside him were being slowly dragged apart by oxen pulling in opposite directions.

  Sooner than fling himself out of his saddle to hammer his fists on the ground and scream, sooner than abandon all pretence of dignity, he took refuge in extreme formality.

  “Nicky,” he said politely, “let me introduce you. This is Christopher Clerk, your mother’s lover and your natural father. Ride over to him and shake his hand. He is entitled to courtesy from his son.”

  Once more Christopher opened his mouth and then shut it again, this time without even uttering one syllable.

  “Peter,” Liza pleaded. “You can’t…it isn’t Nicky’s fault…!”

  “I haven’t said it is. I have only suggested that Nicky should show respect to his father, as is proper.”

  “I still don’t understand,” said Nicky hopelessly.

  “Let the boy alone,” said Christopher sharply. “If…even if I really did sire him, and I admit that he looks as if I did, you are still his father, sir. You have reared and educated him all these years. He looks like a fine boy and I thank you for your care of him.” He looked at Liza. “I’ll go now, unless your husband wants to knock me down. He can do so if he wishes. I won’t object.”

  It was an invitation that Peter almost accepted, but the fight with Baldwin, coming so soon after Bosworth, had drained that kind of violence out of him. Besides, the misery of this moment, of the loss, at the same moment, of both wife and son, was too great to be assuaged in such a commonplace and useless manner.

  “Just go,” he said. “Mount your horse and leave. But tell me first, where is your home?”

  “Dunster Castle. I’m the chaplain there.”

  “And a splendid example of priesthood to all your flock, I feel sure. You will see me there before long. For the time being…just go.”

  Christopher turned to Liza and held out his hand. “Farewell,” he said. “With all my heart, I mean it. Both halves of the word. Fare well.”

  “And you, you fare well, too,” said Liza.

  They clasped hands briefly. Peter watched but did not interfere. They let each other go. Christopher picked up a cap which he had put down on the grass beside him, clapped it on his head, went to the bay horse, attended to stirrups and girth, mounted and touched his heels to his horse’s sides. With a scramble of hooves the bay climbed out of the dell. A dark tail flicked as he vanished over the top and then horse and rider were gone.

  “You had better get on to your pony,” said Peter to Liza. “And we’ll go home.”

  “Father, what’s happening?” pleaded Nicky. His eyes were wide and frightened but Peter, looking into them, no longer saw the eyes of his son, only those of his rival, the man Liza had loved before she married him, and, it seemed, had never ceased to love, through all the years between.

  “I’m not your father,” he said sharply. “Haven’t I just said so?” The horror mixed with the dawning comprehension in Nicky’s face did touch him then, and he spoke more quietly as he added, “Your real father has just ridden out of the dell. You are his living image.”

  “You are out of your mind, boy!” Richard shouted at Peter. “Beat her and throw her out, the whore!”

  “If you call Liza a whore again,” said Peter, “I shall punch you on the nose.”

  He had called her that himself at first. After riding home in stony silence, the three of them had ridden into the yard, where Alfred, who was forking old straw out of the stable, had started to exclaim in we
lcome. Cutting him short, Peter had dismounted, gestured for Liza and Nicky to do the same, ordered Nicky to help Alfred see to the ponies, seized Liza’s arm and hustled her into the hall. Then, throwing her into a window seat so that he could stand over her, he let his rage explode into cursing and accusation.

  Liza, staring at him with huge, frightened eyes, said nothing until at last, when the need to breathe had made him pause, she said tremblingly, “I’m making no excuses. I love you, whether you believe it or not—”

  “Oh, yes! It’s easy to believe, of course!”

  “But I loved Christopher before I was married to you and…some things just don’t die.”

  “I wish I had died! I wish I had died at Tewkesbury or at Bosworth! Anything so as not to find out what I found out today!”

  “We met by chance not long ago and…then we met twice in that hollow, to talk. Only to talk, as friends.”

  “Friends! You were more than that in the past! Once, at least!”

  “Poor Nicky,” said Liza, and that was the moment when he came nearest to striking her.

  But at that moment he realised that his father had come in, presumably from the fields, since he was in dusty working clothes. He was listening from the doorway. Now Richard, turning crimson, burst into fury as well, hurling terrible invective at Liza, and would certainly have attacked her, except that at that moment, something in her terrified, tearstained face, had a startling effect on Peter.

  Ever since being hit on the head at Bosworth, he had had occasional headaches. They were growing fewer, but the force of his emotions now had brought one on and it felt like a jagged crack in his skull, through which an unbearably bright light was pouring. That light seemed to illuminate pictures inside his brain. They were pictures of Liza, his Liza: Liza in his arms, Liza weaving, cooking, tossing hay, laughing, crying, nursing babies; Liza young, Liza growing older and broader around the middle…Liza. Part of his life, which was unimaginable without her. And she wasn’t a whore. She was not. It made no sense. The word didn’t fit Liza, not Liza.