The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  As Richard strode forward, his right hand upraised, Peter seized his father’s arm. “Liza! Go to a spare bedchamber and bolt yourself in! Go! Quickly!” Liza slid from her seat and fled to the stairs, and as she did so, he saw Quentin staring, horrified, in the kitchen doorway. “Quentin, go and look after your mother. Take food to her and whatever else she needs!”

  Then he dropped Richard’s arm and went out, passing a scared-looking Nicky, who was just coming in, without even glancing at him. He went up to his own bedchamber and lay on the bed and although he was a grown man in middle age, he cried.

  It went on, the misery and wretchedness, for three interminable days. The loss of Jarvis, over which everyone grieved, made the misery worse. Peter spent one whole day with the Hannacombes, talking about him and condoling with them. Otherwise, he worked on the farm but took meals alone in his room, making Betsy and Ellen, who by now knew all about it, bring food to him there. He avoided the children, though he sometimes saw Quentin looking at him anxiously. Glimpses of Nicky’s white, closed face appalled him, because he didn’t know what to do about it. He turned away.

  He tried to avoid his father as well, but couldn’t do so entirely and whenever they met, Richard would break into another stream of fury against Liza, demanding that Peter throw the whore out of the house.

  Now, as the third day neared evening, Richard, coming face-to-face with him in the hall, had attacked once more, striding about, storming and threatening, his face scarlet and an engorged vein pulsing in his temple.

  And now, to his own surprise, Peter found that the fury inside him was directed more at Richard than at Liza. All his life he had lived in his father’s shadow, obeyed him, allowed himself to be addressed as boy. Now Richard was trying to tell him how to deal with his own wife, and that was enough. That was private territory.

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

  “You dare to threaten me for telling the truth?” Richard bellowed at him.

  “Yes. You call her a whore, but what was Deborah Archer? You remember Deb?”

  “Of course I remember Deb! My poor Deb that the Sweetwaters as good as murdered! She was a widow! Her husbands, both of them, were in their graves. That’s different! I won’t have that woman here for one more night! I won’t…!”

  “Liza isn’t a whore,” said Peter. “I called her that at first but I know it isn’t true. All these years! So many years. I can’t throw them away.”

  “Send her home! I keep telling you! Send her back to Dunster!”

  Peter said, “Do you remember Marion Locke?”

  He hoped the name might induce his father to pause for a moment. He didn’t expect it to bring Richard’s outraged pacings to a complete, frozen halt. “Yes, I do! A fisher girl you had a fling with, in Lynmouth! She ran off with someone else!”

  It was hard for Richard to get the words out. He had never broken free of Marion’s haunting memory and now, forced to speak of her—worse, to lie about her—he saw her again in his mind and heard her, as she fell backward into the mist….

  Only with an effort could Richard keep from raising his hands to grip his temples, to crush her memory out of his head by force.

  “I was mad for her,” Peter said, “and even after she’d gone…I still didn’t want to marry Liza. Only, I had to marry someone and so I agreed to it, and did my best. But maybe…I can…just…imagine what it was like for her, since she, too…If I were to meet Marion again, even now…”

  He had never spoken of it, but three years after his marriage to Liza he had made an excuse to be out on the moor all day, had gone to Lynmouth and asked if the Fjord-Elk was expected to dock there any time soon. Someone directed him to a harbourside tavern where men from another Norwegian ship were drinking, though the ship was not the Fjord-Elk. “They might know something about her. She’s not been here of late.”

  And one of the Norwegian sailors had known something. The Fjord-Elk had been lost at sea, with all hands, just two years before. If Marion had gone away on her, she was probably in Norway, maybe as a widow, maybe married to a second husband, maybe not married at all but making a living as a whore. He had tried not to think of her again, but had never been able to keep the resolution for long at a time.

  “It’s different for women!” Richard shouted. “And there’s Nicky to tell you why! Most people know who their mother is, but if women aren’t honest, how can men be sure their children are their own? Get rid of her!”

  “If Mother goes to Dunster, or anywhere else, I go with her.” Quentin had joined them. Peter looked at her, thinking that she at least was an unmistakable Lanyon. The beechnut hair and the apple-blossom skin were Liza’s but the dark eyes, the shape of the face were entirely his own. He saw, too, that she had left childhood behind. She was a young woman now, eighteen years old, and she was courageous.

  “She lies on the bed in that room all day, sobbing,” Quentin said. “Grandfather, I don’t believe she’s any of the horrible things you’ve called her, but that doesn’t matter, not to me. She’s still my mother and if no one else will help her, I will.”

  “You can’t leave unless your father and I say so!” shouted Richard.

  “You can’t chain me up forever,” said Quentin reasonably. “And if Mother and I are both gone, who’ll see to the accounts?” She looked at Peter. “Oh, Father! Are things never to come right again?”

  Her voice had always had a calming quality. The crimson faded somewhat from Richard’s face. Awkwardly Peter said, “Quentin, I’m sorry. I hate seeing you distressed.” He turned to Richard. “For years and years Liza and I have dwelt in peace together, even though we were not each other’s first loves. I wish her to stay. I want to mend the breach….”

  Quentin’s soothing tones could achieve only so much. Richard lost his temper again. “I repeat, you’re out of your mind! Look how she’s deceived us all! Going for walks on the moor! We thought they were harmless. I wonder how many times she’s really met this red-haired lover of hers? I wonder how many others there’ve been besides him!”

  “There have been no others! Of that I’m sure.”

  “Oh, are you indeed?”

  “Yes, I am! I know Liza. As for the red-haired lover, I intend to visit Dunster Castle and see that Christopher Clerk leaves the west country and never returns. I also intend to keep my wife, and I would remind you, Father, that Liza is my wife and not yours. It’s for me to say.”

  “Very well,” said Richard grimly, quietening down once more but this time becoming, in the process, somehow more menacing, more alarming than ever. “But I’ll tell you one thing, boy. If I have to tolerate that woman here, there’s one thing I won’t stand for. Try making me and you’ll regret it. Listen to me!”

  “It’s not right. None of this is Nicky’s fault. Please, Father, please, please think again,” Quentin implored him, but Peter, accosted as he sat at the study table, only shook his head and sanded the new will he was preparing.

  “No, my dear. Nicky is not my son or my father’s grandson and he can’t inherit the Lanyon property. There, sadly, my father is right and he had no need to threaten to disinherit me as well if I argued. Allerbrook and all the rest of our property will be for you instead. You’ll be an heiress!”

  “I don’t want to be an heiress! I’ll…I’ll…give it away to Nicky when the time comes. I will!” said Quentin passionately.

  “You’ll be married by then, I trust,” Peter said, “and your husband won’t let you, not if he has any common sense.”

  “But Nicky! What will he do? How will he live, where will he go? It’s Nicky, Father! Nicky!”

  “I know. Quentin, my dear girl, I’m not going to abandon him just like that. I shall ask him what he wants to do with his life and help him as far as I can. I know I must do that.”

  His head was aching again. He found it intolerable to be in Nicky’s presence. Every time he looked at the lad, he seemed to see him double—the Nicky he had always
known as his son, with an interloping stranger weirdly superimposed on top. But Nicky had followed him to war, and on that packhorse bridge Nicky had saved him from, at the least, a disagreeable accident. And if he had thought of Nicky as a son all these years, Nicky had regarded him as a father. None of these things could be thrown onto the midden. They were reality.

  “He can’t be the Lanyon heir, but he won’t be flung out to starve, Quentin, my dear. I will explain to him. Don’t tell him yourself. Leave it to me and to my father. But now I have to go to Dunster. I have one last item of business to deal with.”

  “I have been expecting you,” said Christopher, showing Peter into his room at the castle. It was no more than a small stone cell with the plainest of furnishings and coarsely woven blankets on the narrow bed. The only touches of luxury were a prie-dieu with a very beautiful silver crucifix above it, and two or three books on a shelf. By the look of them, they were printed, Peter thought. Father Matthew had a printed Latin Bible in the church at Clicket and Peter had handled it sometimes. A man called Caxton had brought the art of printing to England, Father Matthew said. Printed books were precious.

  Christopher offered him a stool, but Peter remained standing. He was studying his rival, wondering what it was in this unremarkable tonsured individual that had so enchanted Liza. Even as a young man, he hadn’t been that handsome, surely. Well, Nicky wasn’t going to be particularly handsome and Nicky was a good enough comparison. Too good. Practically identical! “Do you know why I’ve come?” Peter said.

  “To make sure I’m thrown out of Dunster Castle, I daresay. Well, rumour says that Lady Luttrell is to return soon and she may not want me here in any case. I daresay she hasn’t forgotten the trouble I caused once long ago. I was already making plans to leave. Believe me, I have no wish to disturb Liza’s life, or yours, any more than I already have.”

  “You can hardly outdo the disturbance of finding that I’ve been saddled with another man’s son!”

  “I had no idea,” Christopher said. “None at all. Liza never told me, never sent me word. She just…did her best, I expect, for you and for the child. What else was she to do?”

  “She’s no concern of yours now. When do you intend to go? And where?”

  “I leave tomorrow. I have already informed the bishop’s office that I wish to give up this chaplaincy and seek a new position somewhere in northern England. I told part of the truth. It is on record that as a deacon I behaved in a most unfortunate way and I said that by chance, the woman concerned had crossed my path again and I thought it best to put a distance between us.”

  “And that was accepted?”

  “Yes. I spoke to the bishop’s deputy, as a matter of fact. This is the diocese of Bath and Wells, and the bishop’s Robert Stillington, the man who stood up in council just after King Edward died and said he was sorry to upset everyone just as they were planning to crown the young Prince Edward, but young Prince Edward wasn’t legitimate. He almost put Gloucester on the throne himself! He’s now in London, attending King Henry’s council and no doubt earnestly promising his utter devotion to the Lancastrian dynasty.”

  “And has bigger fish on his line than your bygone sins anyhow? I take it,” said Peter, “that you have never confessed what must have happened fourteen years ago!”

  “No. I prefer to trust in the understanding of God rather than men for what I did, the day I started Nicky on his way into the world. I know his name,” said Christopher quietly, “because you more or less introduced us, the day we all met. Liza and I…we came together only that once, by the way. Liza was in distress. There had been deaths—a man called Higg, and also some of her relatives…”

  “I don’t want to hear. Don’t tell me. It’s as well you’re leaving,” said Peter. “If you’d tried to stay, I would have gone to your bishop myself and told him what you’ve done. Even if I had to go to London to find him. I’d have made him listen!”

  “You need not worry. I’ll be away from here tomorrow and I go of my own free will. I am sorry, Master Lanyon, for the hurt I have dealt you. I shall never see Liza again, though I shall remember her in my prayers.”

  “I would rather you didn’t.”

  “Master Lanyon, please…if you can forgive her, do so. She’s worth forgiving.”

  “That I know. You may leave her with me in safety.”

  “And Nicky?”

  “Just pack your belongings and go away from here and save your soul. Nicky isn’t your concern any more than Liza is. Good day.”

  Liza, hearing Peter’s voice outside her door, hesitated before unbolting it, but after all, the moment had to come. She could not stay here forever. Already she had stopped crying, because even tears ran out in the end. She had lain, unwashed and weeping, for days on end, only nibbling at the food that Quentin brought her, but sooner or later something would have to change, sooner or later this dreadful catastrophe must be resolved in some fashion, though she couldn’t imagine what. Peter’s request for admittance was the signal that the time of change had arrived.

  She was afraid of him, though, and as he came into the room, he looked bigger and darker than she had ever known him and his face was hard as she had never seen it before. She quailed. Peter, studying her, saw the fear in her eyes. He didn’t like to see it. She was still Liza.

  Quietly he said, “It’s time to come out, Liza. We can’t go on like this for the rest of our lives.”

  “But what is to happen?” Liza was so frightened that she had to push the words out as though they were swimming against a tide. “Your father wants me to go back to Dunster, I know. I’ve heard him shouting it! But my family might not take me in. I suppose I shall have to go to the nuns at St. Catherine’s, as my mother did.”

  The thought was intolerable. At the time of her marriage she wouldn’t have believed it, but Allerbrook, now, was home. It was home. To be cast out of one’s home was one of the most bitter things in the world. How had her mother been able just to abandon hers?

  “Do you want to leave?” Peter asked.

  “No! Of course not! Oh, if only it hadn’t happened! We…Christopher and me…we’d only met to talk, as friends. That was all. There was just that one time, years and years ago…”

  “Maybe it was just once and maybe not….”

  “It was!”

  “He’s going away. He’d decided to do that even before I turned up at Dunster Castle and told him to leave Somerset or I’d make him.”

  “Make him? How?”

  “I meant to use the threat of reporting him to his bishop. Though as the bishop’s attending the royal council just now, I’d have had to chase him to London. But there’s no need. Your Christopher is leaving Dunster and going to the north. He’s out of your life, and that’s the end of it. As for us, Liza, stay here if you want to. We’ve had many good years together and I don’t want everything falling apart, no, I don’t.”

  “What does your father say to that?”

  “My father,” said Peter sharply, “will accept what I decide. This time it’s my business, not his, and I will be a man and not a boy.”

  “Yes. I see.” A faint hope had awakened in her. Peter’s face was still strange to her, though—expressionless, remote. She was still afraid. “But…Nicky?” she ventured.

  “Nicky’s home is here and I will help him to…to find a calling to suit him. I have loved Nicky. I still do, in a way. But he can’t inherit Allerbrook or any other Lanyon property, not now.”

  “Are you revenging yourself on me through Nicky?” Liza asked miserably.

  “No. It isn’t revenge. It’s simply that…he is not a Lanyon. Is he?”

  “He has lived all his life as a Lanyon. He must feel like one,” said Liza. “Have you told him? Does he know?”

  “Not yet. Father and I are going to a lawyer in Dulverton tomorrow to make sure that our new wills are properly worded and sign them with witnesses. There must be no mistakes. Once that’s done, I’ll tell him. And now…” He stoo
d up, holding out his hand to her. “Come. There’s work to do. There always is, on a farm.”

  “All right,” said Walter Sweetwater to the physician he had fetched, personally, from Dulverton. “I can see by your face what you think. I suppose I already know it.”

  “He’s under forty and he’s strong. There is hope. But…” The physician, himself an ageing man with a straggly white beard and legs which felt stiff after riding ten miles over the moor, at speed, with Walter Sweetwater urging him on all the way, let the sentence die away, unfinished.

  “He only took a chill after falling into a stream,” said Walter, almost pleadingly. “He told me he had been thrown from his horse, but I could see he had been in a fight. His face was marked as only fists could mark it. In the end he admitted it. But he’s had fights and fallen into streams before.”

  “Not when his body was still full of bad humours from a battle wound,” said the physician. “And the wound has worsened since the fight, as your daughter-in-law says.” He looked back toward the door of Baldwin’s bedchamber, which was half open. Catherine was there, sitting at the bedside. They were speaking quietly so that she wouldn’t overhear, but there was no need to worry about Baldwin overhearing. He was asleep, breathing harshly through a chest which sounded as though it were full of liquid.

  “The wound probably opened again during the fight,” Walter said.

  “I daresay. A chill on top of that, from riding home in wet clothes, perhaps some impurity in the water of the stream—as a physician I have seen such things before. I have told Mistress Sweetwater how to make my special draught for fighting fever. But…”

  Again, the sentence died away.

  “He is the best of sons,” said Walter bitterly. “But always a hothead. When I got him to tell the truth, well, the fight he was in—he started it. It was on a narrow bridge. Another man, someone he doesn’t like, was halfway across, coming the other way, and instead of waiting for him my son ordered him to go back. It would have meant backing the pony a long way. The other man was entitled to refuse, and he did and Baldwin insisted on fighting him for right of way and tried to throw him over into the water. But in the struggle it was Baldwin who went over.”