The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  “Sit down, Liza! Stop screeching! I reckon they’ll say yes,” said Richard. “They love their land and they’ll want it back, at any price they can afford, and they can probably afford young John. Besides, what will they lose? He’ll get a nice-looking wife and a family in time, I hope. It’ll be a good enough bargain from their point of view.”

  “Yes, and what kind of life would Quentin have among them? Do you think they’d be kind to her—a Lanyon in their midst?” shouted Liza, still on her feet.

  “Maybe not, but it’s no more than she deserves, the way she’s behaved.”

  “No!” Liza was crimson with fury. “Head of the house or not, you can’t do this!”

  “No, by God, he can’t! You’re right, Liza!” Peter roared. “I won’t stand for it, do you hear, Father? You’ve gone too far this time. Quentin isn’t going to marry John Sweetwater and that’s the end of it!”

  “Just a moment,” said Quentin.

  They turned to her, all of them. The fear had gone from her eyes. She was quite calm and indeed, smiling slightly. “I seem to remember,” said Quentin, “not long ago, promising to marry any suitable man you found for me, Grandfather. I suppose that Master Sweetwater is suitable—at least he comes of a well-bred family. I only want to be sure that my mother will be well treated. Please say that she will. And then, if you so order it, I’ll gladly marry John Sweetwater. If he’ll have me.”

  Liza’s mouth opened again, but this time no words came out. Peter clutched at his hair. “Quentin, you don’t know what you’re saying! You needn’t fear for your mother, that I’ll promise anyway. You don’t have to marry a Sweetwater to buy her safety. You can’t marry a Sweetwater! Not you! You’re the best thing that ever came into this house! There have been times…so many times, when I don’t know what I might have done, except that every time I looked at you or heard your voice, I felt calmer, more reasonable. I could bear things. And I want you to be happy!”

  Richard, however, had thrown back his head and burst out laughing.

  PART FOUR

  RECONSTRUCTION 1487–1504

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  SETTLED IN LIFE

  To Quentin, the birth of Johnny, as they nicknamed tiny John to distinguish him from his father, was a wonder and a revelation. It was as though she had been waiting, all her days, for the moment when her very own child was put into her arms, perfect, bawling, a little, adorable, dependent being for whom it would be her privilege to love and care.

  Unlike her mother, she had quickened at once and Johnny had arrived swiftly and easily, on New Year’s Day, 1487.

  Much more swiftly and much more easily than her parents’ consent to the marriage had been won, certainly. For Richard’s scheme, tossed across that supper table, had torn the family apart nearly as thoroughly as the discovery of Nicky’s true parentage. It had even torn people apart within themselves.

  Peter’s outrage across the supper dishes had gone on and on. He had thundered repeatedly that they would be stripping themselves of land, virtually giving it away to the Sweetwaters, and for what? For what? How could a Lanyon hope to be happy, married to a Sweetwater? He pounded the table so that platters jumped and beakers spilled and only by getting hurriedly onto her feet and leaning on the table with all her weight had Liza stopped him from overturning it in his fury.

  While all the time her grandfather Richard had laughed, saying that after all, Quentin was a granddaughter to be proud of, a real Lanyon. “She’s wiped my eye properly. But it won’t get you out of it, young Quentin. You’ll keep your word and go through with this. Understand?”

  “Yes, Grandfather. I understand,” said Quentin demurely.

  Whereupon Peter had burst out again, this time so wildly that Quentin, aghast, turned white and began to cry, which caused him, briefly, to check himself.

  Until Richard turned to Quentin and said, “You mean it, do you? If I can get their land and house and their agreement, you’ll wed John Sweetwater and carry some of their property back to them, a gift from us, the Lanyons they have so much despised?”

  “Yes, Grandfather,” said Quentin, shakily, which he misinterpreted as fear of the marriage rather than distress at her father’s rage. “I will. I mean it. I will do as you bid.”

  Whereupon Peter lost his temper again and crashed out of the house, and on returning, refused to speak to his father.

  Meanwhile, Quentin, well aware that from her grandfather’s point of view, marrying her to John Sweetwater was retribution for defending her mother, had decided to be circumspect. But that evening, in a private conversation with her parents in their bedchamber, she told them that at Baldwin’s funeral she had met and spoken to John Sweetwater and liked him. And was perfectly prepared to marry him.

  “And it would please Grandfather so much, though I think perhaps we shouldn’t tell him that John and I have met and that I took to him,” she said, drawing her parents deftly into a conspiracy against Richard.

  Peter flung up his hands, exclaimed that women were impossible, and left the room. Shortly afterward, he could be heard furiously chopping firewood. Her mother, scanning Quentin’s face, said, “There’s more than you’ve told me, isn’t there? I don’t, I can’t, like the thought of this, but you already care for this young man, I think.”

  “Yes,” said Quentin. “Yes, I do.”

  “That way? The way that…I told you about?”

  There was a silence. Then Quentin said, “Yes. That way.”

  “I always swore,” said Liza, “that if you fell in love like that, I’d try to help you. I know how it feels. But I never guessed the man would be a Sweetwater.”

  “I think John isn’t quite like the other Sweetwaters. Mother, I mean it. I really want to marry him and I don’t think he dislikes me.”

  She knew nothing of the stormy arguments that followed, between her parents, out of her hearing, when Peter declared that his entire family appeared to have taken leave of their senses, and her mother said that the plan had its good points; that if anyone could win the Sweetwaters over, Quentin could, and since the girl was willing, well, it would at least keep Richard sweet. To which Peter more than once replied that he didn’t want to keep his father sweet; he felt more like killing him.

  What finally overcame Peter’s resistance was partly the fact that Richard, though still chilly toward Liza, now became very pleasant toward Quentin, which was certainly a blessed change. Along with this was a weird but increasingly strong feeling that young as she was, Quentin knew what she was doing.

  “Very well,” Peter said at last, having summoned her once more to his and Liza’s room. “I think you’re crazy, all of you, but if you really want this marriage, Quentin, then all right. I agree! Although,” he added, “I still hope my father changes his mind.”

  Richard didn’t change his mind. Richard, like a charging bull with head lowered and nostrils snorting, plunged straight ahead. He went to Dulverton to discover the name of the right man to contact and then to Dunster, where he found a messenger in the shape of one of the young Weavers. Peter, wearily, gave consent to the sale or exchange of those items of property which had his name on the deeds. An urgent letter went to London and a deal was struck.

  His grace King Henry VII is pleased to accept the lands listed in your letter in simple exchange for the house known as Sweetwater House, in the parish of Clicket in Somerset, the village known as Clicket and the following Somerset farmlands of the Sweetwater estate….

  The big joke, said Richard, chortling and fairly shining with satisfaction, was that the Lanyons could never have managed any of this but for the generosity, years ago, of the man who became Richard III. Perhaps it would be as well if King Henry never found that out!

  After that, he prepared another letter, this time for Walter Sweetwater, who had mournfully taken his family to stay with Agnes and Giles Northcote until he could eject the tenants from one of Catherine’s dower farms. Sweetwater House was empty except for Denis Sawyer and a
couple of servants who remained as caretakers. Sawyer was the messenger this time. He was a long time returning, and when he did, came straight to Allerbrook.

  “There was a fine to-do,” he said dispassionately, sitting in the Allerbrook hall with a tankard of cider in his hand. Denis Sawyer was not emotionally attached to the Sweetwaters, and the uproar caused by Richard’s missive seemed to amuse him. “I’m sorry I was so long over it, but Master Sweetwater’s got possession of one of the dower farms and he’d left Mistress Agnes’s home to move in. Quick work! I had to follow him and his family there. It’s too small for them, considering what they’re used to. They have to live as their tenants did—no hall or solar, just one big kitchen that counts as their main room, and a tiny parlour that’s hardly used because they have to work. They don’t have many farmhands, and in the house Mistress Catherine’s only got one girl and a handyman to help her, so she’s busy with the cooking pots most of the day and Master John has to see to the animals. They all came into the kitchen to talk over that letter, though.”

  Sawyer grinned and held out his tankard as Liza offered him a refill from a jug. “Master Walter can’t get used to the lack of space. There he was, striding about and clutching at his temples and bumping into things and tripping over people’s feet and wanting to know what Master John was about, courting a Lanyon girl on the quiet and had he got her with child—was that what this was all about?

  “And there was Master John saying no, he hadn’t, and wouldn’t, but she was a pretty maid and things had been better lately between the Lanyons and the Sweetwaters, hadn’t they? Master John said a man could do a lot worse than marry Quentin Lanyon and there was no denying that it would put them all back in Clicket where they belonged and the tenants they’d thrown out so as they could move into this hen coop of a place would be able to come back. And they needed the rent….”

  “Is the answer yes or no?” snapped Richard.

  “Oh, it’s yes,” said Sawyer. “Master Walter might curse and swear and say that things being better was just on the surface and so on, but…”

  Here he paused, thinking it better not to quote Walter’s comments that the Lanyons weren’t gentry and had always hated the Sweetwaters and even if Peter wasn’t to blame for Baldwin’s tragedy, he, Walter, would still be happy enough to do Richard Lanyon down and Richard would probably push him, Walter, over a bridge or off a cliff if he got the chance and he wouldn’t sell his son to a Lanyon even to get his own property back.

  “Mistress Catherine cried,” he said, “and said that if John liked the girl and she was willing, and it would get them all home into the bargain, how could he think of turning the proposal down, and then Master John said he was going to marry the lass anyhow. He fancied her and he wanted to get the family property back, and he didn’t need any man’s consent…at one point they were all shouting—or crying, in the lady’s case—at the same time. I never knew a pack of strolling players make a noisier scene.”

  “But what if Master Walter makes her life a misery, if she goes to live at Sweetwater House and he’s there!” said Liza, her brow furrowed with worry. “She’s obedient enough—” Liza had well understood that it would be better not to reveal Quentin’s secret passion “—and I can see that the idea has advantages. It’s a good marriage in its way. Only, Master Walter still resents us, at heart!”

  Quentin, however, said, “If John and I can’t live with him, we’ll have to find somewhere else. But perhaps he’ll get to like me, when he’s used to me. I’m not afraid of him.”

  Peter, by then, had given in, because his entire family seemed ranged against him. “But if it goes wrong,” he said to Quentin, “if you’re miserable, you just come home again. We’ll protect you. If it goes awry, we’ll get you out of it, if we have to bribe the Pope for an annulment!”

  The wedding took place the following March, and was conducted by Father Matthew at the parish church (since even Richard had recognised that it would be tactless to insist on celebrating it in the chapel at Allerbrook House). It was hardly a merry occasion. Walter scowled all the time and Liza, though dry-eyed, couldn’t smile, while Peter refused to attend at all. It was Richard who placed Quentin’s hand in that of her bridegroom.

  There was an awkwardness, too, when the couple were at last alone. Until they were brought together at St. Anne’s in Clicket to make their vows, Quentin and John had in fact exchanged very few words and never in private. They had spoken to each other at the graveside, and they had had brief conversations when John and his grandfather came to Allerbrook for the betrothal, and after that, on two occasions, when John visited her and they had made a little conversation. Always, someone else had been present. As she stood beside him in front of Father Matthew, his nearness made her heart turn somersaults, and yet he was virtually a stranger to her.

  Throughout the wedding feast, though they sat next to each other, and during the dancing later on, which they had to open, John made only a few conventional remarks to her. “Will you have some more meat? I’ll beckon the page.” “Your dress is very fine. Pale pink looks well on you.” “It’s time to start the dancing.” He smiled at her now and then and she smiled back, but she was too nervous to initiate any conversation of her own. Now that it was too late, she was saying to herself, If I’d said no, and been strong about it, my parents would have backed me up, and between us, we might have withstood my grandfather. But I agreed. Of my own free will, I agreed. What have I done?

  When, at last, they lay uneasily side by side in the darkness of a curtained bed in Sweetwater House, however, she took herself in hand. The basic good sense which she had inherited from Liza, albeit alongside the contradictory ability to fall headlong into love at five minutes’ notice and stay there for life, told her that she had no choice. She had made this bed herself and had better set about making it comfortable, or at least not complain if it wasn’t.

  She cleared her throat and then said gently, “This marriage was my grandfather’s idea, but I was content with it. I wanted to give you back your own, or as much as I could. I know you haven’t got quite all of it since we’ve kept Rixons Farm, but you’ve got Hannacombes and Shearers back, and Clicket and your home farm and this house and at least you’re home again. I was so very sorry about…about everything. And I liked you. Just being sorry couldn’t help you on its own.”

  For a long moment there was no response from him and her skin seemed to freeze. Then he rolled over and she felt his arm move across her. “You are kind and pretty. If only property and…and…the way our two families have wrangled all these years wasn’t mixed up with it….”

  “But could we ever have been married at all, unless property and…and the old quarrels…were mixed up with it?” said Quentin in a down-to-earth fashion.

  There was another lengthy silence. Eventually, she added, “I will do all I can to see you don’t regret it. Can we not put the old quarrels into the past?”

  He laughed a little. Then he said, “Talking of quarrels—tell me, why did your brother leave Allerbrook? Was that over a dispute of some sort? All Clicket was buzzing about that, but no one ever had an answer.”

  Quentin decided to keep to the story Richard had insisted upon, and for the sake of trying to make interesting conversation, invented some extra details. “Yes, there was a dispute. Nicky didn’t like the life of the farm. Getting up at first light and always being out of doors even in the freezing cold or the rain—it didn’t suit him, and my father and grandfather were angry.”

  “Oh, I see. Not a typical farmer’s son, then?”

  “Well, no,” said Quentin, sensing a covert jeer at her family’s social standing but sensing, too, that John did not realise it was a jeer at all, still less that it was also a jeer at her. “He will make his way,” she said. “I expect one day he’ll be richer than any of us.”

  “Well,” John said, “I have to admit that my family is richer now than it was when we all woke up this morning. But we haven’t quite ratified th
e treaty yet, have we? I suppose it’s time we did.”

  He rolled himself on top of her. There in the curtained darkness, nature spoke to them. By morning they had invented pet names for each other. Tentatively, quietly, a genuine friendship had begun.

  At breakfast, Quentin greeted Catherine and Walter with courteous affection, and then there was a pause, while she looked shyly from one to the other, and waited for an answer. She had been well aware that yesterday, in church, Walter had glowered all the time. Later on, surrounded by wedding guests, he and Mistress Catherine had made an effort, had gone through the motions of courtesy and uttered suitable words of well-wishing, but how far had they meant them? Today she would find out just how welcome they intended to make her.

  Catherine gave her a small, cautious smile. Walter stared at her, cleared his throat and then, for a few moments, was silent.

  The wedding feast had been held at Sweetwater House instead of at the bride’s home in the usual way. Walter wanted it so because somehow, to have it at Allerbrook would be an extra Lanyon triumph. The Lanyons agreed, for a reason they didn’t mention to Walter, which was that Peter had objected violently to the idea of holding the wedding celebrations under the Lanyon roof. So Sweetwater House it had to be, which was nearer St. Anne’s church, anyway.

  On the way back from the church to the house, Liza Lanyon had come to Walter’s side.

  “Master Sweetwater, may I speak to you?”

  He scarcely knew her, but she was now his grandson’s mother-in-law and social proprieties sometimes had the strength of fetters. He could hardly say anything other than “Yes, of course.”

  Liza, with a hand placed on his arm, brought them both to a halt so that she could stand facing him. Pleasant brown eyes looked into his.

  “I expect,” said Liza quietly, “that this marriage isn’t altogether to your taste. But somehow or other, Quentin has become enamoured of your son. Master Sweetwater, Quentin is a good girl and will make a good wife, if you will…if you will give her a chance. Whatever you feel about the Lanyons, please be kind to Quentin. Please.”