The House Of Lanyon

“Where we goin’?” Marion enquired.

“Into the valley. We can get down and stroll awhile and have some private talk, if you will. It’s a pleasant morning.”

Marion laughed again. Bumping and jogging, they made their way along the rough track and into the valley, with Ruff running at Splash’s heels. Once there, Richard drew rein again, dismounted and helped Marion down. He removed Splash’s bridle and hung it on a small tree, eased the girth, hobbled the animal’s forefeet and told Ruff to stay on guard. He offered Marion his arm. “Shall we walk?”

In the priory of St. George’s in Dunster, Christopher Clerk stood in a small monk’s cell, looking about him. He had made it plain that he had no intention of taking vows as a monk, but Father Hugh Meadowes hadn’t cared.

“Take vows as a monk or not—that’s up to you as long as you take vows as a priest. That’s your business in life and you know it. You’ve a vocation, my son. I know one when I see one, and what will your father have to say if you abandon yours? He’s proud of you! You’re not going to let him down and you’re not going to let me down and above all, you’re not going to let God down. You young lunatic! If you hadn’t been willing to swear on a crucifix that you didn’t sleep with the girl, I’d have had to go to the bishop. Do you realise how serious that would have been? Forget her! Forget any oaths you thought you swore. Forget you ever thought you loved her. I doubt it, myself. What sort of a life were you going to drag her into? She’s going to marry someone else, who’ll give her a better future than you ever could!”

“I’d have made my way. I’d have made a life for both of us!”

“And one day your call to the priesthood would have risen up and poisoned it. I know about these things. You’ll finish your studies in the priory and then you’ll stay there and serve the monks and the parishioners. Liza Weaver won’t be among them. She’s leaving the parish. No more argument, my son. I don’t want to repeat what I had to do when you were brought back to the castle, but if I have to, I will.”

His back was still marked from Father Meadowes’s whip. He could only hope that Liza had not been similarly treated. He had not dared to ask, not even when her parents came to see him, to hear him apologise and promise to put Liza from his mind forever. He had had little chance to say anything beyond the apology and the promise. Nicholas had done most of the talking. Some of his remarks had burned more bitterly than Meadowes’s lash. Callow young wantwit. Trying to lead my girl into a life of concealment and poverty. She doesn’t know enough of the world to realise what was ahead. And you say you loved her. Bah!

But all the time, all through that diatribe from Nicholas, and all through Meadowes’s beating, he had prayed inside his head for Liza, hoping that God would let him suffer for them both.

He sat down slowly on the hard, narrow bed. He was thinking about the past. At the beginning it had been his own idea to enter the church. He believed he had been called. Their own parish priest, back in Bristol, had given a homily one Sunday on what a privilege a vocation was; how it was like a summons to a holy army, and how priests and monks followed the banner of Christ just as knights followed the banner of their overlord. The soldiers of Christ fought battles of the spirit, not of the body, and their purpose was to save the souls of their fellow creatures from damnation. There was no nobler calling on earth, said the priest ardently.

Christopher had thought about that homily many times during the following weeks and he had gone to talk to the priest privately, and before very long he had become convinced that he was among those who had been summoned to take Christ for his suzerain. His father had been delighted.

His mother, a practical woman, was less so, and expressed regret that her second son would not marry and have a family. They were willing to help him, she said; he could go as an apprentice to another merchant and could in time become a merchant in his own right, could succeed in the world. But he shook his head and said he must leave the world, in that sense, behind, and his father told her to stop making objections; this was a great honour and he was proud of Christopher.

And he, Christopher, had been proud of himself, sure of himself, had thought of himself as a good soldier of God. And then, as he’d roamed through the fair at Dunster on that spring day, he’d stopped to watch as a dishonest weaver was paraded past for swindling his customers, and realised that the girl standing beside him hated seeing someone put on display like that. She had left the people she was with and walked off alone into the crowd and he had followed, concerned for her in such a gathering, with so many strangers about. She had suspected his intentions and looked sharply around at him, and he had spoken to her, meaning to show kindness, as a priest ought to do, and their eyes had met, and the whole world had changed.

He had known then, in that moment, that his vocation was a horrible mistake, that he was made for the ordinary life of a man, that he was on the wrong path entirely. He’d fought the knowledge off and might have won the fight if Elizabeth Luttrell’s wretched little dog hadn’t run away, and he hadn’t found himself chasing after it and coming face-to-face with Liza Weaver once again. After that, there was no more resisting. His vocation had been nothing but a dream, a youthful ardour trying to find somewhere to put itself and making the wrong choice.

And there was no way back.

He looked around him, at the stone walls of the little cell, at the prie-dieu in the corner, with its embroidered cloth—the only splash of colour in the room. Whatever revelations had struck him when he met Liza, he had ended up here. His vocation might seem unreal to him now, might have faded into nothingness as far as his emotions were concerned, but he was bound to it just the same, a soldier plodding across an arid desert, sworn to the service of his lord whether he liked it or not.

Liza was lost to him and he had been a fool ever to think they could escape together and create any kind of life worth living. She had been rescued from that and from him and probably it was the best thing for her. He understood that now.

What none of them knew, however—though God presumably did—was that what he felt for Liza, and what she felt for him, was real and would remain real all the rest of their lives, even if they never met again. They were sworn to each other, whatever Father Meadowes and the Weavers might say. He said aloud, “I will go on praying for her all my days.”

Yes, he would! And there was nothing anyone could do to interfere with either his private prayers or his memories.

Meanwhile, this priory and this cell were to be his home. Very well. His future had been ruthlessly reorganised and his life sold away. Soldier of God? No, he was a slave, and for life. But his love was unchanged and would remain so until he died.

CHAPTER TEN

CLOUD BLOWING IN

The Valley of the Rocks was a curious place. On the moor and among its surrounding, greener foothills, the water had sculpted the land and was still doing so. Streams ran through nearly every one of the deep, narrow combes that dented the hills as though a giant had repeatedly pressed the side of his hand deep into a collection of vast and well-stuffed cushions. The valley, by contrast, was dry.

It didn’t run down to the sea, but lay parallel to it. Its floor was flat and broad, but on either side, hillsides of bracken and goat-nibbled grass rose steeply to curious crests where grey rock outcrops, weathered into extraordinary shapes, adorned the skylines. Richard knew that the hills to his right were a thin wall between valley and sea, with a drop of hundreds of feet from the hillcrests to the water, most of it sheer cliff with broken rock at its feet.

Ahead, the seaward hillside broke in one place, though even from there, the drop below was still hair-raising. The heights resumed with a tall conical hill topped by an extraordinary mass of rock which looked, from a distance, so like the ruins of an old fortress that most people called it Castle Rock.

There was no one about, except for a goatherd encouraging his flock from one piece of grass to another, up on the slope to the left. He was high up and moving away from them, and showed no sign of having seen them. He certainly wouldn’t disturb them. “Mistress Locke,” said Richard, “as I said, I wish to talk with you. I came here today to find you. I have something to tell you and something to ask you. I hope you will listen.”

“Well, what might all that be about?” asked Marion.

She said it with a smile in her voice, and provocation, too, and when he turned to look at her face, that provocation was in her eyes, as well. The white fire leaped again, shockingly, filling him up. Her hand burned on his arm. He hardly knew how to go on just talking to her. He wanted to throw words and politeness and every last vestige of civilised behaviour away and her clothing with them and his own as well and turn this bleak, lonely valley into a Garden of Eden, with him and Marion as Adam and Eve.

To steady his mind, he quickened the pace, leading her toward the foot of the goat path that wound its way up and around Castle Rock. With a great effort he kept his voice normal as he said, “Mistress Locke, you must understand, even if it disappoints you, that I’ve plans for my son Peter and that there can be no question of a marriage between you. However, I can see very well why he’s lost his heart and his head over you. You are as lovely a wench as I ever saw.”

It was a poor description of her, he thought, nearly as inadequate as when her mother called her pretty. Marion Locke was no conventional beauty. His first impression had been the right one. She was ripe, like a juicy plum. She gave off the very scent of ripeness, of readiness.

“Tell me,” he said, still keeping his voice even with the greatest difficulty, “what if I asked you to think about me instead? I’m a widower these many years and I’d like a wife. Specially, I’d like a wife like you.”

“Oh,” said Marion, and dropped her hand from his arm.

“Why oh?” He caught her hand back and drew her to him. “Come! I’m older than you, but I’m hale enough. You’d get used to farm life, though it’s different from what you know. Marion…”

“But I…no, please,” said Marion, shaking her head and pulling her hand free. She edged away, arousing in him a sudden huntsman’s instinct to give chase.

“Now, don’t shy away from me, sweeting. There’s no need. I just want you to listen to me.” He stepped after her, repossessed himself of her hand and then changed his grasp to her elbow, drawing her back to him, clamping her to his side and walking her steadily on. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not an enemy. Just listen, my dear.”

Marion didn’t know what to do. The young men she’d flirted with and, well, given way to once or twice—and she knew that she’d taken a risk and been lucky that no harm had come of it—had been easy to manage, even a little shy. She had never felt out of control. She had never encountered anyone like Richard Lanyon before. He was handsome, but he had an aura of danger, something new to her. Besides, this wasn’t decent. She had made love with this man’s son, and here in this very valley, at that. It wasn’t right. Marion’s morals were broad, but not broad enough for that.

But she couldn’t break Richard’s hold and if she did, she knew she couldn’t outdistance him. She could still see the goatherd but he was far away; there was no help there.

They had reached the foot of the path up the Rock. “Let’s climb a little way and see if we can see the coast of Wales,” Richard said, and steered her upward. The path wound, bringing them to the seaward side of the Rock, giving them a view across the Channel and westward down it. He looked down at her, smiling, but then, unable to stop himself, suddenly swung her in front of him, bending forward to kiss her.

His forebear Petroc, the one who had brought the Lanyons to Exmoor, had started life as a Cornish tin miner. That meant a free man, even in the days of villeinage, but it was a hard life of digging and panning, which produced men with muscles like steel ropes.

Petroc had hated it and given it up to breed sheep, though with poor success at first, for Cornish pastures were thin and sheep reared on them grew poor fleeces. However, when the Black Death tore holes in the population and opened, for those who still lived, chances hitherto unimaginable, he had snatched his opportunity and travelled to Somerset, where the grazing, even on the moors, was far better. Here he found success at last with his sheep. But if he had left the harsh days of failure behind him, he hadn’t lost his tin miner’s physique. To those of his descendants who survived, he had handed it down. Richard Lanyon had the thick shoulders and knotted muscles of his ancestors and he scarcely knew his own strength.

Marion, feeling his fingers grip her like pincers of steel, cried out, turning her head away from him. “Master Lanyon, don’t! You’re frightenin’ me!”

Realising that he must have hurt her, he let go. This was no way to go courting. “It’s all right. Don’t be afraid.” Better keep walking; it gave his overheated body something to do. He turned her and guided her onward and up. “Watch your footing—the ground’s rough,” he said, and used that as an excuse to put a heavy arm around her shoulders. “I’d treat you kindly,” he assured her, “and you’d eat well, on the farm. Not so much fish, but much more cream and good meat. The farmworkers’ wives would show you how to do this and that, and…”

“Weather’s changin’,” said Marion.

It was. It was growing colder and the west wind was strengthening. There was no more blue in the sky and the high brown-and-white clouds had given place to low grey ones, flowing in from the far Atlantic. The path had brought them quite high up by now and wisps of cloud were blowing around them, bringing a hint of drizzle. Wales, which had indeed been visible at first though neither of them had paid any attention to it, had vanished.

Marion was shivering, partly with cold, partly with what was now serious alarm. When Richard had come to Lynmouth to see her parents, he’d been just Peter’s father, a farmer in a brown wool jerkin and a hooded cloak, darker than most Somerset men were, and good-looking—she was never unaware of good looks in a man—but all the same, one of her own father’s generation and not, in her mind, a potential lover. But now!

His dark eyes were like Peter’s as far as shape and colour went, but their expression wasn’t the same. Peter’s eyes held an essential kindness, but Richard’s were hot and demanding. He wasn’t offering her love. What he wanted was possession. He wanted to hold and control and enter her, not for her pleasure but only for his own, and he meant to have his way.

Beneath the outer layer of sheer sexiness which enveloped Marion like a rich velvety cloak was a girl who not only had at least some moral sense but a knack of understanding people, too. It had been part of her attraction for young men. She always looked at them as though she knew them quite well already and longed to know them better still.

She said carefully, “You’re kind, Master Lanyon, payin’ court to me like this. But I couldn’t. I mean, I don’t think it ’ud be fitting. My father wouldn’t like it!” The last sentence was an inspiration. It was surely the one thing that might impress this man.

“I’ll talk to your father.” They were nearly up to the rock outcrop on top of the Rock, although they could hardly see it, for the cloud around them was thickening swiftly. “I’ll make him an offer he’ll look at twice, or maybe three times. Marion!” He stopped and swung her to face him once again, grasping her upper arms. “Can’t you see I’ve fallen as deep in love as a man can fall? I’ve fallen further than if I jumped off one of these here cliffs. Don’t let me land on the rocks! Say yes!”

“I can’t! I’m sorry, but I can’t!” Marion was really petrified now. She could not have put into words what she sensed, but if someone had said the words snapping pike to her, she would have said at once, yes, that’s it.