The House Of Lanyon

Father Bernard led the way on his mare. The bearers followed him and the crowd formed a rough and ready procession on foot behind the coffin. They talked among themselves as they went, for funerals were not such rare events, after all. Death was part of life. Father Bernard, in church on Sundays, often spoke of the next world and told them to be ready for it.

Halfway down, a steep path descended the slope to the right, met the track, crossed it and continued down to a ford. Water was draining down the path from the side of the combe and the crossing was extremely muddy. “Carefully now!” Father Bernard called over his shoulder, and steadied his mare as one of her hooves skidded. “The rain’s made this a proper quagmire. Mind you don’t slip.”

“Keep in step!” said Nicholas. “And take it steadily.”

Somewhere on the other side of the combe they heard a hunting horn and the voices of hounds, but, being concerned with their uncertain footing, no one paid much heed to it. The horn sounded again, nearer. And then, out of the trees on the other side of the river, came the stag.

There were two ways of hunting deer. If the purpose was simply venison, the hunt could drive the quarry into a ring of archers who would mow them down like corn. But if the huntsmen wanted sport and the pleasure of the chase and maybe a fresh pair of fine antlers to decorate a hall, then they would look for a grown stag and bring him to bay after a chase. Sir Humphrey preferred the chase. The hall in his manor house bristled with antlers and he employed not only a huntsman to care for his hounds but also a harbourer to keep track of likely stags and lead the hunt to them on request.

The harbourer had found them a fine beast this time. The animal which burst out of the woods, splashed headlong across the stream and came up to the crossways like a four-footed hurricane was in full breeding array. He had twelve points to his crown, six each side, tipped white as if with pearl. His nostrils flared red with the effort of running and his eyes were rolling. The horrified bearers were passing the top of the slippery path down to the river when he hurtled up toward them, fleeing in such panic from the hounds on his trail that he was not aware of them until the last moment.

Then he swerved, with a huge sideways leap, sprang past the nose of Father Bernard’s startled mare, which reared in alarm, and was gone, into the trees and on up the hill, and at the same moment the hounds, brown and black and patch-coated, giving tongue like wolves, poured out of the woods opposite, and hard behind them came Sir Humphrey’s huntsman and then Sir Humphrey himself and his twin sons, Reginald and Walter, on their big horses, closely followed by three riders who were presumably their guests, all hallooing nearly loud enough to drown the hounds and the horn.

Hounds and horses crashed through the ford, water spraying up around them. They scrambled for footholds on the path and tore upward. The cortege had stopped where it was as if paralysed, everyone having unanimously decided to keep still and let the uproar flow around them as it would around a line of trees. Most of the hounds veered as the stag had done, but three of them took the shortest route and went straight under the coffin and between the legs of the bearers. One collided with Richard’s ankles and another bounced off Nicholas Weaver’s shins. Both Richard and Nicholas lurched and their burden shifted.

The lurches were small and the shift in the weight was minor, but feet slipped on the perilous ground and the uneven weight of the tilting coffin made them slip still more. There were shouts of alarm. The riders, coming hard after the hounds, swerved their mounts around the head of the cortege, but one of them came too close. His horse saw the coffin, shied to avoid it and kicked out, catching Higg’s hip.

Higg, knocked sideways, held on but stumbled, and the tilt of the coffin became dangerous. Then Richard, who was one of the foremost bearers, lost his footing altogether and sat down, still holding on but pulling the front of the coffin down farther still. The tilt became a slide toward the ground, tearing the other bearers’ hands and breaking their hold. There were more cries of alarm. Margaret Weaver and Betsy called aloud on God, and people crossed themselves. Kat and Deborah screamed.

In a shaft of sunlight through the leaves, the funeral party had a fleeting glimpse of tall horses, reins with ornate dagged edges, spurred boots, richly coloured saddlecloths and tunics, bearded faces, one with a hunting horn held to its lips, velvet cloaks and exotic headgear, twisted liripipes bouncing on their owners’ shoulders, and then they were gone, leaping over the path and crashing up the hillside.

As they went, the coffin slithered right out of the bearers’ grasp, came down slowly but inexorably onto the path to the ford and then, gliding on the mud churned by the hunt, set off on its own, straight toward the river.

Father Bernard was off his horse on the instant. He threw himself after the coffin, clutching at it as he landed facedown in the mud, but its weight dragged it out of his grasp. Others scrambled frantically down through the trees to help. Deborah Archer, exclaiming with horror, got there first, tearing her dark skirts on the underbrush. She flung herself on top of the coffin as it went into the water and somehow succeeded in hooking one foot around the trunk of an alder at the brink. Held by her weight, the coffin sank where it was, and grounded in the shallow water of the ford, Deb lying on its lid and spluttering with her face in the stream and her skirts floating to each side of her.

Roger, rushing after her, waded into the water to get to the other end of the coffin and push it back toward land. Other helping hands were there. They picked Father Bernard up, lifted Deb and grabbed the coffin, dragging it ashore and hoisting it up again.

Richard, white-faced, had got to his feet and reached them in time to help with carrying his father’s casket back up the slope to the shocked procession on the path. “It’s all right. It hasn’t broken open. Deb saved it. If the water had moved it off the shallows…”

It could have done. The Allerbrook had a strong current and downstream of the ford it became quite deep. No one wanted to imagine what could have happened next.

“Father Bernard, you’re covered in mud!” Richard looked at the priest in distress. “You must brush it off. You must call at your house and put on something clean before the service. Can you find Roger here some dry things, too? He’s drenched to the knees. And Deb, oh Deb, I can’t be more grateful, but you’re wet through and shivering. Here!” He pulled off his cloak and threw it around her. “That’ll keep some warmth in. You can hardly strip your wet things off just here, so go home, Deb, run, to keep some heat in you, and put on dry things. We’ll wait for you in the churchyard. But you must get dry or you’ll take a chill. Go on—now!”

“I’m past the age for running and it’s over half a mile!” said Deb through chattering teeth as she wrung out her skirts and clutched the cloak to her. “But I’ll get home fast-like and see ’ee in the churchyard.” Holding her wet gown clear of the ground, she scurried off and Richard turned his attention to Betsy’s husband, Higg, who was flexing his right wrist and rubbing his hip, a pained expression on his seamed brown face. “What’s the matter, Higg? You’ve hurt yourself?”

“One of their damned hosses well-nigh kicked me off my feet and then my wrist went when I was tryin’ to keep a’hold of the coffin,” Higg said. “Hip don’t matter—that’s just a bruise—but it feels like my wrist’s been twisted half off. Don’t think I can go on as bearer. T’wouldn’t be safe, and we’ve had trouble enough for one day.”

“It’s time for the relief bearers, anyhow,” Richard said, and raised his voice to call the volunteers forward: Ned Crowham, the Searles, Gilbert Lowe, Sim Hannacombe and Harry Rixon. Far away in the distance the hunting horn spoke again and the baying of the hounds once more drifted through the trees.

“Bloody Sweetwaters,” said Richard through his teeth. “I hope they all fall off their damned horses and break their necks and I hope the hounds bring that stag to bay and it gores every single one of them to death!”

“It went well enough in the end,” Nicholas Weaver said to Richard later that day as they stood together, partaking of the generous food and the excellent cider that was Kat’s speciality, and yet very conscious of the space in the household, the empty niche in the air which once had been filled by George. “That accident could have been much worse!”

“I daresay,” said Richard. “But I’ll never forgive the Sweetwaters. Never!”

“Likely enough they hardly realised what had happened,” said Nicholas. “It was all so fast. By the time they’d seen us, it was too late.”

“They had time enough! Had to get across the ford, didn’t they? And all of us up there on the path. Couldn’t miss us!”

“Ah, well. The light under the trees is always dim and we were all in dark clothes. Can’t come to a funeral in festive red and tawny!”

“You’re a good-natured soul, Nicholas,” Richard said. “I’m not so even tempered as you. The Sweetwaters behave as if this were still the days of serfs and villeins and we were nothing but animals with no human feelings. Before I’m done, I swear I’ll teach them different. I’d like to kill every last man of them. It would be a pleasure to see every Sweetwater head on a chopping block.”

“You’re so fierce!” said Nicholas, and adroitly turned the subject. “Well, there’s talk of war these days. Plenty of people will get chopped up if that happens!”

A good many of the gathering were talking about the accident to the coffin, some of them with amusement, some with anxiety for the health of Mistress Archer, who had been soaked to the skin and had had to go a good half mile like that in order to get home and dry herself. For others, however, talking about the Sweetwaters and their connections had led to conversation about the wider world in general. Here in this quiet corner of the southwest, the power struggles of kings and lords didn’t often impinge, but it had been known to happen, and for years the news had been disturbing. King Henry VI was said to be ailing in his mind, and his relative, Richard, Duke of York, who like the king was a descendant of Edward III, had been made regent for a while, but it was an uneasy state of affairs.

“Ambitious, that’s what I hear. He didn’t much care for it when the king got better. Could lead to trouble…”

“Some say all that’s a tale put about by the queen. She don’t like him. They say he’s sworn his loyalty but she don’t believe it. I’ve heard no good of her. When I were in Lynmouth and there were a ship in from London way, the men aboard said folk in the eastern parts are calling her Queen She-Wolf, ever since her French friends burned Sandwich port last year. Bloodthirsty, they say she is.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.” Ned Crowham was unwontedly grave. “We had a queen over a century ago, a French-born one, that used to be called the She-Wolf of France. They must have named this one after her and it’s hardly a compliment. You could be right. I can see war coming.”

“Pray God and the saints it don’t come near us or call any of us away. If the Sweetwaters go to war…”

Nicholas had heard things, too. “If war does come,” he said to Richard, “then the Luttrells in Dunster Castle will go, for sure, and they’ll take some of the young fellows in my family. We’re their tenants.”

“And I’m a Sweetwater tenant! The last thing I want to do is die nobly fighting at their orders!” Richard said angrily. “Oh, well, it hasn’t happened yet. My friend, there’s something else I want to discuss.” He took Nicholas’s elbow and steered him into a quieter corner. “I’ve something in mind that could do both of us a bit of good. You might think a funeral’s no place for fixing up a marriage, but nothing’ll bring my father back and this talk of war’s unsettling. I’d sooner think of things that can be settled by you and me, here and now, and might give all our thoughts a happier turn. Your eldest daughter’s still not betrothed. I’ve been thinking…”

The Sweetwaters lived at the eastern end of the village on a knoll, in a house with a battlemented lookout tower. The Allerbrook, running close by on its way to join the River Barle, provided the house with a half moat in front, and there was a good ford for the packhorse trains carrying wool to market, and a set of stepping stones maintained by the Sweetwaters for the convenience of travellers in and out of the village.

Richard envied the house and approved of the stepping stones, but his father had been sour. “They put all the village rents up when they put in the stones,” George had said. “Lucky they didn’t put the farm rents up again and all!”

In the great hall Reginald Sweetwater, the elder by twenty minutes of Sir Humphrey’s twin sons, helped his father off with his boots while Walter did the same office for their guests, and Geoffrey Baker, who had returned to his duties immediately after the funeral, came in with two young pages and served mulled wine. He did not let the women servants wait on all-male gatherings. Sir Humphrey and Reginald were both widowers, and Walter’s wife, Mary, preferred to remain in her solar with her young daughter when male guests visited without their own wives.

“That was a good run,” said Thomas Carew, one of the guests—and an illustrious one, since his mother had been a Courtenay. “You’ll have a fine new set of antlers for your wall, Sir Humphrey.” He looked appreciatively around at the remarkable collection already there. “Twelve pointer, wasn’t he? Not bad. They hardly ever go over fourteen points in England.”

“That one did.” Sir Humphrey, a heavily built man, stretched a large pair of feet toward the warmth of the hearth and pointed to the impressive trophy just above it. “My grandfather killed him. Eighteen points. Almost unheard of for this part of the world.”

“It was a sixteen pointer that chased a friend of mine up a tree one September,” said Thomas.

“Damned lucky to find a tree on these moors,” said Walter Sweetwater.

“It was on the edge of Cloutsham vale, over beyond Dunkery hill. Plenty of tree cover there. Up there two hours he was, with the old stag parading around and going for the tree with his antlers every now and again. It was in the rut. Stag must have thought he was a rival. Do you reckon a male deer can tell male and female humans from each other?”

The conversation went on an excursion around remarkable hunting stories and anecdotes about animal sagacity, and an argument between Walter and his father about the intelligence of sheep, Walter maintaining that according to the Sweetwater shepherd, Edward Searle, they weren’t as stupid as most people believed, and Sir Humphrey complaining that Walter spent too much time in the company of the shepherd and should concentrate on practicing his swordplay instead. “Edward Searle may look like a prophet out of the Old Testament and stalk about among his sheep with his head in the air as though he were royalty, but he’s only a shepherd and ought to remember it, and so ought you,” said Sir Humphrey, who was himself slightly intimidated by Edward Searle, though he would have died before he admitted as much.

Thomas’s young son, whose mind seemed to have been elsewhere all this time, suddenly asked, “Who were those people we almost crashed into after we crossed the river? I could hardly see them in that bad light under the trees. What were they doing there?”

“George Lanyon of Allerbrook’s funeral party,” said Reginald contemptuously. “Our steward, Baker, attended it.” He looked around, but the steward had withdrawn and was out of hearing. Reginald laughed. “He said they dropped the coffin and it almost went into the river. But they got it up and it was all right. There was no harm done.”

“George Lanyon’s no loss. Maybe deer know men from women, but George Lanyon never knew gentle from simple,” said Sir Humphrey. His eyes, which were grey and always inclined to be cold, became positively icy at the thought of the departed George. “Had the presumption to argue when his rent went up, as if rents don’t have to go up now and then—it’s the course of nature. Let’s hope the son—what’s his name…?”

“Richard Lanyon, Grandfather.” Walter’s eleven-year-old son, Baldwin, was also in the company.

“That’s it. Richard. Bigheaded peasant who won’t let anyone call him Dickon. We can hope he’s less bloody-minded than George, but I doubt it. There’s something about him. He doesn’t like taking his cap off to me. He’ll very likely be even worse than his father was. Ah, here’s Baker back again. More mulled wine, Baker.”

When he brought the wine, Geoffrey said, “I’ve ordered a fresh basket of firewood to be brought in. The weather’s turning colder. It feels as if winter’s on its way early.”