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“I hope he did no serious damage,” he said. “He belongs to Mistress Luttrell—he’s her lapdog—but he’s forever running off into the woods. I think he thinks he’s a deerhound! Can you hand him over the fence to me?”
Liza went to do so and his eyes widened. “Don’t I know you? Aren’t you Liza Weaver? We met two days ago at the fair.”
“Yes, yes, I am. And you’re Christopher.” At the fair they had stood and walked side by side. This was the first time she had stood face-to-face with him and really studied him. He had a snub nose and a square jaw with a hint of pugnacity in it, the effect both tough and boyish and remarkably attractive. His red-gold eyebrows were shapely above his smiling eyes, and once more she noticed how beautiful and unusual their colour was. That amber shade was quite different from the soft velvet-brown of her own eyes, as she had sometimes seen them when looking in her mother’s silver mirror. There were a few gold flecks in the amber, and his skin, too, was dusted with golden freckles. There was a slightly denser freckling on his chin, adding an endearing touch of comedy to his face.
The hands that reached to take the struggling dog from her, though, were beautiful, strong without being coarse, the backs lightly furred with red-gold hairs, the bones clearly defined beneath the skin, the fingers and palms in perfect proportion. She found it hard not to keep gazing at them.
On his side, he was having his first clear view of her. He took in fewer details, but the little he did absorb was enough—the deep colour of the beechnut hair showing in front of the coif, the candid brown eyes, the good skin. She was tall for a girl, and within the plain dark everyday gown her body had a sturdy strength. Not that either of them felt they were studying a stranger. It was more as though they were reminding themselves of something they had known since before they were born but had unaccountably forgotten.
“The bluebells are still out in your garden,” he said. His hands were now full of dog, but he nodded to the little splash of blue next to the herb plot. “There are wonderful bluebells in a dell on the other side of the castle. You can get there by the path past the mill. A few yards on, there’s another little path that leads aside, leftward, to the dell. Do you know the place? Anyone can go there.”
“Yes. Yes, I know it. But how do you come to know it?” Liza asked curiously. “I thought…I mean, you have your work.”
“I came across it a week ago—chasing Wagtail again! He’s always getting out, and whoever sees him slipping off usually goes after him—page, squire, man-at-arms, maid or cook or groom! Not the chaplain or Mistress Luttrell herself, though. They keep their dignity. I found Wagtail among the bluebells and I’ve been back since to see them before they fade. Father Meadowes—the chaplain, that is—gives me a passage from the Scriptures to meditate on each day, and three times I’ve done my meditating while walking about in the dell after dinner. At about two of the clock.”
He shouldn’t be saying these things. Liza knew it and so did Christopher. He shouldn’t, either, have lain sleepless last night, while the girl he had met at the fair danced through his mind, glowing with light and warmth so that all thoughts of priesthood and his vocation had melted like morning mist before a summer sunrise. Now the words he ought not to say had come out, apparently by themselves.
“I walk out to take the air sometimes, too,” said Liza. She smiled. “There’s a leaf in your hair. Did you know?”
“Wagtail’s fault. He tore straight off through the woods below the castle and I went straight after him. But it’s hard going if you don’t take a stick or, better still, a wood-axe along with you,” said Christopher, grinning, and because he was still holding the dog, he leaned forward across the fence and let her remove the leaf from his tonsure. It was the first time they’d ever touched. It made her inside turn somersaults again.
“I must go,” he said, and she watched him walk away across the meadow. He was almost a priest and her parents wouldn’t like this at all, but it made no difference. Something had begun that would not be halted. At the thought of seeing him again, her spirit became as light as thistledown, dancing in the wind. Around her, the scent of the herbs, the green of the meadow, the azure of the bluebells, the distant sparkle of the sea all seemed enhanced, brighter, stronger, as though her senses had been half-asleep all her life and now were fully awake at last. She felt about as sensible as a hare in March, or an autumn leaf in a high wind.
She would see him again. She must.
In the afternoon she slipped away, through the village, along the path that led to the dell, and found him there and they walked together.
Three days later, although the bluebells were no longer at their best, they met there again and this time they kissed. Then they sat down on a fallen log and stared at each other in consternation.
“I’m going to be a priest. Well, I already am, in a junior way. I’ve been a subdeacon and six months ago I was ordained deacon. Becoming a full priest is the next step, the final one. If I…if I abandon my vocation now, my father won’t take me back. He has other sons to settle. He’s a merchant in Bristol, successful but not rich.”
“I see. Well, you told me to begin with that you were going to be a priest. But…” Liza’s voice died away in bewilderment, mainly at herself.
Christopher thrust his fingers through his tonsure. “Liza, my father and mother are both steady, reliable people. They expect their children to be steady and reliable, too, and I thought I was! And then—we met at the fair, and you smiled at me and all my good sense has flown away like a flock of swallows at the end of summer! You make me feel as though my feet have left the ground and my head’s among the stars. I don’t understand myself!”
He stopped running his fingers through his hair and reached out to take her hands. “What I do understand is that my world has turned upside down. Liza, as I said, I’m already in the priesthood. To get myself released from this would be horribly difficult. I’d have to go to my bishop and he’d probably say I was committed for life. I’ve heard of men who’ve bought their way out, but I have little money. I suppose I could borrow some. I know I could make my way in the world, given time, but it would be very hard at first and perhaps I’d be in debt. Would you wait for me? Would they let you wait?”
“I don’t think so. They want to get me married, and they’d say that a priest can’t marry and that’s the end of it.”
Liza knew her family. They were good-natured as a rule, though liable to shout loudly in times of crisis—if, for instance, a pot should be spilled in the kitchen or a piece of weaving be damaged or if Aunt Cecy discovered a spider in her bedchamber—but with no real ill feeling behind the uproar. Nevertheless, for all their seemingly easygoing ways, they took their work seriously; nothing slipshod was ever let past. And they expected their private life to be properly conducted, expected that parents would arrange their children’s future careers and marriages and that the children would concur. The arrangements would be made with affection and consideration, but made, just the same, and with a very keen regard for respectability. What Liza was doing now would not be tolerated. She would be seen as a wanton who had tried to seduce a priest from his vocation. Her mother in particular would be horrified. Margaret prided herself on holding up her head among the neighbours.
“No, I see. I’d say the same, in their place. Liza, what has happened to us?”
“It’s as if…this were meant to be. I was reared to be steady, sensible, like you. My father talks to me about cloth-making because sometimes I ask questions about it and he says he likes to see his daughter being interested in practical things and her family’s business.”
If you’re taking the trouble to learn about my business, you’ll do the same about your husband’s business when you marry, whether he’s in the weaving trade or no. I’d sooner see you with an abacus than mooning at the moon. Nicholas had said such things to her several times.
“He’s taught me to keep accounts, with Arabic figures, and an abacus,” Liza said. “I’ve always tried to be what he and my mother wanted of me. I think my parents are like yours in many ways. But now…my head’s among the stars as well.”
They looked at each other helplessly, two earnest young creatures who had suddenly found that common sense wasn’t enough.
“Except that it can’t come to anything. Dear heart. Oh, Liza, what have I done to you, letting you love me, letting myself love you? It really is like that, isn’t it? I mean—love?”
To Liza’s distress, there were tears in his eyes. “Yes. I don’t see how I can ever marry anyone else, but they’ll make me!”
“Oh, my poor Liza! Oh!” He cried it out in anguish. “Why can’t a priest be a man as well and live as other men do? Why are we condemned to this…to rejecting human love, to being so alone? It’s cruel! And there’s nothing, nothing I can do about it, for you or for me!”
“Hold me,” said Liza.
On the way home, aglow from the feel of his arms around her and the feel of his body as her arms closed around him, she came face-to-face with a small, wan woman whom she recognised as Alison Webber, the wife of the unfortunate Bart. Bart was at least forty, but Alison was his second wife and she was still very young; indeed, not yet married a year. She had been a rosy girl with bright eyes like a squirrel, but now she went about like a shadow, and Liza, troubled at the sight of her, paused to say good-day. Whereupon Alison’s haunted eyes blazed at her.
“You wish me good-day? Your mother’s the cruel-lest woman in all Dunster. Won’t speak to me in the street, as if it was all my fault, and it isn’t! Your parents should have dined with us yesterday and they cried off. And what the Weavers do, others do! If she’d put out a hand to us, it ’ud be different. She’s pushed us into hell and she’s done it a’purpose and I’ve no word to say to you. Just this!” said Alison furiously, and spat at Liza’s feet before pushing past and going on her way.
No, thought Liza miserably, all the glow gone, no, there was no future for her and Christopher. Margaret would never forgive her if she knew. Never.
But all through the summer she and Christopher went on with their stolen meetings, most of them in the dell. One, by chance, was on the stone bridge which had been built across the Avill River for the benefit of packhorses carrying wool to and from Dunster market. On the bridge, shadowed by the trees that bordered the river, they hugged each other and then stood to talk and look at the water, and Liza saw someone in the garden of a nearby cottage looking at them. Alarmed, she dragged Christopher off the bridge without explaining why, which annoyed him because he thought he’d seen a trout and was about to point it out.
“A trout!” Liza gasped. “The woman who lives in that cottage has the sharpest nose and the longest ears in Dunster! If she recognised us…!”
“Never mind her nose or her ears. Unless she’s got the eyes of an owl as well, she couldn’t possibly have recognised us in the shade of the trees! Acting guilty like that, you’ve probably drawn her attention. She’ll think about us now and start wondering who we were!”
“Oh!” Liza burst out, stamping her foot. “How I hate this secrecy!”
“Good thing we’re off the bridge. You might damage it, stamping like that,” said Christopher, and as he pulled her into his arms, there, once again, was that tough grin which had turned her insides to water at the fair.
They had other small squabbles later. Liza never told him of the feeling of guilt toward her family, which often kept her awake at night; nor did he tell her of his own wakeful nights, when he wondered what he was about, how it happened that the studies, the prospect of full priesthood, which had once, to him, been the meat and bread, the sweet water and glowing wine of the spirit, were now nothing but yesterday’s cold pottage.
But sometimes their secret misery, forced to dwell side by side with this extraordinary thing which had come upon them and bound them together and could not be altered, seemed to turn them into flint and tinder and sparks of anger were struck, though only to be extinguished moments later by Liza’s tears and Christopher’s kisses and that sudden, enchanting grin as his temper faded.
They never went further than kisses, though. Their stolen embraces woke a deep hunger in them, but the common sense to which they had been bred, and the knowledge, too, that they would be breaking Christopher’s solemn, priestly promise of celibacy, protected them.
“I think sometimes that we quarrel because I want you so much but I know I mustn’t,” Christopher said once, after one of their brief arguments.
Cautious caresses were all they would ever have of one another and they knew it. They would have this one magical summer, but never would the enchantment reach its natural conclusion, and the summer would soon be gone. As it now was. From what Liza had heard that morning, the woman with the sharp nose and ears apparently did have owl’s eyes, as well. Talk had started somehow and almost certainly with her. Very likely she knew them both quite well by sight. Their secret was almost out. Only her family’s kindly trust in her had kept them skeptical, but it wouldn’t last.
Now, standing by the plague cross on the Alcombe road, they recognised that their time was done.
“They are arranging my marriage,” said Liza. “And they’ve heard talk. We dare not ever meet again. It’s over, Christopher.”
“Oh, dear God. Don’t say that!” He closed his fingers around her upper arms so tightly that she protested and he eased his grip, but his face had gone hard. “It can’t be…so suddenly, so soon!”
“But we knew it was coming,” said Liza miserably. “We’ve always known. I can’t defy them and if I did—even if we ran off together—I shouldn’t take you from your vocation. I know that. Only, I don’t know how to bear losing you. I just don’t know how to bear it.”
“Nor do I!”
He drew her into the shelter of some trees, out of sight of the track, and pushed her coif back so that he could kiss her thick brown hair, and then for a long time they stood there, clasping each other so tightly that they could almost have been one entity, as they longed to be.
Parting was so painful that they did not know how to do it. Liza, gazing into his face as though she were trying to memorise it, had a sudden inspiration and pulled a patterned silver ring from the middle finger of her right hand. “Christopher! Take this! It’s loose on my thickest finger, but it might fit one of yours. Please take it and wear it. I want you to have it!”
“But…how did you come by it? If someone gave it to you as a gift, should you give it away?”
“It belonged to my grandmother. When she died, Mother gave it to me. But it’s always been loose, as I said. I can say I’ve lost it. Mother will scold because she’ll think I was careless, but nothing more. Take it, Christopher, please.”
He did so, trying it on his left little finger and finding that it fit quite well. Then, at last, after one final and furious kiss, they let each other go. Christopher, looking over his shoulder all the time, went to reclaim his pony, and Liza, putting her hair back under its coif, found her hands trembling. She saw him mount and waved to him, but then couldn’t bear it anymore. She turned away, brushing a hand across her eyes, and started back across the field.
The women were still there, gleaning, nearer to the path now, and they looked at her curiously. One of them—Liza recognised her as Bridget, the wife of another weaver—said, “Are you all right, m’dear? You look a bit mazed and sad-like.”
That was when she realised she was crying. She wiped her knuckles across her eyes. “It’s nothing.” They went on staring at her and she told them one small part of the truth. “I think I’m going to be married but I don’t know him very well and…”
“Ah, that’ll come right soon enough,” Bridget said kindly. “Don’t ’ee worry, now. Nicholas’ll not agree to anything but what’s good for thee. Don’t ’ee fret a moment longer. You’ll be as happy as a lark, and think of all they pretty babes that’ll come!”
“Of course,” said Liza, now determinedly smiling. “Of course I know you’re right.”
Whatever happened she mustn’t have red eyes when she reached home. With a frightened jolt she realised she had been away without explanation for quite a long time, and that her parents knew there was gossip about her.
She must find an excuse for her absence. She could say she had wanted to go for a walk and when passing through the lobby had overheard her father talking about marrying her to Peter Lanyon. That she hadn’t meant to listen but had accidentally heard that much. So she had walked to St. George’s church to pray for happiness in her future, and then walked back across the stubble field. Yes, that would do, and if Bridget should ever mention seeing her, it would fit in.
CHAPTER FIVE
UNTIMELY AUTUMN
With an effort that felt like pulling her heart out of her body, Liza arranged another smile on her face as she approached her home, only to realise, on reaching it, that she needn’t have troubled. Her family was in the middle of one of its noisy crises. Dirk, the younger of the two menservants in the Weaver establishment, was up astride the roof ridge along with her cousin Laurie, doing something to a chimney, and she could hear shouting within the house while she was still several yards away.
As she stepped inside, the smell of soot assailed her nostrils and the shouting resolved itself into confused cries of annoyance from women in the main room, and a furious bellowing from the back regions, which she recognised as the voice of one of the older cousins, Ed, declaring that soot was blowing into the fleece store and would somebody shut that accursed door before the whole lot had to be washed a second time!
She walked into the living quarters and her mother and one of the maidservants, both liberally smeared with dirt, turned from the business of sweeping up a shocking mess of soot and disintegrated bird’s nest, which had apparently come down the chimney and mingled with the revolting remains of a fire over which someone had tossed a pail of water. Above it, the filthy and battered remains of what had once been a thin tree branch waved and waggled, presumably because Laurie and Dirk on the roof were agitating it. “What in the world…?” said Liza.
“The chimney were blocked,” said Margaret. “Where’ve you been?”
“I just went out to take the air. I went to St. George’s and—”
“You and your walks.” But Great-Uncle Will had advised them not to challenge Liza, and Margaret, distracted by domestic upheaval, didn’t at that moment want to. “Find a broom and help us out. Fine old muddle this is, I must say. Spring-cleaning in October. I never did hear the like.”
No need after all for excuses or lies. She’d got away with it. Thanking the saints for her good luck, Liza made haste to be useful. Later in the day, when order had been restored and dinner eaten, her parents called her to their room, and she felt alarmed, but their faces were kind. They simply wanted to talk about her marriage. Nothing less, but nothing more, either. If her absence in the morning had aroused any doubts, they evidently didn’t mean to mention them—unless Liza herself was foolish enough to be difficult. She knew her kinfolk very well indeed.
“The whole family has discussed it now,” her father said, coming to the end of his explanation. “We’ve agreed it’s a good thing for you. Peter Lanyon is young and healthy. The business side is not ideal, but it may work out well. Anyway, we intend to say yes.”
“I understand,” said Liza nervously. Since she had not had to invent an excuse for her absence in the morning, she had taken care, throughout the interview, to look as though the notion of Peter Lanyon as her bridegroom were a complete surprise. She added, “It’s a big thing for me.”
“Naturally. Have you any objection?” Nicholas asked. Her parents were both watching her sharply. Well, she’d better allay their suspicions before they voiced them. She dared do nothing else.
“No, Father. I…I’m sure it’s a good thing.” She must, must be the sensible Liza her family wanted her to be. She shuddered to think of the storm of wrath the truth would arouse, and besides, Christopher might suffer. She made herself smile again. Would she have to spend the rest of her life forcing the corners of her mouth upward when all she wanted to do was cry and cry?
Well, if so, so be it. She had no alternative.
Christopher, on his way to Alcombe, felt like crying, too, but except for that one uncharacteristic fit of emotion during their first meeting in the dell, he was not in the habit of shedding tears. He must face it. He had lost Liza for good and what had been between them must remain a secret for all eternity. They had known it would be like this one day. It felt worse than he had expected, that was all. It was like an illness, but he supposed he would recover someday. And so, of course, would Liza. At the thought of Liza forgetting him, he did find tears attempting to get into his eyes, but with a highly unclerical oath he repressed them and rode on.
At that very moment, at Allerbrook farm, another unsanctioned love affair was disturbing the air. It had been secret until now, and its emergence into the light had thrown Richard Lanyon into a dramatic fit of temper.
“Marion Locke? Who in God’s name is Marion Locke? I’ve never heard of her! You’re going to marry Liza Weaver—it’s all settled! Who’s this Marion Locke? Where did you find her? There’s no Locke family round here!”
Richard Lanyon stopped, mainly because he had run out of breath. He stood glowering in the middle of the room, the same room in which George’s coffin had lain awaiting its funeral. He had shouted so loudly that the pewter on the sideboard rang faintly as if trying to echo him.
“She lives on the coast. In Lynmouth, Father. I met her at the Revel there, in June.”
“Lynmouth? That’s as far as Dunster, the other way. I remember you went to the Revel. Well, half of Somerset and Devon go to it—young folk have to enjoy themselves. I’ve no quarrel with that, and if you’ve had a loving summer with some lass there, I’ve no quarrel with that either. Young men have their adventures. I did, in my time. But that’s one thing and marriage is another. How have you managed to visit her since? Oh!” Richard glared at his son. “Now I recall. Two weeks back, we drove the moor for our bullocks and somehow or other you got yourself lost in a mist, you that’s known the moor all your life. Came home hours late, after the cattle were all in the shippon, and said you’d mistaken the Lyn for the head of the Barle and thought you were going southeast instead of north. I thought your brains had gone begging, and all the time…”
Peter stood his ground. “Yes, I saw her then. Other times were when I said I’d ride out to see how the foals or the calves were doing. It came in useful that we’re allowed to run stock on the moor. I’ve seen her twice a month since we first met. Marion visits relations—a grandmother and an aunt—in Lynton, at the top of the cliff, on the first and third Tuesdays of each month. We arranged it so I’d meet her in Lynton whenever I could.”
“Who is she?” Richard spoke more calmly and with some curiosity. After all, if this unknown Marion Locke were a more profitable purchase than Liza Weaver, it might be worth indulging the boy. Nicholas would be upset, but maybe he could suggest someone else for Liza who would suit her parents better than Peter. He raised an enquiring eyebrow. Peter immediately dashed his father’s hopes by replying, “The Lockes are fisherfolk. They run a boat—the Starfish—out of Lynmouth harbour. They—”
“Her father’s a fisherman?”
“Yes, that’s right. He—”
“Are you out of your mind, boy?” roared Richard. “When did fisherfolk and farming folk ever marry one another? Fisher girls can’t make ham and bacon and chitterlings out of a slaughtered pig, or brew cider, or milk a cow, and our girls can’t mend nets and gut mackerel!”
“Are those the things that matter?” Peter shouted back. “Marion’s lovely. She’s sweet. We love each other and—”
“When you’re living day to day then, yes, they do matter, boy, believe me, they do! When a girl can’t do the things you take for granted, that’ll soon see the end of your loving summer! The autumn leaves’ll fall fast enough then, take my word for it!”
“Liza Weaver’s not been farm reared, either!”
“She can bake and do dairy work. She’ll soon pick up the rest. And she’ll bring a pile of silver and a cut into the Weaver profits along with her. What sort of dowry has this Marion got, I’d like to know? Well? Tell me!”
“I never asked. Not much, perhaps, but—”
“I’ll tell you how much! Nothing! Fisherfolk never have a penny to spare. They put all their money into their boats. Marion Locke, indeed! You can forget this Marion, right away. I’ll—”
“Father, she’s beautiful. And we’re promised to each other.” Peter raised his chin. “We’re betrothed and—”
“Oh no, you’re bloody well not!” shouted Richard. “Not unless I say so and you needn’t go trying to get Father Bernard on your side, either! I won’t have it and that’s that. I’ll see this girl’s father and see what he has to say about it, and I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t agree with every word I say. Who is he? What’s his name?”
“He’s well respected in Lynmouth. He’s Master Jenkin Locke and he lives by the harbour in the cottage with the birds made out of twisted thatch along the ridge of his roof. He made them himself. The Starfish is one of the finest boats—”
“Be quiet! Just forget about Marion Locke, as from now! And…what is it?” Hearing a sound at the door, Richard swung around and found a timid-looking young girl there with bare feet, a shawl wrapped around her and a lot of straw-coloured hair trailing from under a coif that was badly askew. “Who the devil are you?”
“I’m…I’m sorry, sir. But the mistress sent me—Mistress Deborah. I’m Allie, sir, her maid….”
“Allie! Oh, of course! But what brings you…is something wrong? With Mistress Deborah!” Suddenly he was taut and alert, his eyes fixed on Allie, Peter’s vagaries for the moment quite forgotten.
“Yes, sir, dreadful wrong!” Allie was near tears. “She’s so ill, sir. I’ve called the priest. She took a chill the day after the…the funeral, sir, when she fell in the river, for all you give her your cloak, and she’s worse and she’s sent me to fetch you, sir. She wants to see you….”
Richard turned at once to his son. “Go and saddle Splash for me, while I get my cloak. Allie, is anyone with your mistress now—any other woman?”
“Yes, sir, our neighbour. But she’ll not be able to stay long. She has children and—”
“She won’t have to stay long. I’ll take you down to the village with me on my horse.”
