The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  On that chilly winter morning, Richard and Peter, who had spent the previous two days in the wooded combe cutting poles, decided that they had enough for the first stretch of fencing.

  “They’ll be at it all the time it’s light,” Kat told Liza. “They won’t want to stop till dusk, so you’d better take some dinner out to ’un. I’ve got some bread and hot chicken pasties ready. I’ll put the pasties in a crock with a lid and wrap it in a cloth to keep them warm—and there’s a drop of cider in this here flask.”

  Liza duly set off with a bag containing dinner for her husband and father-in-law and found them hard at work. “A hedgerow ’ud be better, like we’ve got round the fields near the house,” Richard said as she admired the first few yards of fence. “But hedgerows take a man’s lifetime to grow. Might plant some brambles or hazel, though, to get one started. We’d get nuts and blackberries that way, too.”

  Peter said, “I think we’ve got company. It looks like Sir Humphrey.”

  It was. Astride his big bay gelding, he cantered toward them, embroidered saddlecloth flapping and a brooch in his velvet hat gleaming in the dull light. He slowed to a trot, pulled up beside them, put one hand on his hip and then scowled. Liza hastily curtsied and after a moment’s pause, her menfolk removed their caps. “Good day, sir,” said Peter politely.

  “I’m not sure that it is a good day,” said Sir Humphrey. He pointed with his whip at the fencing. “What’s all this, then? And why has this field been ploughed?”

  “It looks to the south and the soil’s deeper than in most places hereabout,” said Richard. “It’s more fertile, too. It’s my belief that this field could rear a crop of wheat and I’m going to try. Only I’ve got to keep the deer out.”

  “You’ll also keep my cows out, I see!” Sir Humphrey snapped. “And stop me riding over the land when I’m hunting. This is my land, let me remind you.”

  “I rent it from you, sir,” said Richard, quietly, but with an undertone which Liza found alarming. “And it’s my business to make the best of it. Wheat’s a valuable crop.”

  “Barley’s good enough for the likes of you. Wheaten bread’s not for common folk. If any wheat’s planted on Sweetwater land, it’ll be on our home farm. We’ll eat the bread and take the profit if any goes to market. Well, you’ve ploughed—you may as well plant. But make sure it’s rye or barley and put the land back to meadow afterward. And take that fencing down. I’ll have no fences getting in my way on my land.”

  Liza stared at him in astonishment and his cold gaze fastened on her face. “You’re looking at me as though I had two heads, young woman. May I know why?”

  “I just…wondered…”

  “Yes, well? What did you wonder?”

  “If a field has crops in it, Sir Humphrey…I mean…surely you wouldn’t hunt across any crop, whether it’s fenced or no,” said Liza, quite seriously.

  Peter gasped, but Richard laughed, although it was a mirthless sound. “My wench, a hunt goes where the hounds go and the hounds go where the quarry does, and find me the stag that solemnly runs round a field instead of across it!”

  “Quite right.” The bay fidgeted restlessly, but Sir Humphrey checked him with a rough hand on the curb. “I’ll forgive her for her impertinence this time,” he said. “She’s new here, I believe. But teach her to guard her tongue. Put your mind to breeding children, my girl, fine healthy sons to make the best of my land, but not to fence it. I’ll be out here again tomorrow and I’ll expect that fencing to be gone. My horse needs exercise, and standing here in the cold will do him no good. Good day to you all.”

  He swung the bay around, cantered it in a semicircle, jumped the ditch beyond the end of the new fencing and rode off across the ploughed field, veering away at the other side and heading downhill toward Rixons.

  “What the devil,” said Richard furiously to Liza, “did you want to go and say that for? We’ll have no peace for months now. He’s taken umbrage!”

  “I think he’d taken it already,” said Peter mildly. “The fencing’s upset him much more than Liza did. We’ll have to remove it, you know.”

  “I’m damned if we do! We’ll finish the job, boy, and that’s that.”

  “We can’t,” said Peter. “Do that and he’ll send men up here to take it down for us. You know he will.”

  “God damn him and all the Sweetwaters. The only good Sweetwater is a dead one. Him and his two sons—I hate the guts of every single one of them. Why should they have everything and us hardly anything and not even the right to better ourselves? And why should he have two sons when it was all Joan could do to give me one? And when are you going to have some news for us, Liza?” His angry eyes appalled her. “Near eight weeks you’ve been wed and it’s time there were signs. What have you to say for yourself?”

  He took a step toward her and for a moment she thought he would strike her. “Father…” said Peter protestingly.

  She did not know if he said more than that. Terrified by her father-in-law’s fury, she dropped the dinner bag and cider flask on the ground and turned away and fled.

  By nightfall the fencing was down, but Richard at the supper table was like a thunderstorm in human form. He shouted at Betsy that the pottage was too salty, which it was not, and berated Higg, who had hurt his wrist during the accident with George Lanyon’s coffin and had wrenched it again while helping to cut fencing poles, as wrathfully as though Higg had done it on purpose.

  Liza did not dare speak to him and scarcely even ventured to look at him. Next morning his temper seemed no better. Breakfast was nearly as frightening as supper had been.

  When it was over, she fed the fowls and the pig and then went off to walk up the combe to the ridge above, abandoning the work of the house, taking—or stealing—one of the solitary walks she loved and hadn’t had since she came to Allerbrook, desperate for escape from the atmosphere of rage which seemed to fill the house like smoke.

  It was cold, but solitude was a blessing. She reached the top of the combe and paused, thankfully breathing the free air on top of the ridge, beside the bog where the Allerbrook rose.

  The bog itself was a long stretch of virulent green amidst dark heather, with clumps of reeds here and there. It spread along the hillcrest in wet weather, sometimes even spilling over the edge, something Liza had witnessed in a rainstorm during December.

  The slope of hill between ridge and farm was not smooth but undulated like the folds of a curtain. It wasn’t perpendicular—sheep could find a footing there, and a few stunted trees clung to it, but it was certainly steep. During the December rainstorm, the overflow had poured down one of the creases and formed a new stream, which raced past the farmhouse about a hundred yards from the front door, to find its tumbling way eventually into the combe and the Allerbrook. It was quite a dramatic sight.

  The bog was not overflowing just now, however. Liza turned northward along the ridge, climbing a little, and rounded an oval-shaped mound she now knew was called a barrow and was thought to be the grave of some ancient chieftain who had lived here before the name of Christ was ever heard in these parts. Peter had told her that there were many such barrows on the moor, and most were said to be haunted, at least after dark. This one seemed wholesome enough in daylight, though. Liza paused beside it, looking back and down, to the thatched roofs of Allerbrook. The place where she lived, though she did not think she would ever call it home.

  She shouldn’t be here, of course. If Richard noticed her absence, it wouldn’t do much to improve his temper. But it was comforting to see the buildings of Allerbrook, where she sometimes felt like a captive, dwindled by distance to the size of toys.

  Raising her eyes from the farm, she looked northwest. There, in the distance, was Winsford Hill, where there were more supposedly haunted barrows, and far, far away beyond that rose the highest hill on the moor, Dunkery, where a beacon would be lit if any enemy invaded.

  Just below Dunkery, though she couldn’t see it, was the valley of the Avill
River, which flowed to the sea through Dunster. Even though she couldn’t, at this distance, glimpse as much as a trickle of hearth smoke, she knew where her home village was. Beyond it, lost in haze and therefore, today, just an emptiness, was the Channel. She missed it. At home, the sea had always been close at hand. If she was unhappy at Allerbrook, it was probably because she was homesick. Would she have been homesick living—in France, perhaps—with Christopher?

  She didn’t think so. Christopher was where she belonged. She had only to think of him and it was like a homecoming.

  And she must not stay here too long, thinking about him. She was sure to be needed for something. She hoped to heaven that Richard was now out on the land and unaware of her idle wanderings.

  As she took the path down the combe she noticed that while she had been out, someone had moved the cattle and horses from their housing in the farmyard and put them in a field, where they were making the best of the poor winter grass. She wondered why. A few moments later, as she neared the yard, she heard the scream.

  It was the most hideous noise she had ever heard in her life, earsplitting and full of frenzied terror. Horrified, she began to run. As she rushed into the farmyard, the sound seemed to wrap itself around her. Raised voices were mingled with it now. That was Peter, shouting, “Not like that, you bloody fool!” and her father-in-law, clearly not out in the fields after all, bellowing, “Hold on, hold on, can’t you? Damned slippery brute…Higg! What in hell’s name are you doing? You’ve done this job before….”

  “Can’t hold ’un with this bloody wrist…!”

  “You and your poxy wrist! Hold on, you and Peter, give me a chance…!”

  The screaming crescendoed just as Liza arrived in the yard. It seemed to be coming from an outhouse which hitherto she had never entered. The door was half open. She ran to look inside and then stopped, staring, breathless and revolted.

  Richard, Peter and Higg were all there, and so, hanging by its hind feet from a pulley in the roof, was the huge pig she had fed only that morning. The pulley rope stretched down and was made fast to a bracket in the wall, and immediately below the pig was a wooden bucket, empty. The pig was shrieking and struggling as Peter and Higg tried to hold it still. Richard was standing ready with a glittering knife in his hand. As she watched, the others finally stopped the pig from twisting its head and lunging with its front trotters, and Richard struck.

  There was a final scream, which died away into a gurgle. Blood spurted all over the three men and then settled into a scarlet stream, which poured into the bucket. The pig jerked convulsively, not yet quite dead.

  Richard, glancing around, caught sight of her and said quite amiably, “Oh, there you are. Stupid animal—put up a fight. Only made it harder for himself. But we’ll get a good pork joint and some fine salted meat and chitterlings out of this one. Kat’ll teach you to make chitterlings. She chops up some of the innards and fries ’un with bread crumbs and onions. She’s a great one for them.”

  The pig was still now, dead at last. But the blood reeked, sweet and metallic and completely disgusting. Retching, Liza fled to the back door of the farmhouse, dashed inside and found a basin.

  The kitchen was hot, full of steam from a vast cauldron bubbling over the fire. There was a bucket of fresh water under the table, however, and Betsy, clicking her tongue in concern, dipped a beaker into it and brought it to Liza as she leaned against the wall, basin in hand, and threw up what, to her, felt like her entire insides.

  “Here, when you’re sure you’re done, wash your mouth out with this. What was it, seein’ the pig killed? Meant to warn ’ee they were plannin’ that for today since they can’t go on with the fencin’, but ’ee’d slipped off somewhere. Never seen it afore, I expect. You’ll get used to it.”

  “Get used to it? It…it shrieked!”

  “Who wouldn’t?” said Kat, unconcernedly beating eggs for a pudding. “It’s mostly quicker and quieter than that. Get it right and piggy’s dead afore he knows he’s even been hoisted off the ground. You only get that racket when whoever’s holding ’un b’ain’t got a proper grip. Roger ought to have helped instead of Higg, until that wrist’s properly better. Pig should have been killed back afore your wedding, anyhow, to my mind, but Master always keeps one goin’ till the New Year, so as to have fresh bacon and hams still hanging when everyone else has run out.”

  “Why isn’t Roger helping?” Liza asked, and then retched again. When the spasm was over, she added, “Where is he?”

  “Out clearing a ditch. Higg said holding a pig would be easier if he strapped his wrist, but it looks like he was wrong,” said Betsy. “Dear Lord, you do be upset. Here, sit on this stool.”

  Liza was still sitting on the stool and sipping water when Richard came in, carrying a stack of empty buckets. She looked around once at his bloodstained form and hurriedly turned away, swallowing.

  “Kat, is that cauldron boiling yet? Liza, you’d better come and learn how to get the bristles off a pig…what’s the matter?”

  “She’s been sick. Gave her a shock, walkin’ in on that,” said Betsy.

  “Oh, I see. Well, having something to do ought to put that right. Come along, Liza. Come and help. Betsy, Kat, that water.”

  He and the two women between them scooped water from the cauldron and bore the buckets away. Liza emptied her beaker, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and followed them reluctantly back to the outhouse. No one seemed to have noticed how long she’d been gone—there was that to be thankful for, at least. The cattle and horses must have been moved in case the screaming and the stench upset them.

  Inside the shed, the pig still swung from the hook in the roof, but the bleeding was over. The pail of blood had been put aside and a piece of wood placed over it, while a large barrel had been placed under the pig instead. Peter had climbed, by way of a ladder, onto a stout timber ledge in the nearby wall and Higg was standing sulkily at the ladder’s foot, saying that this was his job rightly and his wrist would be all right. “Bucket won’t clobber me with its trotters and twist about.”

  “We’re not risking you losing hold and emptying boiling water over us by mistake,” said Peter brusquely. “Ah. Here’s the water. Hand me up that bucket, Kat.”

  “Stand back,” said Betsy to Liza—unnecessarily, since Liza had halted nervously in the doorway. Kat passed her pail up to Peter, who emptied the contents over the pig. The water sloshed down into the barrel and Peter handed the empty pail down through clouds of steam to Higg. Betsy gave him her full one and he doused the pig again. Liza found the first empty pail being passed to her.

  “Fetch another lot of hot water,” Richard said. “Quick! It needs to be boiling. It strips the bristles off. Didn’t you know?”

  “No. What…what do we have to do after this?”

  “Scrape him down, get any leftover bristles off, right down to the skin. Couple of days and we’ll start cuttin’ him up and getting his meat salted and whatnot. Betsy and Kat’ll show you what to do.”

  Liza slept badly that night, dreading the tasks that lay ahead. Her parents had bought their meat from a butcher who did his slaughtering out of sight and sound of the village. This close contact with it was something for which she hadn’t been prepared. “I wish someone had warned me,” she said that night to Peter.

  “It’s just the first time that’s upset you,” said Peter calmly. “Next time, you won’t mind so much and the time after that, you won’t mind at all. You’ll see.” Liza, who had eaten little that day and still felt nausea clenching at her stomach, hoped he was right, but doubted it.

  But two days later, when the next stage of the work began, her tasks weren’t too unpleasant after all. The good-hearted Higg had said that morning that the gutting and cutting up should be done out of Liza’s sight. “The mistress b’ain’t used to such things yet. It’ll take a while.”

  Liza therefore stayed in the kitchen while the pig was dealt with in a barn. Under instruction from Kat, Liza peeled onions an
d grated bread for the mysterious product called chitterlings. Presently, Betsy brought in chopped-up intestines for the purpose, but they didn’t look much like insides and therefore weren’t particularly horrid. When they were fried with the crumbs and onions, the smell was appetising.

  Nor, when larger cuts of pig were carried in, did she mind the business of laying down hams and bacon in troughs of salt with juniper berries and dried bay leaves. However, all the chopped intestines hadn’t gone into the chitterlings. When Kat, quite forgetting Higg’s warnings, went to the icy-cold shed where she had left the bucket of blood, after stirring barley and oatmeal into it, fetched it in, added the rest of the chopped-up innards and tipped the whole lot into a pan, saying that this would make a fine black pudding, Liza was overtaken anew with uncontrollable sickness, and Richard, once more choosing the wrong moment to walk in, said, “Oh, for the love of heaven! Not again! What’s wrong with the wench? You’re on a farm now, my lady. These fine airs won’t do!”

  Liza, sitting miserably on a stool and clutching another basin, said, “I can’t help it!” and burst into frightened tears, punctuated with further heavings. Betsy, coming over to her, leaned down and whispered a question.

  Liza looked up. The nausea subsided a little. “Oh! I’m not sure. I think it should have come three days back, only it hasn’t.”

  Betsy asked another question and Liza nodded. “Yes. Always regular, till now.”

  Kat had come over as well and was listening. She and Betsy then turned to Richard and surveyed him unitedly and with so much authority that Richard actually subsided and said quite quietly, “What are you women muttering about?”