The House of Lanyon

by Valerie Anand

  “And the letter? Did someone read the letter for her?” Liza asked unhappily. Higg looked at her mournfully.

  “Tell me,” said Liza.

  “Mistress, she…she tore it up.”

  “She needs more time,” said Liza, trying to be calm, trying to be sensible. “Did she look well?”

  “She said she wasn’t ailing, Mistress. I didn’t see her for long.”

  Liza worried afresh, but at this point, Father Bernard’s gloomy forecast came true. The situation was indeed worsening. A new rebellion had started in Lancashire. “So far,” said Father Bernard, “men have only been summoned to arms from the districts where the troubles actually are. We can but pray they come no closer.”

  The next report said that the rebellion was bigger than expected and was led by a relative of the powerful Earl of Warwick. The king had taken refuge in Nottingham Castle and the rebels had issued an alarming proclamation, condemning the queen and her family, the Woodvilles, and claiming that the Earl of Warwick was one of their own supporters.

  July brought the news that Warwick had fled to France and that George of Clarence, King Edward’s younger brother, had gone with him and had been married to Warwick’s daughter Isabel. The air was full of danger. The southwest was still not caught up in it, but trouble was coming closer, like an incoming tide. The king had summoned the Earl of Devon to him, and the Earl of Pembroke, too, the same Pembroke who was lord of Dunster Castle. The Duke of Somerset, however, was reportedly supporting Warwick, which now meant supporting the king’s enemies. The Sweetwaters, who were now Yorkist and therefore on King Edward’s side, came to the butts at every practice, and were seen watching the men of the parish with keen eyes, picking out the good marksmen.

  The next reports were still more grave. Warwick and Clarence had landed in southeast England. They had marched through Kent, gathering men, entered London with a swagger and then set out northward to join their supporters. There had been fighting. And the Earl of Pembroke had been taken by the Lancastrians and beheaded. Dunster’s absentee landlord would be an absentee forever now.

  “I don’t like it,” Richard said over Sunday supper the day that Father Bernard made that announcement. “It’s as if we’re perched on a rock on a beach, watching the sea roll in!”

  Further news was brought to Clicket by a seaman called Ralph Stubb, whose parents lived in the village. He had been granted leave from his ship, which had put in at Porlock, bringing goods from London. Having greeted his family, he had repaired to the White Hart to renew his acquaintance with old friends—Adam Turner’s ale counted as one of these—and also to enjoy holding forth to a fascinated audience.

  “Seems,” Stubb said, “that whatever Warwick and Clarence are up to, King Edward’s in London, and reigning. Only,” he added, “there’s another tale going round. It’s old news now but some folk hadn’t heard it before and it does make a man think. Some of them on the rebels’ side…well, looks like they had a point.”

  “What do you mean?” demanded Father Bernard, who, although now very pale and thin and assisted by an energetic curate who would take over from him eventually, was still, as yet, in charge of his parish, still liked his ale once in a while and was in the tavern that evening.

  “Two years back,” said Stubb, “that’s when it happened. It’s about the Earl of Desmond. You’ve not heard?”

  “Nothing about anyone called Desmond. The Sweetwaters don’t tell us everything they hear,” said Father Bernard. “Not if it’s against the Yorkists, anyhow.”

  “Well,” said Stubb, “it’s like this…”

  It was an unpleasant story. The king’s controversial marriage to the widow Elizabeth Grey, whose family of origin, the Woodvilles, now occupied so many splendid posts, was probably much of the driving force behind the rebellion, and with reason. The Earl of Desmond, who two years ago had been Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland, had paid a visit to England at that time. He had talked with the king and he had criticised the queen, who had learned of it and been angry.

  Later Desmond returned to Ireland and lost the post of Deputy Lieutenant to the Earl of Worcester. “A friend of the queen, it seems,” said Stubb. “He had Desmond arrested, for no good reason as far as anyone knows, and then had him beheaded. Worse! He had Desmond’s two small sons beheaded, as well.”

  There was a stir, and a horrified murmur.

  “One of them were no more than six years old and didn’t understand,” said Stubb. “Had a boil on his little neck and said to the headsman to mind it. That’s what’s being said.”

  “Wicked, that is,” said Turner.

  “We shouldn’t be speaking evil of the king’s own wife,” said Father Bernard uneasily, but he was frowning. “But if that tale’s true,” he said slowly, “then it’s a shameful thing. To murder two little boys!”

  Father Bernard did not care for children in person, because he liked to read and pray or—these days—snooze undisturbed, and every child in Clicket knew better than to play near the vicarage. One incautious shriek and Father Bernard, who could still move surprisingly fast for someone of his age, would shoot out from his door, waving a stick. He would, however, have given his life without hesitation to protect any one of them from real harm. “This is ugly news,” he said. “Pray God it’s not true.”

  “But it is,” said Stubb. “We gave passage to some of Warwick’s men last year, had ’em on board for a week, going up north. They’d been at court the year before, when word got to the court from Ireland. They said the court was buzzing with it.”

  For the time being, however, quiet seemed to have fallen, even though Warwick and Clarence were presumably still at large. In the autumn Liza tried again to make peace with her mother, and sent Roger with two big mutton hams and two large cheeses. Another letter accompanied the offerings, this one not only loving, but pleading. When Roger returned, however, he brought the hams and cheeses back with him.

  “I won’t ask what happened to the letter,” said Liza bitterly.

  “Best not try again,” said Richard. “You’ll only upset yourself. Maybe it’s because of all this that Quentin’s still the only one.”

  He had begun, once more, to make digs. This was not the first. “Perhaps you’re right,” said Liza dejectedly. She felt heavy and tired and her head ached. The last thing she wanted just then was to be harried over her poor showing as a brood mare.

  In fact, her out-of-sorts feeling was the harbinger of illness. The autumn was damp and cold and it brought an epidemic—a cross, it seemed, between an ordinary cold and the sweating sickness. The sufferers were feverish and ached all over with violent coughs in the later stages. Liza was the first person at Allerbrook to succumb, but everyone there took it in due course, one after the other, and in the village there were deaths.

  At Allerbrook they all recovered, although Higg never quite shook off the cough. In Clicket, however, just before Christmas, Father Bernard died. His erstwhile curate, Father Matthew, conducted his funeral and was confirmed by the Sweetwaters as Clicket’s new vicar.

  The winter closed in and a heavy snowfall cut off the higher farms and villages. Richard, these days, wasn’t the good shot that he used to be with either crossbow or longbow though he was still accurate over short distances, but Peter’s eye was straight enough, and he had the idea of putting out a few vegetables on the snow to tempt rabbits, or even deer, within range of his arrows. The rabbits, of course, were now legal, but the deer were not.

  “Only, if we can’t get down the combe to church through the snow, I doubt any Sweetwaters’ll be clambering up it to see what we’re up to,” Peter said cheerfully, stepping into the kitchen one morning with a dead hind on his shoulder. “See what you can do with this, Liza.”

  The thaw made the Allerbrook spate and flooded some of the field, but at least it became possible once more to get down the combe from Allerbrook, attend church and hear Father Matthew give out the latest news, whenever there was any.

  Father Matt
hew was a learned young man who believed in education and had started a small school for the Clicket children, though he was much given to homilies about the sinfulness of pleasure and the fires of hell, and his pupils found their lessons more depressing than inspiring. His face, though, had never been as sombre as it was when in March he announced that the time of quiet was over. Lincolnshire had risen on behalf of the imprisoned King Henry VI.

  After that, for months, the news was a continual muddle as the warring factions went up and down on the wheel of fortune. “It’s enough to make you dizzy,” Richard said in disgust. “First one side’s on top, and then the other. Where will it end?”

  Everyone was relieved to hear that Warwick and Clarence had fled the country again, but in September the conflict at last rolled its first waves into the southwest, as the two of them brought fleets to Devon and landed.

  “But they have set out straight for London,” said Father Matthew. “Once more, the worst has passed us by.”

  It seemed to be so. King Edward and his youngest brother, Richard of Gloucester, were now the ones in exile. They had gone to Burgundy and King Henry was back on his throne. The queen was in sanctuary at Westminster.

  “No business of ours,” Richard Lanyon said as the winter once more clamped down. “I don’t care who sits on the throne as long as they leave us alone. Let anyone have it!”

  In March 1471, Father Matthew stood up in his pulpit once more and said the words they had all been dreading to hear. “The king is in England again. He is in the north, but he is mustering men and this time calling for aid from every able-bodied man in the country. All men of this parish are to assemble at the butts as soon as they leave this church. The women should go home. The men who are to go will return home for one night before setting out with Master Walter Sweetwater and his son Baldwin Sweetwater tomorrow.”

  “I argued with them!” Richard said furiously to Liza as she stood, stricken and horrified, in the hall, while Peter, grim faced, put his arm about her. “I told them, take me, I’ve been soldiering before and I’m fit enough for all I’m fifty-one this year. But no! That sly Walter Sweetwater said he’d been watching me at the butts and I don’t aim as true as I did over distances. Peter’s to go and there’s no appeal. God’s teeth! If only we weren’t Sweetwater tenants! I’m sick of being in their power, sick to my stomach of it!”

  “I may not have to be gone long,” said Peter. “It may be all over quite soon.”

  Liza, biting her lip, saw little Quentin looking at them wide-eyed from the doorway to the kitchen, with Betsy hovering behind her. For Quentin’s sake, she mustn’t give way. If ever there was a moment to be sensible, it was now.

  “I…I must help Peter put his things together. Peter, you must have clean things…shirts, hose….”

  “Yes, he must. Could find himself sleeping out in the damp. You’ve always got to have dry things to get into.” Richard, though still burning with fury, hauled useful memories into the light. “And you’d better take the old helmet, and that sword I got at Towton.”

  “I don’t know how to use it!” said Peter. “I’ll have my bow.”

  “I daresay the Sweetwaters’ll put you through some drilling before you get to the king. You take the sword, anyhow.”

  Liza, slipping from Peter’s arm, went to Quentin and picked her up. “Your dad’s got to go away for a while, sweeting. You and I have to send him off with plenty of good stout clothes. Come and help!”

  As she went out, taking Betsy with her, she heard Richard say to Peter, “I suppose there’s no chance that you’ve left her with child?”

  She didn’t hear the answer, but the proof that no such thing had happened had come only two days before. It looked as though Quentin would be the only one forever. After all, she was now nearly thirty-six. If only, if only her father-in-law would just forget about it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  SHE-WOLF AND CUB

  When men came home from war and sat warming their feet at the hearth and drinking ale and talking about their exploits, their descriptions of how armies met on the field made pictures in the minds of their families and friends. In their imaginations, these admiring hearers saw squadrons of horsemen with lances and swords, or a mass of determined foot soldiers grasping pikes, all shouting war cries and racing toward a cringing enemy.

  What their mental pictures didn’t contain was a confused collection of men, some in full plate armour, some light-armoured, some in chain mail handed down from bygone generations, and a number of unfortunates not in mail at all, some riding a variety of horses from massive destriers to wild-eyed ponies, and many others on foot, trying to keep out of the way of the horses, all sweltering hot and cursing the month of May for producing such a heat wave, and all so lost in a tangle of sunken lanes between banks and ancient hedgerows that they couldn’t even find the enemy, let alone charge him. By the look of things, the Battle of Tewkesbury was going to be a disaster, though it wasn’t yet clear for whom.

  Peter Lanyon, in the middle of it all, was a horseman without armour, except for his helmet. He had his sword. He also had a destrier, which he had acquired just over two weeks ago at the Battle of Barnet, by grabbing the leg of the knight who was riding it, yanking him off and then sticking a dagger through a gap where his victim’s armour was falling apart. This enabled him to fight on horseback, since ponies like Plume weren’t used in battle, and anyway, he was fond of Plume and didn’t want the poor animal to come to harm. Plume had been left behind the lines with the baggage.

  He was now wondering, however, whether the enormous liver chestnut destrier was quite the prize he had thought. After Barnet, when the Captain of Archers he had been following saw that Peter now had a charger, he had been transferred to a mounted troop, but he had ridden Plume and led the destrier during most of the march from Barnet to Gloucestershire, and hadn’t had much practice in handling his new mount.

  He was now discovering that although he was strong and accustomed to horses, a trained war stallion was very different from even the most wilful pony. It had several times tried to bite him, even when he was offering it food, and now, with ears flattened back, it seemed to want to bolt, a desire he could understand but couldn’t, just now, allow.

  Richard of Gloucester, the king’s youngest brother, the loyal one, who was in charge of this wing, had ordered them all to have their weapons ready, which meant that Peter needed his right hand for his sword. He had only his left hand for controlling the horse, and his left shoulder felt as though it were about to come out of its socket.

  A pretty state of affairs it would be if he fell off the moment they met the Lancastrians. He would probably be killed and the Sweetwaters wouldn’t care. Walter Sweetwater and his son Baldwin were both in this same company, among the lightly armoured riders but mounted on hefty chargers, which they handled with contemptuous ease, and they had already laughed to see him trying to manage his new steed.

  It was a wonder he hadn’t been killed already. This whole expedition was a nightmare, and not only that. Something completely unexpected had happened to him.

  He was, after all, a vigorous man of thirty-two, a long way from boyhood. He hadn’t expected to be seized with homesickness when he had been gone from Allerbrook only a matter of weeks. He was suffering from it now, and all the more because these deep lanes and high banks, where the grass was thick and the cow parsley was already in bloom, reminded him so much of the lanes of Somerset.

  He kept on remembering Somerset. He was haunted by images of wooded combes with steep sides plunging down to swift peat rivers, of high moors where the wind whispered through the grass and gorse and over the dark heather and there were larks and curlews and ravens and now and then hovering kestrels or buzzards, searching the moor for prey.

  He longed with all his heart to be back there, tending the sheep, watching the crops sprout, watching the calves and lambs grow, repairing ditches and fences. He was a farmer, not a soldier, but here he was, with no me
ans of escape, trying to manage this horrible horse with one hand and wondering if Gloucester was ever going to get them out of this maze of lanes. He hated war, hated being away from home, and he was afraid.

  Somewhere a cannon boomed, and just ahead of him a shower of arrows swished over the hedgerow to the left. Men fell, toppling from saddles; those with bows and quivers tried to return the compliment, shooting wildly over the hedgerows. Gloucester, who had already ridden past the place, turned back, shouting, and the trumpeter at his side blew a signal telling them to close up against the left-hand bank and use it as shelter.

  Peter’s stallion reared, snorting, and Peter stayed on only because he had acquired the saddle along with the horse, and a knight’s saddle, with its high pommel and cantle, fore and aft, was designed to keep the rider in place. But he still wouldn’t bet a single penny piece on his chances of ever seeing his home, or Liza, again.

  They had set out as quite a sturdy force, fifty men all told from the parish of Clicket, led by Walter and Baldwin Sweetwater, who did indeed make opportunities along the way to drill them all in the use of various weapons, and bullied them pitilessly in the process. Long before they reached the king, north of London, Peter, whose dislike for the Sweetwaters was strong but had never hitherto been quite as violent as that of his father, found it becoming positively virulent.

  They were part of a bigger company by then, having fallen in with others on the way. Ned Crowham had joined them for a while, still very much the same old Ned despite his added years—still pink faced, fair-haired, overweight and a terrible slugabed, much given to complaining when obliged to rise at dawn. They had skirmished with a few bands of men who were trying to link up with Warwick, but there were not many of these. They were small groups and easily routed.

  As they went, they gathered news of the king’s whereabouts, and by April 10 they had found him at St. Albans in Hertfordshire. There they found themselves being reorganised and allocated. Ned Crowham was sent to a force under the king’s direct command and the Clicket contingent was handed over to Richard of Gloucester.