that happens, a man doesn’t seek to live in luxury.”
“Do you mean you give it up even though you miss it, or you somehow don’t miss it because you don’t want it anymore?” Liza asked, interested. She often caught sight of the Abbot of Cleeve and his entourage of monks coming and going from their house and had many times wondered what made them choose such lives. Were they happy, always wearing such plain white wool garments and never marrying?
“Some of us cease wanting the pleasures of the senses,” Christopher told her, “and others give them up. They are the price. But if you really value something, you don’t mind paying for it.”
“But which group are you in?” Liza asked acutely, and privately marvelled at her own outspokenness. He might well accuse her of impertinence! Yet it seemed easy to talk to him, as easy as though she had known him all her life.
“I’m among those who have to make an effort. But as I said, the price is worth it.” She turned her head to look at his face and he gave her a grin, a tough, cheerful, entirely masculine grin, and she found herself smiling back. His eyes, which were the warm golden-brown of amber or sweet chestnuts, glowed with laughter, and without warning, her breath seemed to halt for a moment and her heart turned a somersault.
“I won’t say it’s always easy,” he said, searching her face with his eyes, and she knew, without further explanation, with a certainty that would not be denied, a certainty as solid as the simple fact that two plus two made four, that now, this moment, was a time when it wasn’t easy. That he was talking, obliquely, about her.
About them.
About us. But we met only five minutes ago!
At that moment she caught sight of her parents, apparently arguing and just going in at their door, for dinner no doubt, since it was past noon. With a few words of farewell and thanks for his company, she took her leave of Christopher and followed them into the house, to find that an argument was indeed in progress, and that it was about Bart Webber.
“To my mind, Margaret, it’s enough, what he went through today. There’s no need to keep on about it and say we can’t have him and Alison to dine or ask them to Liza’s wedding when it comes….”
“I don’t agree, Nicholas. I can’t. I’m sorry for Alison and I’d sooner lie dead and in my coffin than be in her shoes, but have them at my table…no, it won’t do. It’s makin’ out we don’t take honesty seriously and we do.”
“But…”
Margaret would win, of course. When it came to social niceties she usually did, and as other households often followed the Weaver lead, Liza now felt sorry for Mistress Webber as well as for Bart. Her parents broke off their wrangle when they saw her and greeted her, and to her surprise, they seemed to notice nothing strange about her.
Liza herself gave the Webbers little further thought, for she was engrossed with the astounding experience she had just had, and amazed that it had apparently left no mark upon her. She felt as though it should have done; as though the wave of hair which always crept from under her neat white coif should have changed from beechnut brown to bright green, or as though luminous footprints should appear wherever she trod.
But after all, what had really taken place? Nothing that anyone could have seen, and nothing that could be repeated. Very likely she would never set eyes on the red-haired clerk again. Whatever had happened, it would never be repeated. She had better forget it. That would be sensible.
No doubt it would have been, but a perverse providence seemed determined to reunite them. Two mornings later, going to the herb plot at the far end of the garden to fetch flavourings for dinner, she discovered a small brown-and-white dog industriously digging a hole under the mint.
“Here, stop that! Where did you come from?” said Liza, advancing on the intruder and picking it up. It yapped at her indignantly and struggled, while Liza stood with it in her arms, wondering how it had got in. Then she saw that there was a hole under the wooden fence which bounded the end of the garden. Beyond, meadowland sloped away, down toward Dunster’s harbour. It was silting up these days. Just now, the tide was out and a number of small boats from the Dunster fishing community lay aground, waiting for the sea to come back and refloat them. The sea itself was a band of iridescent blue and silver, far away, with the coast of Wales beyond.
To the right, however, the meadow was bounded by the castle hill and its covering of trees. The Luttrells’ black cattle were in the pasture, and a man was hurrying across it from the direction of the trees and the castle. He saw her and waved, and came on faster. “You’ve got him!” he said breathlessly as he came up to the fence. “Wagtail! You wicked dog!”
“Is he yours?” Liza asked. “He shouldn’t be let loose to scrabble in people’s gardens. Someone might throw stones at him or kick him!”
Wagtail barked again and struggled in her arms. And then she recognised the man. He was once more in clerical black, though this time in the more practical form of hose and jerkin, and he had pulled a dark cap over his fiery tonsure. Some of his red hair was visible, though, with an oak leaf absurdly clinging to it. Christopher Clerk, the young man who had read her mind and knew that she was sorry for the swindler Bart Webber.
“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