tacitly accepting Richard’s presence as natural without making any reference to the reason for it. In the priest’s eyes, however, this outburst went too far. It had also been too loud. In the group of mourners now moving out of the churchyard, heads had turned and brows had been lifted. Father Bernard put a hand on Richard’s arm to halt him. “It’s not wise to raise your voice so much,” he said. “What if the Sweetwaters hear of it?”
“Maybe it’ll stir their consciences!” Richard was unrepentant. “Poor, poor Deb. Never harmed a living thing and everyone who knew her was the happier for it.” He was going to miss her more than he had dreamed possible. She had been friend as well as mistress—someone to talk to and laugh with as well as to sleep with. “And now I’ve watched her being put in the ground, all because of the bloody Sweetwaters!” Richard thundered.
“I’m sorry, too, Father.” Peter, who had been walking with them, had stopped beside Richard. “Everyone is.”
“Her little maid, Allie, said she was chilled when she came home all wet that day,” Richard said. “But she still went out again after she’d changed, so as to come to my father’s burial. Sun was out, but there was a sharpish wind. Allie told me she fell ill next day. Looked like a bad cold at first, but two days after that she started coughing and in two more days, she was in delirium and Allie was sending for the priest and for me, and she died that night, with me holding her. All because the Sweetwaters…!”
Fury choked him. Shaking off Father Bernard’s hand, he jerked his head at Peter to follow, and strode out of the churchyard, not turning toward Deb’s cottage where the other neighbours were going for the funeral repast, but turning the other way instead, evidently making straight for home.
“He’s grieving,” said Peter awkwardly to the priest.
“Yes, I know. You’d better go with him. Look after him.”
“If I can,” said Peter, and set off in his father’s wake.
Kat and Betsy had a meal ready in the farmhouse. Richard ate it in a stormy silence, which Peter decided not to break. Afterward, when the two women had left for their own cottages, father and son repaired to the big main room where a good fire had been lit. Some saddlery in need of cleaning lay on the floor, to provide occupation for the evening. They lit candles, since it was October and darkness was closing down already. With only the two of them in the house, it had an echoing, empty feel.
“It’s time we had more folk about this place, more helping hands and a mistress for our home.” Richard broke his silence at last. He picked up a bridle and put some oil on a cleaning cloth, but fixed his eyes on Peter, in no kindly fashion. “Now I’ve something to say to you. What with Deb dying, I’ve not spoken to you again about Liza Weaver, but nothing’s changed. You’ll marry Liza and I’ll hear no more talk of this girl Marion. Understand?”
Peter, in the act of reaching for a saddle, put it down again and drew a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, Father, I truly am, but…”
“Look here, boy!” Richard glared at him and his voice became aggressive. “I want to make something of this family, to wipe the lofty looks off those damned Sweetwater faces, even if we can’t chop their heads off their shoulders. Last century, before my time, let alone yours, there was a big rising in the southeast of England. It got put down, but it left its mark. Higg and Roger would have been villeins then, with no right to leave Allerbrook and go somewhere else, but they’re free men now and they can go if they want to. The rising was because—”
“I thought it was the plague that set men free,” said Peter. “So many folk died that villeins were left without masters and no one could stop them going where they liked—and asking wages when they found masters who had no one to work the land and weren’t in any position to argue.”
“The plague and the rising together made the difference, so I’ve heard,” said Richard. He moderated his tone, trying to be patient. “The one made the other stronger. But the rising was about people like us getting bone weary of having people like the Sweetwaters lord it over us. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? That’s what the rebels used to chant. What makes the Sweetwaters think they’re so wonderful? My father sent me to school, though he could have used my hands on the land by then, because he wanted me to have a chance in life and not speak so broad that no one could understand me that wasn’t born in the west country. Later I sent you, too—and paid through the nose for it!”
“Yes, Father, I know, and I’m grateful, but—”
“No buts, if it’s all the same to you. We can read and write, just about; we can talk proper English and understand the Paternoster in Latin; we can add up our accounts and we know a bit of history. What have the Sweetwaters got that we haven’t? Land and money, that’s all. Well, that’s what I’m after, and seeing my only son hitch himself up with a fisher girl ain’t going to help. Liza Weaver’s another matter. We could gain a lot from that, could start saving. I’m relying on you making a good marriage to give us a leg up in the world. You can just forget Marion!”
“But, Father…” Peter, too, was now trying to be calm and patient. “We’ve said the words that make it a contract.”
“Without witnesses, and her a maiden in her father’s house? Those words were never said, my boy, and that’s that.”
“But they were said, and they’re binding.”
“I see. You’ll challenge me, will you? The young stag’s lowering his antlers at the herd leader, is he?” Richard abandoned patience, rose to his feet, laying aside his own work, and unbuckled his belt. Peter also stood up. He was taller than his father and though not as broad, he had in him the coiled-spring vitality of youth. The two of them faced each other.
“Father Bernard told me to look after you,” said Peter seriously. “So I wouldn’t want to hurt you, but if you try that, I might. I’ll fight. I mean it.”
“My God!” Richard stared at him. The candlelight was shining on Peter’s face. “You’ve had her, haven’t you? There’s nothing turns a boy into a man the way that does. She’s let you…and you still want to marry her?”
Peter was silent, remembering. September, it had been; not the day of the heavy mist, which had been a brief and chilly meeting, but the time before, which was in warm, sunny weather. They had met as usual close to Lynton, the village at the top of the cliff, and wandered into the nearby valley, with its curious rock outcrops. He had left his pony to graze while he and Marion took a goat path up the hillside, through the bracken, untroubled by the flies which in summer would have surrounded them in clouds.
On a patch of grass, hidden from the path below by a convenient rock, they sat down to talk and caress. They had done as much before, but this time it went further. Marion made no protest and soon he was past the point of no return, far adrift on the dreamy seas of desire and at the same time full of energy and the urgent need for pleasure.
The memory of it, of Marion, of her curves and warmth and moistness, her murmurs and little cries of excitement, her arms around him like friendly ropes, the rustle of a stray bracken frond under his left knee, the scent of warm grass and Marion’s hair, which she had surely washed with herbs, and then the splendour of his coming, were beyond putting into words and, in any case, they were not for anyone else to share.
“Yes,” he said now. “I want to marry her. I intend to.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Richard. “I’m going to Lynmouth tomorrow, to find the Lockes. I’ll see what they have to say! And now I’m going to bed and you can damned well finish cleaning the saddlery. And you can tell that priest that I don’t need looking after!”
His father, thought Peter bitterly as Richard stalked out of the room, was turning out as big a bully as George Lanyon had ever been.
The sky the next day was dull but dry and Richard left Allerbrook at dawn, a nosebag for Splash on his shoulder.