There was a chill in the air after nightfall in October.
“We’ll have to find somewhere to sleep, but if we can, we should avoid looking for lodgings or rooms at an inn,” said Christopher. “We don’t want to leave a trail behind. Maybe we should have gone another way, across to Devon, to Exeter. We’d have been that much harder to trace. But London will be easier to find than Exeter. I’ve been there before, as a lad, with my father. Exeter would be quite strange to me.”
“But tonight, Christopher?”
“I think we should try to find a barn with hay in it. I’ve got some bread and cheese with me. I managed to take it from the kitchen when no one was looking. We can eat.”
“But can we find a barn in the dark?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. Look, that’s surely a farmhouse over there. See—where the lights are? There’ll be barns there. Let’s walk the ponies. There ought to be a track turning that way.”
“But what if we can’t find a barn?”
“If we can’t find one here, we’ll find one somewhere else—on the far side of Nether Stowey. There are farms beyond it.”
“Is Nether Stowey far?”
“Only a mile or a little more. Take heart, love. I know where we are well enough.”
The search for a barn was unsuccessful. They found a lane to the right and before long they could distinctly smell a farmyard. But the lane seemed to be leading straight into it and if there were barns at a safe distance from the house, they couldn’t be seen because the lane was a sunken way between high banks with brambles on top, which hid anything on the far side. To make things worse, the darkness became intense because the direction they had taken had put the moon behind a hill. They heard sheep bleating, and then, alarmingly, a dog began to bark. Christopher pulled up, reaching a hand to the bridle of Liza’s pony, too.
“No good. If we go any farther we’ll have people coming out to meet us and we’ll have to explain ourselves. Turn round. We’ll have to go back. Sorry.”
“Oh, Christopher!”
“Don’t let’s have a wrangle here,” he said wryly. “Let’s quarrel later when we can enjoy it!”
“All right!” said Liza, and tried to sound as though she were laughing. She was beginning to feel frightened. They were losing so much time, and the pursuit must surely have begun by now.
They went back. Presently they were on the Nether Stowey road again and once more had the help of the moonlight. “Not far now,” said Christopher. “I think I know where we’ll find a barn, once we’re through the village. And the bread and cheese are fresh. Take heart.”
“I’m certainly hungry,” said Liza, determined to be cheerful. “I’ll enjoy our supper.”
Her new, if somewhat forced, cheerfulness had five minutes to live. At the end of that time, as they cantered to the crest of a rise and paused briefly to look ahead, she saw her pony’s ears flick backward, and then behind them, some way off but not nearly far enough to be comfortable, they heard a horse whinny.
“Christopher…!”
“Maybe it isn’t them,” said Christopher.
“It is! I know it is. I don’t know how I know, but I do!”
“All right. Well, let’s be on the safe side and assume it is, anyway,” Christopher said. “Come on! Let’s ride for it! We’ll look for another side lane and try to dodge into it and let them go past. If it is them. Come on!”
It was the best plan he could make. He had kept his voice steady, but he too was now afraid, for her as well as himself. He could endure whatever they did to him for this, but what would happen to Liza? He had done horribly wrong in bringing her away, but what else was there to do, other than let her go forever?
Side by side, alert for a secondary track, they urged the ponies into a gallop, taking advantage of the moonlight. But providence wasn’t with them. There was no break in the banks to either side, no escape from the track, and sturdy though their ponies were, their short strong legs could not match the stride of the Luttrells’ big horses behind them. They heard the hoofbeats catching up, and then a rider swept past them and swung his horse right across the track to block their way. They found themselves looking up into a dark, square face which Liza did not recognise, though Christopher did. “Gareth!” he said.
“Look round,” said Gareth, grinning, and they turned in their saddles to find that Nicholas Weaver and Father Meadowes had pulled up behind them.
Nicholas rode forward. To Liza’s astonishment he didn’t even look at her, but instead made straight for Christopher. “Have you taken her? Is that what slowed you down on the road? Come on! I want to know!”
“We kept missing our way and then turned aside to look for shelter,” said Liza in a high voice. “We’ve taken vows to each other, but we haven’t…Christopher hasn’t…”
“I’m glad to hear it, but no doubt it was just a pleasure postponed,” said Nicholas. He spurred his horse right up to Christopher’s pony and his fist shot out. It landed with immense force on Christopher’s jaw and the younger man reeled sideways, out of his saddle. His pony plunged. Christopher, who had clung on to the reins, scrambled up again, his spare hand pressed to his face.
“Father, don’t!” Liza cried it out in anguish. “Oh, please let us go! Let me go with Christopher! I can’t marry Peter Lanyon. I can’t. I tried, so hard, to make myself willing to marry him, but I can’t do it. It has to be Christopher…and we’ve bound ourselves…oh, why won’t you understand?”
“I understand that you’re talking nonsense and one day you’ll know it, my girl. I’ve come to take you home,” said Nicholas.
CHAPTER NINE
REARRANGING THE FUTURE
“Go to her, Margaret,” Nicholas said. “Bring her downstairs and get her thinking about her bride clothes. She’s got to at some point. Saints in heaven!”
His normal robust heartiness was dimmed. He was sitting by the kitchen hearth while Margaret and Aunt Cecy helped the maids with supper, and he could hear his young sons, Arthur and Tommy, laughing over some game or other in the adjacent living room, but just now these pleasant things could not comfort him. His shoulders were hunched and his face drawn with misery, and the two maids, aware of it, were unusually quiet.
“We never had this sort of trouble with either of our girls,” said Aunt Cecy righteously. “Maybe that was because we walloped them when they needed it instead of bein’ soft, the way you two are.”
“We haven’t been soft this time!” Margaret snapped, and continued obstinately stirring a pan of pottage.
“No, we haven’t!” Nicholas agreed irritably. “But at least we had good reason. Cecy, you used to slap your girls for a bit of careless stitching or a speck of flour dropped on the floor, as if there weren’t worse things! Reckon they were glad to be pushed off when they was barely ripe!”
“Well, really!” said Aunt Cecy. Nicholas ignored her.
“There’s never been anything really truly bad in this house in my time, till now. I never thought our Liza would do this to us! I never thought I’d…I’ve never raised a hand to her, all her life, afore this and to have to take a stick to her…it broke my heart and I’m half afraid it’s broken hers.”
“Then the sooner she’s married and away, the better,” Aunt Cecy said sharply. “We’ll all be happier, her included.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it of her either,” said Margaret, still stirring. “It’s a mercy we got her back in time and that there’s been no more gossip.” She eyed the maids, who had become very busy about the