The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

them,” said Richard. He was well aware that the Sweetwaters, although only minor gentry, were on social if not intimate terms with Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, which was a double-edged blade. On the one hand, they considered themselves so far above their tenants that they could scarcely even see them. But on the other hand, if the said tenants tilled the land badly or wrangled over a rise in the rent, they were as capable of throwing the offenders out as they were capable of drowning unwanted kittens. You never knew. Richard loathed the Sweetwaters as much as George, but he was also wary.

      The quarrel passed over. George gave in and paid the increase, and the Sweetwaters continued to regard the Lanyon family with disdain. Quietly the Lanyons began to prosper, though Richard considered that they could have done better still if only his father hadn’t in so many ways been so pigheaded.

      But now…

      Extraordinary, Richard thought as he stood looking down at his father’s sunken face and half-shut eyes. Extraordinary. All his life he had fought this man, argued with him and usually given in to him. And now, would you believe it, George was making a good Christian end.

      Betsy and Kat, the two middle-aged sisters who cooked and cleaned and looked after the dairy and were so alike in their fair plumpness that people often mixed them up, were on their knees on the other side of the bed, praying quietly. At the foot stood Father Bernard, the elderly parish priest. “He’s safe enough,” Father Bernard said with some acidity. He knew George well. “He’s had the last rites. Luckily you fetched me while he was still conscious. Lucky you had that horse of yours, too, whatever your father thought!”

      Richard Lanyon grinned, fleetingly. Father Bernard lived down in Clicket village, in a cottage beside St. Anne’s, the elegant little church built of pale Caen stone imported from France for the purpose by some pious bygone Sweetwater.

      There was a long, sloping mile of Allerbrook combe between the farm and the priest, but George had asked for Father Bernard with pleading in his eyes and begged his son to hurry, and Richard had been able to do so, because he had a good horse at his command. George always said he had lost only three battles in his lifetime. One was the squabble over the rent. Another, a very long-running one, was the way Richard, once widowed, kept on refusing to remarry and make another attempt to raise a family. The third was over Richard’s purchase of Splash.

      “Why can’t you ride a local pony like everyone else?” George raged when Richard went off to a horse fair miles away and came back leading a two-year-old colt with a most remarkable dappled coat. The dapples were dark iron-grey and much bigger than dapples usually were, overlapping and running into each other so that he looked as though someone had splashed liquid iron all over him. “The ponies round here can carry a grown man all day and never tire or put their feet in bogs by mistake. What did you spend good money on that for?” Master Lanyon senior demanded.

      “He’s well made. I’m going to break him for riding and call him Splash,” said Richard.

      “I give you your cut from any profits we make,” George bellowed at his unrepentant son, “but I don’t expect you to throw it away on something as ought to be in a freak show!”

      But Splash, with his long legs and his undoubted dash of Arab blood, had proved his worth. He was as clever as any moorland pony at avoiding bogs and he could outdistance every horse in the parish and beyond, including the bloodstock owned by the Sweetwaters. He had got Richard down to the village and to the priest’s house so quickly that by the time Richard was hammering on Father Bernard’s door, the dust he had kicked up as he tore out of the farmyard still hung in the air.

      “Get up behind me,” Richard said when the priest opened the door. “Don’t stop to saddle your mare. It’s my father. We think he’s going.”

      And Splash, head lowered and nostrils wide, brought them both back up the combe nearly as fast as he had carried Richard down it, and before he drifted into his last dream, George Lanyon received the sacrament and was shriven of his sins and given, thereby, his passport into paradise.

      “I couldn’t have done it without Splash,” Richard said, and glanced at his father, wondering if George could hear and secretly hoping so.

      But if he did, he made no sign and when Peter, Richard’s nineteen-year-old son, came quietly into the room asking whether the patient was better, Richard could only shake his head.

      “Keep your voice down now, Master Peter.” Betsy, the older of the two sisters, looked up from her prayers. “Don’t ’ee be disturbing ’un. Your granddad’s made his peace and he’s startin’ on his journey.”

      Peter nervously came closer to the bed. As a child, he had seen two small brothers die, and at the age of eleven he had been taken to his parents’ bedchamber to say farewell to his mother, Joan, and the girl-child who never breathed, and every time he had been stricken with a sense of dreadful mystery, and with pity.

      The pity this time was made worse by the change in his grandfather. Petroc, the Cornishman who was George’s own grandfather, had died before George was born, but his description had been handed down. He had been short and dark, a very typical Cornishman. He had, however, married a local girl, said to be big and brown haired and clear skinned. The combination had produced good-looking descendants, dark of hair and eye like Petroc, but with tall strong bodies and excellent facial bones. In life, George had been not only loud voiced and argumentative; he had also been unusually handsome.

      Now his good looks had faded with his vitality. He had been getting thinner for months, and complaining of pains inside, though no one knew what ailed him, but the final collapse, into this shrunken husk, had come suddenly, taking them all by surprise. To Peter it seemed that the man on the bed was melting before their eyes.

      George himself had been drifting in a misty world where nothing had substance. He could hear voices nearby, but could make no sense of what they said. His body no longer seemed to matter. For a change, nothing was hurting. He was comfortable. He was content to surrender to whatever or wherever lay before him. But in him, life had always been a powerful force. Like a candle flame just before it gutters out, it flared once more. For a few moments the mist withdrew and the voices made sense again and his eyes opened, to focus, frowningly, on the faces around him.

      Father Bernard. Sharp-tongued old wretch. But he’d provided the last rites. No need to fear hell now. With difficulty he turned his head, and there was young Peter, his only surviving grandson, looking miserable. Why did the Lanyons never produce big healthy families? As for Richard…

      Wayward boy. Been widowed for years; should have married again long ago. Should have listened to his father. I kept telling him. Obstinate, that’s what he is. Big ideas. Always thinks he knows better than me. Always wanting to try new things out.

      Oh, well. Richard would soon be able to please himself. His father wouldn’t be able to stop him. Didn’t even want to, not now. Too tired…

      Weakly he turned his head the other way, and saw the white-capped heads of Betsy and Kat. Beyond them was the window. It was shut, its leaded panes with their squares of thick, greenish glass denying him a view of the world outside. He’d had the windows glazed long ago, at more expense than he liked, but he’d always detested the fact that Sweetwater House was the only dwelling for miles that could have daylight without draughts. Yet even with glazing, the daylight was partly obscured and the view scarcely visible. “Open…window,” he said thickly. “Now. Quick.”

      Betsy got up at once. Kat murmured a protest, but Betsy said, “No cold wind’s a’goin’ to hurt ’un now, silly. We’d be doing this anyway, soon.” She clicked the window latch and flung the casement back, letting cool air stream into the room.

      She meant that, once he was gone, someone would open the window anyway, because people always did, to let the departing soul go free. George knew that quite well. He wanted to see where he was going.

      The window gave him a glimpse of Slade, the barley field, all stubble now, because the summer had been good and they’d got all the corn in and threshed, as well. The names of his fields told themselves over in his head: Long Meadow, Slade, Quillet, Three