The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

not offended, boy. I was just wondering what the answer was, that’s all. I tell you,” said Richard, man-to-man, “about three-quarters of the reason was that your granddad wanted me to marry again so badly! He kept on and on and the more he kept on, the less I felt like obliging him. So time went on, and it never happened. You’ll gain! You won’t have to share with others when you inherit the tenancy.”

      Another reason, although he was fond enough of Peter not to say this to him, was that he hadn’t been very happy in marriage. Joan had been a good woman; that he wouldn’t deny. Too good, perhaps, too gentle. He sometimes glimpsed the same gentleness in Peter and didn’t like it. Peter was a Lanyon in looks but he had his mother’s temperament, and that wasn’t fitting for a man. It had even been irritating in a woman! He’d have liked Joan better if she’d spoken up more, the way Margaret Weaver sometimes argued with Nicholas: good-naturedly—there was no spite in it—but clearly, and often with very sensible things to say.

      Joan was timid, scared of him and scared of George. She always had a bad time in childbirth and she was terrified of that, too. The fact that her last pregnancy had killed her had left Richard feeling guilt stricken. For some years now he had had a comfortable arrangement with a widow down in Clicket, a woman who’d buried two husbands and never borne a child. She did him good and he had done her no harm. He never discussed her with his family, though they all knew about Deb Archer.

      “I don’t think you’ll be inheriting yet awhile,” he said jovially to Peter. “I’ve a good few years in me yet, I hope. Do you want to see your grandfather again, for a last goodbye?”

      George was in his coffin on the table in the big living room. After the funeral, the room would come back into use, with a white cloth over the table and the best pewter dishes brought down off the sideboard, but until then, the room was only for George.

      Peter shook his head. “No. I…I’d rather not. I saw him yesterday but he doesn’t look like himself anymore, does he?” He shivered. “I can’t believe that what’s in that box ever walked or talked…or shouted!”

      “You’re getting morbid, boy. Well, maybe before long I’ll turn your mind in a happier direction. You just wait and see.”

      

      In another hour Father Bernard had ridden in on his mare, and shortly after that, Tilly and Gilbert Lowe arrived from the farm on the other side of the combe, accompanied by Martha, the plain and downtrodden daughter who was virtually their servant. The Lowes were followed by the Rixons and Hannacombes from the other two farms on the Sweetwater estate, and then a number of folk from Clicket village straggled in, all soberly dressed, some on foot, some on ponies, to pay their last respects and escort George down to the churchyard and his final place of rest.

      Among them came Mistress Deborah Archer, forty-nine now but still buxom and brown haired. Richard kissed her without embarrassment and Father Bernard greeted her politely. Like nearly everyone in the parish, he knew of the arrangement but accepted it without comment, just as he accepted the fact that neither Richard nor Deborah ever mentioned it in his confessional. He had had a lapse or two of his own. It was even possible that Geoffrey Baker, steward to the Sweetwaters, was his son. No one knew for certain.

      The Sweetwaters didn’t come and no one expected them, though some of their employees arrived, including their shepherd Edward Searle, along with his son Toby. Edward Searle was a local personality. Tall, gaunt, dignified as a king and able to tell every one of his sheep apart, he was one of the few in the district whose baptismal names had never, unless they were already short enough, been chopped into nicknames. In a world where Elizabeth usually became Liza or Betsy and most Edwards became Ned or Ed, Master Searle remained Edward and no one would have dreamed of shortening it.

      The other exceptions included the Sweetwaters themselves, Richard Lanyon (who refused to answer to Dick or Dickon and had long since squelched any attempts to make him) and Geoffrey Baker, who arrived on a roan mare and gave his master’s apologies with great civility though Richard knew, and Baker knew he knew, that Sir Humphrey Sweetwater hadn’t actually sent any apologies at all.

      Sir Humphrey, said Baker solemnly, had guests, connections of Thomas Courtenay, the Earl of Devon. The Sweetwaters had promised to show them some sport today. They were all going hunting.

      “Sir Humphrey’s showing off, as usual,” Richard growled to Peter.

      Friendship with the Courtenays had brought one very marked benefit to the Sweetwaters, since Sir Thomas was the warden of Exmoor Forest. Clicket was outside the forest boundary, but only just. All deer belonged to the crown and no one hunted them except by royal permission, but a Sweetwater had distinguished himself so valiantly at the Battle of Crécy that he and his descendants had been granted the right to hunt deer on their own land.

      Normally, they would not have been allowed to pursue them into the forest, which was inconvenient because the deer, oblivious of human boundaries, very often fled that way. Sir Thomas, however, had used his own considerable powers and granted permission for the Sweetwater hounds to follow quarry across the boundary. Sir Humphrey never missed a chance of demonstrating his privilege to his guests.

      By ten o’clock all was ready at the farmhouse. The Clicket carpenter, who had made the coffin and brought it up the combe strapped to the back of a packhorse, had solemnly nailed it shut while Father Bernard recited a prayer. The Lanyon dogs—Peter’s long-legged, grey-blue lurcher Blue, Silky the black sheepdog bitch who had belonged to George, and Silky’s black-and-white son Ruff, who was Richard’s special companion—knew that they were not invited on this outing and lay down by the fire. How much animals sensed, no one could guess, but Silky had been pining since George died.

      The six bearers, Richard, Peter, Higg, Roger, Nicholas Weaver and Geoffrey Baker, lifted the coffin onto their shoulders. They would be replaced halfway by a second team of volunteers, since the mile-long Allerbrook combe which must be traversed to reach Clicket was a long way to carry their burden, but to put a laden coffin on a pack pony would be risky. Ponies could stumble, or take fright. Nicholas, whose hair and beard were halfway between sandy and grey and who had grown hefty with the years, grunted as he took the weight, and cheeky Ned Crowham, who was one of the relief bearers—he had been got out of bed only just in time to join the procession—said that at least Nicholas’s pony could now have a rest.

      “True enough,” Nicholas said amiably. “My pony’s stout, but I reckon the poor brute still sags in the middle when I get astride him. That’s why Margaret’s got her own nag. Not fair to any animal to put me on him and then add someone else.”

      Father Bernard smiled, but Margaret said seriously, “Oh, Nicholas. We shouldn’t make jokes, surely.”

      Richard, however, easing his shoulder under the weight of the coffin, said, “Oh, my father liked a laugh as much as any man and he wouldn’t grudge it to us now. Are we all ready? Then let’s start.”

      The bearers carried George ceremonially through the front door—the hinges, as usual, had had to be oiled to make sure it would open—and took the downhill path into the combe. They trod with care. The sun was out now, but the ground was soft from last night’s rain.

      The voice of the Allerbrook came up to them as they went. It was a swift, brown-tinged peat stream which rose in a bog at the top of the long, smooth moorland ridge above and the rain had swollen it. Some feet above the water, the track turned to parallel the river’s course down to Clicket. The trees met overhead and the light on the path was a confusing mixture of greenish shade and dazzling interruptions where the sun shone through. There was no other track to the village. The combe was thickly grown with trees and tangled undergrowth and on the far side, the few paths did not lead to Clicket. The track was wide but in places it was also steep, and in any case the coffin lurched somewhat because Higg and Roger were among the first team of bearers at their own insistence, and Higg’s broad shoulders were four inches higher than Roger’s bent ones.

      Father Bernard led the way on his mare. The bearers followed him and the crowd formed a rough and ready procession on foot behind the coffin. They talked among themselves as they went, for funerals were not such