LITMIR.BIZ

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he had more than once dreamed at night of Deb Archer, but oddly enough, last night she’d turned into Marion halfway through the dream.

      Maybe that cheeky, overweight, well-bred friend of Peter’s, Ned Crowham, was right. Maybe he ought to get married again after all.

      There’d be no advantage, socially or financially, in marrying Marion Locke, but now that he’d seen her…

      Peter hadn’t got her with child, but probably that was because he hadn’t had chances enough. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t have babies once she was a wife. It would be a pleasant change for Allerbrook to have children about the place. His and Marion’s; Peter and Liza’s. Peter’s marriage would be the one to bring the material benefits. And it would show Peter who was master. Oh, yes indeed.

      It wouldn’t do to have Peter under the same roof as Marion, of course. No, that would be daft. But there was a good-sized cottage empty just now, over on the other side of Slade meadow, where Betsy’s son and his wife and children had lived before the young fellow took it into his head to go off to the other side of Somerset because he’d heard life was easier there, away from the moors that were so bleak in winter. And off he’d gone, depriving Allerbrook of two pairs of adult hands and several youthful ones. George had been alive then and he hadn’t been pleased. He’d said that all of a sudden he could see the point of villeinage.

      Still, the cottage was there, and once Peter was installed in it with Liza, he needn’t come to the farmhouse often. He wouldn’t come at all, except when his father was there; Richard would see to that. Once the boy had settled down and seen what Liza was worth and got some youngsters of his own, and Marion had a few as well, wanting her attention, getting underfoot and thickening her midriff, Peter’s infatuation would die away.

      Marion would probably breed well. She looked strong, quite unlike his poor ailing Joan. It was an idea.

      It was a most beguiling idea.

      

      “Where’s Liza?” Margaret called to Aunt Cecy as she came down the stairs from her bedchamber. “In the weaving shed? It’s time we were talking of her bride clothes, and I must say I’m surprised that Peter Lanyon hasn’t been over to see her. A girl’s entitled to a bit of courting.”

      “Farm folk are different from us,” said Aunt Cecy. She was patching one of Dick’s shirts, though because her eyesight was faulty nowadays, she had Margaret’s small daughter beside her to thread needles. “She’ll have to get used to a lot that’s different, out there on Allerbrook. She’s not in the shed. She went into the garden with a basket—said something about fetching in some mint.”

      “I’ll call her,” said Margaret, and hastened out through the rear of the house.

      Five minutes later she returned, frowning, and once more went upstairs. Great-Uncle Will, back in his familiar winter seat beside the hearth, remarked, “Looks as if Liza’s not in the garden. Funny.”

      “She’ll have slipped off somewhere,” Aunt Cecy said. “She’s always had a fancy for going walking on her own, but Margaret told her she wasn’t to go out by herself anymore.”

      “I did indeed,” said Margaret, reappearing on the staircase. “But she’s not in the garden and not upstairs, nor is she in the kitchen or at her loom. I’ve looked. And I’ve just been into her chamber and her toilet things are gone—the brush and comb and the pot of goose grease she uses for her hands. So I opened her chest and I could swear some of her linen’s missing. I don’t like it.”

      Aunt Cecy said, “I can’t see so clear as I used to, but I thought I saw her talking to a fellow in the churchyard when we came out of the service on Sunday. He were pointing out something on the church roof. Looked harmless, but…”

      “She might have gone across to see Elena for something,” said Margaret uncertainly.

      “And she’d take her linen and toilet things for that, would she? Better look for her,” said Great-Uncle Will. “And fast.”

      

      “So she’s not in any of our houses,” said Nicholas, who had been hurriedly fetched from the inn at the other end of the village, where he had been talking to a potential buyer of his cloth. “You’ve made sure, you say, Margaret. And she’s not in any of our gardens and some of her things are gone.” He turned to Will. “Great-Uncle, you said that according to the gossip that’s going about, she’s been meeting a red-haired clerk from the castle. I think I’ve seen him at church with the Luttrells.”

      “That’s him. And that’s what’s being said, yes,” said Will.

      “The fellow I saw her talking to on Sunday were outside the church and he had his cap on. But he were all in black, like a clerk,” said Aunt Cecy.

      “I wish we knew his name,” said Nicholas, “but I think we know enough. I’m going up to the castle. Now.”

      

      “Why is it,” grumbled James Luttrell, standing in his castle hall, wishing he could sit down to a peaceful supper and irritably aware that any such thing was out of the question for the time being, “why is it that trouble is so catching? The whole world’s disturbed these days and it spreads like plague. There’s no good government in the land, with all this squabbling between the king and these upstart cousins of his, Richard of York and his sons. What’s it matter if the king is weak in his mind? He’s been crowned and anointed and that ought to be good enough for any man.”

      “But the point is…” began Father Meadowes, normally a stern and self-confident priest but unable to stem James’s irrelevancies.

      “No one has any proper sense of their duty anymore. Even priests aren’t staying on the right path, it seems!” Abruptly James abandoned his excursion into national affairs and returned to the real matter in hand. “Are you sure Christopher Clerk has vanished, Father? He hasn’t gone on an errand and forgotten to let you know? Something urgent, perhaps?”

      “I regret to say this, but I don’t think so,” said Meadowes. “He went out to meditate in the open air as he often does, but I expected him to return later and there was a matter to do with his studies that I wished to discuss with him. He hasn’t come back, and personal things are missing from his room. There has been village gossip concerning a girl. I took him to task and he assured me there was nothing in it, that he had merely escorted her home when she was accidentally separated from her family at the May fair and exchanged the time of day with her after church once or twice out of courtesy. Villagers do have a talent for making something out of nothing and I believed him then. I warned him to be careful and left it at that. Now, frankly, I wonder. Earlier this year he asked me some odd questions.”

      “What sort of questions?” Elizabeth Luttrell asked. She was seated, working at an intricate piece of embroidery while Wagtail snoozed at her feet. “He always seemed so earnest,” she remarked.

      “Yes, he did,” Father Meadowes agreed. “But the questions he asked were about leaving the church if a man changed his mind about his vocation. I asked if he were having doubts about his own and he said no. Now I’m wondering!”

      “He’s always seemed very quiet and conscientious,” said James. “Too much so, perhaps, for a young man.”

      “Yes, I felt that, too, sometimes,” Elizabeth said. “He was—is—so very…very self-contained, yet I sometimes felt that there was a side to him that was hidden.”

      The two men looked at her with interest. Elizabeth, usually a quiet woman, had a knack of occasionally making very acute remarks. Sharp as an embroidery needle, her husband sometimes said.

      She smiled at them. “All the same,” she added, “need we be anxious so soon? There could have been a misunderstanding…or even an accident.”

      She broke off as the gatekeeper’s boy arrived in the hall at a breathless run and barely sketched a bow before exclaiming, “There’s a Master Nicholas Weaver from the village, zurs and mistress!

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