LITMIR.BIZ

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were patched pale gold with moor grass and dark where the heather grew. Here and there were the green stains of bogs, and in places there were gleams of bright yellow, for always there was gorse in bloom somewhere.

      Splash was fresh and they made good time. Richard found himself almost at the Valley of the Rocks while the morning was still quite young. He drew rein and looked round. That must be the cottage where the grandmother and aunt lived, standing a little back from the road; he could see its thatched roof, just visible above some apple trees. He hesitated. Would Marion be here yet? She would have quite a long walk from home, up the steep path which linked Lynmouth to Lynton, and then through Lynton itself. Should he wait, or go straight to the cottage and knock, or…?

      Then he saw her, walking toward him, her basket on her arm. He knew her at once. It was as though during that one brief meeting a week ago he had memorised her, head to footsoles, every line and movement of her. He rode toward her.

      “Marion Locke!”

      She stopped, looking up at him in surprise, and he saw that she didn’t recognise him and was startled, although, as she looked into his face, he also saw appreciation there. Marion responded to the sight of a handsome man as instinctively as a flower opening in the sun. Ruff ran up to her, wagging his tail, and she stooped to pat him.

      “I’m Richard Lanyon,” he said. “Peter Lanyon’s father.”

      She’d recognised him now. She straightened up and smiled and he doffed his cap. “You saw me last week, when I called at your parents’ home. I brought you a disappointment, I think. My son is betrothed already, my dear. But I wish to talk to you. Will you ride with me a little way before you go to see your grandmother?”

      She got up behind him without the slightest hesitation and neatly enough, despite the basket on her arm, putting her left foot on his and accepting a hand to help her on. For the first time he touched her, and the contact burned him like white fire. More prosaically, a smell of fish arose from the basket and Splash snorted disapprovingly. “Your horse don’t like the scent of herring,” said Marion, laughing. “But they taste all right.”

      “Not to him,” said Richard, also amused. “Hold tight!” He put Splash into a trot on purpose, so that she would have to hold on and he would feel her hands grip his waist.

      “Where we goin’?” Marion enquired.

      “Into the valley. We can get down and stroll awhile and have some private talk, if you will. It’s a pleasant morning.”

      Marion laughed again. Bumping and jogging, they made their way along the rough track and into the valley, with Ruff running at Splash’s heels. Once there, Richard drew rein again, dismounted and helped Marion down. He removed Splash’s bridle and hung it on a small tree, eased the girth, hobbled the animal’s forefeet and told Ruff to stay on guard. He offered Marion his arm. “Shall we walk?”

      

      In the priory of St. George’s in Dunster, Christopher Clerk stood in a small monk’s cell, looking about him. He had made it plain that he had no intention of taking vows as a monk, but Father Hugh Meadowes hadn’t cared.

      “Take vows as a monk or not—that’s up to you as long as you take vows as a priest. That’s your business in life and you know it. You’ve a vocation, my son. I know one when I see one, and what will your father have to say if you abandon yours? He’s proud of you! You’re not going to let him down and you’re not going to let me down and above all, you’re not going to let God down. You young lunatic! If you hadn’t been willing to swear on a crucifix that you didn’t sleep with the girl, I’d have had to go to the bishop. Do you realise how serious that would have been? Forget her! Forget any oaths you thought you swore. Forget you ever thought you loved her. I doubt it, myself. What sort of a life were you going to drag her into? She’s going to marry someone else, who’ll give her a better future than you ever could!”

      “I’d have made my way. I’d have made a life for both of us!”

      “And one day your call to the priesthood would have risen up and poisoned it. I know about these things. You’ll finish your studies in the priory and then you’ll stay there and serve the monks and the parishioners. Liza Weaver won’t be among them. She’s leaving the parish. No more argument, my son. I don’t want to repeat what I had to do when you were brought back to the castle, but if I have to, I will.”

      His back was still marked from Father Meadowes’s whip. He could only hope that Liza had not been similarly treated. He had not dared to ask, not even when her parents came to see him, to hear him apologise and promise to put Liza from his mind forever. He had had little chance to say anything beyond the apology and the promise. Nicholas had done most of the talking. Some of his remarks had burned more bitterly than Meadowes’s lash. Callow young wantwit. Trying to lead my girl into a life of concealment and poverty. She doesn’t know enough of the world to realise what was ahead. And you say you loved her. Bah!

      But all the time, all through that diatribe from Nicholas, and all through Meadowes’s beating, he had prayed inside his head for Liza, hoping that God would let him suffer for them both.

      He sat down slowly on the hard, narrow bed. He was thinking about the past. At the beginning it had been his own idea to enter the church. He believed he had been called. Their own parish priest, back in Bristol, had given a homily one Sunday on what a privilege a vocation was; how it was like a summons to a holy army, and how priests and monks followed the banner of Christ just as knights followed the banner of their overlord. The soldiers of Christ fought battles of the spirit, not of the body, and their purpose was to save the souls of their fellow creatures from damnation. There was no nobler calling on earth, said the priest ardently.

      Christopher had thought about that homily many times during the following weeks and he had gone to talk to the priest privately, and before very long he had become convinced that he was among those who had been summoned to take Christ for his suzerain. His father had been delighted.

      His mother, a practical woman, was less so, and expressed regret that her second son would not marry and have a family. They were willing to help him, she said; he could go as an apprentice to another merchant and could in time become a merchant in his own right, could succeed in the world. But he shook his head and said he must leave the world, in that sense, behind, and his father told her to stop making objections; this was a great honour and he was proud of Christopher.

      And he, Christopher, had been proud of himself, sure of himself, had thought of himself as a good soldier of God. And then, as he’d roamed through the fair at Dunster on that spring day, he’d stopped to watch as a dishonest weaver was paraded past for swindling his customers, and realised that the girl standing beside him hated seeing someone put on display like that. She had left the people she was with and walked off alone into the crowd and he had followed, concerned for her in such a gathering, with so many strangers about. She had suspected his intentions and looked sharply around at him, and he had spoken to her, meaning to show kindness, as a priest ought to do, and their eyes had met, and the whole world had changed.

      He had known then, in that moment, that his vocation was a horrible mistake, that he was made for the ordinary life of a man, that he was on the wrong path entirely. He’d fought the knowledge off and might have won the fight if Elizabeth Luttrell’s wretched little dog hadn’t run away, and he hadn’t found himself chasing after it and coming face-to-face with Liza Weaver once again. After that, there was no more resisting. His vocation had been nothing but a dream, a youthful ardour trying to find somewhere to put itself and making the wrong choice.

      And there was no way back.

      He looked around him, at the stone walls of the little cell, at the prie-dieu in the corner, with its embroidered cloth—the only splash of colour in the room. Whatever revelations had struck him when he met Liza, he had ended up here. His vocation might seem unreal to him now, might have faded into nothingness as far as his emotions were concerned, but he was bound to it just the same, a soldier plodding across an arid desert, sworn to the service of his lord whether he liked it or not.

      Liza was lost to him and he had been

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