Joan Wolf (3 page)

“Created thing naught valu’d he nor shunn’d.” It was a moment before I recognized the lines. They were from Milton’s
Paradise Lost.
And then I knew who the Earl of Leyburn reminded me of.

He came down to the stable at nine the following morning accompanied by Mr. Fitzallan. I saddled Saladin and brought him out of the stable and over into the paddock where the men were waiting. Lord Leyburn was dressed in buckskin riding breeches, high, polished boots, and a single-breasted hunting jacket that fit beautifully and looked as if it had seen many seasons of wear.

The extraordinary dark eyes considered me for an unnerving moment and then he said, “Get up on him, please.”

“Me?”

He didn’t answer but stood regarding me impassively. I could feel my cheeks turn scarlet. I turned to Saladin. The stirrup was a long way from the ground, but I am athletic. I swung up into the saddle.

“Trot him around the paddock until you feel him loosening up.”

“Yes, my lord.” My cheeks were still hot as I turned Saladin along the rail.

When I brought him back, Lord Leyburn said calmly, “Now, get off.” When I was standing in front of Saladin holding his reins, the earl came over to stand next to me. He was not as tall as his cousin, but he was over six feet. I felt unpleasantly small standing beside him. He began to talk to Saladin. The stallion’s ears pricked forward.

After five minutes the earl reached out to pat the stallion and Saladin did not try to back away. The earl reached into his pocket for a carrot, which Saladin gobbled greedily.

“Hold him while I get on,” the earl said to me, and he moved to the horse’s left side.

He was on Saladin’s back in a flash, and crossing over my stirrups, which were far too short, he nudged the horse along the fence.

Saladin was nervous with the strange weight on his back, and the earl let him move into a canter. They came by us once and he called to Mr. Fitzallan, “Open the gate, Ned!” The next time around they swept past us in full gallop, out of the paddock and toward the moors.

“Heavens,” I said weakly.

Mr. Fitzallan grinned and put a hand on my shoulder. “Diccon rides like a centaur,” he said. “Always has. He’s going to love that stallion.”

I took a deep breath. “Then I suppose that means my job here is over.”

Ned Fitzallan’s kind, handsome face looked concerned. “It might mean that,” he said. “Lord Leyburn asked me about you. He is not inclined toward turning his home into a refuge for indigent runaways.”

The words I recognized as Lord Leyburn’s. Mr. Fitzallan would never have spoken in such a manner.

“I am not running
away,”
I protested.

“Aren’t you, Valentine?” He looked at me with ineffable kindness, and I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Well, you will just have to convince Lord Leyburn of that, won’t you?” He gave my shoulder a sympathetic squeeze and walked away.

Chapter 4

The inevitable interview with Lord Leyburn came at four o’clock that afternoon. I was helping some of the lads clean tack when Hutchins came to tell me I was wanted at the castle.

“And you had better have something to say for yourself, Valentine,” he warned me. “His lordship can’t abide a liar.”

I raised my chin in what I hoped was a dignified gesture. “I am not a liar,” I said grandly.

“You had better not be,” he returned darkly, and with those ominous words ringing in my ears I walked up to the castle.

I scrubbed my hands and face, brushed my hair until it shone, and changed my shirt before I went to find Crosby.

“His lordship wants to see me, I believe,” I told the upright old man who was Lord Leyburn’s butler.

“He does indeed, Valentine. He’s in the library, and you’re to go right along in to him. It’s the first room down this hall.”

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. Crosby put his hand to his face and coughed.

“It’s not the hangman, lad,” he said.

“I don’t know about that,” I mumbled glumly, and went off down the hall.

The library had to be the most comfortable room in the castle. It was medium-sized, book-lined, and the furniture was all well-worn leather and chintz
.
There was a fire burning in the huge stone fireplace and the earl was seated in a chair near it, his long booted legs stretched before him. Mr. Fitzallan was standing by the window looking serious. The dogs, who were curled up at the earl’s feet, came over to greet me and then returned to their places. The dark head turned in my direction.

“You wished to see me, my lord?” I asked.

 “Yes, I did. Come in, Valentine Brown.”

 I walked halfway across the room and stopped, facing him. I waited.

 “I want to know why you are here,” he said.

‘ ‘I—I needed a job, my lord, and the Marquis of Rayleigh needed someone to deliver Saladin to you.”

“And why did you need a job?” He had a clear, beautifully pitched voice, the sort of voice that commanded effortlessly. Without making a move or raising a hand, he was intimidating me.

“I needed the money,” I said flatly.

“Because your father had died?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I believe you told Mr. Fitzallan that your father was an army officer who was killed in the recent retreat from Spain?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“What was his commission?”

There was silence as I realized what I had just admitted. I had never told Mr. Fitzallan my father was an officer. I said nothing.

“I have little patience with these kinds of games, Valentine,” Lord Leyburn said. “You will answer my question.”

“No,”
I said. “I won’t.”

“I see.” His voice had kept the same tone of pleasant command all through the interview. “Well, then, you had better pack your bag and leave. Mr. Fitzallan will give you whatever wages you have coming.”

I felt as if the bottom had dropped out of my world. Until this minute I hadn’t really believed I would be sent away. I looked at Mr. Fitzallan.

“Diccon,” that darling, sweet man protested. “You can’t just run the boy out. Where will he go?”

“That’s his lookout,” his lordship returned. More than ever he was resembling Milton’s Satan. Then he added, startlingly, “If he can’t trust me, then I can’t trust him.”

“But I don’t know you,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows. The answer to that fatuous remark was so obvious that I found myself smiling. “I will tell you why I’m here,” I said, “but I won’t tell you my name.”

Lord Leyburn waved me to a seat. “Well, that’s a start, at least. All right, Valentine. Let’s hear it.”

I gave him the bare bones of my story, omitting the name and rank of my grandparents and omitting as well to mention that I had changed my gender when I ran away.

“Papa was quite convinced that my grandparents would take me in,” I concluded, “and I suppose he was right. That was not the sort of thing he would leave to chance. But I don’t want any part of them. I can manage on my own. As far as I’m concerned, they’re nothing but a pair of scoundrels. Do you know, they never even
wrote
to my mother? Not once?”

“Valentine, my dear boy, that is very distressing, no doubt, but do please consider. Your father was most certainly in touch with your grandparents. They expect to take care of you. And it won’t be long before you are old enough to be truly independent. Do please let us get in touch with them for you.” It was Mr. Fitzallan, my only ally, and I stared at him reproachfully.

“I’d rather starve,” I said—dramatically but as it happens, truthfully.

“So would I,” said the Earl of Leyburn, and I looked at him in astonishment.

“You would?”

“Certainly.” He rose to his feet in a single fluid movement.

“Diccon!”

His lordship smiled. He was beautiful when he was angry but when he smiled ... I realized I wasn’t breathing and took a gulp of air.

“Damn it all, Ned, you wouldn’t send the lad to a cold-blooded pair like that, would you? Yes, I can see you would. Well, I won’t. He can stay on here. We’ll just have to make some arrangements.”

“Diccon, you can’t just appropriate a boy like this. The law won’t allow it.”

It was gradually being borne in on me that Mr. Fitzallan—kind, dear, sweet Mr. Fitzallan—had not dealt with me sooner because he had been counting on his lordship to do it for him.

“In this part of the world, I
am
the law.” The earl did not even sound arrogant when he said that. He was stating a fact. He looked at me and I blinked at the brilliant laughter in his eyes. “Christ, Valentine,” he said, “but you can ride.”

****

“I’m always needing someone to run errands for me,” his lordship had said casually when he discussed my position in the house, and as the weeks of May and June went by, that is what I found myself doing to earn my keep. Most of the errands involved his lordship’s tenants and dependents, who comprised nearly the whole northeastern section of Yorkshire, I discovered. In this part of the world, the Earl of Leyburn was indeed the law. But he was far more than that—he was protector, benefactor, and a source of tremendous local pride. In Yorkshire, the Earl of Leyburn ranked just slightly below God.

What I loved best, however, were the times he would take Saladin out on the moors and allow me to come along. He knew every stone of the Dales, every waterfall, every hill, every farmer and farmer’s family. I loved the country. There was something about it—a wildness, a freshness —that went to my head and made me want to shout and laugh and run like a young colt, for the sheer pleasure of it.

I think Lord Leyburn sensed my response and was pleased by it, for as the weeks passed, he took me farther and farther afield, through all the wild, remote, and beautiful places of the Pennines.

The agricultural business in this part of Yorkshire was sheep. For centuries the farmers of the dales had been supplying wool to the weavers in Leeds and Bradford. The wool industry was beyond comparison the greatest source of wealth in Yorkshire, and the Fitzallan family had been fostering it since the Middle Ages—on the agricultural end only.

“I was in a factory in Leeds once,” Lord Leyburn told me. A look of inexpressible distaste crossed his face. “A hellish place. No air. Noise. Not fit for human habitation. I couldn’t wait to get out. I can’t understand why anyone would want to leave the country and go to work in a place like that.”

We were riding toward the Buttertubs Pass between Wensleydale and Swaledale, and the wild mountain scenery around us was truly magnificent. Lord Leyburn turned Saladin onto a steep narrow road and I followed on Cavalier, his lordship’s big bay gelding.

“Someone has to make the cloth,” I said mildly.

I could hear him grunt. “I suppose so. But at least they could put windows in the damned places. Bloody cits.”

“Why don’t you start a model factory?” I suggested.

Saladin stopped and the Earl of Leyburn turned to look at me. He didn’t say anything, and I looked silently back at that magnificent face and grinned. With the greatest effort of imagination possible, I still couldn’t picture him in a factory.

“Watch your footing here,” he said. “The road runs right along the side of a deep gorge.”

He started forward again and I followed, looking around me appreciatively. Buttertubs Pass was one of the highest mountain passes in England, Lord Leyburn had told me. It took its name from certain holes in the ground near its top, which were called Buttertubs because of their shape.

Near the summit of the pass Lord Leyburn pulled up once again and signaled to me to dismount. We tied the horses and stood for a minute looking about us.

“Look back toward Swaledale,” he said, and obediently I followed his eyes. “The stream, or beck, at the bottom of the gorge there is called Cliff Beck,” he told me. “It runs away down into Muker Beck and then to the Swale. That hill there”—he pointed—”is Great Shunnor Fell, and that one is Lovely Seat.”

“Lovely Seat?” I echoed incredulously.

He grinned. There was a slight wind and it blew his black hair onto his forehead. He threw his head back a little. “The names are Norse.
Sjoww
means a lookout hill and Lovely Seat comes from
luin,
which means alarm. They were probably sentry lookouts in the old days.”

His black hair was still falling over his brow, and I had a sudden, alarming urge to reach up and smooth it back for him. I put my hands in my pockets.

“Well, where are these famous Buttertubs?” My voice sounded strange and I cleared my throat.

“Over this way.”

I stared, awestruck, down into the menacing pit that was sunk into the flat surface near the crest of the pass. The rock faces descending into the one-hundred-foot-deep depression were so beautifully fluted it did not seem possible they were the work of nature and not of man.

“It was done by rainwater eating away at the limestone,” the earl said. He was standing right next to me. “Uncanny, isn’t it?”

I felt breathless. “It certainly is.” There was the sound of a curlew crying in the distance. I looked up but did not see it. The cry came again.

“What is that?” Lord Leyburn said sharply, and started toward the next depression. I followed.

“Christ.” We both looked down into the frightful hole and saw the same thing: a child clinging to one of the narrow edges. The small face turned up to us looked absolutely terrified.

“Christ,” the earl repeated, and then he turned to me. “I’ll climb down there with him. He can’t be left alone—he might try to climb out and fall. You ride into Thwaite, Valentine, and get help. We need men and some good strong rope. Try Hambleton at the feed store first.”

He was taking off his coat as he spoke, and now he called to the boy on the ledge. “Hold on, lad! I’m coming down to you. No need to be afraid.”

I stared in horror at the sheer rock face below me. I put my hand on his forearm. It was hard as the rock we were standing on.

“My lord,” I said breathlessly, “you don’t have to climb down. Wait until I get back with some rope.”

He pulled away from me and lowered himself over the edge. As he disappeared into the pit, he looked up once, briefly, and grinned. “It won’t be the first time I’ve done it,” he said. “Now go.”