Lytes Cary Manor is made of limestone, a modest huddle of yellow gables and chimneys embedded comfortably on a mild slope of arable land where the Polden hills begin to rise up out of the damp flatness of the floodplain that is the Somerset Levels. The estate itself spreads down onto the damp moor in several places, but most of it sits on higher ground over a knoll in the crook of a bend in the river Cary, as far as Broadmead and Sowey’s Fields, then out onto the lower, uncertain ground of Carey Moor. Lytes Cary stands on the very brink of the Levels, and in winter these marshy acres to the south-west are inundated with shallow salty water from the sea and can be traversed only by boat. The Mendip hills are high and blue in the distance to the north, to the far south-west are the Quantocks, and to the near west, at about seven leagues off lies Bridgwater Bay, with its bustling port and the wide murky sea that stretches to Wales.
About the house sit diverse barns, the malthouse and dovehouse, and tenants’ cottages, many put up in his father’s time. Henry can still remember improvements being made to the house when he was a boy. The adjacent manor of Tuck’s Cary is almost uninhabited, just a handful of tenants, since Henry’s brother Bartholomew died of a pleurisy four years ago. There is also a hop yard, two windmills and several withy beds.
The new garden project here, however, is of his own devising.
To his knowledge, this part of the grounds has not been cultivated for at least two generations, though it lies alongside the kitchen garden that feeds the household, and the little plot in which his first wife Anys grew a few of the most vital herbs. Sheep have been folded here right up by the house on this grass during summers for years, so the soil has been kept fertile with dung, and it is level, south-facing, and as well-drained as any of this clay country is likely to be. Now the earth needs to be prepared and opened up, so that the frosts can penetrate the clods and break it down over the winter months.
He likes digging. He likes the pull of the spade against the earth, the tilting strain on his back, the mud drying on his palms. More accustomed to directing men than taking up the tools himself, he is always surprised at how much you can be changed by working physically till you ache. The world seems more vivid, more manageable. He does not feel it is at all beneath him as a man of status to be at work like this, instead he imagines his guardian spirit glancing down approvingly from time to time, saying, look, see how he takes charge of his affairs, because that is how it feels to be digging into the good soil with the iron spade and mattock.
And then of course he remembers that guardian angels are no longer the stock in trade of any churchman worth his salt, nor any true believer, and are resorted to only by those such as his cook, Old Hannah, still cutting her surreptitious cross into the raw soft dough of every loaf on baking day. At thirty-six, Henry Lyte does not practise his faith in the way he was instructed as a boy, nor as a youth, because the world is not now as it was, not at all. It has changed, and changed again.
While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchards across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father’s ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths – Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more.
He wonders – as he does at some point without fail each day that passes – whether it would have been better if his father had, despite everything, attended his wedding to Frances. Three months have passed now since the ceremony, and the fact of his father’s deliberate, calculated absence on that day is a smouldering hole in their relationship, there is no doubt. Henry had stood with his bride-to-be at the church door perspiring with anxiety and the heat of July, in the hope that his father would appear as invited, despite Henry’s letters having met with a deafening silence. After almost an hour the chaplain could wait no longer, as he had others to marry at two o’clock, so he garbled through the litany and vows, and the thing was done without his father being there. Henry would have liked his approbation, but there was nothing to be done about it, for his father, when he gets an idea into his head, is a stubborn man.
That in itself was an inauspicious start, and then suddenly Frances was burdened with pressing, unexpected matters to attend to in London because by great misfortune her own, beloved father had died on their wedding night. Her mother had needed assistance with probate, which proved a terrible family tangle that Henry was unable to involve himself with. After several weeks he had returned to Lytes Cary alone to deal with his own estate that could not, after all, run itself, and sent up diffident, occasional letters to his new wife as though to a stranger. Now her brother has come to the aid of their mother so that Frances’s presence is no longer essential, and tomorrow at last he goes up to London to fetch her.
Henry digs on to the end of the row, straightens up and looks south, and finds now that evening is already creeping up the hill from the west, that the large, yellowing sun is close to the horizon. A green woodpecker flies to a branch of the tallest willow at the end of the bank and squats back belligerently on its tail, the slope of its red cap bright in the grey of the tree. Henry always calls that bird the Sorcerer, it has a menacing, ethereal presence he would rather do without. From there the bird has a commanding view of its surroundings, it knows more than he does about their mutual territory.
The sweet savour of dug earth is all about, and yet for a moment Henry Lyte thinks he can smell the sea – a weedy, salt smell of unwanted water. Then it is gone – perhaps it was a draught of air drawn over the half-completed brick wall from the heap of rotting compost in the kitchen garden, some stalks of greens maybe, or kale. But Henry Lyte pauses, and for a moment has a strong thought of the sea itself wash round his head – the great blank sea that lies in sheets of water against the low shoulder of the land at Berrow, the wide strip of coast where the mouth of the river Parrett coils its way out across the mud flats at low tide below the dunes thirty miles from here.
It must be explained that the sea there is held back by only the thinnest strip of land at high tide, and with the highest tides in winter the sea wall is often breached. But these winter floods are to be expected; they are planned for, understood by farmers, eel fishermen, migrating birds. Unseasonal deluge has never happened in his lifetime; that would be more of a threat to human life than he would care to think of. Nevertheless, it is said that a true native from these parts, with marsh-blood going back centuries, is always born with webbed feet, because nothing can be taken for granted in this precarious world. Unusual weather stems from unusual circumstances. It certainly felt that way just after the death of Anys, the winter that followed – last winter – was the coldest and deepest he could ever remember. And there are plenty who believe that bad weather is a punishment from God.
Downwind of the chimney, Henry can smell what might be supper and the unaccustomed exercise has made him hungry. He props his tools in the outhouse and bolts it tight, goes into the house by the back door. His blisters sting satisfyingly as he washes his hands in the ewery. The dog in the porch beats her tail without raising her head, a young mastiff bitch called Blackie who has developed a reciprocal loyalty to this half of the house rather than to her master. He puts his head in the door to his left. The kitchen at Lytes Cary is high and