Читать книгу The Memory Palace - Christie Dickason - Страница 20

Gifford nodded with gratification when he saw their party arrive in the Bedgebury parish church. Heads turned in the congregation. Some bent together to whisper. Elbows nudged ribs.

Zeal missed the pleasure of singing hymns and had difficulty suppressing yawns during Gifford’s long sermon on the spiritual perils of revolt. She found the undecorated stone walls of the parish church astonishingly plain for a house of God. Otherwise all seemed well enough, until they left.

Doctor Gifford stood in the porch bidding farewell to his sheep. As Zeal and Bowler stepped out into the sunlight, he gave the parson a letter.

‘But I am certain, madam, that you will wish to note the contents.’

Zeal knew instantly that she would not wish any such thing but, mindful of the caution voiced by Wentworth and Sir Richard, she bade the minister a civil farewell.

Bowler clearly shared her premonition about the letter. He fanned himself with it, unopened. He shoved it into his pocket, then took it out again. He studied the outside as if for a hint of what lay within. He sighed.

‘We both know we won’t like whatever’s in it,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

Bowler nodded and broke Gifford’s seal. ‘Oh, dear,’ he said after a moment. All colour drained from his cheeks. He held the letter out to her. ‘What are we to do now?’

Doctor Gifford wrote:

…I am gratified to inform you that at the last vestry meeting it was agreed to ban the decadent Roman practice of playing music in church services of any sort, throughout the parish from this date forward. All Psalms are henceforth to be read, not sung. All prayers must be spoken. Any making of music during holy worship (full list of occasions given below for avoidance of confusion) will be deemed a return to the outlawed practices of the Church of Rome. All violations will be punished with fines or other more severe penalties, at the discretion of the vestry council. May God’s hand guide you always, Yours most sincerely, in Christian brotherhood…

‘We ignore it,’ said Zeal. ‘If I don’t have your music to buoy up my spirits, I don’t think I can go through with the wedding at all.’

‘Oh.’ Bowler looked both pleased and alarmed. ‘My dear. Goodness.’ He blushed but bit his lower lip at the same time. Then he looked at her with concern.

‘I’ll pay the fines,’ she said, pretending to misunderstand his real question. ‘I’ll say I ordered the music. Don’t fear. What with summer plague and a war in Scotland, and no parliament and all the new taxes, people have more important matters to worry about than whether I have music at my confounded wedding.’ She folded the letter and stuffed it into her sleeve. ‘Don’t tell anyone else about this yet.’

They turned back onto their own track along the river and walked a silent, thoughtful furlong. Then Bowler began to hum. ‘“Praise Him with timbrel and dance,”’ he sang quietly. ‘“Praise ye the Lord.”’

‘And so we shall!’ She felt lighter for having at last hinted to someone how she really felt about the marriage, in spite of all those approving nods from Reason.

Having been given licence by Zeal, Bowler went to work with fervour. She sometimes wondered whether it was wise to defy Gifford. Then she heard Bowler’s plangent counter-tenor leading the estate children in rehearsal among the trees beyond the ponds. From time to time, the heavy clanging rhythms from the forge gave way to the boom of the smith’s drum. Twice she caught groups of girls practising a dance with garlands.

Mind you, she reassured herself, Gifford’s letter did not forbid dance. She knew that she should warn Sir Richard of all they planned. He must have had a letter too. But what if he said that she must obey it?

Apart from the music, Zeal tried to keep the celebration a modest one. But anticipation wrote its own rules. A rest day for any reason was to be made the most of. The wedding gathered its own momentum in spite of the bride’s half-heartedness. There was much urgent cooking, laundering, and stitching. There were secrets behind closed doors.

Mistress Margaret relented far enough to confer with Sir Richard’s steward about the details of the wedding feast, which was to be held at High House.

‘The weather should still be fine enough for us to dance outdoors,’ she reported. ‘Sir Richard will let us move back into his great hall if it rains.’ The old knight himself began to trap and shoot anything with wings or fur that might be eaten at the feast.

While she had agreed with Wentworth about the special licence, Zeal would have been content merely to exchange promises before witnesses, which was enough to make a legal marriage. However, Wentworth had insisted, for the child’s sake, that they have a church blessing. ‘And more witnesses than any man could ever be accused of bending,’ he said.

Zeal feared that preparations would interfere with the autumn work, already behind schedule. Five pigs remained to be butchered and preserved. The brewing was at a critical stage. They had to make enough soap to replace their entire stock, which had melted in the fire. Sheep waited to move to winter pastures where shelters still needed repair. Cows had to come in for the winter. Their quarters must be prepared and dried bracken laid on the ground. There was hay to cut and get into the barns. Winter lodgings to find for the house family who now camped in the outbuildings. And, of course, the salvage of building stuffs from the old house.

On the other hand, she saw that the wedding was bringing an unforeseen benefit. In spite of any reservations they might have about the match, Bowler, Mistress Margaret and all the others had grown animated again and brimmed with purpose as they had not done since before the fire. Zeal clamped tightly to her rock and let the sea wash over her.

She nearly washed off and drowned the night she saw John leaning against the doorpost of her chamber at High House, smiling at her. Even as she sat bolt upright and opened her mouth to cry out his name, he shook his head and faded.

He’s dead! she thought. His ghost came to tell me that his ship sank. He has drowned like my parents.

The next morning she took up a quill pen to write to him. If she acted as if he still lived, then he did.

She remembered his hand holding a pen. A hand browned by the sun, with a scar wrapped around the base of his thumb. A strong making and building hand. Standing in this same office, she had watched him trim the end of a split quill, locked with him in a shared silence like the breath between two musical notes.

He had felt her gaze, looked up and pinned her like one of his moths. She let herself be studied, wings, antennae and all. Then he smiled ruefully and she had smiled back. Their silent complicity felt like the embrace they had not yet shared and did not imagine would ever be possible.

My dearest love, she now wrote.

She leaned back. Now what? My dearest love, I miss you so painfully that I am to marry someone else in three days’ time.’

She bent her head over the paper again. I…Again she stopped.

How can I write that I bear his child but that it, like me, will soon belong to another man? She could think of no words strong enough to survive that burden. The truth would melt and reform into dreadful smoking lumps like the disasters of an apprentice smith. In any case, she did not yet know exactly where to send a letter.

I will wait until he writes again, from Nevis, she decided. So long as I write before rumour can reach him. I shall use the time thinking what to say.

She pulled a pile of accounts over the letter.

The day before the wedding, she peeped into the chapel and felt an easing at the base of her throat. The colours – the bright leathery red of the oak branches, the golden firework sprays of oats, the deep musty greens of fern and ivy, the polished, sweet-scented russet and gold of apples heaped in baskets – were a soothing draught for her senses.

Things may turn out all right, after all, she thought. So long as I try not to think. Just look and listen and work and care for John’s child. I’ll get through those seven years. John will write again and let me know that he is alive. I will write back in such a way that he will understand and forgive me.

Somehow, she did not ever get around to discussing Gifford’s letter with either Wentworth or Sir Richard. Sir Richard would have mentioned it, if he thought it important, she told herself.

And Gifford won’t dare make a scene in front of Sir Richard. Not once we have all begun.

A harsh observer might have said that, in spite of reason, she wanted to prevent the wedding. She had most certainly misjudged the minister.