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.
In the chapel gallery, Bowler’s musical consort struck up a sedate march. Zeal and Wentworth entered under the swag of ivy above the chapel door, with Gifford close behind them. Mistress Margaret, Sir Richard, Rachel, Arthur and other house family followed the minister.
‘No!’ Gifford stopped so suddenly that Mistress Margaret bumped her nose on his back. The minister’s cry held such horror that there was a general pressing forward by those still outside to see what calamity lay within. The music broke off.
Zeal’s precarious calm wobbled. I should have gone ahead and jumped! I’ve always known it. Here comes the confirmation!
Gifford’s eyes widened. ‘“What is this that thou hast done?”’ His face flushed purple. ‘I will not solemnize any union amongst these pagan trappings!’ With the clenched brow of a man struck by an excruciating megrim, he surveyed the ropes of ivy around the pillars, the swags of red oak leaves, the jugs of wheat sheaves and golden oats. His eyes fell on a pair of stuffed cloth figures, each a foot high, propped side by side on the altar among heaped baskets of apples and pears. Zeal and Philip Wentworth, recognizable by his silver hair, black coat and fishing rod, by her red-gold hair. Both dolls wore crowns of plaited wheat, and they were tied together by a golden thread.
‘Idols!’ Gifford whispered in an exhalation aimed at the back pews. His terrier body vibrated with emotion. ‘The props of witchcraft! I am struck dumb with horror!’
‘Not so you’d notice,’ someone said at the back of the crowd, just loudly enough to be heard by all.
The minister’s head swung around, rusty hair bristling. Bland faces looked back at him from the chapel porch. Then Gifford spied the choir of children, dressed in green, standing beyond Bowler near the altar.
‘How dare you?’ he demanded of Bowler. ‘You were warned yet you disobey! Oh, rebellious soul! And you!’ He pointed a shaking finger at the children. ‘You wait to do the devil’s work here! Quake in terror of God’s wrath, for you are lost. You are fallen!’
Two of the younger children burst into tears.
Zeal heard a rustling from the gallery behind them as the string players ducked out of sight.
Ignoring Zeal, Gifford gripped Wentworth’s arm. ‘You will come to Bedgebury to be wed. This place was always a temple of Rome. It should have been destroyed with the others!’ His eyes razed the acrobat, fish and monkey pew finials, smashed the tiled pomegranates in the floor and torched the carved Rood screen to which Doctor Bowler seemed to be clinging.
Wentworth detached his arm from the minister’s grip.
Gifford’s glance fell next onto Zeal’s cat, which was pretending to be asleep on a pew. He looked away quickly. ‘How dare you permit such desecration?’ he demanded again of Doctor Bowler, gesturing at the decorations. ‘What do you think you are doing?’