The Memory Palace

Graciously, if tentatively, Gifford offered his own congratulations. ‘I shall marry you in Bedgebury, it goes without saying.’

Wentworth gave Zeal a warning look. She kept silent while Wentworth and Gifford at last agreed that the Hawkridge attendance at his services in Bedgebury could be limited to one Sunday a month.

‘I would have touched the gun!’ Zeal said tightly to Wentworth when Gifford, Comer and Sir Richard had gone. ‘I would have fired it if I could!’

‘Of course.’ He gave her a conspiratorial smile. ‘But never confess anything in the presence of a judge.’

12

‘Tell me the old sot was raving in his cups!’

Zeal was alone in the bake house the next morning blearily eating a slice of cheese with her morning ale when Mistress Margaret arrived breathless and alone, on foot from High House. The sun was barely up. The ovens were still banked.

Mistress Margaret lowered herself onto a stool and wiped her red face with her apron. ‘Tell me you are not going to marry that old man!’

‘You heard this before dawn?’ Zeal picked up a knife. ‘Bread?’

She had not slept.

‘Not dawn. In the middle of the night! Sir Richard was roaring around as drunk as an owl till he keeled over at cockcrow…Give that old loaf to the hens. I’m about to bake more…I haven’t slept since I heard about Harry, and then that other nonsense Sir Richard was spouting.’ Mistress Margaret had loved her nephew John fiercely.

Zeal kept her head down as she began to cube the stale bread. ‘It’s all true.’

Mistress Margaret squeaked like a small rusty hinge. She got up and took the yeast sponge from the oven where it had been rising overnight along with a bowl of water. Still silent, she beat down the puffy yeast mix with a wooden spoon, measured flour by the hand full, mixed all together. Her amethyst ear drops trembled.

Zeal swept the bread cubes and crumbs into the hens’ basket, then stooped to feed the sleeping fire under the first bread oven.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mistress Margaret at last. ‘If you love my nephew as you claim, how can you bolt to the altar before his ship has scarce cleared the horizon?’ She turned the dough out onto the floured tabletop and attacked it with both fists. She pinched her small mouth, then sniffed angrily. ‘I expected better of you, my girl.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Mistress Margaret turned the dough and slapped it, though not as hard as she might have done before the knuckles of her hands had grown swollen and red. She worked for several minutes with her head down. ‘I’m not sure I can live here if Wentworth becomes master. Even if he deigns to permit me. But where can I go? How can you do this to me, at my age?’

Can’t she see what’s before her eyes? Zeal wondered. Even if she’s never carried a child herself? Rachel guessed.

She ached to tell the older woman, but Mistress Margaret had kept a secret just once in her life, and then only when her nephew’s life had depended on it. ‘I won’t let him turn you out, aunt. In any case, our lives won’t change that much. He has no ambitions beyond his fishing. We shall carry on just as before.’

Fiercely, the older woman pressed down on the dough, folded and turned it then pressed down again. The smell of raw yeast began to fill the air. ‘I had thought – at the worst, if it came to it – that you might have to make a business-like marriage to bring in some money to help run and repair the estate. And pay our Crown levies. But all Master Wentworth can settle on you is a bucket of trout! And not even his own trout, at that! Most likely your trout! The old wrinkle-shanks!’ She thumped the dough again and raised her voice. ‘And I don’t care if he hears me!’

She paused as one of the dairymaids staggered in from the cow barn with two full pails. Together the three women lifted the heavy pails to pour the milk into a shallow lead sink rescued from the dairy house, so that the cream could rise to the top for skimming.

‘The churn Mistress Wilde lent us from Far Beeches needs to be scoured and set to dry in the sun,’ Zeal told the maid.

‘Waste!’ muttered Mistress Margaret, pummelling her dough again.

Zeal began to pump the bellows.

‘I like the man well enough, don’t mistake me,’ said Mistress Margaret.

Slap, thump.

‘…As far as I’ve had a chance to know, that is. It’s not that…can you find me the seeds?’

Slap, thump.

‘…but he’s old. And odd.’

Thump!

‘…keeping to himself, forbidding anyone to clean his chamber. He might be a murderer for all we know. Have chests full of severed heads.’ She sliced the dough into six smaller lumps.

Zeal took a lump and began to shape a cob loaf. ‘I like him well enough too.’

‘“Like!” La, la!’ Mistress Margaret stood staring down at her loaf. Then she burst into tears and hobbled out of the bake house.

Before Zeal had shaped her second loaf, Rachel came into the kitchen. Without speaking, she went straight to the second oven and began to work the bellows.

After several minutes, Zeal said into the silence, ‘Yes, it’s all true.’

‘God be praised!’ Rachel’s elbows flapped as if she were a duck trying to lift off a pond. ‘I can save my tears then.’

When Zeal passed him in the forecourt mid-morning, Doctor Bowler wore the expression of a kicked dog and avoided her eyes.

‘Terrible, terrible about Harry,’ he said. Though he did not mention the proposed marriage, she knew by his odd manner that Wentworth had spoken to him as promised.

By the end of morning milking, the rest of Hawkridge estate seemed to have heard the news of both death and marriage, and split into those for the match and those against. John Nightingale had been popular during the fourteen years he had run the estate, first for his uncle and then for his cousin. Wentworth shunned friendship and had often given offence by repulsing well-meant overtures. Few were in favour.

‘They’ll work it out soon enough,’ Rachel told her, having caught Zeal near tears in the still room. ‘But we must get you into a safe berth first.’

Zeal pinched her lips and drew a deep breath. ‘And what do you hear about Sir Harry’s death?’

Rachel peered into a tiered muslin sieve, which was dripping a greenish juice into a crock. ‘Everyone on the estate knows the truth of what happened. Any rumours will soon die.’

Zeal had never before felt out of favour here, even when first proving herself to them as Harry’s new, fourteen-year-old wife. Now the averted eyes and pursed lips hurt her. She hated the way talk stopped whenever she entered a room. She was frightened by the occasional assessing eye that measured her waist. Wentworth was right. They must marry as soon as possible.

That morning, Wentworth abandoned his rod and the river to spend several hours with Sir Richard. Then, he borrowed a horse from Zeal and set off for Winchester.

She watched her betrothed settle into the saddle and gather up the reins. At least I now know that he can ride.

The beech avenue swallowed him.

Perhaps he has gone for good. His proposal was a cruel jest. And he has taken my horse. How can I know differently?

She had planned to write that morning to tell John of her proposed marriage. Now she decided to wait until she knew for certain that Wentworth was coming back. It was best not to tempt fate.

Wentworth returned three days later with an ordinary ecclesiastical licence issued by the diocese, which allowed them to be wed at once, without calling the banns. Though the growing child was the reason for this saving of three weeks, Zeal was grateful that news of the marriage need not be published throughout the parish. The disapproval and curiosity on Hawkridge Estate alone were as much as she could bear. She did not ask how Wentworth had managed to acquire the licence. Nor did she know that both Sir Richard and Master Wilde of Far Beeches had each stood surety for a large sum of money, to guarantee, accurately or not, that Wentworth’s written allegation presented to the archdeacon contained no falsehoods concerning her state of legal spinsterhood.

After one night back, on Michaelmas Day, Wentworth borrowed the horse again, this time to ride to Basingstoke.

‘Surely I must settle a jointure on you, not the other way round,’ Zeal told him unhappily. ‘Do we need a lawyer to ensure your right to my pile of ashes?’

On marriage all her property became his, as it had become Harry’s. She had much less now than then, but nevertheless, if Philip had had a male heir, that heir, not she, would have the right to whatever remained after Philip’s death. Or a creditor of his might attach the estate, or the king might declare it forfeit if Wentworth committed a crime.

From the little he had told her so far, an unknown crime did not seem beyond possibility. These risks were the price of her child’s life.

The lawyer Wentworth brought from Basingstoke was eating toasted bread and cheese at the bake house table while a kitchen groom held another slice on a knifepoint over the fire. The man’s papers and pens waited on Zeal’s table in the estate office.

Wentworth nodded curtly at yet another of the house family who had found an excuse to visit the bake house kitchen. ‘Am I a specimen in a menagerie, that all these people must come peer at me?’

The second dairymaid’s face disappeared from the kitchen door.

‘You’re not often seen. And, by day, this is always a busy place.’

‘Small wonder I prefer the riverbanks!’ He led her to one of the little windows and stooped as if to look out. ‘I will almost certainly die before you,’ he said quietly. ‘I want no one to find anything irregular in our union. For the child’s sake.’ He glared at the kitchen groom, who fled. ‘Also, I want to make secure your absolute title to Hawkridge again after I am gone, not just dower rights or a widow’s annuity.’

She nodded. It was kind of him to think of such things, although she would be leaving Hawkridge in any case, when John sent in seven years for her to go to the West Indies. None of which Wentworth knew. ‘Arrange things as you wish,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.

He scratched the bristle on his chin and smiled. ‘“On my obedient wife, Zeal Wentworth, I settle, herewith, two fishing rods of willow with copper rings, four Brown Queens, two Peacocks and a dozen hooks of the finest Spanish steel.”’

Zeal laughed.

Wentworth looked at first startled and then pleased that he seemed to have amused her.

‘You might find use for my rods, if you’ll allow me to teach you to fish. Then you can leave them to the child…the thought pleases me. I might even leave the cub my books direct.’ He peered through the window again. ‘And here comes Sir Richard at last, to be our witness. I swear he’s making his horse trot on tiptoe to spare his head.’

That image of her neighbour, short, round and undoubtedly sore-headed from his night of drinking, made Zeal laugh again.

Wentworth again looked both startled and pleased.

He’s grown used to amusing only himself, she thought. At the least, I can give him my laughter. I think he really does mean me well.

The lawyer finished the last of his bread and brushed the crumbs from his long white collar as Sir Richard opened the bake house door.

The old knight took off his hat and fanned himself. ‘Oho! The happy couple.’ He mopped his bald head and replaced his hat. His reddened eyes sat in their puffy sockets like specks of grit in two oysters. ‘Don’t know how you’ll take to this news, but Doctor Gifford sent me word that he can make time to marry you Saturday next, if I have no objections as magistrate.’

‘That’s only eight days!’ cried Mistress Margaret, returning with ale for Sir Richard in time to hear. ‘How can we prepare in eight days?’

‘But surely our own Doctor Bowler must marry us!’ Zeal protested. ‘If he’s willing.’

Sir Richard and Wentworth exchanged glances.

‘Doctor Gifford is the parish incumbent and a strong voice in the parish council,’ said Sir Richard. ‘Doctor Bowler merely your estate parson.’

‘All the more reason for him to bless an estate union.’ Zeal folded her arms. ‘I don’t like Gifford. He will be a weight dragging us down. Doesn’t the man know that God resides above? He should lift spirits, not always be tugging them down towards damnation.’

‘I can’t stomach the man,’ said Sir Richard. ‘But it would not be politic to offend either him or the parish vestry.’

‘Why not?’ she demanded.

Sir Richard and Wentworth exchanged another of those maddening male looks.

‘We must give no one any excuse to question the marriage,’ said Wentworth.

Zeal pursed her lips and wound a sleeve ribbon around her finger until the tip looked like a ripe cherry. She tried not to think of the darkness that Gifford would cast over the wedding. The whole venture was already as fragile as a bubble. ‘He must agree at least to marry us here at Hawkridge in our own chapel. I shall tell him so.’

‘Best leave that to me,’ said Sir Richard hastily. ‘I’ve an examination to make in Bedgebury tomorrow in any case.’

The lawyer cleared his throat politely to indicate that he was now ready.

The next Sunday, as negotiated on the night of the inquiry into Sir Harry’s death, Zeal took herself and her household to their monthly service in Bedgebury parish church. Sir Richard, of course, had not been part of the deal and waved them off with too much gusto for Zeal’s liking. Wentworth had never attended prayers and apparently did not mean to begin now.

He’s the blasted rudder after all, Zeal thought crossly as the little procession set off along the track downstream along the river to Bedgebury. But I don’t suppose Gifford is worried about his soul.

Doctor Bowler, however, trudged glumly at her side, still avoiding her eyes. ‘All that sermonizing,’ he said. ‘I won’t be comfortable. And with no hymns or Prayer Book! I shall feel as if I’m talking to a stranger, not my own God.’

‘I wish you were marrying us, not Doctor Gifford,’ said Zeal.

They both huffed and waved their hands to disperse a cloud of late gnats, which hovered in a sunny patch.

‘Will you want wedding music?’ Bowler enquired carefully as the shady tunnel closed round them again.

‘Oh, yes! But I feared to ask.’

‘Because Gifford will disapprove.’ He nodded in understanding of her difficulty.

‘Gifford can’t be allowed to order everything in the parish!’ She glanced at his long, hound’s face. He suffered so when he found himself at odds with anyone. ‘No, I didn’t ask because I know you don’t approve of the match.’

They crossed a little hunting bridge in silence. Then, as they joined the larger track that led from Far Beeches to Bedgebury, Doctor Bowler said, ‘I had thought I might compose an epithalamium.’

Zeal beamed. ‘Dear Doctor Bowler!’

‘But what of Doctor Gifford?’

‘Master Wentworth seems to know how to deal with him. I’m sure that if I say I want your epithalamium, we shall have it.’

They smiled at each other with the delicious relief of truce.

‘Would you also deck the chapel?’ she asked. ‘If Master Wentworth and I are to be united by that dispiriting Scot we can at least cheer ourselves with the sight of ivy and green boughs.’

‘And sheaves of ripe corn,’ said Bowler. ‘And pumpkins. All the bounty that autumnal Nature provides.’

‘Apples.’

‘Grapes and peaches.’ Bowler flushed with excitement. ‘It will give me great pleasure both to decorate and to compose a celebratory piece for you.’ He gazed up into the trees. ‘Seth must re-string his viol so we can march on the firm ground of his continuo.’ He hummed a few notes in an exploratory way. ‘…great pleasure.’ He seemed as relieved as she was at his relenting.

She had heard it said that Bowler failed as a clergyman because he always understood both sides of any question with equal conviction. He could not find it in himself ever to condemn. Anyone who wanted to know exactly where he or she stood in relationship to Heaven and Hell or whether to play shove ha’penny on Sunday, had to attend church in Bedgebury, where Doctor Gifford delighted in firm pronouncements, invited or otherwise.

She smiled sideways at her parson as they trudged onwards towards Bedgebury. He continued to frown and hum, waving his hands from time to time, even voicing a few notes.

How dare Doctor Gifford dismiss him as a clergyman? Though perhaps an over-forgiving shepherd for wayward sheep, Doctor Bowler gives us rich gifts of the spirit in return for his milk and eggs.

She glanced over her shoulder at the straggling procession behind them.

From among those walkers Bowler had formed a chapel choir of an excellence surprising in such a rural backwater. For this choir, he composed psalms and hymns exactly suited to their voices. From among those same estate residents, he also mustered and tutored a consort of instruments, which included his own fiddle, a double bass viol, a viola da gamba, several pipes, a tabor and the smith’s great drum. He and this crew played for church festivals and for dancing on secular feast days with equal fervour and delight. But Bowler’s unique gift was his voice.

It was high, but not falsetto, nor was it a simulacrum of a woman’s soprano, like the voice of an Italian castrato. Its piercing purity of tone suggested some other instrument than a human voice, an instrument not known on earth, the vibrating of a silver reed blown only in Heaven.

Bowler loved to sing as much as he disliked making judgements. For feverish children, who saw wolves and demons among the bed curtains, he stood diffidently in the sick chamber and sang light into the shadows and smiling faces onto the foot of the bed. He sang a small green grass snake into his pocket and a robin onto the corner of the pillow.

For the dying, he sang stars of light into dusty folds of hangings. He sang the smell of fresh pine and the sweetness of witch hazel blooms. He sang long-vanished faces around the bed. He sang clear still water. He sang rest.

For the others, he sang rising barn walls, candles, leaping flames, magic cups that were always full. Sweet meats and diamonds. Golden arrows for the hunter’s bow. God. He could sing warmth around the heart, lightness beneath the ribs, fizzing in the belly. He could lift the hair on your neck with the sound of hope.

For Zeal, Doctor Bowler’s music would bless her strange, uncomfortable marriage with a joy she saw nowhere else. She did not see that she had just declared war against an unreasoning enemy, with her little parson as both ally and cause.

13

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.