“And what shall you do when we’ve arrived at Chester?”Nathaniel turned in the saddle and shrugged. They had been on the road all night and now the sun was rising in the east. Before them lay Ludlow. Nathaniel gave the tired horse its lead.
“I’ll see you to your aunt’s and then go back to Knowstone.”
“Mr. Talbot will have a piece of you for what you’ve done, Nathaniel. You shouldn’t have risked your reputation.” Mary replied. “And yet, I am glad that you are here, because I love you.” He felt her sigh and how she tightened her arms about him. Talbot’s scolding would be nothing. Mary’s arms were around him now. The world could go to hell. She couldn’t see his smile nor feel the emotion welling joyfully up inside him. Or perhaps she could, for suddenly she held him tighter and pressed her head against his back.
“Here’s Ludlow,” she murmured as they approached.
“Shall we stay here and rest a while?” Nathaniel pulled up rein gently and turned, tapped her nose playfully when she smiled and nodded.
Rooms were taken at The Feathers Inn on Castle Square and as soon as they were settled they strolled arm in arm like tourists through the ancient town later in the morning, stopping for tea at a little shop on The Buttercross across from St. Laurence’s Church. Seated at the window, Mary noticed Nathaniel’s preoccupation and vigil on the fifteenth-century edifice and building.
“The Lord is a gentle lover, patient and understanding,” she said softly, covering his hand with hers.
“What, my heart? Hmm?” Nathaniel answered, startled out of his reverie.
“I fear I have compromised your vocation; you will be disgraced and have to answer for your un-priestly actions. And yet, I know that Mother Church will always be your mistress and love and I am content with that!” Mary’s voice was low so that no one else could hear. When she reached up to touch his face, he kissed the hand and took it in his own.
“You are not the cause; you are the marvelous effect of what grace can do,” he whispered. “Will you marry me? There’s the church across the way. There’ll be no need for you to go your aunt’s in Chester nor do what is expected of you. We’ll make our own life, my love!”
She nodded and moved away as the waitress brought their tea and then protested when Nathaniel rose suddenly, taking his hand. “Where are going?”
“I’ll only be a moment.”
Mary watched as he left the inn and walked across to the church. The tea was nearly cold when he finally returned, sliding onto his chair and taking a cake as he did so, winking mischievously.
“Tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”
Chapter 11
Mary, sitting before a mirror at the dressing table, was brushing out her hair, not at all bemused by her new station and circumstance. It seemed quite natural to sit in this pretty room with amenities to make one comfortable, the flowered and striped wallpaper and white linens, the lace curtains, all enchanting. It was natural with Nathaniel sitting on a bed removing his boots and jacket and then stretching out for a moment of peace. The sun was already burning hotly into the room and cast a warm, orange glow. The tinny ring of a clock somewhere told her it was one o’clock.
They’d been married for almost an hour. Mary held up her left hand and admired the gold band on her third finger, how the sunlight captured the ancient engraving of love knots that encircled it.
“In memory of the lady Ælfgyva,” Nathaniel murmured when he purchased it from the jeweler’s shop in Watling Street that morning. “She would have worn such a beautiful thing had she married for love.”
Nathaniel was dozing when the maid came up to offer a hot bath and fresh linens for the good reverend’s wife. When the screens were arranged round the copper tub, Mary took her bath and Nathaniel listened to the gentle rise and fall of the water, the sweet sound of her voice as she sang softly, watched the perfumed steam rise behind the screen.
“And so we are man and wife, Mrs. Godwin.”
“So we are, Mr. Godwin. A joyful thing it is, too,” she laughed.
“Shall we go to Canterbury? You’ll have to meet my parents and I must speak with the Archbishop.”
“You never said why you left Canterbury.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why did you?”
“A difference of opinion where it concerned a lady I loved and marriage.”
The room was suddenly silent and then Mary resumed washing.
“Not much different from the present situation, I think?”
“A world of difference, Mary. You married for love the first time—and this last, I pray. I married to acquire property and a good station in society in order to please my father. She hated me. Then I became a sport for her, her curiosity. She was beautiful and she was evil.”
“Was? Then you’re—”
“No different from you. Until this morning, I was a widower.”
“Nathaniel…”
“It wasn’t as romantic as consumption or childbed fever. She was killed by her lover. I was a cuckold. I wasn’t sent down from Canterbury. I walked away. I simply opened the rectory door and rode away. They found me at a tavern near King’s Lynn—I wanted passage to France or die of drink. The Archbishop thought it was nonsense and sent me to Knowstone to think things over—to do penance. At first it was the worst kind of purgatory, hell even, but then I met you.”
He didn’t hear Mary come from the bath or kneel beside the bed. Nathaniel opened his eyes when he felt Mary’s fingers tracing his tears. She leaned over to kiss him and he responded gently, pulling her scented, warm body towards his. Under her thin robe she was still damp and the flannel clung to her skin so that her wonderful curves were apparent and enticing.
“My darling Nathaniel! Think no more of it.”
Nathaniel took a length of her hair and wrapped it in a fist, and stroked his face lazily with it, kissing it. “I have nothing to give you, Mary. I have no fortune, no inheritance. I was disowned by my father because I chose a path none other had taken. I became a priest and I found that God still didn’t care.”
“You gave me this ring. You give yourself,” she whispered, smiling. “Now we have each other.”
Mary drew the curtains to block the afternoon sun. The room was as dark as dusk then. Nathaniel saw her silhouette against the windows, watched as she came to the bed again and slipped the flannel robe from her shoulders.
They lay in bed entwined as lovers are after their coupling; heartbeats slowing and breathing coming deep and long. The dewiness of skin damped by sweat and desire. The sun, once that orange brightness in the room, now gave way to the night. In the purple shadows Nathaniel saw her bright eyes and the curve of her naked shoulders draped by the blankets and coverlets. He let a hand slip under the down coverlet and ride over the silken skin. She was a mystery and marvel to him and he trembled at the touch of her.
“Here we are in our kingdom of heaven,” Nathaniel murmured as he lifted his head from where it had lain on her breast and smiled. “All is right and good in our world, I take it?”
“Marvelously so, and to begin our marriage, I would make all perfect.”
“You are perfection, Mary!”
“I will make a confession to you here and now, so that we may begin our life together with no shadows, no secrets,” she said. “To begin, I am not a fallen woman, nor a seductress,” Mary told him. Her voice was sad and hesitant.
“Darling Mary, I know that better than anyone!”
“But you should know the truth.”
Nathaniel released her and guided her head to his breast where it lay for some time. At last she spoke. “My father, late rector of Saint Ælfgyva’s, wore his piety heavily, like a coat. We were all sinners, all of us, he would cry, and none would be saved from hellfire. My mother and I had no comforts such as the families of priests were allotted by the Church. I was forced to weave cloth and ply my needle so that we could live respectably.
“My father was a hypocrite of the worst kind, but he knew how to beguile and win
confidence, love. We would walk through St. Edmund Wood and he would quote passages of scripture. I was enraptured at first, fearing and loving him at the same time. Then one day, we were walking through the Wood and we came upon Mr. Talbot…
“Do you know the ways of the world, Daughter?”
“Ways?” Mary asked looking to her father first, and then Charles Talbot, who was smiling at her—not a smile she’d seen before; not a smile one ought to give a thirteen-year old girl.
“The sinful must atone for their wickedness. And do you know who is wicked?”
“The devil is wicked, Father.”
Charles Talbot stepped up and roughly took Mary by the throat, sneering at her. “Young girls are wicked, for they entice and lead good Christian men astray, Mary Burnley!”
“Do you speak of me, sir?” Mary dared to ask, trying to look at her father, who now had a firm hold on her as if trying to keep her from escaping. “If you do speak of me, I beg of you, please! Let me go. You know that I have always tried to live as godly a life as the Virgin Mary and the saints, as you have taught me…”
“Liar!” Percy Witherslack growled and struck her across the face. “We have seen your flirtations and your beguiling smiles at the men in church!”
“The men in the village do naught but praise your beauty,” Talbot added. “How could they do that, if not by knowledge of it?”
“I have done nothing—!”
“Wantons must be punished! Whores must be punished!” Witherslack murmured huskily as his hands came up around Mary and fondled her breasts.
“Let go of me!”Talbot came behind her, ripped open the bodice of her dress so that the cold air against her naked skin shocked Mary into fear and anger and she struggled even more, biting and clawing as her clothes were removed and her father started to undress while he muttered a prayer. Before she lost consciousness, she remembered the tops of the trees and the sun shining through them, the silhouette of her father blocking out the sun as he climbed on top of her and the searing, burning, the horror, and when she regained her senses there was more pain, more of the burning, the bleeding, for Talbot was now taking her by force, panting and coming to climax saying, “‘Your daughters play the whore, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery!’”
Nathaniel’s fierce embrace brought Mary out of the nightmare of memory she’d recounted and she choked back a sob.
“Hush, Mary, no one will hurt you ever again, I promise!” Nathaniel vowed.
“There is more and I beg you to hear all. My mother said I was a wicked girl and God would punish me for my sin. My sin! She knew what my father and Charles Talbot did to me—”Nathaniel’s reaction shook the bed, but Mary placed a hand to his lips, continuing: “Soon tales spread. Only Erland Frankewell refused to believe what was being bandied about…”
“I am your champion…”
Mary was back in the church at Knowstone and she turned and smiled at Erland, who had slipped into the pew beside her, and, where no one could see, held her hand.
“What did my father say, when you asked him?” she whispered, smiling sweetly up at Witherslack in the pulpit above them.
“He refused my suit.”
“God help us!”
“God does not care, else what happened to you.”
“We promised not to speak of it!”
Erland found her again after the service, away from the parishioners clustering on the porch to say good morning to the good reverend Percy Witherslack.
“I shall talk to your father again. I’ll come by this evening. We shall come to an understanding…”
Hearing this, Nathaniel protested softly and propped himself up with an elbow to look at Mary. “But Erland told me that it was his family that refused you!”
“True enough; but for different reasons,” Mary said. “The fall from a horse that killed my father wasn’t entirely an accident.”
After a moment considering this, Nathaniel nodded. “A carefully placed branch on a road, or a noise or animal to startle a horse.”
“There were knife wounds that could not be explained.”
“Did Erland—?”
“He will never say. His parents suspected what really had happened, though, and sent him away. And then Justin Burnley came to Knowstone. He was the Archangel Michael come to deliver me.”
And then Mary cried. She turned from Nathaniel and mercifully he let her weep for what seemed to be hours. When she had slept a little and woke she found Nathaniel’s arms around her and she turned in his arms for a kiss. Nathaniel slid the blankets and sheets off of them and brought her into his arms. There was nothing like this on Earth—to lie in a woman’s arms and feel her body against his, to hold her closer and closer until that sweet, divine moment came and rather than rest, want it all the more, to ride a tide of delicious sleep and then wake and want to take her again. He prayed that this profound and passionate love would never leave him.
Chapter 12
Knowstone enjoyed the scandal caused by Mary Burnley and Nathaniel Godwin’s departures, their names bandied around The Castle and Motte, neighbors leaning on gates and saying “I told you so!” Homilies preached every Sunday warned of the sins of the flesh. The titillation was stale and boring by a month mind, and the lovers were but distant memories. Life in Knowstone got on, the market held on Saturday and the lamps lit at dusk. The good wives assembled in front of the church on Sundays after Morning Prayer or Holy Eucharist and shared gossip. Even the tragic end of Erland Frankewell was forgotten a year later as the Frankewell family prepared for Jane’s wedding to Robert Marchmont.
No one gave second thought to the young cleric and his wife when they arrived in Knowstone, for it was assumed they were guests for the wedding.
At Hazelwick, Emily‘s cook heard the jangle of the rusting bell and wiped her hands upon her already greasy apron, ready to upbraid the fool that had come to call so early in the day. The pies would be ruined if she didn’t get back to them.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Mary greeted. “Close your mouth, dearest! You’re bound to catch flies!”
“Mistress Burnley! Mary! Is it you? Look at you!” the cook exclaimed.
“Cook!” Emily shouted from the top of the stairs. “I smell something burning!”
“Straight away, Mistress. But do come down; you have a visitor!” the cook called back.
“Mary! My dear child! Mary!”Emily nearly swooned at the sight of her daughter standing in the middle of the parlor. She was dressed in a becoming apricot frock and pelisse, the same as that which graced the dress shop window a year ago, and looked radiant. As they offered sterile kisses in greeting, Emily noted the wedding ring the girl’s left hand.
“Where did you go? Why did you never write or send word? Your Aunt Lodge in Chester wrote that you never arrived and we all did think—”
“That is because I took Mary first to Ludlow, where we were married quietly at St. Laurence’s Church, and then to Canterbury where we had a proper wedding supper with my family and the Archbishop. I’m sorry you couldn’t attend, but it was sudden,” Nathaniel replied as he entered carrying their cases. Emily nearly collapsed—more from the sight of Nathaniel Godwin than his news. She turned to Mary for confirmation and the girl nodded solemnly.
“And you’ve returned to Knowstone to take your place at Saint Ælfgyva’s! This is news indeed! My dears, I am so glad for you! Mr. Talbot will be relieved to hear it. He is nearly dead for all that he must do, and tomorrow is the wedding, the most important wedding in all the year. Jane Frankewell is to marry Robert Marchmont! How everyone will marvel at your good fortune! This is wonderful indeed!”
“I have come on the authority of the Archbishop, Mistress Witherslack, to relieve Mr. Talbot of his duties here,” Nathaniel answered.
“Are you then to be rector?” she wanted to know, forcing a smile.
“No. We are on our way to Salisbury.”
“Nathaniel has been appointed dean of the cathedral,”
Mary added.
Emily gaped like a codfish at the wonderful news. She gasped and cried, “A man as young and educated as you, Nathaniel Godwin, will surely be a bishop in good time if you have been elevated to dean so early in your career! My dears, you are truly fortunate. Come, sit down, and we’ll have tea,” Emily suddenly gushed.
Nathaniel waited for Mary to sit and then took his place beside her, Emily noting with bitterness and envy how he refused to let go of her hand or remove his eyes from her. If they were bent on staying the night she’d give them the north rooms where she wouldn’t have to hear their lovemaking, for it was apparent after a year that that fire had not yet died and looked as if it never would.
“Tell me, Mr. Godwin, Nathaniel, if not you for rector, then why would Mr. Talbot require a replacement?” Emily wanted to know, handing him a third sandwich.
“The Archbishop has been considering this action for some time. You need not worry.”
“And why should I not be concerned? Mr. Talbot is our priest. I’m sure the good people of Knowstone would have something to say about it!”
“Why should the Archbishop listen to them when for so many years they shut their eyes and ears to things which may not be spoken of?”
“You are being vague purposefully, sir! Come! Say what it is and stop playing games,” Emily snapped.
“Charles Talbot is called to answer charges of rape and adultery” Nathaniel replied matter-of-factly, taking a fourth, then fifth sandwich.
“Rape and adultery—? Surely the Archbishop is mistaken, for Charles Talbot is a sober man,” Emily replied, tittering nervously.
“Is he?” Mary asked.
“I would I knew his accuser or accusers!” Emily declared passionately. “I will be glad to speak for him!”
“Will you?” Mary demanded quietly. She raised her brows at Emily, who looked away and fussed with the tea cup in her hand.
“You ought to reconsider your valiant offer,” Nathaniel said. Your late husband, Madam, is fortunate to have met with a foul accident to prevent this same embarrassment to you.”
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