by Abigail Agar
In the back of her mind she worried that the nation might be on the brink of something and that this could be a sign of decline. The horrors of the French Revolution seemed to hover over the gathering.
But perhaps it could be different here …
But it was not time for such thoughts. She sipped her brandy again tasting it burn the back of her throat and warm her gut. She was deeply satisfied.
Catherine’s husband had called that morning to thank Lord Stanley for paying bail for his wife, providing funding of his electoral canvassing efforts and assisting in bringing a suit against Lord Fitzwilliam for blackmail.
Her mind was wandering, but she guided it back to the room.
She had become accustomed to partaking of these after dinner nightcaps as Fidel, and although no longer really a natural part of the masculine evening activities, she continued to attend now that she was Vera again, largely out of habit. ‘You got my Vera back for me, Fielding,’ continued Lord Stanley. From my own foolishness, from my own cowardice. You saved her.’
‘You never lost her, sir,’ replied Fielding. ‘Never forget that. She stuck the course for you. You best do the same for her.’ He said the last words with the jolly tone of an uncle giving a nephew advice, but his face hardened, and he repeated himself, ‘You best do the same for her.’ It was a voice that conveyed implied violence with astonishing effectiveness.
Vera recoiled from that threat in his voice; she appreciated the fatherly protection, but she hated to hear Lord Stanley put in danger.
I wonder if it’s just stolen goods he’s hiding, or if there are bodies out there? It certainly sounded possible.
Lord Stanley took the threat in good humour. ‘I have no intention of giving you any reason to defend or avenge my Vera, Fielding. You have my word, on my honour.’
Vera felt herself welling up again and threw herself on Mr Fielding, wrapping her arms around his neck. ‘Oh, what can I do to repay you for what you have done for us?’
She looked up at his face and could see he looked a little awkward. Assuming it was the embrace, she quickly took a step back. Then she remembered, He is in possession of a large quantity of stolen furniture and is rather well known now to the chief thief-taker.
‘Well,’ said Mr Fielding. ‘I would never ask for anything for myself. But Mrs Plimpton …’ He turned to Lord Stanley and explained, ‘Mrs Plimpton is a kindly woman of my acquaintance, the owner and manager of a fine public house The Worm in the Rose in the absence of her husband who was indentured away for some trifling run-ins with the law and can only return once his indenture is paid off in Suriname. If I might ask on her behalf that you settle that poor man’s debt to society and the colonies of Suriname, I would take that most kindly.’
‘Say no more,’ Lord Stanley cut in. ‘I will pay off the indenture of this friend-in-law of yours and square it all with the courts. Caruthers sort that out would you?’
‘At the earliest opportunity, My Lord.’
Fielding smiled and said, ‘I’m sure Mr Plimpton will be most grateful. As for myself, I may well be doing a little travelling. I have become very close to Mrs Plimpton, and wouldn’t want her husband to feel his wife’s virtue were under any competition from myself. You will never see old Fielding in the same room as Mr Plimpton, mark my words.’ At this he turned and gave Vera a big wink.
Well, that confirms it then, she thought, smiling at the thought of the money passing through the courts to the paid owner of Mr Plimpton, the falsified reports of his return, the joyful reunion of Mr and Mrs Plimpton and the unexplained disappearance of one Mr Fielding, fence and agent of Vera Ladislaw.
Lord Stanley was giving her a confused look. She gave him a pitying one back. Men can be so slow. ‘I’ll explain later,’ she said teasingly.
‘While we are making requests of one another, Mr Pli– Mr Fielding.’
‘Anything, my dear. I am drunk enough on this very fine brandy now to agree to give you anything.’
‘Well, myself and Lord Stanley are to marry in the spring. With my dear father departed from this earth, I need other family to give me away. I was hoping it might be something my faux-uncle might do me the honour of doing.’
‘Give you away to this lout?’ said Fielding warmly. ‘Can he support you? Can he keep you in men’s britches and bubbie-binding-bandages? What are his credentials?’
While Vera and Caruthers laughed, Lord Stanley nodded sagely, ‘I will give over a full wardrobe of britches as dowry. Whole boats loaded down with pantaloons. A dozen caravanserais of trousers. I will render armies naked from the waist down to win this woman’s hand.’
Fielding bowed low in his chair. ‘He is worthy of you, my dear. I shall gladly give you to this man knowing full well that you shall never go around with unclothed legs again.’
Vera wiped the tears of laughter from her eyes and gave Mr Fielding a hug. ‘You sweet man. I think my days of dressing as a man are over.’
‘A shame, my love. I thought that riding trousers rather suited your figure,’ said Lord Stanley and gave her a wink.
Caruthers and Fielding, reading the room, yawned in unison and disappeared to their varied quarters.
***
It turned out that the Avonside Manse had a small chapel on its grounds. A simple, Norman built structure originally built to house a congregation of about fifty or so snugly. It was set in amongst dozens of headstones which the time and disrepair had rendered anonymous, but it was structurally sound and technically still a part of the Episcopalian communion.
It was there that Vera decided she was to be married. In the shadow of the house that had at first been a place of fear, then of shelter, and finally of a deep and calming happiness.
The grounds of the chapel were a mass of brambles when Lord Stanley first took Vera up there. Even with their leaves thinned out for winter, it was an intimidating site. The kind of place you might meet the Green Knight or some darker more ancient sort of danger.
They sat on their horses surveying what needed doing before the wedding. There was barely a wind, and the cloud of their breath seemed to hang in the frosty air.
From the hill on which the chapel stood they could see the house, the sun glinting off its many windows. Small figures moved about in the garden, airing out the East Wing and making it fit once more for habitation.
The figures were largely new faces at the Manse. Vera had taken over hiring and brought in a large contingent of new staff to help Caruthers and Helen run the Manse and prepare the home for their married life.
She looked at Lord Stanley who was also staring at the little figures moving on the white-green of the lawn.
She knew one of them was Martha, her old prison mate, who after Vera had paid off her debt for the damages Martha had caused to her guardian’s property, Vera had brought her to the Manse as a companion for herself and insisted that Lord Stanley hunt around for some eligible bachelors from which Martha might make her own choice.
Vera squeezed Lord Stanley’s hand. He looked sad. The leather of their gloves squeaked a little as she gripped him, and he gave her a melancholy smile.
‘It was time,’ she said.
‘I know. Thank you. It means a great deal to be able to let go of the guilt.’
‘Keep the happy memories, though,’ she said.
‘Yes, but no more wallowing. There is joy to be had in our futures. I don’t want to wander ghost haunted corridors. Like you say, it was time.’
He took from his pocket the only remaining items from the two rooms of the East Wing that had been kept preserved for so long.
Together, they dismounted, and Vera took a trowel from her saddlebag and helped Lord Stanley dig a hole in a patch of bare ground among the brambles of the chapel.
He laid the two items together in the hole. A small stuffed lion with its ear chewed to a hard point, and a sprig of hemlock in a small glass bottle. The rest of the contents of Lady Stanley’s room and the nursery had been moved out and disposed of.
Either burned or given away to the staff if it were deemed to be in good enough condition.
It had been a few months since Vera had held a similar private ceremony at the grave of her parents.
She had stood in the autumnal riot of leafy colours and finally seen the place where her parents had been laid to rest. Just like today it had been cold enough that day by her parents graveside that her breath had formed a kind of pall over it.
She had brought a bottle of the home brewed grain alcohol her father made in the same style as his grandparents had in Poland. Maman and Father had drunk a glass every night, ‘for their health’, but never allowed Vera to try it.
She drained a glass herself, the first in her life. The cough it blew out of her was explosive and formed a series of puffs of condensation in the air. Then she poured another glass and emptied it over the joint headstone her parents were laid under.
In her absence, Vera’s cousins had not paid for Mishka’s burial, and she had disappeared into an unmarked grave, so she poured another glass out onto a patch of grass beside her parents’ grave.
Then her knees had given out, and in full view of those members of the village community who were out for a Sunday stroll, she finally cried for them.
The pain came in dense waves that had the weight of molten rock behind them. Each sob felt like a cosmic force trying to pull her heart out through her mouth. Her tears fell to the earth mixing with the spirit and salting the earth.
When she finally had finished wailing into the silent Earth, she felt better, a weight lifted that she had been carrying with her since the day she had witnessed her father’s murder and failed to save her mother.
She had finally been able cry for them and in doing so had laid them to rest. Now she could help Lord Stanley bury his own grief.
They covered up the hemlock and lion with the soil they had dug out. The frozen earth was dry, hard, and crumbly even when they packed it down. Then they made their way back to their horses.
‘When the weather warms a little, we can begin to get the chapel ready for our marriage,’ he said.
‘I’ll have Eli hire a few extra gardeners for the job,’ said Vera.
‘Can you really wait that long, my love. Till spring, we could be married in the Myton Brookleigh church in just a few weeks. Even that seems like an eternity to me.’
‘Patience my love.’ Vera wanted more than anything to say yes, but there was no rush. ‘Anything worth doing is worth doing properly. You have gone this last eight months in my company without giving in to your baser urges. And I have done the same. I think we can survive another few months for the good weather to come and the chapel be restored.’
‘You are a cruel mistress, my love.’ He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close.
Pushing him back playfully, she said, ’I enjoy making you suffer too much to end it so soon, my holy hermit. Your time in the wilderness will be over soon.’
She made a half-hearted effort to run away from him, let him catch her right away and pulled him close. Kissing him full on the mouth.
Then she mounted her horse and kicked the old nag into a canter. She knew he would be riding behind trying to keep up, but her nag, for all its bad temper, had proved time and again to be the fastest horse Lord Stanley owned.
The hooves hammered over the frozen earth kicking up shards more than dust. The wind was like knives against her cheeks, but the exhilaration of the ride drove her on.
Knowing he was right behind her, keeping pace, and always would be for the rest of her life seemed to make all the melancholy of loss something easy to bear. So long as she could share hers with his, and his with her, both their loads would weigh less than feathers.
Her breathing was timed to the horse’s, her legs giving way and rising again in response to the horse’s pace; she was one with the horse, and together they were barrelling away from the buried past.
No, thought Vera. Not away from the past, rather towards the future.
***
When spring came, Lord Stanley had Eli cut the brambles in the chapel grounds right back to the old stone wall, and masons were brought in to repair the chapel’s tower where it was showing its age in the crumbling cement.
The bell was cracked and so a new one was cast and installed. Vera would wake early every morning they were working on the chapel and walk up the hill through the grounds, and with the orange glow of the springtime civil twilight that started the day, she would ring the bell. The chimes sang out, mixing with the dawn chorus and filling the grounds with the sounds of life.
Several of the windows in the chapel were cracked or broken and needed re-glazing, but the interior of the church had been preserved like an ancient tomb.
The wooden pews had not rotted, and the stone carvings with their extravagant faces on the arch above the entrance could have been chiselled out yesterday.
The array of carvings seemed to promise something for the future; after all, they had been protecting the church from evil since before the Stanley family had ever claimed this patch of soil.
***
They married in the spring. Vera wore a carefully tailored dress in the finest white muslin money could buy, with a long silk shawl in pale pink which was embroidered with a pattern of white lace flowers. Around her hair was a wreath of wild flowers and holly cut from the woods that hemmed in the church.
The wedding parties were small. Just Mr and Mrs Plimpton and the older Avonside staff on the bride’s side and a few haughty cousins on Lord Stanley’s.
Helen was bridesmaid to Vera and looked very fetching in her gown, as the new stable boy was heard to remark many times over the course of the day.
Mr Plimpton gave Vera away as he had promised, making apologies for Mr Fielding’s absence and winking every time he did.
The service was read by Doctor Severn who had looked after Vera’s father’s health for so long. He was unable to avoid joking that Doctor Severn had come to Avonside, and he was duly laughed at politely.
Vera stood at the altar and could hardly wait as the priest said the words that would bind them together:
‘Eternal God, you create us out of love that we should love you and one another. Bless this man and this woman, made in your image, who today become a sign of your faithful love to us in Christ our Lord.’
A muttered chorus of ‘Amen’ came from the rabble behind them.
The church really was transformed from its tomb like preservation to a celebration of new life, decked in flowers. A swallow had nested under the eaves and the chirrups of its fledglings could be heard from outside.
‘By your Holy Spirit, fill bride and bridegroom with wisdom and hope that they may delight in your gift of marriage and enrich one another in love and faithfulness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
‘Amen,’ again. Vera felt impatience at the slowness of the ceremony, now that it was so close the moment where they would be bound together in the eyes of God and man, she could hardly wait for the ceremony to reach its climax, the moment when she could claim Lord Stanley wholesale.
‘May Lord James Peregrine Stanley and Miss Vera Ladislaw enjoy the blessing of your kingdom. Give them faith and joy in their marriage. Blessed are you, Lord our God, you give joy to bride and groom.’
I should hope so, after all we’ve been through, she thought, glancing to her side where Lord Stanley stood his face somber and serious as if he were at a funeral. For a moment his face broke a smile of glee as he creased his lips and eyes, then he put back his formal, ceremonial face.
Vera with the veil over her face felt no need for decorum, her face hurt from smiling so long and hard. It felt like her heart might break from joy.