The Memory Palace

by Christie Dickason

  She could not look at Gifford as he married her. A smirk of satisfaction had followed his relief. Now his pale eyes shot forth spears of will to pin her in place while he prescribed marriage as God’s remedy against sin.

  If only he knew the worst of it!

  She could smell scented sheep’s grease on his hands. When he spoke, his lips stretched and curled like two bristly caterpillars. And how she loathed that mellifluous voice, which belonged by rights to a larger man! Such authoritative cadences, such swelling diapasons and profound rumblings could not possibly emerge from that scrawny body.

  He’s a rusty-furred terrier, she decided. Not a large hunting sort but one of the smaller quivering breeds designed to go down rat and rabbit holes. Given to leaping up and yapping at the slightest sound.

  Yes, she thought. He has a terrier’s large head and short, slightly bowed legs. And its tenacity.

  Dwelling on her rage at Gifford made the ceremony itself seem less real.

  Watching his eloquent eyebrows distracted her from the vows she made. And those made by Philip Wentworth.

  Then she found herself signing the marriage book. ‘Mistress Zeal Wentworth.’ She wore a ring on her hand. She stretched her mouth in a smile. Nodded. Accepted a kiss from Mistress Margaret. Stretched her mouth again at someone else.

  When Wentworth, Sir Richard, and Gifford had also signed the marriage book, the minister led the small glum procession from the chapel towards the track to High House for the wedding feast.

  I miss the children, thought Zeal as she walked. I would have liked to hear their voices. They would have cheered me. Beside her, Wentworth – now implausibly her husband – was frowning at the ground. Even the two escorting dogs trotted with heads down and tails tucked tightly into their hindquarters.

  The next hours, she thought. I can’t. The false determined jollity. Everyone else stretching his mouth too. All getting drunk and flinging themselves about dancing as if motion and noise could simulate joy.

  She glared at Gifford’s back. Unless he tries to forbid all dancing and drinking as well as music, even though it’s not Sunday. Nor in church.

  Then, as they passed the forge, a sound like a gunshot cracked the afternoon air.

  Gifford ducked. Mistress Margaret and several of the other women gave little shrieks of alarm.

  ‘Someone just fired the anvil,’ said Wentworth with interest. The sulphurous smell of burnt black powder reached them.

  ‘A poor jest in troubled times,’ said Gifford.

  Wentworth gazed around. ‘And we seem to have lost Sir Richard.’

  Zeal looked back at the procession in time to see meaningful glances and smothered smiles. A little farther on, she spotted an apple, set on the dirt at the side of the track like a copper coin. Gifford pretended not to see it. Zeal picked it up and sniffed its sweet fragrance with a first stirring of anticipation.

  ‘What is that?’ Gifford suddenly set like a hound, his head cocked, listening.

  From beyond the trees ahead of them, where the track led into the drawn breath of the first of Sir Richard’s meadows, against all reason, came the faint sound of a string consort playing a Psalm. Gifford lowered his head and set off again like a man charging into enemy fire. More apples marked their way, some gold, some like drops of blood. Around the next bend, they came upon an arch made of willow branches twined with the seed heads of Old Man’s Beard. A small pale-haired boy and silvery girl waited on either side of the arch, a pair of nature spirits holding crowns of ivy. Zeal stooped down and bent her head to the girl.

  Wentworth stared at the boy for so long that Zeal thought he would refuse the crown. Then he, too, bent his head. He took Zeal’s hand. To the accompaniment of the unlikely music, both wearing their green crowns, he led her under the arch into the open meadow. Gifford walked around one side of the arch and followed unsteadily.

  Two farmers and the estate carpenter sat on stools on a rocky outcrop in the grass, dressed in their finest clothes, playing a fiddle, a viola da gamba and a double bass viol. Silhouetted against the last light of the low autumn sun, they looked both incongruous and wonderfully dreamlike. In the vast open space of the meadow, the voices of their instruments were small, yet clear and hard-edged like the cries of birds.

  Gifford rubbed his mouth. ‘Where’s Bowler?’ His breathing was so tight he could hardly speak.

  ‘We’re in Sir Richard’s domain now,’ said Wentworth firmly. ‘You must speak to his chaplain, not Bowler.’

  But Sir Richard was not to be seen either, nor was his chaplain. Gifford’s eyes skated over the musicians and slid away. ‘I am humbled by my failure so far here amongst you. But you will learn that I am resolute.’ His eyes grew watery. ‘I shall return to Bedgebury and pray for guidance. In the Lord’s war I will not be vanquished. I will never abandon so many souls to damnation.’ He turned and trudged back into the trees.

  As she listened to the Psalm, Zeal felt delight and astonishment blossoming under her breastbone. Her little parson had routed Gifford, after all. He had given her the music she needed to lift her spirits. The singing strings, the warmth of the setting sun, the soft damp earth under her best slippers must be signs. Heed them, not Gifford, she told herself. These things are the truth.

  When the consort had finished their piece and accepted the applause, Rachel waved a large handkerchief. ‘Now, madam, I must cover your eyes.’

  Zeal gave herself to whatever the game might be. Her last sight was of Wentworth, grinning, his wreath askew.

  ‘Come with me.’ Rachel took Zeal’s hand. Giggles and laughter followed behind.

  Her feet told her that they had left the track and were walking through long grass. At first she feared she might stumble and fall, but Rachel’s hand was steady and her directions clear. Very soon, Zeal’s feet became two small animals, sniffing out their own path without help from her thoughts. She floated through the darkness, tethered to the earth by Rachel’s warm, firm hand.

  When Rachel removed the blindfold, they stood in a far corner of the field at the bottom of a slope near the tree line, beside a tiny pool of water overhung with grass. A slow constant drip of water oozed from the ground. The nearby bushes were swagged with garlands from the chapel.

  Rachel put a silver pin into Zeal’s hand. ‘You must make a wedding wish, madam. Don’t tell us, mind.’

  Zeal held the pin until it grew warm in her palm.

  I can’t wish for what I truly want, not today.

  She closed her eyes. I can’t use his name today.

  In time, let me love and be loved. She knew what she meant.

  She opened her eyes and threw her offering into the tiny pool of the spring. Hard as she tried, she could not stop the flash of memory.

  John surfaced from his dive, sleek as an otter and dripping water like a sea god, laughing up at her, his skin brown to the waist from the sun.

  She kept her eyes on the spreading rings on the water as they bounced back and cut across themselves. She knew that Wentworth was watching her with a wry smile.

  Far more cheerfully than it had left the chapel, the wedding procession crossed the ridge and headed down the far slope towards Sir Richard’s fishing lake. Then Zeal saw the missing children.

  They stood near the lake in two long lines, linked to each other by garlands. The two lines formed a corridor leading away from the track to the edge of the lake. When the procession drew near, they opened their mouths like nestlings and, at a nod from one of their number, began to sing:

  ‘Mistress and Master, so newly bound,

  Here await transport to realms

  Where bliss and joy are found!’

  In unison they gestured towards the lake.

  The hair stood up on Zeal’s arms.

  In the early twilight, a white veiled figure carrying a lighted torch glided towards them, across the surface of Sir Richard’s lake. The apparition moved smoothly, with long reaching strides, splashing a little but supported by the water.
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  ‘Bid Hymen welcome,’ (carolled the children)

  ‘As he welcomes you.’

  Mistress Margaret gasped and clutched her heart.

  ‘The Second Coming,’ muttered Zeal’s new husband into her ear.

  The god of marriage lurched, seemed to fight for balance, then stopped some way out from the shore, still miraculously afloat, and gestured with his torch towards the left end of the lake. There, the musicians, panting, had regrouped on the bank, joined by the smith and his drum. At the signal from Hymen, they began to play again. The notes of their introduction fell on the air like clear water drops.

  ‘Weep not, O solitary heart…’

  When Hymen began to sing, Zeal recognized Doctor Bowler’s high unearthly voice.

  ‘The heavens have found thee thy other part.

  Thy other part, thy other part,’ (echoed the children)

  ‘Thou hast already skill to achieve thy wish,’ (sang Hymen)

  ‘O, Piscator,

  O, noble Petrus of our time,

  Go thou and fish.’

  Hymen gestured again, this time to the right. As Zeal watched, a punt pushed off from Sir Richard’s little wooden dock, poled by Tuddenham’s son, Will. In it sat a stocky figure holding a fishing rod and wearing a dusty black coat that could only have been Wentworth’s. A hat masked the face but Sir Richard’s red cheeks and white whiskers could be easily identified. He seemed to be suffering from severe stage fright for the tip of the rod shook. On the prow of the skiff sat the Wentworth doll, from the chapel altar.

  ‘Weep not, O solitary heart…’

  Hymen and the children together repeated the verse. Then, while the consort on the left bank furiously sawed out a long dramatic tremolo, the fisherman in the boat hauled up the tip of his rod. The smith suddenly thumped his drum. A strike! The hook had been taken. Over another tremolo, the fisherman pulled in his line. A hush gripped the watchers. From the water, dripping like a mermaid, slowly rose a small figure with red-gold hair.

  ‘O, Piscator, blessed soul, alone no more.

  This golden fish is thine forevermore.’

  The fisherman held up his catch, to cheers from Hymen and the choir.

  ‘How was that?’ demanded Sir Richard’s voice from under the fisherman’s hat, exuberant with relief.

  There was a splash as Hymen, retreating to the far shore, fell off the unseen support into the water up to the waist.

  Zeal wiped her eyes, both laughing and weeping. Wentworth laid his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I would have made a more subtle and ingenious rhyme,’ explained Doctor Bowler, as he stood dripping in the hall of High House, accepting claps on the back and shouted congratulations. ‘If I had only had more time. And Jamie should have sung the part, of course, as he has the voice. But given the short time…’

  Zeal kissed him. ‘Nothing so fine has ever been seen in a Whitehall masque!’

  ‘Masters Davenant and Jones must fall on their swords in envious despair,’ said Sir Richard.

  In the end, when Sir Richard complained that his arse had been soaked, she and Wentworth had walked around the lake to the house rather than be ferried across in the punt. Any risk of otherwise dampening the celebration was long past.

  The original epithalamium was finally performed in Sir Richard’s great hall, to further cheers, with Jamie, the pale-haired boy, singing a descant which soared high above the rest, like a hawk hanging on the clouds.

  When the string consort had taken off their coats, downed a pint or two, and settled in for their real evening’s work, Zeal danced first with her new husband, who (she noted) displayed the tutored nimbleness of a gentleman. Then she danced with Sir Richard, who was amazingly light on his feet and filled with wonder at his part in the afternoon. Zeal smiled at him but still felt Wentworth’s hands on her waist.

  Doctor Bowler had more drink pressed on him that evening than ever before in his life and fiddled himself into an ecstasy. Meanwhile the young men clamoured for their fleeting right to dance with the bride and to claim a kiss.

  ‘Should you be dancing, madam?’ Rachel whispered once in her ear.

  ‘I must, or they’ll suspect,’ she replied. In truth, she wanted to dance.

  At last, they sat down to the wedding dinner, now a wedding supper thanks to Doctor Gifford. Only then did Zeal realize that no one had asked Wentworth to kiss his bride.

  As servants began to bring in platters of roast meats and moulded jellies, Sir Richard launched into the first toast. Glasses rose into the air.

  Zeal glanced at her new husband. Perspiration stood on his forehead. One hand gripped the edge of the table. The other sat clenched in his lap. His eyes were fixed on the platter that someone had just set before him. His breath came in quick gasps that made the strings of his collar quiver.

  At the chorus of shouted good wishes, he nodded without looking up. He leaned to Zeal and muttered, ‘You must excuse me.’ He rose and left the room.

  A hush followed him. Then Sir Richard shouted after him in triumph. ‘Ten years older, Wentworth! And I still outlasted you! And I danced two dances more!’ He winked at the company. ‘He wants to save his strength.’ He lifted his glass again to Zeal. ‘And who can blame him?’

  Mistress Margaret caught Zeal’s eye. Zeal ignored the heavy meaning in the older woman’s glance and stretched her mouth gratefully at Sir Richard while the company laughed, drank some more and pretended to forget the groom’s odd behaviour. The earlier joy deserted her. Apprehension began to settle like a November fog.

  Wentworth still had not re-appeared when Zeal, no longer able to make herself keep smiling and counterfeiting an appetite, at last pleaded tiredness. As she was carried up the great dogleg staircase in a chair of crossed arms, clinging for her life to the heads of a stable groom and one of her tenant farmers, she reflected that, whatever else he might be, Wentworth was no fool. He had contrived to escape this rowdy bedtime send-off that was the fate of most newly-weds. She could not decide whether or not his sudden departure had left her looking the fool instead.

  Rachel closed the door on the boisterous drunken faces on the landing. Caterwauling and a banging of pots began outside beneath the windows.

  Now I learn whether or not I still have a bridegroom, Zeal thought. Perhaps he has gone fishing as usual. He had said that life need not change much. A flicker of relief lightened her apprehension.

  Nevertheless, she was puzzled by his absence from the bridal chamber. He had been so firm for all the other legalities and show of marriage.

  16

  While Rachel readied her young mistress for bed, the maid’s nose twitched as it always did when she was trying not to speak her mind. She clamped the bone pins between her teeth and stroked the silky red hair.

  ‘I’ll never sleep so grandly again,’ said Zeal, to avoid saying anything else.

  Sir Richard had lent the newly-weds his best upper chamber. The bed was a squat sturdy galleon of oak from the days of King Harry, with sails of heavy red brocade and enough yards of gold braid and twisted fringing and tassels to rig a navy. Turkish carpets covered every horizontal surface in the room except the floor. All four of Sir Richard’s grandparents tilted forward avidly in heavy six-foot gold frames. You could have stabled a horse in the fireplace.

  Rachel sniffed the armpits of Zeal’s yellow silk dress and draped it over a chair to take away and clean. ‘That’s fine, then,’ she said enigmatically.

  Wentworth had not gone fishing after all. He lifted aside the Mortlake tapestry that protected the closed door from draughts. He wore a night shirt, and a long sleeveless robe, and carried a leather pouch and his ivy crown.

  ‘You may go, Rachel,’ he said.

  Zeal folded her arms tightly. When Rachel had left, she said, ‘Sir, I am accustomed to directing my own maid.’

  Wentworth looked amused. ‘Forgive me, I’m out of practice at being husband and lord. And young women have changed.’

  Zeal watched him set d
own the pouch. He then put on the ivy crown and leaned against the side of the great four-posted bed. He did not offer to explain his sudden flight from supper.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said, fingering a honey-suckle garland which had found its way to the bridal chamber and wrapped itself around a bedpost. ‘Against all odds and the counsel of just about everyone.’ He grinned suddenly and looked many years younger. ‘Spiting wiser heads has never before brought me so much pleasure nor such a rich reward.’

  ‘And just what is that?’ she asked warily.

  He sat and held out his hands to her. ‘At the very least, marriage makes for warmer sleep. Unless you have cold feet…have you?’

  ‘No, sir.’ She put her hands behind her back in alarm. She had thought that without his black coat he would shrink, but sitting here on the bed in his night shirt and gown, he seemed larger even than when he was dancing, more fleshy, noisier. More solid and male.

  ‘Zeal, trust me.’ He took off the crown and set it on the floor. ‘I’m safer than most men I know, including your former husband. Come over here, by me. Or do I repulse you suddenly.’

  She crossed and took his outstretched hands. They felt dry and very warm.

  ‘That’s better.’ He lifted one of her hands and kissed it. She could smell the wine on his breath. ‘We must keep up appearances. For the child’s sake, I beg lodging for the night. Apart from that, my manly pride won’t have everyone on two estates whispering that I slept alone on my wedding night.’ He stood. ‘Which side do you sleep? Or is it the middle?’

  Zeal pulled her hands free, walked around to the far side of the bed and climbed up under the linen-covered quilt. He removed his loose robe and climbed into bed on his side.

  ‘Sweet Lord, it feels good to lie down!’ He extended his left arm towards her. ‘Come, lean your head against my shoulder. We must practise appearances. And friendship.’