The Memory Palace

by Christie Dickason

  There was a murmur from the back pews.

  Doctor Bowler had turned chalky white. His mouth pulled and jumped at the corners, seeking an acceptable expression in which to rest.

  ‘You must sharpen your eyes to the vision of angels, listen with the ears of the pure. You must be the sword of God. You must be the purifying fire!’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted a man’s voice, at once multiplied by other voices.

  ‘He means to stir up a hanging mob right here in church,’ said Wentworth between his teeth. ‘And I had to leave my sword…!’

  ‘This battle,’ cried Gifford. ‘Yes, this bloody battle is come to us. “We must swallow up the ground in fierceness and say among the trumpets, ‘hah, hah!’ and smell the battle! Oh, the thunder of the captains, the shouting…”’

  Bowler sat motionless, making himself very small.

  Zeal gave a small moan and fell sideways in a faint. She kept her eyes closed during the ensuing confusion. Felt Wentworth lift her and carry her out of the church, staggering only once.

  ‘You can put me down now,’ she murmured when they had cleared the churchyard. ‘Unless Gifford is hot on our scent.’

  ‘He’s still holding his hounds on a leash of words.’

  ‘Is she ill?’ Bowler’s urgent voice had caught up with Wentworth.

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Zeal as Wentworth set her back on her feet.

  Gifford’s tragedy was that he wanted to love but doubted his own talent for it, as both minister and man. His neighbour called forth no tenderness from his heart. On the contrary, Gifford’s quick mind found most people tedious. His fellows, whom he knew he should love with a pure, selfless generosity roused in him chiefly impatient thoughts and twitches of irritation. And he knew that each such thought, each twitch, pushed him towards damnation. After years of attempted charity, he had begun to suspect himself of a deep, destroying coldness. He was not certain that he loved even his brisk, melon-breasted wife, whom he serviced nevertheless with a mixture of carnality and guilt, and not as often as the imp of Satan between his legs would have liked.

  With fervour and relief, therefore, he embraced the simpler, crystalline passion of holy rage. If he could not love, he would cleanse and save. Such good work might, perhaps, hold him steady in God’s Grace.

  He saved souls the way other men hide coins in old socks, to be ready as a form of ransom, as if God might in the end be willing to make a deal. The more valuable he secretly felt a soul to be (though he knew he should hold them all to be equal in God’s eyes), the greater his rage when he failed to rescue it. And because he possessed considerable intellect and perception, the souls at Hawkridge, young Mistress Wentworth in particular, both stirred and challenged him more than the usual tedious run of Bedgebury sinners. She would be a precious gem to offer to the Lord.

  ‘The purifying fire!’ Gifford shouted again, to quell the hubbub amongst his congregation and pull their attention away from the door.

  That young woman had a way of going at life full tilt that almost guaranteed she would fall off the tightrope of virtue. How she had got from Lady Beester to Mistress Wentworth had, in itself, fuelled many of his prayers. She was young and fresh, with the time (given the right guidance) to put her soul in order and hope for Divine Grace. The fire that had consumed her house should have been enough warning, but not even that little Arminian parson of hers had read the sign.

  Gifford had hoped that that new husband might rein her in, but the old pantaloon had shown nothing but indifference and ill breeding in the matter of the wedding chapel. To educate the body, you must begin with the head. Which, in this case, was not the putative master, but the young red-haired hussy who (yet another transgression) tried to run the estate as if she were the man.

  The word ‘fire’ reminded him of a recurring dream from which he had wakened in a sweat again the night before, of her naked young body suffering eternal torment, her hair turned to bright tongues of flame.

  That night, Zeal woke to see Wentworth dressing by the light of a candle.

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ he said.

  ‘Fishing at this hour?’ she asked.

  He hesitated. ‘Wish I were.’ He opened a chest and took out the pistol, which he had spent a day dismantling and cleaning shortly after Harry died.

  Zeal sat up. ‘What is it?’ she asked in alarm.

  ‘Visitors down at Hawkridge.’

  She got out of bed and reached for her over-gown. ‘Who?’

  ‘Tuddenham says that Sam brought word back from Bedgebury…some damn fool hotheads took Gifford at his word and think they’re meant to be flaming swords raised against the Antichrist.’

  ‘Bowler?’

  ‘So I fear. If I’d been a lout looking for an excuse for a brawl, that sermon would have served me nicely too.’

  Zeal bent and felt for her shoes on the shadowy floor.

  ‘You’re staying here,’ said Wentworth. He tugged a heavy leather jerkin into place on his shoulders.

  ‘No, coming.’ She forced one foot into her shoe. Her feet had begun to swell after she missed her second monthly flow, and the shoe pinched. ‘Poor Doctor Bowler. He must not be hurt!’

  ‘You stay.’ She had not heard Wentworth use this tone before. ‘It may come to nothing. But if there is a ruckus, you mustn’t risk a blow or a fall.’

  She put on her other shoe.

  ‘Zeal, I am not yet too old to represent you in this. You will stay.’ He buckled on his sword belt.

  She stared back at him. Life was not entirely unchanged after all.

  Was I ever so meek before? she asked herself, as the door closed on him. All the same, now that she was dressed, she saw no harm in merely going to observe what happened. She would stay well clear of any fighting.

  She knew the track so well by now that she did not need a lantern. As on her wedding day, her feet found the way. She stopped on a hump on the Hawkridge side of the final slope, where she would be able at least to hear what was happening.

  Below her, lights moved through the stable yard. One climbed the drive and vanished into the dark mass of the beech avenue. Still others skirted the ponds and probed the shadows along the river. She heard voices, but in urgent exchange rather than argument. A cluster of lights gathered by the chapel, near Doctor Bowler’s chambers.

  A chill began to creep through her cloak and gown. Her shoes grew wet and cold with autumn dew. She walked a little farther down the slope.

  A burst of distant voices exploded from down river near the mill. But these were quick verbal shots fired in succession, not the sustained roar of a mob. Wentworth’s voice cut through the shouts. Then his voice dropped so that she could not hear what he said. Several lights moved quickly in the direction of the trouble, though she counted five left on guard by the chapel.

  She strained to hear what might be happening. Three lights came back up from the river. The others began to disperse.

  ‘…back another time,’ she suddenly heard Wentworth say out of the darkness, headed her way up the slope. If Wentworth and Arthur had not been talking, they would have caught her on the hillside.

  Am I under that man’s rod after all? she asked herself, as she fled back to High House, intent on being found in bed, demure and desperate for information she already knew.

  Too late, she remembered her wet shoes, on the floor beneath the window. She tried to distract Wentworth with eager questions but could not tell if he were deceived or not.

  ‘They were cowards,’ was all he said. ‘Quick to run at the sight of a sword.’

  ‘Will you teach me to fight?’ she asked, partly to distract him from the shoes, partly in earnest.

  To her surprise, he did not laugh. ‘After the child is born, if you still wish it. There’s never harm in knowing how to defend yourself. I’m not what I was on the battle field but I could most likely manage the part of tutor.’ His eyes rested on her shoes.

  ‘You still owe me your gift of truth,’ she said quickly. �
�You have only just begun to keep your promise.’

  Now he laughed. ‘Not tonight. I am quite certain that you need to sleep now, for the child’s sake!’

  20

  Zeal knew at once that she had interrupted Wentworth and Sir Richard in some masculine matter. They both looked alarmed at her entrance. Wentworth made as if to hide the letter he was holding, then changed his mind. The two men exchanged glances.

  ‘Is it Doctor Gifford again?’ she asked.

  Neither of them replied.

  ‘Or shall I simply disappear again?’ She stepped back towards the door.

  ‘I think she should know,’ said Wentworth.

  Sir Richard pulled his side-whiskers. ‘Not so certain…’

  ‘Master Wentworth is right,’ she said. ‘He already knows me that well.’

  ‘She will know how we rate it.’ Wentworth held the paper out to her.

  Dear Sir Richard, Conscience will not let me stay silent. I have intelligence that an old man of your parish has been bewitched into marriage by a young woman whose history, investigated by me, fills me with alarm. I fear that she means to serve him as she has served others, that is to say, that his life is in danger. As the Holy Bible enjoins us ‘Do not suffer a witch to live.’ I leave this in your hands as magistrate. – A Christian Well-wisher, who would see God’s natural order preserved.

  Written in heavy slashing strokes, the letters awkwardly formed, as if the writer had disguised his or her hand.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear,’ said Sir Richard. ‘There’s always a mischief-maker in any parish squinting and peering after other people’s sins.’

  Zeal returned the letter to Wentworth, who re-read it, then stood with it gripped in his large square hands as if waiting for it to speak the author’s name.

  ‘From Doctor Gifford?’ she asked stiffly.

  ‘Could be.’ Sir Richard glared at the ceiling in thought. ‘Could be anyone. But that “…I have intelligence…” And the rest. Don’t sound to me like the words of the man who did the marrying.’

  ‘At first, I suspected the carters,’ said Wentworth. ‘But as you dismissed them so fiercely, they would write to some other magistrate. Or even the bishop…’

  ‘How old are you, in fact?’ asked Sir Richard.

  ‘Sixty-two,’ said Wentworth.

  ‘Hah! I got it right at the wedding feast.’

  Wentworth smiled slightly and continued to study the letter. ‘The hand smacks of an unsteady temper. Look how fiercely the pen was pressed into the paper.’

  Sir Richard held out his hand. ‘I’ll set it against all those sad, bile-soaked letters I am continually sent. It may match the hand of another. Such creatures sometimes persevere until I’m forced to catch them at it.’

  ‘It’s only words,’ Wentworth said to her. ‘You heard Sir Richard. An over-zealous addle-brain.’

  Zeal nodded as if convinced, but she still felt as if a stranger had suddenly stepped out from a crowd without warning and struck her.

  That night, lying alone in bed, Zeal decided that, in spite of the anonymous letter, and the sense it gave her that an unknown intruder had invaded Hawkridge, she had nevertheless made a fair beginning to the project of surviving the next seven years.

  Since their wedding night, Wentworth had left her alone and gone to sleep wherever he now chose to sleep. Or else, like tonight, he camped on the river, fishing. Although his absence from their bed meant that he had not yet continued his promised revelations, he had at least begun. She would work out how to deal with him in his night shirt, and he would learn that she, too, could fish patiently, in her own fashion.

  Meanwhile, he had more to say than she had expected on the subject of the new house. That afternoon, he had walked with her to look at the burnt ruins. Together, they had climbed Hawk Ridge itself, and gazed back down into the valley. A little below them, the ridge flattened into a strip of meadow. At the edge of the meadow rose the rocky outcrop where she and John used to sit at the end of the day, flank to flank, not talking, content just to feel the other’s warmth and to know that their eyes watched the same flaring sunset or swooping bats.

  There! she thought.

  ‘I think I might build just there,’ she said, pointing down, expecting a short reply.

  ‘A fine fair-standing,’ said Wentworth. ‘Needs only a little work to level it and dig cellars.’ He gazed down a moment longer. ‘Yes. A fine place to build. The house looking south, with Hawk Ridge at its back. Protected from north winds. Above the miasmas and damp airs of the valley that plagued the old house.’

  She looked away from his surprising enthusiasm lest he read her true reason for choosing this spot.

  Each time I look from my window, I will know that what I see is also recorded in John’s memory. The glinting Shir, line of fishponds, beech avenue climbing the far slope to the high road, and dirty beige sheep grazing in the Roman Field. No matter what else may happen, a small part of our thoughts will always be exactly the same.

  But I must write to tell John that the statues are gone, so he can adjust that part of his memory.

  Wentworth turned to face west, looking upstream past the water meadows. ‘I’m certain you could divert water from the river upstream, there, above the upper weir, and bring it almost to the house. Let it lift itself the last few feet with a small wheel. I’ve seen such things working. Water brought straight to the house in wooden pipes.’

  ‘Worth more in everyday life than the finest gold plates.’ She turned back to the south again. ‘I can just see the chimneys of High House from here,’ she said happily. ‘Hawkridge Estate rises in the world.’

  When he did not reply, she glanced at him. He stood with his feet planted squarely, hands on his hips so that his old coat flared out like the tail of a bird, gazing into the distance, far beyond the chimneys of High House.

  ‘Sir?’

  He did not hear.

  Where has he gone? She studied him curiously. When he sighed and shook himself back to the present, she resolved to insist that he take her with him, in her imagination at least.

  ‘Sir,’ she repeated. ‘I hope you are not still sleeping in your old chamber. The entire wing may collapse at any time. I don’t wish to be made a widow so soon.’

  Now he looked at her. ‘How long would you like me to wait?’

  Guilt made her flush. ‘You know that’s not what I meant!’

  He smiled. ‘Don’t trouble yourself on the matter. I don’t.’ He set off down the slope.

  She scrambled after him. ‘I meant only to say, that you should sleep comfortably and safe. And to say that you are welcome to return to our bed.’

  And story telling. Now, at least, her scarlet face might have a more friendly explanation.

  He grinned widely and cocked one eyebrow. ‘Thank you for that kind invitation. When not otherwise occupied or on the river, I will accept.’ He turned away and began to pace out the distance along the brow of the site. She watched him grow smaller.

  ‘One hundred and five paces,’ he called back. ‘You can build a palace here, if you like.’

  ‘I like!’ she called back. ‘I lack only the means!’ When he had come closer again, she added, ‘And also the least idea of how to set about it.’

  ‘The latter, at least, I can help you with,’ he said. ‘I’m neither a master builder nor surveyor, but if you tell me how you want it to look, I can help you draw a rough plan. As for means, we can begin by begging and might consider stealing.’ They both laughed.

  ‘Have you read Bacon’s essay “Of Building”?’ he asked. ‘I shall lend it to you.’

  So now she had an unexpected ally in her great project, and a sense that building a house might after all be within her power. All that troubled her now was the need to write to John as he had begged her to do.

  My darling, she said silently into the darkness of the bed. If only I could send my thoughts instead of a letter. Then you would have heard from me every day and night.r />
  I shall definitely write tomorrow, she told herself.

  She fell asleep making a list of what she needed to do the next day. Her last thought was that she still had not spoken to Doctor Bowler as he had asked, about his sermon for Bonfire and Treason Day.

  Tomorrow. Letter to John, and Bowler, tomorrow.

  21

  Doctor Bowler had good reason for concern over his sermon for the Bonfire and Treason service. Everyone, however unschooled or indifferent, knew the reason for the country’s chief holiday – the foiling in 1605 of a treasonous Catholic plot against both King James (father of the present king, Charles) and Parliament. The last minute discovery and the terrible vengeance taken on the traitors were worthy of the most exciting stage play.

  When the king declared an official holiday on the anniversary of his escape, Parliament (Protestants, Puritans, and Laudians alike) established by statute that all people must rest from work on that day, in order to reflect on God’s protection of his anointed representative on earth. They must also thank both Providence and the king’s generosity for giving them freedom to drink, bowl, ride (if they could afford a horse), fight cocks, bait dogs and bears, dance, make love, or just sit and stare idly into space. They must also, by law, attend a special church service. And here Doctor Bowler’s difficulties began.

  Although, as a good Anglican, he accepted the authority of the bishops, he was not an extreme Arminian, whatever Gifford might say. He did not, like Archbishop Laud, embrace everything Catholic except the pope and the authority of Rome – incense, rich robes, bells, services sung in Latin, and saints. But he needed music as a fish needs water.

  Doctor Gifford, on the other hand, was more extreme than even the severely reformed Puritan Anglicans, who accepted the authority of bishops but were otherwise almost identical to the pared down plainness and personal witness of Presbyterians. He was not merely a Presbyterian, rejecting bishops in favour of the forum of the presbytery. He was an extreme Calvinist Presbyterian, preaching the bleak doctrine of election and predestination in a formerly Anglican parish church. A spiritual brother to the men who were tearing out church organs, pulling down bells and plastering over religious pictures on church walls, he confused many of his older parishioners by banning Saints’ Days and refusing to celebrate any festival that ended in ‘mass’, including Christmas. He wore only plain black wool.