Rory Clements - Revenger

He splashed the last few drops of piss over his feet and dropped his cassock. He pushed himself away from the wall and lurched up the path toward her house. The rain was cutting rivulets in the muddy track that passed as a road in this village. It is God’s blessing , he thought dully, for at least it washes away the accumulated dung . Even as the thought came to him, he stumbled and fell, face-down, into the drainage kennel. He spluttered, then tried, clumsily, to push himself up.

Of a sudden, help was at hand. Strong arms lifted him from all sides and he wondered, for a moment, if angels had come to raise him up to heaven.

But instead of floating on Elysian clouds, he came down with a crack of the head, thrown unceremoniously into the back of a farm cart. And he heard a voice, which was decidedly not the voice of God.

“Come on, Reverend, you’ve got to get yourself sober. There’s a job of work to be done in the morning.”

B ESS LISTENED TO Shakespeare intently. She did not interrupt him, until finally he said, “So, I believe we must somehow remove the lady Arbella to a place of safety.”

“You know, Mr. Shakespeare,” she said with great deliberation, “I have never made any secret of my ambitions for my granddaughter. I have raised her as a royal princess, believing-hoping-that she would one day, in the fullness of time, ascend to the throne of England, for I consider her to be first in line. This has not always been appreciated by the Queen, who does not care to dwell on her own mortality. I confess that we have not always seen eye to eye on the matter. But never did I think to do such a thing-such a treasonable thing-as is now being proposed by my lord of Essex. We must prevent it, Mr. Shakespeare, or we will all lose our heads.”

“Can she be spirited away?”

Shakespeare could not imagine Bess losing her composure, yet now he saw real anxiety in her eyes. Her small hands were clenched into balls.

“First we will have to find her.”

“My lady?”

“I went to her chamber not two hours since. She was not there. Her lady’s maid was most flustered and said she had gone off with a group of young gentlemen, she knew not where. I looked for her in vain. I asked my lord of Essex where she was and he said he had not seen her. His men feigned ignorance, too, and made a great show of looking for her. Even her tutors could not tell me where she was.”

Shakespeare felt his whole body tightening. Bess’s demeanor told him that she, too, was fully aware of the extreme danger of the situation. “Your tutors-I believe one is called Morley?”

“Indeed, Mr. Shakespeare. You seem to know a great deal about my arrangements.”

“He conspires with Essex, my lady. He is one of them. It seems clear they already have the lady Arbella in their keeping. I fear we may be too late…”

T HE ANCIENT CHURCH OF ST. JOHN DOMINATED the fields like a specter in the gray morning light. Its stone walls, five or six hundred years old and first built before the Conqueror came to England, were weather-worn and strangely welcoming. The bells in the square tower were silent this day.

At the head of the wedding procession that traipsed slowly on horseback across the meadow toward the yew-planted churchyard were Essex and his best man, Southampton, richly attired and mounted on caparisoned war stallions.

The rain had gone, but the clouds remained heavy and threatening. A lone plowman gazed over at the wedding party but did not stop his work. He lashed the ox pulling the plow and carried on carving a deep furrow for winter wheat.

Inside the church, Oswald Finningley stood at the altar, a shaking hand clasped to the communion railing to support himself. He could not hold himself still, his head ached, and he was desperate for ale or brandy to take away the shaking and the nausea. Last night was a blur. He had been abducted and locked away in some strange room, and this morning two men had come for him and woken him with a pail of cold water over his face. They had given him a good breakfast, most of which he had puked up, and had then brought a clean cassock and new-laundered, bright white surplice and ruff. It was only as they set off for the church that he realized that he had been held within the servants’ quarters at Hardwick Hall.

The two men had jogged him along mercilessly on the back of a rattling farm cart, which served only to make him feel more sick. He now stood silently, a man at either side to prevent escape.

Essex and his guests entered the church: twenty hard-edged but finely dressed men. The Reverend Finningley looked at them as if they were strange creatures from some far-flung land. He had no idea who they were, nor what they wanted of him. Yet from their apparel and demeanor, he could tell that they were of noble blood, and his knees began to buckle.

The two men guarding him thrust their hands under his armpits to keep him from falling. “Just say the wedding words, minister, and you will be back at the tavern pouring ale down your throat in no time,” one of the men whispered in his ear. “Make a commotion and I’ll pour boiling tallow down your miserable gullet instead.”

Essex’s men found places to sit or pillars to lean against, hands on sword hilts. Essex paced about like a caged leopard, waiting for his bride to appear. He did not have long to wait.

Heralds at the doorway trumpeted her arrival. Two ushers escorted her into the building and indicated the altar, where Finningley fought back an overwhelming desire to bring up the last remnants of his breakfast.

A man in scarlet and gold velvet escorted the lady Arbella along the aisle. He was slender and languid, scarce bearded with a thin, dark mustache.

Arbella was almost skipping with excitement. She wore ivory satin and gold thread, her face covered by a lace net. As she reached the Earl of Essex, she looked up at him from beneath her veil with adoring, besotted eyes. He looked at her distractedly, then, as if remembering that this was to be his wife, he smiled at her.

“Now, Mr. Finningley,” one of the men at his side said. “Do your business, sir. And remember the hot tallow.”

Finningley recognized Arbella and was horrified. He wanted to say that the banns had not been called, that this was most irregular, but he was convulsed by fear. He took a deep breath and began to intone the words of the service in a weak, spindly voice that belied his great bulk.

“Dearly beloved friends, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of his congregation, to join together this man and woman in holy matrimony…”

He droned on through the service as laid down in the Book of Common Prayer introduced during the first year of Elizabeth’s long reign. All the while, Essex glared at him impatiently.

“… and therefore is not to be enterprised, nor taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men’s carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding-”

“I know all that. Get on with it, man.”

“It is the form of solemnization of matrimony, sir… my lord.”

“Yes, yes.”

The congregation of his friends and supporters mumbled their approval. One or two applauded with clapping of hands.

Finningley sighed. What did it matter? He couldn’t imagine any of this was legal anyway, not without the banns. And so he omitted the next part and got on to the nub. “Will you have this woman to your wedded wife, to live together after God’s ordinance, in the holy estate of matrimony? Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her, in sickness and in health? And forsaking all other, keep you only to her, so long as you both shall live?”