Christie Dickason - The Memory Palace

‘“Woe unto them who call evil good, and good evil.”’

Zeal sighed with frustration and looked about for assistance. Sir Richard was studying the ceiling.

‘The only authority you must study is God’s Holy Word,’ added Gifford.

‘Doctor Bowler says that Man creates beauty only to glorify God. He will quote you scripture to prove that God delights in…’

‘Bowler!’ Gifford said in a surge of fury. ‘That false man of God who pollutes your worship with music ! And flowers! And all the other vain deceptions of the world! He is not a man of God, merely an obscene…fiddler!’

‘“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,”’ replied Zeal.

‘I hold Bowler responsible for this young woman’s sins,’ Gifford told Sir Richard and Comer. ‘She is still young and ignorant while he is…’

‘I’ll be responsible for my own sins,’ Zeal interrupted.

‘Madam.’ Gifford collected himself. ‘A masterless woman is always at risk in this wicked world. Under no man’s rod, who knows how she may err? Your own words prove my case. I must keep you under my eye from now on. I shall impose no penance this time, but you and all your people must henceforward attend my church at Bedgebury.’

‘We worship very well here.’

‘I think not. I shall expect you for all services. And all the estate workers.’

‘But that’s impossible! We’re over-busy here, with winter coming, and the house…Your church is half an hour’s walk away. We will do nothing else but traipse back and…’

‘All of you, at all services, including morning prayers.’ Gifford began to button his coat. ‘I won’t let you continue to risk your eternal soul, nor the souls of those who look to you for example. You have no husband or father to guide you. I must therefore take their place.’

‘That’s most decent of you.’ Wentworth spoke for a second time. He sounded entirely sincere. His dusty black coat rustled as he stepped away from the wall. ‘Perhaps a compromise might be found, which would allow for the pressure of work.’

Zeal thought that perhaps the surprise and interest that had greeted his earlier demonstrations of speech were now touched by irritation that the man was putting himself forward out of turn.

‘Have we met?’ Gifford asked coldly. ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you in church.’

‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Sir Richard, who had listened to Gifford with open mouth and raised brows. ‘That’s Master Philip Wentworth, the Hawkridge sojourner. Been in the parish twice as long as you. Full of ingenious ideas. You can thank him for getting rid of those heathen idols we didn’t know enough to grind up into powder.’

‘What is your compromise, Master Wentworth?’ Gifford’s tone softened by a degree.

‘If you abate the schedule of attendance, I will undertake to be this woman’s guide.’ Wentworth crossed to stand behind Zeal’s stool and laid his large square hands on her shoulders. ‘I can vouchsafe for her future behaviour. The ship no longer lacks a rudder. She is to be my wife.’

Zeal sat frozen with the weight of his hands on her shoulders and the heat of his belly against her back.

Sir Richard broke the silence with a violent coughing fit. When Comer had thumped him on the back and offered a handkerchief to mop his eyes, words began to emerge between the splutters. ‘…old dog. Lucky old bastard!’ He straightened. ‘My congratulations!’ He blew his nose. ‘Suppose I’ll have to arrange a bridal chamber at High House then. Can’t have your wedding night in a barn!’

Graciously, if tentatively, Gifford offered his own congratulations. ‘I shall marry you in Bedgebury, it goes without saying.’

Wentworth gave Zeal a warning look. She kept silent while Wentworth and Gifford at last agreed that the Hawkridge attendance at his services in Bedgebury could be limited to one Sunday a month.

‘I would have touched the gun!’ Zeal said tightly to Wentworth when Gifford, Comer and Sir Richard had gone. ‘I would have fired it if I could!’

‘Of course.’ He gave her a conspiratorial smile. ‘But never confess anything in the presence of a judge.’

‘Tell me the old sot was raving in his cups!’

Zeal was alone in the bake house the next morning blearily eating a slice of cheese with her morning ale when Mistress Margaret arrived breathless and alone, on foot from High House. The sun was barely up. The ovens were still banked.

Mistress Margaret lowered herself onto a stool and wiped her red face with her apron. ‘Tell me you are not going to marry that old man!’

‘You heard this before dawn?’ Zeal picked up a knife. ‘Bread?’

She had not slept.

‘Not dawn. In the middle of the night! Sir Richard was roaring around as drunk as an owl till he keeled over at cockcrow…Give that old loaf to the hens. I’m about to bake more…I haven’t slept since I heard about Harry, and then that other nonsense Sir Richard was spouting.’ Mistress Margaret had loved her nephew John fiercely.

Zeal kept her head down as she began to cube the stale bread. ‘It’s all true.’

Mistress Margaret squeaked like a small rusty hinge. She got up and took the yeast sponge from the oven where it had been rising overnight along with a bowl of water. Still silent, she beat down the puffy yeast mix with a wooden spoon, measured flour by the hand full, mixed all together. Her amethyst ear drops trembled.

Zeal swept the bread cubes and crumbs into the hens’ basket, then stooped to feed the sleeping fire under the first bread oven.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Mistress Margaret at last. ‘If you love my nephew as you claim, how can you bolt to the altar before his ship has scarce cleared the horizon?’ She turned the dough out onto the floured tabletop and attacked it with both fists. She pinched her small mouth, then sniffed angrily. ‘I expected better of you, my girl.’

‘I’m sorry.’

Mistress Margaret turned the dough and slapped it, though not as hard as she might have done before the knuckles of her hands had grown swollen and red. She worked for several minutes with her head down. ‘I’m not sure I can live here if Wentworth becomes master. Even if he deigns to permit me. But where can I go? How can you do this to me, at my age?’

Can’t she see what’s before her eyes? Zeal wondered. Even if she’s never carried a child herself? Rachel guessed.

She ached to tell the older woman, but Mistress Margaret had kept a secret just once in her life, and then only when her nephew’s life had depended on it. ‘I won’t let him turn you out, aunt. In any case, our lives won’t change that much. He has no ambitions beyond his fishing. We shall carry on just as before.’

Fiercely, the older woman pressed down on the dough, folded and turned it then pressed down again. The smell of raw yeast began to fill the air. ‘I had thought – at the worst, if it came to it – that you might have to make a business-like marriage to bring in some money to help run and repair the estate. And pay our Crown levies. But all Master Wentworth can settle on you is a bucket of trout! And not even his own trout, at that! Most likely your trout! The old wrinkle-shanks!’ She thumped the dough again and raised her voice. ‘And I don’t care if he hears me!’

She paused as one of the dairymaids staggered in from the cow barn with two full pails. Together the three women lifted the heavy pails to pour the milk into a shallow lead sink rescued from the dairy house, so that the cream could rise to the top for skimming.

‘The churn Mistress Wilde lent us from Far Beeches needs to be scoured and set to dry in the sun,’ Zeal told the maid.