Christie Dickason - The Memory Palace

Raised, urgent voices came from the chapel. Three boys ran out of the door like animated bushes, arms full of boughs, with only their legs exposed.

‘The tranquillity of the riverbank might ease your mind. Come hide with me from all the consternation.’

I dare say, other women have been even unhappier on their wedding days, and lived.

She tugged at her cloak, on which she was sitting, to protect her skirt hem from the damp earth under the willow.

Wentworth stood motionless, some way downstream, planted like the stump of an ancient tree. Every once in a while, his hands moved, making some fine adjustment to the placement of his line.

Why am I so angry with him? she wondered. He didn’t put a foot wrong during all that dreadful scene with Gifford. Indeed, Gifford was afraid of him. Maybe he does keep chests full of severed heads as Mistress Margaret said.

She considered the still, solid figure on the bank. A finger of breeze stirred a strand of his silver hair. Otherwise, he seemed not even to breathe.

What a lather he was in to get away from the chapel, she thought. I suppose I should be flattered that he finds my company tolerable. So long as we don’t speak.

Please, God, let it all be over soon.

When the bake house bell rang at dinnertime, she did not move. Wentworth merely shifted farther down stream.

She shut her eyes. Otherwise, she might see John poised naked on the bank, preparing to dive into the water. Or coming through the trees on fire with urgency to show her the fringed miracle of a double buttercup.

The pealing of the chapel bells woke her. The sun was slanting low through the trees.

‘They’re ready for us.’ Wentworth gripped his wriggling chubb and dislocated its head with a quick jerk. He put the fish into his sack, then helped her to her feet. ‘Back to the fray.’ He shouldered his rod and set off up the riverbank with Zeal trudging behind, her hands upraised like a supplicant so as not to be married while covered in nettle welts.

What am I doing? Philip Wentworth asked himself. How did I let myself get so tangled in other lives after all those careful years?

The most absurd fact was that he wanted to go through with this commedia. He was wilfully, in full knowledge of his risks, putting himself in danger again.

To judge by his open relief at the denuded chapel, Gifford had clearly expected more resistance. The reassembled company were fewer in number and subdued. None of the children had returned, and who could blame them? Nor was Doctor Bowler there.

Zeal imagined him seated alone somewhere, gathering the courage to be chastised by the man who had wounded him.

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.

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