The Mountain of Gold (21 page)

Barwick, the sick old Dean of Saint Paul's, began the litany of weary inevitability. 'Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honourable estate—'
An honourable estate? Christ in Heaven, what was honourable about any of this?
I heard only snatches of Barwick's words thereafter, mightily troubled as I was by my own thoughts. '...not be taken in hand unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly, to satisfy men's carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding—'
As if this had anything to do with my brother's carnal lusts, such as they were!
'...duly considering the causes for which matrimony was ordained. First, it was ordained for the procreation of children—'
Aye, and what guarantee was there of that, given how poor my brother's prospects of fatherhood must have been? So unlike our
sovereign lord standing by, who seemed to need only to brush the skirt of a woman for her to be birthed nine months later...

Lost in my fevered thoughts, I almost missed that most delicious and yet most dreadful moment in any marriage service. Dean Barwick looked out to the congregation and proclaimed, 'If any man can show just cause, why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace!'

The cathedral, the greatest enclosed space in all of London, suddenly seemed very small and very silent. I sensed the presence of Cornelia, knowing full well that she was perfectly able (and willing) to lecture the congregation for at least two or three hours on the full gamut of reasons why Charles Quinton and Louise De Vaux should not be joined together, but I had made her swear on the sanctity of our own marriage vows that she would remain silent. Instead, I glanced at Tristram. He opened his mouth, but in that moment his eyes moved from my mother at his side (whose own glare was forbidding enough) to the King, standing beside the Lady Louise. I, too, shifted to look upon our sovereign lord again, and saw that his face was now fixed in a cold, vicious mask of prohibition. His eyes and my uncle's seemed to fight a battle of wills, but in that contest, there could only be one victor. Tris covered his mouth, coughed, and the moment passed.

The dean nodded contentedly, and proceeded with the words of the marriage service. 'Wilt thou,' he asked my brother, 'have this woman to thy wedded wife, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honour and keep her in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto her, so long as ye both shall live?'

Charles seemed far away. Almost inaudibly, he said, 'I will.'

Barwick turned to the Lady Louise, whose eyes were downcast and demure. 'Wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live together after God's ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness and in health; and forsaking all other, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall live?'

'I will,' said Louise De Vaux, with all apparent sincerity and meekness. I wondered if she had been equally sincere and meek on the two previous occasions when she had sworn the same oath.

'Who,' asked Barwick, 'giveth this woman to be married unto this man?'

Charles Stuart smiled broadly, and all but thrust the Lady Louise's hand into the Dean's. He, in turn, brought my brother's hand over to take hers. And so it proceeded to the peroration. Then it was my moment. Barwick beckoned for the ring, the same plain band that had adorned my grandmother's hand, and although every instinct in my body directed me to throw the cursed thing through one of the holes in the rose window, I produced it and placed it without demur into my brother's hand. The Earl, in turn, placed the ring upon the lady's fourth finger, and spoke with an unexpected confidence: 'With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' Barwick delivered the prayer of blessing before joining the right hands of the bride and groom, proclaiming loudly, 'Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder!' And then the final knife into my heart: 'Forasmuch as Charles and Louise have consented together in holy wedlock, and have witnessed the same before God and this company, and thereto have given and pledged their troth to each other, and have declared the same by giving and receiving of a ring, and by joining of hands; I pronounce that they be Man and Wife together. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.'

They be Man and Wife together.
In that moment, Louise Quinton, Countess of Ravensden, glanced toward me, and smiled.

It was done.

***

Ravensden House was too small to accommodate the veritable legion of wedding guests, and was in any case far too humble (and unsafe) to receive the Lord's Anointed. Fortunately the hall of the Worshipful Company of Thatchers stood nearby, and both the cunning negotiating skills of Phineas Musk and the promise of royal patronage had made it available for the wedding feast of the Earl and Countess of Ravensden. Resplendent in the flower-bedecked Ravensden state coach, my brother and his bride made a triumphal procession from Saint Paul's to the hall, cheered by curious passers-by. Fiddlers and pipers went before them, and the entire congregation followed behind, some now bearing torches against the cold and the gathering dusk; I suspected that not a few were already some considerable way into their cups, having come to the cathedral in that state to begin with. Cornelia and I travelled in the Garvey coach, but it was a tense journey with little of the cheery banter that families are meant to make at weddings; my wife and my sister were increasingly at odds on the matter of our new sister-in-law, and I did not relish the role of umpire. Cornelia and Lizzie did essay a few venomous remarks about the dress sense of some of the guests, but neither of them had their hearts in it. Venner Garvey and I had nothing to say to each other; my good-brother's thoughts were as inscrutable as ever, but for my part, I could simply think of nothing suitable to say to a man whom I half-suspected of ordering the destruction of Deptford Dockyard and my ship.

It was a blessedly brief journey, but as we decamped into the Thatchers' Hall, Cornelia murmured to me: 'I think I am in hell, husband. And we have worse to come, of course. The bedding of that
slet,
that
smerige heks
—'

Her tirade was thankfully drowned out by the crescendo of noise that greeted us within the hall. Musk informed me that the pipers and the fiddlers seemed to have fallen out with each other, and now seemed to be engaged in a war to see which could be the loudest and most discordant. With many of the guests already so far agitated by drink, the ribaldry that ever attends a marriage was increasingly prevalent. A wench was roughly deprived of one of her garters, which was then hawked around some of the ruder young men. A disquieting number of maidens already wore clothing rather looser than it had been in the cathedral. Even my mother was disconcertingly jolly, seated on a large oak chair at the centre of proceedings, bestowing bonhomie on all around her. Phineas Musk was imbibing ale at a prodigious rate—as he said, what are weddings for, if not a heaven-sent opportunity to eat and drink enough for a week? There was a moment's relative sobriety when the King appeared. He passed through the throng like Moses through the Red Sea, the men bowing low, the women curtsying even lower to ensure that their bosoms were fully exposed to the expert royal eye. Charles Stuart was relatively temperate himself, but he seemed to inspire—indeed, actively encouraged—the most intemperate behaviour around him, and after that briefest pause to give due reverence to Majesty, the hubbub commenced anew.

In the midst of it all stood our earl and countess, receiving the congratulations of all and sundry. My brother was as diffident as ever, but the Countess revelled in it all, dispensing her radiant smile upon one and all. As we looked upon the spectacle, Tris came to our side. 'So the deed is accomplished,' he said. 'Alas that we failed to prevent it.' His opposition to the union remained undiminished, whereas, distressing though I found the whole sorry business, my hostility had been somewhat moderated by the words that Charles had spoken in the abbey ruins. In truth, my mind was in a ferment upon the matter, clarity eclipsed by endless clouds.

In those days, one of the great delights of our English marriage custom was the bedding: the bride and groom escorted to their chamber by the entire bridal party, given possets of sack, undressed of their stockings and garters which were then gleefully thrown at the married couple, all accompanied by much mirth and lewd advice. Although ours took place in Veere, the wedding of Cornelia and myself was attended by enough English exiles to enable a passable imitation of the ritual to take place; indeed, it took some considerable time to eject from our chamber the last of the bridal party (Harcourt, this, who claimed never to have witnessed a consummation in all his days). Nowadays, of course, in these mean and prudish times under our Hanoverian masters, it is increasingly common for bride and groom to skulk off alone to their chamber once the wedding feast is done—as if their bedding should be a
private business
! Thus far is old England decayed. Back in the year sixty-three, though, such mean-spiritedness was unheard of. Consequently, there had been not a little disquiet at the news that Charles and his lady were to be bedded privately, and in an apartment of the Palace of Whitehall, no less. It was given out that this was merely for convenience: it was said that it would be physically impossible to get the entire bridal party into the earl's bedroom at Ravensden House without risking the collapse of the building. However, I also suspected that my brother's craving for solitude, and the profound embarrassment that the lewd ceremony of bedding would have caused him, might have contributed not a little to the decision, which was causing much grumbling within the Thatchers' Hall. How little I then knew.

The King came over to us. Tris and I bowed, Cornelia curtsied. Charles Stuart was in the highest of spirits: he enjoyed weddings, primarily because they guaranteed the presence in one building of a significant amount of young female flesh, yet paradoxically, of course, he took the marriage vows themselves perhaps more lightly than any other man then living. Poor Queen Catherine, who was naturally nowhere to be seen on such a day.

'Matt. Mistress Quinton. Doctor Quinton,' said the King, cheerily. 'Damnably excellent day, don't you think?'

As Your Majesty says,' Tristram replied. 'Your very presence brings rays of sun through the winter cold to warm the House of Quinton.' In that age of dissemblers and hypocrites, Tristram Quinton could stand his own with the best of them.

'Quite, quite,' said the best of them, seemingly accepting the words at face value; but then, the King spent every waking hour listening to flattery of the most sycophantic kind. Alas, it seemed to me that he was increasingly inclined to believe it. 'The bride looks splendid, does she not? Quite splendid. And Matt—the
Seraph
is almost ready to sail, I gather?'

Women and ships in one conversation; that must have been very close to Charles the Second's idea of heaven.

'I hope in a week or so, sire. When I left her, we awaited only our guns and the remainder of the victuallers' stores.'

'Excellent, excellent. You know the importance of this voyage to me, Matt.' He turned to Cornelia. And Mistress Quinton—we realise, of course, that your husband's absence for so many months upon our royal service will be a sore trial to you. You must come to court. Your presence will be an ornament to it, and we are sure we can find ways to while away your time.'

My face fell, for I knew full well how King Charles preferred to while away the time of women. But as our sovereign lord passed on to a nearby gaggle of eager maidens, Cornelia kicked me on the ankle. 'Husband!' she chid, to Tristram's amusement. 'You know me so little that you think I would jump into bed with another—even with the King? Sweet Christ, I would rather bed Musk than him! Besides, Tristram and I will have business enough, these next months.' She smiled wickedly. After all, that injunction about no man putting asunder what God has joined together makes no mention of a woman, does it?'

My heart sank; for God alone knew what mischief my wife and uncle could make without me to restrain them.

***

An hour or so later, I stood in the small yard that adjoined the Thatchers' Hall, gulping in some of the cold winter air. I was desperate for relief from the increasingly noxious atmosphere within. The great room itself was filling with the smoke of sea-coal fires and many pipes of tobacco, while the assembled company was becoming ever more raucous. Drunken young men of my age were doing what they are wont to do at weddings, vomiting onto the floor or steering equally drunken maidens toward dark corners. Tristram had deserted me, deciding that this was as good a moment as any to mend his fences with my mother; as far as they could be mended, given the twenty or more years of destruction that had been wrought upon them. Cornelia, too, had removed herself, she and Elizabeth decamping together as women sometimes do. I did not wish for words with Venner Garvey, nor with any of my vapid cousins, nor with any of the increasingly inebriated bridal party. So I sought solitude and a little fresh air before returning reluctantly to the fray.

'Matthew.'

I turned—'My Lady.'

Louise, Countess of Ravensden, stood before me. 'Not "my lady", good-brother. Please. It should be Louise, between us.'

'Louise.' The word almost choked me. But I recovered myself—'Good-sister. I am surprised that you absent yourself from your bridal feast.'

She smiled. It was not an unpleasant smile, if truth be told. 'Ah, Matthew, that is one of the curious things about weddings, I find: no one is troubled if the bride disappears for a while.' Her voice, too, had a strangely plausible lilt and modesty to it. 'It's always assumed that she must be attending to some aspect of her dress, or her headgear, or talking with some of the other guests, out of one's sight. And as you must be thinking, I have experienced enough weddings to speak with some authority on the matter.' She was a beauty, that much was certain: a beauty of the body and the mind. Clad in that splendid wedding gown, it was easy to see why she fascinated and enslaved men in equal measure. But I recalled that the Emperor Claudius was fascinated and enslaved by Messalina, and I also recalled the bloody outcome of that marriage.